8 Weeks - 8 Hours

I'm not gonna lie...this week has been tiring. Travis was out of town last week, and I was mentally prepared for that. However, while he was away, he caught the flu, and came home a day later. Then when he came home, he was still recovering for a few days, so I was still kind of on my own with the girls. Then when I thought he was finally feeling better last Sunday, he woke up with a terrible head cold on Monday morning, which basically lasted all week. By the time this weekend came around, I was exhausted. I felt kind of like I was in "survival mode" for the last few days, but I think things are turning around now that Travis has mostly recovered and we had some time to go out to dinner last night while Travis's parents stayed with Avery and Kendall for a few hours. I was also able to go for a run Friday, Saturday, and this afternoon, and that also helps with both my mental and physical health.

Luckily, Kendall has been sleeping for longer stretches, but not consistently. Also, she's been struggling with going back to sleep after a long stretch in the middle of the night...so there's been several nights where I've been up for 2 hours in the middle of the night just hoping Kendall would go to sleep!!

Yesterday, I re-read about managing your baby's day in Babywise, and I decided that one of our problems may be that we don't have a consistent "start time" for Kendall's day. She's doing pretty well on her "eat, activity, sleep" schedule, but times vary throughout the day, so I decided I'm going to work on that. I wrote down her "goal schedule" for the week, and I'm going to try to start her day around 7-7:15 every day. Avery has been waking up around 7:45 recently, so this will give me a little time to get Kendall fed before Avery is up.

Yesterday, although she didn't follow her schedule exactly, she had her last evening feeding at 9:30, and she slept until 5:20 this morning - almost 8 hours between feedings! She also went straight to bed after the 9:30 feeding, which has sometimes been a struggle, so she got a good 7 hour stretch of sleep! After she ate, she went right back to sleep (luckily) and I woke her up at 7 to eat again, and begin her day. I have a renewed sense of energy and hope that she'll be consistently sleeping for 7-8 hours very soon, and I'm looking forward to when she starts sleeping 10-12 hours at night!

We are also getting ready to celebrate our February birthdays...Travis and Avery are both in February.  I'm not doing a big party for Avery this year, just a smaller party with family, but I'm sure it'll still be a good time. I haven't done as much planning for it yet, but I still have a few weeks. She is just so much fun now, and I think she'll really enjoy her party this year.