New Year's Eve

We had the grandkids today.  All day.  This afternoon when I put Haley down for a nap, I thought that if I had to use one word to describe her, it would be obedient.  She really didn't want to nap, but the nap was overdue, so as I lay beside her in the big bed, I asked her to close her eyes and go to sleep.  Dutifully, she closed her eyes, and I watched her.  For 10 or 15 minutes (or maybe more), she lay there with her eyes closed, and if it weren't for all her fidgeting, I would have thought her asleep.  In fact, I was ready to chalk up the fidgeting to an inherited trait from her mother, when her hands finally fell to her side, and I could tell she really was asleep.  Finally.

But my little angel isn't perfect.  Her demands for Josiah to give her things because "I want it!" weren't very polite, and I knew it was again bedtime.  This time it wasn't as easy.  We started getting her ready for bed at 7:30, and now, at 9:30, we've won the battle.  Her stall tactics have been perfected!  The nighttime bottle took a very long time. Reading books while having a bottle is the way they do it, so we do too.  But I only managed to read a handful of books before I had to get Josiah's bottle ready, so Einar took over rocking Haley.  There were a few interesting conversations, including a teary one asking to go home to Daddy & Mommy's house.  I'm glad that her home is her favorite place to be, and also glad that it didn't take long to move on to other things.  Josiah was down just as Annika started fussing, so I moved on to Annika, did the routine, and put her to bed.  Then Josiah was back up, and took a few minutes of rocking and he was back asleep.  Haley still wasn't sleeping. 

So I went to sit with her.  I told her I wanted her to sleep.  She said no, she didn't want to sleep.  She wanted to cry.  I said if she cried, maybe Bestemor would cry too.  Would she like that?  No, she didn't think she'd like that.  She decided she wanted to go home to her house and cry there.   So I offered to sing to her, and apparently that was preferable even to crying.  She's sleeping now - finally - and I'm not surprised that the kids sometimes look exhausted!  And yes, I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat.