It’s Friday, payday, night we get to go out while the kids have a babysitter, and I thought I’d write something a little lighter for your enjoyment.

I read Dooce almost every day, and today she has a story about how she got her kid to sleep that reminds me of a time when Brandon was a baby. I told this story at a baby shower for a friend once, and the other women in the room looked at me in horror, but the new mother called me when her baby was about 6 weeks old and expressed complete understanding.

Brandon was a pretty easy baby from the get-go - no problems nursing, very typical sleeping patterns, very social and sweet. But he went through a growth spurt or something at about 5 months and was all of a sudden waking up in the middle of the night wanting to nurse after having slept at least 8 hours for the last three months. I was a college student, trying to get through my last year of school, and John was working crazy hours so that we wouldn’t have to pay for childcare, and we were both exhausted all of the time. This crying thing was not okay.

So I would nurse him, and then he would be . . . AWAKE. Wide awake, ready to play. I thought I was going to die if I didn’t get some sleep soon. So out of desperation we started to keep a bottle of water ready rather than nursing him, to discourage him from thinking he would get food at o’ dark-thirty in the morning. He would wake up and fuss, John or I would go get him, and we’d try and give him some of the water, which he would drink half-heartedly, and then we’d put him back down and he would cry. And cry. And cry some more.

Until one night. I was so tired, I remember just feeling like every atom of my being was weeping for a solid night’s sleep. Brandon woke up, I went and got him and sat on the edge of the bed with him swaddled in his blanket. I reached for the bottle of water, pulled off the cap, and aimed it toward his screaming mouth.

All of a sudden there was water everywhere. My pajamas were soaked, his blanket was dripping, and he was sputtering and hiccuping, looking at me with these huge round eyes, like “What the hell was that, you demon woman?!!!!” I just couldn’t understand what had happened, until I looked at the bottle in my hand.

Instead of taking the cap off the nipple, I had unscrewed the whole top and dumped the whole 6 ounces of water right in the poor kid’s face.

Sleep deprivation is dangerous, I tell you.

But, although I absolutely don’t condone this experience as any kind of genius parenting method, Brandon slept through the night after that.

I mean, who wants to get up at 4:00 am to have water thrown in your face?