I think Paul was offended by that last post about him wanting finger food but being unable to get it into his mouth. He continued practicing and went from a success rate of maybe 25% up to 60% in a matter of days. He now grabs two or three O's, crams the fist containing them against his face and most of the time they go in or stick to his lips so he can just nudge them further in. He won't grab the squishy food yet, but I'm sure that's not far off. He has been enjoying the first tomatoes from our garden for the past couple of days. There are likely to be many more since we have 14 plants and they seem to be heavy-laden.
It took many weeks for a lesson to get bludgeoned into me - keep a schedule and life will be easier. We have been so involved in setting up the new place, big events, etc, that we just didn't bither with a schedule. Meals happened whenever convenient, bedtimes were guesses based on unruliness of kids, eaxh day was a different errand. There were some rough days, but Dan wasn't working, so we were able to muddle through somehow. With Dan at work from 4am to 7pm (except on days when it's 4am to 11pm), the unruliness that comes from catch as you can a bit too exhausting.
Typical day starts when Paul wakes at 6am. I have breakfast and do a chore or two because he's generally cheery and no longer hungry. Penny wakes around 7:30am for breakfast and Paul has something to eat in his chair. By 9am we have to be out the door to the park. My pale skin really restricts when we can play outside, so we're part of the early crowd at our parks. It's kinda funny, too, because the other folks at the park are speaking Russian or something and look pale like me. As we wrap it up at 10am or so, the tanner (more likely Italian descent) folk start to arrive at the park.
We have some nice parks to choose from. The one by Penny's future school has a couple of good playsets and lots of older trees for shade. The obviously new park on the beach has no shade because the trees aren't old enough yet. However, it has a great ocean theme, with pirate ships, a play structure shaped like the SI ferry, and a sprinkler system that turns on when you touch a certain pole.
After playing, we might run an errand like a trip to the grocery store, the library or the hardware store. Whatever we do, we have to be home for our 11:30am lunch time - both because the sun is too strong by then and I've got hungry little campers. Lunch takes forever as I make something different for each of us, the nap for Penny at 2pm. Paul usually requires a nap by 1pm, but he likes to keep me guessing some days. Penny's "nap" goes until 5pm. Nap prep - potty, brush teeth, stories, whining about how not sleepy she is - usually takes an hour, then she doesn't really sleep for a while, then she might actually start sleeping by 4pm. I tried starting nap later, but then she would wake from napping at 6 or 7pm in a horrific mood and that just made things awful. So this ludicrous three hour confinement to room is really what works best.
Then it's 5:30pm dinner, maybe a bit of playing, perhaps Daddy comes home at 7pm, we go water the garden, Paul's bedtime, Penny's bedtime routine from 8pm to 9pm. If I'm lucky, Dan isn't too tired and I get to do thre dishes before bed. If I'm unlucky, I just have to figure a way to do it during nap the next day. You can see there's not a whole lot of downtime or time for me to do chores unmolested. Yesterday, I mowed the lawn after putting the kids to bed for the night. Morning revealed a couple of patches I missed, but remarkably few considering the whole process was done in the dark. I then take a shower and go to bed.
It feels weird having my day so rigidly planned, but then days like today happen and I remember why it is that way. This morning Paul awoke early, then was ready for his morning nap by 7:30am, well before Penny awoke. With both kids asleep, I figured I'd capitalize on the opportunity and get a cat nap. Penny awoke me at 9:30am and we started breakfast at 10am. So we missed our usual going out window. As such, errands for the day were postponed to tomorrow. I tried to still do stuff with them outside, but further threw off the schedule, which led Paul to skip lunch and have a weird nap schedule and some serious crankiness from Ms. Penny. It's amazing how one little choice can snowball throughout the day, but getting back to the schedule can really help return sanity to the situation.
It took many weeks for a lesson to get bludgeoned into me - keep a schedule and life will be easier. We have been so involved in setting up the new place, big events, etc, that we just didn't bither with a schedule. Meals happened whenever convenient, bedtimes were guesses based on unruliness of kids, eaxh day was a different errand. There were some rough days, but Dan wasn't working, so we were able to muddle through somehow. With Dan at work from 4am to 7pm (except on days when it's 4am to 11pm), the unruliness that comes from catch as you can a bit too exhausting.Typical day starts when Paul wakes at 6am. I have breakfast and do a chore or two because he's generally cheery and no longer hungry. Penny wakes around 7:30am for breakfast and Paul has something to eat in his chair. By 9am we have to be out the door to the park. My pale skin really restricts when we can play outside, so we're part of the early crowd at our parks. It's kinda funny, too, because the other folks at the park are speaking Russian or something and look pale like me. As we wrap it up at 10am or so, the tanner (more likely Italian descent) folk start to arrive at the park.
We have some nice parks to choose from. The one by Penny's future school has a couple of good playsets and lots of older trees for shade. The obviously new park on the beach has no shade because the trees aren't old enough yet. However, it has a great ocean theme, with pirate ships, a play structure shaped like the SI ferry, and a sprinkler system that turns on when you touch a certain pole.After playing, we might run an errand like a trip to the grocery store, the library or the hardware store. Whatever we do, we have to be home for our 11:30am lunch time - both because the sun is too strong by then and I've got hungry little campers. Lunch takes forever as I make something different for each of us, the nap for Penny at 2pm. Paul usually requires a nap by 1pm, but he likes to keep me guessing some days. Penny's "nap" goes until 5pm. Nap prep - potty, brush teeth, stories, whining about how not sleepy she is - usually takes an hour, then she doesn't really sleep for a while, then she might actually start sleeping by 4pm. I tried starting nap later, but then she would wake from napping at 6 or 7pm in a horrific mood and that just made things awful. So this ludicrous three hour confinement to room is really what works best.
Then it's 5:30pm dinner, maybe a bit of playing, perhaps Daddy comes home at 7pm, we go water the garden, Paul's bedtime, Penny's bedtime routine from 8pm to 9pm. If I'm lucky, Dan isn't too tired and I get to do thre dishes before bed. If I'm unlucky, I just have to figure a way to do it during nap the next day. You can see there's not a whole lot of downtime or time for me to do chores unmolested. Yesterday, I mowed the lawn after putting the kids to bed for the night. Morning revealed a couple of patches I missed, but remarkably few considering the whole process was done in the dark. I then take a shower and go to bed.
It feels weird having my day so rigidly planned, but then days like today happen and I remember why it is that way. This morning Paul awoke early, then was ready for his morning nap by 7:30am, well before Penny awoke. With both kids asleep, I figured I'd capitalize on the opportunity and get a cat nap. Penny awoke me at 9:30am and we started breakfast at 10am. So we missed our usual going out window. As such, errands for the day were postponed to tomorrow. I tried to still do stuff with them outside, but further threw off the schedule, which led Paul to skip lunch and have a weird nap schedule and some serious crankiness from Ms. Penny. It's amazing how one little choice can snowball throughout the day, but getting back to the schedule can really help return sanity to the situation.
posted from Bloggeroid
No comments:
Post a Comment