In which I find Rhea tied to the crib and other notable events from the Holidays

Yes, I am still alive. I took a Christmas vacation from blogging, I suppose? I didn’t plan it, but the holidays were exhausting as usual and we are still recovering. We truly enjoyed the Christmas festivities, though.

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Our tree and decorations are still up because they stay up until the Epiphany. It really helps with the post-Christmas depression because we’re pretty much tired of it by then. Anyway, I will restrict myself to our holiday highlights because I can feel your eyes glazing over already. Off we go!

We spent the Saturday before Christmas at Costco because we are gluttons for punishment. Some of my Amazon purchases still hadn’t arrived (I’m looking at you, illustrated Harry Potter book), so we had to take drastic action. The trip actually went pretty smoothly until Wren managed to spill my entire Coke onto the floor from her lofty perch in the cart. The Coke was way below her sitting on a table and we were all watching it, but she is a sneaky one.

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Christmas Eve turned into an impromptu gathering at my house. My grandparents dropped by to drop off some presents for the girls, my cousins were in town and hadn’t met Rhea yet so they were visiting, and everyone else was trying to find my grandparents, so a Perez party it was! Thank goodness my aunt/fairy godmother showed up with enough Chick Fil A to feed a small army.

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Don’t Scott and I look great?! We’ve been using those wraps everyone you barely know keeps messaging you on Facebook about. Just kidding. Those are my beautiful cousins. Ruth is wearing a pink plus red combination because she is dressing herself these days, and I allow it because it means I’m only dressing four people every morning as opposed to five. Parenting win!

We decided that the 4:30 pm Christmas Eve Mass would be the least hectic. (HA!) That didn’t give Ruth and Rose enough time to fall asleep (a process that usually takes 30 minutes to an hour) so we put the two babies down for naps early and hoped for the best with the other two foregoing their naps. It was pouring down rain, and there was no parking to be had anywhere near the church half an hour before Mass, so we had to park down the street and hike it in the rain. “No jumping in puddles or the mud in your church shoes!” was said several times.

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We sat in the auditorium for the overflow Mass (the sanctuary and balcony were jam packed) and actually happened to sit down next to some old family friends, so that boded well. The girls weren’t too bad, considering the sketchy nap status. We did have to bribe them with several snacks, though, which is something we never do. Desperate times. Directly after Communion, there was a mass exodus that almost made me question where the fire was, as I was pacing around in the hallway nursing the baby at that time. But once we re-entered, Mass was still going on. I hoped that meant that leaving would be more low key once the Mass actually ended. Nope. It was raining cats and dogs and there were cars lined around the block waiting to pick up bedraggled family members. Scott offered to do the same, since dragging two toddlers and two babies in the rain down the street while weaving through cars seemed unmanageable. Mom and I survived the long period waiting for him by allowing the girls to strip all of the ornaments off of one of the little trees in the basement of the church. Did I mention desperate times?

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Christmas Day we stayed in our pajamas all day, the girls opened and played with their gifts, and I whipped up a nice brunch for everyone. We went to my parents’ house for dinner, as is our tradition. We visited with my dad’s family the day after Christmas, and Scott’s family came on the Sunday after Christmas to exchange gifts.

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Don’t mind the big gray whale to the left. I have decided that nursing dresses, while convenient, are the least flattering things ever! I promise I only weigh about 400 lbs, not 500 as it appears in this photo. Also, my husband is a twin! Not sure if I have mentioned that.

My parents very graciously offered to watch the girls on New Year’s Eve so that Scott and I could have a little New Year’s date. We decided to finally watch the new Star Wars movie. Guys, it had literally been more than a year since we had been to a movie theater. Tickets are a whole lot more expensive than I remember. Also, what is with all of this 3D nonsense?! What is this, the 1950s? We couldn’t even find a non- 3D showing of the Star Wars movie before 11:20 pm (way past our bed time). So, 3D it was! The cashier pointed to a screen with several boxes with numbers and letters on them when we asked her for the tickets, and I had to ask her what the heck I was looking at. Apparently you can choose your seats in the movie theater now. The times they are a-changin. I feel like I need to be reintroduced into society after four years of changing diapers. Anyway, 3D turned out to be a bad call because I spent the entire next day suffering from a debilitating case of vertigo. So I got all of the New Year’s Day hangover with none of the fun New Year’s Eve drinks. I know, I’m weird. But simulation sickness is a thing, I promise. It is epidemic in dork circles, even.

What about the title of my post, you ask? Well, the room sharing experiment continues to be really hit or miss. More miss than hit, really. Rhea seems to be going through a stage where any sort of sleep-like activity induces screaming for hours. She doesn’t want to be nursed, rocked, stroked, sung to, swaddled, noise machined, or anything else used for relaxation. She just wants to shriek and wail at the top of her lungs. Ruth, on the other hand, is a gal who loves her sleep and finds this an understandably frustrating quality in a roommate. During one nap time, I thought that Ruth and Rhea’s room was very quiet. Too quiet. I went to check on them and this was what I found.

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Yes, my snapchats are fraught with errors. Anyway, I didn’t even know Ruth could tie knots, much less several of them. I asked Ruth why the heck she had done that, and the only answer I could wheedle out of her was that it was so Rhea would stop kicking. Needless to say, Rhea is back in her rock n play as it would seem that she and Ruth need a bit of a break from the roommate situation. For their own safety. Any suggestions on easing this transition? I’m assuming Rhea can’t be room-less indefinitely.

I hope you and yours have a very merry Christmas and a blessed new year.

10 thoughts on “In which I find Rhea tied to the crib and other notable events from the Holidays

  1. Kim Johnston

    Ruth has signs of an engineering mind! Very creative and impressive! Emerson and Ben have shared a room since 15 months/3 months and naps are a little rough. I have no idea why I punish my children like this – I have a spare bedroom. The vain need to have a guest room in my home for a visitor once a month?!

    Reply
    1. sylvia.hobgood@gmail.com Post author

      Once a month is pretty frequent, you need that guest room! Yeah, this is not going well, particularly during the sacred nap time!

      Reply
  2. Carolyn Mack

    Oh the tights thing made me laugh! The sort of thing my older brothers would have done to me. I can’t watch 3D films either without feeling awfully travel sick, you’re not alone in that one!

    Reply
  3. LC

    I love everything about this post. It’s charming. I love your gray whale comment. You look fabulous, by the way. Your photos are adorable – what cute kids. I get woozey in 3D movies too. But the best part is the story of Ruth tying up her sister. And you didn’t even know she could tie knots! Hilarious. If it helps my girls are in 9th and 11th grade and they’ve always shared a room. Last year when my oldest son went to college, my older daughter took to hanging out and sleeping in his room so she could have a little alone time. One day she started to walk into her room and absentmindedly knocked on the door. Her little sister cried because she thought it meant that big sister no longer wanted to share a room. That night they slept together again and have since.

    Reply
  4. Elise Smith

    We just have two bedrooms for the children and we currently have 3 girls, one boy, and one due in August. I just moved our 18 month old into her brother’s room from our room. She has had a crib set up in the girls room since before she was born (we have a set of bunk beds and the crib in there so all three do fit). She just didn’t do well with the girls, she disrupted them and they disliked it. For some reason she did just fine with her brother and he seems rather undisturbed when she has random night melt downs. My suggestion would be to try different combinations. Ideally the baby could be solo and other children could share, but if that’s not possible perhaps a different combination will work better? Maybe two in cribs who can’t access each other?

    Reply
    1. sylvia.hobgood@gmail.com Post author

      Yeah, I think you’re right and this combo just isn’t working. Rose is much more sanguine and she already has a crib in her room too (we have more cribs than we know what to do with), so maybe I should try that combo and see what happens once Rhea gets past this scream all night long stage. Thanks!

      Reply

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