So, as I mentioned briefly on facebook... this 4th year of T's life is pretty tough on me. He is finally back to dressing himself in the mornings, which I'm 100% fine with. I don't care if he's mismatched all day, though he usually does a pretty good job. The parts I'm having trouble with are the "being bad" parts. He doesn't want to eat, he doesn't want to potty train, he doesn't listen anymore, he doesn't want to sleep... the list just goes on and on and on... like my days. ha! He has also hurt himself more since his birthday than he has the past 3yrs of his life because he's trying to do more on his own. Like getting into and out of his brothers playpen in the driveway. And doing a face plant onto the driveway yesterday because he didn't want to put his feet down first. This was his explanation after the event, I didn't actually see him getting out, but Chris said it was pretty quick, though T did pause to think about how to get down. Awesome. Huge bruise and knot right by his eye; even better. Great head on those shoulders huh? So we have made a few rash changes in our little home lives.
a) the boys now share a bedroom because Travis said he was sleeping in the hall (and coming into our room 4-5 times a night) because he didn't want to sleep alone in his room. A sleep deprived mama = a very grumpy mama and a very messy house. I had just gotten his room arranged how I wanted and had even made some art and gotten a plan for actually "FINISHING" his room. perfect timing boys. so now we have mismatched furniture in their room and it is driving me slowly bonkers. I just have to make it through 2 more years and then we can get matching twin/bunk beds. Just 2 more long years!!! so far at a week in, the boys are loving it. Chase goes to bed first, crying for 10mins like always, while T watches his "show" in our bedroom. Then after a Max & Ruby/ Dinosaur Train/ Caillou/ Word World/ Chuggington, we read 2-4 Bernstein books in the hall. And then T goes to bed too without waking his brother up. He does however, wake Chase up in the morning. Because he has to go into their closet right next to the crib and change into his clothes. And he takes a while to look through all his shirts until he finds 'the one'. Oh lordy!
b) we now have a playroom where almost all of their toys reside and we moved the 'castle' playset onto our covered porch and put down foam flooring so we have somewhere to play rough when it rains. These two changes are going over great! we have used the castle more in the past two days than in the past year and once we get a gate built, I can let Chase roam around in the tunnels under it too.
c) I finally made a schedule for our day. I know daycare centers have set times for outside play, naptime, lunch time, but here in our house, it's like the wild west. Anything goes. We do whatever whenever the mood strikes us and to be honest, it's not as awesome as it sounds. Kids do so much better with structure. I know that. I've known that for a long time, but did I listen to my own advice/knowledge? nope. That is, until this week. Today was a bust because Chase got me up 3-4 times (I lost count) last night and I was uber sleepy all day and so were the boys. We loafed around all afternoon and Chase took a 3hr nap in the morning. However, Monday and Tuesday went great. T was happy all day long, happy when his dad came home from work instead of being at his grumpy end of day funk, happy to go to bed too. It was amazing!!!! And we make an agreement each day, that if he doesn't take his nap, it means he has to go to bed early and miss out on playtime with daddy. I think he actually understands the choice/consequence he's making too. Yay for a growing brain!
1 comments:
Way to go momma! I can't wait to have 2 kids! No just kidding, I know it's great, but structure is wonderful. thanks for doing all this first, so you can teach me along the way!
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