Will You Just Sleep Please?!

Peter is adorable, but never have I had a kid who is so averse to sleeping!  Just as I wrote a few days ago that his sleeping was improving, he regressed again.  Last night he was up at 4am and had the hardest time going back to sleep.  Then today he wouldn't nap.  Took a 30 minute nap in the morning and refused any other later naps.  I finally took him on a long ride in the bike trailer in the afternoon and he fell asleep for 30 minutes in there.  That was it.  All. Day.  Now, as I type, he continues to wake and cry every few minutes just a few hours after going to bed.  He'll be 10 months old in less than a week.  Why hasn't he figured this out yet??  Sleep deprivation is a beast.  I am so ready for some quality sleep!  I can't remember the last time I slept more than a few hours at a stretch.

Nothing too special happened today.  We went on a long bike ride, as I mentioned.  We played some games of Clue, and otherwise just did the week's schoolwork, read, played video games, and ate.  Kind of boring.  I think we're sinking into a bit of a slump as we reach the three month mark of quarantine.  The lock-down officially lifts this week, but there are still a lot of places shut down - gyms, hair salons, museums, libraries, etc.  Basically all the places we most need to go!  You should see Benjamin's hair!  It has a life of its own now.  He's started wearing a headband from Bella to keep it out of his face at night.  I've offered to cut it but he won't let me near him.  He's at that lovely teenager age when mom knows nothing about anything and is simply to be shooed out of the room and spoken down to or lied to as if she were a mentally-handicapped child incapable of grasping your situation.  But I digress.  My point was that we're in a slump.  This is the place we usually reach just before school starts again, but sadly we're actually just at the beginning of summer.  School ends in 2 weeks.  We still have another 3 months left!  We've gone through a lot of phases of quarantine coping.  We started with exultation.  "It's Corona Time!" was often shouted in our house at the beginning, of course with the obligatory drunk Mexican flair to it.  Anything was allowed.  Want to stay up late?  Want to play video games until bed?  Want to jump on the trampoline until dark?  Want to eat ice cream every day after lunch?   SURE!  You can do that!  Who cares!?  We're not going anywhere  for a long time! That was a pretty magical time.  For about 3 weeks.  Then the trampoline got boring and the late nights wore the kids out.  Christian, especially, started really feeling it.  He woke up dead tired every morning and started really moping a lot during the day.  I quickly scaled things back and reinstituted bedtime.  We achieved a happy medium and did quite well for many weeks, although I kind of missed the late nights because it allowed me Peter-free time with my older kids.  That was the main reason I'd allowed it in the first place.  I had been sad that Peter dominated my attention all throughout the day but I couldn't allow the others to stay up late because of school.  With school gone, it gave me the perfect opportunity to see more of them.  However, the sleep deprivation took it's toll so we had to rearrange.  Then I tried to do more during the day by having one watch Peter while I do something with the others and we swap around.  That worked well...for the next 30-40 days or so.  Now we're slowly slumping again.  We've explored every forest and neighbrhood, played all our board games, exhausted the trampoline and slack lines, read all our books, etc.  I gave in and bought Bella the series she's reading now since the library online rental system had too long of a wait on it.  We have good days still, but I need to find some new hobbies for us to engage in.  Something that gets everyone outside again and away from the screen.  Christian and I go out running every morning and biking every afternoon, but the other two are pure teenager.  Just sit at home on their devices, or Bella has her new book series and so she's been tearing through them.  I like that because it's the first book she's read of this level and length.  It's been impressive to see her finally read just for fun.  Never thought I'd see that.  She always said how much she hates reading, but she found this series somewhere and I agreed to buy it and I'm so glad I did.  Benjamin has been tearing through the Harry Potter series.  I had never allowed him to go past book 2 until he was older because I think they get way too dark.  However, I relaxed on that a little during quarantine and allowed him to continue.  Of course, Benjamin refuses to read, so I found online versions of the audio books and he listens to them while he's mowing lawns or at night in bed.  He's on book 5 now and says he still really likes them.  That makes me a bit sad for him.  He's gone a little numb to the spirit through the things he watched and studied in his English class the last couple years.  I call his teacher the anti-Christ because he was always showing the kids things I'd never let them watch.  Such violent things.

I only have one photo for today.  Christian took this photo while I wasn't around.  Poorly framed, but very cute.