Prison Warden

Lately I feel like I spend a lot of my day as a prison warden. Here is my “prisoner"

This is Andrew at 9:30 pm after going to bed at 8 pm. Andrew has not been napping and going to bed as well as he used too. I miss the days of him crawling down the hallway to pull up on his crib and cry and beg for me to put him in bed for nap or bedtime. He is also waking up earlier now (I really think this is because he hears Lily get up to eat.)

Currently we are lucky if he naps at all (he spends a lot of quiet time in his crib if he doesn’t nap.) I don’t know if it is because he is getting older, the days staying light longer, or him hearing Lily (he has a noise maker, but I am sure he still hears her). I am sure it is a combination of all of them. Oh and the big one is the passi doesn’t work anymore. If you look at the picture, Andrew has the passi in his hand and fingers in his mouth. That is because the rubber part of the passi is gone. He still sleeps holding it at night, but it doesn’t stay in the mouth well.

Once the passi “broke” a bad habit started. Like all habits it made sense at first. Andrew had a fever so we let him take a water cup to bed, to hydrate. Well months later guess what he takes to bed for every nap and bedtime. Yep, water!
Here Andrew is asking for more ice water. He always shakes the cup to make sure there is ice in it. So now he stays up in his crib drinking water and asking for refills. The more water he drinks the more he pees and wets through his diaper. So now I have crib sheets and blankets to wash on practically a daily basis. Who would have thought a little water cup could cause this chain reaction?

Tonight after I changed Andrew’s diaper, I tried to rock him to get him sleep he was making faces in the mirror and making me laugh, so the rocking didn’t work to well. Then when I put him back in the crib he kept telling me that he had pee peed so I would get him out of the crib to change his diaper. Andrew is getting creative at stalling.

So for now I am embracing my job title as we figure out what Andrew needs. Everyday we try to take a nap, sometimes it happens sometimes it doesn’t. I am hoping he will not stop napping all together. Our evenings are much happier and a lot more fun when Andrew naps.
This little lady is napping great most days, bedtime can be rocky but once she is asleep she sleeps through the night. Her sleeping is already so different than Andrew. Lily never falls asleep nursing and will not let me rock her she only like standing bouncing. Most nights she goes into her crib awake and she puts herself to sleep. Some nights there are no tears at all at bedtime, other nights she will fight for hours. Not much in between.

I am starting to set my alarm now in the mornings, hopefully it will become a habit. I was having stressful mornings because both of my kids were waking up at the same time hungry for breakfast and I can’t feed Lily and Andrew at the same time. I would find myself 2 hours after I woke up finally getting a drink of water and some breakfast and this would put me in a grumpy mood. So far it has helped me eat breakfast and I can get Andrew’s ready for when he gets up, and get dressed for the day.

This post ended up in a long post about sleep. I find it funny that I am posting this at 11:15pm.

P.S. - since I am starting to wake up earlier I am trying to have a bedtime of 11pm so I can get enough sleep. Obviously I am still a working on this.