Sleep battles

This has been a challenging week with the kids.

Both kids have been very resistant to naps lately. And I find it nearly impossible to wrestle both of them to sleep at the same time. Admittedly, this is compounded by our small space here, but I think we'd be having similar issues even in a big house. Ian is at the age where he wants to stay up past naptime, but when he does he has complete meltdowns by 5pm and it's a major test of our sanity to make it to 7 or 8 when we can get him in bed. Rinnah is only 17 months old, but it's getting harder and harder to make her nap. She is clearly nowhere near outgrowing naps-in fact, she may still need two naps and not just one, but lately nothing works for getting her down. Even car rides (our last desperate resort) have failed this week.

So now we're caught in a vicious cycle of overtired kids, who need sleep but are too tired to fall asleep without screaming for hours and making Jeremy and I want to pull our hair out. Ugh. This has been one of our most challenging and exhausting weeks as parents of two kids. One of those weeks where we think of our dear friends, many of whom we admire greatly, with 6+ children and have a simultaneous feeling of awe at their superhuman patience and bewilderment at how they haven't lost their minds completely.

We did have a few bright spots. This morning (before they were too tired again) we went for a quick trip to the children's museum, and that was fun. Rinnah has started saying, "Yeah!!!" excitedly when she wants to do something you suggest, and Ian has taken to doing the same thing, so it was a nice feeling when we'd offer an activity and they'd be all excited about it.

We do love our kids. I am so thankful for them, even during weeks like this. I'm thankful that sleep is our biggest issue right now. But still, hopeful that this coming week is better and we can figure out what we need to do to get them to rest so we can have our (mostly) happy kids back again.