Sleep? Whats that?

My kids are under the grand delusion that I don't need to sleep, and that my existance is served by getting them chocolate milk at any given time of the day or night.

Of course the real truth is that chocolate milk is a daytime only beverage, and I do need sleep - and I tend to need a lot more than I've been getting lately.

As babies, my kids are wonderful sleepers - They sleep through the night at 8 weeks, and take long and delightful naps consistently just as I did. Then they turn into toddlers and nothing is ever the same.
I will interject here that Matthew has never been a good sleeper, and gave up his naps by the age of 2 but he is a rare exception I'm sure, and as is convenient to me, I shall blame that on his father's genes. My genetic contribution would be to want to sleep long hours, and especially to sleep in on weekends.

With the excitement over the past week - Easter bunnies and birthdays and all, our schedule has been thrown all over the place and trying to get back has been a little difficult.

For starters - Easter was just way too exciting for them. It's like Christmas only everything is made of chocolate. What kid doesn't like a holiday that allows them to eat a chocolate chicken for breakfast! My kids were excited about the promise of chocolate eggs mysteriously arriving in the night - and despite my best efforts at convincing them that the bunny won't come if you're awake, they tried their hardest to avoid slumber in a desperate last ditch attempt at catching the Easter bunny and making him their prisoner - dreams similar to Jack and the Beanstalk capturing the chicken that laid golden eggs, or in this case, a bunny that gave neverending chocolate eggs.
Nevertheless, we managed to get them into bed and asleep a little later than usual, but still with enough time to do some serious egg hiding. All would have been great except that Matthew in his excitement woke up and declared it Easter at 4:30 in the morning. Yes, that's right - 4:30 we heard a whoop and a 3 yr old bursting into our room in his excitement that there were EGGS in his room!
He quickly collected his eggs and conned me into getting him a bottle to get him back to sleep. I usually insist on water at night, but at 4:30am, I'm not always thinking clearly.
Of course what we didn't know is that he had gone into his brothers room and collected his eggs too - neatly placing them into a basket beside his brothers bed.
When Duncan woke up at 7:00 - we were treated to a wailing, that he had "missed it" meaning the finding of the eggs, as they were all sitting neatly in a basket before him. So I sent him back to bed and re-hid his eggs at 7am so that he could find them all at 7:06am.

For the next 2 days those boys were in a chocolate induced frenzy. They got way more chocolate than any one person should have in a year, let alone a one day bounty - so our cupboard is currently host to several chocolate animals, spongebobs and eggs that they do not realize are even theirs. I may have to help eat some of that, to make room in the cupboard you know.

only 3 days after Easter, my big boy turned 5 and was up again at 4:30 in his excitement at being inundated again with presents and spoiling and all things out of the ordinary.
He had the worst possible day at school on Thursday - coupled with a double ear infection and woke up this morning again at 4:30am with a fever.
See? Too much chocolate can make you sick.
The upshot of it all is that I haven't had more than 4 hours of consecutive sleep in a week. If it's not one it's the other, and if both the big boys manage to stay comatose for the night, the baby has a nightmare (or teething or something).
so I'm tired.
very very tired.
and I'm going to bed.