Daylight {for days?}

I think the boys' internal clocks have finally switched into 'Summer mode'. Their once easy and succinct 8pm bedtime has slowly become 9pm. Blame the daylight. Blame the "sleeping in" {ha!! yeah right} because of no school. Blame the heat of the 3rd floor (and that short 2 week stint of a broken AC). Blame moving a 4th boy upstairs (even though he's still in bed by 8pm). Blame whatever you want...but it's time to succumb, or better yet, embrace it.

We fought the new bedtime for a while. A couple weeks even. Refusing to believe the 8pm reprieve from child craziness had truly left us. We even tried herding the boys upstairs much earlier than 8 o'clock in an attempt to get them into "bedtime mode" sooner. All our efforts did, was turn a usually 15 minute bedtime routine into a 1.5 hour long routine!

It was making me grumpy. It was making Matt grumpy. We were getting irritated at the kids for repeatedly coming downstairs asking for a drink, to pee, a hug, a kiss, a snack, another book. We were yelling, threatening punishment. Instead of having an extra hour of time to relax, we had added an hour of all out war (I'm exaggerating quite a bit here...but that feeling in your chest when you hear little pitter patter of feet coming down the stairs 25 minutes after you thought they were in bed!? Well, it's anger. And I sincerely dislike feeling anger toward anyone, especially my children.)

Until it dawned on me. Why not embrace it? Why not use that extra hour to play, sing, hang out with our little guys? So, it's taken us 3 months to get through half a season of OITNB. So, I rarely get to enjoy an entire glass of wine. So, I never get to blog anymore. I'm enjoying my children and snuggling my teeny, growing way too fast, baby. This last week has been great! 

Last night, we stayed up late enough to play with sparklers in the dark. Everyone had a blast. I spent most of that time nursing Diana and getting her settled in for the night. Mitch spent most of that time clinging to his father's leg in terror at the fireworks. The rest of us were in hog heaven. The boys might remember that night as fun, magical, special, different. 

An added perk? The bedtime routine is back down to 15 minutes, and relatively stress free. Instead of 4-7 irritated individuals, we have 5-7 happy ones! (Obviously, with that many humans in one house, someone is bound to still be grumpy).

Parenting, child-rearing; it's constantly changing. Moods change. There is so much growing, learning, maturing going on in our house at all times. The animals that survive are the ones that adapt. The same goes for parents. If you don't change, adjust, mold and accept things, parenting will kill you. 

I'm so glad I figured ALL of this out, just in time for the schedule to change again in 2 weeks. School time!!!!