Tired Puppies

When people see Jip and I out with Ryleigh, we often get asked, "Are you getting any sleep?" The truth of the matter is, we're not. But, it has nothing to do with Ryleigh. She's a great sleeper. At night, she often goes 7-8 hours between feedings. No, it is RJ that is preventing solid slumber. He has never been a good sleeper. He's just our busy kid. As soon as he started crawling, he decided sleeping was highly overrated. Sure, every once in awhile, RJ will sleep through the night, but lately, he is up 3 and 4 times in the night. RJ still takes a decent nap each afternoon, and he usually falls asleep quickly for his nap. But, nights are more challenging. We have to sit in his room with him until he falls asleep, and sometimes that can take up to an hour. Just when you think he has fallen asleep, he'll pop up and ask you what you are doing or ask what Ryleigh is doing or if he can have some apple juice. The answers are always the same: "Waiting for you to go to sleep. Ryleigh's sleeping. No, drink some water." Then RJ comes in to our room around midnight, 2, 4, and 6. He is always quick to go back to sleep, whether it is in our bed or his. There have been a number of nights we'll wake up and RJ is in bed with us and Jip and I will ask each other who helped him get into bed with us--we're so tired we can't remember him jumping into bed with us. We are tired puppies.

But, tonight, RJ was a tired puppy. He crawled into bed, Jip read to him, and he barely got out, "I love you," and Jip heard the tell tale sign of RJ being down for the count--"slurp, slurp, slurp" (RJ sucking his fingers). That gave us hope. He was so tired that maybe he would make it at least a few hours. But, as I was writing this very paragraph, RJ got up and started crying when he realized we were downstairs.

And, so it begins. I got him back down very easily. I'll feed Ryleigh around 11 pm, then once RJ comes in again, I'll probably camp out in RJ's room on the floor so Jip can get some sleep. Somehow RJ senses our presence when we sleep in his room and he doesn't even stir. Jip and I are both tired, but at least I can sneak in cat naps during my day while RJ and Ryleigh are napping. Jip needs the nighttime sleep more than I do, so I don't mind sleeping on RJ's floor.

I'm not writing this to necessarily complain. I'm just stating some facts. We aren't getting much sleep. We wish we were getting more, but we're managing. Unfortunately, we're both getting pretty good at functioning on 4-5 hours of sleep, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. My sis tells me that it will get better--her girls weren't great sleepers either, but they eventually turned a corner and sleep as kids their age should. So, we're looking forward to that. I keep telling Jip I'll sleep when the kids go to college. Of course, I hope it is sooner than that.

Oops--there is RJ again. Gotta go play some Words With Friends while I sit next to RJ until he falls asleep again.

Marching to the Beat of His Own Drum

This morning, I received a reminder via Facebook that our library has story time on Wednesdays. We went a few times last year, before the big earthquake and we loved it. The story time leader was so awesome!! A couple of weeks before the earthquake, the fabulous story time leader announced she wasn't able to continue leading story time, and they we're having a hard time finding a replacement. After the quake, it was even harder to find someone and the base didn't have story time for a long time. Then, this fall, they found a new leader, but having a new baby didn't exactly fit with going to story time. Anyway, today I figured it was finally time to return to story time.

Let's just say that we'll be taking another break from story time. The leader is fine, though not quite as fabulous as Catherine of pre-earthquake days. The problem now is RJ. Although he will sit still when we read at home, he wanted nothing to do with sitting, let alone sitting still, at story time. He pulled books off shelves. He wandered around. He was, well--RJ. It was fine--he wasn't loud or really that distracting. He was just defeating the purpose of story time. Toward the end of story time, all of the other kids did a craft, but RJ didn't want to do it. Instead, he grabbed a book and asked me to read it. Then, he marched around to the classical music playing. Then he sat down (finally) and read a book I had picked out. Whew! It didn't help that Ryleigh, who should have been napping, was crying or generally fussing most of the time. I have never been so happy to see 11:15!

After lunch with Jip, we came home and just chilled. It was good to have an afternoon at home, filled with naps, playtime in the office, Lego building in the living room, and just being. Tomorrow is supposed to be the nicest day of the week, so we'll enjoy lessons in the morning and rest up for some solid playground time in the afternoon. Playdate on Friday. Jip works Saturday. Then Tokyo for the baseball game on Sunday. I need a nap just thinking about it all!

Please tell me this is just a stage...

As I was walking downstairs from my office to the little locker room where I store my bicycle, Amy called me and told me that we were going to dinner at the O-Club with our friends, Darren and Lauren (and Bella-5, and Isaac-a few months older than Ryleigh).  It sounded like a great plan.  Tuesday night is "MongAlian" night at the O-Club which is a combination of a Mongolian Grill with Italian ingredients, too.  You go pick your raw vegetables, fruits, meats, spices, etc., pay by weight for those ingredients, and then have them delivered to your table after they are cooked.  At that point, you can add noodles or rice, depending on your desires and tastes, to complete your MongAlian dinner.  RJ usually has some kid's meal like pizza, grilled cheese, or spaghetti.

The great night started going South immediately when RJ wanted the crayon that Bella was using.  I had made the mistake of letting them sit next to each other--learned my lesson!  Bella and RJ play together often, but he's always pushing boundaries and learning about social interaction.  Meanwhile, Bella has to put up with the occasional hair pulling, pushing, or hitting, and continual annoyance.  Tonight was no exception.  This is something that RJ needs to work on, and some days are better than others.  Anyway, RJ cried, was loud, didn't listen to anything I said, refused to cooperate, continually bothered Bella while she was eating, and overall just misbehaved tonight.  I made three trips out of the eating area (once to calm him down and twice for bathroom runs) and each time we'd come back, he'd go right back into being a pain in the rear.  I think that Amy and Lauren and Darren got a good chat in while I played referee with RJ, though. 

I know that this is just a stage, but it sure can be frustrating.  He can be such an angel most of the time but the little devil comes out occasionally--and it's always at the most inopportune time.  I know that he'll get better and better, but sometimes it sure would be nice if I could be successful at reasoning with a 2 1/2 year old.   :)

I hope your dinner is peaceful and calm tonight.
-Jip

Cute moment

I'm sitting here writing this blog entry on a new app we downloaded on the iPad. We'll see what kind of luck we have with it.

On to the cute moment. We needed to get out of the house this afternoon, so a trip to the playground was in order. I gave RJ the choice of playgrounds. He chose the one by McDonalds. I was thrilled--it is fenced in and everything is meant for 1-3'year olds, so I can actually sit on a bench and just watch RJ play. Plus, I could treat myself to an iced tea. But, once we were there, RJ played for only 10 minutes and announced he was ready to go home. So, back to the car we went. We hit the drive-thru then started heading home. On the way home, RJ suddenly changed his mind and wanted to go to the playground by the water. Fine. We pulled up and RJ saw that no one was there, and he changed his mind again. I was okay with that--I wanted to get outside, but I wasn't really in the mood to chase RJ everywhere on that big playground. Back home we went. In the middle of all of the drive-thruing and mind-changing, Ryleigh had fallen asleep. But, on the way home the second time, she woke up, and she wasn't happy. When we pulled up to the house, I decided I needed to make a couple trips. I didn't really feel frazzled, but I must have looked it, for when I came back to the car to get RJ and a still crying Ryleigh (first trip was to carry my tea, RJ's OJ, my purse, and unlock the door), RJ said, "Mom, I'm going to hug you and make you feel better." I didn't have to have the hug--just the words made everything right with the world, at least for a few moments. The hug was a bonus!!

It's not funny!

As the title suggests, someone thought something wasn't very funny, and that would be RJ responding to Amy and I laughing at him.  Unfortunately, we laughed harder after he said that line.  After running some errands and going to lunch, we all approached the front door of our house at about the same time.  It's a pretty heavy metal door with a screen door in front of it, and one common approach to opening the door for all of us is to use our backsides to push the door open.  This allows for a little more oomph to be put into it, especially while carrying a car seat or groceries, etc.  Today, Amy unlocked the door and just as she turned the doorknob and started to push it open, RJ pushed his backside against it and prepared to heave backwards.  Needless to say, he ended up landing on his rear and sliding bum first into the house.  This made Amy and I laugh.  He didn't land that hard, but I'm sure it was a surprise to him.  Well, he looked up and obviously didn't agree with us, so out came, "It's not funny!" which only made us laugh harder.  He sure didn't sound like a 2 1/2 year old! 

Some other good stuff today for the kiddos.  RJ made some ground today on going #2.  He's been getting better over the past couple weeks recognizing when he needs go and trying to get there before his pull-up is dirtied but he hasn't made it for a while now.  Today, he went three times without any mess in his pull up.  There was one other time in the middle there that he didn't try to make it to the potty, but that was while we were shopping so I'm not too worried about that one.

Enough about my son's bathroom habits.  He and I did some drawing on the white board today and for the first time, I saw him draw a very nice circle and triangle.  In the past, he's only drawn scribbles, but today the shapes were very well done.  Go, RJ.

Ryleigh had some quasi-firsts today.  Today was the first day for one of her new outfits...that counts as a first in my books.  She also had some quality time sitting on our bed today.  I got a few pictures of here with my iPod Touch, so they are not very clear.

Look how strong I am now.

Yeah, I'm looking at you, Dad.

Mom made a funny!

And this is RJ trying to join the fun with Mom and Ryleigh. Maybe next time he'll get a couple more inches of his face into the picture!

So that's about it for the major achievements of the day.  We managed to get out of the house twice today--once to go to the NEX, and once to go to LIVIN to look for some clothes for the kids and to get RJ another matchbox-like toy for his potty progress. 

Amy posted several photos from yesterday, but there were a few more that I thought were worth sharing.  Enjoy!

Not sure who's learning more here...

The "ball mountain" was a lot of fun.

Hi, Mom.

Come on, Dad, hurry it up.  We have to get to the top quickly.

RJ bonding with the one fish in the whole building.

 I was also able to get this video of Ryleigh bouncing in her bouncy-bouncy.  (Note:  I've had trouble getting a video into the blog.  If you are reading this with an Apple product, you probably won't be able to view it.  Our HP works okay, but the iPad and iPhone wouldn't.  Sorry.  The quality isn't very good because I had to reduce the size of the file to get it onto the website)

Of course, there was a little Engrish to brighten our day.

I didn't know vastness was tactile, let alone that more than one even existed...

I guess I'll have to go find an astronaut and ask about my qualifications...

And to close out the night, I'll share what RJ told me right before he laid down to go to sleep.  "Dad, I have a mission to save Mom.  I need a firetruck, ambulance, police car, and airplane."  Now, I have to go ask his mother what crazy adventure she's planning that will require these four vehicles to reach her...