monday

We had a nice weekend. Ryan had the holiday off today, so that made it even nicer!
Although I'm thinking he might have rather been at work today... it was one of those kind of days. The kind where at only 9 o'clock in the morning you've about had it. The kind where the kids are in bed early out of pure necessity. The kind where you feel horrible about the evening -most of the day really, and after the kids are asleep you just want to curl up in bed with them and hold them, hoping the silent little kisses you can't help but plant on their foreheads, cheeks and sleeping eyelides will somehow erase all the short tempers, tantrums and frustrations of the day. Thank God we start over fresh in the morning.

*****
But the weekend.
We had a fun night out on Friday. Our babysitter plans fell through and so we ended up taking the kids over to the Swinigan's where they had two sisters both babysitting theirs. Savannah was super excited about her "sleepover" with Norah... she brought her sleeping bag and they had a movie night and lots of giggles before they finally fell asleep both in Norah's room. We were back at almost midnight and scooped the kids out of bed to plop them back in their own beds at home. In the morning I asked Sawyer if he had fun and Lucy and Norah's house, and he kept telling me "I sleep!" I would say, "I know, you did a great job going to sleep at Lucy's house!" and he would then say "Big bed" (he went to sleep in Kevin and Heather's bed) and I would say "I know, how fun!" and then he would get a huge grin and say happily, "Bink!".
At home we had been without a Binky at bedtime for three nights before that, but I chickened out and brought him a Binky for a night away with a babysitter he'd never met. Apparently, that was the highlight of his whole night out, because we had that conversation about four times the next morning! Haha!

Speaking of sleeping,
here's our new plan for Operation Keep Sawyer Down Before Dawn:















Meet Sawyer's new bed buddies...















I ordered these lights and we strung them up under his top bunk plugged into a timer. Now he says good night to them each night (we actually count them and he wants to give each one a kiss goodnight) and we talk about staying in bed until they "wake up" in the morning. The first night we set them to come on at 6:30 in the morning, the next two mornings 6:45. He's done pretty well in that he stayed put the first morning (I don't know if he slept until then or not) and the second two mornings we've only had to direct him back into bed once, reminding him the froggies weren't awake yet and then he's stayed put until they light up. That's much better than the 50 times he's usually up between 6 and 7. So we'll see. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. And maybe bump it up to 7 o'clock. He loves those frogs!










We spent the weekend alternating between relaxing and doing some heavy duty cleaning. I decided that we needed to get our act together in the basement because even though we aren't going to be finishing it for real as soon as we originally wanted to, we do use it often and I want to make it as nice and livable as possible. So we all spent a good amount of time downstairs (with our new outlets and light switches!!) putting our electronics back in order, unpacking more boxes that were never unpacked after the move, packing away holiday stuff we'd just thrown down there, adding more to the garage sale boxes, and reorganizing pretty much everything. We got a lot done and it's looking good down there! Okay, it's still concrete walls and bare lightbulbs, but at least all the stuff is organized and the kids have so much room to run around. Feels good.

And now we're off to enjoy a movie down there... our favorite couch and a bunch of blankets and a great big tv... and I'm thinking I'll be asleep in no time.