Sandman 911

Mr. Sandman... bring me a dream. MAKE MY KIDS SLEEP!!!!

10:30pm. Just spent over an hour getting both kids to bed and they're finally asleep. Mom and Dad in bed. Is it too good to be true? Do we actually get to go to bed by ourselves and get some sleep? NO!

First, the thunder starts. IN FEBRUARY? Yep, huge lightning and thunderstorm followed by torrential rain. I thought it was going to snow tonight? Oh, - it did at 4am. Thanks. Well, one of our dogs is scared to death of thunder. If you ever hoped to sleep during a thunder storm with her in the house, you were wrong. She comes right up to the bedside and pants with hot doggie breath right in your face for hours until you think she is going to have a heart-attack or pass out. We have doggie xanex for her, but it doesn't work very well. We use to have prescription tranq's for her, but they're not "safe" to use anymore so the vet won't give them to us.

Cue Hattie. Thunder (weather) and/or Shadow (dog) woke her up at what - 11:30pm? Another hour getting her back to bed. I lost count at 35 times of putting her back in her little toddler bed and walking out of the room. It was textbook sleep strategy -exactly what they do on tv, only it's pretty painful to do. FINALLY, she stayed in bed and went back to sleep.

Cue Grace 1:30am. Shadow still breathing hot doggie breath and freaking out. Grace sits straight up in bed and screams "Mommy" until you get out of bed, walk to her door and either put her back to sleep or tell her she can come in your room. It's a toss up which is more painful. I chose #2 last night and she came to our bed to David's dismay.

Finally David locks Shadow in the downstairs bathroom so that she feels safe in a "cave" and we close our eyes for a couple of hours.

Cue Hattie - 4:30am? She's up. She wants milk. Mom is seriously too tired to try the 35 times back to bed routine. I wish she would sleep with us, really, but whenever she gets in bed with us she does everything BUT sleep.
Mom takes Hattie to her room and sits in the rocking chair with her for an hour. Finally decides to go back to bed and take Hattie with her at 5:30 for dare we ask 15 minutes of sleep?

Hattie rolls and kicks and pulls Grace's hair. Shadow starts barking from the downstairs bathroom. David gets up for work. Hattie won't stay upstairs if Daddy is downstairs. Mommy and Hattie head downstairs for early breakfast and TV.

8:38am Grace is still ASLEEP in Mommy and Daddy's BED!!!! Lucky!!!

ps - this has been going on pretty much non-stop since the week of Christmas. Before that, both kids slept soundly in their own beds without a peep and didn't take much to go to bed. WHY? I know that sleeping in the same room for a week for our vacation didn't help, but it was going on long before that... I guess I did too much bragging about what great sleepers they were and now karma has me.