Category: family

It’s been a couple months since Gwen’s sleeping habits went off the rails, and I’m THRILLED to report things are finally almost back to normal, at night at least. We have our routine down and most of the time it’s a success. After dinner she has her bath, then drinks her milk while we watch youtube videos either on the couch or in our bed. Then she gets her nighttime diaper and pajamas on and brushes her teeth. We read one story in her bed and then tuck her in sitting up. She hugs us and hugs the dogs and then we turn on the Sleep Sheep and turn off the light. After we leave the room she lays down and probably 95% of the time goes straight to sleep and stays asleep through the night.

A few notes:

• She has her bedtime milk in a bottle, but with a sippy lid on it. I found that the sippy lid valves tend to collapse on themselves and make it hard to drink so I leave the valves out and keep my fingers crossed that she won’t spill milk all over herself/the couch/my bed (spoiler alert: she usually does).
• Her youtube faves: Yo Gabba Gabba clips, Vet Ranch, Demolition Ranch, and Cats 101.
• Either Taylor or myself or most often both of us have to brush our teeth while she brushes her teeth.
• I bought some little light switch clips to try and stop her from turning on the light on the rare nights she doesn’t stay in her bed, but she figured out how to work them, so we actually have to loosen the bulbs in her room every night.

HOWEVER one thing we don’t have back to normal yet is naps. Gwen still needs a nap, if she doesn’t have one she is ABSOLUTELY DEMENTED by about 5 o’clock. After a few failed naps where she made assorted messes in her room (clothes, books, poop D:) and kept her lil friend awake I stopped trying to get her to sleep in her bed in the afternoons. I found that the only way I could get her to take a nap was if she fell asleep in her stroller. Every day I take her for a walk around my block, and once she’s out I pray I can get her back to the house before some loud noise (sirens, construction, garbage trucks, just loud people or dogs) wakes her. Back at the house I very carefully roll her stroller down the stairs and into the foyer. She’ll sleep in her stroller for an hour or two, then wake up all sweaty and cranky.

Sometimes she’s so grumpy and fussy after her nap I’d have to cuddle her on the couch for hours afterwards. I hate that she’ll only nap in the stroller because I just don’t think it’s that comfortable- she always has her head cranked way over to one side. Last week she started falling back to sleep once I moved her too the couch and napping for longer, and then yesterday she actually fell asleep on the couch before I even took her for a walk. She woke up from that nap without any fussing or crying at all, it was kind of amazing! I mean, it’d be MORE amazing if she would nap in her bed, but I’ll take what I can get.

A few weeks ago the speech pathologist called to check on Gwen’s progress, and I asked her to go ahead and close the file. Gwen is talking more and more all the time, and I think it’s better to the speech pathology department to spend their time and resources on children with greater issues. Even though the file is closed, we don’t lose our “spot,” and if we have concerns about Gwen’s speech in the future the file can be reopened without us having to be on waiting list again.

Some of her Gwen’s favourite things to say…

Colours. When we read books she’ll point to things on the page and say “pink! blue! green!” She knows what purple is but she can’t quite say it yet so it gets “pink!” as well.

“More!” When she wants to watch another instalment of Demolition Ranch or eat another bowl of yogurt & berries.

“Too!” When she wants to go for a walk too, when she wants me to watch tv with her too, when she wants Taylor to come brush his teeth with her too. Speaking of teeth, when she wants to brush them she says “teeth” and rubs her finger on them like a brush.

“Poo-poo” or “poopy” or “pooooooooooo.” When we take Georgie for a walk and she does her business.

Recently she’s been adding longer words to her repertoire: kitty, pillow, tickle, and my personal fave, Taylor. Yes, she’s stopped calling Taylor “dadda” and started calling him by his first name, and it is HILARIOUS to me. This is obviously a habit she’s picked up from me, although when I’m speaking to her I call him “dadda” or “your dadda” (usually in the context of “let’s go wake up dadda!”) but when I’m talking to him I call him by his name and she copies everything I do.

I know it’s poor form to recycle your instagram pics in your blog posts but this is literally the only picture of Sym that exists, and also it is very cute.

School is over and it’s officially summer for Sym, which means it’s officially exasperation season for me. We already had our first big attitude problem-related blowout and I confiscated all her devices for five days- before she’d even picked up her report card. Teens are hard to parent sometimes! Last summer I came up with a big list of chores and activities with rules about how many she had to complete each day before she was allowed any screen time, which worked well, but this summer I’m more about getting her out of the house to do things where there might be other people.

Options for teen activities when you are as broke as me are pretty limited; most of the programs at the community centers around here are for younger kids (or they are just exercise classes), and most of the art and theater classes I’ve found are too rich for my blood. Through some clever googling though, I found a wealth of teen activities and workshops at the library that are FOR FREE and I am ALL ABOUT THEM.

This week she started a creative writing workshop that is every other Monday afternoon all summer, and I signed her up for a three-day Barbie modding workshop at the end of July. She actually pestered me about the Barbie thing for days until I signed her up, which is amazing for a kid who usually wants nothing more than to lurk in her bedroom watching It’s Grace videos all day. There is also a button-making workshop I’m trying to get her to do but for some reason she says she isn’t into buttons? I was like “YOU CAN PUT THEM ON YOUR JEAN JACKET!!!!” but she wasn’t sold. Honestly sometimes I wonder how we are even related.