This week, we were continuing to get her to nap without us in the room, since it hadn't been working lately anyways. She would just start playing or trying to get out of bed while we were in the room, instead of us being in the room helping her to calm down, like it used to. It's probably for the best anyways, because once Aedan is born, we won't have the time or patience to sit in her room waiting for her to go to sleep. I still stay in her room for about 10 minutes, just to help her calm down and stay in bed a little better, and I was amazed on Monday when she actually fell asleep around 1:45 with no fighting and without me in the room. It made me think, maybe this can actually work? I was very glad that she took a good nap, and fell asleep right away, because the weather was wonderful, and Daddy had plans to take her to the park to play while I gave piano lessons that afternoon.
Daddy told me a couple funny stories about their time out together that afternoon. When they were driving, they passed the church that Samantha and I go to for BSF, and Samantha recognized it, but then said, "Daddy, you can't go to Bible Study." Then Daddy asked, "Why can't I go?" Samantha replied, "Because you're not a lady." I think it's funny the things she picks up on, because she doesn't really see anyone except for the teachers and the boys and girls in her class, so I don't know how she would know that it's just a women's Bible study. Also when they were driving, Samantha told Daddy, "Slow down, you're going too fast. You're going to get into an accident!" She said this, even though he wasn't driving fast, just going around a corner. She likes to pay attention to what's going on around her while we're driving, whether lights are red or green and whether or not we looked before turning right or left. In fact, one time we went to the recycling center and a car almost backed up into me because they weren't looking. I mentioned how we almost got into an accident, and of course, that was one of the first things Samantha told Daddy when she saw him that night. Not much can be a secret around her. :)
On Tuesday we had Sadie over and did our normal routine of story time at the library. The first Tuesday of every month they have preschool science activities rather than craft time, and Samantha always enjoys those, although I have to admit that this day was probably her favorite. It was all about color, so she got to mix different colored water in test tubes, seeing that red and yellow make orange, red and blue make purple, and so on. She probably could have played at that station for quite awhile, but we had to give other kids a turn. She also got to play with prisms and see rainbows on the wall and looked through colored plastic and how it turned everything you looked at red, yellow, or blue. Another favorite station of hers was the sorting station, which isn't that surprising. They had containers that were red, yellow, green, and blue, as well as a bucket of items of those various colors. The kids then had to take the colored items and sort them according to color. Samantha really enjoyed this and wouldn't stop sorting until she correctly matched all the items from the bucket. She really wanted to dump them out and do it again, but Sadie was itching to get out of the stroller and it was time to let another kid have a turn. Our library is so great, and Samantha thoroughly enjoys her time there on Tuesdays.
Again with the nap time saga, for how good nap time was yesterday, Tuesday nap time was terrible. Like I said in my last post, we tell her that she can't have her blankie if she's going to play and not sleep, so I had to take her blankie away, making her scream and cry, because I feel like I have to follow through with what we say we're going to do. She still just looked so tired, even though she refused to sleep. It's such a crazy, daily battle. Who knew that nap time would be so challenging? I wouldn't care so much if I didn't think she still needed her nap. I know a lot of kids grow out of their afternoon nap around the age of three, but it seems like Samantha still need it on most days, and I feel like I'm not ready to give it up yet and then deal with a tired, cranky child at night. We tried just doing quiet time awhile back, but is just didn't seem to be the right time for her, maybe it is time to try it again though, who knows.
After nap time was over (even though Sadie napped and Samantha didn't), we played outside for a little while before Sadie got picked up and then while fixing dinner. But it was even hard for her to play because she was just so tired, she had a hard time listening, and she would get easily frustrated when trying to ride on her tricycle. We have been trying to encourage her to pedal so she can learn to ride by herself. She was able to do it all the way across our patio, but then when we took the tricycle in the parking lot in front of our apartment, she kept just pedaling forwards and then backwards, making it so that she wasn't getting anywhere. She was tired, got overly frustrated and emotional, and then refused to try it anymore. I'm excited for the day when she finally learns to pedal her tricycle because I think she will really like it and will enjoy zooming around on it.
Speaking of Samantha not doing a good job listening, while Daddy and I were working on dinner, we were letting Samantha play outside on the patio by herself. She knows her parameters, or so we thought, because the next instant we looked up and she had wandered away from our patio and got almost all the way down to the end of our apartment building. We tried to get her to come back so we could talk to her and reinforce the boundaries, but she wouldn't listen. Since she wouldn't even come and talk to us, she then lost her privileges to play outside for the rest of the night. Daddy handled that time out and behavior issue, which I was grateful for. Sometimes I get tired of dealing with all the battles during the day, and it's nice to have someone else take over when your patience is tried and tested all day long.
On Wednesday we had Sadie and went to BSF. It was good to go to Bible Study and have a little break from watching two little girls. It's always such an encouraging time for me, a respite in the middle of the week. And, after not napping at all yesterday, Samantha compensated for that by taking a nice long nap today. She fought it a little at the beginning, and then it started thundering and raining after she got into bed for nap time, so I went up there once to comfort her when she was crying because she was scared of the thunder. However, after going up and comforting her, she fell right asleep, sleeping until after 4:30 when a loud thunderclap finally woke up both Sadie and Samantha. They both had nice naps that afternoon. I always have thought that rainy days are the perfect kind of days to take naps, and apparently they did too.
While we were driving around in the car with Sadie that day, I mentioned how we had one more week of watching Sadie and then we weren't going to watch her anymore. Samantha asked, "Why?" I said, "Well, because Aedan will be born soon and then I will be busy taking care of him." After a brief pause where you could tell Samantha was really thinking, she asked, "Well, how long will we watch Aedan?" I laughed out loud and said, "Forever, honey, forever. You know how you live with Mommy and Daddy? Well, Aedan will live with us after he's born, too." Then Samantha said, in a very excited tone of voice, "So he gets to sleep at our house, too?" You can tell that she is trying to process what it means when Aedan is born and she will have a little brother, but you can also tell that she doesn't fully understand, which I know is normal. I think it's cute how much he comes up in our normal, every day conversation. Samantha is a going to be a WONDERFUL big sister. I can't wait for them to meet each other. :)
That night, since Daddy was planning on going out of town on Thursday morning for a conference in Chicago, we decided to go out to eat at Texas Roadhouse to fulfill Daddy's craving for steak. We had a good dinner together, but going out to eat at sit down restaurants is just not the relaxing experience that it used to be. Samantha really does fine at restaurants, she isn't loud or disrespectful or anything, but she has reached the stage where the commotion of everyone else is too distracting for her. She just wants to look around at everyone else and has a hard time focusing enough to actually eat her food. We tend to go to non-sit down restaurants more often, leaving the sit down restaurants for when Ben and I get to go out to eat by ourselves.
When we got back home, it was bath time and bed time, and then Mommy and Daddy had a good night of relaxing together, watching our recorded show and Netflix movie. I love nights of quality time together like that, when neither of us are working with a computer in front of us. It was an especially thoughtful thing for Ben to do before going out of town for a few days, because I certainly needed that time together to fill up my quality time tank. :)
Daddy left for Chicago at 6:45 on Thursday morning, starting my few days as a single mom, and not just a single mom; a single, very pregnant mom. Samantha woke up around 8:00 after I got out of the shower, and she immediately starting asking for Daddy. She knew that he would be leaving, but had forgotten, and she was pretty upset that she could not give him a hug and a kiss like she usually does in the morning before he leaves for work. We had a busy morning with going to a gymnastics make-up class at 9:15, and it was difficult to get out of the door on time with getting Samantha ready, getting myself ready, eating breakfast, and taking care of Roscoe all by myself. Gymnastics went well, even though we were late and missed the warm-up exercises. Apparently people must be able to tell that I am getting near the end of my pregnancy because now people will do things to help me out without me asking. For example, Samantha kept getting stuck in the ball pit at the end of gymnastics class, and both the teacher and another dad pulled Samantha out for me without me having to say a word. That was very nice of them, and I appreciated their kind gesture.
After gymnastics was over, we went to another appointment and then picked up Roscoe to take him to the vet for his rabies shot. It was raining all morning long, and it felt like a very long morning of running errands. However, I did stop at Starbucks to get myself some coffee while we were out, and I got Samantha a cake pop as a special treat for being patient while we ran our errands. Then, the day just kept getting more and more exhausting to me as I was dealing with everything by myself. I gave her leftovers for lunch, but she would hardly eat a thing. I finally got a few bites in, but she was just acting super tired. However, once I got her down for her nap, she was anything but quiet, she was kicking, jumping on the floor, playing with the curtains and the rug, taking the white things off the shelf that cover up the screws, taking out her hair and complaining about losing the hair bands, and generally being very loud. She looked so tired, had huge bags under her eyes, but was being so disrespectful about staying in bed. I wanted her to sleep because I knew she needed it, but she has been resisting naps so much lately. I want her her to at least be quiet and get some quiet rest, but how do we give her a reason to be quiet without also giving her permission to read or play instead of sleep? When we had quiet time as an option on the table, then naps were no more, she would just immediately get out of bed and start reading or playing. She played nice and quietly, but then after a week of doing that, she just acted too cranky and emotional at night. She had reached her limit by 5:30-6:00 every night and then was very unpleasant to be around the rest of the night. I also felt bad for Ben because the time he got to spend with her during the day was when she was so cranky, so because of all that we went back to enforcing nap time again.
Anyways, after almost two hours of fighting her nap, I didn't know what to do because we had small group that evening, and I knew we would be out late, which wouldn't be good for a grumpy, tired girl. However, a little after 3:30, she finally fell asleep, after calling for me saying she had to go the bathroom. So I took her to the bathroom and then took her back to bed since I wanted her to stay in her room quietly for a little longer. Well, then she screamed right away, so I went back in and sat her in the corner for a time out for screaming, then we talked about her being disrespectful instead of napping, and I told her about possibly not being able to go play with Delilah (our babysitter for small group) tonight because of how she was behaving. Then, I had her get back in bed again. After that, she didn't make any more noise, so something I said must have finally worked, or she decided she was tired enough and actually let herself fall asleep. It's just so silly, though, because she had been in her room since 1:45, finally falling asleep around 3:30, and then I had to go in and wake her up around 5:45 because I didn't want her to sleep too long, plus we had to have dinner before going out to our small group. It was quite the battle of the afternoon, and I'm glad she took a good nap finally. I also had a lot of time to myself since she was up in her room for 4 hours, and I was actually able to finish her baby book that I have been working on the last few weeks.
She ate a pretty good dinner that night of quesadilla and peas while we talked to Daddy on Skype. She was certainly excited to see him and talk to him, as she mentioned several times during the day how much she missed her Daddy. Small group was good and Samantha had Delilah all to herself, which she enjoyed. We even got invited over to a friend's house for Easter, depending on what is going on with the arrival of Aedan. However, we probably didn't leave small group until around 8:45, getting us home around 9:00, then I had to take care of Roscoe, let him out, and get Samantha ready for bed, when she was very tired and not so cooperative. I got her in bed between 9:30 and 9:45, finally getting my chance to sit down and rest, but she had a hard time falling asleep. I had to go up to her room a few times because she was crying and wanted to know what I was doing and where I was going, even though I told her that I would just be downstairs and wasn't going anywhere. There was also one time that I went up there because she didn't have an animal to sleep with (which I was kind of avoiding since she fought her nap so much that day). However, I didn't think that was a battle worth fighting tonight because usually our rule is that if she takes a nap, she gets to sleep with an animal. She chose Lambie, so I went searching for Lambie, gave it to Samantha, who promptly placed her at the foot of her bed, and then after that she finally settled down enough to go to sleep. I think it was around 10:20 when she finally fell asleep for the night. I was exhausted from the long, busy day. It's amazing how much different it is when Ben is not around. I always appreciate what he does for us, but I don't think I fully appreciate it until he's gone for an extended period of time like this, leaving me to handle everything myself. I think Samantha has also had an especially difficult time with him being gone this time. Our life is just not the same without Daddy around. She is the happiest when all of us are together.
Needless to say, I stayed up much later than I should have just to get some time to myself on Friday night. Especially because of how late it was when she finally fell asleep, I hoped that she would sleep in on Friday morning, but of course, that did not happen. She woke up singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at 7:00. I went into her room and told her it was still early and she needed to go back to sleep, she felt my clothes, wondering if I was still wearing my pajamas. I told her yes, and that I was going back to bed as well. She was quiet for another 20-25 minutes, whether she fell asleep again or not, I don't know, but then she was awake, and I decided to go in and get her ready for the day. After getting her ready, I offered for her to watch a show on the iPad so that I could take a shower, and that always works out well. However, after I got out of the shower and was getting dried off, the smoke detector in her room started going off with a deafening, piercing noise. I went in her room to see what was going on, and everything was fine, there was no smoke or fire, but Samantha was sitting there almost crying with her hands over her ears because it was so loud. I moved her into our bedroom where it wasn't so loud, dragged a chair out of Aedan's room so I could reach the smoke detector, and pushed the button on the detector to make it shut off. It worked, and everything was fine, but I just thought to myself, "How many other things can happen while Ben is gone, and I am here alone?"
After finishing getting ready and eating a quick breakfast of eggs and toast, we were off to my doctor's appointment. Again, it was hard getting out of the house on time when trying to take care of everything myself. I definitely take advantage of the routine we have when Ben and I are both home. My doctor's appointment went well, and Samantha did a pretty good job waiting patiently with me. My weight was the same as it was last week, which I was pleased about. My blood pressure was good, Aedan's heartbeat was strong, and his head is still down and in the right position. I asked Dr. Crooke about who is back-up doctor is, since he will be out of town the weekend of April 25, right after my due date. He said it is Dr. Brewer, which many of my friends use. I obviously would prefer for Dr. Crooke to deliver Aedan, but I am also not keen on the idea of inducing early just to guarantee that he will be there. I want my body to go into labor naturally, and I want to deliver naturally, unless there are medical reasons that force me to do something differently.
After my appointment was over, Samantha and I had to run errands to drop checks off at the bank, and to drop off and pick up books at the library. Then, we still had some time before our car seat check appointment, so we stopped at a local doughnut shop for doughnuts, chocolate milk for her, and coffee for me. It was fun having a little Mommy-Daughter date, and Samantha definitely enjoyed her pink frosted doughnut that she picked out herself.
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Our car seat check was quick and uneventful because we had them properly installed and the straps were pulled tight enough. The lady said we did an excellent job with them. So, Samantha and I made our way back home after another long morning of running errands together. However, I was so pleased with how well she behaved. Especially because she didn't sleep for as long as normal that night before, she could have acted a lot worse for me, which I was so grateful for. When we got home, we sat down together and read through all the new baby brother/big sister books that we had just picked up from the library. Samantha wanted to sit on my lap and cuddle while we read, and it was wonderful. We have been so busy lately that I feel like I have missed these quiet, snuggle moments with her. I will never turn down reading and cuddling with my little girl.
After that it was time for lunch, and I made Samantha Annie's mac and cheese, which is usually her favorite and she can't wait to gobble it up. I even let her choose which box she wanted me to make. However, when it came to eating lunch, she was not interested in the mac and cheese at all. She ate some broccoli dipped in ranch dressing, but hardly touched the noodles. I chalked it up to the fact that she had a doughnut that morning, but little did I realize that this non-eating trend would carry over into the next several meals as well. After letting her play for a little while after lunch while I vacuumed the house, it was time to take a nap, and she was tired enough after her late night the night before, that she went right to sleep for me without a fight. I didn't even have to go back in there once for any reason. She was asleep by around 2:15, and my parents arrived during her nap to visit for the weekend. For some reason, after sleeping for about an hour, Samantha woke up crying from her nap, I went in there to see what was wrong, and she didn't really have anything to say. I just told her everything was okay and that she should roll back over and go to sleep, which she did. Samantha ended up sleeping until around 5:30, which I was grateful for because she was so tired and would have had to go to bed pretty early that night if not for the nap.
Since she slept so late, and it was a Friday night, my parents and I decided to just get Mother Bear's and bring it home to eat, rather than going out to the restaurant and having to wait for a long time. Again, pizza and breadsticks are normally one of Samantha's favorite foods, but she would hardly touch it that night. I think I maybe got her to eat four bites, and she was just not acting hungry, wanting to get down from the table right away.
After a fun night of playing with Grandpa and Grandma, and coloring in her new Magic coloring book that they got for her, it was time for bed, and I let her stay up a little later than usual to be with her grandparents. It was really cute when I was putting her to sleep because she prayed, like she usually does, but tonight she prayed for her "Daddy living in Chicago." She certainly loves her Daddy and misses him when he is gone. After leaving her room, I had to go back in her room one time because she was crying when she thought she didn't have her blankie, when really it had just gotten tangled up in her blanket. After that, she settled down and was asleep by 8:45.
I spent the rest of the night going to Walmart to pick up a few things, one of them being the pictures for Samantha's baby book. However, when I looked at them, about half of them were pretty fuzzy, so after putting the good ones in her book, I spent the rest of the night looking for the original copies of the pictures that printed fuzzy. I think the problem was that I got lazy and started just copying the pictures off my blog rather than finding the original picture in my computer folders, making the resolution not as good as it needed to be.
I again stayed up a little too late working on Samantha's book Friday night, making Saturday morning come much too soon. Samantha woke up right at 7:00, ready to go. We had plans to go to the Wonderlab with Grandpa and Grandma, and Samantha was raring to go. By the time everyone got ready it was like 10:15, and Samantha had already been playing for 3 hours. We had waffles for breakfast, of which Samantha again did not eat much. I think I got her to eat four bites and she refused to eat anymore. We got to the Wonderlab around 10:30, and Samantha had a great time playing with the hands-on science activities, even though she was acting rather tired. Her favorite things were probably the little red spiky rods you could press your hand or other body parts into, leaving your imprint on the other side, the water table, and the air tubes that would suck up a ball or scarf, blow it around the tubes, and out the top, where it would fall down to the ground.
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This picture below is of Samantha's reaction when a scarf or ball was blown out of the air duct. She always squealed with delight!
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As soon as we got home, I made a quesadilla for Samantha because she promised me that would be something she would eat. The rest of us just had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pretzels, and cantaloupe. Even though Samantha devoured the quesadilla I made for her the other night, she hardly touched it today. She was refusing to eat again, and now I was starting to get worried. This had been a problem, on and off, since Thursday morning. I didn't want to force her to eat, but at the same time, I thought she must be hungry. So I told her she had to eat two triangles of her quesadilla. She still would not eat, so I gave her a time out in the bathroom. She screamed and cried and carried on for awhile, then I sat her down and talked with her, making a deal with her, and she just kept begging to be able to go right to take a nap instead of eating. I told her I wanted her to finish her two triangles, and then we would go right up to take a nap so that we could go back to the museum when she woke up from her nap. However, as soon as we got to the table, she started pushing back in her chair, trying to grab onto my shirt, and then put her teeth on the table, leaving a bite mark in the wood. So, I swiftly took her upstairs where I gave her a time out in the corner in her room. Again, she screamed, cried, and kicked for awhile before I went in there and had another heart to heart conversation with her. I told her I wasn't going to back down, that I still wanted her to finish her two triangles, and that she needed to apologize to Grandpa and Grandma for screaming at the table. I got her to calm down enough, so we went back downstairs.
When she first went back to the table, she seemed like she would actually comply, but then she just stopped eating, tearing her food into little pieces instead. So, I set a timer for five minutes and told her that if she didn't have the food on her plate finished when the timer went off, that we would not go the museum, even if she did take a good nap. So, she started whining and crying, saying "I don't want to go to the museum." I tried to just leave her alone at the table and ignore her, because sometimes that works to get her to finish her food when she's being obstinate like this. However, grandparents are not so good at ignoring their grandchildren, so Grandma continued to sit at the table with her and talk to her or keep on telling her to eat, which just made the situation worse, I think. After five minutes, the timer went off, and she still hadn't finished her torn up quesadilla, so I told her that we weren't going to be going back to the museum, and I promptly took her upstairs for nap time. She screamed and cried and carried on while I was trying to get her to go potty and get dressed, and she was making me quite upset. In fact, she made me cry a little as well. I wasn't really angry with her, I just felt frustrated because it seemed like nothing I was trying was working. She hadn't eaten very well for a couple days, she was so tired, and our normal consequences and time outs weren't doing any good. All this compounded with the fact that Grandpa and Grandma were here, Daddy was gone, and I was tired as well. I told her that she was being too disrespectful and that she was going to get in bed without me reading any books. So we just went straight to her room, got her pajamas on, and had her get in bed. I stayed in there for about 10 minutes, and even though she was begging to go down for a nap earlier, she was now in bed playing and trying to sneak her feet out of bed and stand up, so I decided to leave the room. As soon as I left the room, she cried for me to come back in and give her a hug and a kiss. So, even though I didn't necessarily feel like giving her a hug and a kiss because of her disobedience, I still did love my little girl tremendously, and wanted her to feel loved by me so that she could take a nap peacefully. After she got her hug and kiss, she fell asleep pretty quickly, and oh was I ever so grateful.
I can't remember what time she woke up from her nap, but she was much more pleasant after getting some sleep. She had a good evening playing with Grandpa and Grandma, ate much better at dinner that night, and Daddy arrived back home around 7:30, which everyone was so excited about. He took over Samantha duty, giving her a bath, and putting her to bed for me. I have such a wonderful husband, even though he was just as exhausted from his weekend as I was from mine, he put my needs first.
After a pretty crazy few days, Sunday felt much better with our normal routine of going to church and Sunday School. We made my parents a yummy lunch of peachy pork chops in the crock pot, along with some homemade bread from my breadmaker, corn, and cherries from Upland Grandma. It was a good lunch. Nap time was somewhat normal with Samantha playing for awhile and then finally falling asleep, but she woke up just in time to see Grandpa and Grandma, and say good-bye before they headed back to Chicago around 5:00. Our weekend was so busy with Ben being out of town and then having my parents to visit, that Ben and I definitely felt exhausted and in need of another weekend. Maybe when Aedan is born it will actually feel restful to us with how busy we have kept ourselves lately! He will force us to stay at home and rest!
I know I share a combination of both positive and negative aspects of parenting Samantha, but I wanted to leave this blog with a sweet story about the type of personality she has. Lately, if either Daddy or I mention not feeling well for some reason or not sleeping well, Samantha will immediately stop, close her eyes, and say a sweet little prayer for us go feel better. What an example to me of how I should pray for others! There is no hesitation or second guessing or promising to do it and never following through. She stops right in the middle of whatever she's doing and prays for another's need. It is so sweet and so encouraging to see that trait already developing in my little girl.
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