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Getting kids to sleep on Christmas Eve (How?) LOL


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I'm curious what time your kids get sent to bed on Christmas Eve and how long it takes them to fall asleep.

 

It's almost 8am Christmas morning here in Aus (Merry Christmas) and all my kids are still sleeping (Wahoo) :D

 

DS4 is always first asleep - he was out at 9.30pm

 

DS2 had a late nap so I was expecting him to be running around a little later then normal but coupled with excitement it was 10.30pm before he fell asleep.

 

DD was still awake at 11pm :glare: She was watching Santa on Norad and when he hit the top of Australia (we live down the very bottom) I told her she was going to miss out if she didn't go to sleep - she raced off and fell asleep in 5 minutes.

 

I was so exhausted yesterday I was falling asleep waiting for them to go to sleep so I could do the gifts. We normally spend ages arranging the presents prettily under the tree and stuffing stockings -last night DH and I just dumped them by the armload under the tree haphazardly and all 3 stockings were stuffed in under 3 minutes :lol: Kids won't notice the rush Santa was in I'm sure :D

 

Seriously - it gets worse every year as they understand the exitement more and more. DD has special needs and is prone to meltdowns and had several huge ones starting at dinner time till 11.pm which made our Christmas Eve miserable and destroyed most of our planned activities :glare:

 

I guess the upside is that once my kids are asleep they stay that way - we have Church at 9.30 so I guess we won't be doing presents till after. I bought DD a new dress to wear to Church so I had to root around under the tree and poke tiny holes in several gifts to find it and then put it with her stocking because I planned on them being up earlier then this :lol:

 

No way am I waking them or meltdowns will ensue all day. :glare:

 

Anyone have some secret go to sleep fairy dust I can sprinkle on my kids :D

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Take them to the 11pm Church service each year. Most years, two or three of our kids are on to serve as acolytes (Episcopal), so they have to be awake and moving around during the service.

 

Amazing how having to serve at church at midnight gets everyone to go to sleep as soon as we get home!

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From the NORAD site:

 

When will Santa get to my house:

 

"NORAD tracks Santa, but only Santa knows his route, which means we cannot predict where and when he will arrive at your house. We do, however, know from history that it appears he arrives only when children are asleep! In most countries, it seems Santa arrives between 9:00 p.m. and midnight on December 24th. If children are still awake when Santa arrives, he moves on to other houses. He returns later … but only when the children are asleep."

 

That ought to be incentive. :)

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I'm curious what time your kids get sent to bed on Christmas Eve and how long it takes them to fall asleep.

 

It's almost 8am Christmas morning here in Aus (Merry Christmas) and all my kids are still sleeping (Wahoo) :D

 

DS4 is always first asleep - he was out at 9.30pm

 

DS2 had a late nap so I was expecting him to be running around a little later then normal but coupled with excitement it was 10.30pm before he fell asleep.

 

DD was still awake at 11pm :glare: She was watching Santa on Norad and when he hit the top of Australia (we live down the very bottom) I told her she was going to miss out if she didn't go to sleep - she raced off and fell asleep in 5 minutes.

 

I was so exhausted yesterday I was falling asleep waiting for them to go to sleep so I could do the gifts. We normally spend ages arranging the presents prettily under the tree and stuffing stockings -last night DH and I just dumped them by the armload under the tree haphazardly and all 3 stockings were stuffed in under 3 minutes :lol: Kids won't notice the rush Santa was in I'm sure :D

 

Seriously - it gets worse every year as they understand the exitement more and more. DD has special needs and is prone to meltdowns and had several huge ones starting at dinner time till 11.pm which made our Christmas Eve miserable and destroyed most of our planned activities :glare:

 

I guess the upside is that once my kids are asleep they stay that way - we have Church at 9.30 so I guess we won't be doing presents till after. I bought DD a new dress to wear to Church so I had to root around under the tree and poke tiny holes in several gifts to find it and then put it with her stocking because I planned on them being up earlier then this :lol:

 

No way am I waking them or meltdowns will ensue all day. :glare:

 

Anyone have some secret go to sleep fairy dust I can sprinkle on my kids :D

 

 

Same dilemma here. It just occurred to me an hour or so ago that I should start waking the kids up at the crack of dawn on Christmas Eve and give them a jam packed go, go, go kind of day so they fall in bed exhausted.

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We had a late dinner and dh took them down to the basement to watch Grinch, Frosty AND Rudolph! It is 10:39 and they are still up watching movies. We went to Mass early (not Midnight like usual) so they could get to bed earlier and I wouldn't have to stay up so late waiting for everyone to fall asleep in order to get the presents out. So much for that idea. :glare: Had I known his plan was to watch all three I would have made them start this afternoon or I would have squashed those plans.

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My 2yo fell asleep in the car on the way home from church. We should've brought his pajamas to change him into after the service, because getting him out of his clothes and into PJs was a challenge and he woke up cranky. (Clothes weren't any good for sleeping in, alas.) My husband finally got him back to sleep.

 

My 6yo had a hard time falling asleep. She watched the NORAD Santa tracker for a while before bed, and then when I checked on her about half an hour after bedtime she begged me to go see where he was. No. We do not provide in-bed updates of Santa's whereabouts in this house.

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Well, it is just gone 8 here and no one is in bed or anywhere near sleepy, but we don't normally have bedtimes here. We allow them to fall asleep when they do and get up (for the most part) when they do.

 

That said, I would like to go to sleep!! So, my darling oldest children are hard at work getting the little widgets to settle down and play quietly at slumber parties. :tongue_smilie:

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12:30 am Christmas Day here. Ours went to bed on time tonight. A couple even fell asleep at the table while eating their cookies and egg nog. They chose to get up early to make breakfast and a turkey dinner with all of the fixin' for lunch. We purposely had dh run errands with the littles which allowed them to skip naps. They were TIRED by bedtime. It was awesome!

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Depends..

 

It's traditional to drive or walk around on Christmas Eve to look at lights, and in Tassie it's not DARK until 10ish. BUT, we generally head out much sooner then that. We stopped at the first house last night around 830 or so, hung out for a long while because the guys yard is PACKED with stuff and he hands out lollies and all that. We got home around 1030 and I sent the kids to get ready for bed. They were out like lights shortly afterwards.

 

They woke me at 10 to 5 this morning and scared the beejeepers out of me. I didn't fall asleep until all most 2 am. Never had that issue as a child, but as an adult I can't sleep on Christmas Eve. :lol: I just want to give everyone their gifts and watch them smile. ;)

 

I took a nap this afternoon, the kids watched one of the dvds they got. :D

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On the way home from Church, our kids ASKED FOR BENADRYL. :lol::lol::lol:

 

Now why didn't I think of that :lol: Wouldn't work here though - that type of stuff has the opposite effect on my DD and she gets really wired and hyper.

 

Oh man I was so exhausted and just wanted to go to bed - the thought crossed my mind a few times to wait and put the presents out in the morning but I didn't want to risk it if they woke up early and saw a bare tree :001_huh:

 

As it turns out they slept till 8.30 :glare:

 

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one suffering with hyper awake kids :tongue_smilie:

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@cin my 8 year old asked for something too to help her fall asleep!!! I totally relate to that & remember how hard it was to sleep on christmas eve. I told her that no matter what, don't get out of bed!! (her room faces the front room, tree and all), that's why i'm online, waiting to make sure she's asleep...

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My 9 year old, Mag, is Santa with me, and he's the only reason the others went to bed. At 8:30, I said it was bedtime and Mag ran up and got ready and convinced the others that they had to get right to bed because Santa would skip our house if anyone was awake. He hopped into bed, lay there for 20 minutes, then came and got me and we did the stockings. I don't think he was in bed until midnight, but he'll be the first one up at 7am. That's the earliest they're allowed out of bed. :001_smile:

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My 7yo ds is amazingly still awake (it is 3:20am!!!). The kids went to bed a little after 10pm, but ds has been unable to sleep. Of course, he is so excited that he keeps getting worked up and then crying because he can't sleep. I finally sent dh to bed and put ds in bed with him. Here is hoping it works!!!

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Right! Never thought I'd be happy to see a wet bed.

 

Btw, it's 1:50 and now both my dds are awake! It's the never ending night. At least they are in their beds, but we need to sneak the stockings back in. I'm thinking next year we change from stockings on the bed to on the mantle.

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We went to 11:00 Mass. The baby fel asleep at the restaurant, and slept through church. The 5 year old slept though church, but woke up when we got home, and got all wild and hyper with her aunts and uncles.

 

 

The 13 year old laid down with her at about 1:30, and my brother read some special books to them. They were out cold.

 

I sent 15 year old to bed about 2:00 so I could fill stockings. Then I forgot I still had a few presents to wrap, and dh had. Toys to assemble.

 

The 2 year old woke up at 3:30. I lied down with her to get her back to sleep, and instructed dh to wrap gifts I had bought, hidden, and forgotten about.

 

At 5:00am the baby goats in my playroom started crying for their breakfast bottles. It's a good thing dh let me open my new coffee maker last night.

 

My 4 youngest kids will sleep until impatient adults insist they wake up and open presents. I woke up my oldest, because she has hours of chores to do before breakfast.

 

I wish she had not stayed up all night finishing gifts she made, but I knew Christmas would be ruined for her if she didn't get it done.

 

I'll promise her a nap this afternoon. I'm sure dh will join her.

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