Air conditioning and other stuff

We've been having some trouble with naps lately.  Mostly Middie Biddie screaming through what would be a second nap.

For the last week, we tried having them take one nap in the middle of the day, but that mostly lead to tired babies during most of their awake time.  Teeny Tiny is still very much on the two nap schedule, just prevented from really taking that second nap by Middie Biddie having none of it.

I think it's a combination of factors.  Middie Biddie has molars coming in and seems to be a tad constipated.  She seems far more affected by teething than Teeny Tiny and it's been rough on her.  She's also having some issue where she is screaming through diaper changes.  She seems ok during removal and cleaning, but when I go to put a diaper back on, she's screaming and writhing around.  My only guess is that the constipation has lead to some evil association with the diaper.  She had a bit of a rash for a couple of days but we got that cleared up and she's still pitching fits.  Not as bad as she was, but it's still a challenge.

We took the girls to their first dentist appointment and the dentist told us that she could tell which one had a pacifier and which one didn't because it's reshaping Middie Biddies mouth.  Since then, we've been running a needle through the pacifier end of MB's wubbas to decrease the suction and generally make them less appealing.  I don't know how long it will take us to wean her off of them, but we're now working on it.

They've also been distracting each other during nap time now that MB can stand up in the crib.

I think the biggest factor has been the heat.  Every year, K and I debate buying a portable air conditioner and this year we finally just went ahead and did it.  It's been on the floor of the nursery for a few days and seemed to do nothing so I was really getting aggravated that we had spent money we couldn't really afford and it didn't seem to be helping.

*Life tip ahead*

Yesterday I realized that hot air rises so with the AC on the floor, well we were getting this nice pool of cold air on the floor where it wasn't doing any good.  I put it up on a table yesterday and the difference is remarkable.  Within minutes, the temp dropped a couple of degrees throughout the room.  By bedtime, walking into the nursery was like walking into a store on a hot day, the change in temp was significant.  So if you have something that's meant to cool the room, place it up high so the cold air will fill the room as it drops.

This hasn't completely solved the problem, but it has helped.  There was some whining and it took a little bit of time to fall asleep for the second nap, but at least a second nap happened and the whining wasn't the horrible screaming it had been throughout the week prior.

I'm still a bit checked out of life right now.  I went to the weekly family breakfast on Sunday (partly to keep the girls awake long enough to do the one nap in the middle of the day thing) and realized just how checked out I was.  The girls were in high chairs at the end of the table and very well-behaved.  Pretty much just munched on toys or eggs, depending on which was in front of them.  No whining or melt-downs.  I was quite surprised at how long the good behavior lasted actually.  But I was just a zombie.  My whole demeanor was just "meh, whatever."  I wanted to engage with the people around me but just couldn't seem to flip that switch to come out of my coma.  Oh well, it beats being a frantic mess I suppose.

Had a bit of a scare with Teeny Tiny yesterday.  As much as I sweep and try to keep all potential dangers out of the baby proofed areas of the house, she managed to get something in her throat that was choking her.  I looked over and saw her face get red as she coughed and gagged.  Picked her up, and she was doing the work of dealing with whatever it was, so I tried to position her to make it as easy for her as possible but so I could do the Heimlich in a moment if she stopped being able to get air.  Since she was coughing and sputtering, I knew she could breathe somewhat and my understanding is that if someone is able to cough, you don't want to jar them because air CAN get through and if you try to interfere, you might lodge whatever it is into a position where they'll no longer be able to breathe.  As long as they're coughing, it's unpleasant and scary, but not life threatening and you should just let them cough.  Throughout this, Middie Biddie kept trying to climb on me and I had to gently push her off of me several times which did not please her one bit.  Teeny Tiny gurgled up some foam which was really scary, but she eventually must have fully swallowed whatever was causing the problem because she went back to normal.  I suspect I'll never know what it was she managed to find and shove in her mouth unless it manages to come out the other end in one piece.  I feel like a complete parenting failure.

We're considering kicking one of our cats outside, something I thought I'd never even consider.  But now that we've removed most of the carpet from the bedroom (that's the next project, pulling all the old urine out of the wood and putting down a new floor), so my jerk of a cat decided he needed to pee on the bed instead.  It was one thing when we would go in and discover it, but he really crossed the line when he peed on my feet while we were still in the bed!  We took him to the vet and for $150 we confirmed that he's not sick, he's just an asshole.

We've declared Spot and Tyg truly gone as we haven't seen either one of them in weeks now.  We're thinking about completely enclosing the deck so other animals can't get in, and then opening up the dog door that the previous owner installed and moving the litterboxes outside.  We're still working out the logistics of whether or not this is worth the effort.  Part of the issue is that the dog door is big enough for a baby to very easily crawl through.  We might just lock the peeing cat out of the bedroom until we can de-urine it and get the new flooring down and see if we still have a problem when we let him back in.  People have told me to just get rid of him, or make him an outside cat, but I just can't.  He's 8 years old with no idea of how to defend himself from the wild animals in our neighborhood, and I do really like him when he keeps his urine where it belongs.  I'm honestly just waiting for the 14 year old male to reach the end of his life and hoping that the younger cat will stop peeing when the other male is gone.  Of course, the older male shows no signs of being near the end of his life so we may be fighting this battle for a few more years.

I think this whole checking out thing I'm doing is just a reaction to being defeated.  I've lost the weight war (I'm just so fat!), I've lost the cat urine battle, our finances suck, and every day the girls seem to be unhappy and I'm unable to fix it.  I keep thinking I should get a job to help with the financial load, but even before I had to consider things like daycare I couldn't find work.  Now that I would either need something very flexible to take advantage of K's odd schedule plus the occasional family member babysitter, or something that paid high enough to pay for more than the daycare for two I would need just to go to the job, I'm just defeated and hopeless whenever I even explore the possibility of finding work.  I just can't seem to fix anything lately.  Anything I do seems to dig the hole deeper so I'm kind of doing nothing in hopes of at least slowing down the descent.

I'll just be sitting here, pissy babies clawing at me, cats peeing all around me, fat engulfing me, and bills threatening to bury me.  Somebody send Starbucks and chocolate to rescue me!