Saturday, June 28, 2008

Sleeping in

Friday
9:11pm: Maeve lays on dads chest as he gently pats her bum until she falls asleep.
Saturday
3:06am: Maeve stirs in bed next in between mom and dad. Dad is awake but doesn't know how to operate the bottle warmer so mom gets up. Dad meanwhile changes her diaper, half asleep, in the dark without getting pee or poop on himself, Maeve, or the bed. A success. Feeds Maeve her bottle.
3:25am: Maeve falls asleep on dads chest. He carefully moves her off so he doesn't roll over on her.
5:00am Dad awakes to the sounds of Charlotte's bird machine in her crib. He looks up at her video monitor and sees she is still laying in the crib. Goes back to sleep.
5:58am Maeve begins to stir. Dad looks up at the video monitor and sees Charlotte is no longer in her crib. He gets out of bed. He finds Charlotte sitting on the floor at the gate in front of her door playing quietly with toys. They are both up for the day.


Saturdays should be the one day of the week you can sleep in a little. Not until noon or 1pm, but maybe 8am? maybe 7am? Getting up at 6am is just silly, especially after waking up at 3am and again at 5am.

So everyone keeps asking how hard it is with two children. At least from dads perspective, its not any harder than having one. Its much easier than he expected. Everyone tried to prepare him by saying, ohhh, two kids means double the work and stress. As for stress? None. We have already gone through most of it with Charlotte. We don't worry about every little sound. About if she is sleeping on her back or stomach. If she drank enough milk. Or if her diaper was changed every hour. There is just less to stress about.

It is harder to get things done because you only have two hands. It would be nice if we had four. Its hard to hold an infant and urinate at the same time while a two year old is trying to flush the toilet on you. Its hard to put an infant down to sleep and then hold her sister back from poking her in the eyes while she is sleeping, all the time yelling, "SISTER AWAKE??". Its just hard to tend to two children at the same time. But we couldn't imagine Charlotte not having a sister to play with. She has been so great with her little sister. And we now know what a baby who sleeps well, eats well, and sleeps well is like. :) It makes us very happy. KNOCK ON WOOD!

Maeve turned 8 weeks old on Friday. Its hard to believe two months have already flown by. In celebration, here are some shots of Maeve getting a bath tonight.










1 comment:

Tamra said...

Aww! Thank you for the encouragement. We could use it. Now if this baby would only be born. He is due today!