Night Number One

As promised, a recap of our first night home with Paige and Reese:

We were released from the hospital on Thursday morning and made it home just in time for Reese's one o'clock nap. The timing of our arrival made getting Reese settled for her nap a little tricky, but eventually she went to sleep. About thirty minutes later, Paige was ready for a feeding, and after days of feeding her in an uncomfortable hospital bed, I took her to the rocking chair in the nursery--bad idea. While I can't confirm that it was Paige's little noises that woke Reese up from her nap, within minutes Reese was up after a nap that lasted about 35minutes. Unfortunately, there was no getting her back to sleep. Instead, we decided we'd just opt for an early bedtime.

Our afternoon was fraught with mini-melt downs from our over-tired toddler. Cries of "Mommy, where are you?" could be heard ringing throughout the house if I didn't announce to Reese my every move and intention. If I was out of sight, she suddenly worried I had abandoned her.

Our "early" bedtime coincided with another feeding for Paige (and let's face it,with her eating at least every 3 hours, it gets in the way of a lot of things Reese would rather it didn't). Reese eventually settled for a bath from Daddy and then we tried a family story time while I was nursing Paige. While tumultuous, we eventually got Reese settled for the night.

Our night with Paige was uneventful at first: we woke her up for feedings, changed her diapers, fed her, and she went back to sleep without much fuss. (NOTHING like her older sister who stayed awake screaming for hours on end even during her first days home.)

We had just put Paige down around 3:45AM when we heard Reese stir and wake up. Upon waking Reese began to immeidately dictate a list of needs: We heard cries of "I need a drink of water," "I need another story," "I want more lullabyes," and the like for the next hour. From previous experience we've learned that if we enter Reese's room and grant one of her late-night (or early-morning) requests, she will stay up indefinitely making more....so, we chose to ignore her. After an entire hour of listening to her shouts, Mommy was teetering on the verge of insanity; and that's when Reese turned up the volume on her protests. Instead of making requests, she started alternating between screams of "I'm upset, " and "I'm crying." After another half hour of inattention we were sure she was going to exhaust herself and go to sleep. Instead, she started screeching at the top her lungs and then yelling, "I'm screaming, I'm screaming." Even with the monitor turned off, we were privy to all of her commotion since we share a wall with her bedroom. By this point Mommy was in tears and Daddy was growing tired and impatient too. Only Annie and Paige seemed undisturbed.

Reese finally relented in her screams and then proceeded to climb out of her bed and started banging on her bedroom door. (We had live action views courtesy of our new video camera.) After only five or ten bangs, she climbed back into bed. We anxiously anticipated her collapse at this point...instead, she climbed out of bed one last time, walked over to an air freshener near her door (an air freshener she had never touched or played with before), pulled it out of the socket, looked directly into the camera, and then proceeded to try and stick her finger in the electrical socket. We watched in shocked horror and Kevin lept out of bed to prevent her from electrocuting her self.

When we got her back into bed after her nearly hazardous encounter, she managed to sleep for an additional 30 minutes before waking up at 6:15AM ready for her day...it gave us a lot of time to kill before school started at 9AM. We considered not sending her to school, but in the end (since we had already arranged for Aunt Kim to drop Reese off at school), decided to pick her up early and try to squeeze in a good and early nap.

What followed was a long day for all of us.