The little one’s ways
I don’t write much about my nearly two-year old or my four year old at the moment. They’re both in interesting stages of becoming people that I don’t feel actually tag them very well.
Baby isn’t a baby any more and there’s an intelligence behind those eyes and a real evident love of what she’s doing that I find difficult to put into words.
My four year old has moved past what I remember as really bad times and is now someone I can talk to and occasionally reason with. While one week into a new school year is pretty early to say “things are getting better,” they appear so.
Baby has taken to waking up in the middle of the night hungry. She’s about to grow again I know it. She’ll get up, leave her room, walk to the stairs leading up to the bedroom and screaming “dada, baba, dada… dada.. milk… milk… baba” and when she sees me wake up will giggle and wait for me as I come down.
Once I’m downstairs she runs back to her bed while I make a bottle, she’ll take a sip or two, sigh, and go right back to bed.
I’ve tried feeding her extra, or giving her more milk, but I think we’re in a range where her stomach can’t hold what it needs to last more than about six hours asleep. I’m actually OK with being woken up by this one as the other options are to just put out a cheese plate or something for when she wakes up.
4yo Maggie is generally sleeping through the night. She’s kept a fear of shadows she has had since two that I don’t understand so she wants it either all dark or all light. All light she wakes up in three hours from, and all dark is just too dark. Nightlights don’t work in that room due to having two plugs in the absolute worse locations.
We settled on setting one of those multi-million color nightlights to a very dark red or very dark blue. Reds and blues don’t seem to make shadows, but still allow enough light for her to see if she wakes up.
I switched up a couple of weeks ago to a new-to-me Manny-van. Both the kids love that they don’t have much of a step up and can get in by themselves. It’s a level of empowering that’s done a lot for their mood I didn’t anticipate.
Being able to seat more than two adults again and have storage has made me a happy camper as well.
Little one’s second birthday is right after the Great North American Eclipse of 2017. We’re planning on maybe filming reactions as long as it’s not going to take away from the experience. We’ll see.
