pillow talk

brendan and i aren't the type of couple who can just lie down and fall asleep in a heart beat. we also aren't the type of couple who can cuddle ourselves to sleep. we can cuddle and then separate and THEN fall asleep, but we CAN'T sleep within a foot of each other. in the first week of marriage, these are some things that we immediately discovered:

we both:
A. toss and turn in our sleep
B. swing our elbows and knees (as we toss and turn)
C. need to be in control of the blanket
D. like to spread out on the bed

any one of these could be a problem when trying to share a bed with someone else. but take two people with all these habits and then throw into the mix that our bed for our first month of marriage was a full size. not a king size. not a queen size. but a full size bed. that's barely a step up from a twin! having a full size bed meant we started drawing imaginary lines on the sheets to keep our sides separate. it wasn't just to make sure that neither of us was getting jipped out of our "fair share" of the bed space, it was a matter of safety. if one of us strayed too close to the other, you couldn't be sure if you would accidentally get a kick in the middle of the night. i remember waking up in the middle of the night one time wondering what was pressing on my face, only to realize it was brendan's elbow. and in the morning he'd tell me about the elbows and knees i sent flying during the night. FORTUNATELY, most of these situations have been resolved. the biggest fix in this case was:

A. getting a king size bed - we can finally toss and turn without injuring each other, and spread out enough to be comfortable
B. brendan's genius brought along this second change - we each have our own separate sheet to sleep with (it's too hot here for blankets, but sheets are perfect). that way we can pull and twist and turn all we like, without stealing them from each other. we used to have mini-battles over them in our sleep, but now it's all better.

now we can actually sleep... minus incidents with the dogs during the night. the dogs are upstairs during the night with my mother-in-law, while we are downstairs.
sometimes during the night the dogs:

A. bark - what dogs don't? - but even worse, if one dog goes downstairs for a drink or to use the bathroom outside, the other dogs bark like mad whenever anything is on the stairs. so any movement in the house, the dogs bark. good for safety, but annoying if it's only other dogs roaming.
B. if my mother-in-law isn't home, the dogs just whine because they miss her. one night they barged into our room - yes, one of the dogs literally knows how to open the closed door to our room. so annoying when ur in a REM cycle at 4am and then 3 dogs come in whining and wanting attention. we had to lock the door after the second time it happened so they wouldn't come in again.
C. early every thursday morning the dogs go crazy because it's landscape day and they freakout with having people so close to the house. early morning wake-up calls. no need for an alarm clock on thursdays mornings.