Sleep

We're in the thick of it now.

Monster has just started to skip naps altogether, though we're working on getting him to at least take "rest time," which he'll merrily do - it means he gets an hour where his sister is locked out of his room, and he can watch a movie of his choosing from under his covers.  If we manage to keep Lady Bug off him after he goes to bed at night, he'll sleep through and everything is candy-flavored roses.  This rarely happens.  Lady Bug is a ninja, and under the cover of darkness she will always find her brother, sleeping peacefully, and slap his face.  It is, apparently, a tiny woman's perogative.  Once she's slapped him, he's up for at least four hours.

Lady Bug, however, will only sleep when the sun is up.  I'm pretty sure she's actually a vampire.  Frequently, I get up for work to find the hubby is just falling asleep after a night's worth of pleading and wrestling, the little lady having gone to sleep with the dawn.

Overall, it's making the house a little tense.  I try and stay up later to offer the hubby some respite, which just means I'm headed to work on little sleep.  Hubby's sleep schedule is so ridiculous I'm fairly confident he falls asleep in the shower.

I remind myself that scoldings and promises don't get the kids to sleep any faster.  I remind myself that the phase is a transitory one, that soon we'll all be back to our regularly scheduled programming, and if we let go of trying to micro-schedule we'll likely have an easier time of things.