Overnight Antics

See that sweet smile? So deceiving! Venice is going through an extreme independence streak. She fights all things related to caring for oneself- anything bathroom related, washing hands, bathing, brushing teeth. Is in a super clingy phase to Sylvie and goes ballistic when they play and when Sylvie is done playing. Poor Sylvie! She climbs out of her crib and time-out, runs around like a manic child during her time outs. It's exhausting.

We went on vacation and we are slowly getting back to local time zone. We finally had Venice wake at a decent time, nap at a decent time, and we woke her up to not sleep too long. Bedtime went decently but she woke at 1. Jorge rocked her a bit but I was pretty surprised when she woke at 4:00 again, wanting a snack, tv, and ready to play. AAAAAAHHHHH! Well here the independent streak comes in, she was screaming her little head off and trying to climb off the bed to go downstairs anyway. Before, she would have been quieter and mad.

So she kind of cornered me because Jorge had only gone to bed at 1:15, and needed to sleep for work. The kids were on the verge of waking up, and this child was going to do everything in her power to go downstairs, despite my 'no.'

She was mad that we were not starting up our morning downstairs, I camped on the couch with her on top of me. But she did settle. It's cooler and darker down here, so maybe she was overheated. We're working on drifting off the sleep, her on top of me.

Woof. Scratch. Whine. From upstairs. Repeat 200 times. Sigh. Lifted her up and went to get the puppy who also thinks there must be some magical party downstairs. Let the dog out to pee, grab a baby gate so I can block us into the family room and the dog in the rest of the main floor. This way the dog doesn't jump onto us, lick us, etc. And also, she can't chew all the kids toys, a random pencil someone dropped, kleenex, or one of the million things she likes to find. Well that pretty much backfired on me because Venice had a fluffy skirt on and it got all caught in the baby gate's 'arm.' Oh no! Now a normal child might have been okay with just getting this skirt off so I could fix it in the morning. But not this child. She was half asleep on me, and now stuck to a baby gate. And she was obsessed with this skirt- for the moment. If it dared to rip, there would be hell to pay. SO I had to prop the gate up with one hand onto the dining table and try to disentangle the skirt in the dark. With the dog woofing from outside now ready to come join the party.

It worked. We lay back down. She did settle. We slept until 7:30- bliss.

Gotta love parenthood. It's a wild ride.