What?  7 months old?  Where has the time gone?  Our little boy is sitting up on his own, eating 3 jars of baby food per feeding, and on the verge of crawling.

Paige: “Psst, got anymore food you could spare?”

So our sleeping is all out of whack.  I can honestly say we are a mess as I sit here in the dark in the wee hours of the am with Paige.  The girl has been waking up at 4:30 AM or shortly thereafter for about two weeks now.  We’ve tried everything to get her to sleep more but she is just up.  So I went online to consult the internet gods about how much sleep a toddler at this age needs.  The answer was ideally 14 hours a day, but MOST toddlers only achieve 10.5 hours per day.  So if we put Paige down for bed at 7:30 and she wakes at 5 that is 9.5 hours at night with a 1.5-2 hr nap totally around 11 hours sleep a day.  So she is normal and our expectations of her were not.  If would be AWESOME if she could get that 14 hours of sleep a day that they say is ideal.  I think that is more Cole-like sleep habits.  We put Cole down at 7:30 and he normal wakes up around 7:30 plus the two hour nap so he is achieving 14 hours of sleep a day.  I also recently changed their nap time a few weeks ago.  We now lunch at 11:30 and nap around 12:30.  This seems to be working out good.  I do not have to change their therapy times because all therapies start after 2pm and Paige at least is up by that time.

My other concern is Drew’s naps.  The kid just doesn’t sleep.  He can go all day without a good nap.  I did read that I am doing him a major disservice by forcing him to nap when the others nap.  He just can’t do it.  He needs two naps a day and I was making him try and only do one big nap per day with two small catnaps.  There is a window to put kids his age down in and if you miss the window then they become overtired and will not nap.  I think by trying to push his morning nap into a midday nap he was reaching that point.  The only thing is that if they all nap at the same time it makes my day sooooo much easier because I can do chores during nap time and I have a break from whining.  Oh well.  I’d rather have a well-rested child.  Eventually they will all nap at the same time even though I read that once you hit 2.5 years old the nap times get much shorter.  I’d even take ten minutes if that’s all they’d sleep.

Last thought:  before I put Cole and Paige down for their naps I always read them a book or two (or four or five) to settle them down and cue them that it is nap time.  I really enjoy doing this.  We sit in a big recliner and they each sit on one leg while Drew would sit in a bouncy chair next to the recliner and listen too.  I knew those days were short-lived.  Now that Drew is so much bigger and older he doesn’t want to sit in his bouncy anymore.  Great.  Yesterday I tried holding him in the center of my lap with P and C on either leg.  It was a tight squeeze getting all of us on that recliner.  It was so funny trying to read to them all at once.  Drew was just grabbing at the books trying to eat them? and was fascinated with the pictures on each page, Cole was trying to turn the pages on Drew’s fingers (before I could even finish reading the page) and Paige was saying “all done” and trying to rip the books out of everyone’s hands.  I’m trying to figure out how to make reading a little easier.  I don’t know if a kids’ couch would be good.  I don’t know if a full-size couch would help.  Maybe sitting in front of them reading upside down while all three of them are sitting would be good.  I don’t want to stop the reading before naps but it is getting tough keeping all three of them together and focused.  We’ll see.

5 PM: I was going to write a post about Paige waking up at 4 in morning, not from throwing a tantrum, but from coughing.  Instead I have to write Tobie took Cole to the ER tonight.  He started to crash pretty hard at home before dinner. The breathing treatments we were giving him weren’t working.  So he’s at the hospital right now.  He’s getting better after they gave him a few breathing treatments and some oxygen.  He was satting around 91 without the O2.  Not sure if they are going to admit him or send him home.  Part of me wants him admitted so we don’t have to run in his room every 2 minutes to see if he’s okay.  I’ll post more when I hear from wife.  I’m even posting a picture of him in a girl’s sleeper to threaten him so he doesn’t do this to us again!

Update 11 PM:  Good news, Tobie and Cole came home.  Roids and O2, is there anything they can’t do?  He had a bronchospasm episode.  On the downside we had Cole weighed, he was 22 pounds.  The last reference to Cole’s weight I made was in this blog post from summer.  That means he hasn’t gained any weight for about 4 months.  Ugh, that hurts.  On the flip side, Paige is pushing 27 pounds.

It all started at 4:00am  Drew wants to eat.  Go to his room and breastfeed him in bed.  Get a horrible kink in my neck that lasts all day long.  Early in the morning the whining starts.  Each time I tend to Drew, Paige throws a horrible tantrum.  I can’t breastfeed him without Paige trying to grab my finger and take me to the fridge.  Suddenly she’s dying of thirst and god forbid if Mommy doesn’t immediately put Drew down, stand up, and get her milk.  I tried to keep all three kids occupied, but they were so restless and bored all morning.  I decided to take them to the park. 

Last time we went to the park I spent the majority of the time chasing Paige from running into the parking lot.  She thought it was hilarious to watch Mommy leave her brothers with strangers and run after her.  Yeah, really hilarious.  So why did I think today would be different?  Well it was.  Today the park was empty.  I had no one to leave Cole and Drew with while I repeatedly herded her back into the play area.  She makes me crazy.  I can’t NOT chase her.  I tried that one time just to see how far she’d run away from me.  It was far.  This is the same girl that won’t get off my lap at home to initiate playing with toys on her own.  Needless to say we didn’t stay at the park long.  When we got home she fell asleep in her highchair and I struggled to wake her up.  That’s how tired she was. 

So I got them fed and went to put them down for a nap.  Paige screamed/cried for an hour in her crib.  Huh?  Same girl that fell asleep in her highchair?  She finally went down and slept for 3 hours.  That’s four hours total she was down.  So after all that time…you’d think she’d wake up refreshed and pleasant.  First thing when I got her downstairs she started going “mmmm” I said Paige “you want milk?” doing my little hand sign language gesture.  She gets all excited and grabs my hand to take me to the fridge.  I get her milk and hand it to her.  She takes her cup and throws in on the ground, screams, and proceeds to drop to the floor and throw her head back, crack on the tile floor.  That makes her mad and she does it again.  Turns out she wanted a cracker, not milk.  Stupid Mommy.  Our therapist calls half an hour before she is due to arrive to cancel our therapy today. 

Cole and Paige start fighting over sitting in my lap.  I try to explain to them that since I am still overweight there is plenty of lap space to go around.  They scream and bump heads together.  I get up so no one gets Mommy’s lap.  The peak of my day had to be when Cole was pulling my hair multiple times and laughing.  I said “no Cole” nicely, not so nicely, very firmly, then in desperation I pulled his hair.  I heard that works for biting so I thought hair pulling might work too.  I can’t tell you how horrible and sorry I felt when he whimpered and looked at me like I hit him.  He can pull all my hair out after that look he gave me.  Our play therapist who is scheduled for tomorrow calls and says she is not coming tomorrow and is taking another job so she’ll no longer be with us.  It took over a month to get her and she only worked with us for one day.  Now it will take over a month to get another therapist.  Is it time for Daddy to get home yet?  Nope, we go for a lonnnnng walk.  So now it’s time for bed so we can start the whole whining, tantrum-filled day tomorrow.