Bed. Now.

I am exhausted. I almost called it a night and didn't get up again after the boys were asleep. The playroom's back together, if you don't count the toys that have been rescattered through the house since this morning. But I've got a ton of laundry to catch up on tomorrow, and two baby showers to attend, plus Scott's grandmother's (89th?) birthday party on Sunday.

G napped early today, since he was awake by 6:30 with his brother this morning. F didn't nap at all, but wanted me to play Rescue Heroes with him all afternoon. We also got onto funschool.com to check out their preschool games. My neighbor told us about it. He liked the one where you put each animal in their proper habitat. He knows where they're all supposed to go. The hard part was learning how to use the mouse. I helped a lot at first, but my back got tired leaning over him, and just as he started to get the concept, G wanted to nurse. Plus it was getting close to dinnertime and Scott wasn't home yet.

It's about this point when I wonder why I don't just enforce a schedule like all those smart moms out there who have guaranteed nap and bedtimes to keep them sane and their kids rested. Why did I have to go get mixed up with those crazy unschoolers and TCSers who insist that kids have different natural rhythms and learning shouldn't be limited by arbitrary schedules? Who say that external boundaries only inhibit one's ability to learn to regulate oneself?

(And then I remember that we had this "problem" even before I started reading Sandra Dodd or the rest. Because Scott and I wanted to be able to do things in the evening -- participate in our church book club, rent a movie at my parents' -- without having to hire a babysitter. So we never did buy into the "baby's bedtime is 7 p.m." thing, but slept in to make up for late nights. Occasionally F was ready to nurse to sleep before my teeth were brushed, and we ended up with cranky baby and cranky parents. But we could have found a solution if we'd tried harder.)

The truth is, he really is good about regulating his sleeping. If he's tired, he'll usually say so. And he doesn't argue if we suggest it's a good day for nap because we're going out after dinner. If he's tired and HUNGRY, on the other hand, he'll just be impossible to distract from the one thing he wants but I'm not willing to give him. And that has much more to do with age and genetics. If I ever get around to writing a parenting book, I really will have to title it "Hypoglycemic Parenting." Because that seems to be the style I have down pat.