Do You Sleep?

If we could all sleep like cats, life would be GRAND!

The first day of school is always exciting.  New clothes, new school supplies, new teachers, and a new year!  Many schools are weeks into the swing and we are just beginning the sleep deprivation and schedule organization.  I'm confident by the end of the week I will be feeling the effects of early mornings and will want to sleep in on Saturday.  Bad idea.  I remember reading somewhere about not wrecking your sleep schedule by changing your sleep routine.

Remember high school and the occasional college weekend when we got to sleep in till noon?  Oh how delicious!  If I slept till noon my kids would destroy the house and eat in parts of the house not allotted for eating.  My husband will have cut the grass, fed all the animals, cleaned stalls and coops, watered all growing things, and burned something; I would be left feeling angry and guilty.  So, I sleep till 8:30 or 9 on the weekends.  This is sleeping late for those of you with children.  Remember the days when we didn't get sleep?

In my house we have good cop and bad cop.  For the record, I am ALWAYS bad cop.  If a child wakes up in the middle of the night they go the long way around the bed to sneak in with Daddy or to tell him about their difficulty sleeping.  If they wake me up, the world might end...THEIR world might end.  The reasons I've stated for midnight wakings(of Mom) are as follows...1) You are dying  2) You are hallucinating which is how you got to my side of the bed or 3)you are dying.  For all other issues, see Dad.  He deals with the throwing up way better than I do and that is one of the reasons for waking Daddy.  If you ask the kids, the reasons to wake Daddy are as follows:  1)  I think my bed is full of frogs  2)  I saw a scorpion(for the record, you can't "see" when you are asleep)  3)  My feet are cold  4) I'm having a bad dream because Chloe let me watch Scooby Doo(that means you sleep with your sister) and my personal favorite, 5)  I want to cuddle.  Clarification, I love you, but 3am cuddles are OUT!!  Sleep is so important for all of us.  In Family Circle October 2012 I read a crazy statistic, 46% of moms says they got 6 hours or less of sleep last night vs 35% of dads.  Unfortunately for my husband, he falls in the 35%.  It also reported that 1 in 8 moms would pay $1000 for a perfect night's sleep!  The reality of the situation is being a mom means you forfeit your rights to EVER have a perfect night's sleep.

We get so busy and fill our kid's lives with so much stuff.  Clearly your child is going to be the next Olympic gymnast and volleyball player so all the time you dedicate driving them from practice to practice and language classes so they can gain early acceptance(Kinder) to an Ivy League school.  The BEST thing you can do for your child is feed them a healthy and well balanced breakfast, send them to school, attend practices and such after you've given them a well balanced snack/dinner, and then bed at a decent hour.  My children still complain about their school bedtime that has changed to 7:30 this year.  Last year it was 7.  Seriously, I need down time, too!!  Don't judge.  Of course, I'm not sure I followed any of this advice today, except the healthy breakfast part.  My daughter had volleyball until 8, the kids ate Whataburger(delicious!) and were in bed by 9.  Tomorrow will not be great for them because of the late bedtime.  I guess I just have to remember that before I discipline them for acting like brats, they went to bed 1.5 hours late.

So here is a recap, Develop a  routine and a good sleep schedule that works for you and your family.  Set rules for when your children can come to your bed and tell them the rules*.  Eat well balanced and healthy foods and an occasional adult beverage(for you, not your child).  Get ready for the best year of your life!!  Go 2012!


*No sense in having rules if they do not know the rules.