Hug Twice

My children have always been night owls.  From birth, actually.  They come by it honestly - both Matt and I would, if it was logistically possible in the world we live in, stay up really late and sleep ’til noon every day.  It is just how we are wired.  And lucky us, we passed it on to our kids.  Because it *isn’t* logistically possible, which means if they stay up late, we still have to get up early.

When we had CJ, I thought no child could be more a night owl than that boy.  Left to his own devices, he would stay up until 3am and sleep until noon.  Slowly, over a long period of time, we fought him and fought him on that idea, and he adapted to a still crazy baby schedule of sleeping midnight til about 10am.  He was my only child and that schedule I could manage (since Matt stays up until midnight anyway, regardless of the kids) so we muddled through and eventually, when *he* had to start getting up early for school, he started being more tired at night.  Now he goes to bed around 9-9:30 pm and gets up at 7:30am and although he still dislikes waking up early, once he’s up, he quickly adjusts and goes off to school cheery and happy.

I said I thought no child could be more of a natural night owl than CJ, but then we had Alexa.  Left to her own devices, she would live like a vampire.  She literally will stay up all night and sleep the entire day.  Still.  At 16 months, she still hasn’t outgrown this desire.  It is seriously unreal.  And the problem with Alexa and nighttime is that we manage to get her to sleep, she goes to sleep, and when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she wants to party.  When CJ woke up as a baby/toddler at night, he wanted to nurse and go back to sleep.  Alexa wants to stay up for 5 hours.

So we continue to have the battle of the wills.  We continue to try and ease her into sleeping in the middle of the night, and we get a little more tired each day.  Matt slept half the night on her floor last night while she threw a little party of her own in her crib, just happy to be awake.  At least he can sleep through that stuff, I would have been awake and crying.  This night thing somehow seemed easier the first time.  Yawn.

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