Baby awake

Spencer was notorious for not napping during his naps.  He would lay in bed talking to himself for hours.  Sometimes he would fall asleep 10-15 minutes before he needed to be up.  More often he would never fall asleep and I would let him get out of bed after 2 hours. This didn't start until he was about two and a half though.

 

Elliott thought he would get a head start on his big brother. Sibling rivalry I guess.

 

Last Monday he fell asleep quickly, like always, woke up after about a minute and never went back to sleep.  Then he did the same thing on Wednesday.  Unbelievable.  I will never understand how my children, at such a young age, can be awake and functional for 13 and 14 hour stretches. Oh, and there were those couple of times when Spencer stayed awake for 23 hours straight as a newborn.

 

 On Monday I actually went and got Elliott out of bed after 20ish minutes.  I was not happy about it.  On Wednesday I let him lay there for 2 hours.  He just talked to himself, then fussed and called for me, then talked to himself.

 

He took great naps on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so I figured it was just a fluke and we could move on with some napping normalcy.

 

Nope.

 

He did the same thing this Monday.  He fell right to sleep and woke up a minute later.  I had planned on doing a 75 minute work-out during his nap and I wasn't going to let him stop me, so I left him in there for 2 hours.  He never fell back to sleep.

 

This is what the afternoon looked like after that.

Spencer and I were playing a card game with each other and Elliott kept reaching up to the table and pulling the cards onto the floor.  Every time he did it he would cry.  Loudly.

 

It was pretty funny, actually.

 

It's probably not nice to laugh at your hysterically tired baby, but I did.

 

He was totally out of control.

Man I love it when babies start getting a little bit of frontal lobe development and control of their emotions.

Even Spencer recognized how out of control Elliott was.  I might have let him mock Elliott a little.

Predicting that the rough afternoon would turn into a rough evening I got dinner ready really early.  The plan was to eat, go in the pool, take hot showers and go to bed.

 

We had finished dinner and had just mentioned the pool to the kids (causing Elliott to run around the house yelling boop, boop, boop- his word for pool) when a huge monsoon dust storm blew in at about 1,000 miles per hour. 

 

Within 10 minutes the sky was totally filled with dust.

 

And then the thunder, lightening and pounding rain started.

 

The beagle and the baby had no idea what to make of it.

 

After a particularly loud clap of thunder took a few months off her life, Ginger decided that she was more comfortable with storm watching from the living room.

The storm watching took the place of pool time and we managed to keep Elliott from totally melting down until we got him in bed at 7:45.  Then he proceeded to lay there jibber jabbering for 20 minutes. 

 

Seriously.  Why don't my kids need to sleep?

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This post has a few P.S.'s.  Bare with me.

 

P.S. #1

The title of the post, "Baby Awake" is a reference to what Spencer would say when he woke up from a nap or when he wanted us to come get him because he refused to nap.  He called himself baby for a reeeeeeaaaaallllllly long time.  One of his favorite stories about himself is about how he would say "Baby Awake".  He desperately wants Elliott to start saying it.

 

Little, almost 2 year old, baby awake Spencer.

 

P.S. #2 

Sarah Alderks- THANK YOU for telling me about the off switch on the spinner!  I saw it when I set everything up, but I thought it would turn the entire thing off.  I didn't know it was just for the sound.  I DO like it so much better in silent mode. 

P.S. #3

 

Look at the tile all shiny and clean! 

Isn't it just the best?