Goodnight Gracie

Fresh off a wonderful and busy weekend with their grandparents, Mary and Kate are exhausted. Cranky, droopy, sloppy exhausted, limp limb exhausted, my girls are tired. But it's not just the grandparents, first we had four days of the uncles, and there is no sleep to be had when they are in town. A three day break and then four days of grandparents, and certainly you might be thinking, grandparents, really? Rocking chairs and cookie baking, not these people. We went to the zoo, we went to the beach, there were tricycles and hula hoops, festivals and celebrations, and yet again, very little sleep.


The girls tell me when they are hungry, they manage the bathroom procedure now rather self sufficiently and they certainly know when and how to have fun, but it is my job to see that they get an adequate amount of sleep. Like any four year old they hate to surrender to that place where they will quite certainly miss out out on all that goes on in the rest of the world, understandably. And now that we have phased out naps, save very special late night occasion preparedness, as in the Independence Day fireworks, exhaustion is standard fare around here. There are things I can be somewhat casual about but for reasons unknown, I am a complete lunatic when it comes to their sleeping. It's not that bedtime is cast in stone, 8:00 generally, a smidge later now that summer is here, and they generally sleep until 8:00 the next morning, banking a good 12 hour sleep almost every night. But when I see the signs, the loopy eyes and the wandering stare, my crazy mother sense goes into overdrive.

Much like in high school when I would find myself at a party or event that I sensed was soon to be out of control, my feathers begin to spin when I realize we are away from home with soon to be very tired children. Clearly it's my fear of illness that plays a role as they both tend to fall prey to whatever the kid funk of the day is when they are tired. But there are some very real fears about being out of control and not taking charge of a situation when they look to me to make the right decisions. Several years ago we figured this out, children have no idea how much sleep they need, it's our job to be responsible and make the right choices for them. They can run wild in Target and I am able to chock it up to four year old madness but when they are tired and I let it happen, the weight of bad parenting lands firmly on the top of my head.

Goodnight Mary, goodnight Kate.