Sleeping.... And the Nightmare Begins!

My children and sleep would appear to be mortal enemies. Kaia will sleep through the night, as she has since she was 5 weeks old, but getting her to go to sleep is a serious battle of wills. She cries, I want to cry. She fights sleep like nothing else while I try to stay awake. Every single night, I have to lay down with her to get her to go to sleep. I know this is my fault. I know it. But man, the screaming, the yelling, the crying that goes on when I try to let her go to sleep on her own is so overwhelming I just give up for my sanity, as well as the sanity of those poor souls that live next to us. I read her books, increasing in length nearly every week to try to lull her into sleep as I read. It rarely works. So then there is singing and praying and then the fight begins. She tosses and turns in an effort to keep herself awake. I pretend to go to sleep to encourage her to sleep, to indicate that it isn't play time, and she should stop asking me for toys. This often results in me actually falling asleep, and Nick having to wake me as quietly as possible so that I won't make any sound, lest she wake up and decide to stay awake for the next three hours. And heaven forbid she take a nap. If she dozes off for even a couple of minutes during the day, she won't sleep until after 11pm. No matter how cranky she is, no matter how tired, we keep her awake.

Of course, Kaia going to bed at 7:30 doesn't mean that we're off the hook for the night. Jonah will be up until about 10pm. He dozes a lot between 8pm and 10pm, but won't actually go down for the night until about 10pm. Then of course, he's up at midnight, then 2am, then 5am, and then awake around 7am. He seems to have an aversion to real sleep. I know, he's supposed to be sleeping through the night by now. He's 8 months old, and I realize that again, this sleep thing is probably my fault. But man, I can't deal with him crying. Since he is still waking up, I can't have him in his room with Kaia, for fear that she will wake up and decide to throw a party. So he is in with me. And in my intense desire for sleep, I get him when he starts crying, because if I don't, it just escalates until I feed him and lull him back to sleep. I want a good night's sleep. Maybe I'll get it once they move out!

Ultimately though, I think that they will start sleeping well, eventually. I'm told teenagers like to sleep, in fact, it is difficult to get them to stop sleeping. I may enjoy that time. Until then I will continue to have that perpetually glazed look in my eyes, where you can tell that I'm a mom of young kids.