All Things Haley: Story #12

Grace has been pulling up and semi-cruising on furniture for a while now. But today she started getting quite a bit more confident in her cruising abilities and really showed us how close to walking she is!

She's a pretty fast little crawler now, so in no time she'll get from the "safety" of our big rug in the middle of the living room out to the tile and over to the sectional, pretty much out of sight. She'll crawl along around the ottoman and then all of a sudden you can see these little spikes of hair pop up from the side of the couch! Then, inevitably, Grace Face pops all the way up, tongue sticking out in focused effort, pulling her way around one step at a time!

She's always doing this tongue-out thing. When she's really working at something, usually trying to stand up or manuever around some tricky furniture, she'll stick her tongue out just like the picture above!

All day she would sneak away to pull up on the couch, usually in an attempt to get closer to something she wants but knows she can't have. That, or she's trying to tackle the cat. That elusive grey creature who always gets away just as Grace is getting close enough to really, really want it!

Today was a lot of fun, albeit stressful. After last nights disaster of a bedtime, the sleeping was a little better than anticipated. Grace woke up at 3 and then Caleb around 4:30 or 5. Unfortunately, I woke up after a horrific nightmare about someone trying to get into the house and get the babies and couldn't fall back to sleep. So I was ready to jump when Caleb started crying for a binky, it's critical right now that we get to it quickly so the other baby doesn't wake up too much! Stressful!

They both woke up fully around 6:45 so Ben had to get up and help feed Grace even though it was his sleep-in morning. Then he went back to bed and I hung with the littles watching some Olympics. This practice is far more trouble than it's worth, because keeping Grace from injuring herself while trying to watch anything else is pretty much worthless. And now that Caleb is rolling quite a bit more, he can't really hang on the ottoman without constant supervision, either.

We ate breakfast and then Ben woke up and helped with the next bottle right before their first nap. Grace started passing out in my arms on the bottle so I quickly took her in and laid her down for naptime. She was almost asleep as I laid her down, but awake enough to remember that she has officially gone on sleep-strike and therefore spent the next thirty minutes in full on meltdown when I wouldn't pick her back up again.

We officially started cry-it-out with Grace today. It was horrific. She was a blubbering, hyperventilating mess. She eventually passed out after I did the 1 minute, then 3 minute, then 5 minute checks. Right before I went in for a seven minute check, she had finally decided to call it quits and fell asleep. And for those unfamiliar with the Ferber method, the "check timeframes" start back at zero after every check. So she cried for one full minute, then three full minutes, then five full minutes, and then seven full minutes. It was horrible. I almost quit and picked her up, but then I remembered that she actually called this sleep strike and, oh yeah, she's old enough to have me pretty well figured out. She knows that I pick her up and then hold her to fall asleep when she cries like that. Hence...she cries like that. This has to change. I know her brain is on overdrive right now as she's learning about a million new things, but that doesn't change the fact that she can very easily fall asleep in my arms so therefore should be able to fall asleep in her bed just like she did a couple of weeks ago. Plus, her brain needs the sleep to make sure it can retain all of that critical baby-knowledge!

Phew, thanks for listening in on my self-justification. Cry-it-out sucks in every facet. Including, of course, the mommy guilt aspect.

Oh, and I've decided that it's pretty much impossible to do full-blown cry it out to two babies at once. It just isn't feasible. We're winging it right now with a modified re-try of cry it out for Caleb but still helping him sleep more than usual as we try to fully cry-it-out for Grace.

This is no joke. There's crazy logistics involved in this parenting twins stuff.

Ok, so after naptime finally began for Grace, Caleb gave us maybe three more minutes of nap (aka free time for Mommy and Daddy) before he woke up. Back to the races! We fed them lunch and then all went to the ballpark to meet up with Nana and Papa for some baseball fun! They did really well at the game. Caleb had a couple of very minor cry-fests but pretty much stayed happy. Grace was nothing but excited to have all the sights and sounds to take in...especially all of the fun non-toys to play with like Nana's glasses!

Then came more logistics. They both passed out in the car on the way to the game so that counted as their second nap. We've decided that a late nap or a third nap in the afternoon are officially out of the question in we don't want to be entertaining babies (or standing over baby cribs) until 9:30 at night. So getting them back into the car at 3:45 was like a death wish. Ben made the call to have me sit in the back seat and try to keep them awake with an obnoxious amount of puffs being shoved into their hands and mouths and a bottle each. It WORKED!

They were both wicked tired before bedtime rolled around and we had some fussy Caleb moments because of it, but when we gave them their bottles, they both pretty much passed out and then STAYED ASLEEP when we put them in their beds.

Whether this will work again tomorrow, I don't know. But the extra time tonight and lack of serious stress and irritation was incredibly needed. I'll take it!

So, Ben actually got to work out tonight and I actually got to write a real blog post! I plan to cook dinner, as well. Glorious!