Zeke, The Manipulator

I need to preface this story with a little background info so it will make sense to everyone. For those close to us, it is no secret that my children have not been sleeping well as of late. Between our travel schedule, vacation, and time change...both my 1 and 4 year old wake quite frequently in the night...it's nuts at our house once the lights go down.

My closest friends know me as the Sleep Natzi (I had Zeke tightly routined by 2 months of age), so this constant waking is truly out of my comfort zone. Zeke's sleep pattern had gotten so disrupted by mid-October that I decided to give him a morning prize (a temporary tatoo) when he didn't scream out in the night & stayed in his bed. This decision was mostly to prove to myself that he was indeed able to control these outbursts...he obviously is. Because he shares a room with Kaelyn, the screaming just proved to wake them both up....thus making it that much harder to settle everyone back into bed.

So, right now my parents are keeping the kids at our house while we are Germany. Yesterday my mom wrote me an email that I had to share because it made us laugh.

We put K in the back bedroom and she lasted until 4. Your dad changed her and she lasted until 5:45am when we all got up to party. Zeke slept the whole night and woke up needing his "present". He selected one from under the tree (we already have our wrapped Xmas presents under our Xmas tree). I explained the one he wanted belonged to Kendell and I'd have to check with you for what he would get. We then located the tatoos on the fridge. He's now got the real biker look.

Leave it to Zeke to decide he needed to raise the prize quality. HA! I doubt someone else would agree with him, right Kendall? :)