Sleep Happens

So the other day I was curious about how many hours that your child should be sleeping per day, how many naps per age, etc. My daughter is 3 and a half and normally doesn't take naps. My son is 18 months and will take one nap during the day and if I'm lucky it will be 2 hours, but sometimes it's as little as 30 minutes. So, I found this helpful chart. Not all children are the same, so it's not a written in stone type deal.

Anyway, what I don't get is how no matter what time your kids go to bed at night, they wake up at roughly the same time in the morning. For instance, being an old lady, I tend to like to go to bed at 8:30pm. LOL. I take the kids in with me while I wind down watching General Hospital. I'm usually asleep before 10pm. Now, the kids usually fall asleep within half an hour, and then wake up in the morning anywhere from 7am-9am. L sleeps later than A typically. I love it when I wake up on my own before them.

But last night, for example, we were visiting a relative and Nick kept us out until a whopping 10pm and I was about to pass out! So, we get home, get the kids right to bed and they fall asleep within TEN MINUTES! I had a harder time winding down and didn't fall asleep until close to midnight. So, when Nick's alarm woke up at 6am and woke me up, I had a hard time going back to sleep and I am SO TIRED. But, the kids still got up at the same time as usual.

What's the deal? If I had the option of sleeping as long as I wanted, you can bet I'd be living that up! I always figured 9 hours was my perfect number for sanity sake, but since having kids, I'm lucky to get a good 6. Plus I'm a very light sleeper and wake up multiple times at night.

I'm gonna wrap this up, cause it's getting long, but this is kinda me pondering aloud about sleep. Are my kids getting enough? Why do they insist on waking up before they're ready? Will I ever get those 9 hours I long for? Is Claudia going to lose the baby on General Hospital?