The Prophecy

"Neither can survive while the other lives" was the prophecy for Harry Potter and his nemesis Voldemort. A similar thing happens with my two children. Neither can sleep while the other is awake. Ginger is a wonderful baby and she sleeps through the night, and has for some time. Penny was the same way. Both girls sleep through the night and have approximately the same 8 pm bed time. If you consider each of them seperately it makes for a pretty easy bed time. Sounds like a parent's dream come true, right? Well here's what happens.

When we put "the chosen one" into her crib she can't be made aware of the presence of anyone else in the room or she won't go to sleep, but "she who must not be named" usually doesn't go all that quietly and calls out to us telling us that she isn't tired or needs a drink of water. This alerts Ginger to the fact that she is not alone in the bedroom so she struggles to free herself from her night-time wrap and to peek over the crib and look at Penny in her bed. Eventually she gets frustrated either because Daddy's wrap was too good and has immobilized her (rare these days) or because she was successful and is now looking at her sister begging her to play with her. She starts whining and moving around in her crib, peering over the edge at Penny. Then Penny who has been claiming she wasn't tired for some time sees a golden opportunity for escape and starts yelling, "Ginger's crying in mine ear!" over and over. This encourages Ginger's struggles and her whining escalates to crying. Then it just snowballs and an intervention has to take place because Penny's still yelling at Ginger to stop crying and Ginger's just crying for someone to come play with her. Neither is in any condition to fall asleep at this point so we have to get them both up and calmed down before we can start over staggering the bedtimes enough that they fall asleep individually undisturbed by the other.

I too have seen the future. An epic battle will unfold between my children as they find other ways in which it is difficult to coexist peacefully. Perhaps for many years. Maybe someday we'll get a third bedroom and that will help.