bedtime...what a nightmare

My dream: getting my kids to bed at 8:30 and snuggling up on the sofa to watch a movie alone with my husband. My evenings are more like a volleyball match. My son finds every reason to get out of bed and every delay tactic available, the most common and effective of which is that he is starving and couldn't possibly fall asleep with such a roar in his tummy. We have to lie down and read to him (he who fights sitting down with a book at any other time of the day). Sometimes he falls asleep when we turn the lights out and sometimes he's up for another hour, in and out of bed with the "Mama this and Mama that". If we let him sit in bed with the little light on reading about Pokémon or sharks (his two favorite topics), looking at his Pokémon cards, or just fiddling with some little gadget, he'd stay awake into the wee hours of the morning. He was difficult to get down at night even as a baby, and once he was able to climb out of the crib and we got him a bed, we had a whole new evening playing field on our hands. I'm already worried about my future teenage son and school starting at 8am (versus our lenient 9:25am elementary school start). Ah, well…one day at a time, or more appropriately, one night at a time.