Slave to the Un-Schedule and Monkey Dreams

Since Christmas the babies have been pretty "off" in their schedule. They have been staying up later and I've been playing around with the nap schedule trying to harness the ubiquitous "sleeping through the night" thing.

Two nights ago they went to bed at 10 pm. Gasp! I always hated that when parents would put their kids to bed late. But, my theory was if they are going to be in their bed crying might as well get them up to play until they are tired.

See, my kids go to sleep pretty easily and peacefully (usually). They just don't stay asleep.

Last night they went to bed at normal time: 7:30-8:00. Max slept until 2-ish and then came to bed with Michael and I. Madeleine slept straight through until 3:30! Success, right? Wrong. I came into her bedroom because she was howling. I went to pat her back and she sat straight up and said "oooh, oooh, ahhh, aaahhh, aaahhh". Which is the response to "what does a monkey say?"

I said, "were you having a dream about a monkey?"
She said yes in her own little way.

The thing was, the thing was, that after the monkey dream she couldn't settle down and go back to sleep. Instead she wanted to play and have breakfast. I know this because she is very good at communicating. In fact, our conversations look a little like my friend Nicole's description of communicating to the locals in Hungary.

First Madeleine pointed to the fish making the fish noise.
"Yes, that is the fish" I acknowledged.

Then she went to the play kitchen and pretended to wash her hands.
She motioned to me that she wanted something to eat. I made her toast and hot chocolate.

She squealed and pointed to her diaper. I changed it. She asked where Maxy was.
He promptly woke up crying and was brought out to the living room to play with Madeleine and me.

That is how we spent the morning. The babies had breakfast at 4:30 am. I watched CNN crap about the caucus. They went back to sleep pat 5:30 or so. Needless to say they are sleeping now.