Up All Night

My children clearly believe sleep is for amateurs. Because of this, Mommy does not get to sleep. The bags under my eyes could carry a Kardashian's wardrobe on her next trip. We have dishes in the sink, laundry piled on the couch (but it is clean. Points for me!), and we've watched a few too many episodes of Curious George. 

This little cutie doesn't want to go to sleep. She thinks of a million excuses to get up after we tuck her into bed. I get more hugs after 8pm than I do all day. Some of her antics:

She will say, "Hey kids! You're waking me up!"  We point out that you must be asleep in order for that to be true, but what is logic to a three year old?. Sometimes Beckett takes the blame, although he is usually asleep by then (not for long. I'm getting to him.)

She has to go potty 32 times. 

She yells, "I need you!", then scrambles to think of why when we arrive. 

I am currently listening to jungle sounds from her sound machine, in her room, turned on full blast. It occasionally alternates with white noise (or "ultrasound" as I like to call it). 

Finally, her ultimate weapon. Guaranteed to buy her a few more precious minutes of awake time, she asks us to "ho-hold her". I mean really, who can pass that up? She knows it, we know it, and we don't care. Our days of getting to ho-hold her are limited, so we take a deep breath, hold that baby, and take her back to her room for round 7,426. 

This turkey takes the late shift. After Big Sister finally passes out around 11pm, he brings the house back to life around 1:45 am. He wakes up screaming his face off and demanding juice. His screams are not usual unhappy baby screams. They are base level, guttural, primitive. The child is serious about his "duce". When this first started a few months ago, I put him in the bed with us. My laziness has created a monster! He wakes up at least once each night. Every now and then, he makes it to 4 or 5 before waking. On those mornings, he is pretty much up for the day. Then this happens around 10 am:

On the plus side, many mornings I wake up to a sleepy, "Mommy!" and a few kisses. Can't complain about that! 

While I jokingly rant about this, I do know that if this is my biggest problem, I am blessed. And I am, so very much. I wouldn't trade these two for 8 straight hours of sleep every single night.