Isn't it time to sleep?

When the T-man needs to sleep, he sleeps. Love that about him.

My name is Tennille and I am a sleep nazi. My sleep, my children's sleep, and my husband's sleep (well, I don't worry so much about him--he can fend for himself) are very important to me.

I love that feeling when you first snuggle under the blankets. I love reading a good book whilst snuggling, and finally--finally--relaxing after a long day. I love waking up in the wee hours of the morning and realizing that I get to sleep for another two hours. And I love sleeping in.

When I was applying to college, a survey was included to help them pair you up with roommates. Under hobbies, I wrote "sleeping."

My mother: You can't put sleeping as a hobby.
Me: Why not? I love to sleep.
My mother: You can't do that. You'll get weird roommates.
Me: I don't care.

When I became a mother, I quickly realized that at least some of the things I loved about sleeping had been ripped away from me. Sure, I still actually get to sleep, but the length and quality of the sleeping is sometimes severely diminished. Since I haven't technically slept late in the past eight and a half years, I try to pretend I'm sleeping in on weekends by at least hanging around in my pajamas for a few hours. It's not really the same since I'm still feeding babies, breaking up fights, fixing breakfast, and cleaning up the house, but I like to pretend it is.

Because sleep is important to me, it's even more important to me that my children sleep well. When they sleep, I sleep. We've sleep trained all of our kids, and it's always gone really well. A few nights of crying, and then things calm down and everyone's getting the sleep they need.

Sleep training the twins was a little trickier. They slept in their cribs for naps, but I didn't want them to wake up their siblings at night. I couldn't figure out a way to put them in separate rooms, so we put them in the toy room in separate portacribs. After a few nights, they were sleeping great, and all was as it should be in the 'bee house.

Then one day, my husband said, "Don't you think you should have the twins sleep in their actual beds at night?" What? Why would I want to disrupt the lovely sleeping by putting five kids in two rooms? I know that's the actual plan we set in motion a month and a half ago, but I wasn't sure I was ready for babies to wake up older siblings, and vice versa. And definitely not ready for all of it to wake me up. N must have read my mind, because every time he said that, she would randomly wake up a few times that night and cry, and I would say, "See, they're not ready."

But after a month and a half of setting up two portacribs every night, taking them down every morning, and dragging two monitors and two noise machines up and down stairs every day, I was finally ready to try it.

We've done it for the past week or so and it's gone ok--a few baby cries here and there and a few instances of older brothers thinking their baby brother should wake up and play just a touch earlier than I had planned. (Sunday night, A2 seemed completely unwilling to sleep anywhere but next to me, but that's hopefully an isolated incident.) The real problem is the effect on my sleeping. Every time I hear a sound, I pop my head up--first, to figure out which monitor the sound is coming from; and second, to decide who is making the sound and if the sound warrants action. I turn the monitors down pretty low so I don't hear every movement that five little people make, but I'm still waking up a ton.

I know they'll get used to sleeping together, and I'll get used to the noises, but part of me keeps thinking, "It's not really that big of a deal to have the twins sleep in the toyroom. Maybe I should do it for a little while longer--say, until the babies are a year old. Or maybe two." Cause the sleep nazi in me wants everyone in the house to sleep well, including me. :)