Was a roaring success!! It's 9:00 a.m. and I haven't heard from Hannah since we got her to sleep last night in her bed. Yes, one of us had to sit with her until she GOT to sleep, but that's the last we heard from her. Big step in the right direction! Yay!
We've been dealing with sleep issues with Hannah forever. She co-slept with us for a long time, I'm not even sure how long. Probably at least 2 years. Then she started sleeping in her room, sort of. She'd sleep in there for a couple hours and then come out crying hysterically and end back up in our bed. She fell asleep on the couch a few nights and we noticed that she'd actually sleep all night if we let her stay on the couch and left the tv on a “digital music” station. Not a video station, more like a radio station that plays through the TV. So we've been doing that for a while now, and she sleeps all night. Yay!
Saturday night she was looking at a Wal-mart flyer and saw a Princess bedroom set. Just like with the Dora Dolly, she got really excited and said she wanted a Princess Room. It's all she talked about for the rest of the night, and on Sunday. So we told her that if she'd sleep IN HER ROOM, she could have a Princess Room. She agreed, and we went to the fabric store and bought some fabric to make her room into a princess room. We got some fleece to make a blanket and a couple of cotton prints to make sheets and a headboard cover. At Wal-mart we got a pillowcase with Belle on one side and Cinderella on the other. When we got home, we quickly hemmed around the edge of the fleece and just tucked some of the headboard fabric over the bed. We also got a nightlight that rotates and has “prisms” so it sparkles on the walls a bit. I was hoping the motion would be similar to the flickering of the tv she's used to while the digital radio is on. Charlie found a small radio and we turned that on softly.
Without going into the gory details, after reading several stories and tucking her in, all happy to be in her princess bed, Hannah was up SCREAMING hysterically every 30 to 45 minutes all night long, finally ending up on the couch around 4:30. She was so upset that she even woke up screaming while on the couch. What a night. That was Sunday night.
Last night (Monday), we decided to try something else. I have always said that my kids would never have a tv in their room at such a young age. I didn't see the need in it. But, in desperation, we got out our portable dvd player and put in a video from Grandma. It's from the Long Beach Aquarium and it's just a bunch of fish, seahorses, jelly fish, etc., swimming around while lullaby type music plays. I stayed in Hannah's room with her watching the video until she fell asleep and then we went to bed. Hannah was up at 3:30 but she wasn't screaming hysterically, just crying a bit and said I had to come watch the video with her. I went in her room and waited until she fell asleep again, about 5 minutes later. We didn't hear any more from her until after sunup, around 7:15. YAY!!!!!
We had Thanksgiving at my parent's house yesterday. The kids had their toys out, as usual. Sarah brought out a tea set and started handing out all the plates and cups, saying “Party, party, party!” It sounds more like “Potty” though. LOL…
Hannah dumped all the tea set dishes out of the box and they went everywhere. We told her to clean it up, so she started to pick them up while singing “Clean up, clean up, clean up”, which is part of a song on an episode of Jack's Big Music Show.
Sarah started picking up pieces of the set and putting them back in the box, too. And, the funniest part of this whole thing, is that she also started singing “Clean up”! “Keen up, keen up, keen up”. The whole time she was picking up the toys. And then dumped the dishes out and picked them all up again, singing “Keen up, keen up, keen up” the whole time. SO cute!
Just a quick post so you don't think we've fallen off the face of the planet… we're just super busy! The ILs are here for the week and we've been doing stuff with them, of course. Today we went to Kids Imagination Discovery Space where Grandma & Grandpa bought a one-year membership for us. Yay! Now we can take the kids somewhere fun when the weather isn't nice enough for the park. There is SO much stuff for them to explore there. And they're open seven days a week!
Nothing much else that's new to report; just the same ol' same ol' stuff going on around here.
I did more than one entry of Hannah's vocabulary, so I'll do another for Sarah, too. She'll be 16 months in a couple of days, so now seems to be a good time. I posted 22 words last time…
23. Uh oh
24. Stinky
25. Cat
26. Bum (her rear-end)
27. Show (as in TV show)
28. Sock
29. Shoe
30. Ball
31. Gentle
32. Hannah
33. Yeah
34. Stuck (”Guck”)
35. Light
36. Nose
37. Eye
38. Head
39. Ow
40. No
41. Toes
42. Tickle
43. Papa (Grandpa)
44. Up
45. Cup
46. Nana (for Banana)
47. Tales (as in Veggie Tales)
48. Baby
49. Hot
50. Cheese
51. Spoon
52. Ball
53. Cold
54. Stop
55. Coat
And one of her favorites…
55. MINE!
That's all I can think of right now. But I'm quite impressed! That's more than twice what Hannah said at 17 months, and Sarah's only 16. But Sarah's always been our talker, and Hannah our mover. LOL
It's been a while since I posted anything on here… sorry! We've just been busy. Let's see… what's been going on?
Last weekend, we were at my parent's house after church. My mom has this resin figure of a golden retriever puppy, about 10 or 12 inches tall, that the kids just LOVE. That day, Sarah was the one playing with it. She also had a good sized ball. I guess she decided the puppy needed to play fetch with her. She'd put the puppy down, throw the ball, then bend down and say something to the dog. She'd point at the ball, then pat the dog on the rear end with kind of a pushing motion, like she was saying “Go on!” Of course the dog wouldn't move, so she'd pick the dog up and take it over to the ball. Then she'd pat the dog on the head like she was saying “Good boy!” and repeat the whole sequence again. It was so funny! She even tried to pick up the dog and the ball at the same time, and that just wasn't working because they were as big as her if you put them together. LOL
That was probably the funniest of things that have happened since the last update, so I'll just leave it at that for tonight. 
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