Once upon a time...

Once upon a time, I had only one child.

She was precious.  Such an easy going, pleasant baby.  She was a great eater and an even better sleeper.  She would nap with no problems.  She would sleep through the night and transitioned to a toddler bed right around her 2nd birthday.  She did NOT sleep in my bed.  That was only on a very rare occasion, usually when she was not feeling well.  She did not watch television until she was over 2 years old.  There was no need for it.  She was a toddler and didn't know how to ask to watch her favorite show.  She didn't even have a favorite show because, like I said, she didn't really watch television.

Then...
That little girl became a big sister.  She was getting older.  She got so freaked out on Halloween that year and started sneaking into our room at night.  She stopped taking naps.  I started to let her come into our room after successfully avoiding it for over 3 years.  It would be 3 a.m. and guess what? I am pretty freakin' tired at 3 a.m.  This is especially true when you have another baby in the house. 

That little girl started to enjoy watching television.  And I enjoyed her enjoying it.  It was nice to get a few minutes of time to myself...which were few and far between.

And now...
That little girl and her little sister are both big sisters.  They all come into our bed at one point or another.  It is like they toss a coin and decide who it's going to be for that night.  It doesn't happen EVERY night, but it happens enough to seem like some sort of conspiracy.  And you know what?  We let them come in.  Sometimes the two oldest come in and one of us ends up in their bottom bunk.  Sometimes we don't hear a peep from them but the baby wakes up.  She is 14 months old now and I just started letting her come lay with us for a little bit until she falls back to sleep.  Why did I do that?  Am I the one creating the monster?  Well, I can tell you that she has quite a set of lungs on her and I would much rather her lay down with us for 20 minutes then have her wake up the other two sleeping beauties.  That's for sure.

They all have their favorite shows that they like to watch.  And we let them watch them.  If we didn't, not a damn thing would get done around here.  And enough already isn't getting done, so we can't afford to let even more go.

So you see, once upon a time I thought I had it all figured out.  Then, as usual, I quickly realized that I didn't have a clue.