It's raining sleet, in fact. And the whole house is snoring. Today is Day 8 of my new sleep schedule, where I get to bed by 10PM and am up at 3:30AM, and it’s going swimmingly. I’ve grown to cherish my blissfully quiet morning hours, and I'm equally jealous of my sleep hours.
The rest of the family is growing accustomed to the schedule, too. Chuck’s been handling the boys’ bedtime book reading and then I make my appearance to “tuck” them in. After that, if they venture down the hall to our room for anything besides a life-threatening emergency, they face the Wrath of Mommy.
It used to be that, sometime after the boys had been tucked-in for the night, Alex would send his scout down the hall to see if they could come and sleep in our room. You see, Alex perceives that Chris, at 6, has already honed the art of argument and is able to construct such a convincing – if illogical – filibuster, that Chuck and I often relent due to utter mental fatigue.
But now, with my new sleep deprivation schedule, the boys are quickly learning that Mom and, to some extent, Dad have adopted a zero tolerance stance toward bedtime stonewalling. Oh, they might still pad down the hall to test the waters of Mommy Meanness, but they come as a pair now. Alex is far too good a kid to throw his little brother into that lake without a life-vest. The good news is that, regardless of whether their attempts are met with a bellow (GET BACK TO BED!!!!!!) or hissed through gritted teeth (get. back. to. bed.), they no longer cower in fear and peer at me as though they’re seeing the very face of Beelzebub.
I think this is going to work.