Sleep...finally

The other day while the babies were napping we had a nice long chat with my parents on FaceTime.  We FaceTime with them fairly regularly with the babies, but with three crazy toddlers grabbing for the phone and wanting to "see nama" or "see gampa" we don't actually get to chat, so it was nice to catch up.  They asked us how sleep has been lately and when we told them that they are all sleeping through the night pretty consistently (until 5ish anyway) they both said "we didn't see that in the blog!" so I figured it was time to document that big accomplishment.  (Mind you I do NOT consider it our accomplishment because I don't think Michelle & I had much, if anything, to do with it.) I told my parents that I'd been hesitant to write anything about it because it felt too good to be true. I tried to find a picture of one of them sleeping in the last month, but I think we have been too busy sleeping to snap any pictures! =)  But here's an older one that is just so sweet I had to share.

Whether it was coincidence or not I don't know, but this magical event started right after I took the kiddos to Massachusetts by myself.  A few days later our nanny asked Michelle how the sleep was (meaning while the kiddos & I were gone) and Michelle said she didn't want to jinx it, but it's been wonderful. After 20 months of continuously interrupted sleep the sleep we have been getting feels too good to be true.  We have had a night or two where all three have slept through the night but every time we got excited about it in the past they have gone right back to their usual middle of the night wake ups.  The first few days after we got home were pretty hot so we had the air conditioner running in our room and thought maybe we just weren't hearing them (though we were both waking repeatedly and checking the monitor), but it has been a month now of fairly consistent sleeping through the night.  I'd say maybe 80-90% of nights now we get to sleep until 5am straight without someone waking up.  Isaiah continues to be the most likely culprit for night waking but most often now he's making it until around 5 before he wakes up and if I can get around 7 hours of continuous sleep I can handle the 5am wake up for a long time!  He does typically go back to sleep, but sometimes it takes a little while.  Avery, on the other hand, has been sleeping until 5:30 or 6 and then fussing on and off until she falls back asleep or we give up and get her up around 6:30.

With a few exceptions, mostly on vacation, the sleep for the past five or six has been glorious.  It is almost good to have a not-so-good night every now and then to remind us just how amazing the good nights are!  For a while we were getting a little too used to the solid night of sleep and staying up too late and then waking up still feeling tired so we have been committing to getting in bed earlier.  Sometimes after a solid night of sleep I am actually getting up before the kiddos and having a tiny bit of "me" time before the troops wake up.  Usually I spend this time making coffee & prepping breakfast, but sometimes I actually get to sit and drink that cup of coffee without reheating it five times and some mornings, like today I get to sit down and write for a few minutes.  Some mornings my "me time" ends up looking like this.

                                     
Unfortunately today those few minutes were literally just a few because then Avery woke up.  But today I decided I would try having her join me in this experience rather than giving it up completely.  So we made waffles together, got ourselves a warm beverage (coffee for me & a "mocha" for Avery), and then sat down to do a little blogging. I only managed to write this last paragraph, but hey, it's something.  And as you can see in these pics & this video, she was pretty adorable. =)

waffle helper

serious blogging (r looking at google images of dogs)