What is it with kids and bedtimes?

When they're tiny it's fighting through colic, or days and nights mixed up...and of course the regular round of waking up for night feeds. Babies love sleep, but quite often aren't actually that good at it at night.

Then you move past the newborn phase, some people take the easy-come, easy-go route and don't have any structure to bedtime, some go for the co-sleeping either by design or from being worn down into it and some go for the full-on, by the clock bedtime routine.

Just as you have that sussed, and hopefully sleeping through the night is something fairly regular....along comes TEETHING, WEANING, COLDS ......Yeah!!!! You thought you had a sleep-through baby. WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Soooo....teeth - check, solids - check, colds - check. You know what to do with all of them, within reason. Clever Mummy, you're a real pro.

Muahahahahahaaaaaa says the sleep fairy. WRONG WRONG WRONG. Baby wants to give up one nap, and discovers the joys of overtiredness. and playing. and climbing. and m-a-n-i-p-u-l-t-i-o-n. Deliberate, carefully-planned manipulation.

You overcome that one. Along comes 'dreaming' and 'Mummy-can-you-say-separation-anxiety'. Oh, and more climbing. And the manipulation skills are growing.

Just as nights slowly start to become a time when expecting more than 3 hours sleep on the trot isn't something too unrealistic, the bedtime routine grooooooooows.

Playing and delaying. One and the same. One loo visit turns into 4. Cuddles and kisses turn into a cycle of 'cuggle'...'now tiss'...'cuggle'. Brushing teeth starts as cajolment to do it, and then moves into begging to stop. Every toy in the house, bedding, clothing, food, drink and sponges to wash faces with explode in every room, vitally important and when removed cause screams of dismay.

And you know, I am convinced, we'll get past this only to move into 'pleeeease get out of bed now'.