Gametes In Love

S and I haven’t had an un-intertupted night’s sleep since S2 was born. Longer for me if you count all the months I woke up to pee when pregnant. Yes that goes with the territory of having an infant.
But what sux more is that we’re getting hit on two ends: both boys WON’T go down on their own, AND one of them still wakes up twice at night. Ultimately this produces two tired adults, the lucky one of which that puts G down gets nothing accomplished.
For the most part (night waking excluded) we’ve brought this on ourselves.

The story of G
G falls asleep at 10. That’s right. 10. We’ve tried putting him to bed earlier, but that results in him being in his room for the duration, still awake, still talking to you. We’ve tried killing his mid-day nap, which at our last (and only) attempt, resulted in one pissy toddler. There we made the decision that it was better to have a kid that goes to bed late, than one that screams and throws things at you for hours on end. Translation: the no-nap option was even more exhausting than the late-bird option.
If you recall, the day before S2 and I were discharged from the hospital, G got sick and raised a fever of 102+ degrees, which hung on for a few days. We battled this by S dedicating himself solely to G, and me to S2. S slept in G’s room, which was enough to get G to ask that he ‘snuggle wich youuuu’ (I don’t do justice how cute he says it) each night. I remember there was a time, when as a baby I would put g in his crib down for the night, walk out, and he’d fall asleep. Man that was ages ago!

The story of S2
Really, same story, second verse. Snuggle, rock, put down asleep. Tiptoe out door with fear of little monster waking up because you’d have to spend another 30 min for each put-down iteration.

Summary
It sucks! Sleep training for all is on our horizon. I told myself I’d wait until both kids get to their birthday. Actually, longer because we have two trips planned and I don’t necessarily want to redo everything we do now based on room stay accommodations.

I am NOT looking forward to this. I am hopeful, though, that at least if S2 figures out a way to fall asleep on his own at night, it will translate to him putting himself back to sleep if he wakes up in the middle of the night too.
For G, I don’t know how we’ll do this. He screams whenever we try to leave the room now. Sure I can close his gate, but then he’ll think he’s in time out and I’m worried he’ll grow to despise bedtime even more. If you have experience sleep training an older child, I’m all ears.

So yeah. This is my messed-up-sleep house. Signed,

At fault.