Love and Fights

We love in the morning and we engage in battles at night.  That seems to be the natural cycle these days.  Every morning, I find them in my bed calmly snuggled close to me.  At night, they want me to hold their hands so they would fall asleep in their own beds.  I counter with either I stay in the room and type on the computer, or I leave.  Tonight, Ethan refused to close his eyes unless I let him grab my feet.  Artimus demanded that I hold her hand while she falls asleep.  I told them the rules, counted to three, and their eyes were still looking at me.  So I got up and left the room.  She cried.  Ethan just quietly walked over to my room, sat on my bed and looked at me with his very tired eyes.  I repeated to him the rules.  He agreed.  We went back to Artimus who was still crying in her bed.  She agreed to stay in her bed and sleep while I type on the computer.  After I started typing, the whole time ignoring them, out of the blue she said, "Sorry mommy," and started crying again.  Aaah, so sensitive!  I went over and kissed her good night for the one millionth time.  Only after all this fuss that they fell sound asleep, at 10:55 pm.  Thank God it's Friday night! 

I still don't have the hearts to just walk out of the room and force them to fall asleep on their own.  I am afraid that by leaving the room and letting them cry it out would only mean that I am not recognizing that at night, children have unreasonable fear of monsters.  Adults can rationalize it all they want.  The truth remains that we can all remember those early days when we fear the dark or some unknown forces we could not explain. 

Anyway, the summer is coming near.  It's a good time to push them further into independent at night.

Hope you had a beautiful April.

-JW