In between stuff...

The boys have been having trouble sleeping through the night lately. Sometimes a towel left carelessly hanging from a doorknob will too closely resemble an angry ghost. Sometimes it is just a bad dream that pulls me from my slumber into Mikey's room at night. For Johnny, it is typically a cough that causes him to become separated from the almighty "b" - aka, binky, that causes him to cry out in the night. Last night it was a blood curdling shriek that had J and I running to our littlest ones room. Johnny was clearly upset - and was firmly telling J "no" at his attempts to comfort him, and asking instead for me. Who else? I suppose sometimes only my neck will do.

With Mikey we can talk through the bad dreams, or swat down the scary towels that look like ghosts. But Johnny doesn't exactly have the same vocabulary Mikey did at this age. I can ask him if he had a bad dream,  and he will usually say yes, but that is about as far as our conversation goes. So I lay him back down, re-binky him, snuggle sheep back into the crook of his arm, and cover him with his blanket. I stroke his hair, and tell him everything is ok, and to go back to sleep. Mostly he does.

These interrupted nights can lead to some depressed mornings. I always know it isn't going to be good news if Mikey is insisting that he is sick and doesn't want to go to school. He usually is jumping out of bed on Monday morning, excited to see his friends again. But by Tuesday, the resistance is starting to build. By Friday morning, it takes some serious convincing to get him out of bed and into his school clothes.

Maybe it is just this week, but after school hasn't been much fun at all, either. This week has been full of crankiness, hitting, yelling and just not listening. Last night, G-Ma came by for a little bit, and that helped. They snuggled her while I cooked dinner.

All that snuggling calmed them down, and bath time was full of pleasant sweetness.

Even though the evening ended well for the boys, Mikey was still begging not to go to school this morning. I promised him that the weekend would be here soon. That we could snuggle for hours tomorrow. J and I took turns snuggling him this morning to just make him feel better. It wasn't really enough. I'm now trying to figure out it would be possible for me to home school and work at home. Am I crazy? Maybe. I likely would end up putting a lot of hours in at night, but what Mom doesn't? I don't know, just a lot to consider, but it is getting harder and harder to push the boys out the door in the morning.