Sammy, Mommy and Alena Time

My sleepless nights of late have lead me on a quest to find answers to difficult problems in my life. One such problem is the behavior and troubles of my 4 and 6 yr olds. Alena hates-passionately hates-sleeping alone. The party across the hall is lemon juice in her injury. It's is lemon-juice in my wound as well trying to get that room full of boys to stop teasing and sleep!. Sammy vehemently refuses to sleep w/o Eli and Luke. He desperately needs more sleep than they do but morpheus cannot penetrate stubborn Samuel Stecher.

Our new house will be set up with Alena having the smaller private bathroom bedroom and the boys sharing the bedrooms connected by jack and jill. I coated the separation of Samuel from E & L with descriptions of "boys quarters" and "you're the big brother of Brigham, he'll need you to teach him . . .". But, seeing Alena so lonely is really making me sad. Samuel wouldn't tolerate being in a cute pinky room, yet they all want their dreamed up for two years bedrooms. What to do. Well, inspiration came and I will make a trundle bed for Alena in Samuel's room so she can join the party and be tired too:) No, really it will be good. I told them it would be her secret bed and when they can't go to sleep I'll have a room to escort her to where her feminine side can dream in sweet surroundings.

Another problem I chewed in the darkest hours was how to fit in reading etc with Samuel and Alena. I am glad that I got an answer but it is a bit painful. The 2 hrs I cling to to regain sanity and mental processees aka "quiet time" is something I fight tooth and nail for. It's the only break I get from being dragged in 7 different directions all day long. But I decided to give some of it away to

'Sammy, Mommy and Alena Time".

This is what we did today. Ok so it's actually at the top and I have to cut this short. We read that fun book you see called 'Four Fat Frogs and other Nonsense Numbers and Alphabets.' Then they painted pictures that had something to do with numbers and alphabets. Alena of course chose her own proud A and 4. She does such happy artwork-all on her own. Samuel chose to copy his favorite page in the book about 9 Newts being Nudged. He only got the background done but it's quite nice.

My personal favorite was '7 Smart Salmon Snapping Silly Shrimp'. So cute when I noticed that the shrimp were making silly faces and being snapped by old-fashioned cameras! I am thinking of framing those for our Family Room in our new house. What do you think?

PS, Sammy's watercolor accidentally got photographed upside down. It does make more sense right-side up. I'll be sure to post his finished masterpiece.