One nap I guess

I think we're pretty much going to be down to one nap now.

Middie Biddie has been fighting for a one nap schedule for about a month but Teeny Tiny has still been firmly in the two nap zone.  I've been trying to adhere to two naps because I like the day better that way, but I think those days are over.

Normally they go down for their first nap about 2 hours after breakfast.  What's kept me confused about Middie Biddie is that they always go down great for that first nap, it's usually 60-90 minutes, but she's just been dead set against the second one even though she's exhausted.  I figured if she wasn't ready for the first nap, she wouldn't go to sleep that early now would she?  It makes for a 2 hour morning and then a 7-8 hour afternoon which made no sense to me.  If she needed one nap, shouldn't she not fall asleep that early and only be prepared to sleep in the middle of the day?

It looks like it's starting to shift to something that makes more sense to me.  The last few days, she hasn't been going down very well for that first nap but rather wanting a nap around the time Teeny Tiny wakes up.  I've been trying to figure out if I wanted to continue to try to force them to sync, or just resolve to putting Teeny Tiny down, enjoying alone time with Middie Biddie, then switch, then switch again so that Teeny Tiny gets two naps while Middie Biddie just gets one.

They kind of made that decision for me today.  I tried the normal first nap and they talked, whined, and giggled their way through it.  For once, Teeny Tiny didn't fall asleep.  So I got them up, gave them something to eat, and then put them down again once it was a more appropriate time for a mid day nap.  It took Middie Biddie still fought, but eventually joined her sister in slumber.

So it looks like we're now going to start doing one long nap in the middle of the day.  I hope it's a solid 2 hours.  I'm going to be exhausted if I only get one short break in the middle of my day.

My tracking app has a feature called "scheduler" that produces a graphic showing what a babies schedule looks like for the week.  For the benefit of other moms checking out this blog from the first year of the girls lives, I was considering making a page showing this graphic for each week/month so others can compare what their babies are doing versus what my days looked like.  Do you think that would be beneficial for new moms?  Help them know what to expect?  I'm only tracking sleep at this point, but here's what Middie Biddies week has looked like.  What do you think?

Pretty sure I'll eat these words

I'm constantly asking K if I'm doing this mommy thing well or not.

There's really no way of knowing at this point because the girls are who they are, and I don't think they're old enough for me to have a whole lot of influence on their behavior.  In my mind, they are too young (14 months) to misbehave so my effectiveness hasn't really been tested yet.  K disagrees.  He thinks babies are perfectly capable of misbehaving, having major meltdowns, etc.

A couple of days ago, I took my new (to me) car to the shop to check on some minor things I've noticed and to get a complete buyers inspection to make sure there's not something sinister lurking beneath the hood.  While I was stuck there, K brought the girls to pick me up and we went out for breakfast.

The girls were so well-behaved.  They sat in their high chairs at the restaurant, barely able to see over the table and reach their eggs.  They just quietly nibbled away, looking around, eating up the attention of anyone who walked by and remarked on how cute they were.  When we finished eating, we packed them back up, cleaned up the carnage under the high chairs as best we could, and headed out (tip your servers well when you bring kids!).  Completely uneventful.  That's what I expect at this age, there's no reason for them to meltdown or cause any scene.

K says that this is a testament to how we're raising them.  He said that when we walked in, he noticed the other diners practically groan at our arrival, anticipating their meals being disturbed by two obnoxious kids.  Is that the norm for kids this young?  A couple of two year olds, yeah, I would totally anticipate some obnoxiousness, but 14 months?

Ok, on the off chance that K is correct and their behavior is a reflection of how we are doing things, here are the only theories I can come up with on what we're doing that might be reflecting in their good behavior.  Again, I'm not convinced that we're fabulous so in 6 months when they are holy terrors, I expect to eat these words, but ya know, just in case, here's my advice (for what it's worth).

• Our schedule is such that if we leave the house, we do so at the optimal time.  The girls wake up, they eat, we leave.  So when they arrive somewhere, they aren't hungry and they are as rested as possible.
• Every time the girls eat, there's protein on the plate.  Something I learned during my brief jaunt into gestational diabetes, when you eat sugar (be it carbs, fruit, or treats), if you have it with protein, you'll avoid those blood sugar spikes and crashes.  No hyper highs or cranky crashes.  Every time they eat, there's meat, cheese, yogurt, or eggs on the plate, and if I can't manage that, they're drinking milk instead of water at that meal.
• Cranky girls go night night.  Period.  If your butt is dry and your belly is full, you must be tired so you're going into your crib.  Whether you use that time for a nap, to quietly play with your lovey's and giggle at each other, or even whine your way through it, if you're cranky, you need rest.  For the most part, this seems to work for us.  They pretty much start getting whiney and cranky around nap time and I put them down before they can firmly establish a case of the cranks.  When we're out and about long enough to hit the overtired stage, it's fortunate that they tend to favor the thousand mile stare rather than a crying fit.
• They eat plenty during the day so they don't get hungry and wake up throughout the night.  So they generally get 11-14 (yes, sometimes 14!) hours of straight sleep at night.  Even if something goes awry and naps don't work out, they are running on a lot of good rest.
• Very little unnatural sugar.  I'd say we give the girls a treat about once a week, usually after dinner, and usually they share a pudding snack pack.  Other than that, I dunno.  We haven't been giving them graham crackers or sugared cereals or cookies.  Sugared carbs are the foundation of my diet and it has not served me well.  I want protein to be the foundation of their diet.

So that's it!  Personally, I think they are just good-natured and will likely become little monsters in a few months when they are old enough to understand the power of disobeying and throwing temper tantrums.  But just in case they are easy babies because of what I'm doing, that's my advice.  Protein on every plate, limit sugar, quiet or sleep time when the cranky begins, and when taking them out of the house do so when they are most rested and their bellies are full, even if you're going out to eat.

Mommy's Day Off

I've had a couple of "days off" this week with K home to watch the girls.  Oh those longed for days off.  Oh how I stupidly spent them.

The first day off was spent preparing for the rest of the week when I wouldn't have time off.  I swept the house.  I did laundry.  I worked on de-stinking the floor.  Yes, I'll be de-stinking the floor until the end of time.  I cut and cooked vegetables.

That doesn't sound all that dramatic, but the cutting and cooking of vegetables took forever.  Seriously.  I got a bag of frozen stir fry veggies from Costco so there would be some variety in what the girls get.  I spent about an hour and a half standing next to the stove cutting frozen vegetables into baby bites and tossing them into the steamer tray on top of boiling water.  I still can't believe how long it takes to cut those damned vegetables and how little I get for my efforts.  An hour and a half, my back was burning like hell, and I ended up with a 12oz mason jar full in the fridge and one ice cube tray full in the freezer.

But it's worth it.  For the next week or two, whenever I make scrambled eggs or pasta for the girls, I just spoon in some pre-cooked pre-cut veggies rather than cut and cook them at the time.

Then I had today off as well.  K let me sleep in because he's awesome.  It's been a while since I've been able to sleep in because with his back all fucked up, I've had to get the girls out of the crib and into their seats for breakfast.  I think his back is still such that I shouldn't be letting him pick them up, but ya know, life happens when you're injured and you just get on with it.

I spent the first portion of my day at a job interview.  It wasn't so much a job interview as my potential boss showing me the workspace and us just chatting about life and pottery for 45 minutes.  I have a really good feeling about this job.  It's the right number of hours, she's flexible about scheduling with a kid of her own (so she knows how that goes), and it's DOING POTTERY!!!  It's hand building which isn't my forte, I'm a wheel thrower, but it's not my forte because I simply haven't had much opportunity to do it.  While being trained on the clay stuff, I can still be useful unloading the kiln, glazing, all that other kind of grunt stuff.  She has another interview tomorrow and told me she'd let me know by Monday.  I really want this.  It's an identity away from the house without having to be gone so much that I feel like I'm not raising my own kids.  A little extra income would be mighty welcome too.

Yeah, I had a pottery job a while back, but that was kind of doomed from the start.  That was piece work which never works out, and it as so far away that it was an all day commitment just to deliver stuff.  This is pretty close by, actually very close to my parents (if I need last minute babysitters) and it's hourly.  This seems to fit in a lot of ways.  A few nice people to get to know (small, no office politics!), jeans and tshirts, doing something I love, and a flexible schedule so we don't have to spend more in daycare than I'd be earning.

So anyway, after my interview, I went home for a half hour to kiss everybody and then back out the door for a dentist appointment.  My number one annoyance was dealt with, but my number two annoyance is still bugging me and will require another appointment.  A couple of hours in the dentist chair.  No fun at all.

Then back home for another half hour and round of kisses then back out to do a video job.  I got there early so I stopped at a nearby Starbucks to kill some time and when I went to go to the job, the car wouldn't go into gear.  After messing with that for several minutes, I called the job to let him know I might be late and he says he's having a really crappy day and would just as soon reschedule anyway.  Ok, fine.  Of course once I got off the phone with him and located my Triple A card, the car went into gear and all was well.  Ain't that always the way?  So I got some groceries and went home instead of doing the job.  So now I have to reschedule the job and go back out another day which sucks.

Yup, relaxing days off eh?  At least I showered.

For no reason at all, here's a picture of (clothed) baby butts and pictures of the most patient cat in the world watching over her babies (from my desk).

  

My ass is being thoroughly kicked

Quite a shocking morning here, the girls slept in until after 10am!!!  Imagine my surprise when I heard them on the monitor making their morning noises, looked at the clock and saw it was so late.

Then I resigned myself, it's likely that getting 14 hours of sleep (!!) means no naps today.  Then, magically, 2 hours after getting up, they actually took a 90 minute nap.

Wow.  Sleepy babies!

So then a lunch of scrambled eggs and veggies and I prepared for a long afternoon of happy play.  We discovered several games yesterday generally built around sliding on the wood floor.  Teeny Tiny would crawl ahead, I would grab a foot and pull her back.  She loved that.  She started crawling a few inches and then flattening out in anticipation of being slid back.  But she's not in full body jammies today so we couldn't really play that game.  However, putting them in a laundry basket and then sliding it around like the teacup ride at Disneyland seemed to keep them entertained for a few minutes.

But after that thrill wore off, I don't know what the hell happened.  They both just got really cranky.  Middie Biddie would sometimes go into full blown crying and I just don't know why.  Both wanted to climb on me and whine and cry in my face with no consolation.

Even though they had eaten only an hour before, since they were both sounding so desperate, I figured they must be hungry.  So I prepped a quick meal with them yelling at me the whole time and they scarfed that down.  Seemed pretty content while eating.  They even had some fits of laughter as I put a plate on my head and then tipped forward to let it fall off.  Yeah, it's the simple things in life.  Somehow Mommy with a plate on her head is endless entertainment.

But once they were done eating, the whining and crying began again.  Both have clean butts so that's not the problem.  I gave them some baby Tylenol because they might be having some teething pain.  Even though they just woke up a little over 2 hours ago, screw this, cranky girls go night night.  That's where we are as I type this.  Teeny Tiny is actually looking like she'd like to go to sleep, but Middie Biddie keeps waffling between calm and cranky so neither is actually sleeping.  Not surprised considering how much they've slept over the last 24 hours.  I'm shocked they took one nap today, I certainly don't expect a second one to happen.

Oh well.  They are currently chatting over the crib rails.  They are safe and not unhappy so it's an improvement over what was happening in the playroom and I'm getting a bit of a break.

Side note, I think Teeny Tiny has been trying to drop her loveys on Middie Biddies head.  I've seen her holding one of them while looking over the rails at her sister and when they woke up this morning, Middie Biddie had a couple of them in her crib.

It's days like today I wish I enjoyed wine.