Summer begins

Tomorrow is the last day of school, and summer begins. I know our routines are going to be sorely challenged because we have several trips to different settings planned. What works at home is different from what works at grandma's house is different from in a hotel, etc. I did bring up the clean clothes issue with Toby - I asked him, since the goal had been to wear clean clothes to school, how he would like to handle this issue when there is no school. He said he didn't know (stock first answer), so I told him I thought if we let it go during the summer, it might be very hard to get back into the routine in September, and what did he think? He suggested we keep the same goal for weekdays. Love it! The same as during the school year, from his own mouth - way more than I expected.

I think Contributions will work the same way as during the rest of the year, when we are at home. P&Rs should work the same way. I haven't considered summer activities as Ps and what their Rs might be - great conversation to have with Toby this week, may open up some new Rs.

Since I last posted progress did occur. Toby remembered to ask for his timer to be set several days last week. Both children seem to have settled into our new bedtime routine, in their own ways. Usually I lie down with them for 10 minutes, then I leave and Hazel follows me. Dan goes in to Toby for a while. Hazel entertains herself quietly in the room with me either until she falls asleep on the floor, or I go to bed and she comes with me. A few times, she skipped her nap and fell asleep in her bed early. I was feeling like her falling asleep all over the place was crazy and needed fixing, but now I am willing to go with it for a while. The big accomplishment is that I can use my evenings for something now, besides putting children to sleep.

Another big change recently is that I stopped nursing Hazel first thing in the morning. I changed the first nursing of the day from wake-up to after breakfast. My hope was that without the incentive, she would sleep later in the morning. She has still been waking up consistently at 5 and coming to my bed, asking to nurse. I say after breakfast and she cries a little and goes back to sleep. The crying was, from the first day, much less than I expected. It has been getting less and less, and for the past 2 days, she has not asked to nurse when she comes in! She has sometimes forgotten about it by after breakfast, and she has missed a lot of naptime nursing either by falling asleep while we are driving or by skipping nap. The net effect is suddenly, much less nursing overall - which I am very pleased about. Hazel seems mostly untroubled by it, which is great.