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Monday, March 31, 2014

Life as I know it is over.

Remember last month? When I blogged about how having two wasn't really that hard and most of that was coming from the fact that I got a couple hours of free time to myself each day? When they both napped? At the same time? For like two hours? Every day? And it was awesome?

Let me refresh your memory:

What is hard is rarely having yourself to, well, yourself.  I'm lucky, like I said, and I actually get some time during the day and evening to myself when they are sleeping concurrently...usually. However, on days when Carys rejects her nap and is awake all day, I usually get to a point where I. want. to HIDE. Five minutes to shower, PLEASE. I'll even take two minutes to go pee by myself without someone needing me. On the days when they both don't nap, it's 12+ hours of constantly. being. needed. And touched. And serving two little dictators with no regard to yourself. With no break. Really, it's hard enough to go all day like that WITH a nap and an hour to yourself. On days without that hour break, it's just really, really hard.

I also said:

Also, thank god for naps. Please don't stop napping til kindergarten, Carys.

So karma decided to punish me for bragging and now Carys doesn't nap.  WHAT THE FUCK, KID? You're supposed to nap until you're three. THE BOOK SAID SO.

It's like a 90% chance she'll skip it any given day.  Swim class followed by four hours at the zoo where she walked the entire time? No nap. NO NAP. It's super awesome because now she's exceptionally grumpy come bedtime (but an earlier bedtime doesn't seem possibly - she already goes down at 7:30 or 8). It's super awesome to have to be "on" for fourteen hours a day. It's super awesome to have a toddler breathing down your back every minute and super awesome to not ever take a shower alone again! SUPER AWESOME FUN DAY!

I kid, I kid.

No, no, I don't. It really sucks.

On the plus side, though, I no longer have to schedule our days around naps (and have a little bit of time before I'll have to start doing so for Emmeline), which means we have slightly more relaxed days and can spontaneously do things as soon as the mood strikes. And she's slowly getting adjusted to less sleep, so the grumpy evenings are improving.

Oh, and also...

Speaking of sleep.

She sleeps in the hallway now.

Yeah.


It's either a parenting win or a parenting fail (probably fail) but at least she goes to bed without a fight.

She was having a really hard time going to sleep, for several weeks. It was becoming a ridiculous spectacle. One night, she kept coming out and laying down in the hall and I put her back a hundred times and on the hundred and first time I went to put her back and she'd fallen asleep. The next night she came out again, and I asked her to go to bed, and she said, "No, thank you, please. I sleep here," and promptly fell asleep.  At that point I had to ask myself if I really wanted to spend two hours going back and forth with her every night, and whether I really cared where she fell asleep, as long as she fell asleep. And I thought really hard about it and decided that nope, I don't care. I just want her asleep, without a big production.

So the next night I asked her if she wanted to go to sleep in the hallway or in her bed. And she choose the hallway. So together we picked out a pillow and a stuffed animal and made her a little bed outside the door, and she promptly fell asleep.

And she has repeated that every night since.

And it's a parenting win because she's sleeping without a fuss.

But obviously also a parenting fail because hallway.

4 comments:

  1. Kaia stopped napping last fall at her babysitters and since the beginning of the year she has stopped napping at home. *Cue fat mommy tears*. What we do instead is that for an hour in the afternoon Kaia has 'quiet time' in her bed. I put her in her crib with some milk and books and she sits and talks to herself and drinks and 'reads'. I hear her chatting away on the baby monitor. She (mostly) doesn't complain about this, so I'm going to keep it going AS LONG AS POSSIBLE. Brian however has been talking about converting her crib to a toddler bed (I know, we're way past due) so I'm wondering if this is going to screw up quiet time once she realizes she can just get up.

    I feel you on the having to be 'ON!!!" from morning to night. We have watched way too much TV this winter due to crappy weather and Mommy just not being able to entertain ALL DAY long.

    I say if Carys is comfortable in the hallway and sleeps and it doesn't bother you, then who cares? All toddler weirdness is only temporary!

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  2. She's sleeping. its a win. Beds are a man-made thing, there is no law of nature that people sleep in a bed. You are a good mommy.

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  3. Thank you for being so brutally honest... and thus hilarious. There is nothing more enlightening and refreshing. We all struggle. We all want to be great parents. We all want NEED "me" time. There are undoubtedly more children sleeping in unconventional places (and still thriving) than we realize. Parents used to put babies in drawers rather than cribs, right? Go with it!

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  4. This will be the first comment ever posted! (Funny because I read your blog everyday for my last three month of pregnancy, which sounds... just plain creepy, but it was super helpful. Especially your hospital bag, I left out everything c-section related and then needed an emergent c-section! Now back to the point!) I feel like it's a win. You are encouraging individuality. My 2 month old recently decided he doesn't like naps that last longer than 5 minutes (then cries in my face because he doesn't understand why he feels bad I imagine).

    Unrelated: My son's name would have been Emmeline had he been a girl. Now he's named after Nightwing from Batman (Grayson.)

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