True Confessions of a Temporary Housewife

One more week. That's all I have left of my maternity leave. Only one more week of not setting an alarm, of not putting on make-up, of meeting-free days. Only one more week of letting Lucy doze on me mid-afternoon, of watching her wake up all smiles from her first nap of the day, of knowing exactly what she did and how she felt all day long.

It's also only one more week of terrible daytime TV programming, of spending significant portions of my day trying to get one little person to fall asleep or stay asleep, of feeling out of touch with the rest of the world.

Am I ready? Yes and no. I'm starting a new job at work, so there will be challenges and new experiences when I return. I'm a little nervous about it, but also excited. I do, of course, have concerns about how Lucy will transition to daycare. But this isn't my first rodeo, and I know it will all eventually work out. Plus, we've arranged it so that Lucy is not starting daycare at the same time I am starting back at work. She will be spending two more weeks at home with M. before she starts at daycare. Then she'll have to start getting used to an earlier wake up time so she can join us all in the morning rush out the door.

Yes, I did say EARLIER wake up time. Which brings me to one of my two confessions, the "secrets" I have been keeping from this blog for fear of somehow inviting bad karma that puts an end to them.

Lucy has been sleeping through the night.

Not the "if your baby can sleep 5 or 6 hours straight at night, she is technically sleeping through the night" crap. The "we get her into her crib asleep anywhere from 7:30 to 8:30 pm, and she doesn't wake up until after 6:30 am" sleeping through the night. 10, 11, even edging toward 12 hours in a row.

She's been doing this every night for at least a week - I can't remember exactly when it started. Disbelieving, M. and I continue to prepare for middle of the night feedings. We prep the bottle warmer with the necessary water for heating, and we bring an insulated sleeve with ice packs and a bottle up to the kids' bathroom. Where it then sits, all night long, until either I start to hear a few stirrings over the monitor, or I get worried that it's been too long since I heard anything, and I decide that it MUST be time for us to start our day. Today I went in at 6:55 am and had to wake a dead-asleep Lucy in order to give her her reflux medication.

I'm under no illusions that this will keep up forever. Eventually, Lucy will need to learn to sleep unswaddled, and she will need to learn to fall asleep on her own (THIS, she still does not do. Much effort to get her to sleep, followed by many wonderful hours of sleep). Not to mention growth spurts, ear infections, teething... there will be wake ups. But for now, it's heaven.



Confession #2 involves Finn. With very little work from M. and I, he is now just about completely potty trained. It's crazy how wonderful he has been about it. We still put him in a diaper at night and a pull-up for his naps, but he has been keeping them dry. The rest of the day he spends in big boy underwear, and he's had nary an accident in days. I think, very soon, we will be attempting underwear at night, too.

I'm not sure what did the trick. Daycare had been putting him in underwear, but he was having some pee accidents and (if he didn't poop in his morning pull-up first) a good number of poop accidents. Poop in the potty just wasn't happening. After one poop accident that happened at home (v. traumatizing for all of us, not my finest parenting moment), we decided to take a break from the underwear. We continued to send Finn to school in pull-ups, and just before the 4th of July, something clicked for him. He started pooping in the potty. At home and at school. So we've been running with it, and it's working out great. We've even done errands and trips out of the house in underwear, and he has been perfect. It almost makes up for the tantrum/discipline troubles he's been giving us lately ;-).



We had friends over this weekend, and finally managed to get a family picture of the four of us together - our first one since Lucy was born. Now I can finally update our picture on the sidebar of this blog!



And a couple of bonus pictures of my angelic (kidding, kidding) children: