Will We Ever Sleep Again?!

It seems a bout of 3 year old sleep regression is hitting out house. Merasia has never been a good sleeper. We've just learned to deal with it. She has been okay the past year, but could be much better. Connor has been an angelic sleeper since about 5 months. For whatever reason, that has changed. Both of them started waking up for the day at between 4 and 6 a.m. for the past week. They are wide awake, ready to start their day. Mommy and daddy, on the other hand....not so much!

Oh, how I miss sleep.............

We have tried EVERYTHING to get them to sleep better at night, longer in the morning...whatever! I guess it's not them getting up early that I care about. It's them waking US up, and thus waking Mason up too, super early. I don't care if they wake up that early and just play in their room until we wake up...at least then, I know they are contained, they are safe, and most likely, they will play themselves back to sleep anyway. But with them growing up, they have learned how to turn door handles. They have learned how to turn door handles to successfully open doors, which they never could do a year ago at this time. You know those plastic child proof door handle things? They used to work so the twins couldn't open doors we didn't want opened. Now, they just play with them and squeeze them until they fall off. Useless.

So we tried putting a baby gate in their bedroom doorway to keep them in their room if they woke at night, and to keep them in their room when they decide they want to get up at dawn. It works for Merasia. Connor, on the other hand, is Houdini's spawn. He can get in and out of EVERYWHERE, SOMEHOW! He climbs over or under the baby gate and still comes up to our room and wakes us up.

There was the option of locking the door, but that scared me because in the case of an emergency, it takes longer to get into their room to get to them. And then I was reading a fellow mom's blog about similar sleep issues. And she mentioned switching the door handle around. BRILLIANT IDEA! I have no idea why we didn't think of that sooner!

So, I did that today. I switched their door handle around. Yep. That's right. I am LOCKING them in their bedroom at night. Go ahead. Judge if you must. But I can almost guarantee if you were in our position, you would resort to desperate measures too, even if just for one more hour of sleep. Now, we can lock them in their room so if they wake up early, they are forced to go back to bed or play in their room until we are awake. And if there's ever an emergency the lock is on the outside of the door, so we just turn it and get in, no fussing around like when it was the other way around. I think this just may be our solution! I'll
keep you updated on how it goes.... ;-)

I will say...........it's hard to stay mad at these precious faces...