Let's Tell the Babies About Sleep Awareness Week

Babies are really the ones who need to learn about Sleep Awareness Week. So, please ... if you know a baby or have a baby or see a baby, tell them to stay in their beds and cribs longer. Tell them they'll be better off in the long run because we, their parents and caregivers, will be better off.
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It's Sleep Awareness Week. This is a week dedicated to promoting the importance of sleep. Sleep needs to be promoted? Not to me! I love to sleep! It's my favorite thing in the world and that's a world that includes pasteurized cookie dough. If I ever decided to get a tattoo, it would be a tattoo of my bed. No bluebirds, dolphins, or inspirational quotes written in Chinese. Unless that inspirational quote is, "You snooze, you win."

Nope, don't worry about me. And don't worry about most of my friends. We love to sleep. We don't need to be reminded about its importance. But you know who does need to be convinced? Babies! Those little suckers don't get it! They cry at bedtime. They don't stay asleep for long. And they wake up early. It's not bad enough that babies are impatient and immature. They are also terrible sleepers. Supposedly it has something to do with their small stomachs. I don't know about that. I'm not a doctor. (But, whatever you do, don’t tell that to my alumni magazine!)

Babies are really the ones who need to learn about Sleep Awareness Week. So, please ... if you know a baby or have a baby or see a baby, tell them to stay in their beds and cribs longer. Tell them they'll be better off in the long run because we, their parents and caregivers, will be better off.

Why? Well, can you imagine the women and men we'd be if we all slept an hour or two (or three!) more each night? We would -- collectively -- be kinder and more tolerant. We'd be more alert. In which case we'd drink less coffee ... so we would all have nicer breath. If babies slept longer, we would all have much better breath. What a wonderful world it would be.

We'd get fewer colds and fewer parking tickets. We'd have quicker reflexes. We'd be better at making small talk. We'd certainly be better at remembering things, like that guy's name from the movie about that thing. I can't remember his name.

We'd be better listeners and we'd be better dancers and we wouldn't lose our keys nearly as often. (Where are my keys?) We'd be more philanthropic, diplomatic, and probably more patriotic too. We'd exercise more. OK. Who am I kidding? For some of us, we'd just exercise... period. We'd remember the words to more songs and the punch lines to more jokes. We could meet up with friends and say, "I'm good. How are you?" and mean it.

We could learn foreign languages with all the time on our hands. I heard that RosettaStone is good. We could learn Japanese and Russian and maybe a little French and then teach our children, too. Our kids would all get into Ivy League schools if we slept more. And, with our kids away at school, we'd have time to do those things we always said we would. We would volunteer more. I'm sure of it. Or, if we weren't volunteering, we could power through our Netflix cues more quickly, like that movie with the guy from that thing. Wait ... I think I might have already said that. I don't know. I'm tired.

I just know this: You snooze, you win. Will somebody please tell the babies?

(This is adapted from a post that ran on Mammalingo but no one really remembers it that well because everyone's so tired because of the babies.)

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