Anecdotes, part 2

This year, Santa brought Marianne a stuffed prairie dog, along with a book all about prairie dogs. Stop rolling your eyes at the lameness of that gift. Santa fully understands that, because we live a block away from open space with a population of approximately 8 million prairie dogs, Marianne is infatuated with them. While most kids make cow noises and pig noises, Marianne loves to make high pitched "eep eep" noises in imitation of our neighborhood prairie dogs. Anyway, Santa knows all, and therefore the gift was a pretty huge hit.

On Christmas day at nap time, Marianne didn't really think she was very tired. I, on the other hand, was exhausted. So I laid down on the bed in our shared room while Marianne was put down for her nap on her inflatable travel bed. She brought her prairie dog book with her, since our naptime policy is generally that as long as she stays in bed, she can "read" a book. (I'm of the opinion that you can't actually force a child to sleep, but you can force a child to spend some downtime in bed.) As I'm drifting to sleep, I hear Marianne making up prairie dog stories to go with the pictures in her book. I've no idea what that naughty prairie dog was up to, but most of what I heard coming from Marianne was "I say, NO NO prairie dog. Time out prairie dog. I say prairie dog NO NO!"

I'd rather not dwell on what this might imply about our parenting techniques or our child's imagination, thank you.

Holiday anecdotes

This is one of many cute or funny things that happened over the extended period of time I was not online, but that I wanted to share...

Me: Marianne, wake up! It's Christmas morning! Let's go see if Santa came last night.

Marianne (after a little more prodding from her drowsy state, now hopping out of bed and running for the door): Santa's HERE! I wanna see Santa!

Me: No, baby. Santa CAME. Now he's gone. But he probably left toys for you!

Marianne: I wanna see Santa...

She is only two. Next year I'm sure she'll understand.

And then, I held my baby some more...

Can you tell I was getting a little tired of having to hold my baby all the time to keep her from crying, since it came up in two consecutive posts? I guess that's what I get for not rereading something I posted 9 days earlier.

Ruth is playing happily on the floor as we speak, so my arms and back are enjoying a much needed rest. Hopefully I can move on to more interesting topics soon. On the down side, that baby is getting a little too mobile for her own good. She's not officially crawling, but if you take her socks off and roll up her pants so the legs don't trip her up, she makes a solid effort at it. And with a combination of army-crawling on her tummy and shoving her upper body forward into a face plant from a crawling position, she makes some very real distance. I'm going to have to get out the fence thing we used to contain Marianne at that age soon.

Puppy surprise!

If you grew up around the same time as me and saw many commercials, the title above should cause a catchy little tune to immediately start playing in your mind with the words "puppy surprise, puppy surprise! how many puppies are there inside?". Strange and funny as it may sound, that was, and apparently is, a real toy! I was just reminded of this by a friend with whom I had lunch, as it was her niece's dream to have her very own puppy surprise and Santa came through for her. My friend was trying to describe just how ugly this puppy was to me (nevermind that her niece's came with three puppies, one of which was the "runt of the litter" and even uglier than the rest - it's all about realism, you know), but until I checked it out online, I hadn't fully understood. Sheesh. That's one ugly dog. I think they were cuter when I was a kid. Not that I had one - I mostly just remember the song. I use that tune to make up songs about anything and everything that comes to mind. That one and the "my little pony - pretty pony" tune are great for adding your own words.

We had a wonderful Christmas. I had intended to post at least a few times while on vacation, but underestimated just how busy a trip to visit family can be when you have two kids. That becomes especially true when one of the two decides that only mom and dad are allowed to hold her, and mostly mom. And sitting on the floor by mom isn't good enough - she must be HELD at all times in order not to cry. At home I'd just let the kid cry some, but when this is the only day that some grandmother or aunt or cousin gets to see the kid this year, I can hardly feel good about letting her scream through the whole visit. So there was a lot of holding the baby, and not a lot of surfing the web. I'm sure there will be lots of anecdotes about the girls and our other family members to come, though. I've been storing them up!

It's Christmas time in the city

Okay, so I'm about as far from a "city" as possible without actually being on a farm, but it's definitely Christmas time in earnest. Marianne is LOVING this whole set up. We arrived in Smalltown, KS (names changed to protect the innocent) on Friday evening, and have been surrounded by family ever since. Marianne took a little time to warm up, but has been a social butterfly since. Ruth, on the other hand, refuses to be held by anyone but mommy or daddy without wailing. She doesn't even particularly like to play on the floor if anyone else is around, which has resulted in a lot of being held just so that the relatives can see our cute, smiley baby instead of the fussy one she becomes when set down. I keep trying to explain that when we're home she plays happily on the floor and we don't hold her constantly, but I can see the doubt in some of their eyes...

As for Christmas festivities, Marianne caught right on to that. Saturday night we had our family party and gift opening with my extended family on my dad's side. It's a raucous good time whenever that crew gets together. My aunts and uncles plied Marianne with junk food and candy and ham, and then she got presents. Can life get any better? She tore her way through all of her gifts and Ruth's and suddenly I discovered I'd turned into my mom. I kept having to say, "slow down! where's the tag on that present? who's that from?!" Role reversal is highly entertaining. And forget about our usual late nights of playing cards and talking... if I'm awake much past the girls, it's an acheivement. It's exhausting trying to care for two babies and be social and helpful and fun for family! Tonight we have big plans to play some games since this is the last night we're here, but we'll see how that goes.

Tomorrow we're off to my parents' house in an actual city for a few days (though we'll still be in KS, so you can define "city" however you see fit given that piece of info), and then up to visit Nathaniel's family for Christmas weekend. The fun times just keep rolling...

Here comes the roadtrip...

I'm in LA today for work. I need to be wrapping up everything I have open, because I'm on vacation, starting tomorrow, until after Christmas (hooray!), but trying to get anything done while sitting in a room with 7 other women who only see each other about twice a year is fairly challenging. So, I'm just trying now to determine the nicest way to explain my open items to my boss, who'll be covering for me while I'm away.

I get home from LA tomorrow around noon, then we have a holiday party starting at 4:00. So between the time I get home from the airport and when I have to pick up the girls from daycare to start cleaning them up for the party, I figure I have something like 2 hours to pack for myself and for the girls for a 12 day trip. That'll be easy, right? We're hoping to leave Friday morning before the girls usually wake up so that we can get a couple hours of the roadtrip done before breakfast. Do we set unrealistic expectations? Maybe... We'll find out soon enough!

Here's to 10 hours in a car with two babies! For now, I'm just going to think about dinner out with my colleagues and a night spent with cocktails and bowling in LA. (Yeah, we're going bowling and to be honest, I'm pretty darned excited about!) The suitcases will pack themselves tomorrow.

You got me... a box of chex? Thanks...

I'm done! Done! That's right, I'm done wrapping Christmas presents. I do not love wrapping gifts. I do a decent job of it, and I'm always proud when I see how nice they look under the tree, but I tend to dread actually sitting down to do it. But they're all wrapped now, so hurray! Nevermind that not a single gift has a bow on it other than the one that was wrapped by the store that sold it to us. That'll get done later. We have to travel all over the midwest to deliver these puppies, so there's no point in getting the bows all smushed up in the car.

I did total ghetto wrapping this year. I went to the garage and raided the cardboard recycling to find decent boxes. If you can call what I found decent. I used, among other things, the boxes from: a case of coke, a case of beer, graham crackers, Life cereal and a dozen donuts. Ha! So, when you open a gift from me, you just never know what you're getting. Most likely it's not what the box says... but then, I don't think my parents would be that upset if I gave them a 12-pack of coke. At least it would be something they could really use.

I will add, though, that not all the boxes were used whole. I had some real issues with some of the boxes on the toys for the girls. I'm all for the open front boxes so you can touch and play with a toy without having to unpackage it (since heaven knows there's no replacing those 8,000 metal twist ties once you take them off!), but when they cut out part of the front and top of a box, it becomes a real wrapping challenge. I had to cut cardboard from the Life cereal box in order to create a false front for the toy's box so that I could wrap it. I know, I could have just tried to find a bigger box to put it in, but we didn't have any of those, and I refuse to spend money on boxes.

It should be an entertaining Christmas morning for sure!

Einstein

Ha ha ha ha ha! Okay, this is for the parents out there who've seen Baby Einstein, because otherwise it's not likely to be funny. But I just ran across a great video on another blog. The mom writing the blog apparently recently saw her first B.E. video and hated it, so decided to make her own. The video is at the end of her post - it's about 5 minutes long, and might take a couple minutes to download, but I cracked up.

I'll just add that I, personally, love Baby Einstein. There are some days that it's only through the amazing hypnotic power of those DVDs that I manage to get a shower. Or food. Or time to post on my blog. But if you're not so into letting your kid veg in front of the TV, I can see why you might not like them :)

Probably too much information...

...for anyone who is not a mom. And maybe for some moms.

Ruth is still going full speed ahead with her teething. She has her third upper tooth coming through now, and she's all about biting things. For any of you who are, or who have ever been, a nursing mom, you're well aware that this is a mixed blessing. I'm thrilled that before long she'll be chewing her own foods and we won't have to puree everything. That's super! But for the time being, every time I sit down to feed her I'm half cringing at what might happen. If she gets started eating well, I know we're good to go. But it's in that first few seconds of feeding when I find out whether she's seriously hungry that I get all nervous. Ugh. Those of you whose babies wait longer to pop their teeth through don't know how lucky you are. My mom tells me she was born with teeth, and I'm feeling some major sympathy for my grandma now.

On other Ruth topics that no one really needs to know, all of this solid food she's learning to eat - cereal, green beans, carrots, bananas, apples, peaches... there's nothing this girl won't eat! - seems to be causing her some, um, digestive troubles. She went the whole weekend without one poopy diaper. While that was normal for her when she was strictly breast feeding (no joke, she'd have one poopy diaper every three days or so), it doesn't seem quite right with all the food she's taking in now. Our daycare lady said this morning that she's had good luck clearing that problem up by adding a little juice to the baby's cereal, so she's going to try that today. We never really gave Marianne juice at all till she was much older, though, so I hate to start anything like that if I can avoid it. But then, Marianne never had trouble making poopy diapers. We were lucky to get away with only three or four a day. Talk about differences in children!

There you have it. I promised you too much information, and I'm pleased to say that I delivered.

The good old days

Last night, I had a real, honest to goodness, evening out with adults! It was just like the days before kids, for about 5 hours. My friends with kids are wondering how it's possible, and those of you without are wondering what the big deal is, but the fact remains, it was great and refreshing and fun. Nathaniel and I went with another couple out to dinner downtown and then to a Barenaked Ladies concert! The other couple has a three year old son and a baby on the way, so of course a lot of the conversation revolved around kids... but that's not always a bad thing. There was talk of non-kid stuff as well. And there were margaritas (for those of us who are not pregnant). The concert was fantastic. BNL is such an entertaining group. I've seen them a couple times now, and they always throw in some hilarious stuff about the city they're in or recent happenings in their lives. It was about half holiday music, and was just good fun, all around.

On the downside, the girls weren't as nice as they could have been to our babysitters. A couple of kid-free friends of ours came over to spend the evening with our kids, and, inadvertently, to remind themselves why they're really not ready for this! Sounds like Marianne did reasonably well, apart from frequent milk spills during dinner and not wanting to go to bed when it was initially suggested, but that's hardly news. Ruth, on the other hand, refused to eat anything during dinner or her bedtime feeding, and cried anytime either of our sitters tried to hold her or actively play with her. She was generally content when left alone to play on the floor, though, so that's how she spent most of the evening till she was too tired to stay awake. Surprisingly, this did not result in her waking up to eat three times during the night, though! I fed her a little after we got home, but she was too tired to eat much, and then she slept through the night as usual. I feel bad for our sitter-friends, though. They were cheerful in their report to us of how the night had gone, but the description I heard did not sounds very pleasant. So, thanks Ted and Kristi! Sorry our girls were handful, but you made my month by allowing us to enjoy such a great evening out!

On a side note, Steve, one of the lead singers of BNL, made a comment about something that's become a huge issue this year, the whole "Christmas" versus "holiday" debate. The flight attendant on their flight into Denver had made a remark toward the end of the flight to the effect of "at the risk of being un-PC, I'd like to wish you all a very merry Christmas." And some people had been offended. I have such mixed feelings about this debate. Obviously this is a religious holiday for me - advent and Christmas - and I don't want to have to avoid saying Merry Christmas to people in order to avoid offending them. I think that's crazy. It is Christmas. At the same time, there are other legitimate religious and secular holidays around this time of year, too, and I don't want to exclude someone who is focused on celebrating one of those. So I'm not going to tone down my Merry Christmases around my Christian friends, but I'm not going to force them on Jewish friends. To those friends, I'll wish a Happy Hanukkah, or Happy Holidays if I'm unsure what someone celebrates. It seems like such a pointless argument to me. A Christmas tree is a Christmas tree... you can't make that untrue, but you don't have to offend people of other faiths or mindsets in celebrating your own holiday. The BNL guy shared my view. I knew I liked those guys.

Birthday candles

Marianne is very into singing lately. She's really starting to remember words better these days - words to songs, to prayers, to obnoxious drivers ("Dude! Where are you going?!" is a great one that she picked up from me in response to someone turning across my lane the other day, and now she uses it in the car all the time). She sings Twinkle, Twinkle, the alphabet song and Rockabye Baby whenever asked. It's fun stuff.

With the holiday season here, we have our advent wreath on the table and each night before dinner we light the candles and Nathaniel reads something appropriate from the Bible. The entertaining part (not the Bible isn't entertaining...) is that Marianne views just about any candle as a birthday candle. It's all we can do to restrain her from breaking into song till after the reading. Once daddy puts the book down, though, the singing begins. We've explained that we're celebrating the coming of Jesus's birthday, so every night before we eat, we're treated to a wonderfully out of tune version of "Happy Birthday dear Jesus". It's pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself.

Using my time well

Naptime is in full swing, so it's time for me to get a few things done around the house. But what with a messy kitchen, toys all over the living room, a guest room full of gifts to be wrapped, clean laundry to be folded, dirty laundry to be washed, pine needles to be vacuumed, etc, etc, etc,... It's a tad overwhelming. I think I'll play on the computer for a few minutes before I get started on the rest.

Hang on! Suddenly I'm understanding why Nathaniel is in his 7th year of grad school. This blog (and other people's blogs) are to me what computer video games are to him. And escape from responsibility. Okay, I'm heading back to the kitchen now. At least I don't have to make dinner; we have a holiday party this evening.

There are days I could hope for a lot more than my usual hour or so of overlapping naptime from the girls, that's for sure!

Big time!

I found my site on google today! Okay, I searched for pretty obvious things like "tiny hanger" and "marianne ruth staci", but for both of those searches, I was in the top three sites! What? You think no one but me writes about hangers (or at least tiny ones) or has kids with those exact names? Stop raining on my parade!

Recently Marianne has started showing her love to Ruth more often. It's sweet for the most part, and I think that her intentions are generally good, but it's making my life more stressful. Last night I was trying to make dinner but Ruth didn't want to be left on the floor or in her crib. I asked Marianne to sit with her and talk to her so she'd stop wailing like the little banshee she is, and Marianne was more than happy to oblige. Ruth is, in general, highly entertained by her big sister, and it's easy to see why. Marianne will wave toys in front of her and dance around and sing songs and whatever else it takes to make Ruth laugh. It's a riot to watch! So, with Marianne in place to entertain the baby, I head into the kitchen to start tenderizing some venison steaks. (Fancy, I know - a hunter friend of ours gifted us with the meat. Thanks, Randy!) All of a sudden Ruth is crying, and not in a gentle way. More in the "stop torturing me" way that every mother dreads. I poke my head out to see what's going on, and Marianne has knocked Ruth down from her sitting position and is shoving a Care Bear into her face in a way that can only be called menacing, though she was making kissing noises at the same time. Great. Now Ruth will grow up horrified by Care Bears. I suppose there are worse things. But it didn't stop there. I told Marianne to be gentle to her sister, sat Ruth back up, and went back to the kitchen. Silly, trusting mommy. Next thing I know, Ruth is pushed over again, and this time with Marianne herself getting in her face and basically lying on top of Ruth in a full body hug. All the while, Marianne is talking and laughing and obviously thinking she is the greatest big sister OF ALL TIME for being so much fun! {sigh} So much for using the 2 year old as a babysitter, I guess. I ended up in the kitchen, with Ruth on my left hip, pounding out steaks with my right hand. It was a lovely sight, I'm sure. I thought about putting on my pearls and vacuuming with my left foot, just to complete the Donna Reed-ishness of it all. Except I don't suppose her kids ever cried. Or beat each other up with Care Bears.

Will wonders never cease?

Just before I sat down at the computer, I attempted to put some laundry into our dryer only to discover that we had not finished cleaning up from the dust storm after all. The dryer was full of dirt that had blown in through the vent and the lint collector. Thankfully I noticed it before putting all my clean whites in (it would have been hard to miss given that when I opened the dryer a puff of dust flew out at me), but what a pain. That was one thing I didn't feel the need to do today - wash out the inside of my dryer. I can honestly say I've never before bothered to do that. Does anyone usually clean out a dryer? But I shouldn't complain. The wind appears to have pretty much destroyed the garage door of the house across the street from us, and amid other rubbish in the yard we have at least one shingle from a neighbor's roof. Our house appears to have suffered no expensive damage, so we're counting or blessings.

Now the weather has turned even colder and instead of blowing dust, it's blowing snow. I'll happily accept the change. Hey, maybe it'll keep up and I won't be able to get into the office tomorrow! Not likely, I know.

Today the girls had a play date. For want of a better, warm option for somewhere to play, I met my friend Michele at an outlet mall that boasts a carousel in its foodcourt. You may recall Michele's kids Charlie and Braley from our trip to the zoo several weeks ago. Since they live far to the south of us, we like to meet in the middle for play dates. I'm really thankful to have a friend who is motivated enough to call repeatedly and ask if I want to get together! I tend to move from one day off to the next, just looking forward to not being at work, and not giving any thought to the fact that it's good for my kids to get some interaction with other kids on those days and good for all of us to get out of the house. If not for friends like Michele, my days off would be based strictly around accomplishing a few chores and hopefully getting the girls out for a walk if the weather allows.

We had a nice time chatting while the kids played in the mall's kid area - full of giant bugs to climb on, in and around, as opposed to the dinosaurs at my local mall. Then we headed to the foodcourt for carousel rides and fast food (something for the kids, something for the mommies). I'd like to take a moment here to offer a tip to anyone considering a future in sales: If you see two women attempting to feed lunch to four children, the oldest of which is nearly two and a half, do not bother attempting to sell them services at your day spa. And when they try to politely point out that they don't really have time for that sort of thing these days, don't keep pushing them, because they're not just saying that. Really.

The great dust storm of '05

Last year we took our typical holiday roadtrip through Kansas and Nebraska, visiting various family units over about 10 days. When we returned to our house, we discovered a strange coating of sandy dust over a lot of the kitchen and everywhere else near a west-facing window in the house. We came to find out that while we'd been away, there had been some crazy winds for a day or two and all the dust had blown into our house through our closed doors and windows. Lovely. We love our house in part because it is just to the east of several miles of open space leading up to the foothills of the Rockies, but that results in some seriously high winds on occasion, to say the least!

So now to more recent past... last night, the wind, she was a blowin'. Nothing too shocking, though. You could hear windows shaking some, and wind howling, but the babies slept through it all, as did I. This morning, the wind was still pounding against the house, and in a fiercer manner. By the time I left for work shortly before 7am (you read that right, feel bad for me because I get up early), it was getting CRAZY. As soon as I pulled the car out of the garage I could feel the wind shaking it and there was so much dust blowing in from the open space that you could barely see more than headlights from oncoming traffic! Nathaniel called me later that morning to say that he hoped the house would still be there when I got home from work because it had been creaking when he left. He had noticed some dust and a lot of wind getting in through the doors and windows, so he'd put towels in to try and cut down on the draft. (Does anyone else remember back in the '80s having "draft doggies" that were basically long bean bags with faces, legs and tails sewed on to look like wiener dogs, and you'd lay them along the edge of a door to block the draft? Was that just my family? I don't think my mom actually made them, so I assume they were sold at Walmart or somewhere. I digress.)

Fast forward to this evening when I arrive home from work. It took me a short time to notice the full extent of what had occurred, but once I did, I was thoroughly impressed by the power of wind. There was fine dirt piled 1/4 to 1/2 inch high and extending several inches into the house all along the west-facing windows and doors. On the kitchen counter behind the sink. All along the carpet by the sliding doors in the dining room. And of course on the window ledge in the master bedroom. Again, lovely. Because I have to imagine that, although the mess is most obvious within a few inches of the windows, there's probably plenty of dust blown all through the rest of those rooms as well. That makes you want to let the kids play on the floor, doesn't it?

On the upside, last year I believe it took me about 4 months to finally clean it all up from the kitchen window and in the grooves of the windows. (Next time you're 6 months pregnant, working full time and chasing around a 15 month old, feel free to pass judgment). This time, I cleaned up the same night. I'm so proud of myself. Now we should probably take the hint and see about getting some better insulation for those windows.

More lights

We caved this weekend. We had no intention of getting a Christmas tree this year, since we always spend a week or two visiting family in other states over Christmas and Marianne is still too young to carry this Christmas in her memory forever. But the whole "more lights" excitement from Friday night (disregarding the desire to bite said lights) was enough to convince us that we needed to do something to spruce up the house for the holidays, no pun intended. We set out on Saturday to find a small tree, preferably potted, that we could put on the table or buffet, more as a gesture than as a real Christmas tree. It turns out it's much cheaper to just buy the grocery store 6-7 foot tree than a nice potted evergreen that would later transfer to the yard. And we already had all those decorations from a couple years ago when we got a big tree... Anyway, before we knew what had happened, we were tying a tree to the top of the car with twine. Now our living room is all sparkly and smells like fresh douglas fir and to be honest, I'm so glad! We even put some lights in the bushes out front, only to discover that we didn't have the necessary extension cords to plug them all in. Hopefully we'll remedy that tonight, and then watch out! Holiday spirit, here we come! And we were planning just to get out the advent wreath this year. Ha!

Breakfast for bear-bear

This is Marianne feeding breakfast to her bear-bear this morning. Bear-bear started out with a hearty bowl of rice cereal (that's what he's eating in the picture, per Marianne). He followed that with some pears. Then, in healthy bear-bear fashion, he had an onion, which Marianne helpfully warmed in her microwave. Mmmmm. We don't make this stuff up. Marianne does.

Ruth, on the other hand, is now happily eating infant oatmeal and mushed bananas. It may not sound really tasty, but it's gotta be better than warm onions.

Interesting kid quote:

We were just driving home from some friends house where we'd had dinner and played board games (we live such an exciting life). On the way home Marianne, who we had woken up to pack into the car, was admiring the Christmas lights on all the trees along the road. Every time we'd come to a new patch she'd say, "More lights! I like more lights!" which seemed cute and sensible. Then suddenly she added "I want to bite them". We informed her that she did not want to bite the lights, because they would break, and it would be owie. But she insisted, "I want to bite the more lights." Huh.

Nearly in the mail

I finally finished the blanket I've been making for my new niece Lucy. Okay, she was born almost two months ago, but what with one thing (Marianne) and another (Ruth), it's taking me longer to finish projects these days than it used to. Plus, I made this afghan based on one my friend Emily made for Marianne because it's easy to do while traveling. In my case, I made squares of it while riding the bus to and from work each day, averaging about a square per day, three workdays a week... You can see why it might take a while. It's not totally finished - I still need to work in about a zillion loose ends. That's something I didn't think about before hand. If I had, I might have used a different pattern for the blanket. But too late now! And Ruth seems to like it, so hopefully Lucy will as well! My plan is to mail this to her before she heads to Nebraska with her folks over the holidays so that they don't have to worry about transporting it back to Pittsburgh themselves. We'll see though.

Anyway, it's no Baby Norgi sweater (knitted for Ruth by Nathaniel's friend Kris), to be sure, but I like to be a little crafty sometimes.

The evils of technology

I sometimes wish we didn't have a baby monitor. Our room is just across the hall from (and in fact, shares a wall with) the girls' room, but we have a baby monitor that sits on the nightstand near my head. Those of you who know me well know that I'm somewhat hard of hearing (what's that?) and it's only made worse when I'm sleepy, so the baby monitor makes sense. Without it, I'd wake up if one of the girls really started screaming, but probably not until then. The problem with the baby monitor is that I not only hear fussing kids, but kids with hiccups in their sleep, or kids having coughing fits in their sleep, or kids talking in their sleep, and that means less sleep for me. It means I lie in bed chanting "fall back asleep, fall back asleep, fall back asleep..." to the monitor whenever I can hear one of them coughing or tossing and turning, instead of sleeping myself. And since our two young girls share a room (our third bedroom being on a different floor of the house and colder than any other room in the house), I'm paranoid that if one really starts getting noisy, I need to get in there and get that kid out before she sets off the second daughter, so I have a hard time just letting myself rest through the noises.

It's not really as bad as I make it out to be, because for the most part both girls are sound sleepers. Still, there are the mornings I wake up and wonder if things wouldn't be a little simpler and more restful if baby monitors had never been invented.