What Happened Here?

I wonder where things went wrong.  It used to be, when it was bedtime, we would tuck Wyatt in for the night and not hear a peep out of him for 13 hours. This is the stage we are at with Brooklyn right now.  Around seven-o-clock she sees her night-night bottle being made and heads down the hall for her bedroom.  I hand her the bottle, place her in her crib, she pulls her covers up to her chin and waves “bye-bye”.  I usually have to wake her up so we can get out the door for work/school at a decent time.  Somewhere in between Brooklyn getting up during the night to this, Wyatt became a pain in the a** to get to bed.

As I type this, I am listening to him scream from his bedroom I NEED SOMEONE IN MY ROOM! I refuse to give in.  I don’t even care if he does wake up Brooklyn at this point. Somewhere along the way, I must have done something wrong, right?

We try to have a pretty solid routine down at bedtime.  Bath (most nights), bedtime snack, PJs on, brush teeth, story time, lights out – OK the lights don’t actually go out, they get dimmed a bit. You get the picture. They say routine is the path to success at bedtime.  I’m not so sure. We do this routine every night and every night he finds more and more ways to procrastinate going to sleep.  Once in bed, it starts with having to go potty, sometimes more than once.  Then he might need a drink. Then he insists on having ice in his water. Then he needs me to scratch his back and sing him a song.  Then maybe he needs to tell dad some-fing, real quick.  I really try not to give in to all of these requests EVERY NIGHT. But let’s face it, this kid is persistent.  I tell him NO WYATT, GO BACK TO BED and he is out of the room within 2 minutes finding me for something else.  Normally he’s yelling for me at the top of the stairs, which irritates me to no end because I would really rather him NOT wake up Brooke. He basically yells right outside her bedroom door as if to let me know that if I don’t accommodate him, he’s going to wake the baby.  So I end up getting upset, chasing him down the hallway scream-whispering to get back in bed, if you wake your sister you are in TROUBLE!

Then the howling crying begins.

Ugh.

It seriously is taking almost 2 HOURS to get this kid to go to bed.  Now, let’s think about really how much of my day that is.  I sleep for 8 hours on average, work for another 8, drive kids around for 1 hour, cook meals/do light housework for about 2 hours, get people dressed/ready for life for about 1 hour – so the remainder of my day that is left to do ANYTHING else is about 4 hours. 2 of these hours are spent with my blood pressure going through the roof trying to get this child to GO TO BED. Does this seem not right to anyone else?

THEN, to make matters worse. He is up again at the crack of dawn.  And I REALLY mean the crack of dawn – we are talking 5:30ish. IN THE MORNING. And I am not a morning person. Nor is Chris.  I beg him to watch sponge bob and let me sleep, which usually is good for another 15 minutes of rest before he is harassing us to get up. AGAIN.  My question again – where did things go wrong?  I loved being able to brag that our kids went to bed with no problems, slept through the night, and generally let us sleep in a bit.  One thing us Hustads know and love – it’s sleep.  And our sanity.  I feel like I might be losing both – HELP!

And now, there is silence in the house. Peace. I feel like I should take back all my rants about the boy tonight.

Nah.

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