Sunday, August 08, 2010

Challenges for Anders

This summer has been a bit rough for Anders. The birth of Cade notwithstanding, he's faced a number of big changes over the last few months.

During the school year (September to May), we had a great routine. Mondays we spent at home, Tuesdays I worked & he went to a friend's house, Wednesday we had Bible Study and a friend (a 3 year old I watched) came over to play all day, Thursdays were spent with another friend (a 1 year old I watched) and then Fridays were spent at home recovering from our week. Somewhere in there we would spend some time with one of my friends doing something fun.

But then at the beginning of June, all of that went away--work, Bible Study, friends coming over, etc, and we moved him from his crib to a big boy bed...and, all of a sudden dad was home all day, every day.

Don't get me wrong, this is a wonderful thing for us. Joel is so busy during the school year, summer is a great respite for us. But, it does shake things up a bit. Then add to that, I went to work for 40+ hours one week to run camp and that threw a wrench in everything.

Anders, my great little sleeper (12 hours at night and 3 hours in the afternoon), quit sleeping.

He started fighting nap time, bed time and everything in between. His temper tantrums grew and grew and things just seemed out of control. Every time we seemed to make headway on the problem, a new challenege arose.

And then Cade came. Anders loves his little brother, but it was just another new challenge for us.

We have spent the entire summer trying everything from bribery to time out to everything in between. Just when we thought we were going to be stuck at home forever with a child who wouldn't sleep, I think we have made some progress. He's going to sleep easier and has even fallen asleep for a nap at my friend's house and he went to bed last night at our other friend's house.

And today, he even feel asleep in his bean bag chair. I think he's finally catching up on all that sleep he missed in June and July.

Now if only I could, too...

2 comments:

Jeni said...

We had sooo many challenges with Joseph that came up when we brought Faith home. You're a great mom...I know that you can get through this huge transition. :)

Beverly said...

I'll pray that you can get into a good routine quickly--I know how difficult it is to transition! We learned the hard way that Tobin did NOT deal well with change, and his sleeping patterns really reflected it. Unfortunately, that came during the 2004-2006 time frame when we moved once a year and he was in the 2-4 year range. The good news is that eventually he did outgrow it, and I did a lot of growing right along with him!!

As Ted says, "This too shall pass...like a kidney stone, but it will pass!!"