Just Checking In

I'm trying to blog regularly even though I don't really have much to say. We are going on vacation to Newfoundland in a month and things promise to be less routine, and more bloggable, then. We are starting to settle into a new normal way of living and that means I'm less frazzled than I was. Daniel is also starting to sleep for longer stretches at night (six or seven hours) so I'm feeling a little more awake as well.

We still haven't gotten any results from the ultrasound of Daniel's sacral dimple. I'm inclined to think that this is a 'no news is good news' sort of situation and just relax unless I'm told to do otherwise. In fact, I'm pretty sure the dimple is growing over as I can definitely see the end of it now. I guess it was just a little thing to freak a mother out.

In other Daniel news, his acne is all but gone. See:

He has some really dry skin around his hairline and on the very top of his head. I don't really think it is cradle cap but I may be wrong. Either way, I've been putting olive oil in his hair, letting it sit for an hour, combing off the dry skin and then giving him a shampoo the likes you only see at the most thorough salons. It's getting better slowly. After the acne, dry scalp doesn't bother me at all.

In even more Daniel news:

He can smile! I love it when tiny babies learn to smile. In fact, I make my face sore grinning and goggling at him in an effort to make him grin. He has even given a chuckle or two and it melts my little heart.

The girlies are doing well. Jillian is super big into playing make-believe and that's new for us. Claire is far too Vulcan (she takes after her mother) to suspend reality long enough to play pretend. Until now, we have never had to treat dolls gently because they are 'babies' or pretend to be "Lucianda" or some other name she fabricates or eat pretend foods or have tea parties. Jillian's new favourite toy is not a new toy at all. She is head-over-heels in love with my old Fisher-Price kitchen set from when I was a kid. That toy doesn't owe my parents a cent. I played with it a lot when I was a kid. I'd insist on having real food to serve my real friends though (like I said, I was pretend-challenged). My nephews used to play with it endlessly at my parents' cottage when they were younger and now Jillian plays with it daily. I have to admit that I'm still a little bit anti-pretend because I will toss back a cup of 'tea' of scarf down a bowl of 'soup' almost as fast as she can hand it to me. In turn, she has started handing me my 'food' like this:


This look says: You will take this 'cake' and you will 'eat' it slowly and with many, many yummy noises and you will tell me how delicious it is and then you will ask for more...got it?

Claire has been doing well too. She has her moments for sure but she has been better behaved since her surgery in December. Lately she has been into helping and that sometimes raises issues because she likes to think that she is the boss of other kids (or sometimes even us). It can get sort of ugly sometimes. She has been big into asking us a lot of questions about everything but mostly about nature. Yesterday it was about sharks and what they eat and why they want to eat meat and, and, and. The day before it was about ants and what they eat and why spiders eat ants and why birds eat spiders and, and, and. The day before we had a big decomposition/litter chat when she tried to tell me that "the ground is the garbage" (I'd like to get a hold of the little monster at school who told her THAT). The other day she told her father that bees make honey and when he asked how she knew she said "Because they do. BESIDES, I'm four years old you know", as if that explains it all. She thinks this is how to pose for photos (the strange effect is what happened when I tried hitting "auto repair"):


It is a good pouty supermodel look if you ask me.

Our biggest issue nowadays is bedtime. They started sharing a room shortly before Daniel was born. They love sharing the room but they have such different sleep patterns that they are driving DH and I nuts. Claire has always been the sort of kid who embraces bedtime. When we tell her it is bedtime she almost always goes without complaint, asks for a book and then happily goes to sleep. She sleeps like an absolute rock for 12 hours and sometimes gets up grumpy. The grump wears off once she's fully awake but it is easy to set her off till she sheds the sleep.

Jillian is a completely different story. She is a much lighter sleeper and she has always been harder to settle to sleep. She stays up till she's overtired and wired and even then has trouble falling to sleep. She can function on far less sleep than Claire and will wake up between 6:30 and 7 AM regardless of when she goes to bed. She always wakes up in a reasonable mood and just picks up where she left off the night before.

If we put them to bed at the same time, Jillian will keep Claire up for HOURS. She talks and laughs and jumps on the bed and sings and does anything else she can think of. Claire wants to go to sleep but she can't help either talking to Jillian or admonishing her for still being awake. It almost always ends with one or both of them downstairs complaining. The other night Claire got up, put Jillian in the spare bed in Daniel's room, put herself into our bed and went to sleep. When I found them, Claire was almost asleep and Jillian was still bouncing off the walls.

If we put Jillian to bed first, she might fall to sleep and then 20 minutes later Claire goes in and goes to sleep. This would be the perfect solution but it only works out that way about 20% of the time. The other times, Jillian is still awake waiting to parrrrrr-tay with Claire and they're both just up later than if they went to bed together.

If we put Claire to bed first...well...that's never happened. There is no way nosey Claire is going to let Jillian stay up later than her. NO. WAY. This would be the best scenario if Claire would allow it.

In the end, what all this means is that I have two really tired, grumpy kids around here. Frankly, we're grumpy too as we spend hours trying to get them to sleep so we can have a bit of peace before we go to bed ourselves. Yes, Jillian needs less sleep than Claire but she still needs more than she's letting either of them get. She has been going to school in a bad mood and picking more than her usual share of fights with Claire. Claire looks like the walking dead half the time. On the nights when Jillian goes to sleep first and she can go to bed and directly to sleep she is much easier to live with the next day. When she gets less than her 12 hours things are going to go wrong around here before 9 AM. Guaranteed. And when things go wrong with Claire - things go wrong with everyone (her wrath knows no boundaries).

I have yelled, I have revoked priveledges, I have promised treats if they just go to sleep already, I have left them alone. Nothing works. Nothing. Help? Please? Help?

Maybe I do have lots to say after all!