Kicked Out by Room Mate

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Being room mates with Albany has been a love-hate affair. In a nutshell, Albany gave me bad nights. Being a light sleeper, I awoke to the slightest antics by Albany. For instance, her scratching. She had eczema issues on the common locations such as joint areas ever since we started putting her 2 days a week at the child care centre. Since Jen stopped working a few months ago, Albany's skin problems gradually became under control. However, her bad scratching habits are still ongoing. 


Some people sleep walk and are not aware of a single thing they do. My daughter sleep scratch. Like sleeping walking, it can potential inflict a lot of damage on the person or to other parties. In Albany's sleep-scratching case, she scratches so hard that she would wake me up from deep sleep and forced me to hold her hands to stop her. In the middle of the quiet Perth nights, her scratching sounded exactly like what it would be when I tried to de-scale a fresh fish I bought from the market. That was how hard Albany scratches herself in the night. Needless to say, the damage will be apparent in the morning, where she would come to terms with swollen and painful skin. Creams, lotions, balms or holy water may be able to suppress this condition but only by a modest limit. Those (such as doctors who prescribe steroid creams) who insist that eczema can be fully subdued do not know how an eczema attack really feels like. Only an eczema sufferer will know how useless the magic products are when it starts to get itchy. I am one of them.


Jen could never understand why I get so irritated whenever Albany scratches herself. I will get myself worked up or even hurt her verbally when she refuses to stop. She was too young to understand her actions will only make things worse. And I felt useless and helpless being unable to make things better. There were many nights when Albany could only fall asleep on my chest, after I gently rub her affected skin repeatedly as a deal for her to stop her scratching. 


When Albany finally stop scratching recently, she began to develop the strange habit of invading my bed during the course of night. I would jolt awake when I felt my elbow against her head, relieved and frustrated at the same time that I could have hurt her by accident. It could be just hot weather that prompted Albany to stray by warm bed sheets to cooler pastures. I wasn't sure. Things began to get worse lately when I would wake after Albany knocked me on the head with her knuckles or jab me hard with her heel. Every time something like that happened, I would ask Albany the next afternoon why she woke Daddy up. Each time, she would look sheepish and said, "I don't know."


Yesterday afternoon, when I asked Albany why she started crying the night before. She said, "I cannot sleep because you snored."


"I want to sleep with mummy," she declared.


I widen my eyes in surprise and started to laugh. "So, can Daddy sleep in the room tonight?"


"No," Albany said.


"So where should Daddy sleep?" I asked.


"In the living room," she replied.


With that, I was officially kicked out by my room mate, after many nights of bad sleep being tormented by her. That was probably a preview of how I might get driven out from our house for forgetting to buy bacon for breakfast in future. Fortunately that evening, Jen managed to play mitigator and I was once again accepted as member of the room again.


That night, once again, Albany woke me up in the middle of the night crossing over to my bed and placing her head near my arm pit. She was still sleeping in an awkward position when I woke for work. It was a rare 15 degrees Celsius for a Summer morning. I gave Albany my blanket and kissed her goodbye.