Babies Galore

Last week my friend Sara and her son Eli came over for a baby/mommy play date.  Sara and I were roommates for a while, got married about a year apart, and had our first babies 6 weeks apart.  It is nice to have a good friend who is in the same stage of life as me (aka: married in our 30's, having our first kids in our mid-30's), and we try to get together about every other week

Laurel is a little taller, but Eli definitely has a bigger head!

 This past weekend Scott and I went up to Gladbrook, IA, to spend Friday night at my sister Carrie and her husband Tim's house.  They had work Christmas parties both Friday and Saturday night, so we took the Friday night shift, while the Klinge grandparents were in line for Saturday night.  This was a good test for us, if we should somehow end up with twins...Kendall is just over 2, Laurel is 8 months, and Oren is 1 month old!  I changed 5 diapers on 3 different kids in 2 hours!

Scott burping Oren.  Laurel has never been willing to take a bottle, so I think Scott kinda enjoyed feeding Oren.

Laurel and Kendall played "together" for a few minutes.  Most of this involved Laurel trying to pull the string on this toy while Kendall pushed her away.

Scott holding the babies

We were not able to get a picture with all three kiddies looking at the camera.

 Kendall went to bed around 8:15pm.  She wants someone to sit on her bedside table while she falls asleep...just sit there silently while she tells you a couple stories, and eventually settles down.  Laurel tends to need "mommy time" at night, so I ended up sitting on the bedside table holding Laurel while both kids fell asleep, and Scott gave Oren a bottle and put him to sleep.  We then had approximately 20 blessed minutes during which all 3 children were asleep!

Laurel doesn't sleep well in her pack n' play, so I put her on the boppy pillow on the living room floor.

 Laurel and bedtime have not been friends for the past month or so.  When she was really little, she slept in her car seat.  At about 3 months, we transitioned to her crib, and that went really well!  Then we started putting her to bed even before she was totally asleep, and she would fuss a little and go to sleep.  Then we started just putting her pacifier into her mouth in the middle of the night instead of me nursing her, and she went right back to sleep.  She even slept through the night a couple times!

Then a couple months ago she got her first 2 teeth.  She had about a week of lots of crying throughout the night, then the teeth popped out and she was happy again and slept well...for a couple weeks.  Then she got the flu right around Thanksgiving and since then, bedtime and sleeping has not been fun at all.  She will not soothe herself to sleep.  She will fall asleep on my lap or on Scott's lap, and be totally out...but then the instant we put her into her crib, she starts screaming.  If you pick her up, and stops screaming right away, and goes back to sleep--until you lay her back down in her crib.  

We have tried the 5-10-15 method.  It often turns into marathon crying sessions.  Last night she cried on and off until 3:30am!  Sometimes I even nurse her in the middle of the night again, but she still wakes up as soon as we put her into the crib.  However, she sleeps like a log if she is in our bed...problem is, we really don't want to have the baby sleeping in our bed all night for weeks, or months, or years.

Tonight it only took 4 tries and 45 minutes.  We'll see if she stays asleep, or if we get a middle of the night screaming episode.

so peaceful

Check out her crazy tuft of hair sticking out on the left.

 Laurel slept for about an hour on the floor Friday night, but woke up shortly before Carrie and Tim got home.  Then she was wide awake until about 11:30pm.  When she finally fell asleep, she actually slept in the pack n' play until almost 1am!  However, we didn't want to keep everyone else awake with a screaming episode, so we just put her in our bed...two adults and one baby in a full size bed is a little crowded.

I want my mommy!