Go Figure

I've often heard mother's say "Just when I had this sleep (feeding, carseat, etc) thing figured out the kid goes and does something totally different!" Parenting is all about flexibility, it seems, as our carefully construed schedules for our children are (at least in my house) rarely followed. I admit, schedules for kids are not totally overrated as sleep and food are usually necessities in a toddler's life. But as predictable as some things in life seem, my kids are NOT.
Sadie has seen a total of 4 movies in her life, at the movie theatre, only 2 of those were with me. So far she has wept many tears at each movie, usually in fear of "the bad guy", but also when Simba's dad died (which prompted a very sweet conversation between her and Steven regarding his mortality). We took her and 3 of her cousins to see "The Smurfs" at the dollar movie last weekend and pretty much every time Gargamel made an appearance she held onto Steven for dear life. She ended up in my lap by the end of the movie for the big fight scene where the smurfs defeat Gargamel once and for all and throw him in a heap of garbage. Literally 2 minutes before she was begging to go home, weeping over captured Papa Smurf, then at the end of the movie she turns around and says "I loved it, that was my favorite movie and I want to watch it everyday." Go figure.

Eli, as I have mentioned, has given us some sleep and diaper issues lately. He used to be so easy putting to bed and a great sleeper so I'm not sure where we went wrong, but lately he's discovered he doesn't have to stay in bed, he can get up and walk around, play, usually he just crawls really slowly through the hall. We have found him asleep many times at the top of the stairs, in the hall, or on the floor next to Sadie's bed. The other night we let Sadie fall asleep in her bed and put Eli in ours (usually we do it the other way around since they share rooms, the move Sadie to her bed after she's asleep). We came upstairs to check on them and go to bed and Eli wasn't in our bed. Where was he? In his, fast asleep. Go figure. And tonight, after weeks of talking about potty training, occasional peeing in the potty (and pooping once), Eli NEVER mentioning that he has to go, I turn around while giving David a bath and he is sitting naked on the potty, peeing and pooping all by himself, with no prompting. Go figure.

Now for David, he is perplexing me as well. From the beginning he gave me pretty good stretches of sleep, but the last month he has seemed to go backwards and wanting to wake up and nurse more in the middle of the night. So the last few weeks I bit the bullet and started putting him to bed in his own room, in his crib, and feeding him in there in the middle of the night (vs. taking him back to our bed). He was not improving, in fact he seemed to be waking up more. (Crying it out wasn't really working, either). So, last night he was up by the time I was turning out the lights to go to bed. I let him cry for a few minutes then just gave up and went and got him and brought him to our bed. He ate a little, then fell asleep between us and slept until 7:15 the next morning. Go figure. 

To conclude, one of my favorite parenting quotes "you just gotta find what works." That's the theme of my home lately, it seems. If I figure it all out, I'll let you know. :)