ALL THE TRANSITIONS

sleepy girls

As I hope you’ve read, we recently put Briar’s bed in Raelynn’s room in hopes they would sleep together.

We did this about 4 weeks ago in Week 32, and it’s been going okay. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, but that’s to be expected I guess when you integrate a 2 year old into a 4 year old’s room.

When we initially moved Briar over, she was in her crib. We knew we were going to transition her over into a “big girl bed” soon, we just weren’t really sure when. We wanted to go ahead and just move her with the crib over to Raelynn’s room so they could start getting used to sleeping in the same room.

It takes them about an hour to go to sleep because they talk and fight and throw stuffed animals at each other.

Then ALL of the fun began when Briar realized she could climb out of her crib.

This has been one of my biggest fears recently. She’s just always been such a dare devil. I knew she would be the one to climb out of her crib. When she discovered she could do this, she always went straight to Raelynn’s bed.

There were so many issues with this.

First, well…she was climbing out of her crib, which is not safe.

I was more scared than anything that she was going to hurt herself. I told Scott that we had to transition her over to a bed sooner rather than later. At this point, she had already conquered MY fear of her getting out of her bed, so we might as well just get the ball rolling on the big girl bed.

Second, we actually tried to let her and Raelynn sleep together.

We were really okay with this, if they would just go to sleep. But Raelynn doesn’t like Briar in her bed. She wants her bed to herself. When they actually did share a bed and sleep together, Briar would push Raelynn out of the bed, or kick her, or hit her. I think they successfully slept together twice.

sleepy girls

It was becoming exhausting and overwhelming.

Miraculously, Scott’s cousin happened to post a full size bed on Facebook for free because she moving and didn’t need it anymore. We weren’t looking for a full size bed, but free is free. I told Scott about it and he said let’s take it. We went and picked it up a couple of days after that.

We set it up a couple of days after getting it. Briar looked so tiny in a full size bed. Even with the big girl bed, she was still climbing into Raelynn’s bed and getting out of bed at night. She wouldn’t get out in the middle of the night, but it would be like 10 minutes after we put her to bed, she would get out and come prancing down the hallway with a big smile on her face.

So even with the big bed, it was still taking them about an hour to go to sleep. BUT, at least she wouldn’t be hurting herself trying to get out of crib anymore.

Overall, Briar transitioned very well.

They both sleep through the night. Their overall sleep hours are just about 2 hours less because it takes them forever to go to sleep and then they wake up earlier. They normally get between 9-10 hours of sleep a night.

I am constantly praying they start going to sleep quicker because here before long when Jolee is here, I am going to be going to bed when she goes to bed, which will leave Scott to deal with the two of them on his own and we both know how frustrating that can be.

Potty training has been so hit or miss.

There are some days when Briar does really well and then there are other days when she’s like, “Not today, girlfriend.” It’s so aggravating.

Briar and Raelynn have both been having really weird and bad poop issues.

Briar just refuses to poop on the potty. For a long time she was constipated, but we have recently started giving her fiber gummies and they seem to be doing the job for her. However, she holds her poop in and prefers to poop in her pull up. Her poop has not been hard for a really long time. But, she still holds it in. It blows my mind. We try to reward and encourage her as best we can, but she just simply doesn’t give a shit.

Raelynn, on the other hand has been having SEVERE constipation issues. In the past month, I’ve had to give her 3 enemas to get her poop out. It literally makes my heart hurt.

Our most recent incident was the worst.

For my 37 week appointment, I was only working a half day. I took Raelynn to work with me that morning, then we were going to go to the doctor, then eat lunch, and then we were going to get our nails done. I have been promising her for a long time that we were going to get our nails done. This was the perfect opportunity.

Right when we were about to leave work she said she had to poop and it wasn’t coming out.

I could tell this was going to be terrible.

When we got to the doctor, she wanted to try again, and still nothing. She told me she wanted to come home and try to go. I told her I could give her enema and it would help her. She absolutely does not like when I give her the enema which is 100% understandable. I wouldn’t like someone giving me on either.

In the past when I have given it to her, it pretty much comes right out. Not this time. I ended up giving her two, which is not recommended and even after the second one, it didn’t come out. At this point, I was getting super worried. We tried for 2 hours to get her to poop and nothing. I finally told her that we just needed to stop and she should get in a warm bath to relax.

I was so exhausted. I felt so bad for Raelynn because you could tell she didn’t feel good. She was so sad that we didn’t get to go to lunch and get our nails done.

She looked up at me and said, “Mommy, I’m sorry we didn’t get to have the day we wanted.”

WHO IS THIS SWEET CHILD OF MINE?!?!

I was holding back tears at this point. I promised her that we would do it another day and she did not need to worry about anything. She asked to sit with me in the recliner and she dozed off for a little bit. I just held her tight.

That night, I ended up going to the store to get some more enemas to try for the next day.

My mind was on Raelynn the entire time.

I just wanted her to go poop because I knew she would feel better. I also decided that I was going to do a miralax clean out to just clear out her system really good. This is just where you up the dose of miralax you give them for several days in order to get the poop moving and stay moving.

Whenever I got home, Raelynn was smiling so big and said, “GUESS WHAT MOMMY!?!? I FINALLY POOPED!!!”

This is the best part of the whole story.

I asked her if it was good one and Scott proceeds to say, “Don’t worry, I made sure that I left it in the toilet so you could go look at it.”

I’m seriously that fucking mom.

And I’m super okay with it.

I instantly laughed, because in that moment I realized how perfect Scott and I were for each other. He gets me. He knows how crazy I am. He had no shame in leaving that poop in the toilet so I could look at it. Even as I type this out, I am laughing.

These are the type of scenarios that you never envision yourself having before you become a parent.

But here we are. Leaving toddler shit in toilets so we can analyze it.