Naps and the Women Who Love Them

We decided to drop Charlie's nap last week. It was, by far, the most stressful part of the day for all involved. Charlie clearly still needed the sleep but getting him to admit that was a feat beyond imagining. So, we now pile in the stroller at 1ish every day instead. Charlie generally sleeps for at least a little while. Megan is a crap shoot. Today she actually fell asleep in the car and then slept through the walk. Other days haven't gone so smoothly. While it's nice to get in some exercise for me, I'm really missing that nap. I really think divine intervention occurred near the end of my pregnancy. For the last month of my pregnancy and the first week or so that Megan was home, Charlie napped like a champ. He went down with little fuss and would sleep for 2 hours, sometimes even more, and then he would still sleep at night. It was nothing short of miraculous. We are putting him down an hour earlier and the extra time will be nice once Megan gets past the peak fussiness stage and starts developing some organized sleep. But, nap time was when I re-charged, wrote blog posts, checked e-mail, and otherwise got the down-time you desperately need when facing a day with Charlie. I loved my naps.

4 Things

1. Sometimes motherhood sucks

2. Some days, my biggest parenting achievement will be not spanking my toddler

3. Never go to the grocery store with a newborn (cranky) and toddler (cheerful but energetic) who need you to go as efficiently as possible on senior discount day

4. Always be sure to keep 2 chocolate sources in the house at all costs

New Motherhood

So far, things are continuing to progress in a reasonable fashion. Last night was rocky. There is at least some possibility that Megan has colic which is a pain but if there is one thing I got good at during Charlie's early months, it was waiting out a crying baby. I can sing, pat, and bounce with the best of them and colic has the saving grace of generally ending by about 4 months. I'm still hopeful that it's a gas issue due to a rather overabundant supply and way too much lentil soup on my part but we'll see what happens over the next week. I know that by this time with Charlie, I had called my mother in hysterical tears to beg for help. A week of nights like last night might have that effect but I think we can struggle through for now. I suspect a large part of the problem was that she was too gassy to do her usual cluster feed before her long stretch so the cluster feed got moved to between midnight and 4 am- less than desirable for all involved. If she's anything like Charlie we'll be looking at least a day or so to get back on track, unless it's colic and then we're looking at another 3-4 months at which point we'll get to embark on teething!

I had forgotten how much of new motherhood involved being smelly. Between the hot flashes, spit up, and projectile poo, I'm not sure 2 showers a day is really adequate.

Charlie is becoming happier as his routine is coming back into play. The c-section took me out of commission for 2 weeks for all but the most sedentary of Charlie activities and the parade of relatives who came to help, threw him as well. Yesterday was our first solo morning and you could see his little body relax as we went about our usual morning routine of errands, lunch, and play time. The tantrums that had been at least an hourly occurrence eased back and I can only hope that the trend continues. He did get very distressed in the car when Megan was crying (she needed to go to sleep but hadn't quite managed yet) but calmed down as Megan did. I was heartened to see compassion on the part of my young toddler. Although, I do hope that we won't have many tandem crying sessions- that is the road to madness.