News Flashes I Have Deprived You Of Lately

I am working a LOT.

Rachel learned to sit up last Monday night, 5 days before her 6 month birthday, and 1 day after we took photos in which sitting up would have been extremely helpful. Now here she is just one week later, moving from very wobbly to just moderately so. It's almost to the point where I could leave her sit and run out of the room without fear she's tip backward and brain herself. I could not be more damn proud.

Meanwhile, Matthew's maybe missing me a bit, either that or hitting terrible 3's early. He's on a terribly frustrating downward bedtime spiral, right at the time Rachel's fine-a-leeeee back to sleeping through the night and going to bed easily. Take 20 minutes to wrestle him in bed, and at least 45 minutes to keep him there. Last night I heard the last remants of him reciting his "Cars" book to himself in bed, well into the 10pm hour. Then we had a couple night time wake-ups involving yelling, tears and tucking back in at the 3am and 5am hours.

Send toddler drugging pills, please.

I am counting the minutes to vacation.
I am stressed.
But Mike is keeping the trains on the tracks at home, thank God.

That's all I got. Just ... wish me luck with returning to regularly scheduled posting/sleeping/breathing, soon.

Sleeping Beauty

Monday night we enjoyed the singular experience that can drop young (yes I'm still labeling myself young) parents to their knees: Matthew didn't sleep all night.

He went to bed fine - which is saying something, it's a semi nightly power struggle. But then it was, "I have boogies." "Turn my music back on." And finally then just "WAHHHHHHH!!!"

Over an hour later, I asked Mike to come home from his "having a quick beer" night out. Because when one kid would get settled, the other needed her paci. When she was drifting off, Matthew suddenly MUST have me put his blanket back on. Momma wasn't able (or willing) to keep up alone.

So Mike hustled home, to which Matthew first said "You're home with Mommy now?" and we thought, ah yes, that was the problem. Now we're okay. Buttt...we weren't, he wasn't, and six hours later, we were both losing our sh^t.

I'm happy to report that its good I waited to post this, because I'm sitting on the other side of 11 hours of SLEEP - Matthew's - and about 7-8 hours of ours - from last night.

So what HAPPENED, Mommies? (Erin, I know Bridget had us guessing this same thing that night she didn't sleep ...) Was it the stuffy nose? Impending cold front? Or just his uncanny knowledge that Daddy had a night out planned, followed by Mommy's the next night (which was since cancelled given I really can't whoop it up on 1.7 hours of sleep)?

Or is this just LIFE WITH KIDS?
Wait, don't answer that.

Who DOESN'T Like Whale Noises?

So the toybox rummaging this morning wasn't just fun bonding for Matthew and me.

It was a master plan for miss Rachel and napping and more of them more consistently.

She's great at night, but only pretty good to okay during the day. There's a lot of "Okay, I'm off to slee...HA HA, gotcha! Now pick me up and hold me for the next hour and a half. I'll keep pretending to drift off, but don't think I'm down because ... GOTCHA AGAIN!"

This morning, I was on a mission for a BFF I haven't seen since Matthew's late stages of babyhood. Behold, the Sleep Sheep.


This was my go to sleep move for Matthew. This was attached to his crib or bassinet or Pack n Play pretty much every day since birth - and every where we went. He seemed to be addicted to the whale noise setting when he went night night.

It was probably more like WE were addicted to FEELING that we had a routine. "Oh, did you pack the sheep? Well, he's GOTTA have his sheelp..." But whatever, we used this thing to death, it seemed to work, and I have in turn provided this to multiple other new mommies as gifts in the last couple years. But hadn't dug it out for little girl baby just yet.

SO - just switched the whales on for Rachel and attached it to the Pack n Play. At first, she actually did go right to sleep. Now I hear her hiccuping in the Pack n Play but the key is, not crying. Just taking in the soft chatter of whales. Fine by me, cuz here I am getting to type.

Sleep Sheep, we still got it.