sleeping like babies...

Yesterday morning my boys were lovely. I looked at them snuggled in their beds snoring away and thought I was the luckiest Dad in the world. Then I looked at the clock and remembered it’s a school day and they ought to be getting dressed by now the little buggers.

We’ve just had another weekend of tired boys testing our patience. My Mum & Dad were over which was great but the boys saw that as a more than good enough reason not to bother sleeping. This is not unusual of course, most kids will do this.

They had a tricky time of it last week; the sun was hot so sleep came hard. By Friday they were well ready for the weekend. The good thing is that we had nothing to get up early for Saturday. No football, no school fetes – nothing at all. Which was why getting a toy ambulance siren screaming into my ear at 6 o’clock came as a bit of a shock. No way would they go back to bed, they were up and staying up.

By the time their Grandparents arrived the boys had already started to flag. As a parent you know it’s coming, but there’s nothing you can do. No kid in the world will accept that if they have some sleep now while nothing is happening, they will be able to enjoy themselves more later on. Saturday was spent chasing round, keeping the two lads apart and negotiating over every tiny little thing. We weighed out sweets on a pharmacists super accurate scale in order to ensure that neither of them gets even the smallest fraction of a sweet more than the other. A child’s eye can spot a slightly bigger Smartie from 10 paces.

Sunday was the same after the kids excitedly woke their Grandparents up and ridiculous O’clock. However I have to say that on the whole they weren’t too bad – the kids that is not the Grandparents!. The tested us and pushed us but nothing serious, mild fighting over toys and a small cricket bat on head incident. I thought they weren’t really trying. I know that both my boys can do much worse than that. Daniel did try and have a major scream about being told he would have to tidy his room, banging about and demanding that his brother should be there as well; slowly his head worked out that what he had actually been told was that both of them would have to tidy their room before bed, and that he didn’t have to do it yet. There was a gradual slowing of the noise and then finally footsteps on the stairs. “Do I have to do the room now or can I still play?”, “you can still play; tidy your room at bedtime!” “Oh”. And that was it, bless him.

So there I was at 7 on a Monday and the little monkeys are fast asleep – why can’t they do this on a Sunday? Well it’s no good they need to get up, now where’s that ambulance…