Transitions

This blog is the closest thing we have to a family journal, so I have felt loads of guilt over the fact that I haven't been posting anything lately. I have this dream that one day I will actually put these posts into a book. In an effort to record something of what's been going on at our house, I'm going to start including excerpts from my emails to my brother Ryan who is currently serving a mission in England.


Excerpt from email written on April 3:
So life has been crazy at our house. I can't decide if I keep getting
busier or if I'm just getting more realistic about how much time I
actually have. We've been going through a lot of transitions lately
with the girls. I guess it's been about a week and a half now that
Anna has been binky free. I was gone at book group and Dan couldn't
find any of Anna's binkies. He told her that the binky fairy came and
took them to help her be a big girl. Anna didn't think much of that
and kept saying, "the binky fairy needs to come back and give me my
binkies." Of course I found two of her binkies the next day, but I
figured I didn't want to lose the progress we had already made, so I
hid them.  We both decided though that we felt a little guilty using
the story of the binky fairy, so the next day I told Anna that Dad had
told her that story because he thought it would help her but there
really isn't a binky fairy. We just couldn't find her binkies. I guess
the story made an impression though because she continued to tell me
that the binky fairy better come back. Anyway, it was hard for the
first twenty-four hours and there was a lot of crying for her binkies.
She even woke up in the night, crying because she didn't have her binkies to soothe
her. The next day she never took her nap because she didn't have her
binkies and I noticed her sucking on her fingers, but by the second
day there was less crying, and she took her
nap. Even now when she is extra tired or really sad, she'll cry, "I
want my binkies," but most of the time she's ok.

About the same time all of this happened, Anna also decided she wanted
to start wearing underwear instead of diapers, but she's not so
interested at sitting on the potty. So I've been putting her in
panties every morning, but then I spend most of the day trying to talk
her into sitting on the potty instead of just wetting her panties.
Rarely does she ask to sit on the potty herself. Usually I have to
bribe her with jelly beans, Skittles, or today it was gummy bugs. Evie
doesn't really know what's going on but she knows that when I go to the
pantry it's to get Anna some candy. Evie follows me now and begs for candy
too, so usually I give her some. I'm afraid of her first trip to the
dentist. Evie loves sweets and already eats more than Anna got at this
age. We usually make it through the first part of the day by eating
lots of candy and I spend a lot of time in the bathroom waiting to
hear that magical tinkle sound. Usually at nap time I put Anna in a
pair of pull-ups and if I'm too tired I just leave her in the same
pair until we put her in her diaper at bedtime. She's making progress
but it's very slow going. I want to give up but I figure as long as
she asks for panties I should try too.

On top of all of this, nap time is falling apart. Evie has been
sleeping for only an hour a day and this last week Anna has taken only
one nap. I think she's decided she's done with naps. I wonder if the
lack of binky has something to do with it. So this past week I spent a
lot of time rocking Evie to try and get her to take better naps and
then I spend more time trying to convince Anna to take a nap. I'm
continuing to try to focus more on my kids than on my to do list, but
at the end of this week, I felt like all I had done was sit in the
bathroom or rock Evie to sleep or the dishes. It's been a hard week
for me.