Diva

So.... someone was begging me for a walk.  Even brought me his leash.  Edward was out with The Ducklings and the sun was shining, so Malcolm, me and someone headed out.  However, someone started lifting his paws and looking quite miserable.  As I eyed the hill in front of me, I realized I couldn't carry someone and push the stroller.  Happily, the stroller came with a built-in diva puppy carrying device; aka, storage basket.  This was the result:

Is it possible for a dog to look sheepish?

Peekaboo!

Sharing Rooms

For our first few months with Malcolm, he snoozed in his little nook in our bedroom.  Well, to be honest, he spent most of his nights cuddled beside me, and his naps in Edward's arms.  However, he gradually spent more time in his bassinet - at least enough time for us to discover that he was rapidly outgrowing it.  Also, he started waking up every time I would sneak into the bedroom to get ready for bed.  He wasn't hungry, he was just a really light sleeper.  Yeah.  In our crazy loud and busy house.  Not the best combination.  So, I decided that it was time he got used to his more permanent digs.

That went well, and has continued to go reasonably well.  That being said, there are challenges inherent in room sharing, particularly when you have different ages and genders in the mix.  We do have three available bedrooms upstairs, but opted to continue using one of them as a playroom until Malcolm is a little older and they'll play more in their rooms.  Right now, their bedrooms are basically for sleeping. 

Colin and Malcolm

Initially, Evelyn was my choice to share with Malcolm.  I figured she'd be the most amenable to late night howling, and given her nurturing personality, she might actually enjoy her little brother's company.  However, at the last minute, I reconsidered and picked Colin.  Firstly, Colin is the deepest sleeper.  Secondly, certain combinations of Ducklings lead to loud and rambunctious results.  Specifically:  Keith + Colin = lots and lots of fun.  Not just "fun".  But, FUN!!!!!  Put them in the bath together, and expect a tsunami.  Put them beside each other at the table, and expect food to fly.  Put them alone in the same room, and expect.....  well, I'd rather not find out.  So, Colin got relocated.

I took the opportunity of the Ducklings being in New Brunswick for three weeks in August to rearrange the rooms.  I was a little sad moving Colin's bed out of the configuration he had shared with his siblings since birth.  I started preparing him for the change while at the cottage.  I explained that he was going to be sleeping alone for few months and then with Malcolm.  In the middle of my rather verbose pep talk, he interrupted with: "Okay, Mummy.  I get my own room!!  I SO excited!!"  and that was that.  Done.

It was all quite bucolic for Colin until Malcolm moved in.  Yes, Colin is a deep sleeper.  But nobody can sleep through Malcolm.  The situation improved as Malcolm's sleep improved; however for a long time, Colin was perpetually sleep deprived.  Evelyn can soldier through without a ton of sleep, and Keith is pretty amiable regardless.  But Colin NEEDS day and night sleep to function.  So for a long time, Colin was on (read: way over) the edge of miserable.   It doesn't help that Malcolm still has to be resettled partway through his afternoon nap, waking Colin up.  When Colin looks darkly at Malcolm and announces "I don't like Malcolm.  His screaming hurts my ears", he very much has our sympathy.  

We have tried to come up with different solutions, including the possibility of Colin napping in our bed (which he is afraid of), or getting another play pen for Colin to put in our room.  The last play pen I tried to buy on-line fell through, but I'll probably try again.  Evelyn is using the one we borrowed from my parents to nap in the basement.  Apart from the occasional "scary noise", that's working well.  She is extremely adverse to Quiet Time, much preferring Very Loud Time, and thus we need as much geographical distance between her and her siblings as possible for anyone else to get any sleep.

In any case, in the past week or so, the table have turned and now it's Colin waking Malcolm up from his nap.  Colin insists he isn't tired as he practically falls asleep in his lunch,  but will read or play with his toys as soon as he has a chance to be alone (ie. in his bed).  I guess he needs the alone time more than he needs sleep - no matter how much I try to convince him otherwise. 

As frustrating as it is for all of us, I do think these issues come with the territory when you have children with differing and changing sleep habits sharing the same room.  At the moment, we're going to push through, because it won't be long until Colin is at school full days (gulp) and Malcolm will be sleeping through the night.  Right?

Malcolm's side

Colin's side.  It's quite a small room*

Evelyn and Keith

I wasn't sure about mixing genders in a shared room.  I know this will be temporary, because I am sure that I don't want them together for more than another year or two.  And I suspect they'll agree with me.  But for now, it's a great combination.  Keith and Evelyn will carry on a few minutes of conversation after the lights go out, but nothing like the two hour nightly song and dance routine that transpired when all three of them were together.  No manner of cajoling or coercion would stop that party, which lead to some rather tired mornings.  As I mentioned above, Evelyn doesn't nap in her bedroom, and Keith loves to have time in his room for napping; but more importantly, he loves to have me set it up just the way he likes it: blind partially open, music on low and the fan running.

Keith and Evelyn's room*

I have learned that with most adult-engineered situations, your kids have to buy in to your schemes to some extent in order for them to be successful.  The older they get, the more opinions they have - and being three is all about asserting them.  The decisions are mine and Edward's to make, but consultation and compromise is an ever increasing part of the equation.  They have to nap and they have to sleep - it isn't open for debate.  But how and where they sleep is becoming more of a matter of preference.  At the moment, the Colin/Malcolm combination might need some tweaking on the nap front, but otherwise, we're going with the status quo.  I think those two will grow into it.  I can certainly hope they will!

*PS:  Yep, everyone is still in cribs.  They still like them for the personal space they provide, which is a rare thing in our house, and we love them for the containment!  Unless they start climbing out, or objecting loudly, I'm planning to keep them in their cribs until they come back from New Brunswick this summer.

Afternoon Sun and a Bit More Sleep

When you have a baby who wakes up from his nap a little early... and you realize you suddenly have a few rare minutes where the child to mummy ratio is 1:1, you grab the camera!

Malcolm at 7.5 months

He can sit solidly on his own, but once we try to entice him to crawl, he just rolls over on his back and grins.  He's no fool.  He knows that crawling = less time in someone's arms.  He's not ready for that, and quite frankly, neither am I.

We've had a few better nights.  We know Malcolm can self-soothe.  He can put himself back to sleep, but he was choosing not to.  Seven - eight months is notorious for the onset of separation anxiety.  They suddenly realize that you can go away and may not come back for a while... or, gasp, maybe not FOREVER!  It's possible that this was the root of his recent sleep issues.  In any case, he's still eating at 11ish, and then he gets a bottle of pumped breastmilk from Edward between 2:30-4:30, and he'll eat again between 5-7:30.  I can easily live with the 11 and 5-7:30 feeds, and the goal of giving him a bottle in the middle is to wean him off the habit of eating at that time.  

Weaning a baby off breastfeeding is a bit more complicated than weaning a bottle-fed baby.  With The Ducklings, anyone and everyone fed them their bottles.  So eating was strictly a biological requirement.  Once they were no longer hungry in the middle of the night, they stopped waking up to eat.  That didn't mean we were getting 8 hours of sleep, but the overnight feeds were pretty much a thing of the past by about 5-6 months.  

However, with breastfeeding, there is a biological and a psychological requirement of being comforted by me.  We weighed him on Friday, and he's tipping the scales at 19 pounds.  So clearly, he doesn't need to eat overnight - although to be fair to him, he is incredibly distracted during the day by his siblings and our boisterous household, and thus his day feeds aren't great.  Nevertheless, his feed times overnight are largely a habit by this point, combined with the need to be comforted.  We'll get there, but I truly believe that the last bit - giving up the reassurance and cuddles - is something Malcolm has to be ready to do.  Last night, he woke up and cried but rolled himself onto his side and fell asleep.  

Baby steps.  

Forecast: A Cold January With No Chance of Sleep

Apologies for the radio silence on the blog front.  I've been adjusting to Edward's return to work, the post-holidays daze, the frigid temperatures and a baby who defies sleep at every opportunity like it's his job.  More on that later.  

But first:

Dressed for -35 and the sledding hill

Someone is now officially too big for the bouncy chair (and 9 month pants)

A spinach/carrot/red pepper mustache

Ah, that adorable face.  The face that even for the fifth time and at 3am, I am compelled to kiss.  Malcolm has never been a great sleeper.  Our long, interrupted nights and subsequent foggy days are captured on calendars and random sheets of paper; proof of our high hopes and hard realities.  With a pacifier or without; nursed to sleep or not; quiet bedtime routines in semi-darkness or within the hubbub of our boisterous, busy house; rocked and held or put down.  It doesn't seem to matter.  He is resolute in waking up every two hours to feed.  Occasionally, we get a glimmer of hope, but then we're back in the sleep trough, stringing together a few hours of sleep a night.  We know he can put himself to sleep.  But that ability gets overridden by....?  Hunger?  Overstimulation?  Understimulation?  Noise?  No noise?  Alien visitation?  It remains a mystery.

The thing about having a challenging sleeper is that *everyone* has advice, and offers it very freely.  Books, other parents, neighbours, someone's uncle's brother's sister-in-law.  Everyone has their absolute "This is the ONLY thing that works".  "You HAVE to let them cry".  "You HAVE to take away their soother", "You HAVE to stop __________ (rocking them / holding them / singing to them / feeding them)" or you will Never. Sleep. Again.  I know they're well-intentioned.  But if there is one thing I've learned from being a mother of four, it's that One Miraculous Thing will not work for every baby.  God knows, it hasn't worked for mine.  My only advice for parents who have a challenging sleeper:  Unless you really want to be inundated with hair-raising stories about the poor parent who didn't __________, tell them that your baby is sleeping just fine, thank you.  Then run in the opposite direction.

And so, we continue to muddle along.   At some point, better sleep lies ahead.  We know this, and while we will continue to try to help him get there, a large part of our progress rests on him.  On really bad nights, Edward will mumble to me, only half-coherently, that "he HAS to sleep sometime".  And it's true, he will.  And when I stumble upon the 100%-Confirmed-One-Size-Fits-All-Magic-Bullet, I'll be sure to let you know..... once I make MY million.

The Aftermath

We had a very low-key Christmas, but all in all, it went very well.  The Ducklings were a little overworked (read: overtired, overstimulated, overwhelmed, and just, well, over done) towards the end, but they thoroughly enjoyed their Christmas experience of unwrapping, discovering and playing with their new toys.  We were fortunate to have dinner with my parents on Christmas Eve (followed by church), Christmas Day and Boxing Day, which always serves to reset our mood to "happy" and gives Edward and I a few more hands on deck.

The boys, engrossed

Reading Santa's reply to the letter they wrote to accompanied his milk and cookies.  If I look a little off, it's because I came down with the stomach flu on Christmas Eve, and spent Christmas Day feeling pretty awful.  I'm well on the mend, as is Myriam, who came down with said Plague on Christmas Day.  Fun times.

Evelyn discovers her new wallet and the shopping carts Santa left in the basement.  A total hit!

Everything is back on track at the moment, but we're waiting to see if Edward and Malcolm come down with the Plague.  Perhaps he'll catch it just in time for his return to work next week.  Indeed, after seven months off to help manage the brood, Edward is going back to work next Friday... for a much deserved  rest.... 

The Stockings Were Hung....

We're ready for tonight!

I'm not quite sure how we managed to pull it off - sheer force of will, I guess... although that's pretty much how anything gets down around here - and we still have a few more hours to go.  But.  The tree is decorated, the stockings are hung, the presents are wrapped, and soon (but not soon enough), visions of sugarplums will be dancing in the Ducklings' heads.  I'm looking forward to Nana, Opa, Edward and myself sitting on the couch to unwind with our feet up while kids slumber upstairs.  Of course, this idyllic scene may not play out until next year, or the year after, but we have something to aim for!

One of the perks of the kids being in preschool two mornings a week is the amount of art they bring home.  They are so proud of what they create, and although I have a wall in the basement dedicated to displaying their copious output, I was getting a little swamped towards the end of the term.  Then, the preschool offered the genius suggestion of using the art as wrapping paper.  So this year, the majority of our gifts were wrapped in The Ducklings' creative endeavours.  The colours are a little non-traditional - which is a plus, in my opinion - but it is a pleasure to gaze under the tree and see their handiwork.

On that happy note, we would like to extend our merriest and most heartfelt Christmas wishes to you all.  May our coming days be filled with the joy of celebrating with family and friends, time for the quiet contemplation of our good fortunes, and big dreams for the year to come.