Tag Archives: sleep

05/10/10

I’m going to Phoenix….

Yep you read that right. I feel so bad for the first winner over at 5 Minutes for Mom and wish she could go but due to circumstances out of her control she cannot and so I was chosen to play the role of Susan for the 2nd night of the Glee Tour in Phoenix, AZ! I promise to write more about this after this weekend!

Today was like a day out of the twilight zone…first Little Man and Little Princess slept until 8:30 a.m. ~ I actually checked on them to make sure they were not ill or worse yet dead. That is a full hour and a half past their “set your clock by them 7 a.m. wake up call” And even though there were awake an hour and a half late, they still took a normal nap.

I have been in class for my work at home job for a week and class starts at 8 am and goes to 11 am (after the class is over on May 27th I get to chose my own hours and will be able to work while the twins sleep). The class is online and recorded every morning, thank God because you never know what my kids will be doing (such as following large bugs around the house on their hands and knees as if they were pets; or screaming in delight at the top of their lungs); who will walk through the door (such as the day our door was unlocked because my best friend from high school was coming over and a drunk came right in as if he owned the place, no knocking and no door bell ~ I was 5 feet from the door and would have heard both); or what e-mails will come through (such as the one about how I was now the above winner) or a host of other issues that will ruin my concentration. Some of these things have happened while I was role playing as a customer ~ nothing like giving the trainee a true to life call, poor woman but she did great! I still have NO IDEA what the amazing teacher was telling us today as I completely zoned out…looks like I have 6 hours of class tomorrow.

So let’s hope tomorrow is just as exciting and that I continue to get so much done ~ I am currently working on painting the upstairs hallway so that I can empty the last of the bedrooms and make it a guest room with 2 beds! I am also trying to plan our garage sale so that I can buy Aaron and I a new bed! Lots going on but I feel like I am getting back to normal!

02/24/10

{55/365} I did it…

Yep I did it…by it I mean I separated Little Man and Little Princess for nap time. I had tried one time before and Little Princess had a MAJOR meltdown so I have been leaving them together. Today I reached my limit on them not napping and no real quiet time for mommy so I marched up the stairs pack n’ play in hand set it up in our bedroom so they could still see each other through the door between the two rooms, grabbed Little Princess and all of her things and set it up. Ten minutes later I was back up the stairs (one of the benefits of the up and down) because it sounded as if Little Princess had made it out of the pack n’ play and was in talking to Little Man. When I got up there I found she was just screaming at the top of her lungs from the pack n’ play to her brother in the next room and he was responding (the door between the rooms is just basic glass panels so pretty thin). I rolled the pack n’ play with Little Princess in it into the play room, told her it was quiet time and closed the door. I then went back in to their bedroom and laid Little Man down told him the same thing I told Little Princess and walked down stairs. For the next two hours it was PURE silence ~ it had been a week since I heard this silence and I was in heaven! So they will go to bed in the same room as that has never been an issue but as far as nap time goes they will stay in separate rooms for now. We are discussing if we should separate them in June after Sonny leaves, we most likely will not but it is a discussion we need to have.

You all may not be that proud of me but I am, my biggest mommy guilt is separating them for any period of time. The way I see it the only thing that they have had their whole lives is each other. They have lost so much in their short little lives that I don’t want them to think they have now lost each other as well. A little unreasonable on my part but still something that I thought about any time I thought it might be time for separate rooms at nap time. I will need major help when the time comes they need separate rooms (in just a few short years)…so stick around that will be tough. We already know that we will keep Little Princess in the room adjoining ours as she is known to wake up in the night. Her toys will be moved to that room and the toy room will become Little Man’s room. The big storage in the toy room will move to the sewing/guest room (currently Sonny’s room) and the storage (which is VERY similar to that in the toy room) in that room will move 1/2 to Little Princess’ room and 1/2 to Little Man’s room as it is two pieces. We actually discussed moving each to their own room in June but I think I would have heart failure so we will wait until they are 5 or 6 unless they ask before that OR we adopt another child then the whole plan changes…hehe :)

So I leave you with the ONE picture of the day….how cute is this:

Also I have tons of posts and pictures to get up, I am trying to be a good little blog reader again and I have a few projects up my sleeve! So here is the deal, I will post that days post and 3 back posts every day until I am caught up (should be about a week) I will do the posts oldest first…

02/22/10

{53/365} Who hasn’t had an obstacle?

Just saw the perfect quote on twitter ~ “if a road doesn’t have an obstacle in it then it probably doesn’t go anywhere” ~ from a wise old okie to Sandi Patty…. Right now I feel like I could not have a smooth road if I tried! So I am glad I am headed somewhere!

So today I leave you with this picture (he is sleeping and looks as if he has NEVER had an obstacle):

02/19/10

{50/365} Naps or lack thereof…

Apparently Little Man and Little Princess have given up naps for Lent…yeah it was that Wednesday that they stopped sleeping during the day and still not sleeping at night. I am almost at my wits end right now and I am exhausted. Here is how nap time used to work:

Around 11:30 I would fix their lunch, sit them in their chairs and they would eat (usually with no complaint). After lunch it was diaper change and up the stairs for nap time. Typically they were in their bed prior to Noon and I would read a book or two to them, tuck them in, tell them I love them and we would play when they woke up! I would shut the door and hear them talk for between 5 and 30 minutes, they would fall asleep and wake up almost two hours later! It was great!

Now how it works:

Around 11:30 I fix their lunch, sit them in their chairs and they eat (usually with no complaint). After lunch diaper change and up the stairs for nap time. They go in bed and I read a book or two to them, tuck them in, tell them I love them and we would play when they woke up! I walk out with them lying down, shut the door and hear them talk for hours. Then every 30 minutes I am upstairs asking them to lay down replacing blankets and lovies that they threw across the room in an effort to share with the other. Every time I go up I get more and more upset. After two to three hours I bring them down stairs where they are NO FUN to be around and they fight over me until they are both on my chest asleep and dinner is now going to be hours late. And they sleep for about 40 minutes, no where near what they need.

I think they would both sleep if they were separated and ok with that, problem is last time I tried that Little Princess SCREAMED until we put them back together. We have not tried again out of fear.

So ideas, suggestions etc…. are welcome!

(Post script since it took me so long to post this we tried separating them again and as long as Little Princess is in her own bed there is NO screaming. So Little Man sleeps in the play room in the pack and play and Little Princess in her bed but this is only good at nap time ~ at bed time they HAVE to be in the same room still but they remember what happened at nap time with sleeping in separate rooms and they no longer chat at bedtime BUT they are together and taking two hour naps again!)

01/30/10

{30/365} Their First Night Away

Remember this post about our sleep issues….one child will not sleep during the day and one will not sleep at night. For weeks ok really months I have been running on as little sleep as possible (I didn’t realize law school was prep for motherhood) and doing ok but recently we have been up and down and up and down – it is about to do me in and lead me to the question “Is she trying to break me?” and if so why?

(I wrote this next part a week or so ago trying to work through some things….)

So I was facebooking about Little Princess’ lack of continuous sleep and one of my friends was teasing me about it – then my mother in law joined in and said those words most mothers long to hear “both kids can come and spend the night with Gram and Papa just let us know when.” Now when I read the words I was thinking is this Friday too soon (they both work so I would never wish these two on them on a week night). Then the more I thought about it the scarier it got.

See I am a bit of a control freak and giving up my kids for a night is well giving up control of them for one night (even though it may be necessary for my sanity). I do not get how those moms who start letting their kids stay over at people’s houses before they are one or two do it. I mean my inlaws have not even picked the kids up, heck we have not even picked a day yet and I am stressing about all of the things that could happen. I tried to talk it out with Alison last night and she was great to talk to because she didn’t try to talk me out of it – she tried to help me work through all of my worries. One worry I have is what if Little Man wakes up — that happens like once every few months – but when he really wakes up at night (he can cry a little in his sleep) he is almost inconsolable for at least 30 minutes and then he is wide awake for at least an hour. I would hate for him to be completely inconsolable because he is in a different place and then his grandparents are stuck with two screaming kids (yes it would wake his sister). While the chances of him actually waking up are VERY small they are still there. Then we have Little Princess….there are times the ONLY person she will let calm her down is me (she will let Daddy get her out of the crib but scream until she sees me and then wants to cuddle for an hour before returning to her bed). Alison made a good point last night though – she said they are her grandparents so while you make her relax etc when she wakes up they would probably let her play and even give her a snack if she wanted one (which is true — Little Princess has Papa wrapped around her little finger, pretty tightly I might add). So she would not scream for long if I sent all the right toys/books (Alison knows that dolls and books are Little Princess’ favorites) and made sure Gram and Papa had some popcorn on hand (her favorite night time snack).

Notice that I have no worries about Gram and Pop’s ability to care for my children – they love them and would care for them. And I know that if it got really bad they would first try to call us to see if talking to Mommy and Daddy on the phone would help and if that did not do the trick they would bring them home so no one would be too traumatized though they would only do that as a last resort. Also, note that I am not worried about Little Man and Little Princess thinking we left them with complete strangers – when I mention Gram or Papa they both immediately point to the picture on the wall of Gram and Papa – they can identify all of the immediate members of both Aaron and I’s families.

Both Aaron and I fondly recall spending the night with our grandparents and we would like to be able to let Little Man and Little Princess have those fond memories as well so maybe I should chat with Gram….

(Ok the rest I wrote today…)

So I did it – we planned a Friday night for Gram and Papa to take ALL of the kids (yep the exchange student as well) and that Friday was last night. I am not sure Aaron or I thought this would really happen as prior to Little Man and Little Princess leaving we talked about just going to Wal-Mart…it was kind of a joke! But it happened…I planned out clothing, made sure they had all of the right toys and lovies, lots of extra clothes and even disposable diapers (if you don’t know we cloth diaper but didn’t want to add another thing for Gram and Papa to worry about). We took the car seats out of our car and let Gram and Papa use them (because the kids are not 30 lbs yet….close but not yet).

As they pulled away from the house I was crying, but I didn’t hear either of them cry (Gram said Little Man whimpered for a bit but not very long – as if he could not figure out what was going on). Daddy and I came in the house and tried to decide what to do. We decided to try out a new restaurant down the street and it was very good and pretty reasonably priced – matter of fact I may take the twins there for lunch soon since we can walk there and lunch was even more reasonably priced.

At dinner we talked about how we had forgot what it was like to eat hot meal or not ask for a child’s meal to come out before ours. We talked about what the last 15 months have been like. We talked about purchasing a used mini-van (I said talked – it will be awhile before that happens.) We talked about more adoptions. All of this talk was without interruption, no toddler talk, no picking up food from the floor, no crayons, and no screaming. We had forgot what that felt like…and it felt good. Don’t get me wrong we talked about our children A LOT and we wondered what they were doing and if they were having fun. We were proud that we didn’t call and ask.

After dinner we ditched the plan to make a Wal-Mart run and went to rent movies. It took an hour to choose 3 movies and come home…we almost fell asleep in the video rental store. But once we were home we cuddled up with each other – no kids on our laps, no one jealous of who was with which parent just mommy and daddy. It was nice. We enjoyed the movies even the bad ones and went to bed….still missing our babies but planning to sleep in!

We slept like babies….and did run a ton of errands today without the kids! We invited Gram and Papa for dinner. We learned that everyone was good and no one really melted down the whole time. And we had never been happier to see our babies faces – ok maybe once when we first met them – but we were happy to see them and they us. The whole thing went so well we discussed doing it again in a few months!

The only thing I would change is preparing the babies better….Little Princess is mad at me. I expect this to last a few days but other than that it was great! Thanks Gram and Papa!

So pictures from before bed:

01/17/10

{17/365} Nap time Chaos

For Christmas 2008, we gave Aaron’s Grandma – GiGi to Little Man and Little Princess – monthly play dates and it worked so well that for Christmas 2009 we decided to continue the monthly play dates with a few modifications. Today was supposed to be our first play date of 2010 – notice the words “supposed to.”

Lately we have been having nap issues. Little Man fights naps so badly that when he is laid down at 1 pm for nap time he will do EVERYTHING possible to stay awake – since there is very little in his crib and all of the toys are in the play room, he usually will talk to anything that will listen for up to two hours before he will lay down and go to sleep. I do go upstairs and ask him to lay down every half hour, which he willing does but then as soon as I leave the room he is up again and if I stay in the room he screams as he thinks he should be able to get up then. (Funny thing when we were gone on Friday we had ZERO nap issues with him, he slept at all the right times in the car.) So we called GiGi and told her that we would be there when they woke up which is usually around 5pm or 5:30 pm. At 5pm we called GiGi and canceled – Little Man had JUST gone to sleep and he naps for at least an hour to an hour and a half though he really needs like a 2 hour nap. We tried EVERYTHING to get him to sleep as we wanted to go and see GiGi but he would have NONE of it.

This issue with him has been ongoing for about a month, recently he added his sister to the mix. Their cribs are on opposite sides of their room because I was scared to death they would try to get at each other through the bars of the cribs and end up hurting themselves. So she usually ignores him and get her sleep (this girl likes her sleep and since she wakes up in the night she needs her naps) but for the last week or so they have had massive hour or two conversations going on…people who call on the phone or who I call during nap time can hear them through the monitor.

No matter what I do they will talk talk talk….So now they are going down for naps around 1 or 1:30 pm but not going to sleep until at least 3 pm and then not up until 5 or 6 pm depending on how tired they were when they went up. In my mind that is too much time in their room but they NEED nap time. So I have tried separating them – naps in separate rooms – but they screamed for 30 minutes because they each thought the other was in some sort of trouble. They were fine once I put them in the same room. I tried waiting to give them a nap until 2 or 2:30 pm but they were almost falling asleep on their feet and still when I put them in their cribs they would talk for a good hour.

So what should I do? They do best when one of us holds each of them and rocks them until they are asleep and then off to bed, which can take a much a 30 minutes but faster than 2 hours we usually have. But during the day there is only one of me and when they are tired it turns into one HUGE fight over me and who get more space and then when I go to stand up they wake up and won’t go back to sleep. Some days I let it happen and stay there while they sleep but others there really is things I have to get done. Oh yeah this can happen at bedtime as well, though not nearly as often probably because there are usually two of us at bedtime. I am open to any other ideas, because this is making it impossible to make evening plans a you have no idea when they will get up or even go to sleep.

I could not take a good picture today to save my life…so I guess this ONE is the best even if it is blurry!