Well the long weekend was an overwhelming success by many measures . . . 10 kids, more than 10 adults, a beach and 5 acres of rolling green grass to run and play. It was perfect save for the classic mistake that, like being frustrated when shopping, I am almost certain that I will make again. Here is my tale . . .
When it comes to sleep patterns and children it is commonly said that it takes four days to establish a pattern and one day to break one. I don't know who the brilliant behaviourist who came up with this formula is, but as someone in her seventh year of motherhood I must say that, though completely unfair, it seems to be true. In fact, I proved it once again for good measure this past weekend.
On Friday night we arrived at the lake just before 8:00 PM (on a weeknight at home this is when we are usually getting out of the tub and climbing into bed for storytime). It had been a long week at work coupled with a long drive out and both my husband and I were completely focused on setting up the campsite, making the kids a hot dog and grabbing ourselves a cold beverage so that we could settle in and visit with our friends.
You may have noticed that in that laundry list of priorities, stories and bedtime do not even make an appearance - there is a reason for this, and the reason is that those two very important weeknight priorities were the furthest things from our "vacation mode" minds. In fact our mindset was so relaxed that we thought it was a great idea to keep the kids up late because they would inevitably sleep in the next morning as a reward for our kindness (WARNING: this trick has only just started working now that our youngest is 3.5. DO NOT try this with younger crack-of-dawn-loving children because IT WILL BACKFIRE and you WILL have a miserable little troll who wakes up at their regular time and punishes you for the remainder of the day for your mis-step).
So, the kids continued to play well into the late evening and we enjoyed the company of our friends and bevvies and hot dogs by the fire. A couple of hours later the kids were right tuckered out and went to bed relatively easily so, in light of the success of this pilot project, we continued the pattern for the duration of our stay ... which was four nights (if you refer back to the pattern formula you will understand why this is not a good thing).
On Tuesday, four nights of 10:30 bedtimes later, we decided not to rush out and get in one more day at the beach before making the trek home. So at 5:30 we hit the road and as our rational brains slowly started to re-emerge we realized that we had made a rookie mistake. Not only had we altered our children's sleeping patterns (possibly indefinitely) but we had just loaded two beached out, played out and generally worn out kids into our vehicle for a two and a half hour car ride home. A sick feeling came over me at the moment I realized what we had done ... we had created the recipe for the perfect storm.
Keeping them awake in the truck would not only be difficult, but if they were as exhausted as I was we would not want to be driving down the highway with them grumpy and awake. So we opted to continue with our newly found pattern of haphazard parenting and let them sleep, knowing full well that when we got home, bedtime was going to be a nightmare.
I should say that my son, who is six, was really good about trying to stay awake and watch his movie and he only drifted off briefly during the last leg of our trip. Monkey-girl fell asleep early on but she had played hard for the full 96 hours since our arrival (or so it seemed) and did deserve a rest - I just wish it hadn't been from 6 - 8 PM on the night before we had to re-start our weekday morning routine.
We rolled into town around 8:00 PM and shuffled our sleeping beauties into the tub, complete with lavender to encourage more sleeping, and then attempted to restart the regular bedtime wind-down routine. To make a long story short the little dude finally tuckered out at 10:00 PM*, my husband hit the hay at 11:00 PM and monkey-girl decided that she was ready to go back to sleep just after midnight* ... at which point this supermom fell asleep on top of the covers, fully dressed. 6:15 came pretty darn early on Wednesday for all of us!
Much to my chagrin our second night home was only slightly more reasonable than the first, sleep came to each child one hour earlier than it had the night before. I can only hope that by tonight they will be tired enough from their 6:15 starts to slip back into their earlier, more reasonable routine ... which of course will be just in time for a weekend full of BBQs and birthday parties which equal more late nights (though not nearly as late)! And so it begins again .... wish me luck!
*Just a note to let readers know that I cannot complain too much because both the little dude and monkey-girl stay in their rooms once they are put to bed ... and they are pretty cute, I just want them to get their rest so their days can be as full of fun as they can be.
This was just one small aspect of an otherwise eventful weekend, we also had one black eye, a bloody nose, birthday cake, beach fun and some wagon rides down a grassy hill - lots of fun! We are a lucky bunch.
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