A Little Spring Break and a Night Bandit

We are enjoying the first morning of our Spring Break for the year! Spring is in italics because it is way cold outside. Our heater is just churning away. It is sunshine-y, though. We are going to be super exciting in a few minutes and head outside to clean/organize our disaster of a garage. I would post "before" and "after" pictures, but I won't. I am too embarrassed of the "before".

My main reason for posting today is that I need to document some stuff about Rush. I have posted before about how he just doesn't want to sleep. Ever.

Famous quotations from Rush regarding sleep:
"I can't sweep. My eyes just won't close." (Remember, "l's" are still only making an occasional appearance in his speech.)
"I can't sweep. See, Mom, watch." (He then closes his eyes and reopens them.)
"Can you rub my back and tell me a stowy?" (Remember, "r's" are still only making an occasional appearance in his speech."
"I can't sweep. Can you way with me?"
"I need some night time music to help me sweep."
"I am firsty. Can I pwease have some water?"

I have to admit, while we are addressing the speech issues with corrections at home, it is really hard to resist the cuteness of the words and the fuzzy head when he is making his night time requests. We aren't giving in, but it is still hard.

So the other night, Phil and I were watching TV. Phil got up to walk in the kitchen and saw this:

Yes, that is Rush camouflaged (or so he thought) by his rocket ship receiving blanket that he still sleeps with each night. I am not sure how many episodes of Friday Night Lights he watched with us.

If he isn't "hiding" in the hall, he is placing items in the hallway door in order to get our attention. Like his water bottle that goes beside his bed. He knows he isn't supposed to get up and that we will tell him "no" if he asks for something, so he sends silent signals. I swear I feel like he lurks all over our house at all hours of the night. I have seriously considered setting up one of those night cameras that hunters use to catch him in action to see what all he does when we are asleep. I recently read an article about kids with insomnia, and he met every description they gave. We DO NOT give in to his requests, and he goes to bed at the same time every night. I am at a loss really. I have talked to his pediatrician, and he said that as long as his behavior isn't affected then, we are OK for now, but if it continues, we may consider a sleep study to see if we can get more information.


I am considering trying a strategy called "sleep fading" that was mentioned in the article. It said that if kids have trouble going to sleep, they often associate their bed with the frustration of not being able to sleep, so you let them stay up late... until they are so tired, that they can't help but fall asleep. That temporarily becomes their new bedtime. Then, you slowly over a couple of weeks, back the time up to when you would ideally like for them to go to bed. In theory, it helps them to see their bed as a place that means sleep rather than insomnia. I know it sounds all child psychology-ish which isn't really my style, but we are at the point that I don't know what else to do. Except laugh at the rocket ship covered ball hiding in the hall. :-)

We don't have much planned for the week. An appointment here and there. A visit at a potential preschool for the twins on Wednesday... Well, actually it is my only plan for a preschool for next year, so I hope it works out. I am not sure if I have mentioned this before, but we are going to wait a year on starting Kindergarten. Even though the twins will be five in August and technically old enough to start "big school", we have decided to let them do a year of Pre-K before starting public school the next year. The only reason they would be able to start school is because they were born prematurely. Their August birthday was actually scheduled for October. So, if they had been born at full term, they wouldn't be able to start school. So, I look at it as we are putting them in the grade and with the peers they would have been with if they had not decided to make an early debut. There are lots of reasons we have decided to do this and none of them really have anything to do with how they are progressing right now. As a matter of fact, there is a small bit of me that worries that they may be bored with Pre-K because they have learned so much with Sue Sue. She uses the same curriculum that this preschool uses. On the other hand, they have no real school experience (walking in a line, being in a classroom, etc.) since their daycare experience has been in Sue Sue's home. I think it will work out just fine. I love to over-analyze things, though. So, I am currently doing that if you can't tell. :-)

So, as I enjoy my second cup of coffee this morning, I am going to try to chill out a little. A little low key garage cleaning is in my future, but after that... we will just hang out today. And yes, we do all still have on our pajamas. That's how we roll on Spring Break, y'all.