Sweet Dreams

I always go in to give my kids one final kiss goodnight before I hit the hay and always whisper ‘sweet dreams’. For almost 4 years they have taken this wish to heart, until now….

For the last several weeks L has been waking up in the middle of the night screaming for ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy’. At first we thought it was night terrors, but after a few days we realized that it was just a bad habit. We were hoping that she would grow out of it and return to her good-sleeping self…. No such luck. Night before last she woke up SIX TIMES (plus E woke up once to eat – which is also a new phenomenon). So, as any good parent of a two-year-old would do, we began to negotiate. Needless to say our tactics didn’t work so well (we would be terrible international spies). Granted, she only woke up twice (11:30 pm and 5am) but we opted to play hardball in hopes of breaking her. Instead, she ended up waking us and the baby up – even J was a bit more tired than usual this morning and complained about L’s crying. I’m not sure what the remedy is (or even the cause at this point), but I’m hopeful that we’ll get to the bottom of it soon.

As you might remember today (Wednesday) is laundry day for our bed linens. I am always excited to catch some z’s on Wednesday nights as I find I sleep so well with some clean sheets. I remember an Oprah episode a while back where she mentioned that her sheets were washed every 3^rd day. As soon as I discover how to make my millions, I’m thinking I might adopt this strategy! I also sleep with a fan; not so much for the air circulation but for the noise of the motor. This is a sleep time habit passed down to me by my mother and grandmother, so I would be breaking family tradition by not introducingit  my children, right? In my defense I think that the noise helps drown out all of the background noise of the house (crying babies included).

Lessons I learned today:

·       Need to set the alarm when daddy doesn’t need to wake up at his usual time – everyone got dressed and fed (L in the car – a nice activity for car line!) just in the nick of time

·       The process of getting organized can get quite messy (day #2 and I’m still making progress!)

      ·       When your children don’t have sweet dreams, sadly neither do you