Breaking Your Own Rules

Well the time has come for me to break my own rules.... Don't freak, it's nothing serious! ;) Over the past (almost) 10 months with the twins I have been stuck to a schedule and a routine like no other. In my opinion, this is a necessity when raising infant twins. I do not know how we would have survived the first half of the year without set feeding times, or the whole of these past 10 months without set naps and consistent bedtimes and sleeping through the night. I am not a person who can run, run, run and then not sleep; I would be a monster!

But the time has come that one twin has started to pull away from 2 naps and while the other twin would be content to sleep as much as you let him, we are still trying to keep somewhat of a similar schedule for them both. SO how do you remedy this conundrum? I don't know. Honestly, I'm so clueless. I don't go to Mothers of Twins Clubs or chat online with other moms of multiples who have been where I am now and can tell me exactly what to do. The reality is that I have to learn to be flexible. I have to bend the rules and find what works. My rules. :)

So today instead of laying them down at their usual nap time around 10:15 I kept them up and fed them lunch around 11:15 and then their bottles at 11:30 (they normally get bottles at noon and then lunch right after) and laid them down right after bottles. They were falling apart eating their lunch and both were rubbing their eyes as they took their bottle but both went down good. My hope is that eventually we will be able to push lunch to a more normal time and then lay them down right after for a long afternoon nap. I don't expect that today's nap will be 3 hours, that would be awesome, but I have no idea if they will catch on right away to the one nap thing or not. How did you transition your kiddos to one nap?

We are also currently working on weaning the bedtime bottle so that they don't get 'attached' to that. They are doing awesome so far. We're down to 4oz and then we read books and then lay them down. So far so good. I think we will try next week to cut that 4oz and just give them their sippy cups to hold on to and suck on a little bit of liquid while we read books. Our pediatrician recommended that we replace the bottle with something familiar so we've chosen to do baths and books (not one specifically but all kinds) because these activities can, for the most part, be done at anyone's house and allow us to stay flexible with laying them down wherever we happen to be at bedtime. So far they are doing great going down at other houses in a pack n' play. We are very thankful for that. What do you do with your kiddos at bedtime?

So I will keep you posted on how this transition is going. I think more than anything I am learning so much and this process is teaching me so many things. Parenting has a way of showing you the most ugly things about yourself and then giving you the most beautiful gifts along the way. I recently saw a magazine cover that read "The life of Having It All Means Being Childless". I'm so glad that I don't "Have it All".