Quick morning update

Last night Hazel let out a yell around 4, I think, and went back to sleep fairly quickly on her own. Then she woke up and started asking to nurse around 4:30. Five o'clock is my cut-off, so she started crying and yelling when I said it wasn't time yet. I would like to enforce a "when it's daytime out" plan but that's so much later than when she is allowed to nurse now, it would be too drastic a change. So we are going to put a small lamp on a timer to turn on early, and she can use that to know if she can nurse yet - if it's not on, she is supposed to go back to sleep. The only catch (same problem as with Toby's alarm clock) is that she is not always in the same room at that time of night. There was some moving around, leaving her and saying I would come back when she's quiet, which only escalated the crying. She started calling for Dan, and he went to her, and she quieted down. This does not feel like the right way to do this - she yells for me and I don't go, but she yells for him and he does? It is hard to resist when she quiets down but I think it's a quick-fix. Let's see what change a week of this yields.

This morning I struggled to stay quiet about Toby's clothes - he was still wearing the same shirt he put on Friday night when we flew into Newark. He actually got his entire checklist done without any involvement from me, including a clean shirt, boosting my mood and faith. I have decided that setting his timer for when to go out is reasonable - when I have tried waiting for him to ask me to set it, it doesn't work yet. When I hand him the set timer, it is the cue that gets him rolling on his morning routine. In a couple of months, we can move to that next step.

As he was getting ready, Hazel was not interested in putting on her clothes. I asked her if she wanted to come out to the bus with us and let her know that she would need to be dressed to do that. At one point she wanted to go outside naked, so I opened the door for her and of course she balked when she felt the cold air. I did remind her that if she was not dressed then she would need to stay inside by herself, and she still did not put anything on. So when the timer rang and Toby and I were getting our coats on, she ran over saying she wanted to come. I told her she couldn't because she hadn't put her clothes on and I would be back in a few minutes - it took a lot of guts to leave her alone in the house, upset and NAKED, for about 10 minutes. The entire time we were waiting for the bus, I was imagining her pooping on the livingroom rug and smearing it on the walls. Joyfully, nothing came out of her while I was outside and all was well. Pottying has gone perfectly so far today.