The Nelson Narrative

Fed up with Kayley's antics, we decided that's it!  We're putting both girls in their cribs at bedtime and Kayley can cry her little eyes out until she finally goes to sleep and Olivia, poor thing, will just have to put up with it.  So Sunday night that's exactly what we did.  She cried for 20 minutes and finally fell silent.  Last night it only took 10 minutes!  Maybe if we keep this up she'll be back to normal, where we can just put her in her crib at bedtime and she'll just go straight to sleep (or at least not scream and cry).  Here's hoping.  But man, it's nice to have a little of our evenings back.

What a fun day.  This morning I took the girls to an indoor gym at the Mount Si Community Center in North Bend which I never would have known about if not for my awesome neighbor Dana who is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to Things To Do With Toddlers.  They basically set up all kinds of fun climbing stuff, ride-on toys and what-not in a gym and people bring their kids to play for a $1.00 donation.  Perfect for rainy days!  I only wish we would have got there sooner because we only had about a half and hour to play before it ended.  But the girls loved it and we will definitely go again very soon and get there earlier next time. Later, seeing as how Kayley wasn't going to take a nap (although she did sleep in the car on the way home, a whole 10 minutes or less), I decided to put her to work helping me bake cookies! Mmm... Olivia finally got her cookie when she got up from her nap Huh...interesting

We're still really struggling with getting Kayley to go to sleep at night.  If she takes a nap at all, I wake her up after an hour and a half (she used to sleep 2 1/2 to 3 hours) but she'll still be up until 10:00 or a little later.  If she doesn't take a nap, she falls asleep in her highchair at dinner time.  If that happens, we put her in her crib and sometime she'll stay there and sleep and other times she'll wake up and not what to go to sleep.  If she stays asleep, again she'll be up until 10:00 or later and if she doesn't she's a crabby mess, and still will be up until at least 9:00.  Yesterday I didn't put her down for a nap thinking that she would go to bed at 9:00ish or even 8:30, as opposed to 10:00 or 11:00.  But we went for a walk at 4:00 and by the time we got back around 4:30 she was asleep.  I put her down in her crib and got her up a half hour later.  But she was cranky and wouldn't stop crying so I laid down on the couch with...

First of all, what 19/20-month old drops her nap???  Isn't that supposed to happen sometime after 2, if not 3 or 4?  Seriously, Kayley.  OK, so maybe she hasn't dropped it completely , but more often than not she doesn't take a nap.  Including yesterday.  No biggie, I'm getting pretty used to it and it's kind of nice to have a little one-on-one time with her.  BUT, then she proceeds to get up at 3:00 AM and not go back to sleep for a hour or so.  Sort of.  Here's what happened: Kayley woke up around 3:00 AM.  I go in there and try my usual lay-her-back-down-and-rub-her-back-until-she-falls-asleep-and-then-quietly-sneak-out routine.  Not working.  So after 3 or 4 attempts (she would seem asleep, but when I'd try to leave she'd pop right back up and start fussing) I just got her up and let her play/wander in the loft while I laid down on the couch, the idea being that she would eventually fall asleep on the floor at ...

This was the girls' 2nd Halloween but their first time dressing up and trick-or-treating.  We went to our friends' house where the guys took the kids trick-or-treating and the women stayed to hand out candy and enjoy some wine and girl time.  It was great!  Our girls are obviously a bit young for trick-or-treating but since we were with friends with older kids we just took them anyway and they did great and had a really fun time.  It's SO hard to get a decent picture with both of them in the same shot but here's the best I could do: Blurry pic of Kayley as a Ladybug Kayley, friends' daughter Lindsay (3) as a Monkey and Olivia as a Zebra Olivia Olivia and Kayley