Sleep begets sleep and all that

I talk a lot about my kids' sleep habits. At least, I feel like I talk about them a lot.

Charlie loves sleep and only fights bedtimes when she's overtired, which means then she's going to be awake at the ass crack of dawn trying to break down the gate to Cereal Land where she can wreak havoc and mayhem. I'm not usually griping up a storm about the Goober, and really haven't done so since I put my foot down when she was 15 or so months old and forced her to learn how to self-soothe (which is my nice way of saying I broke down from exhaustion and gave into a modified "cry it out" method).

So, when I mention sleep habits these days, usually it's how shitty the sleep habits are and that I'm tired of being held captive in my own bed by the one and only Josie. That kid likes to stay up late no matter how tired she is, and then I'm forced to listen to her rant and rave when I leave the room, or I sit there with her waiting for sleep to take over.

CIO: No thank you. On second thought ...

I hate cry it out. You know, the forced method of getting your child to self-soothe.

Let me reiterate: I hate cry it out.

The thought of it makes me cringe. When Josie was younger, and I was running really low on sleep and, as a consequence, patience ... we tried. I couldn't do it. I made my husband do it and then I still couldn't handle it.

Like a lot of other parents, I'm of the mindset that babies cry for a reason, the most common being they're hungry, tired or have a soiled diaper. We all know babies cry for more reasons than those, though, and some kids just like to snuggle. Not getting that snuggle time is reason enough, still, for my 2-year-old to cry if I try to get her into her bed before she's ready

I have the snugglers who tend to end up in my bed night after night. I love bedsharing, but not nearly as much now as I used to. Charlotte, at 15 months, is the same size now as Josie was at her 2-year well visit. The child is a giant compared to her big sister; I'll likely be buying them the same size clothes by Christmas.

Accidental bedsharers

Most mornings I wake up with a pair of feet in my face. It's like I went to a raging party the night before and don't remember how I got to my bed or, better yet, why there are feet in my face.

I'm usually grumpy when I first wake up, so having a toe shoved into my sinus cavity makes mornings even less pleasurable. This, of course, is not how we planned to spend our first waking moments most days of the week when we welcomed our babies to the world.

In June 2010, Josie joined our little family and at that time, like so many other first-time parents, we tried to follow some of the rules — you know, things like rest when the baby rests and always put them to sleep on their backs.

That's laughable. Looking back on our first few weeks as parents, I didn't listen to a damn thing anyone told me. Oh, the baby is sleeping! Time to scrub the bathtub and do nine loads of laundry and run up and down the stairs. My brain did not shut off. By the time bedtime and those middle of the night feedings came at the end of the day, I could barely keep myself awake to get her to latch on properly. Instead of sitting in the rocking chair in her bedroom at 2 a.m., I tried propping myself up on pillows in bed and promptly fell asleep despite my husband's incessant pleas to keep me awake.