Journey to and Through Motherhood: 1Y48W: An Over-tired Toddler is Almost as Much Fun as a Punch in the Face (1/24/11

Because our study patients have a full 8 hour day with us and there was no good way to figure out how to get everything done and not have to split the visit between 2 days, I volunteered to work four 10 hour shifts since I have to be with the patients at the very beginning and very end of their study day. I have wanted to work such a schedule for quite a while and my bosses thought it was a great idea so I started this week. I will work 10 hours on Monday through Thursday then get 3 days home with Lily. This will save us a boatload on daycare and give me another full day with my precious little girl. Because Paul and I drive to and from work together, it actually didn’t lengthen my days that much. Paul drops me off at the hospital, takes Lily to daycare on the other side of town, then comes back to the hospital for work. Then after his shift, he picks her up then comes back to the hospital to pick me up. We actually only leave the house 15 minutes earlier than we used to and get home less than an hour later so my day is not 2 hours longer working a 10 hour shift than it is working an 8 hour shift thanks to the Paul Rysso shuttle service. It makes a lot more driving back and forth for him but he says that he doesn’t mind.

Lily’s new favorite toy is the giant diaper box from our visit to Costco on Tuesday. She spent most of Wednesday evening playing in the box with two bottles of my nail polish. I am so glad we’ve bought her hundreds of dollars worth of toys! It was very cute because she kept feeding the nail polish to her toy dog and saying, “medicine, feel better.” The box ended up being her favorite place to play all week long.

My first Friday home with Lily was awesome. We slept in until 8, played together for a while, napped together, then played some more. It was so very nice! My parents came over on Saturday and Sunday to help us with some projects around the house. My dad and Paul worked on a big staining and varnishing project while my mom and I entertained Lily and went through all of her outgrown clothes. We had around 12 garbage bags to sort through. The stuff I wanted to keep was sorted by size, folded, and sealed in Space Bags and my mom took the remainder home to donate to charity. It was nice to walk down memory lane looking at her cute tiny outfits. I can’t believe that my little baby will be 2 years old soon.

This second week of limiting Lily’s naps at daycare was a miserable failure. I even let them increase her one nap to 3-3.5 hours but she was horribly crabby and intolerably whiny this week. She cried at the drop of a hat. Tammy had a tough time keeping her awake and neither of them had a fun week due to Lily’s terrible mood. My new shift has changed her sleep schedule a little but not enough to account for the horror that was her mood this week. Every day on the drive home from work, she fell asleep instantly and slept the entire ride. She cried and whined all evening over absolutely nothing yet we still had trouble putting her to bed because she was so over-tired. All that and she still woke up frequently throughout the night so we decided to ditch the limited naps. I told Tammy to let Lily go back to 2 naps per day but just not to let them exceed 2 hours each or 4 hours total. We all miss our sweet, happy Lily. On a good note, thanks to the free Spanish lessons from watching Dora the Explorer, Lily can now count to 12 in both English and Spanish. She calls all penguins “penguinos” and says “tengo sed” when she is thirsty. And, of course, from her favorite song she says “arriba” for up and “abajo” for down.

Here are some pictures from this week.

My cutie playing in her diaper box: