Play School is Hard Work

Sleep, Anyone?

Sunday night marked one week since implementing our new "get mommy out of the girls' room at bedtime without a temper tantrum" plan, so I thought it was safe to share a little update {no fat lady singing here}.

Since there was no possible way I was locking Mallory in her bedroom which is what everyone was telling me we should do {sorry, guys}, I locked myself in our bedroom instead {sometimes is was hard to tell whose temper tantrums were worse anyway ~ Mallory's or mine}.

I won't go into the night~by~night details but will tell you we went from night one of Mallory screaming for an entire hour and a half until virtually passing out from exhaustion {please don't judge, we tried everything to avoid this} to last night with both girls falling asleep peacefully in their beds alone with our bedroom door wide open ~ and last night wasn't the first night. Things improved dramatically from night one to night two and just kept getting better from there.

The last four nights, actually, have been smooth sailing at bedtime...and thank goodness, for poor Walter's sake, because when it became evident that I didn't have what it took to break away from Mallory at bedtime, Walter stepped in, took over, and toughed it out with Mallory {and Anna Claire}.

We still have some work to do with Mallory waking up in the middle of the night, but the good news is lately she has been waking up once, going to the potty, then going right back to sleep...and yesterday she didn't wake up until 5:15 and still went back to sleep until 6:45. Last night she woke up at 12:20, and now it's 6am...and she's still asleep. yay!

We'll keep our fingers crossed for continued improvement!

No More Naps?

Anna Claire and Mallory "resting" this afternoon

It's been one week since we dropped regularly scheduled naps for the girls in an effort to lengthen nighttime sleep and {hopefully} put an end to Mallory's nighttime wakings. I can probably count on one had the number of times Mallory has slept through the night since April 12, 2010, the night she launched herself out her crib causing us to switch both girls to toddler beds two nights later. It has been an exhausting year and three months. Dr. Tillman thinks {and we hope} if Mallory can fall asleep more easily at bedtime, the nighttime wakings will stop. Well...

More recently, since late spring, the girls have been falling asleep around 8:30 {too late in my opinion, but they just weren't tired}, waking up at 6:30 {much too early, don't you think?} and napping for a solid 1-1/2 hours each day with Mallory continuing to wake up a few times a night {usually once or twice, but sometimes more}. It just sort of gradually evolved to that.

Our new plan has the girls resting on our bed for a hour to an hour and a half. Sometimes we read or sometimes we watch a Disney movie, and twice they've fallen asleep for 30-45 minutes {see picture above} and that's been OK because some days they are just more tired depending on how we've spent our morning. They are in bed and asleep by 7:30 which is really great because they are good and tired and not overly tired and fussy as we'd feared. However, they are still waking us between 6:00 and 6:30 and Mallory is still waking up in the middle of the night. Baby steps, right? For now, getting out of their room at 7:30 instead of 8:30 or sometimes 9:00 has been a major morale booster around here.

Two Hours

That's how long all four of us napped this afternoon. Aaahhhhh...

Day at the Museum

One of the girls' favorite exhibits at the Children's Museum yesterday was the grocery store. It looks as though they were making some healthy choices.

(Photo courtesy of Grandmom.)

In other news...

morning nap
Anna Claire and Mallory :30
afternoon nap
Anna Claire and Mallory 1:00

I am slowly but surely relaxing about the whole nap thing. I feel good offering them the opportunity to nap twice a day. I definitely think it was a good thing for both girls to go back to two naps. Whether they are sleeping or just "resting" they seem much better off than they were last week during our one-nap-a-day experiment.

Hide and Seek

This morning, the girls went to the Children's Museum with Grandmom and Aunt Dot. I hear they had so much fun! In the meantime, the girls have been having lost of fun "running" up and down the hallway and "hiding" in the nursery. Hide and seek is thier new favorite game to play together. I was barely able to capture these shots as they ran towards me. Pardon the blurriness.

Morning nap

Mallory - :30 in the car

Anna Claire - none

Afternoon nap

Mallory - :45 + :20

Anna Claire - 1:30

All Smiles

Why does this almost-fifteen-month-old think she no longer needs a nap?Monday

nighttime sleep for Anna Claire and Mallory - 11 1/2 hours

10:30am nap for both girls - 30 minutes
2:00pm nap for Mallory 1 1/2 hours; Anna Claire "rested" for 1 hour

What Now?

Seven days in and our new nap routine is not working for Anna Claire or Mallory.

Neither of the girls is functioning well on just one nap. Mallory is exhausted all morning long (she fell asleep on her stroller ride yesterday), and while Anna Claire can make it a bit longer, she is fit to be tied by around 11:00. And when it is nap time, they are only sleeping between forty-five minutes to one and a half hours (shouldn't they be exhausted???). That doesn't seem to be enough to keep them happy for the rest of the afternoon into evening.

I had to channel my frustration of not knowing what to do about napping by doing something creative this weekend, so I sewed the girls a new diaper bag. I haven't sewn anything since I made the girls' dresses, and I must say, difficult as it was, the diaper bag took less time and turned out much better than the dresses. I must be learning!

The exterior...
The interior...

I guess Mallory needed to find a creative outlet for her frustration with me depriving her of sleep, so she colored on the closet doors in the playroom.

Since school is back in session, and we don't have a lot of excitement going on, I'm going to log the girls naps here for a while to better keep track of their "data", so I can try to do a better job of figuring things out. I'll try to include some cute pictures of the girls to make things more interesting this week.

Sunday
wake-up & bottle 7am-ish (slept for 12 hours)
breakfast 8:30
snack 10
lunch 11:30
nap 12-1:00 (!)
snack 2:00
dinner 5:30
bath 6:15
bottle and bed 6:45

Where do we go from here? I'll need to sleep on it tonight and figure out what tomorrow's schedule needs to look like. Bear with me...

New Nap Routine

Due to Anna Claire's insistence that she no longer needs a morning nap and Mallory's recent confusion about when to nap, when not to nap, and how long to nap, we decided to go cold turkey(mistake?) and drop the morning nap for both girls keeping them on the same nap schedule.

Here's Mallory yesterday begging for her morning nap...I felt so bad because I knew if I put her down she would fall fast asleep. She's smiling here, but she was so drowsy...And then things got serious at lunch. I thought she would fall asleep in her booster seat... Immediately after lunch I put both girls down for their new afternoon nap at 12:30. Mallory was up forty-five minutes later (she was absolutely begging me for a nap earlier in the day!). Her fussing quickly turned to babbling which quickly turned to silence. Thirty minutes later, however, she was up again - this time for good, and not long after that so was Anna Claire. Aren't they supposed to sleep longer when they transition to just one nap?

Of course, my fear is that this means thy are, in fact, not ready for just one nap and their little biological clocks are freaking out because mommy is messing with their perfectly fine schedule - even if Anna Claire won't nap in the morning. Or, it could be that they are transitioning and their biological clocks are freaking out, and they just need more time to adjust. Note to self: Do not forget the three day rule!

New Schedule...
Morning Bottle 7:00
Snack 10:30
Lunch 12:00
Nap 12:30
Snack 3:00
Bedtime Bottle 6:30

Do we sick to it, or go back? Ugh! I hate not knowing if I'm doing the right thing.

Sunday Morning: Nap Time

Mallory... Anna Claire...

Thirty minutes into nap time, Anna Claire is still awake - smiling, laughing, singing, and banging around in her crib. Thankfully, Mallory sleeps through it all.

This has been Anna Claire's "routine" for two weeks now. I thought maybe she was just discombobulated since I've been working semi-part-time, but I don't think it should have taken her this long to adjust. She is just not at all tired anymore at her mid-morning nap time, 9:30. The bigger problem? By 11:00 the crankiness has set in, but afternoon naps don't begin until 1:30.

So, what to do? I have no idea what's best. Move morning nap back so Anna Claire is tired? Cut out morning nap for Anna Claire? For both girls? If we cut out morning nap it makes sense to move afternoon nap earlier. They have always been on the same sleeping schedule which has made life so easy. The thought of putting the girls on two different napping schedules does not thrill me.

Ugh! I do not like schedule changes, but looking back, I have to admit things always seem to work themselves out just fine for everyone. Time will tell...