Useful advice

Hello lovely Mamas. How are you on this fine morning?

Alright, now that that’s out of the way – enough with the niceties and on with the recounting of tales of my kids’ lives for your amusement/enjoyment/to pass 5-10 minutes of your day away.

My 19 month old is teething like a mofo. Poor thing must feel awful. When she’s not crying or fussing, she’s shoving her hand in her mouth and holding it there. (Heart. Breaking.) Sometimes she wants to be cuddled. Other times she’s mad and wants nothing to do with us. Unless we have Popsicles.

My 3 year old is super funny and cute lately. She wants to hug Lauren to make her feel better. Lauren generally wants no such support.

So, lately, Andrew and I spend most of our time trying to distract Lauren and breaking up sibling fights.

And then comes bedtime.

Last night, for what feels like the 100^th night in a row, Lauren required me to rock her to sleep until she was out cold. This from the child who loves her crib. The child who will drink a bottle of milk, go to bed and either fall asleep instantly or happily talk to herself for a while before falling asleep.

Now? She thrashes around and screams and cries if you dare to put her down before she’s asleep. Yet, while you hold and rock her, she plays with my face, pulls on her eyelashes, taps her feet together and other such fidgeting. Also? The kid REFUSES to shut her eyes. They can be rolling around due to complete exhaustion and she will STILL try to force them to stay open.

She is slightly irrational.

Anyway – so things have been stressful at my house as of late. And while I was scouring the parenting articles to try and find some tips for getting through this stage, I came across this useful tidbit:

“Reduce what is making you exhausted”.

Oh. Oh, thank  you. THANK YOU so much for this helpful advice. I had never thought of trying to get Lauren to sleep without me needing to rock her for 2 hours. You know what? I will try that tonight! I will reduce my exhaustion by putting her to bed with no screaming and then skipping off to bed myself.

And by “putting her to bed with no screaming and then skipping off to bed myself” I in fact mean “putting her to bed with much screaming, caving and rocking her for 2 hours and then running to the kitchen for a glass of white wine, followed by a marathon of Keeping Up With the Kardashians just because I need some non-thinking alone time to myself on the couch.”

That should work, right?