Enter Sandman

When we signed up for this whole parenthood thing we understood that their would be sleepless nights peppered with gas, croup and fever:  essentially the complete gauntlet of red eye shifts.  For the most part, save for sickness, teething and growth spurts, our children are great sleepers.*  We have fairly successfully used modified ferberization to get our kids to sleep at night and arming them with self soothing tools so everyone sleeps better, however there are three things that will shift the sleep power position from our hands into that of the toddlers.

 The boy sleeping at 1 month old

Disturbing Other People
When we have house guests, are at a hotel, camp site or staying with family or friends, anywhere public, our children's Spidey senses tell them that usual house rules don't apply and they take advantage of every chance they get to party at 3AM.  This is bad enough when it happens, unfortunately after a night or two with a mid-night cuddle break it quickly becomes "sleep recess" or a bad habit that we're trying to break when we get back to normal protocol.

The boy sleeping at 4 months old

Illness
When one of the minions is getting over an illness we know they need rest and we do whatever we can to get them a good block of uninterrupted sleep.  The other "well" twin decides that this means that the middle of the night is the perfect opportunity to get back some of the attention they missed while we were doting on their sick sibling.  So the non-sickie child screams bloody murder at 4AM and we scoop them up out of their room so they don't disturb the other child.  At this point Chris and I already so exhausted from the sleepless nights with the diseased child that we'll do just about anything to get the other child to shut the eff up.  Last week during Chris's shift on the "night train" he pulled his back because the boy would only sleep with the crook of dad's neck as his pillow.  On Sunday, after a double night shift, I found myself perched on the edge of the bed the boy decided that he could only sleep horizontally across our bed, 75% of the area of our bed was taken up by a 29lb toddler and his cat.**

The boy at 10 months - taking up an entire King sized bed solo

Guilt
After a few days with a house guest, the boy had grown accustomed to a late night "visit" with mom or dad.  After our friend headed off we decided that it was time to drop the hammer on the boy and his Gremlin need to feed after midnight, so when he cried (after we verified that despite his epic cries he was not in fact being torn apart by a pack of wild dogs) we let him cry it out.  So Jack freaked out, A LOT, but we stood strong and would not fetch him from his room despite the heart breaking whimpers of, "Mum, Mum, Mum".  The next morning I discovered that he had cried so much that he threw up all over his bed and then slept in it without complaint.  And this is why I will never be nominated for The Walmart Mother of the year award, because I let my son sleep in his own vomit.***  You know that for the next week or two the smallest cry is going to have us running.


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*Correction, Molly is a great sleeper, I'm fairly certain the boy is part raccoon, owl and vampire.
**All of the creatures in Munchkinland are evil and they never want us to sleep again.
***If you don't think that I've been punished enough by the insane guilt I've been plagued with since I discovered my puke covered son in his crib, know that while I gave the children a bath and scrubbed them furiously that morning one of them "rewarded me" for my efforts by taking a giant crap in the bath tub and yelling "Mommy Poop!  Mommy Poop!"  I spent 10 minutes fishing out little turds with a Styrofoam cup.