I believe we are approaching what is known as the “Terrible Three’s” with Raelynn. I think it used to be the terrible two’s, but has since transitioned to the terrible three’s. She is a good kid, she really is. But she is giving us a run for our money.
And it makes me question EVERYTHING…
Am I doing this parenting thing right?
Should we be spending more time with her?
Should would be disciplining her differently? It’s so complicated!
Her biggest thing is, she does not listen. If we tell her to do something, she will look at us right in the eyes and do the complete opposite. And it’s not just us. Her daycare has recently told me she gets in time out all the time for not listening. I’m hoping it’s just a phase. But I also do not think it’s related to Briar at all. I’ve often wondered if she was going to have ill-feelings towards her, but she never has. She loves her so much. I think she would be acting out even if she was still an only child.
I made a behavior chart in hopes that it will work.
She stays on GOOD and WARNING a lot. Very rarely do we have to use the time-out section. We also try to move her to GOOD or AWESOME as much as we can. We relate it to everyday stuff. If she gets out of bed in the morning and doesn’t argue much, goes to the potty, changes clothes, brushes teeth, then we will move her up, but if she doesn’t do one of those things, we move her down.
Whenever she gets home we go right over to the chart and say, “Okay, this is where you are based on the morning, now let’s try to get to GOOD or AWESOME.” About 75% of the time, she does good. But, boy, when she is defiant, she will fight tooth and nail. She is so bullheaded.
But she’s cute.
Since it’s summer time here, we try to go outside as much as we can.
Raelynn loves it outside. She is her daddy’s shadow when he works outside. When he mows, she wants to help him, whenever he does gardening, she wants to help. We also have a fire pit in our backyard and she loves to have “camp fires” as she says. 🙂
She is too smart for her own good. She remembers EVERYTHING. Like, when we tell her that she can have her iPad on the weekend if she is good…she has no problem reminding us about it. Or if we tell her that a special event is coming up, like a friend’s birthday. She will ask about it everyday until the actual event occurs.
She is definitely going to be our little pistol.
In other news, Scott and I had our first actual date night!
It was amazing and so so so much needed. I wish we could do it every weekend. It was very impromptu. We actually kinda decided at the last minute to do something and we found a sitter.
We went to a local brewery that we had never been to before. The brewery also happened to have vegan food. And a lot of Vegan food is dairy free!! So I was super happy. We got an appetizer, had some beers, we sat outside, it was so nice.
We talked about EVERYTHING.
We talked about things going on in our lives, we talked about things we wanted to do, we talked about our kids, we talked about having more kids or not having more kids. It was just so nice to have uninterrupted time together. After that we went to another local restaurant and drank some more. There was also a live band and we love live bands.
It was just such a perfect night. Neither of us wanted it to end.
We were only out for about a total of 5 hours and home around 11pm. I pretty much went home and went straight to bed and of course, my little Briar was up at 3, 4, 530, and 630 :\ I’ll elaborate more on her sleep later.
The next day was Father’s day.
We went to the Zoo. That’s what Scott wants to do every year. He said he wants to make it a tradition. We try to go early too. Not only to beat the crowd, but the animals seem to be more active when it’s not steaming hot. After that we pretty much ran all day to see all of our dads. So needless to say, we were not excited for Monday to roll around.
And of course, can’t forget to update y’all on my little Briar.
Just when I think I have you figured out, you throw a wrench in my plans.
Sleep is still our biggest issue and she is no where near consistent at all. We did, however, have our first, official sleep through the night. She slept from about 7:30pm – 5:00am. She’s actually done that twice now.
And while I get glimpses of this wonderful life of sleep, she says, “HA, FUCK YOU!” and wakes up literally 3-5 times a night.
Lately she’s been averaging at least 3 times waking up a night. For about a month now, I have only been feeding her once. It’s around the 3:30 am wake up. 7:00 pm until 3:30 am is a long time without food, and she truly does eat good when she wakes up at that time. She’s not just trying to soothe herself back to sleep. So for now, I will keep that feed.
We were absolutely spoiled with Raelynn’s sleep abilities.
At about 4 1/2 – 5 months old she started sleeping so well. She slept from 7:00pm until we had to wake her up the next morning for daycare around 7:00am. Even on the weekends, we had to wake her up at 8:00am.
I already know we are going to have to sleep train Briar. We did not have to do this with Raelynn. She just taught herself how to go to sleep. The biggest difference is Raelynn didn’t have a paci, and Briar does. And when we finally sleep train, I am getting rid of that thing for good. I wouldn’t hate it so much if she kept it in her mouth. She constantly spits it out. But when she does keep it in her mouth, it soothes her. I’m like, okay, what logic are you using here Briar?
We were also really blessed that Raelynn took very consistent naps. Briar is still all over the place. Whenever we figured out what worked for Raelynn, we literally revolved our day around it because it worked! And she cried for 4 months straight, so whenever we figured out how not to make her cry, we did everything we could to make it happen. Briar is just a little shit. A huge believer that the paci is not helping her take naps really either.
I’ve been reading up on what sleep training method I want to use and we are probably going to do the Ferber method.
It’s a version of cry it out, but with check in’s. Everything I’ve read about it says it should work within 7 days tops if you do it correctly. Also, all of the research I’ve done says to wait until 6 months. I’m so so so ready to try now, but I’m still afraid it’s too soon and I’d be wasting my time. I literally contemplate it every night whenever I have to go back in her room and put her paci back in her mouth. But I don’t want to half ass it. I want to do it the right way so that it will actually work.
She has been pretty clingy lately too. She’s always had her fussy time from about 5pm-7pm, but it was getting better and only from about 6:00pm – 7:00pm, but now she’s reverting back to 5:00pm – 7:00pm. She doesn’t want to do anything except be held and walked around. You cannot hold her and sit, you have to walk. It’s like there is an alarm that goes off whenever we try to sit down with her. It’s frustrating and exhausting.
She tries so hard to sit up, but she is still pretty far away from it. Probably in the next month or so she will be able to. I’m so ready for that, because she likes to sit up with assistance now.
We have just not had it very easy when it comes to kids.
Clearly, I am SO INCREDIBLY happy that we have happy, healthy kids. We have some high needs kids. I am SUCH a comparer which I know is the worst thing I can possibly do…BUT I CAN’T HELP IT!! I feel like everyone else has easy babies with their perfect life. And Scott and I are over here barely keeping our shit together.
Which leads me to my next topic….to have more kids or to not have more kids.
Scott and I finally had an in depth discussion about it. Both of us had valid points and I think we both took each other’s perspective pretty seriously.
ME – I just do not feel done have babies. I want one more. I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl. Just a healthy baby. I hate being pregnant. I don’t enjoy the beginning months. But, that first moment whenever I get to see my baby is literally magical. Nothing else matters at the point. I know the next year is going to be fucking hard. But, it’s worth it.
We have been blessed with 2 healthy girls. What if the next one isn’t healthy? What if there are complications? With the exception of Raelynn’s unexpected natural birth, both labors and births have been pretty easy. What if I have to get a C Section the next time? I know it’s not the end of the world, but it’s not ideal.
SCOTT – He really, really hates the beginning months. He does not feel bonded at all to the baby. He felt the same with Raelynn and Briar. And I can totally see why. They are essentially attached to me for the first year of their life. Both cried a lot and he couldn’t soothe them. Both didn’t sleep for the first couple of months. It’s really fucking exhausting. It’s expensive as hell.
We only have a three bedroom house, where would we put the third kid? We obviously aren’t going to move anytime soon. There is no down time with 2 kids. We each basically manage one, so what kid is going to be left out if we have another one? We didn’t realize how much we enjoyed our freedom until we had kids. We didn’t realize how much we enjoyed each other until we had kids.
We both decided the decision is not to be made now.
We are still knee deep in Briar being a handful. I just reminded him that if we had made the decision to have another kid when Raelynn was 5 months old, the answer would have been no.
