Twins Thanksgiving

Upon arrival.  Everybody has their hair done, nice clothes.

Trying something new

Pie!

Grandma wanted some sparkling cider.  She didn't get any.

The playroom is that way girls, you're not allowed in the kitchen.

End of the evening.  Shoes and socks have disappeared, mom is in a borrowed shirt because hers got covered in chocolate pie when picking up a child covered in chocolate pie, Teeny Tiny has a new outfit and her hair all undone for a variety of reasons.

I left out pics of other family because I don't know what their privacy level is.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Separate play time

I have some concerns about Middie Biddie.  She's on the late end of the spectrum in various skills, consistently so.  She seems to hit her milestones within days before or after the end of the normal range.  They are a couple of weeks shy of 18 months and only today did she walk well enough for me to think that I'm ready to say she can.  Still knocking over blocks instead of stacking them.

But while I'm keeping an eye on those things, they aren't really big concerns.  What I'm most concerned about is how much attention she's getting and whether or not she's going to feel like Teeny Tiny is favored. Their personalities are so different.  Teeny Tiny demands and goes after whatever she wants whereas Middie Biddie is far more passive.  The question is - is she really content to play on her own and to just get a different toy when hers gets stolen, or has she simply resigned herself to not having a choice?  Does she amuse herself because she wants to or is she waiting for us to come lavish attention on her because she's too shy to ask for it?

When Teeny Tiny takes one of her toys, I'll often tell her No and try to return it.  But usually the moment TT wants the toy, MB just kind of lets her have it like she doesn't care and finds something else to play with by the time I can get it back for her.  I'm not sure what to do.  I want MB to know that she doesn't have to let TT take her stuff.  In the years to come, I want her to know that I will enforce TT politely asking and won't allow her to just take.  But in practice, at least at the moment, if I try to return the toy, MB no longer wants it and now TT is upset that I took it from her.  I don't want TT to think it's ok to just take what she wants but MB isn't cooperating by wanting the toy back so I can give it to her!

Today, we decided to try something a little different and K took TT into our bedroom to let her explore while I stayed with MB in the playroom.  In just that half hour, it's like she flourished.  She walked a solid 5 steps to me.  She laughed a lot more and was much more responsive to my interaction.  She turned away from me at times to play on her own, but she interacted a lot more than when we're all in there together.  I think she really appreciated having one on one time.

We're going to try to do that for one of the after meal play periods every day.  Each parent taking one kid and playing on our own.  Frankly, it's so much easier when there's just one!  No jostling for position on the lap, no books flying at my face while I'm reading the one in my hands, no tripping over each other when trying to walk towards me.  I don't want to thrust attention on Middie Biddie when she doesn't want it, but hopefully having more one on one time will help make her feel secure that we want to play with her.  Maybe once she knows she'll get attention, she'll start asking for it a bit more.

Another burst of baby changes

After quite a long time of no real developments, the girls are suddenly exploding with new skills and behaviors.  

Middie Biddie is still kind of struggling with walking.  Basically, it seems to take her about a week to add another step that she's able to take before faceplanting.  Or maybe it's another step that she's willing to take rather than able.  I've never seen her attempt to walk across a room and fall, she only goes from one thing to hold to another if it's 2 steps away, and she'll only attempt 3 or 4 steps if she's heading towards a pair of open arms.  She is the cautious one!  But she is getting herself standing without pulling up on anything and practicing her balance a little bit.

We're doing a lot of walking with Middie Biddie holding fingers, trying to encourage her to get comfortable with the concept.  Teeny Tiny will grab a pant leg and walk around the room with us so we have a baby conga line going.  Today, TT grabbed one of my fingers and just walked around me in circles making me a little dizzy.  I was able to kind of teach her to do that dance turn under my arm.  

Teeny Tiny is running all over the place of course, no fear there.  She loves dancing just like always and is getting a little more complicated with it.  More than just random wiggling, she now seems to have a beat and she tilts her head one way while shaking her body the other way.  It's the cutest thing that she simply will not allow me to capture on camera.  I now have a ton of videos of her doing one little bop and then just wandering around the room making me think she'll do the dance again.  I got a very small glimpse of it on camera, but just a hint of the cuteness.

Words are suddenly popping out everywhere.  I'm not sure how much has true meaning and how much is just knowing which sounds go after which question.

Who am I?  Mama!!

Who are you?  Bay-bay!!

What does Clifford say?  Bow-wow (sort of)

As I taught the girls to eat and would introduce them to new foods, I would make this kind of gulping "ahh-oom" noise to encourage them to enjoy it.  Now, TT will make that noise and kind of smack her mouth with her hand when she's hungry.  It's not official sign language but it works for me!  Actual communication of desires!  

In general, they are suddenly trying to imitate what we say.  I'll admit I'm not the greatest at talking to my kids.  They say you should narrate everything you're doing to help them develop language but I just don't.  Now that they're trying to imitate, I'm doing it a lot more.  I guess I'm just someone who needs feedback.

Teeny Tiny is stacking blocks and will now stack rings on her ring stacker even if she has to walk around to collect the various pieces that have scattered around the room.  Both absolutely delight in having a ball rolled to them so that can kind of fling it back to me.  Both are obsessed with books.  The board books are getting shredded and they are constantly bringing them to me and sitting on my lap for a story.  Even when I'm reading one, the other will get another book and bring it over, often smacking me in the face with it.  Our next shopping trip will be looking for books that can't be destroyed and are soft.  I'm going to start looking like an abuse victim soon with bruises on my face from the corners of books and limping with my carved up ankle.

They're also starting to climb so we're looking at babyproofing the rest of the house and reducing the gates in the house.  It also means that they are reaching stuff on K's desk.  I'm going to have to talk to him about it when he gets home.  He thinks he keeps it clean with his stuff out of reach, but they brought me stuff off his desk today that I would prefer they not be able to reach.

They're starting to play with each other a bit more.  The other day they were giggling while Middie Biddie tried to plop a piece of cheese into Teeny Tiny's open mouth at lunch.  I think once Middie Biddie gets properly walking, their relationship is going to blossom with all sorts of games.

We're consolidated down to one nap now.  Anywhere from 90 minutes to 3 hours.

K's back isn't getting better.  I got on his case last night because he's not really doing the exercises necessary to get better.  He's not going to like it but I'm really going to become a nag about that.  Yeah, it might damage the relationship as he gets annoyed with me for a few months, but if the trade off is reducing his pain, it's worth it.  The pain itself is damaging the relationship so I'm looking at the long game here.  

Tomorrow is K's day off so we're going to go down to the Y and look at their daycare facilities and find out how to go about getting the girls enrolled in some sort of mommy and me swimming class.  My parents have offered to help with that so that the girls and I can go even if K has to work (no way I'm taking children into a pool if they outnumber me!), but hopefully this will also encourage K to start swimming to exercise his back, and me to start slimming down.  Being able to leave the girls at the daycare for an hour or so will also take away a big excuse for us not to exercise.  

I gotta tell ya, ever since having the girls, I feel really old.  K is feeling it too.  With my ankle and general aches and pains, I haven't really felt decent since they were born.  K has gone from majorly sleep deprived during their infancy to overworked and tired during their older babyhood, and into severely injured and aching in their toddlerhood.  He literally has not had 1 full day of feeling good and full of energy since they got here.  It's worth it of course, but ugh!  We really should have met and started our family about 10 years before we did.  No, I take that back, maturity is awesome.  What we should have done was found a way to exchange these bodies for nice healthy younger versions.  But I guess the warranty has expired and we're stuck with what we've got.

A rough 24 hours

I'm a little high on pain pills so I might pointlessly ramble.  Then again, that kind of describes this whole blog doesn't it?

I'm not sure how we got through yesterday.  I was only about 50% here due to the issues with my ankle surgery.  The initial numbing had worn off so the pain started, and I took one pain pill which apparently gets me pretty high.  So I was in and out of bed all day yesterday.

The big problem was that K got some sort of bug or food poisoning or something that made him vomit for 24 straight hours.  All of the vomiting destroyed his back, either muscle spasms or inflammation, crap I don't know.  The point is he could hardly walk and when he did, it was generally a dash for the bathroom.

I had to decide which version of out of action I wanted to be - in pain so I couldn't walk very well, or not in much pain but high as a kite.  Other than the one pain pill I took early in the day, once that wore off I opted to go ahead and be in a little bit of pain but remain able to drive should Mr. Vomitman need a ride to the ER.

There was some fear as we struggled to take care of the girls while neither one of us were fully capable.  Fortunately Teeny Tiny can walk now and Middie Biddie can walk when holding our fingers so we were able to get through the day without having to pick them up and carry them much.  I suspect I'll be making them walk most of the day tomorrow when I'm on my own again.  I'm just not comfortable carrying them when I'm not walking well.  I'm not exactly coordinated on a good day.

So anyway, yeah, lots of vomiting yesterday.  I was getting pretty scared after the girls went to bed because K hadn't been able to keep down so much as a sip of water in 24 hours and had a headache.  I made him some broth and it took him about 10 minutes to sip about a teaspoons worth and even that came back up.  By midnight, he was in a lot of pain from his leg and feeling like crap from dehydration.  He wouldn't go to the ER though, and I don't think he was dehydrated enough to warrant a trip, but there was quite a bit of debate about it.  He was eventually able to keep down half a popsicle.

This morning, he was feeling a lot better, but his leg was hurting so bad (an extension of the back injury) that he really needed to take some pain meds.  Since we're on the same meds, only one of us gets to take them at a time.  So I headed out to the store to stock up on Gatorade and chicken soup.

Got to take advantage of my snazzy temporary disabled parking pass and I used one of the scooters in the store.  I know they are there for people who are injured like me or who are more permanently disabled, but I was still embarrassed using one.  Honestly, the embarrassment is because I'm such a fatass right now that I was kind of afraid people wouldn't see the surgery shoe on my foot and would just assume I was being fat and lazy rather than having a legit need to scoot.  But if not for my fat ass making me embarrassed, those things are pretty fun!

K is pretty much back to normal as of this afternoon so I've taken some pain meds.  I'm healed enough that I should be fine tomorrow without them.

Gratuitous kid pick of Teeny Tiny photobombing Middie Biddie, because why the hell not.

Oh yeah!  I've gotten some Christmas ornaments listed in my shop.  Take a look and tell me what you think!  I have more that I just haven't gotten around to listing so go ahead and ask me if you see something that you might want in a different color or something.

Feeling useless at the moment

I had surgery on my ankle on Monday.  Yesterday, I felt fine.  I could walk on it with no problem and hardly felt a thing.  I was at about 90% capacity.

Then the numbing stuff wore off by this morning and I'm hobbling around.  It sucks.  The pain meds completely wipe me out and make me sick so I ended up taking a long nap this afternoon.  Will probably end up with insomnia tonight since I slept so much this afternoon.  I couldn't even sit on the floor with the girls to help entertain them because Middie Biddie kept leaning right on my ankle to help pick herself up to standing.

The doctors said that by day 3 I would be fine being home with them alone but wow am I glad K got a couple extra days off because there's no way I'd be ready to be responsible for them by tomorrow.

This sucks.

Does anyone play My Singing Monsters?  I need some friends on that game.  Add me if you are.  My number is 5690994HE.

The crying begins

Remember how I was bragging that my kids don't seem to ever cry?  Well that ship has sailed.

We seem to be entering a new phase.  We're either in or just coming out of a growth spurt and a whole set of mental lightbulbs have recently switched on.  There are new facial expressions, new understanding of toys and how things works, and now new reasons to get upset.

Oh, I don't know what those reasons are of course.  Just suddenly I'll have a crying toddler who's acting like they just got a major boo-boo.  But, there is no boo-boo.  I'll try cuddles and kisses, I'll try songs, I'll try shaking a favorite toy at them and nuthin.  Just crying, unhappiness.

Then they decide they're over it.  Nothing happened to fix whatever the problem was, some switch just flips and they go from "waaaaaahhhhhh" to "ga goo!"

Today I was lying on the couch while K was with us in the playroom (I don't know what hit me, I was just suddenly exhausted) and suddenly I would have a toddler in front of my face crying at me.  Then after a couple of minutes of making sure I properly appreciated how horrible their life is, they'd head off to go play with something.

I don't know what to do with this.  I have yet to find anything that reduces the amount of time is spent crying when one of these jags hits them.  I can't find a problem to solve, I can't hug the unhappy away, and I can't ignore them into being bored with being upset, and I can't seem to distract them into forgetting about it.  I've tried all of these and none of them help!

The good news is that K has this week off work so I've got a second pair of eyes and hands to try to figure this out, and if we can't, at least I have a witness that I'm farking TRYING so I don't feel so guilty when I think back on how much of the day the girls spent crying.

Didn't K just take a week off?  Why yes he did, but he's taking another one!  Well why on earth would he do that?  Let me tell you!

I'm having surgery on my ankle on Monday and asked him to take off Monday-Wednesday to give me a day or two to rest.  Apparently he's owed a day off for a holiday of some sort (he had to work, animals at the store still have to eat on holidays) and his boss just decided to schedule him with a solid week off.

Yup.  You know you're a stay at home twin mom when recovering from surgery sounds like a vacation.

Blog purpose reintroduction

When I'm asked questions on this blog, I take them to heart and really think about the answers.  So when Anon asked me about why I'm considering a third child when it seems I dislike caring for the first two so much, I answered, and then K reminded me of something when he read over my answer.  He reminded me why I started this blog in the first place and where I'm coming from when I write it.

So, I'm going to share with you all again what I see as the purpose of this blog.  My goal is to try to make people feel better.  Stick with me, I'm going to explain that because I know some of you just choked on your coffee.

I'm leaving my thoughts and experiences behind so that the person who is googling what is making their lives suck at the moment might find me out here saying "yeah, me too."  No one goes into google and types "I'm having a great day, tell me about your great day!!!".  No.  We reach out and search for others experiences when things are wrong, or upsetting, or we feel alone in our negative thoughts.

Internet forums and magazine articles are filled with people trying to shit rainbows and glitter on your bad day.  Strangers patting you on the head with a glib "cheer up!" or "count your blessings!" or other demands that you not feel the negative that you're currently feeling.  I'm not one of those people because those people always make me feel worse.  They make me feel like it's some sort of failing that I'm in a bad place at the moment.  So whatever was putting me in a bad place, now I'm both in that bad place AND I've got the guilt and failure that it's my fault I'm there and can't get out of it.

What makes me feel better?  When someone else says "Yeah, I feel/felt the exact same way."  During the girls early months, I was outside of a Moms of Multiples meeting bawling my eyes out.  The meeting was over and I had to go home to the misery of it all.  I was feeling awful that I took care of my girls out of obligation and not out of some motherly attachment and adoration.  That they didn't feel like they were even mine.  I spewed all of this verbal diarrhea on another mom and she said that she had felt the exact same way.  That after all the IVF, all the desperately wanting of children, she felt exactly how I was feeling during those first few months.  That made me feel so much better.  Until someone else said they felt that way, I felt like a complete freak for not having that wave of bond and love the moment I first held my girls.  Then another mom told me about how that love creeps up on you over time.  How you just want to run away for a few months, then one day you'll find that you don't mind going home from whatever errand you're running, and then one day you'll kind of miss them when you're away.  

These experiences aren't out there in the books, magazine articles, birth announcements.  Ok, they are in the books, the self help books about what's wrong with you.  But these experiences aren't wrong, they're just unpleasant so people pretend they don't exist.

I don't pretend.  Unpleasant shit exists in this world.  It just does and no amount of unicorns shitting glitter and rainbows will change that.  

I'm currently the facilitator for the first year group of EMOMS.  When I go to meetings and help keep the conversation flowing, I walk a very fine line between letting people know that not everyone experiences rainbows, while at the same time trying not to scare the crap out of everyone.  I try to let people know that my experience was awful and I'll be honest about it to anyone who wants to talk to me privately.  I'm the person that the majority of the room is afraid to hear from, but after the meeting, in quiet, hushed tones, someone sneaks up to me and whispers "thank you for being so honest, I thought it was just me."  

THAT'S the person I'm here for.  The person who needs to hear that they aren't alone, the person who is ashamed of what they are feeling or thinking, the person who won't admit things because of the judgment it brings.  Think of me as your judgment lightening rod.  I'm putting all of the ugly out there because I can take the backlash so someone else can know they aren't alone without having to publicize what they're afraid of admitting.

I started this blog a couple of months into my first pregnancy when I experienced something really upsetting.  After sex with K, I had this random emotional breakdown, just this wave of upset that made me cry for no damned reason.  I started googling to see if this was some sort of common pregnancy hormone reaction thing and couldn't really find a whole lot.  I got some random websites saying how hormone fluctuations lead to mood swings, blah blah blah, all very sterile information, but not personal accounts.  That's the day I started this blog.  I figured there weren't personal accounts because sex is inherently embarrassing, and I knew that I felt weird about the experience so if others had the same thing happen, well they probably felt weird about it too and didn't want to advertise their weirdness.  Since others didn't want to advertise, I figured I'd do it for them.  This is weird, it happened to me, so if you're googling alone in the dark, I hope you find me and feel a little less weird about yourself.

At the time, I didn't expect to lose those babies and become a big mess of misery.  I just thought I'd write about the day to day weirdness of pregnancy and eventually complain about baby poop under my fingernails.  But then shit happened and this became a very different blog for a while.  When I had the girls, it didn't feel like an ending of the fear and misery of trying to get them here, it really did feel like the fourth trimester trials and I was still on parenting probation to see if I really could bring them into the world.

They're here now.  They're almost 17 months now.  So now I use this space to think things through, log various milestones, share my complaints about parenting so others can know they aren't alone.  Every household seems more together than you feel about yours.  I'm just trying to show how not together things are around here.  Lift the veil so to speak.

Overall, I'm happy with life.  Every day has highs and lows, and I'm going to complain more about the lows than I'm going to celebrate the highs.  It's commiserating in the lows that helps people seeking comfort for their problems when they're googling at 3am.  3am googlers, I'm here for you.  I'll be the public face of every ugly thought or feeling you have so you can keep yours hidden.

But every once in a while, I'll overhear my girls giggling and I'll sneak around the corner with a camera and capture something really cute that's happening.  Sometimes I'll let you in on those moments too.

Anonymous asks a good question

On my last post, I just got a comment and I was going to reply inline there, but I think it warrants it's own post.  So I'll answer it in my usual long winded way.

Anonymous asks:  

Just out of curiosity and being a snoop (not meaning to be rude) but if you don't like waking up early, the baby phase, and you like having time to "decompress" while the twins are napping...why would you want another one? You wouldn't get anytime for yourself because they'd be on different schedules plus you'd have to go through the baby phase again. I keep getting mixed signals and messages from reading through your posts!

That's actually a really good question and I'm not at all offended that it's been asked.

Usually when I have something to say, it's something that's bothering me and that's what goes into the blog.  When everything is a content, happy equilibrium, I don't have a whole lot to say.  If you look at the history of my writing, you'll see that as the girls came out of the baby phase, my writing slowed down significantly.  Where I was writing once, sometimes several times a day during the miscarriage, IVF, pregnancy, and baby phases, I now go a week or more without posting, and even then it's often just a check in that everything is fine.  There's just not a whole lot of interesting ways to say "another normal day of watching the girls play.  They made me laugh a few times, I got a frustrated a few times, and I'm getting sick of scrambling eggs.  Yup, another day has gone by."

There's also a privacy factor.  When I write, I feel like I'm sharing with other people.  Not just information, but whatever I'm writing about is kind of given away.  When life sucks, I write about it to lighten the load.  Some of the better moments, I want to keep those all for myself.

I'm also acutely aware of the fact that the period of my life in which I'll be spending my entire day looking after children is finite.  It's only a handful of years before they spend the bulk of their day in a classroom and I need to find an additional identity beyond being their mom.  No, I didn't like the first 6 months.  They su-ucked.  But then there's ages 6m-5 years that are so far, pretty darned fun.  I'm enjoying the next stage more and more, but there's that nagging ... I don't know what, where I think "If I were to do this again, I would do blank or not worry so much about blank, and I'd enjoy it a lot more the next time."

I like kids more and more as they get older.  It's a year or two of sacrifice to gestate and raise a baby to the kid stage where they become fun.  Once you get through that difficult time, you have these cool people around you for the rest of your life.  That's awesome.

Then there's the wondering of a single baby would suck a lot less than twin babies.  There were NO breaks with twins.  With a singleton, we could each get 4-5 hour stretches of sleep because there wouldn't be a need for both of us to be dealing with every middle of the night wake up.  If I had that extra sleep, and if I could enjoy the time in which my baby was snuggly and happy, would it be a completely different baby experience?  A large part of me says yes, it would be completely different and I might get to enjoy a lot of those things that other mothers enjoy about their babies that I didn't get to enjoy with my twins.  I could go out and about with one baby strapped in a carrier while the girls walked.  I couldn't safely walk around with two babies in a carrier.  Maybe other twin moms can, but I couldn't figure it out.

As for my desire to sleep in and decompress during nap time - well yeah, who doesn't want that?  I don't sleep well at night, I'm a chronic insomniac.  So by the time I'm asleep, I want to stay that way as long as possible.  The nap decompression is a little different - while I'm waiting for them to fall asleep, I'm sitting here by the monitor in a state of alertness.  I'm very attentively watching to see if one has fallen asleep, if the other one is needing something or just whining and should I go in and check her diaper, if I do will I wake up the other one, will she wake up the other one with her whining, why is she whining, what do I do??????  By the time they are both asleep at the same time, I need to stop biting my nails and chill the hell out.

It's draining to be constantly trying to figure out someones needs when they can't tell you what they are so you're constantly alert and interpreting various signals and clues.  By the time a third got here, the girls and I could communicate with words which would take that particular stress away (and add a whole different one, but I'll complain about that when it gets here).

Last, I'm looking into the future a bit and seeing empty nest syndrome.  First when they start school, and then again when they finish school and launch into the world.  Going from having 2 kids taking up your entire day to a suddenly empty house for a good portion of that day, that's very jarring.  When I get there, am I going to regret not having a third so I can continue to have a kid to care for?  I don't know.

We aren't certain we want a third for all the reasons that make you ask this question.  If I were 28 instead of 38, I probably wouldn't be thinking about it.  But I am 38, K is 44, and we're already feeling a bit too old for all of this.  Very quickly the day is coming that we REALLY are too old for this and our options will be gone.

Yes, there are mixed messages on this blog.  I have yet to meet anyone who isn't full of mixed messages and feelings about things, so I'm in good company.

So, in a nutshell, like most people, I talk most when I have something to complain about, full-time child rearing is very temporary and I'm not sure I'll be ready for it to be over when it is, sleep good, I missed a lot of baby experiences because I had two and a singleton might give the chance to enjoy what I couldn't enjoy with twins, I'd be better at it next time, and I'm getting (I am) old and time to make the decision is running out.

Defeating power outages and time changes

Wow.  My girls are talented.

Their wake up time has been creeping later and later and I was hoping that the time change would just magically fix that.  They used to wake up around 9am but have been creeping closer to 10am, sometimes even being content in bed until a little after that.  While that's great for a mommy who likes to sleep in, it does make for a really late start to the day.

We haven't been doing anything to fix that since the time change was coming up and we figured time would just change around them making their wake up closer to 9am again.  Yesterday, we had a power outage and I thought "great!  They'll fade out with the sun and probably go to sleep a little earlier!"

Nope.  While they did fade out with the sun around 6pm, they did what they've been doing for a while.  They go to sleep somewhere between 7-7:30pm and then wake up about an hour later and play in the dark for yet another hour or two finally passing out around 10pm.  They did the same damned thing last night.  But I figured, whatever, the time is going to change, and they'll suddenly be doing everything an hour earlier, problem solved.

About 10:15am (that's with the time change, so what normally would have been 11:15am), K wakes me up with "should we get the girls up?".  The little twits!  They completely defeated the time change by sleeping in an extra hour!  Argh!!!!  I can only guess it's because I bundled them up extra warm last night when the power was out and it was getting cold.  Then the power came back on so beds were extra snuggly this morning.

To complicate this matter further, we have a party to attend at 3pm.  That would have worked out great if they had done what they were supposed to and gotten up around 9am so they could take a nap shortly after noon.  But no, they've only just faded out around 1:30pm so we're going to be late for the party.  Oh well.  It's at a gymnastics studio and since Middie Biddie isn't really walking and most of the kids there are going to be about 3 years old, they weren't going to be able to play much anyway for fear of getting run over by tumbling toddlers.  I guess we'll probably arrive about the time the toddlers have worked most of their wiggles out and are ready for cake.

Damnit.  I think Middie Biddie has been so content to sit in her crib and quietly play without waking us up that she's been pooping and then sitting in her poop for a considerable time.  K did diaper changes this morning and informed me that the rash we'd finally gotten rid of was back in full force.

It looks like we can't just let their sleep happen anymore, we're going to have to control it.  If it weren't for the rash and sitting in poop issue, we'd probably just let them do what they want.  But if she's not going to wake us up to let us know she needs a diaper change, we're going to have to create an actual honest to god schedule.  Yuck.  My days of sleeping in are over.  I guess we're going to have 9am alarms every morning now.

*grumble grumble*

Stupid need for structure.

Poop.