Goodbye Summer!

Welp, summer is getting shorter these days and we are back to school. The kids are back into the swing of school, as you can see from the pictures. I always feel like we have just gotten into a good pattern when school creeps up around the corner. So instead of fighting at lunch and staying up too late, we are fighting at breakfast and staying up too late. I wish we had established a much better sleep routine earlier in the development of this family. Before marriage and children, I swore up and down that I would never let kids sleep in my bed and I would be firm on bedtimes. Enter Walker. Walker was a very light sleeper as a baby. As a toddler, I would have to lay with him until he fell asleep and then try to sneak away (he ALWAYS caught me, clearly being a klutz was NOT an advantage here). He then had a stage of night terrors. I am convinced the "terror" refers to the parent, because he never remembered these incidents, while Doug and I clearly remember being terrorized by his screaming and yelling. He has had a few other phases since then, but now he is pretty ok as long as someone is sleeping in close proximity to him. Since he is our oldest, how we handled each of his phases set a precedent for the other kids. Since he wandered in our room nightly for a long while, it became the norm for the others to try it. Now I have to eat my young and naive words as I admit there has been a child in my bed for the better part of 10 years. There may have been nights where the whole fam could be found somewhere in our room, via the floor, our bed, or wherever they could squeeze in. Then we gave into the constant pressure they put on us to have nightly "slumber" parties, which is sleeping in the living room. We have worked hard to reign that in and are on our way to a more typical bedtime routine. Typical, but not perfect by a long shot. My reason for this tangent is that I have a strong suspicion that perhaps they would get along better and have higher patience thresh-holds for each other if they had enough SLEEP!!! Oh, wait, maybe I would get along better and have a higher patience thresh-hold if I had enough SLEEP! Speaking of sleep, the picture of Max and Declan napping is one of my all time faves! Thank God for naps! My hopes for this school year is for all to have a year of growth, enthusiasm for learning and reading,and

good and consistent sleep. Meanwhile, throw in some bike-riding which Lauren LOVES to do and Brady is starting to master two-wheeling, and pizza nights and we may just have the best year ever! Speaking of pizza nights, we have had quite a few of those as we celebrated having a 4 year-old (Max) and a 7 year-old (Brady) this month! It's been fun, but I think I need a nap!