The Streak Ends

Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak;

Brett Favre starting 297 games in a row;

Cal Ripken playing in 2,632 consecutive games;

My son sleeping through the night for eight straight nights;

These are the greatest streaks in history.

Okay, so that last one doesn’t quite match up to the other feats. But, in our household, this streak was a big deal. It was Kai’s longest stretch of sleeping through the night in nearly four years.

Unfortunately, like the other momentous streaks, this one came to an end. At 2AM this morning, I heard the familiar knocking on our bedroom door. When I went out to see him, Kai began talking to himself in a very chipper voice. I was not in such good humor.

Still, it was a great run; more than a week of good sleep. For me, I mean.

What is frustrating, though, is that we can’t figure out why he slept so well. Being the analytical type who loves to dig into data about barometric pressure and compression shirts, it drives me crazy that we cannot come up with a good correlation for why Kai slept for eight nights, and now why he woke up last night.

Our son’s DAN (Defeat Autism Now!) doctor has been advising us on supplements to address Kai’s sleep issues for a long time now. Did the cumulative effects make a difference?

We started seeing an Applied Kinesiologist three months ago. Did his work kick in this past week?

Perhaps it was just the cold weather.

Not only did Kai sleep through the night, but, on many mornings, it took a lot of effort to wake him up. This kid, who for years was constantly waking me up much earlier than I wanted to get up, often told me, “Daddy, I want to sleep more.” Sorry, son, you have to get up now or you’ll be late for school.

The other day, as I pulled the blanket off his bed, he said, “Dad, you’re annoying me.” I was surprised how well he expressed himself. Hah, what a positively normal thing to say.

I would gladly take the tradeoff of struggling to get him to wake up versus having him awaken in the middle of the night.

Joe DiMaggio hit in 16 straight games right after his 56-game streak was broken. Let’s see if Kai can start another streak of sleeping through the night.