Drowning Sleepless Sorrows

You know when you intend to eat only a couple of bites of cheesecake, but then your children are such little animals and won't go to sleep, that you end up eating the entire thing without even tasting it, while trying to give yourself a pep talk that "you can do this"?

Ya that.

Well insert any other of my vices where I just said "cheesecake" and that is every night lately that I am alone with the kids (It happens when Jordan is home too, but is much easier to deal with when there is one parent per non-sleeping kid).

Rio is still having her night terrors. And if by the grace of God she somehow has a night off from night terrors, then she has regular old nightmares. She hasn't consistently slept through the night (ok technically night terrors she's still sleeping but you get what I mean) in weeks.

And then there's Asher. He just doesn't want to go to bed anymore. He yawns and says he's tired, and does all of the appropriate things he should do at bedtime. He even goes to bed like a good little boy. Then ten minutes later the "maaaamaaaa" starts, so we get him up*.

"He's not tired enough yet" we tell ourselves. So he sits up with us until we try again, now approaching 9pm. On good nights, he goes down. On bad nights, the same "maaaamaaaa" routine begins again 10 minutes in. So what happens then? He gets up AGAIN, and goes to sleep in our bed. Again, if we're lucky, he stops there. If we're not lucky, he cries himself to sleep. And then finally, when he's asleep at say 9:30, we let him rest there for a while before moving him at our bedtime.

And now, if we're lucky, he'll sleep through in his own bed, and it'll only be Rio who wakes us. If not, around 1am he'll cry for us and then he'll end up in our bed. For the night. Where he sleeps like the proverbial baby.

My God. When Rio slept through the night at 10 weeks old, everyone told us we'd pay for it later. I laughed and thought they were jealous, cranky, old jerks. Sure, she had her hiccups with sleep, but nothing major. Then the boys came along. By the time they came home from hospital they were up only once per night, and sleeping through followed quickly after. I thought we were made in the shade.

Then last fall, all hell broke loose. First Asher, then Nolan, then Rio, now Asher and Rio together. We honestly have not had solid sleep in over a year. Sure, Asher gave us a bit of a reprieve in August and September, just to let us catch our breath, but now he's up to his old tricks. And big sister added in? SIX YEAR OLD big sister having night terrors out of the blue?! This is getting really old. And man are we drinking a lot of coffee. The good news is, I'm quite certain the longer you're a parent, the less sleep you need, so now 6 hours seems like a luxury!

Children, I beg of you, please start sleeping. And if you don't, at least learn how to bake yummy chocolate delicacies that I can drown my sorrows in at night?

*Don't roll your eyes and call us pushovers. This has been going on for a YEAR. We have tried crying it out, we have tried comforting him, we have tried intervals of crying and comforting. We have tried EVERYTHING. He also has a sleeping brother to consider. If he's still doing this when he's 16 you can say "I told you so" but not before. Deal?