Yesterday Kevin and I had a large list of things we needed to get done around the house before the boys' birthday party on July 3rd. We sent the babies off to my mom and dad's house. Actually, I woke up, packed their bags, and drove all three down there by myself with the intention of Kevin getting an early start on his outdoor chores. The heat index was supposed to be somewhere around 105, so it get's hot early. It's an hour drive down there, I spent half an hour visiting, and then another hour on the road going back home to start the chores. I fully expected Kevin would have had a few things crossed off of the list by the time I got back.
Boy was I wrong. He went right back to bed after I left, got up for what I presume was a window of about fifteen minutes to shovel down some cereal, and then went back to bed. I was fuming when I came inside to find him snoring and snuggled into the covers.
Anyway, the plan was to hammer out our housework, and drive back down to my parents' place to spend the night. We had to go back down because they had tickets to an event with some of Dad's coworkers. Little did we know we were about to walk into the fiery pits of hell. It turns out the babies had only napped about half an hour the entire day. They were completely over tired and over stimulated. We managed to get them off to bed for the night pretty easily. Around 10 o'clock we all headed to bed. The babies were each in their own pack 'n play, and Evan was in between Kevin and I...but we were all in the same bedroom. Can you see where this is going?
Their house has ridiculously high vaulted ceilings and hardwood floors throughout. Noise travels quickly and loudly no matter what room you're in. Mom and Dad got home around 11:30 and the babies stirred a little bit when they came in, but nodded back off to dreamland pretty quickly. About an hour later, Uncle Nate came strolling through the door and the babies woke up again, except for this time they refused to go back to sleep.
Kevin and I continued to fight them for the next half hour to forty five minutes when Kevin finally got pissed off and sleep deprived enough to strap them into their car seats and go for a drive. I didn't argue with him, but knew what the end result would ultimately end up being, there was no stopping him at this point anyway. He ended up driving half an hour in both directions and got back home a little after two in the morning.
I was still in bed with Evan while he was on his night drive, but didn't really sleep well. I couldn't shake a very worried feeling I had that since it was so late and that they could all end up in a bad accident or something. They were fine and my prediction was right; the second he got them into the house and laid in their beds they started wailing again. We tried for another fifteen minutes to settle them when I realized they were both wide awake. I took them into the living room, turned the light and tv on and let them play with their toys on the floor while I fought to stay awake.
They were so tired; constantly rubbing eyes and laying their heads down, only to jerk themselves around, pull their own hair, or poke at my face to stay awake. Finally at around four a.m. I decided to turn off the tv and light and hold both of them while rocking in the recliner. It was inevitable, just as one would start to nod off, the other one would start in on a yet another desperate attempt to keep their eyes open...waking up the other brother. I fought them for forty five minutes when finally they were both to the point where they were so exhausted all they could do was sit, squirm, and scream at the top of their lungs. I was getting to the point where I was running out of options.
Thankfully PawPaw finally heard them crying and came out into the living room. Gammaw followed shortly after and they took the babies from me so that I could try to get some rest. At this point it was within minutes of turning 5 o'clock. It was a little longer before I remember noticing that the cries had stopped. I guess they eventually got them both down (see how much simpler things can be when there's a 1:1 ratio?) and took them back to their bed.
They woke up around 8 in the morning and you could still tell from their faces that they had some catching up to do on sleep. However, they continued to laugh in the face of restful zzzz's and protested every time we tried putting them down for a nap. It has been a horrible battle with them this weekend.
We put them down tonight at 6:45, gave them a bottle, put on their night time diapers, laid them in their cribs and shut the door. One of them cried for 20 or more minutes, but we knew we just had to let whoever it was just go at it. Going in to check on them would have just started the whole tear filled, painful process all over again. Here's to hoping they stay asleep for the night and wake up well rested.
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