Miscellaneous Kid Update

I feel the need to write a post, but I'm honestly not totally sure what to tell you. Shall we see what comes out?

1. There seem to be a new word or two coming out of Todd's mouth each day.  This has actually been going on for a while and it is to the point that I'm almost not surprised by new words.  Two word phrases are still more rare, so those get my attention a little more. But the most fun is the comprehension. He doesn't understand everything, but sometimes we can have a real conversation.

T: Nurse! Nurse!
M: Can I please start dinner before we nurse?
T: No.
M: Can I please get my phone before we sit down?
T: Yeah.

Or....

End of bathtime
R: Todd, you got in first, so you need to get out first.
T: Noooooooooooooooo!
Once he's out and in a towel, staring back at Heather:
T: Baff! Baff! Baff! Baff!
(bath, in Todd speak)

2. Heather is really great and a lot of fun right now. Coming up with lots of extravagant pretend play scenarios, singing, dancing, practicing writing letters, chatting away and making up stories. She can also entertain herself for a while with her toys and seems to need at least one good session of solo play each day.

But she also loves to play with other kids.  We have been to an indoor play place several times since my layoff, and this week she was definitely trying to actively find other kids to play with.

3. There are, of course, a few challenges now as well. Todd's sleep still sucks for a 20 month old. He naps great at daycare, but rarely naps outside of the car seat or my arms on home days. I can only put him down totally asleep and his overnight waking is random and unpredictable. He's finally gotten all his teeth through, only has a minimal cold and the separation anxiety is lessening during the day, so hopefully a breakthrough is coming.

I've considered various strategies, from bedtime changes to nightweaning, but each time I'm ready to implement his patterns change again. And quite honestly, he is minimally cranky when he's tired, so other than adult tiredness there isn't much other motivation. We've also considered a bed change as a strategy, since some nights he really enjoys Heather's bed and seems like he could cuddle up in it and sleep.

4. The primary challenge with Heather right now is her acting like a baby and refusing to do the things we know she can do (dressing herself, clearing her plate, putting on shoes, etc). In the grand scheme of things, we are working through it and it is really on the easy end of the Heather-behavior spectrum. But frustrating when both kids act like they need the same level of 'care'.

Keeping my cup full

I read this post over at PhD in Parenting and I feel like maybe it can help me figure out how I'm feeling. Now, honestly, after six days of holiday celebrations and having my parents around to help with the kids I am feeling pretty good. Tired, yes. But the excitement, anticipation and extra work of Christmas is past (minus one trip to the mail center this afternoon) and there is no 'next thing' hovering over me.

But there are still two things I'm dealing with. And they kind of go hand in hand when it comes to my emotions. To use the metaphor in the above-referenced blog post, I feel like I'm struggling to keep my own cup full so I can keep pouring for the kids.

1 - Being unemployed and how I define myself. It is not that I only define myself as an architect...but I don't define myself solely as a mother either. Working as an architect helped to 'fill my cup'. It gave me pride, great adult interaction, interesting stories, purpose, challenges and something tangible to accomplish for others. Obviously, there are other things that can fill one's cup in the same categories, but I haven't found substitutes for them yet. And I would prefer to substitute them with a new job over anything else.

2 - Todd's needs are pretty substantial at the moment. Actually, his daytime mommy neediness seems to be abating a little or it is just a manifestation of having daddy, nana and bapa around so much over the holidays. We will see for sure on Tuesday. But the real draining issue is bedtime and overnight. He needs a lot of mommy/nursing time at bedtime as well as overnight. The lack of regularity makes me think that his brain is waking him up and once he's up he wants to nurse back to sleep. It is still clear that he *can* sleep well in his crib, he just isn't. And he really has to be passed out at bedtime, which sometimes takes a couple of hours. Which is hard especially because it takes away most or all of our couple time as well as my 'me' time and chore time.

I'm doing my best to remind myself that both of these issues are just phases. They might be longer phases than I would like...but in the grand scheme of my career and Todd's life, they are really pretty short. So I will remind myself the importance of filling up my own cup, even when that means ordering pizza instead of making it or letting the kids watch one more episode of Bob the Builder.

In my head I know all this, but I think the metaphor is giving me a good framework for dealing with it on a daily basis.

Sleep V2.0

I was looking back at old posts to get Heather's past weight statistics and I ran across this post. Ha!

How things change. This time, we're making relatively rare efforts to put Todd to sleep in his crib and just "getting through" all the waking up and overnight nursing sessions. It's probably a combination of feeling like he can't possibly sleep with us forever, knowing that he's doing more reverse cycling than she ever did, and being so much more tired that I can't even fathom having to get out of bed multiple times a night. And I'm sure if you would have told me back then that it would be possible to function at work on less sleep I would have thought you were crazy...but you can push your body to do a lot of things.

I think we're in one of those "not ideal but not so awful that we're trying to change things" stages of baby sleep. Todd's also lucky that I'm even more laid back then I was the first time around. :-)

Nap schedule, what nap schedule?

Dreams

As a parent of a baby and later a toddler, you spend a lot of time wondering what is going on in their heads. Do they dream? Do they understand the question? What train of thought led them to remember someone they saw a few weeks ago? What is the obsession with ravioli? :-)

Well, I think one question has been answered for us. There is no doubt in my mind as of this morning that Heather dreams.

Last night about 1am she started whining and calling out for "mommy". We waited, and after about 60 seconds she was quiet again. It is moments like those that you wonder if she was awake and upset, and managed to settle herself down again or if it was just a dream.

At 6:40am, while I was between alarm snoozes and trying to wake myself up, she began calling for "my kangaroo, my kangaroo, my kangaroo"... Considering that she doesn't have a kangaroo in her crib or any toy kangaroo anywhere in the house, I'm pretty confident that she was dreaming. :-)