Roomies

Oy. So, Here We Go happened yesterday and there we went - the land of a shared sibling room. And let's just start by saying that the first night of Harrison and Raegan as roommates was, um, interesting.

To begin, bedtime took forever. As in, an hour longer than it normally does, forever. Poor Ben. He was laying on the floor of their room, waiting for them to fall asleep for over an hour and by them, I totally mean Raegan. Harrison was a rock star. After the books and final potty break normal routine, they went back into their room to give kisses and sing our goodnight song and then HD went to sleep while RL did her best to keep herself and her brother awake. I guess Harrison did shimmy out of his covers once and then, when Raegan finally did sit down in her crib he called out, "Where'd ya go, Raegs?" but after a stern warning from Dad, he got quiet and managed to both tune her out and go to sleep. See? Rock star!

Raegan, on the other hand, was still awake when Ben finally gave up and left the room. I could hear her calling, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy" as he came down the stairs which is apparently what she said over and over while he was in there, too. Well, that and, "Brudder! Brudder! Brudder!" Poor girl. She is not used to having people in with her while she goes to sleep. When we sleep trained a year ago, we established a routine that involved saying goodnight and then walking out so she could put herself to sleep which has served us well for the last 12 months. In that time, however, we learned that what worked for "Brudder" was staying on the floor of his room until he was asleep. Normally it doesn't take more than 10-15 minutes and we figured that was worth it to save him (and us) from his popping out of bed and his room a gazillion times each night.

So tonight's approach was to go the Harrison route and stay in the room until they were both out. As mentioned, he handled it pretty well and was asleep, Ben thought, in probably 20 minutes or so after the final "Goodnight"s which is pretty typical, and downright awesome considering the circumstances. But Raegan was just too tempted to talk and walk around her crib while she had a willing audience which is why Ben made the call to leave after HD had been asleep for half an hour or so. And while we heard her for a little bit after that, it was never wall shaking loud and didn't last more than another 5-10 minutes. Again, this is not her norm, so we can't really blame her for wanting to interact with the people in the room, but talk about lesson learned: wait until HD falls asleep, then leave! I suppose she could better in time, and hopefully will, but no point in staying in there longer if it is only going to keep her up longer too.

The actual night was far less chaotic, at least until 3:45 when we heard Lincoln crying in the other room. Ben went to try first, by rewrapping LT and walking him a bit, but it was pretty obvious that Little Dude wanted more than a quick snuggle. So I got up at 4:00 to nurse him and while he was back down in his crib 20 minutes later, I had a heck of a time falling back asleep before morning came. I did manage between 5:30 and 6 to have a very strange dream about moving into a new house (NO! NO MORE CHAOS!!!), but then Harrison came in at 6:05 to use the bathroom. Raegan, of course, started crying when this happened, but they made it another 20 minutes or so being calm off and on during after that while we waited to do Good Mornings. And really, since the 6-6:30ish time frame is a pretty normal wake up time for us, we were very pleased with the big kids and how they did on their first night/morning together.

Now if I can just figure out how to get myself back to sleep, even when I know that I have just a little time left before the whole house shimmies for the day, we'll all be doing much, much better!