I don't know if it has been the Winter Solstice, the full moon, the excitement of Santa (that they really don't get yet), or just plain bad luck, but our kids aren't sleeping. Let me state that. Our (once easy to go to bed) kids are pitching a fit at bedtime - and have been all week. Normally, our routine looks like this - brush teeth, get Motrin, kisses, Leanne reads 3 book by the glow of the book night light, more kisses, and exit. Kids fall asleep either during the book reading or immediately thereafter. It's been quite a while since we had to go in and sing and console. That is until last week. Tuesday night Gray finally fell asleep IN OUR BED at 9 and I FINALLY got Carter to sleep at 10. This is after putting them down initially at 7:30. And Friday night, it was well past 8:30 before they were both out - and Gray woke at 10. And don't get me started on last night. It was ScreamFest 2007. Loud ear piercing screams coming from both of them until we finally got Gray to sleep in OUR BED AGAIN (at 8:45) and Carter at 9. Lordy be.

But on the flip side - they are napping better than they have in their entire lives. They (and we) have been playing with their napping schedule for months. They seemingly dropped their afternoon nap a few months ago and so we thought they would be ready for the one nap deal. But they were ready for that one nap at 9:30am - and only sleeping for an hour or so. And it is a long time between 10:30am and 7:30pm. We (Mia) tried pushing it back gradually till 11 - which revolted in 30 minute naps. NOT GOOD. So we (Mia) let them dictate their napping schedule and s-l-o-w-l-y they've migrated to a 10:45/11am nap and are sleeping an hour and 45 minutes to 3 hours!!! Now, that is what I call a nap!

Leanne just came down for getting them to sleep and said that she thinks the 'magic hour' is 8pm. They went down easily and are seemingly asleep. Let's just hope they stay that way. Santa has a lot of work to do. But that is for another post....