For the past week I've been off from work due to the week-long shutdown. Unfortunately I had to use vacation for it, but fortunately I got a few things done so it wasn't too bad. It would've been nice to go someplace, but next weekend is my brother's wedding, so we have to drive to Ohio. Driving to someplace like Duluth or Chicago the week before a 12-hour road trip would require more stamina than we have.

Anyway, the combination of two things has been forcing me to get more sleep. One of those things is the shutdown. Even before that, though, Giada's sleep habits after coming back from Japan have forced me to get up earlier, and hence go to sleep earlier. She likes to go to sleep at around 22:30 or 23:00, waking up anywhere between 0 and N times during the night (where N is often 3 or 4, but sometimes higher), and finally awaking at around 07:00. Sachie starts Giada off in her crib, but has to comfort her when she wakes up in the middle of the night. For the most part she'll go back to sleep quickly. At around 05:30, though, she won't be easily calmed and so most days Sachie brings Giada to our room and puts her in the middle. Then at around 07:00, Giada starts rolling around and kicks me in the ribs (she kicked me in the head once), or she'll grab and poke my face (she stuck her thumb up my nose once). Generally I have to reposition her so she can't do me violence, and then we both ignore her for a while until it's time to get up. The antics where she flails about and babbles are her telling us she's hungry, and she gets more insistent the longer we wait. She normally drinks formula in the morning, though, and preparing that usually requires a level of mental activity that precludes resuming one's sleep.

So with Giada's sleep habits, I've been going to sleep earlier, before midnight. Previously I would be up until about 01:30 or 02:00. The thing is, I don't really get up that much earlier, although I can if the baby requires something. Thus I've been getting more like 7-8 hours of sleep instead of 6 (or less). When I was younger, I seem to remember that I would frequently turn over in my sleep. A few months ago, I noticed that often I'd wake up in the same position I went to sleep, or I'd only turn on my side once (that I knew about). The same thing with dreams—until I started shorting myself on sleep in high school and through college, I usually could remember my dreams in the morning, for a while anyway. I don't think I dreamt much in college due to poor sleep habits, and once I started working my dreams had vanished completely. Maybe I'd have one on Friday night during a sleep binge, though that wasn't the same. Most times I couldn't recall the dream, one instead of several, and if I did it was mundane. With the restored sleep pattern, I wake up from dreams more often, and furthermore move around much more over the course of the night (probably to the detriment of my wife).

Supposedly even if one doesn't remember one's dreams, one still has them. To me, the change is an indicator of something: whether good or bad I'm not sure. I seem to wake up more often, probably due to Giada, yet before I was probably so dead tired that I couldn't. My guess is that remembering my dreams waking up is a good thing. That presents me with another concern: having shorted myself on sleep for the past 15+ years, did I just damage myself big time? Actually, when I lived in Japan, I often only got 4-5 hours of sleep a night, which was probably the worst long-term poor sleep that I've had. Indeed, I noticed a change for the worse in my mental faculty. By the time I noticed it was probably too late to save those brain cells, and I could never be sure it was that or the drinking that was done on nights when I didn't have extreme sleep deprivation.

There was an article in the June 9th Wall Street Journal on sleep deprivation. This is the sidebar from the article on "sleep 'stealers'":

• Caffeine–can diminish REM and deep sleep [even when drunk in the morning, supposedly]
• Alcohol–can promote sleep initially, then wakefulness later
• Noise, temperature–can interrupt sleep
• Light–can confuse body clock [I've read elsewhere that light can disturb REM, so sleep after sunrise is probably of poor quality unless the room has fully opaque curtains]
• Stress–can delay sleep or reduce deep sleep
• Working, using Internet, cellphones, text messages close to bedtime–can delay sleep, increasing awakenings [oops]
• Erratic schedules–can confuse body clock [double oops]
• Pets in the bedroom–can interrupt sleep [does that include babies?]
• Jet lag–can confuse body clock [thank you for stating the obvious]
• Napping–can delay sleep or cause early awakening

The bit about Internet use prior to bedtime was particularly troubling. While in Japan I would often work late, come home, then log on and process data or send notes until the wee hours of the morning. Even after returning to the U.S., I tend to wind down by dinking about on the Net. Ah yes, all the unintended consequences of technology, and of the choices we make. To borrow from Jimmy Buffet, "Some people claim that there's a woman [or computer, or work, etc.] to blame / but I know it's my own damn fault."

Oh yeah, happy Independence Day. Be patriotic, go shoot some guns today.