The Sleep Fairy

The other day I was thinking about how kids are not perfect. There are going to be some things that they are really good with and some that they are really bad with. Besides being loving, warm and caring towards each other, there are many things that my girls are good with that other kids their age are not. For example, they hardly ever fuss to get of strollers or shopping carts when we are shopping. There are no in-store temper tantrums or meltdowns.

I am positive that Emily can climb out of her crib but she doesn't. They never scheme to escape the family room or their high chairs. They know and respect boundaries and that makes our lives so much easier.

Here's a picture from the other day. Although our yard is fenced in, it is quite large and we wanted to make a smaller play area to make it easier to watch them. We purchased this cheap fencing at Home Depot. Do you see how easy it would be for the girls to climb over or under it? They never do though. And if they start messing with it, one look from us and they know to walk away.

Oh, they also don't flip out when we brush their teeth, comb their hair or spray the handheld shower over the heads to get the shampoo out of their hair.

So what are they bad with? Self-soothing to sleep. Maybe this is our fault for waiting until they were eight months old to let them cry it out. Who knows? Either way, we have been listening to them SCREAM at bedtime every night for months and months and months on end. Every. Night. And it has been getting worse instead of better.

I know I talk a lot about their middle of the night sleeping issues but I suppose that's par for the course. Right? I mean, there are three of them. I have heard of parents dealing with far worse when it comes to sleeping issues and I know that most of their issues go back to the self-soothing problem.

Yesterday, I decided to tell the girls about the sleep fairy. The sleep fairy comes into their room at night and sprinkles sleep dust over them with her wand. She's really little so if they cry, she will be afraid and won't enter their room.

Would you believe that Rich and I left their room and they didn't make a peep? And all it took was a sleep fairy story!!! I felt like throwing up my hands and saying, "Are you kidding me?"

(I'm not going to mention how many hours I spent in their room starting at 11:30. No. That would just ruin it. I do think that Allie is still not feeling 100% and I didn't want her crying for another three hours.)