The Good and the Bad

This week started out with the best day ever!!
Why was it the best day ever?
Because we found a home for our dog, Dodger!!!!!

We've been trying to find Dodger a new home for a year now and we finally found someone who wanted him. Actually, my sister-in-law found his new home. So she is now (and quite possibly permanently) my favorite sister.  :) So as of Sunday, September 1st, we are Dodger-free! Although he was hilarious in his little hat, I can't say I'm sad to see him go.


This week we also made a little change with the kids' sleeping arrangements. For the past couple months Elise has been waking up at night. It started out with once a night, then turned into two or three times and the only way to get her back to sleep was to feed her. It was getting a little ridiculous. It felt like we had a newborn again and neither her nor I were getting much sleep. But I couldn't blame her, though. She was going through a lot of changes and I'm sure it was affecting her once good sleeping habits. To start with, she had been sleeping in a bouncy chair and was starting to outgrow it and couldn't get comfortable. Because of that we were making her sleep in a crib that she wasn't used to. Add to that her getting ready to crawl and the fact that she was still sleeping in our room and could see and hear us, and I suppose that's a bad combination for any baby to sleep well.
So we had to make some changes. First we had to sleep train her again so she could put herself  back to sleep at night. Thankfully, we only had to sit through a couple nights of her crying/screaming before she figured it out. To make it easier, we moved her into Parker's room and let him sleep in our room for a while.  After a week or so of her sleeping through consistently, we (mostly I) decided it was time for Parker to move back into his bed so we could finally have our own room back.

It's one of those things where you never know how it's going to go.

Well, the first night went surprisingly well! Parker went to bed a little while after Elise, so she was already asleep. Thankfully he was quiet and they both slept through the night...until Elise woke up around 6 am. I got her back to sleep but Parker was wide awake--an hour and a half before his regular wakeup time. :/
That was a long day. Parker's lack of sleep started showing itself around 12:30 and I couldn't wait for naptime!
Naps have been a little harder. Because they go to bed awake and the room is light, they can see each other and they end up sitting there talking and making noises rather than sleeping. Guess they'll need a little time to get used to being in there together. But thankfully they've been doing well at night, which is a huge relief.

The bad that happened this week was Elise getting chicken pox! Poor baby. She woke up from her nap on Wednesday with the most red, tired little eyes I've ever seen. She looked like she hadn't slept in two days. When I picked her up to hold her I felt a couple bumps on the back of her head. I thought they must be bug bites but when I looked more closely, I noticed several more bumps/spots around her head and face. We still weren't sure it was anything... I told Kyle I had given her a new food for lunch and he wondered if it was just a little rash from that. But later on it seemed like she was breaking out even more and some of the bumps were really big so I took her to urgent care. In the back of my mind I kept thinking it looked like chicken pox but I didn't think we had been around anyone sick. We had to wait over an hour to see a doctor, but they confirmed my suspicion and chicken pox it is. She's been breaking out more the last couple days--I hate seeing her sweet little face covered in those awful red bumps. On the bright side, I guess she won't need the chicken pox vaccine shot she was supposed to get in two months.  : /