Monday, June 4, 2012

Parenting Ups and Downs


Things are going really well for our family as of late.  I am so excited for Joe to be home for summer break this year.  I feel like it has become much harder to be motivated to exercise with little ones around and I'm looking forward to more time to be able to get out on my own.  Maybe then I will finally lose this last bit of baby weight!  Here is a bit of an update on our little ones:

Parenting Ups:

1.  Jack has started to learn a few words. This has been super encouraging, since he has a little friend he plays with (a week younger than him) who knows at least 100 words.  Just hearing him try to sound things out and discovering that he is saying a few new words, just makes me so happy.  As of now Jack can say the following words: hi, bye bye, night night, Dada, mine, beep beep, and bike.














2.  Ella has started to sleep through the night.  I hope I am not jinxing myself, but for the last two weeks she has slept from 8pm until 5-6am.  I think I have had to wake up twice for a feeding at night.  This has been so great.  I am still waking up because of Jack, but it just feels nice to not have to train her to cry it out and learn to fall asleep.  I love that she is learning to self soothe!  Oh, and she always wakes up happy in the morning just calmly making noises in her crib.  Then she greets me with a big smile. 

Parenting Downs:
1.  Jack still does not sleep through the night.  He finally has his own toddler bed, and he will go to sleep there each night, but he wakes up around 1am every night and cries because he wants to be in bed with us.  At this point, it is a habit and we let him into our bed for the second half of the night.  I have a goal to eliminate this trip to our bed each night and also to have him stop using the pacifier for naps and bed.  I want to get this done during the summer...I'm just dreading the cry fest that we are going to experience when he learns to sleep through the night.  Maybe I will get rid of the pacifier first.  Ugh, it is already ripping at my heart strings.


 2.  Sometimes being a parent makes you fight with your spouse.  I hate that there are times when we argue about how much free time we each get or if we should just let Jack cry it out at night without any comfort.  Life would be easier if there was one perfect way to raise your kids.  A simple manual to point out how to make it work.  Yet we all know that it doesn't work that way and we are still figuring out our needs.  Thankfully I know that I married a man that is a great father and wants to make his children happy.  That will always make me smile!


1 comment:

Taylor's said...

You both are amazing parents!

One thing a friend of ours does with a child that wakes up to sleep in their bed is . . . .they store the sleeping bags under their bed and they say, "you may sleep in our room but you will need to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor" They said after about 4 trips in and pulling out the sleeping bag and falling back asleep is all it took . . .no more children in their room!

And the binky breaking is so dang hard - I am not going to lie . . . it pulled at my heart so much - to my husband it was nothing but to me it was everything!

Your children are beautiful! You are amazing!

Update in February

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