Sleep

This is one of those precious moments in this household.
I know as a mother I can not be expected to get sleep but I can at least try.
Unfortunately there are several factors which always seem to stand in my way of sleeping, or at least disturbing my sleep. These factors do not always happen all at once and it may be a few days in between them occurring, but these are the factors I have to deal with on a regular basis that prevent me from having a great nights sleep, and let me tell you I love sleeping.

Factor 1
The children, yes I know, before we start I am well aware that by having children then I gave up all right to having a good nights sleep from the moment that little line turned blue!
It was as if your body turned on itself and said “let’s really show her what she is in for!” and I have not had great sleep since!
The boys do not tend to wake in the night much anymore, however when they did it was always, why I don’t know, me that they wanted. Not daddy…it had to be mummy! 85% of the time it was me they came to, always!
Eventually it got to the point where 50% of the time they came to me, it was as if Ben had a shift in who he wanted and suddenly he started always going to Steve at night, but Alex still came to me. Now I had no problem with this apart from the fact that what Ben would want at night compared to Alex, well lets just say I still lost out. Ben would wake for waking's sake and would come and find Steve because he couldn’t sleep or because he was cold. Simple to deal with, let him crawl in next to you and all go back to sleep. Simple, good night all.
Alex on the other hand would come and find me, stand next to the bed naked and proclaim “mummy, I’ve wet my bed!” Tell me…how is that fair?
If it was a simple I am cold or can’t sleep, then he would climb in with me and proceed to take over the entire bed! Thus still no sleep for mummy.

Factor 2
The 4 legged animals in the house.
Yes the cats can rank as high as the children when it comes to my sleep. We have 2 cats, one is great at night the other needs to be shot!
1 seems to have learnt that if you curl up quietly and sleep all night then you get to stay in and keep warm, the other has not learnt this lesson and still insists on playing at 3am.
The playful one will happily sleep the evening away on our bed or even on our lap whilst we watch tv. She will snuggle with me when I go to bed and then Steve will throw her out when he goes to bed otherwise she jumps at the door all evening because she can see a light on inside and this has to = someone still being awake!
However on the odd occasion that he has felt sorry for the cat because it is so cold outside he has left her snuggled next to me.
Great until she starts playing at 3am and then guess what….she jumps all over me, disturbs me, bugs me, until there is nothing left to do but pick her up and chuck her outside.
She never goes near Steve at night, so all his good intentions go out the window as I am the one that has to deal with her in the middle of the night.
The amount of times I have cursed him in the middle of the night and again the next morning when I am so tired because of him leaving the cat in all night!

Factor 3
An odd one but the weather, guarantee that if it is raining outside then I will wake in the night and listen to it. If the wind gets up then I will wake to that too, it blows the curtain and thus I wake up and if there is a thunder storm well I may as well get up and do housework…I will be awake until such time as it finishes.
I never use to be this sensitive to noise but since having the children (their fault again) I am more of a light sleeper, as I am listening out for them a little more.

Factor 4
My husband!
Enough said really………. he snores, usually at 2.41am, yea funny how it is always at about the same time of night.
He grunts and groans to himself as well. And as for the restless legs he gets, sometimes the bed bounces around as his legs jump and then he gets restless and turns over every 10 mins.
Makes for such a fun sleep……for me!

Toilet Training

I know, I know you are wondering why I am discussing such a topic when I have school age boys who are both toilet trained...?
Well they are both daytime trained but we still have issues with night time.
I am one who has never been worried about night time training, I know it is a process we have to go through but I also know that their body has to have the ability to wake them in order for them to know they need to go when a sleep.
If their body doesn't wake them then how can you growl and scream at them for yet another accident or even how can you run a rewards chart for every morning they are dry and then punish them for the mornings they are not??

Ben was close to 6 when he was stopped wearing pullups, Grandma noticed that when staying with her he would immediately use the toilet when waking and his pullup was dry. So off came the pull up and no worries since. We have had the odd accident but nothing to write home about. In fact it was an amazing feeling when he appeared at the bottom of the stairs one night over a year ago and annouced he needed to wee.
I sat there thinking "thank you, at least now he wakes when needing to go, problem solved"

Alex on the other hand, well he is the child that announced when 3 that he was no longer wearing nappies during the day, 2 weeks later he was dry (took us 5 months with Ben). He would also have loved to have gone nappyless at night but I wasn't ready for that just then.
Several times he announced that he was no longer wearing pullups at night and several times after trying for 5 nights and having been wet for 3 of them then we have said no, we will wait a little longer.
He was always wet at different times as well, sometimes I would find him in a wet bed at 10.30pm sound asleep, very difficult to night train someone who manages to sleep through it all.
Othertimes it would be 3am or 5am that he would wake us to say he was wet.

About 2 months ago we noticed that just about every morning his pullup was dry, so we instigated a no pull up rule and away we went. I expected a few accidents along the way but every 5-6 days is hard work.
Again it is always at different times, 11pm, 3am, 4am, 5.30am.
I am not sure if he wakes because he is wetting or if he is waking because he is wet?

We have tried limiting his fluid intake after a certain time.
We ensure he wees prior to going to bed.
But so far we can find no rhyme or reason for this continual wetting that seems to be happening apart from the fact he is on school holidays and getting a lot of fresh air and obviously is just so tired each night that he is sleeping so soundly!

However we are now at the stage where we have to perserve and just go with it.
The lucky part of it all at present is that we are in the middle of summer and getting the washing done each time is easy.

If you have any suggestions or tips then we would love to hear them.....?

Sleeping

Sleeping is something special in this house, if it is not the snoring that keeps me awake then it is one of the boys wandering into our room in the night.

Alex has been doing this for a while and has also been going to bed in the evenings in his brother's bed, with him!

When questioned further about why, he came up with this answer "I don't like sleeping on my own, I get lonely"
Wouldn't be so bad, but he shares a room with Ben already and their beds are all of 2m apart, if that.

Grandma in her ultimate wisdom came up with a solution for this problem, which I have mentioned before.
Her solution was to suggest pushing their beds next to each other. That way he would be more or less sleeping next to his brother but in his own bed.
So we tried it and would you believe it has worked.
People are not walking around in the middle of the night as much now.
However their room does look very weird when you first walk in, with these 2 single beds pushed together in the middle of the room!

But if it keeps everyone sleeping in the correct places at night, then I am happy to try anything!

Sleeping

We regularly find Alex a sleep with Ben in Ben's bed at night.
We know that Alex will sometimes complain about not wanting to go to sleep on his own, not sure why as he shares a room with Ben and their beds are no more than 2 metres apart! but we were never sure as to who invited who into the bed?
Did Ben suggest Alex come and sleep with him?
Or did Alex keep moving over and snuggling next to Ben?

The other night was no exception, this is what I found when I went up to bed......

Now Alex will even take his pillow, wheat bag and bears with him sometimes.

So we asked them how this all goes down. The answer.....

Ben apparently invites Alex to snuggle with him until we go to bed because he knows that he doesn't like sleeping on his own. He would in fact like Alex to stay there all night.
Although this is not such a good idea, as Ben fell out of bed the other night and it was because Alex was with him at the time and managed to move him over so he lost balance, a little like the picture above, Alex has a great habit of taking over the bed and pushing the original owner out!

Sleeping

Whilst at the caravan Alex decided he didn't like sleeping!
When Grandma was with us we put a small tent up and the boys got to sleep in this.
Ben took to this very well and in fact ended up spending 7 or 8 nights in by himself.
Alex got fussy and decided that he didn't want to sleep in the caravan or the tent.
After getting annoyed and loosing my temper I told him to just go and sleep anywhere!

So he did, he took his pillow and blanket and snuggled on the grass outside the caravan.
It was a little cold this evening so he snuggled himself in a little cocoon on top of the pillow and promptly went to sleep.

This is him, all curled up and fast a sleep under his blanket.

We did finally move him into the caravan but not before we had checked that he was still breathing under the blanket because he had his whole face totally covered.

All our friends walking past kept stopping to find out what was going on and as they are all parents they soon laughed and knew exactly where we were coming from.

Good At....?

What is Alex good at?

Lots of things actually, but for this post it refers to the fact he is good at sleeping....as you can see from all the pictures below of him, it is what he does best in the car.

Wish I could have said the same last night about him.

He woke at 3.30am and came into me because his insect bites on his legs were bothering him. He has about 6 sandfly bites.

We do get mossies here in NZ but they do not seem to bother as much as the sandflies do!

The sandfly is native to New Zealand, it is black and is about 2-3mm in size. It lives around water and breeds in running water. Although you do get them in the grass in the back garden and this is where Alex got his from, playing in the yard at Daycare.

Unfortunately Alex reacts slightly to them and ends up with nice red plum size lumps where the bites are! Found this website who talk about reactions to sandflies,very interesting site.

So you can imagine, he was crawling around the bed this morning.

First I put some soothing bite cream on but this did not do much, then I fetched an ice pack to cool the bites down and hopefully stop the itching. This did work but from the size of them I decided to be a terrible mother at 4am and dose him with Phenergan. (Antihistamine drug)

So he then appeared downstairs with me and asked if he could watch tv?!

I tried so hard to explain it was the middle of the night, but realised that he was awake and he wasn't going back to sleep. So I fetched us both a drink, and snuggled with him on the couch with pillows and blankets and put on a soft soothing dvd hoping he would fall asleep whilst watching it. Hopefully with the effect of the drug!

But sadly NO, I started to fall a sleep several times and each time he jumped and screamed and woke me up again as he got excited watching the dvd.

Finally when the dvd finished at about 5.30am I told him we were going back to bed.

This we did and he then slept with me until 8am. He seemed a little dozy when he got up and even still a little dozy when I dropped him at Daycare but I explained that he had had Phenergan at 4am and if he seemed rather sleepy or they were worried about him then to give me a call as I am at home today.

So far I have had no call so I guess the drugs have worn off.

Who knows what he will be like at bedtime tonight, very tired I am hoping?

Sleeping!

Alex just came to me in the study with 3 Lala's in his hands, well one in his mouth and the others in his hand!
Lala's are dummies for those that don't know, and Alex is a conniesuer on dummies.

The first thing to hit me was 'how did he get those, they are on a high shelf?'
One step in to the kitchen and there is the dining room chair pushed up against the dishwasher where he had climbed up to get them!

I took them off of him and told him that he didn't have these during the day, only at nightime when he goes to bed.
As I made lunch so he climbed up again and got all 3 down.
So I told him again that he only has them at bedtime and if he wants them, then he must be tired and to go to bed.

So he did....!

As I write this, he is upstairs laid in Ben's bed with his 3 lala's and his Barney.
And he is very happy laid there too.

Now he does still have a daytime sleep at Daycare but has not had one at home since last year!
He hasn't had that much of a busy morning, he slept till 7am today after a big day yesterday and all he has done today is have his 1/2 hour swimming lesson.

I will leave him for 30 minutes and then I will go get him, sleep or no sleep, otherwise we will still know about it at 8.30pm tonight when he is wide a wake and wanting to watch tv with us, during our mummy daddy time, and that is a definite NO!

Alex Sleeping

All of a sudden Alex has taken to sleeping in the hallway again.

This is how we found him the other evening.

All wrapped and snuggled on the floor.

He is so cute.

Alex

Steve got up at 3am this morning to return Ben back to his own bed and what did he find on route to their bedroom?
Alex asleep in the hallway??!!

We have placed a fan in their room tonight incase it is because he is too hot in there?
Who knows?

Sleeping Again

Turns out that lately Alex has decided that he does still want an afternoon sleep but then he also doesn't. So we have some days where it is obvious to tell and we put him down and other days where we just let him run through and we know bedtime will be a doddle.

Only thing is Alex has taken to sleeping in odd places, remember this, well for several nights now we keep finding him, when we go to check on them before we go to bed, in the hallway.

And yesterday he was playing with the pillows with Ben and at about 5pm all was quiet and there was Alex, face down on the carpet sound a sleep.

Maybe it is the carpet in this place, because it seems to be where he likes to sleep!

Travelling with Kids

Yesterday we flew down to Wellington so I could attend a conference. We were actually amazed at how small the amount of bags there were to take with us, considering it was for all 4 of us and we were not coming home till Wednesday after getting a camper van for a few days (thus the car seats)
Due to how long we were going to be away, it was actually cheaper and easier to get a shuttle to the airport. The boys thought this was a good idea. Ben enjoyed the ride, Alex was so tired with it being sleep time, so he enjoyed the ride because he doesn't remember it!Luckily we were able to get him out of the shuttle without waking him, so getting around the airport to check in was easy. Just had to remember not to check him with the luggage at the counter!

PS: This is my 100th blog.

Sleeping

I can't say that we did anything really wild yesterday. Ben had an unexpected play date with his little friend Kaitlyn, but that was about all.

So after dinner, whilst watching the news, Ben snuggled with me and consequently fell a sleep.

Winter

This whole week has been fabulous. Blue sky's and sun shining. What more could you want in the middle of winter with a 2 year old at home!
What makes it even better is my 12 week old is now sleeping longer at night, so I am getting a 4-5 hour block of sleep each night. Yea, there is life again.