To Nap Or Not To Nap

At almost 4 1/2 years old, my girls are still fabulous nappers. It's genetic. At almost 35 years old, I am a fabulous napper too! However, over the Christmas holiday it became more and more apparent that if the girls took their afternoon nap, their 8:00 bedtime stretched into a 9:30 bedtime. This worked perfectly fine for us when we didn't have any alarm clocks waking us up in the morning.

Now that work and preschool are back in the mix, we've begun a painful new routine on Sundays which involves NO NAP so that the girls go right to sleep at bedtime and are fairly bright-eyed when I wake them up for preschool on Monday morning. There really is no "routine" to our Sundays other than think of every possible way to keep the girls happily occupied and not clawing each others eyes out so that everyone survives and mommy doesn't start drinking at noon just to maintain a little sanity.

Bedtime for the girls is at 7:00 on Sunday.

Since today is a holiday...it is our Sunday. The girls are happily occupied watching their Tinkerbell movie as I type. Next up is a game of Candyland (insert maniacal laughter here). Playing a game of Candyland with three 4-year olds can be about as fun as poking your own eye out with a pencil. I'll try my best not to fall asleep sitting up as we play because I missed my nap today too.

Only three hours until bedtime. But who's counting?

Mercy

Ever feel like your kids take it easy on you when they sense that you have had a hard day or in my case they have me totally outnumbered? Clearly this wasn't the case here or here, but tonight, I think the girls took mercy on me. My girlfriend Ly's son had his birthday party tonight and I decided to take the girls eventhough I didn't have any backup with me. I think this is only the 3rd time I have taken them somewhere by myself...it's the fear of going out in public somewhere and the girls unleashing their inner rebel on me.

We had to drive about an hour and fifteen minutes to go to the party. Makena was a total stinker before we left. She has been throwing awful tantrums lately where I seriously think her head is going to start spinning. They were angels in the car. Hardly a peep out of them. Just looked out the window and listened to their Raffi music that was playing.

The girls were great at the party. Alyssa always sticks pretty close to me since she has developed major stranger anxiety in the last couple of months. Riley and Makena are happy just watching the other kids play and they would wander away not bothered that I wasn't right there. Ly's daughter, Ashly, helped me with the girls once we were there and she had the bright idea of tying ballons to their wrist. It made it so much easier to keep an eye on them by looking for the ballon in the mess of kids!

The ride home was a little noisier because they were a bit fussy since it was close to bed, but they were still really good. Even giggling in the backseat together.

Thanks for taking mercy on your mama tonight!

Almost makes me forget how unruly you can get out in the front yard.

Hmmmm....was that the plan?