Sleep woes

Why is it that my kids can't seem to sleep through the night even up to today ???!!!

I watched and marvelled at how a girlfriend of mine recently put her 3-week old baby to sleep. All she did was watch him yawn, decided it was time for his morning nap at 10am; trotted off to put baby in cot in his bedroom, and reappeared a minute later. Throughout the entire 2 hrs i was there, not a single sound was heard ! No patting, no rocking, no singing, no pacifier (human or otherwise) ! Why can't such bliss happen to ME ???? My girls at 4 and 7 are still giving me grief !!

ok... are you all ready.... i am going to rant, so please bear with me, and try to follow this hugely complicated process !!

part 1 - putting to bed
Each night, i would patiently (though this had gotten very hard of late) put first R to sleep at 8pm cos she wakes up at 6am for school. Although she drops off fairly soon, it still takes a good half hour.

Next comes C who is in the process of weaning off day naps, but still takes them when i gauge she's tired. If she naps - bedtime would be 930pm at the earliest - AND guess who's entertainer after having put R to bed? ME. If C sleeps (like R) at 8pm - i would shout "hooray" cos' i have both girls down and i get an early night ! But alas, this good fortune wouldn't last for long !

part 2 - ME time
By 11pm - ME time would have been watered down to at least 2 interruptions with pitter patter feet and screams of "mummy". I would grudgingly trot and put C back to bed, and as i sneak out, she would wake and start crying again! This can carry on for several cycles on bad nights, by which time, R would have been woken up, and my annoyance would have reached a feverish pitch. Threats like "don't wake jie jie... you going to sleep by yourself outside on the corridor!!" would have flown out of my mouth before any sense of composure, which of course simply serves to raise the level of the crying even higher !!

part 3 - BEDtime
if all goes well, both go back to sleep after waking episode/episodes. But in another 2 hours, usually 1am - R would have found her way onto the mattress beside my bed, C would be ON my bed right between us. Sigh....

All sleep guides like this one tell you that the key is letting them fall asleep on their own. Sure, in theory. In practice, i've never accomplished it, though to be honest, i must have been the meanest parent around - making my kid, C especially, cry for minutes on end, many times up to an hour - repeatedly, until i couldn't take it... just so she would learn to fall asleep. Yet the art somehow still eludes her, and ME.

So i continue to truddle on.... Anyone shares my misery ???