Never Too Old to Learn

I'm not sure if I've complained about it too much here, but we've reeeeeeally been struggling with sleeptimes lately.

I feel like things've gotten progressively worse, but it came to a head for me last night when my parents watched the boys so I could take Andy out for his birthday. The boys pulled all the same stunts they have for the past few weeks and it took my parents an hour and a half to get them down. Yup, sounds about right.

So I wrote to my good friend from college who has five-year-old twin boys as well as a three-year-old son. She always has such good insight when it comes to parenting these little monsters and I really respect her ideas. Then I did some searches online. I wondered if I should give up their naps entirely; it just seemed like too much work for such a little reward. At the same time, though, my boys don't do very well without a few hours rest in the afternoon. Should I separate them? They seem to be keeping eachother up with their shennanigans. They like to jump on the beds. Should I put them back in their cribs and get crib tents? I know I'm exhausted being 34+ weeks pregnant; do they just know that I don't have the energy to fight? What was I doing wrong and how could I make it better?

The best article I found was here. In it, were practically ideas about soothing kids to sleep and what things I might be doing (or not doing) during the day to prepare them for a restful nap. It was all obvious stuff, but details that I hadn't thought of.

After reading the article, my husband and I talked about some small changes I could make to my day in order to help get the boys ready for a good nap:

• Limit our television-watching to two videos a day, one in the morning and another when they wake up from their nap. For a mom who never watches television herself or even introduced TV to her kids until they were two years old, we're certainly making up for lost time. Ever since I was pregnant, it hasn't been uncommon for us to have the television on most of the day, even if we're not actively watching it. Allowing my boys to unplug from the big screen was supposed to help stimulate their brains less. Gosh, I could do that.
• Limit the amount of sugars the boys are drinking and eating. When we started potty training, they encouraged us to have the boys drink as much juice as possible, as it would encourage them to go on the potty and increase the speed of the process. So we bought tons of juice boxes and flavored waters, many of which the boys still ask for. Out of laziness, I've been giving in, letting them have as much as they wanted. But I never thought about the ramifications. Between juice and the treats they still want at times after they use on the potty, their blood is constantly flowing with sugar. No wonder they're jumping off the walls! I'm embarrassed that I hadn't identified this one on my own. It was obvious this needed to change. Now, they can have a juice box with their breakfast and their lunch, then it's water for the rest of the day. They weren't thrilled about this change today, but they're slowly giving in. It's worth it.
• Take down the rails from their twin beds. I bought two guardrails to put on the long side of the beds so they wouldn't fall out during the night. But as the boys play, these seemed more like hazards. I took them down this morning and feel a lot better about them staying safe. They both sleep near the wall-side anyway.
• Do quiet activities about a half-hour before sleeptime and stay away from roudy activities. By encouraging activities such as painting, snuggling, reading and PlayDoh, I increase my changes of the boys being more relaxed than if we went straight from wrestling...which, you know...we do a lot.
• Try for 20 minutes of active play between each sleeptime. This is one my friend added. She said that her boys sleep better in the afternoon if they've played (wrestled, tickled!) for at least twenty minutes. Same for in the evening. Makes sense, doesn't it? How can I put my boys down if they're not exhausted? As a pregnant mom, I've been extremely guilty of this. Today I made a point of letting my boys play outside - which today, meant in the mud - and the boys were thrilled. I had bought rain boots last week and they were thrilled to get them completely filthy.
• Decrease the amount of sleep I allow them to have in the afternoon, making sure they're awake by 3pm. Half the time, I fall asleep and don't want to wake up. Especially when it took so much energy to get them down. But since the boys went down so much easier this afternoon, I felt good about letting them sleep just longer than an hour and a half, as opposed to two hours plus. They definitely wanted to sleep more, but it did guarantee them to be sleepy again when it came time for bedtime.

See what I mean? Kinda obvious stuff, but I suppose I had to be ready to hear it all. The other thing they said was that moms are the obvious pushover. Every kid knows that. Or at least perceives it to be that way. Dads are obvious no-nonsense. Just knowing it wasn't ME made me feel a little better. It's not me...or it is me...but at least I'm not alone.

Just goes to show you: the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. Motherhood is a very humbling job. One day, you're on top of the world because things seem to be going so well. And then the very next day, you're in tears because you realize you have absolutely no idea what you're doing. Humbling, to say the least.

Still, onward and upward! I'm grateful for the small amount of success we experienced today and looking forward to watching these small changes make a difference in our overall happiness in the Sauer household! One thing's for sure: sleep.changes.everything.