The five-year-old boy who is the local target of abject affection and effort is sleeping poorly.

Bedtime has (for the past few nights) become a two hour test of wills, patience, resources, and general StickToItIveNess.

Since about Thursday night�we have had various bedtime maladies, howlings, traumas, et al. The great part is that it then takes me a few hours to wind down after having �stayed externally calm and parent-like.�

I am the schedule Czar (it took me four years to get him to sleep through the night) and once I got full daily keepership�determining and holding a 7:30 bedtime was the key to all things sane and blissful.

Suddenly, we are abed at said time, and going to actual sleep (after having gone through a trial of epic proportions) somewhere between 9:30 and 10:00 of late.

Then it is time to be up at 5:30 or Six AM.

These things happen now and again�and puzzling through them and getting things back on track are the two prized-hopes at the moment.

Today we try to run-his-ass-ragged-and-get-the-ya-yas-out�no matter how much it takes out of me to keep a tired and (ideally) less-easy-going boy on the dash.

In other news, I WANT A BREAK! But as all relatives are on opposing ends of the other coast, and so-on, so-forth, ad nauseam � it ain�t a-gonna happen.

Wah.

Sniffle.

And on we march.

But, love him, I do.

And conquer, we will.

--DaTiredSauce