Oh sleep, where have you gone?

It all began about three weeks ago when Brynnli decided she was going to start crawling. This meant that she kept waking herself up all night wandering blindly around her crib "practicing". Right around the same time, Carson decided he no longer was excited about napping or going to bed at night. We were not excited about letting either of them "cry it out" because they would wake the other up. We tried everything with Carson, threatening no movies, putting his favorite toys in the garbage, positive reinforcement, we even put him out in the garage one night. Brynnli had started to get a little better, finally crying to sleep until this week when I found her like this in her crib..... now everytime she wakes up she stands up in there. Lowering the crib helped a little.
Carson was so cute and ran in saying "hi mincess (princess)" and Brynnli is a big girl!! She was so cute and proud of herself!
Needless to say, her sleep has gotten worse again, and Carson's is still less than amazing. The other night I spent two hours putting both kids to bed. I am close to going on strike.... eight months it has been since I slept ALL night!! However, in the morning when they wakeup (at 6:30) they are sooo cute and I can't imagine life without them!
I couldn't help but take a picture of my cute family after dinner the other night when both kids ended up in Rick's lap. Brynnli apparently has inherited her mom's blinking problem when having her picture taken. This was the fourth try, her eyes closed in all of them (no she is not asleep...)

Her'es the little rascal in her early days of crawling....

On a side note, after my long month of all too often counting the minutes until my kids are asleep at night, I got great meaning out of conference this weekend (for church) when our President Monson (our prophet) gave a talk on having Joy in the journey and making the most of today. He helped remind me that someday not too long from now all the "fingerprints, toys and laundry will disappear and you will miss them profoundly." What a great uplift this talk was and definately needed!! http://www.lds.org/move/index.html?type=conference&event=178&lang=english