Daddy's Special Adventures

I've been pretty honest in the past about our struggles with naps and bedtimes. It has always been a hurdle for us. After Addy started climbing out of her crib a couple months ago, we used the crib tents to delay the inevitable, but it was only a few days before she figured out how to get herself out of jail free and we were back where we started. The tent alone was a deterrent and it bought us a little time to get through the holidays. We wanted to work on the nighttime tantrums before we moved into big-kid beds, thinking if we could get them under control, the transition would go smoother. Lilly was the trouble-maker, sometimes screaming for 20-30 minutes at bedtime and NOTHING worked. I finally decided that they might be ready for some long-term incentives, so we introduced the sticker chart. I downloaded from here, and they earned a sticker when they went to bed with no noise and no trouble. When the sticker chart was full, they earned a special adventure with Daddy. Lilly caught on quick and earned her special adventure first, Addy took a little longer, but did okay.

We wanted the special adventure to be geared to them specifically. Lilly has a longer attention span that Addy does at the moment and LOVES her cartoons, so we settled on "The Princess and the Frog" movie matinee for her and daddy. Jeremy said she enjoyed the experience, thought it was pretty cool, ate a lot of snacks and wanted to leave after 45 minutes. They ended up at Wendy's with a chocolate milkshake in hand, and she came home beaming. She truly is a daddy's girl. Addy's our mover and shaker, so Jeremy quickly decided that a local "fun zone" was the best place to take her to run off some steam. She had a blast (Dad did too) and they ended up at Dairy Queen eating too much ice cream.
During each special adventure, the other daughter stayed home with me and I thought there would be a lot of whining, but they totally understood. They knew they each had a turn and were great.

When we felt we had control of the bedtime transitions, we threw a big change at them and converted their beds to toddler beds. To say the transition has been hard would be an understatement and I'll write more about our obstacles in a later blog. At this point, just send us sleepy thoughts as we try and get our toddlers on some kind of sleep schedule that works.