Bedtime - Trials and a whole lot of errors

For the last few nights, Kensi had been going down really nice, and staying down all night too!  She had been getting up a couple times a night, and every night.  And some nights it wasn't just one or two times.  No, it was 3 or 4 times.  That, coupled with being this pregnant, made the days (and sometimes my temper) really long.  Then Isabelle started doing it too.  I knew something had to be up...she hadn't woken up at night in a long time.  So I started trying to think of what it could be.  Was it because they sometimes went to sleep really mad and crying?  Or because they were cold?  Or was it really just a phase that needed to run its course.  The phase seemed to be the most likely for Kensi, and for a long time I just wrote it off as that.  But with Isabelle, I thought it had to be something that was waking her up.  And she wasn't awake when she got up, she was still more than half asleep.  So she'd come into our room, I'd pick her up and bring her back to bed, and she'd go right down.  Started actually looking at their room when I put them back to bed to see if I could spot anything amiss.  I noticed a few times that Izzy's comforter was on the floor.  So I asked her one morning if she was waking up because she was cold.  She said yes.  Half a lightbulb went off, and that night, I gave her a bigger spare blanket.  It's nice and warm too, so I thought if that was the culprit, the blanket should fix it.  Lo and behold, she hasn't woken up in the middle of the night since.  After patting myself on the back for figuring it out, I turned my attention back to Kensi.  I wasn't really ready to give up on it being just a phase yet.  I had tried so many different things, and even made slight changes to their bedtime routine.  The base of the routine itself has always stayed the same; after supper, the girls get a little play time until about 630p which is bath time.  They take a bath from 630p to 7p, then I get them out, jammered, and get their teeth brushed....now this is where I was having a bit of trouble.  I couldn't seem to figure out the best activity for them in the time between their teeth bring brushed and actually going to bed.  They had stopped wanting to be read to, and instead wanted to read themselves.  So for a bit, I was letting them read in bed.  I had the main light out and just the lamp on.  But soon that became a chore for me because they weren't settling down and Kensi was getting out of bed multiple times.  Talk about frustration city!  So I stopped with books completely and broke them up.  Right after teeth brushing, Kensi went down first and Isabelle went downstairs to watch her show for some quiet time before bed.  That seemed to help because Kensi no longer had her playmate to keep her riled up; and that was the biggest problem. They'd get so riled up that they weren't at all calm when it hit bedtime.  Then it was keeping Kensi in bed and not coming out right away.  I knew that would just take time, and there's no easy fixes.  So I just dealt with that, and the times where I was getting frustrated, Grant took over for me or he put her down.  But after a while of that, Isabelle started having tantrums about going to bed.  So Grant started to put them down together again.  At first, I was adamantly against it.  I had worked so hard to establish a routine for them, and here he was messing it all up.  But the man is smart!  It didn't make Kensi do a complete 180, but he got the point across to her that bedtime meant bedtime and we were serious.  So for a while, we had to basically hold her like a baby in our arms, rocking in the chair, and hold her still so she couldn't move or wiggle around.  Not the nicest method, but it got the point across.  We only had to do that for a short time (in comparison to everything else) before she got the memo and we no longer need to.  I wanted to start reading to them again because I missed the cuddle time, so on one of our errands, I had let them both pick out a book.  Isabelle wanted Peter Pan and Kensi grabbed Aladdin.  Now, after getting teeth brushed and being ready for bed, I grab one or both books, have both of them on my lap (which is not easy!), and read the book.  It's a nice long one so they're nice and calm and relaxed by the time I'm done.  Sometimes Kensi doesn't even make it through the whole book before she wiggles off of my lap and goes to lay down.  After the story, I turn out the lamp, sing Isabelle her song (I made up a song for her and one for Kensi), give her hugs and kisses, go to Kensi and do the same thing if she wants, then I can walk out of the room without having to sit right by the door in case Kensi comes out.  I can go downstairs and do stuff.  Sometimes she still comes down, but after I put her back to bed the first (and sometimes second) time, she stays.  But the middle of the night was still a struggle.  So when Isabelle told me she was waking up because she was cold, and that half a lightbulb went off....the rest of it went off when I thought maybe that was the reason she was waking up.  Made sense.  If one girl is cold, chances are both could be.  So I started turning up the heat at night.  Once I did that, she stopped waking up!!  For 4 nights in a row, she slept through the night and would get up at like 630/7a...which is a perfectly ok time for her to wake up.  Granted it's early for me, but she'll come in bed with me and we'll snuggle...sometimes she'll fall back asleep and sometimes she wont.  Now we need to make sure the house is a little warmer at night.  We probably wouldn't have to if she would keep blankets on her, but for some reason she does not want a blanket over her.  If we try and put one on her, she immediately says no and takes it off.  But at least, for now, I've got her sleeping through the night.  Big high five to me!!