Beach Days and Night Time Dramas

Sunday and Monday we spent some time at the beach. The boys (and Simon and I) absolutely love the beach, and I love to watch them having so much fun! Cohen's favourite thing at the moment is to find rocks and throw them into the water, Kason loves to jump in the waves! Usually at the beach, Cohen is a bit more brave, and just runs straight into the water, whereas Kason would usually hold back a little and wakes a little bit to get used to it. The last two days, though, it's been the other way around. Kason just couldn't get enough of the water, or the waves, and he just wanted to swim! The waves were a little bit too big for him to swim, but he still had an absolute blast :-)

On a completely different note, the boys have been absolute NIGHTMARES for the last 10 weeks or so to get to sleep at night. Before we went to New Zealand, I could put them to bed at 7pm, tell the goodnight, give them a kiss and cuddle and walk out. They would stay in their beds (which, at that time, were their cots converted to beds, so no sides), and go to sleep by themselves. Sure, sometimes it could take up to an hour, but they were happy, they left each other alone, and they didn't trash their rooms.
In New Zealand...completely different story. They played up something shocking, and on just the second night (I think), they tore down the net curtains in their bedroom and stripped the wallpaper off probably a quarter of the room. Every night they would run around being crazy for about 30 minutes, before they started screaming and crying. Then I'd go in to settle them down, and I would end up staying in there with them and cuddling them to sleep. When we got home, nothing changed. I tried to go back to how things were going before we left on our trip, but after they pulled the blinds off the wall (THREE nights they did that!), and after Cohen hurt himself, I decided that I would just have to stay in there with them while they went to sleep. It would take me up to TWO hours to get them to go to sleep. Not fun at all, and by the time they finally crashed out, the only thing I felt like doing was blobbing on the couch, so I haven't been getting much done at all!
Tonight, I decided to see how they went if I put them to bed at 6:30pm instead of 7pm. There was SO much less mucking around from Cohen (he is ALWAYS the one playing up the most at night time), and they were BOTH asleep within 20 minutes, and I didn't cuddle either of them. After reading them their story, I lay them both in their beds, told them goodnight, then sat on the floor between their beds with a hand on each of their tummies, and just waited.

When I came back out to the lounge, I was SO stoked to see it was only 6:50pm!!!!!!!! Here's hoping they sleep past 6am tomorrow morning, too :-) Watch this space!

xxx