Riddles in the Dark- Our Personal Edition

We've had a situation for about the past week that has required much prayer and supplication:  my boys want to share a room.  Let me explain.  The prayer and supplication part is not in regards to whether or not I should allow this but rather, "God, please let us all survive this experiment!"

Matthew has a set of bunk beds in his room that Stephen has always found particularly appealing. However, upon his request to sleep in his big brother's room, Stephen has professed great preference for sleeping on a blanket on the floor. No matter of enticing will get him to sleep in the bottom bunk even though the week before, we were unable to get him out of it.  Notice that Elmo and other stuffed friends have the twin bed all to themselves while Stephen has the floor.

Also, Stephen appears to have a hard time staying on his blanket and pillow.  One evening on my way to bed, I realized that he had managed to roll all the way out of the bedroom and part of the way down the hallway.  Thankfully, he missed the stairs.

Matthew is going to school for the first time in just a few weeks and so we've been attempting to get him on a good sleep schedule since he'll need to wake up a little more than an hour before he does currently.  With Stephen in the room, conversation and playtime are much more likely to happen than sleep.  And then, when sleep does happen, it is because they are utterly exhausted and we have discovered that Stephen snores.  Or more accurately, Matthew discovered this.

Matthew came to our room one night in absolute hysterics claiming Stephen was making sounds and it was scaring him since it sounded "like that guy from the book- the one whose birthday present was the ring".  After forcing my sleepy self to concentrate, I realized that he was referring to Golem in The Hobbit.  Just that evening, Seth had read Matthew the chapter entitled Riddles in the Dark and done all the voices and enjoyed making it especially dramatic (i.e. scary) when Golem threatened to eat Bilbo.  And now Matthew was convinced that Golem was hiding out in his room in the form of Stephen's snoring.  Poor baby was so tired that we couldn't wake him up so our only option was to transport the little snorer back to his toddler bed.  We are now toning down the dramatic readings.

As much as I would dearly love an extra room for an office, craft room, exercise room or whatever other endless possibilities my mind has been considering, I am now feeling like a more ordered and calm, snore-less bedtime is going to be worth more to my mental health than some space all my own.  I have not yet informed my boys though that the bedtime social hour will be drawing to an end.  We'll probably have some more crying tonight.

Source: http://adventuresofaneverydaygirl.blogspot.com/2010/08/riddles-in-dark-our-personal-edition.html