I love my kiddos. I really, really do. I treasure my hours and minutes and seconds with them every day (and night). But! But, but, but… I wish they would somehow manage to coordinate their sleeping schedules a little more conveniently for mom and dad. Alone time is the scarcest commodity for these parents.
You see, my baby girl is out at 6:30 PM and up at 5:30 in the AM. She’s chattering away in her crib, cute as can be at 5:30 every morning. Try as we might to tweak this, she slowly gravitates back toward an early bedtime. I would love to brag that we’re awesome parents who cultivated this healthy sleep schedule with our excess of skill, however I cannot. It’s just Lulu.
Look at this face. You can’t be too irritated by the 5:30 wake up call. She’s just too cute.
We used the same non-techniques with my little boy’s night routine and he will push bedtime as long as he can finagle. Max has hated sleeping since the day he came home from the hospital. Oskar has nightmares from the hours he spent each night walking a screaming baby around our 600 square foot apartment. Now that he’s older, bath time, reading time, prayer time are all drawn out. Then he needs water, needs to pee, needs a hug, et cetera. Then he tells himself stories (which are hilarious and will be recounted in detail at a later date) until it’s 10:00 and finally, the Sandman succeeds. One, if not both of the parental units are passed out by this ungodly hour most nights, leaving us no time for bonding moments of the kid-free variety.
The rarest form of sleep for Max. The nap. Notice how he has first created a nest by destroying the bed.
My guess is, either the “childrens” (as my sweet old Italian great grammy would have called them) just enjoy their time with us sans the other kid to compete with for attention or they have planned their sleeping shifts so as to decrease the chances they’ll ever have to share us with another sibling.
