Of course, after I posted last, Marlena stopped doing well in terms of sleeping in her "big girl bed". I started putting her back in her crib, and while that worked OK at night, at naptime it turned into an extended play session. So I watched Super Nanny... And what does Super Nanny do? She just puts the kid back into bed everytime the kid comes out. So that's what I've been doing with Marlena.
It's required a lot of patience. At night, when we - actually I should say "I" since Don goes into his lair to smoke cigars and work once he's given Marlena her bath - tried this, it took us - me - 1.5 hours until she fell asleep. Last night it took maybe half an hour or so. An improvement, but the trick is patience and no emotion and not saying a single word. Basically, showing no reaction you pick the child up, plop her back in bed, walk out and close the door. Of course, in the Super Nanny shows it seems to work much more quickly that in real life. Anyway, night time has been easy. Naptime is a whole different story. On Monday, there was no nap. I think that was my fault because I didn't start soon enough. Yesterday I started at 1pm, today same time. Yesterday it took 1.5 hours. Today about 45 minutes. I view it as a mental training for Marlena - the bars for the crib were physical, and she couldn't get out. Now I need to help her build mental bars for her big girl bed. Once I accepted that it'll just take time, the frustration disappeared and I was able to show no reaction. Of course some of the stuff she gets up to while we're doing this causes me big internal smiles, but that's where they stay. Or when she said "I need to play a little bit" yesterday, that was just too cute - but she got no reaction from this mommy.
Other news is that our place is finally coming together. Don and I agreed on an entertainment console, which will be delivered tomorrow. Our TV will no longer be sitting on the floor. We also bought a slightly larger desk for in our bedroom and the one we previously bought is now Marlena's craft table/couch table because there was no other place to put it that not only leave little Wolfie a place to play, but would also allow us to sit with Marlena at the table and play with her. Once the entertainment console is in place, the table will no longer block the TV and all will be hunky dory.
Pregnancy news - knock-on-wood, the pregnancy remains uneventful. Within the next few weeks we'll be bringing the admission papers to the hopital so we don't have to do that while in labour. I'm visiting the ob every 2 weeks at the moment - and at the end of March that will turn into every week. I was having trouble sleeping so we bought a memory foam mattress topper from Costco. We've slept on it 2 nights and it's made the bed more comfortable for me, but the bed feels quite a bit higher.
Other than that, nothing new is going on here. The weather is sunny and Marlena and I try to get outside every morning. And hopefully once her naps settle down, I'll be able to get a bit more done during her naptime.
