All that Yazz

The only way is up, baby, for you and me now...

Well I hope the lyrics of that dodgy 80's song are true because I sure as hell need to know that this little phase will pass.

Example of a typical night in the hissychick household:

5:30 ish: Dinner for cheeky monkey girl and solids refusal for the pixie. Bolted down food for me.

6 ish: Pixie's bath, playtime for Cheeky monkey

6:30: Mr hissychick arrives home. Bath for CMG, breastfeed for Pixie.

7ish: Bedtime for pixie. Put down awake to self settle with her snugzee after cuddles and a story. Storytime and cuddles for the monkey.

7:30 ish: Bedtime for monkey.

7:35 ish: Pixie carrying on like a pork chop. Attempt resettle for twenty minutes. Offer top up, burp and put in bed. Mr hissychick with monkey the whole time who is claiming that her sister annoys her and that she won't go to sleep. Ever.

8 ish: Give up resettling a shouting pixie and bring her out to the loungeroom, in the hope that this will allow the monkey to go to sleep. Pixie is happy and bright eyed, playing on the floor and not requiring our attention.

8:01 ish: Monkey will come out requesting a nappy change, even if it is just a wee. We change her and tell her to let mummy and daddy know if she needs to use the potty next time.

8:03ish: Back to bed.

8:15 ish. Attempt to put Pixie back to bed.

8:20 ish: Even though the pixie is only protesting the monkey is up, claiming we have to help her sister. Mr hissychick goes with the monkey and reassures her that mummy and daddy are looking after her sister, that she's not really upset. Stays with monkey while I attempt to resettle pixie.

9ish: give up resettling attempt and bring pixie back out to loungeroom where she happily plays, knowing full well her older sister needs to sleep because she is exhausted and keeps refusing to sleep/ asking for clean nappies, cuddles etc etc.

9:15 ish: Monkey still not asleep. Try to wait for tired signs from pixie. None are forthcoming. Get irritated about lack of time to oneself and watch some TV while ignoring playing baby.

9:30 ish: Attempt to put baby to bed as monkey is supposedly asleep. Baby protests, monkey is awake and up.

Rinse and repeat until 10:30 when I give up, take pixie into our bedroom, dream(ha!)feed her and put her in her cot. Mr hissychick convinces monkey to go to sleep. If I'm lucky, the pixie goes to sleep. If not...

Midnight: Pixie finally asleep after rocking and cuddling.

Anytime between 1:30 and 4: Pixie wakes. Mr hissychick attempts resettling and when that invariably fails I feed her.

6:15 am: Pixie wakes with mr hissychick's alarm.....

As you can see, we're not having fun yet. The kicker is that you have to follow up this nightly ritual with a full day with a non napping cheeky monkey girl and a randomly napping pixie(so the late bedtime has nothing to do with too much daysleep, in fact the opposite is true) . In other words, I don't get a single waking hour to myself (or sleeping ones really), nor do mr hissychick and i get any time together sans children.

Sigh. The kids' body clocks are officially out of whack and we need help to get things back on track. I know what we need to do, and if we were dealing with one wee one at once it wouldn't be too difficult to implement the necessary changes. But with two we definitely need to get out of the house and into the hands of Tresillian.

Now if only I hadn't rung the booking office just on 4:30, when unbeknownst to be they were closed. So it would appear that we plunge into the deep end of another night. And without the necessary alcohol to cope either....*

Dear readers inside the computer, do you have any ideas that might be of help?

* Yeah yeah, BF post six months post will happen one day. It's not advisable for me to be writing that one up now because I'll only get angry. Well even crankier than my normal operating level. Which is pretty damn cranky at the moment.