Saturday night, as previously mentioned, my husband and I finally had a date night.  We took advantage of the fact that the girls school had free babysitting.  Always a good thing.

We dropped the girls at 5:15, went to the 30 minute lesson on how to build a strong foundation through God – something we needed to hear – and then headed out to dinner.  It was nice.  We sat at a small table.  No high chairs, no need to review the kids menu, no crayons and coloring pages.  We finished a sentence.  It was so nice!

After dinner, we went to the store and got the kids some art supplies. What? We needed something to fill the time.  Home was too far away and the toy store was too.  We actually had a good time at Wal – Mart, even though we spent too much money.  We are dangerous together in that respect!

We picked up the kids from the Church and listened to how sweet Katie is, how smart Sarah was, and how Megan never cried, despite being up 2 hours past her bedtime.  I said a secret thank you from God that they behaved for others and we packed them into the car.

I expected at least Megan and Sarah to pass out in the car from total exhaustion.  None of them did.  Up way past their bedtime, I started to get concerned.  None of them seemed tired.  This is not going to go well for me.  I could tell.

We get home and I watch as my one year old, whom I fully expected to take a bottle and go to bed – no such luck – run, full speed ahead, laughter trailing, around the driveway like a child possessed!  Drunk with exhaustion, I could not get her to bed for another hour!  Mind you, she was up from her nap 7 hours earlier!

We finally get them all tucked in, kissed, and prayed with and head to the living room to relax.

As my husband and I settle in for a quiet evening, knowing – obviously – that our overly tired children will surely sleep happily through the night, wake up late and honor us with some rest of our own, we kick our feet up and put in a movie.

It last 10 minutes.  Katie comes out – she messed in her Pull Up, Sarah is up – she wants a snack, and to our surprise, our good sleeper, Megan is up – just because.  

And despite the fact that we get her sister’s happily snuggled back in their beds, Megan treats us to a lovely all nighter, finally going down and staying down at 6 A M!  

Nope.  No exagersation.

6 A M.  As in in the morning, the break of dawn, an hour before I have to be up.  Yes…  that 6am.

I got up Sunday, made it to work by the grace of God and managed 14 two year olds on about an hour of sleep.  No biggie, it’s been done before.  But I will say, I kept telling myself that if I could just get home and wear the kids out, get them dinner early, get them baths, and take full advantage of daylight savings, I could get them to bed by 7 and me to bed by 7:02.

It was a plan.  A plan my husband agree was genius!

Everything went according to plan.  Even my bad sleeper, Katie, curled up in her jammies and went to bed.

For 7 minutes.

Here we go again!

It takes an hour and half to get Sarah and Katie to bed.

But Megan was up again.  Standing in her crib, screaming at the top of her lungs, first for 15 minutes until we went in, then 20, then 25.  She was determined.  We could not figure it out.

And then it dawned on us.  This was payback, baby style.  We had messed up her precious bedtime routine by going to date night, letting her get over stimulated, and then expecting her to just shut down because we wanted her to.

We felt awful.  And now know that we have set ourselves up for a week of resetting her schedule and getting back our good sleeper.  But that is ok.  Because Mommy and Daddy needed to  have their precious routine messed up by going on date night too.  We needed to get over stimulated and not be able to shut down just because we were used to it.

And it worked.  Despite Megan’s payback, we managed to turn the Band aid into glue.  And that glue will withstand any payback these kids throw at us!