It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: Jinxed it

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Jinxed it

I haven't blogged lately, sorry. A lot has been going on and I have a backlog of pictures and video to upload.

But first? Sleep. As so many of you know, sleep has been a touchy subject in the Rodgers household since Mr. Griffin was born. I reached the end of my rope during our trip to Wyoming and was afraid I was going to have to resort to the cry it out method in order to get some sleep. But the book No Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers seems to have been our magic bullet. By incorporating some of the strategies advised in the book (notably keeping the room cooler, blacking out he windows, and moving up bedtime), Griffins sleep has improved remarkably.

He now goes down around 7:30 and gets up once between 2 and 4, nurses back to sleep, and is up for the day around 6:30. This means that Bryan no longer has to get up with him and I'm only up once a night. once. It is glorious.

We've also instituted family reading before bed. Which is really nice. We all climb onto Penny's bed and read book for 20-30 minutes.

So the kids are usually asleep before 8 and I feel much more well rested (and sane).

Of course, now that I've been telling people how improved things have gotten, the kids decide to have a rough start to the night. Although it's probably not because I jinxed myself, but because they both took late naps. Oh well. Griffin took over an hour to get to sleep and Penelope is still awake in bed. Could be worse, right? Hopefully the rest of the night is not as challenging as bedtime was.

What else... Still applying for jobs. Have applied for over 20 teaching positions in a variety of cities (and States!). I'm hopeful, but I'm not going to hold my breath. The job market is pretty terrible for teachers now.

Ok, here are some pictures...

Penny feeding the ducks. I'm happy her hair is long enough for one pony tail.

We had quite a few ducks and geese show up, one of them startled Penny when it got a little too close. I really hate geese, but Poe loves feeding them.