Sleep Deprivation

We are sleep deprived.  Between Marco not going to sleep till WELL after his appointed bed time, and Jonas STILL waking up in the middle of the night, Mauricio and I are exhausted.

Ever since we moved Marco into his big boy bed, we have been having big boy fights and big boy drama, and honestly, it's been a pain in the big boy sized rear end.  We do everything as normal... eat, shower, prayers, bed.  Only now, after he's put in bed, we spend the next two hours telling him to get BACK in bed.  We have tried a few tactics, and things are still not going well.  We have tried the Nanny style, walk back to bed without saying a word.  We have tried the Cuban style, spank and put back in bed.  We have tried locking his door.  We have tried putting up a gate.  So far, nothing has worked.

Jonas is on the other end of the spectrum.  He wants to sleep, but he doesn't want to STAY asleep.  Every night, between 2 and 4, he wakes up... mostly, he just wants to play.  We don't have to over analyze this... he's not hungry, he's not scared, he's not anything but bored.  Being that he's 9 months old, he should be sleeping a solid 10-12 hours, but he doesn't! This is so frustrating!

So yesterday we decided to see what happened when we sleep deprived them a bit.  We did not allow them to sleep in the car, nor lounge around on the couch.  We offered them their naps as usual.  Jonas only slept for about an hour and Marco spent 2 hours in his room doing who knows what, but not sleeping.  That's ok, they weren't going to go to sleep any earlier than normal... even if they were tired.

At about 6pm, Marco began sitting on the steps of the stairs and saying "Marco go night-night".  To which we said, "oh, no... Marco should have taken his nap... we still have lots to do before it's time to go night-night".  He would just sigh.  And Jonas, he was just cranky.

This was Marco while waiting for dinner.  His head kept bobbing up and down and he was speaking like a drunkard.  We recorded it... it was pretty hilarious... we're mean parents!

After dinner we went upstairs, had bath time as normal, and got ready for bed.  Marco kept laying down in bed and saying "Marco night-night", so we thought he'd be out the second we left.  We were wrong.  The little stinker still got up from his bed THREE times, woke up Jonas, kept turning on the lights and opening the door.  Finally, we resulted in taping down the light switch and locking him in.  He fell asleep and didn't wake up till 8:30.  Jonas woke up as usual at 2:51, but I was able to get him back in his crib a while later and he didn't wake again till nearly 7.

Actually, that was the easiest night we've had in a while, even if we did have to result to sleep deprivation.