The past two months have flown by. Between lack of sleep, a moody toddler, and a newborn, I’ve been plenty busy and trying to keep life as normal as possible. My toddler has adjusted surprisingly well to a new baby. She loves being a big sister and we haven’t had any jealousy issues. She loves picking out matching outfits and shares her toys with her baby sister- even though her little sister is too young to play with anything. I often find myself telling my toddler to stop putting toys in the crib, because it can be dangerous. I try to explain my point very simply without reprimanding her, but she is just so excited to have a baby around! My newborn is learning what it means to be a little sister. She receives random hugs and kisses from her older sister, and she has mastered the art of sleeping with lots of noise in the background.
Now that we are settled in with a new person in the house, we have been trying to make some changes. Number one- finally sleep training my toddler. Throughout the past 3 years, she has had periods of sleeping through the night then waking up a few times a night. She was unpredictable last year, but for the past few months she has been waking up in the middle of the night and climbing into our bed, demanding milk. We didn’t want to make any changes to avoid a jealousy issue with the new baby, so we let this happen for a few months.
We knew what we had to do to resolve this issue, but with my husband waking up at 5am to go to work and me taking care of a newborn in the middle of the night, it was hard to be strict with her. We both needed our sleep. Now that my husband is home for the summer, I guess sleep can be put on the backburner for a few nights just to get her into a routine. The first night he walked her back to her room 3 times. The second night just once, and the third night she stayed in her bed. We will see what tonight brings, but hopefully we are on to a better routine for the entire family.
Now, we just have to figure out how to get rid of that nighttime bottle!