On Sleep.

 Question: How much do you all sleep? 

I ask, because my husband has me convinced that I sleep way more than most people. I'm not sure if that's true (I'm guessing it is) but when I sleep less than my usual, I truly feel sick all day (like I'm dying a slow death,) and it makes being with the kids so much more challenging (are they always so loud?) that I rarely, if ever, sleep less than 8.5 hours. In fact, if I know I have something coming up, like a concert with friends, or a dinner out, I actually have to psych myself up for a few weeks before, so by the time 10pm rolls around, I'm not falling asleep. For real. I have to wonder if this is normal!

Now, It's not that I'm all that concerned I sleep too much. On average, I go to bed sometime around 9:30-10 and get up between 6 and 7, depending on the kids. Without them, I would probably go until 8, but that hasn't happened since the day the LM was born, and I'm pretty sure I have about another decade before it does. But the thing is, I wish that I was able to sleep less. There are books I want to read, things I want to write, shows I wish I didn't have to cut from my life, but doing most of those things would mean I would have to sleep less, and there are very few things that interest me enough, that I would cut in to my eight precious hours. 

My husband used to be on the same sleep schedule as me, and with work and the kids, he found he couldn't "waste" some of those precious hours, so now we go to bed together, and he will stay up writing until after midnight, and is usually up before me. He said it just took some getting used to, but I feel like I have tried to sleep less (mostly when getting up with the babies when they were little) and there was nothing great about it. It sucked, and I'm not quite sure I want to try it again on purpose. Plus, isn't sleep good for you? It's supposed to keep you thin, sane, young?

Are/ were any of you life long sleepers. Did you ever find a way to scale back long term? I'm not interested in doing anything drastic, but I would like to find a way to slowly cut back to 7 hours. I feel like having 7-10 extra, kid free, hours a week would be such a gift, but I just don't want to do it at the cost of not having any energy throughout the day. I'm wondering is it better to start cold turkey, or slowly cut back over time. I have to ask, as I always say to my husband when he asks on Saturday night at 9:30 if I'm a baby as I head down the stairs, do some people just NEED more sleep? I think they do, but I would love to be proven wrong. 

As an aside, what it is with kids not wanting to go to bed or sleep in late. There has to be some way to convince them that they have it so good. Man, what I wouldn't give for a solid 12 hours! (Haha, I can just hear Gray laughing loudly at my suggestion that he sleep in!)