More Motherhood Guilt

Greg and I, for the life of us, can't figure out how to get our children to bed. For awhile it was all working perfectly -- we'd put them down around 7:30ish, they might talk a minute or two, but they'd fall asleep. It helped that it was dark outside. Now, we get them down between 7:30-8:00, and we're lucky if they're asleep by 9pm. (Stupid sun.) The talking, fighting, screaming, singing, crying . . . all brilliant stalling techniques on the part of our little girls. We don't really have much at our disposal -- we walk in and tell them to be quiet and go to sleep. And then leave. 'Cause really, there's not much more we can do. Our ultimate trump card is 'the hall.' When one of the children, in particular, is keeping the ruckus going, after a very stern warning will get taken out of bed and set up on a makeshift bed out in our hallway on the floor. Annie hates this with a passion. Last night when Greg was putting Ellie down for bed she asked if she could sleep in the hall. Sigh.

Annie was relegated to the hall just a few nights ago. She screamed and freaked out and yelled a lot about us not being a nice Mom and Dad, and sobbed, "Why is everyone so mean to me when I'm so nice?!" After about a half hour of such dramatics (non-freaking-stop) I was about ready to go postal, so I upped the ante. "Annie, you have two minutes to calm down, then I'm moving you to the bathroom and you will sleep in there." I set a timer. No change. I grabbed several big, fluffy blankets, and lined the bathroom floor, carried her and her pillows and blankets in there and laid her down on the bathroom floor. She flipped out. She was screaming about her horribly mean Mom, and yelling, "You can't make me sleep in here! This room is DANGEROUS!" I told her to knock it off before I shut the door to the bathroom so we didn't have to hear her screaming anymore.

Good thing she doesn't know the phone number for any child protective agencies . . .

She did fall asleep though. She quieted down right away, and fell asleep eventually. And slept all night. And the next night when she started to freak out, I mentioned the bathroom floor. She was quiet and asleep in no time. (Ellie on the other hand was happily laying out in the hall on the floor, singing to herself.)