'Good' night!

My children are now 4, 2 1/2, and 1 1/2. At those ages we should be sleeping through the night, right?

WRONG!!

These kiddos of mine can operate on little to no sleep like no children I have ever seen before.

Kaylee insists that anymore than an hour of sleep during the day is just plain a waste of her time. Heaven forbid she misses anything that is going on outside of her room. At nights she usually goes down just fine, but about the 1am-2am time she is ready to be awake for the day. Luckily February has been good to us and it's now only a couple days a week she wakes up during those hours to yell to us until she either gets bored or we cave and go in and lay her back down. She cracks me up cause she will scream and yell until we hand her water cup to her, which she grabs from us as quickly as possible. You would think she was absolutely parched. Only after all that yelling she simply hugs her cup to her and sucks her thumb. I have yet to understand that! Her cup is like her security blanket I suppose! She will also at times throw that water cup if she doesn't fall right back to sleep at her poor unsuspecting sister. Poor Kambree has had more than her fair share of bruises from flying cups during the night!

Kambree is a bit better and I suppose if she didn't share a room with her sister she would sleep a bit better. When she is up though you can tell. She usually starts off in a pretty good mood. You can hear her playing in her room or talking quietly to herself. Then some nights the singing begins. Her new favorite thing to do is add whatever words she feels like to the tune of Wheels on the Bus. 2 nights ago we heard a good 15 minutes of 'I want my milk' sung to the Wheels on the Bus tune. After a bit of that she will at times get bored and go to bed or she will get really mad and just start screaming... which in turn wakes Kaylee and it's pretty much all over from there.

Jackson, well, he is a creature of habit. He is quite the predictable fella! We have an entire routine that has to happen to the tee in order for him to go down at nights.

When we finally get the kid to get in his bed, after the get ready for bed things are done, he needs his story. After his story if we are both home we have to both say our good nights. KC is lucky on this one and gets away with a hug, kiss, and good night. Me on the other hand, I have a good 10+ minutes of good byes to take care of. It goes something like this:

Hug

Kiss

Me: Good night Jackson

J: Good night Mom

Me: I love you!

J: I love you too!

Me: Thank you! (If I don't thank him he will just repeat the above sentence over and over til I do)

J: Your welcome!

Me: OK (If I don't say ok he will repeat the above sentence until I do)

J: Remember don't get out of your bed during the night. (Can you tell he has been told this a time or two.)

Me: I won't, you don't either.

J: OK, I won't

Me: Thank you!

J: Your welcome!

Me: OK

J: Sleep good!

Me: Sleep Good!

J: I will

Me: ok thank you!

J: your welcome

.

.

.

.

.

.

And so it continues. I usually walk out of his room somewhere in round 2 and he continues to yell at me for a good few minutes after I leave.

This time around he usually stays in bed about 2 minutes before he comes out to let me know he either 'forgot' to tell me good night (cause the above I suppose doesn't count), 'forgot' to give me a hug and kiss, or something random like last nights crabs that climbed in his bed to snap his back and then climbed out and hid before I could see them. We then begin the good byes all over again.

I am usually an ok sport on this the few couple times because I know Jackson well enough to know that somethings just aren't worth the fight and this is one of them. However after doing this about 3 times I am done and a threat accompanies that last good bye.

The good news with Jackson is that he usually stays in his bed once he is down. If he gets up it's him coming up the stairs hysterical and 9 times out of 10 it's cause he needs to go to the bathroom. Not sure when he will understand that turning the corner from his bedroom to the bathroom is a lot easier than getting all worked up to come upstairs and let us know before he goes. Hopefully it comes sooner than later!

In talking to my dad on Sunday we discovered that last time he slept well and through the night was probably sometime in the 1970's so I'm not getting my hopes up anytime soon!