For the love of sleep

Oh sleep, oh sleep, how I love thee so,
My lack of you has brought me woe.
With you my last bit of sanity goes,
For my children are your foes.

When you think of having babies, one always thinks of waking in the middle of the night for feedings. If only that were the only lack of sleep that we get as parents! Having two children has brought about new meaning to sleep depredation!

One example is our night last Sunday. First of all, I was very tired from only getting six hours of sleep the night before. We were trying to watch a movie and Sophia kept crying so we would have to pause the movie over and over again. Finally by 9:00 I'd had enough and took Sophia with me to bed. Figuring I would feed her in the bed and we would go to sleep I left the boys downstairs to their movie. Well, things did not go as planned! I couldn't' get Sophia to stop crying, so by 10:00 I took her back downstairs to Justin. I took Chasen to bed instead, and that took 30 minutes or so to get him to stop talking and fall asleep. We both had barely fallen asleep when Justin comes in with Sophia because he can't get her to stop crying. Finally, by midnight she finally falls asleep....just to wake up at 2:00 throwing up in our bed! So of course we have to do a chinese-fire-drill style changing of the sheets and taking care of Sophia. That situation was taken care of and then at 3:30 Chasen comes in our room telling us he doesn't want to go night-night anymore! We get him in our bed and he sleeps, until 5:30 when he decides he's hungry and wants some milk! For me, once I'm up I'm up so I figure I got around four hours of sleep that night.

Second example, the next day, I take the kids on an outing and the baby sleeps the entire time. When we get home about 2:30, Chasen is tired and so am I. I get the baby out of the carrier for family nap time. Sophia started crying and wouldn't stop making it so Chasen couldn't fall asleep. Then, when she stopped crying Chasen would start messing around and wake her up. We went back and forth with this for over an hour. Finally everyone was asleep by 4:00 and I got about twenty minutes of shut-eye before Sophia started crying again! I do have to give her props though, that night she slept for eight hours!

Third example, after getting us all excited about sleeping through the night the kids thought they would shake things up last night! At 8:00 I said we should go to bed. Justin thought it was too early, but went along with it anyway. By 8:30 I was done with story time and both kids were in bed. Justin was so proud of himself for getting both kids down before 8:30, but I knew it felt too good to be true! About 8:45 we start hearing Chasen talking to himself and getting loud in his room which wakes up Sophia. By 9:00 she's crying and Chasen is out of his room telling us she's crying. It goes back and forth-either Chasen is waking up Sophia or Sophia is waking up Chasen. I think by 10:30 they had both passed out...two hours after getting into bed!

The point is, "nap when the baby naps" is not true in our house! And going to bed early doesn't help anything, in fact I think it makes it worse! Thank goodness for my Keruig coffee maker!