Just one good night's sleep, please!

Both my babies slept through the night from the time they came home from the hospital. I was soooo lucky. I remember talking to other exhausted mothers whose babies woke up every three hours or wouldn't get to sleep and feeling a bit cocky and self-satisfied as I sympathetically lamented their lack of sleep.

If only I would have known that years later it would come back to bite me.

For the last month or so, bedtime has been a major battle. It started when Hubby was away, and still continues. We are following the same bedtime routine as always: bath, stories, a short amount of playtime, into bed, sleep. But the latter steps are not happening. They get into bed, but then they get out of bed. They also seem to be needier than usual:

"Mommy, can you please lay down in the big bed for two minutes? Just two minutes...please?" Surprise implores, holding out two chubby fingers. Sometimes, just to get them to be quiet, I will lay in the big bed as two minutes become twenty minutes and the only time of the day that I can get some work done ticks away. It doesn't work. Twenty minutes later, I head downstairs and they stand at the top of the stairs crying and yelling.

Some nights, I let them go to sleep in the big bed, with the chimes or froggies on the alarm clock lulling them to sleep. I try to avoid getting into this habit though, and it doesn't seem to work anyway.

When they're not yelling for me, they keep each other awake. Surprise's daycare teacher, who has two older children, told me that she had a similar problem, and taking away the TV and everything else solved it. But they don't have a TV. They just have each other, and here it is 10:15 PM and they are up there yapping. I guess we could try separate rooms, but unless we locked them in they would just get out and keep playing.

They're exhausted. Getting them up in the morning has been a real nightmare. And I've been picking them up earlier from preschool, at 3PM. When I arrive they are just getting up from their naps, and walk around for the next hour like little zombies. On Monday, Surprise was still sound asleep on his little mat. They don't nap at home, and I don't even try to make them anymore, but on home days lately they are spaced out and lying around all day.

And I'm exhausted too! I avoid going upstairs to bed while they're still awake, so I'm downstairs waiting and waiting. And with the constant cries for mommy, it takes hours until I can finally get down to work, which keeps me up even later. Then in the middle of the night, they're climbing into bed, leaving me about a four inch wide space to sleep in.

I know, though, that someday they won't want me around at all, so I'm trying to remember to treasure these bleary eyed, annoying moments.