Romance and sleepless nights

Don't worry....this catchy little title doesn't refer to David and I:)

I'm loving my little kiddos - they are just too funny for words. Lauren is hysterical right now. Last night she "borrowed" my lip gloss to make kisses on a piece of paper. She disappeared for a bit and I assumed she was making a lovely card for David or I. Nope - later that night she showed me a piece of paper with her kisses all over it and the writing "Roman I love you Lauren". Her first real-life love letter for her kindergarten boyfriend - I couldn't believe it. David was more surprised than I was!! I tried to explain how it wasn't really appropriate for her to make a letter like this at her age and had to answer all kinds of questions, poorly, I'm afraid. Then, today I hear Jacob asking Lauren if she "fell in love" with Roman like he "fell in love" with Abby - his little girlfriend that he never sees. Seriously? How old are these kids? I think we need to put High School Musical on hiatus. I asked them what it meant to "fall in love" and they said it just meant you got married someday. I guess that is innocent enough.

Besides way too much romance amongst the kids, we are suffering from severe sleep deprivation. It was a long week-end for David with poor Grandma Doreen and I was to hold up more of the fort at home - including getting up with Taylor her 10+ times a night and whatever kid rolled out of bed at 6:15am (typically one of them does). Taylor has been struggling with ear infections for months now and her sleep continues to spiral downward. We feel bad for her because we know they're painful, particularly at night - but holy cow, we're tired. Yesterday we were walking zombies and so ready for a good night sleep. But....Lauren walks into our room around 11pm and says, "my ear hurts bad!" She and I moved to three different beds over the next 3 hours - watched 3 TV shows to distract her from the pain, and finally fell asleep on separate couches in our living room. She was propped up with pillows, but did finally sleep. So today, I took her to her doctor's office and yep, ear infection. David took Taylor at about the same time to her doctor and her ears are getting much better from her current round of medicine. We thought she surely was still suffering to sleep that poorly, but nope, we've just fallen off the wagon again. That gal is determined to party through the night. At least we know her ears are finally getting better and we'll have to re-visit sleep-training. We're really hoping tonight goes better.

I thought I would post a few pics of the kids playing with Taylor recently. They both love her so much and love taking care of her. She's a lucky little gal to be surrounded by so much love. She repays them in return with her smiles and giggles.