Oh Sleep! Oh Poop!

If you don't want to read about poop, I recommend you stop reading now.  Don't say I didn't warn you!

Our life has gotten rather poopy lately, and unfortunately it seems to revolve around Ayden and Rylee's sleeping schedule.

First, let's talk about sleep.  Ayden still sleeps through the night usually.  He sometimes struggles to go down at night and needs one of us to hold him till he goes to sleep, but now for the most part, he is going to sleep on his own.  He occasionally wakes up after a few hours of sleeping, but after some comforting will go back to sleep for the rest of the night.  Ayden has no trouble at all going down for naps during the day on his own.

Rylee has actually improved her nighttime sleeping!  She has even made it through the night a few times now, but that is not very frequent.  She was sleeping only 3-6 hours in her crib at night, and then spending the rest of the night with me on the couch.  She is now sleeping (usually) 6-10 hours in her crib at night!  Woo hoo! We think it is directly related to feeding her more.  Rylee goes down in her crib at night without much fuss, but still cries most of the time for naps.

Now, about that poop.  Ayden wakes up most mornings with a poopy diaper.  Okay, so that's his thing. Wake up and take a grumpy.  At least I hope he's doing it in the morning and not sleeping in his poopy diaper all night.

Rylee generally needs to take a grumpy right around morning nap time.  Dang it if that girl doesn't poop sometimes right after we put her down.  If she cries for too long, I generally check on her to make sure she hasn't A. spit up or B. pooped.  If it's poop and I have to change her diaper, she will NOT go to sleep. She'll just cry and cry and cry in the pnp until we eventually take her out.  What can we do to avoid this?  I have tried waiting it out until she does her morning business, but that doesn't work because there are days that she doesn't poop, so then she just gets cranky because she's so tired!

Now the last few days, both babies have been waking up from their naps with poopy diapers!  I swear that they are waking up because of the damn poop.  Apparently their digestive system works overtime while they are sleeping.  They used to take 2:30 - 3 hour morning naps, but now we are down to an 1:20 or so and them waking up with poopy diapers.  It doesn't matter if they've already pooped that morning or not.  Their little bodies are not opposed to multiple morning grumpies.

Here's another poop story:  Tuesday, Rylee actually took her morning grumpy before going down for her nap.  Oh.  My.  Garsh.  It was the biggest blowout we've had to date.  Actually, I feel pretty lucky because we haven't had many blowouts.  This one was poop everywhere.  It was right before I got her dressed for the day.  So.  Much.  Poop.  It was all over her front AND back.  I knew it was going to be ugly because I could see it on the back of her pj's, so I grabbed a towel to put down on the changing table on my way to the nursery.  Fortunately, they were button up pj's so I didn't have to try getting them over her head.  Thank goodness.  As I was trying to clean up her backside, of course Rylee got her hands in the poop on the front side.  Okay, abandoned the back in favor of wiping off her hands, which she was of course trying to touch ME with!  Imagine trying to hold her kicking legs still while grabbing hold of one hand to clean up while the other poopy hand is reaching and grabbing YOUR shirt!!!!  I was trying really hard not to throw up in the midst of all this because, well, it didn't smell too great either.  Eventually, after half a tub of wipes, I did get her cleaned up, put on a fresh diaper and clothes for the day.  The pj's?  Yeah, I made the executive decision to just throw them in the garbage.  I had dealt with enough poop already and it just wasn't worth it to me.

Changing both Ayden and Rylee has become similar to what I imagine wrestling a polar bear would be like. They are so active!  All they want to do is roll over and grab whatever they might be able to get their little hands on.  This is only slightly annoying when it's just a wet diaper, but it's become a problem when poop is involved.  I have moved everything far out of reach.  Ayden likes the window blinds for some reason, so I pull those up and out of the way as well.  My new trick is to keep a few toys by the changing table and to hand that to them to keep them occupied while I change diapers.  So far it is working.  I'm sure that the day will come when it won't.  Oy.

So there you have it, all the poopy drama that's been going on at our house.  Oh, I should mention that I wouldn't trade this new stay at home job of mine for anything.  I'll deal with the poop and the sleep in exchange for these cute babies of mine.  I just have to try not to throw up sometimes while doing it!