Household Insomnia

As it turns out, sleeping is no longer an activity done well in this house.

Sawyer has now shifted his middle of the night awake time to about 5 am. He wakes, talks, plays, repeatedly throws his froggy and his binky and then cries because they're gone. And most of the time he's actually going back to sleep about 6:30. Which also sucks because then he sleeps in until 8 and that throws off his whole day. Not sure what to do about this kid. I've tried waking him at a certain time in the morning and at the end of naps to keep him on somewhat of a decent schedule and/or make sure he's not getting too much sleep during daytime hours so he'll cut out this sudden night waking stuff. Hasn't worked. It feel like that has just made him overtired.

Savannah has been waking up at the same time Sawyer is in the early morning. I guess she can hear him too. But instead of going back to sleep, or staying quietly in her room until 7 o'clock like she knows she's supposed to, she comes out every five minutes asking -more like whining at us- if she can get up now. I don't know where that is coming from. She knows it's not time to wake up until her clock says 7, and she knows if she doesnt' want to sleep she can read books or whatever she wants in her room or bed but her light needs to stay off and she needs to stay quiet while the rest of us are trying to sleep. But this week we've repeatedly had to talk to her, physically take her back to her room, threaten, and even spank her. She, too, has become extremely overtired. She doesn't take naps any longer so she really needs a completely full night's sleep to function well.

As for me, I've been having a really hard time falling asleep at night. I just haven't been able to shut my mind off. I feel like I have so many things I'm trying to get done lately and going to bed at night is the only time I have quiet time to myself, so that's when my mind starts spinning. Many nights, after about 30 minutes in bed I get up, knowing I won't be drifting off anytime soon, and start writing down everything in my head. Lists of ideas, lists of things I want to get done, lists of things I need to get done... lists of my lists... just kidding on that one. Kind of. So I go back to bed, but then I can't sleep because I'm thinking about how I can't sleep and Sawyer will be up soon, and why can't I just turn my brain off?!
So by the time I get to sleep I only get a few hours in before Sawyer's waking up. And Savannah. And if Sawyer goes back to sleep, Savannah's still up and in our room every time I start to fall back to sleep. Aaaahhhhhhh!!

At least Ryan's getting decent sleep. Even if he gets up to tuck one of the kids back in a few times, he's asleep as soon as he's back in bed and his head hits the pillow. Seriously, the minute he closes his eyes, he's out. How do men do that????

So here's what I did today. Sawyer was awake at 6am (maybe before that, but that's when we first heard him). Savannah too. And Savannah has been up early everyday this week. With no nap. The dark circles under her eyes have been slowly growing all week. Yesterday she was sooooo tired. I was thinking she was going to have a long day today because Nicole was talking about maybe coming over to visit because she has Aria today and she and Savannah could play together. Which is great... Savannah doesn't have nearly enough play dates or anything even resembling one unless you count playing with three little boys who can't even walk yet. She is so excited about Aria coming over. And I'm so happy she'll have a little girl her own age to play with because she needs that. But I'm kind of dreading it because she is honestly exhausted and they will most likely be visiting right through Savannah's usual rest time.
So. Since both my kids got up so early this morning I had the brilliant idea of us all taking an early nap before our friends might come over at lunchtime. I should have known that was a crazy (as in stupid) idea. I put Sawyer down for his morning nap at 8:30. He usually sleeps at least an hour and a half, alot of times more like two hours. I told Savannah she could watch one show on tv and then we were going to lay down in my bed. Then, instead of sticking around and listening to make sure Sawyer went right to sleep, I went downstairs and started some laundry and cleaned up my craft table a bit for that half hour. I came up at nine, didn't hear anything from Sawyer's room, so Savannah and I got settled into bed. She, as usual, was squirmy and trying to be chatty with me. She did start relaxing sooner than I expected and I actually thought she was on her way to dozing off, when we heard Sawyer next door jumping in his bed and banging against the wall. I look at the clock and it's 9:25. I went in to rock him for a minute because I honestly didn't know if he'd even been asleep, since it usually takes him awhile to fall asleep and even if he'd gone to sleep right away, what kind of a nap was that?!? Then I lay him down and went back it to try and get Savannah sleepy again. And back to lay Sawyer back down. And back to ask Savannah to stop singing. And back to give Sawyer his binky. And you get the picture.

Long story short, (or not so short, cuz you know me...) it's now 10 am and the kids are playing in the toy room. No nap for me. No nap for Savannah. If Sawyer had a nap this morning it was only about 40 minutes long and he was up by the time he typically goes down for a nap on a normal day. A normal day... do we even have those around here anymore?

I think it's safe to say it's going to be a loooong day.