I'm actually not too dismayed by this limitation in their career prospects

My kids are lovely, sweet and relatively well-behaved.  But bedtime remains a struggle.  Josie will go to sleep at a reasonable hour, about 8:30 or so, but getting Zeke to bed is not an easy task. 

I think much of the problem is that his circadian rhythms naturally skew late, just as mine do (and my dad's, for that matter).  I vividly remember being a little kid and wondering why I should go to bed at 8 or 8:30 when I wasn't remotely tired then.  Luckily, my parents were pretty lenient about it, and let me stay up as long as I was chilling out and reading or listening to music in my room.  My dad tells me that he used to stay up reading until midnight as a young child, and never understood the point of being forced to go to bed before he was ready.  So I think Zeke comes by it honestly.

And it's even worse when he's excited about something. 

This past weekend my parents came to visit.  And the kids adore Mimi and Papa.  They've been talking about and anticipating it for weeks. 

Their visit did not disappoint.

On Friday night, they both had a sleepover with my folks at their hotel.  My parents both fell asleep before Zeke and Josie did, but luckily no significant damage was done.  When they woke up, they found the doors covered with stickers, but in the grand scheme of things, no big deal.

The four of them also hung out Saturday morning while J and I had a ski day together.  Super fun, plus I don't even remember the last time J and I had a day on  the mountain together.  The rest of the day we hung out, they went to the bookstore, went for walks, played, bounced on the beds.  And still, Zeke and Josie didn't go to bed before 9.  When they did, they passed out like they had been on a bender, but it was still an effort to convince them that they actually needed to sleep and that Mimi and Papa would still be here when they woke up.

Sunday we went to Jump Street, a local indoor trampoline park.  The kids bounced nonstop for an hour and a half.  Josie napped when we got home, but Zeke couldn't bring himself to lie down and potentially miss something.  That night we had good friends over for dinner, and the children ran around and played chase and stayed up as long as they could, because Mimi and Papa would be leaving early the next morning.

Yesterday I was home with the kids for President's Day.  We went to the indoor pool and swam for 2 hours.  At home, we played and bounced on the beds and played monster tag and built trains.  They still went to bed late.

The nice thing is, they sleep later than most kids do.  Our friends who have young kids all complain that their kids are always up and rousting them out of bed by 6 in the morning. 

That doesn't happen in our house.

The children had another day off today (teacher inservice day), so J stayed home with them and I went to work.  We were hanging out in the kitchen, drinking coffee and chatting, at about 7:30 this morning.  Both kids were still sound asleep.

"Well, we know that our kids will never have jobs working in a coffee shop," J observed.

"Why not?"  I asked.

"Because they open at 5:00 a.m."