The non-long weekend

Even though Dave is going to work tomorrow this weekend has had a definite long weekend feel to it. Before the rain started yesterday we made it to the nursery and came home with some plants to go in the front garden that I dug up on a whim on Friday. Dave dug up the other side to match but we ran out of time to do any planting yesterday.

Today was even more rainy than yesterday so the planting still hasn’t been done, but we’ll get there. We had to go out in the rain for Lil’s swimming lesson and the grocery shopping but after that spent the rest of the day dry and cosy inside. Except for Dave who decided the gutters needed cleaning and went up on a metal ladder in a thunderstorm. He survived.

Ed has been resisting his naps more and more lately so we decided to use the daylight savings time change to our advantage and test out a one nap day. After waking at 8 (daylight savings time) He made it to 12 before napping but was well and truly ready by then. He slept for two hours and then made it to 7.30 for bedtime which was also easy. I don’t know if he’s ready to do one nap every day yet but we’re definitely heading that way. One nap is much easier to plan around but I hate this transition stage. He still slept for longer today than he did for his two hard fought naps together yesterday.

He also spent most of the time between nap and bedtime eating. The boy can eat. There was much to eat too. Corn and pea fritters, lasagna, sweet potato chips and apple muffins. The kitchen and the dishwasher (me) got quite a work out today.

Tomorrow morning I’m supposed to do my final week 3 run in the couch to 5k program so let’s hope it’s not raining. I’m not that hardcore yet. And finishing week three means I’m a third of the way through. If I stay on track I’ll be finishing the program while we’re on holidays on the Sunshine Coast. We’ll see if I’m hardcore enough to run while on holiday.

Jinx

Dave and I had the following conversation the other day:

Dave: Edward’s sleep hasn’t been so good lately.
Me: No, but it’s still pretty good. He usually has two good naps a day and goes to bed pretty easily. A night wake-up or two is to be expected. Lil at this age was having two 40min naps that took at least that long to get her to sleep in the first place.

I think that was the moment I jinxed everything. In the last two days Ed has napped a TOTAL of two hours. Thursday night I was at a playgroup meeting. He woke just after I left and it took Dave until just before I got home at 10 to get him back to sleep. Last night he again would not settle in his cot. He’s waking at least twice during the night and he’s waking Lil too. We are tired.

I’d better see a tooth or crawling or something soon to explain this. You used to sleep through the night, baby!

End whinging.

Six month food and sleep report

We celebrated Edward’s six month birthday by starting him on food. So far he’s tried some pear, some toast, some apple sauce, some carrot, some potato and a rusk. Not bad for two days but I don’t think any of it has actually been ingested. Slowly, slowly. Here’s a video of the first food. (The spiffy bib is from Jo and Dirk in The Netherlands.) The look on his face is hilarious:

He was weighed yesterday and is about 8.6kg though it was hard to get an accurate reading because he kept moving around and holding onto the wall. He can now sit up unassisted but is still a little wobbly and has had a few bonks on the wooden floorboards. I think crawling is still a way off as he hates lying down on the floor and is not a big roller either. He just wants to be up up up and preferably held.

In sleeping news we finally bit the bullet over the weekend and started him in Lillian’s room (must get used to calling it the kids’ room!) overnight. Lil had a sleepover at Nonna’s on Friday so we thought it was a good opportunity to give it a go. That night was not so successful. He has a cough and after three wake-ups before midnight I gave up and brought him back to our room. The next night Lil was back and he lasted in her room until about 12.30. Last night was more successful. He was in bed and asleep before Lil went to bed and she snuck in so quietly and went to bed. He had a wake-up at 2.30am and was a bit hard to settle after his feed. I was going to give up and bring him back into our room (where at least I can lie down while he’s awake) but Dave took over and got him back to sleep in the cot. Lil slept through it all. He then stayed asleep until almost 7.30am!

Lillian was so good and instead of calling out from bed like she normally does when she wakes she got down off her bunk quietly and came into our room for a snuggle without waking him up. I’m hoping this being quiet novelty doesn’t wear off! I think she actually likes the company and used to get lonely in her room. She’d been calling out for Dave most nights and he’d been spending part of every night in her bed, but since moving Ed in this hasn’t happened. I expect there will be setbacks but this is encouraging so far and perhaps this whole room sharing thing won’t be too much of a disaster.

It seems I didn’t write a proper six month Lillian update but you can read about her sixth month in general here.

Not tired or sleepy

I can’t remember the last time Lil napped at home. This photo was probably one of the last times. Sometime around September she started spending nap time bouncing around her room calling out, “I’m not tired or sleepy!” until we gave in and said rest time was over. She was still napping at daycare and I was pleased about that because I think she needed the catch-up sleep. In the last few weeks she’s also stopped napping at daycare. She discovered the older kids get to rest on the mat and watch a video and so now that’s what she does. We’ve started doing the same thing at home because trying to get her to stay in her room was more trouble than it was worth.

This whole nap dropping thing has not happened at the best time. Lack of sleep combined with adjusting to a new sibling made for some unpleasant weeks of tantrums and general whineyness. We were/are juggling Edward and trying to work out a new routine to get her to bed earlier, or at least on time.  We’ve moved her bath to before dinner most nights which helps but it’s still easy for bed time to stretch out later than we’d like. Especially if she insists on me doing certain parts of the routine and I am stuck feeding Edward.

Anyway, things seem to be getting better as we all get used to new ways of doing things and the tantrums have been less this week. I figured she was getting used to operating on less sleep. Then this morning she slept in till 7:20am! And this afternoon I got a call from daycare. Always a bit of a heart stopper, they were just calling to say she’d fallen asleep at a table (! never before) and did I mind if she has a nap this late (4pm.) I said go for it. Now I’m worried she’s getting sick (we’ve all been snuffly this week) but maybe it just finally all caught up. We’ll see what this means for bed time tonight.

The bed-time routine

Keda’s post about bedtime reminded me I was going to write about our routine. Just thinking about writing the routine out is making me realise it might sound pretty crazy, but here goes.

6:00pm – dinner for Lil. Sometimes Dave and I eat our dinner at the same time, sometimes we just have an ‘entree’ because Lil seems to eat better if someone sits and eats with her.

6:45pm – if we’re on time we move to the couch and one of us reads books with Lil while the other tidies the kitchen etc. (It’s all one open room anyway.) Lil drinks some milk at this time too.

7:00pm – we start bath around this time. To get Lil to willingly go to the bathroom Dave usually holds one hand of Holly (her doll) or teddy and they all go together. Holly usually has to turn the light on in the bathroom. After this I’m not sure what exactly goes on in there. There is a whole tooth cleaning and undressing routine that I am not part of. Lil has her bath in a big plastic tub in the shower and Dave usually has a shower at the same time.

7:20pm – I get called (by the bath frog or hippo) to come and get Lillian out of the bath. This involves Lillian yelling at the top of her lungs, “Madeline!” I go in and she hands me each of her bath toys and I dry them and line them up on the shower ledge. Then she will sometimes get out willingly or sometimes I have to start counting. I normally don’t get past 2 and she’s out. I dry her off and she tells me to hang up the towel and then she says she’s going to run to her room and I have to chase her. I must also run.

7:30pm – Once in her room we fight for her to lie still while putting her night time nappy on. Once the nappy is on her pjs go on and then I let her bounce on the bed a little bit. (This is a single bed we use for nappies/dressing, she still sleeps in a cot.) I catch her and we go and brush her hair. Near her hairbrush is a bottle of hand sanitiser and we have to spray this on both our hands (“Like at school.”) Then we go and sit on the yoga ball and press the button on her night garden clock/night light that makes Upsy Daisy go away and Iggle Piggle comes in his bed. Sometimes Holly has to press the button. Then we go to the door and call Dave and he comes to say goodnight. Lil (or Holly) turns the main light off, then on again, then off. Dave and Lil do finger shadow puppets on the wall (Baby Moster and Daddy/Mummy Monster, including the monsters kissing goodnight.) This is followed by boofo kisses all around and Dave leaves. Lil and I go back to the yoga ball and sit and have a cuddle, she drinks some water from the pink bottle and then some more from the yellow bottle. Sometimes we sing songs, sometimes she does bounces into bed. This means she sits between my legs on the ball and counts to 20 (skipping the numbers between 14 and 18) and then I put her into bed. I rub her back for a bit, I tell her I’m going to go and talk to Daddy, we talk about any noises Dave is making in the kitchen and then I have to say, “Night night Lillian. Love you lots. See you in the morning when Upsy Daisy comes back.” If I leave out any of those phrases she corrects me. And then I leave. If it’s a good night that’s it. If it’s a not so good night I go back once and rub her back some more. If it’s a bad night she gets up again to go to the toilet. After which she goes straight back into bed.

So that’s it. On a good night I am out of there by 7:45pm. Bad nights are closer to 8:30.