Sleepy Time...

As most parents do, we have had a few sleeping-related issues lately. The main one is they're getting up a bit earlier than before, and it's too early for Monkey. Moose has been getting up early (6:00) to go to the bathroom. Monkey usually follows within 5 minutes. It's obviously too early for her. She can barely open her eyes. Moose is the type to get into routines really easily. We're thinking he's just starting a bad habit. But we're going to try and take precautions to help them sleep better. For one, Moose got limited liquids tonight, and none past around 5:45. We made sure he still drank a lot before that so we would know he's not dehydrated or anything. (He sweats a ton if he's active.) And since they've both been waking up earlier, we're putting them to bed earlier. They had been staying up late over the hub's vacation. But staying up later and getting up earlier don't mix.

At the moment, the hubs is trying to talk Monkey out of freaking out when he closes the door. We remember having to be super patient with Moose when he was younger. I would talk him out of many a tantrum. She's still a bit young, but the talking seems to be helping. Instead of running to the door immediately and crying, she will cry out once or twice, but then stay quiet.

Sleeping is always such an issue with kids. We've made some serious structured routines for our kids and tried really hard to give them consistent sleep times and good habits for falling and staying asleep. But in the end each kid is so different and their bodies all work differently. I can see that they need and respond to sleep the same ways me and the hubs do. We cherish our sleep and get as much as we can as adults. (Lights out at 10:00 sorta stuff for us.) When we don't get enough sleep, we're grouchy. So are the kids. I just hope we can continue their good habits and teach them to our next baby too.

We're shortly going to be outnumbered, so things might get dicey. But I'm sure we'll figure it out. :)