mornings around here

Mornings aren't easy, especially when you wake a few times in the night. That much is obvious. So I think every mom can relate to the bliss that ensues when babies start sleeping through the night. 12 hours of ALONE time (or COUPLE time! Both are so important and welcome, sorry babies!) Ahhhh.

Equally, every mom can relate to the fury that ensues when babies abruptly stops sleeping through the night. For no apparent reason. Grrrr.

Yes, the last week or so Oli has been waking up, consistently, at 4am. Every night. Or should I say morning? We started feeding him rice cereal in the day and before bed thinking "he'll have a full tummy now! sleep awaits us all!". 

Except no. He still wakes at 4am. 

But since Lily is up around 7:15am, and we desperately want him back on the glorious "schedule" (schedules aren't for every family but ours LOVES good predictability), we wake him around 7:30am, though thanks to his 4am parties, he could probably sleep longer. 

So mornings. Lately have been hard on me. After waking at 4am I can never fall back asleep. Impossible, until around 6am or so. Just enough time for a cat nap before the alarm goes off.  And then it starts:

7am-7:30am - wake up, get out of bed, put on some clothes or sweats

7:30am - give Lily her sippy cup of milk and some Cheerios, make Oli's bottle, wake him and change him. Then he hangs in the Bumbo until I can start the bottle process (yes I said process)

7:45am - change Lily's diaper too, and get her dressed. (OH MY cloth diapers are putrid after 12 hours!)

7:55am - start feeding Oli an 8oz bottle. He'll drink the first 3-4oz pretty well and quickly. Like maybe within 10 minutes. And then we wait. And spit up a bit. Burp a bit. Try again. He'll take 1/4 of an oz. And repeat. The kid is a SLOW drinker. Very slow. It takes him around an hour of on and off trying to get Oli to finish an 8oz bottle. 

8:30am - Oli's STILL not done his bottle, so I decide I need to get Lily her breakfast and start him on his rice cereal (which, ironically, he takes like a champ). After they both eat and are cleaned up, Lily plays and Oli and I go back to the couch. For more of the process. 

8:55am - Oli is exhausted and begging for his nap. Suddenly he finished 2-3 oz within 5 minutes and then takes his 2 hour nap like a pro. WHAT.IS.HAPPENING.

After Oli's down, I wash the morning dishes (including Brad's breakfast and my tea dishes), start my own breakfast, play with Lily a bit (today it meant sitting on the kitchen floor, working on her signing, and tossing around a lime from the fruit bowl for 30 minutes. So fun, right? She thought so :), then around 9:30am or 10am Lily will take a nap too. Which brings me here. To writing a blog post.

Whew. 

How does 3 hours go by so slowly and so quickly at the same time? 

Can anyone relate?

 

It's crazy that 3 hours can almost exclusively be spent feeding. There's also a bit of changing diapers and clothes and tidying and washing, but heck, the majority of that time is FEEDING. Bottles and breakfast. I never thought could consume so much time. And yes, most of his bottle feeds take an hour, not just the morning one, though the morning one is most frustrating because Lily needs food equally as much at the same moment. Oh, and I'm sleepy, which definitely makes any situation a bit harder. 

And for those wondering, Oli's bottles have the fast-flow nipples, he's just truly THAT slow.

So morning has come and gone (by 11am I count it as "over"), my kids are fed and asleep, and it all seemed not so bad. In the moment there are a lot of COMMON' OLI!s  and WHY WON'T HE DRINK FASTER?s but I'm thankful to be the mom of two babies who have full tummies and are contentedly asleep. 

What's your morning routine?

*all pictures taken by Brad when he 

was on the morning shift last Saturday