How many hours of sleep does an almost 4 year old need? 7 sounds good, right?

I blog heaviest when Charlotte sleeps least, it's unavoidable.  This week has been a massively effed sleep schedule.  Summer's rhythms have thrown her off, and she's waking at 5 am with the birds.  This means she's tired enough to actually sleep at nap time, but then she's not tired enough to sleep at bed time.  Last night she fell asleep around 1:30 or 2 am, after hours of interventions and one consequence (she was chewing on her dresser instead of sleeping, so got her stuffed animals taken away for today).  She was up by 9 am this morning, and I'm not sure if she had been asleep the whole time.  I refuse to let her nap today, no matter how big the circles are under her eyes.

Then, when in I went in at the 1 o'clock hour, I was singing.  She won't put up with a lot of lullabies, but occasionally I can squeeze one in.  Unfortunately, it's often when I'm too tired to remember the words to any songs, so I fall back on my extensive list of church songs, musical soundtracks, patriotic songs, things I learned for 4th grade chorus, and "Piano Man" by Billy Joel.  If you woke me up in the middle of the night and asked me to sing the first song that came to my head, it would be either "Piano Man" or "Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas," which are apparently the screensavers in my brain.  After Charlotte requested "sing Piano Guy again," a few times, she then requested by name "Edelweiss," which pleased me despite my total exhaustion.  I also pulled out "Fifty Nifty United States," the main body of which is the 50 states sung in alphabetical order.  This reminds me of teething babies, because I sang those 50 states over and over to the baby I was nannying when I was 20, not to mention every sleepless infant I ever babysat when I was a teenager.

A sweet moment, though - one of the things Matt does with her during her bed time routine is to talk about happy thoughts, to help her fall asleep.  Last night (at 11:30 pm or so) I asked her to think of some happy thoughts, and these were the things she was thinking about:

* Going to a zoo and seeing a giraffe.  With spots.  And riding on its back when it runs fast.

* Maybe seeing a tiger at that zoo.

* Looking up at trees, that's a happy thought.

* Going for a long walk.  Going for a long walk to the library to get books.

* Playing with special clay. [that's what we call Model Magic]

* Going to bed and waking up and it's Christmas.