Where does the time go..

I can't believe it is already the end of August, we only have the last third of 2010 to go. I haven't even got used to writing 2010 yet!

Ciara continues to boycott naps at Kindergarten on the 2 days a week that she is there after lunch, she mostly still takes a midday nap at home though. The plus side is that on the days she doesn't take her nap she literally collapses into bed at night with no prolonged bed time ritual required. There have even been a couple of days where I have had to stop her going to sleep on the floor before dinner!

Enya on the other hand needs her midday nap, no ifs or buts there! As a new development, on the few occasions where Ciara has refused to sleep at home, Enya has not flipped out. Instead she has gone down without complaint and not let Ciara's noise disturb her nap at all!

Talking about noise, both girls are now telling Z and I that we are "too loud" if we tell them off or raise our voices in any way, even clapping or dropping something provokes this statement. Unfortunately telling them they are too loud doesn't get them to stop whining ;0). We have been practicing "loud and quiet voices" with them but it is still a huge game for them and they are not carrying it over in practical situations.

I'm still enjoying being back at work but it really leaves me with not a lot of free time. I will keep posting but i fear it may be even more irregular than it has been up to now ;0)

SOB! Goodbye afternoon nap

Ciara has now given up her afternoon nap. At kindergarten she just flat out refuses to lie down and encourages the other nappers (read Enya) to riot with her. At home I can still get her to nap but it often takes about an hour of taking her back to bed repeatedly before she finally falls asleep. She will usually sleep then for about 2 hours but as it takes so long to get her to sleep we run into trouble at night getting her to go down. If we let her go without her nap she is very whingy and dog tired in the late afternoon (as in a few times I've had to stop her falling asleep on the floor in her bedroom at half past five in the afternoon as she is so tired) but at least we're not fighting to get her to sleep at night.

Enya still needs the afternoon nap and we have arranged with the Kindergarten that she will still get it on the girls' long days. Today I was delayed at work and by the time I got there to pick them up, Enya was already napping so I left the girls there and had an unexpected free afternoon. She also sleeps in later than Ciara in the mornings so we are now encouraging Ciara to come and play in the lounge while the rest of us sleep in until half past six (about an hour unsupervised play) so far so good!

Amazing what a difference the child free time makes. I find I'm treasuring the time I have with the girls and trying to fill it with fun stuff to do with them rather than having to do household chores around them. I'm also loving the adult interactions at work, after 3 years everything child orientated it's nice to be able to chat with Z about something different.

More birthday photos

The birthday princesses


BBQ in the rain

Presents

We've been very busy the last 2 weeks.

Ciara and Enya are officially now Kindergarten kids and are LOVIN' it! They are there over lunch everyday and will be there twice a week for their midday nap as well. So far everything is going great, they have a fantastic set of carers who are amazing, patient and the girls love them already. We were really worried about the naps as the room is quite light and C and E are used to sleeping in pitch darkness but until today the girls have had reasonable naps with no fusses. Ciara today decided to boycott her midday nap and we paid for it this evening :0(.

At the same time I've gone back to work parttime, so far I'm really enjoying the interaction with other adults again and love being able to practice my profession again. I have noticed though my german is not as good as it was 3 years ago! We'll see how long it takes for the shine to rub off working again ;0).

The girls celebrated their 3rd birthday on Sunday, my mom and sister were here to celebrate with us and great fun was had by all, even though it rained ALL DAY and we had a house full of guests when we originally had planned to BBQ and celebrate outside. We had to make alternate arrangements but it all worked out in the end. I have only downloaded some of our pictures so I will be posting more later!

The theme this year was Clown/Circus

The homemade birthday cake

Birthday dolls and prams


Z with his 2nd set of twins he's looking a bit bleary eyed as this was late on Saturday night while we were assembling the girls birthday presents

Whew, another bullet dodged

So 9 months later we have finally had our orthopaedic consult just to rule out anything squiffy with Enya's hips. She has incredibily hypermobile (too flexible) hip joints, in part no doubt due to her favorite sleeping position (best description is she looks like a frog with her splayed knees up near her armpits). He was amazed at how normal Enya is, given her long list of diagnoses/problems after birth (balm to this mothers ears). Anyway the upshot of the appointment is she still has a slightly insecure gait pattern but the physical exam was normal and X-rays only showed something that will need to be checked at a later date to see if it resolves (there is no therapy for it as it stands now) in the meantime we are to encourage her to be as active as possible- swimming, gym, and lots of load bearing activities like jumping. We go back for another check up in 2 years time!

I di however while I was already there ask about her feet, as her 2nd toe on the left foot tends to cross over the back of her third toe. His statement is it was purely cosmetic but we could try a shoe insert so that all the toes line up next to each other to remedy the situation. I don't know that I agree that it is purely a cosmetic problem as her toe catches when we put socks on Enya and it has a slight callus on the top of the proximal toe joint as well, which shows it rubs on shoes as well.

Other news, the days of the cots are nearing an end. As I've mentioned in the past the girls have been able to climb into their cots for ages but didn't trust themselves to climb out in the dark (we keep their room pitch black during naps and overnight for this reason), well that all changed this week!! Z eventually had to resort to turning the safety switch for their bedroom light off as they were climbing out of bed and switching the light on to play as soon as he left the room everytime last night. Thank goodness I was out gallivanting in town so I missed the fireworks- apparently they finally went to sleep 2 hours later than usual ! This morning, for the first time ever, Ciara came to our bedroom unaided to wake us up (at 6:15am!), she climbed out of bed in the dark and came to join us in our bed. I've left the gap in the bars on their crib open tonight as I'd rather they crawled out the hole than over the top if they're going to get out anyway. I think we'll be converting their beds this weekend!

Discipline

Yet again I'm beginning to doubt myself. This is what Ciara did to Enya this morning! Enya's face is also a mess of scratches as Ciara keeps attacking her when Enya dosen't immediately give her what Ciara wants. I never thought I'd say this but thank goodness for the glasses, at least Enya's eyes are protected.

We are mostly doing time outs but I'm afraid when Ciara (or Enya for that matter) gets physical, we (I) do shout and even smack them. We also make the perpetrator apologise and kiss the victim better and later discuss (calmly) with them what they did wrong. Has anyone good advice about how else I can discourage biting and scratching as I'm open for most suggestions!