Hallelujah

Alright, so let me start by saying I HATE to hear my babies cry. I actually have a "no cry rule". I'm serious, an absolute NO CRY rule, so much so that I will hold both kids at the same time to keep them from crying. My husband, along with everyone else, thinks I'm absolutely nuts. I don't care. I hate to hear the helpless cries of Olivia and Cole, it's like nails on a chalk board. With that being said, night times had become a complete shit show at our house. For the first three months it was the putting down of the kids that took forever, literally. We would be lucky if we were done in two hours. Then that finally got easy about three weeks ago and the middle of the nights became hell. The kids started waking up around 11 or 12 and again at 4:30. This would be hard with one child, let alone two children. They never coincided their wake ups, they would always stagger them one to two hours apart, so Bryce and I would literally be awake the entire night. On top of being up the entire night, when the kids woke up they would scream bloody murder and kick and throw their pacifiers (yes, at four months old). I kept making excuses until one night Cole did this for three hours. I had it. Bryce and I kept tossing him back and forth to each other because he wouldn't calm down for either of us. I'm not sure if he wanted to play or was just pissed in general that the sun wasn't up, but either way it was utter chaos. The next day Bryce and I sat down and I said "something has to change". I, like many other mothers out there, had not slept for more than a four hour span since I was three months pregnant. THREE. I felt like a walking zombie, but had learned to have that feel like the norm. It was pathetic really. Well, on Sunday after Mass, Bryce and I made the mutual decision to have the kids cry it out. This is a method that I swore I would never do, especially since I have a rule about no crying, even for one minute.  Well, I threw that method out the window and we started with night one. I had been warned that some babies cry for up to three hours so I prepped myself for the absolute worse. Night one wasn't too bad, Cole cried for a solid eighteen minutes and Olivia cried for twenty minutes and then they both put themselves back to sleep. Some how some way, they can sleep through each other's wailing. I don't know how the hell they can do that, but they can. It's a true talent.  Night two was a bit of a different story. Cole woke up first and cried for an hour and eight minutes. Longest hour of. my. life. Olivia woke up thirty minutes later and whimpered for ten minutes (not loud enough to keep Bryce or I from falling asleep, I know that's horrible). The next day Bryce had to leave to go to Houston for business. Super. I prepared myself that I was going to have to fend two crying babies by myself. I had my cat cuddled up in bed with me and gave him a pep talk that he would have to cuddle with me through the loud cries of my children. I woke up at 3 am to silence, I woke up at 4:30 am to silence and I woke up at 6 am to...silence. Both Olivia and Cole slept the entire night. 11.5 hours. Best 11.5 hours of my life. I'm probably jinxing myself by writing about this and telling everyone, but I don't care. Even if it was a one night thing, it was a glorious one night thing.