Lights Out

This past Saturday was our first experience with Trick-or-Treating with the kids. Merrick's first Halloween was spent like this:
Billy and I both seem to have developed amnesia, and can't remember what we did for his second Halloween. So yesterday we had a fellowship/trunk-or-treat at church. I was so excited about dressing Merrick up in his dino costume. We had a great time...even in spite of the rain. Merrick made sure to drag his dino tail through every puddle he could find, and made out like a bandit with a huge pumpkin full of candy for me, uh himself. ;) Tirzah just hung out in the car, but here is a picture of the 2 of them...minus the dinosaur head-piece Merrick really wasn't' very fond of:
So after such a great evening with the kids, Billy and I were very excited about the theoretical extra hour of sleep we were supposed to have coming to us thanks to daylight savings time. I say theoretical, because in theory it was a nice thought. ;) We got them home and in the bed, and got ourselves in the bed at a reasonable hour...10:30! Which is great for our usual Saturday night shenanigans all over the state with 180. :)

Then, for some reason, the power went out. No big deal right? We are asleep...who needs electricity? But, since marrying Billy, who always sleeps with a hurricane force wind fan blowing, neither one of us can sleep in dead silence. So, ridiculous as it sounds, the silence woke us both up at 1:00 am. And then, Merrick woke up. And then, Tirzah woke up. Apparently they don't understand the concept of extra sleep. :)

So...since our house is a shoebox pretty small (Merrick's room is right next to ours, and is the only other bedroom in the house) Merrick's sad crying and refusing to go back to sleep ended with him being put in bed with us. Did someone say party time? I think that was what he heard, although I don't recall saying that. There were feet on my head, and a head in my ribcage all at the same time...he was jumping on the bed, wanting a snack, talking about cat poop, *I still can't figure that one out*, poking us in the eyeballs, climbing out of bed and running into things in the pitch black dark when I didn't grab him fast enough.Yes, go ahead and laugh...I was. :) What else can you do? (Billy was holding Tirzah, who also wouldn't go back to sleep.) I tried holding him still, rubbing his back, reasoning with him, threatening him, *"...if you don't go to sleep right now." :)* but nothing seemed to work. Still no sleeping going on. Finally, we all went to the kitchen and ate chips in the dark. I guess we just decided to embrace the insanity, and hope for the best. After our midnight 4:00 am snack, we tried going to bed again. This time, after about 30 minutes of WWE, he finally fell asleep.

We all dozed off, even though Merrick was sweating on me like he had run a marathon. About 5:30 the power came back on, waking us all up again because the hurricane was back, and several lights came on. But Merrick was too far gone to resist sleep at this point, so we put him in his crib and called it a night. Or a morning.

I thought that I would keep the kids home from church and let them sleep in a little, because they were up half the night. They pretty much said, in their own cute little way, "no thanks mom...we're not tired"! Or maybe I just am hearing things because I can't think straight on 3 hours of sleep. But like I said...that extra hour of sleep? Theoretical. ;)
But it's pretty hard to stay mad at them when they are so stinkin' cute. Even if I am seeing double due to exhaustion. :)