April 29, 2009 @ 3 pm

So, once again it's nap time at our house- although my littlest lady is not too happy about our new nap routine. Lately she decides that she does not want to sleep in her pack and play at bedtime but would rather sleep in mommy's arms until 11 or so and everytime I finally get her to sleep and set her down she wakes up screaming. Not that I don't love holding and cuddling her- but- after a full day of being a mommy I would like 2 hours or so to spend time with hubby and have some ME time. So starting with nap time today I am letting her soothe herself to sleep. It stresses me too badly to just let her cry so I give her a few minutes and go in and pat her back for a few minutes to calm her down and keep repeating until she falls asleep. She is almost asleep now. I know this is tough on her and I both but in a week or so we will so appreciate all of the hard work- mostly on her part. This is the same method we used to get Hannah to sleep through the night and it worked amazingly. Hannah was a bit younger when we started so hopefully I didn't wait too long. Caroline's advantage is that she is already used to sleeping in her pack and play and Hannah had to get used to it because she was used to co-sleeping (which I refused to do with Caroline because it was 10 months of horrible nights of sleep)
But anyways, on a happier note- I took the girls to the zoo today and they had a ball! We looked at all of the animals. I love hearing Hannah say "byebye" to the animals as we move on from each group. "Bye Bye Elephants! Bye Bye Baby Bob! Bye Bye Giraffe!" Those three are her favorites. She loves feeding the elephants their crackers and we even got to see them drinking water from their little pond today- it was quite cute!! After we looked at all of the animals we stopped and got an icecream sandwich and a bottle of water. It's crazy that I could offer Hannah anything to drink and she chooses water- perhaps she got it from her mommy. So all three of us shared one icecream sandwich, washed up and then headed to the swings. The sun was so hot that we only got to swing for about 5 minutes and then headed back to the car. Caroline, unfortunately, got my skin and not her daddy's so I have to be very careful that she does not get sun burned. Hannah on the other hand gets a BEAUTIFUL tan- lucky little lady :) We headed home and got ready for naps. (By the way, Caroline is sound asleep- Nap #1 a success!!) So now I am sitting here waiting on a phone call about our mortgage. Someone is trying to teach me to have patience!! :)
I am looking forward to Gary getting home from work- eating dinner (have to figure out what to make) and then perhaps going to do something outside??? It is such a beautiful day- I love spring nights- and I bet I will love them even more when I can step into my own fenced in backyard and watch my girls chase each other around, look at the pretty flowers (or weeds for now- LOL) and just enjoy a beautiful night in our beautiful home!!!