a little good old-fashined bribery

You may recall my somewhat-stressed post about how the kids just aren't sleeping in a pattern that we can live with...

Well, we tried all sorts of tricks to try to get baby bear to fall asleep before 10:30 and none of them were working.

SM and I were literally losing our minds until he came up with a good idea, that led him to a GREAT idea. BRIBES!

He and baby bear sat down and made another "sticker chart". It's a pyramid type chart that started with only having to put up 1 single little sticker to get his first "prize". That night, he fell asleep by 9:30pm. Not early, by any means, but BOY what a start.

After that, 2 stickers to the next prize. By that 3rd night (en route to prize #2) baby bear was asleep by 8:30pm again. WOOOO HOOOO!!!
Granted, he has also been a little sick, so he's been tired enough to be able to fall asleep earlier, but who cares! We'll take what we can get. We've now had SEVERAL nights in a row with no baby bear contact after 9:30 (and usually earlier) and that feels amazingly good.

I'm not sure how long we'll be able to keep up the bribery. It's not a very good way to function, but at the moment it's the ONLY way to function. We have lots of cars to buy. This weekend we supplemented the prize supply with comic books, so at least we're also supporting his reading habit. Maybe a trip to an actual bookstore is a good idea to...

until next time...
enjoy some evening peace and quiet (or at least something tivo'd)
:o)