Big Boy Beds

Good grief. Who knew it would be so blasted difficult to get your kids to sleep in a bed? Kemper and Rowan have been out of their cribs for a couple of weeks now (or maybe longer, I can't really remember), but still they insist on fighting bedtime and, often, naps.

Last night we bought twin mattresses so they wouldn't be sleeping on the crib mattresses, thinking this might help with the bedtime challenges. It didn't. I made up the beds while the boys watched "Kipper", but when it came time to nap, they were having no part of it. Listening over the monitor, it mostly sounded like they were playing or chatting - no suspicious sounds, anyway. But every 15 or so minutes someone would scream and I'd go check on them. To make a long story short, they trashed the room. They kept unplugging the new window unit air conditioner, in spite of very stern lectures from both mom and dad for the past several days. After nearly 2 hours of this behavior, I kicked them out of the room and made them go downstairs.

Of course, about an hour later, they were both sound asleep on the sofa or floor of the living room. Sigh.

Tonight was a daddy night, but when I got home daddy told me that bedtime wasn't so rough. We were sitting in the living room when suddenly we heard a loud THUD. We both started laughing. (Remember, the mattresses are on the floor so no one can really get hurt.) Rowan was just crumpled up on the floor, sound asleep.

Maybe there is hope yet.

Kemper the destructerator

So we've been fighting the naptime battle of late. Sometimes they go down easily, sometimes they fight it pretty hard and long. Today was one of the latter days. Both boys napped a bit in the car on the way back from their 2 year checkup, which nearly always spells nap trouble. Not that they get particularly upset, they just chat, giggle, jump up and down, whatever, for an hour or so before finally falling asleep.

After the usual hour, I noticed Rowan was no longer chiming in with his comments. Shortly thereafter, Kemper started in with urgent cries of "mommy!", so I went to check on him. He wanted me to give him the combination paddlock that had been thrown (by whom, I'm not sure) onto the floor. I also noticed that he had managed to rip the window shade nearly in half. Sigh. You'd think I would have heard that. Actually, now that I think about it, I did hear a noise that I took to be him making a particularly loud raspberry sound....