Argh, why won't you sleep in your own room?

Both of my kids now have a serious problem with not sleeping in their own rooms. Even if I get them to fall asleep in there, I wake up in the middle of the night to both of them kicking me out of my own bed. What's the deal with that? As far as I can remember, I didn't try to climb into my parent's bed at night to sleep. I've always liked my own bed. (I like it so much, in fact, that if I'm within 45 minutes driving time from my house, I will not sleep anywhere else.)

Ree and Bear have been giving me trouble going to bed lately too, but I think that's due to my being a bit more lenient on bedtime in the summer. When school's in, it's a straight 8:30pm bedtime across the board - everything in the house gets turned off then and it's "go to sleep or you'll be in trouble!" In the summertime, I'll let them stay up until 10pm or so, but lately they've been pushing it so they're still awake well past midnight, despite the fact that the tvs and lights are all off in the house.

Seriously, nothing works to make them sleep. I've tried waking them up earlier. I had them run around in circles all day (literally), didn't work. I've threatened, I've bribed, I've begged, I've sat there and chanted "go...to...sleep...go...to...sleep..." Nothing works. Usually, about the time I give up trying to get them to sleep and go back to doing whatever else I was doing, they just pass out on their own.

Riene's not so bad about this, because she likes to sleep in all day. But Bear will get up at 6am, start jumping on the bed and shout, "GET UP DAD! I WANT BUZZ LIGHTYEAR CEREAL!" (Feel free to substitute "ice cream," "pizza," "hot dogs," "chips," and "cookies" for "buzz lightyear cereal," which I might add, is really Frosted Flakes.) If I don't immediately leap from the bed and dash into the kitchen to get him food, he starts yanking on my arm. If that doesn't make me get up, he starts slapping me in the face. That boy hits hard, too. (He literally climbs the walls in the house and swings from my pullup bar like a monkey.) I had to explain to him that knocking someone out isn't a very good way to wake them up, just pat their arm or something.

Enough blogging for the moment, time to finish getting these two ready for the zoo.