11 Things about Vivian

I feel like my blog hasn't featured Vivian as much as it should, so at 10 months old, I'm going to give you all 10 things I love about Vivian.

1. She is such a mommy's girl.  I mean, she loves Daddy, too.  And I'm super happy that she has finally started reacting when he gets home at the end of the day and runs to him like Evelyn does.  But let's be honest, Evelyn was all Steve's from the beginning, so it's nice that Vivian turns to me.

2. She is a cuddle bug!  She has this adorable little way of snuggling up right under your chin, but then she will pop back up to look at you and smile.  It's like she wants to know that you're happy she's there and she wants you to know she's happy to be there.

3. She loves to dance.  Put some music on and she's bopping up and down, usually in her trademark stance, which is down on one knee.

4. When given the chance she will make a break directly for the stairs and be half way up before you realize she's gone.  This is always interesting since Evelyn can open the door we use as a barrier.  

5. When she gets to the top, she turns around and closes the gate.  Safety first you know.

6. And speaking of closing the gate, nothing that opens or closes is safe.  Drawers, cabinets, the DVD door...

7. When she isn't looking for things to open, she's eating paper.  Toilet paper, tissues, receipts, her sister's art projects...

8. Don't try to feed her anything that she can't pick up and feed herself.  This makes things like yogurt and applesauce interesting.  Cottage cheese though...she will go to town!  

9. She goes nuts for a soft, cozy blankie.  We will often put one down on the floor and she flops right down on it and starts rolling back and forth and pulling it over herself.

10. When she gets mad, I mean really mad, she pulls off her socks.  Like she's staging a protest.  You're going to make me take a nap?  I'm ripping my socks off and throwing them on the floor.  Take that!  And when she gets really, really mad.  She poops.

And a bonus...

11.  When she happens upon a pair of her sister's underwear on the floor, this always happens...

Sleep Update

A while back I posted about the sleep troubles we have been having at our house.  Since then I have received two products that made a real difference in our lives, and helped put us on track for full nights of sleep.  

The first thing we got was a Zippity Zip sleep sack.  My mom saw it on Shark Tank, and said the sharks ate it up.  According to the reviews on the site, it's a must have product and solves all sleep troubles.  The basic premise is that it's a sleep sack, but it allows for less movement, particularly when babies startle in their sleep.  Vivian's sleep trouble started when we moved her to the crib and she started rolling, so it made sense that she was probably waking herself up with her movements in her sleep.  

We got our Zippity Zip and instantly Vivian's sleep pattern increased to a five hour chunk of time, and then quickly to a seven hour chunk.  This was an amazing increase from the 2-3 hours we were getting.  We then feel into a routine where she was waking at two am.  Around this time my mom also got me a great book: How to Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems by Richard Ferber.  Even if your child doesn't have "sleep problems", I seriously recommend getting this book.  It's very interesting to understand how a baby sleeps and the patterns of sleep they go through.  Evelyn was a good sleeper, but I still would have done things differently with her had I read this book when she was a baby.  

There was a section of the book specifically for babies with pacifiers.  And I know it sounds so stupidly simple, but basically the book said it was time to get rid of the pacifier.  By nine months most babies have outgrown the benefits of using the pacifier by the baby's ability to move around on their own.  And with one kid who's still hooked on her paci, I was okay with pulling the plug, especially if it meant we were going to get longer stretches of sleep time.  It took a few nights, but eventually she got over the pacifier and was suddenly sleeping until 4:30 or 5:00, when she would wake for a feeding. 

Reading the book I also recognized that it was time to change some of Evelyn's sleep habits.  It was time to cut her nap significantly.  She would still go three hours if we let her, but she was up until 10:30, or would go to sleep but wake up at three am and not be able to fall back asleep.  We played around with no nap at all, but she was intolerable by about five in the afternoon.  We learned through trial and error that about an hour was the right nap, and still have a bedtime of around 8:00.  I also need to make sure to wake her up by 8:00.  

Even though things are getting better, we continue to have some trouble with Vivian's sleep.  She cries for about 15-20 minutes every time it's time for sleep - both naps and night time.  It's hard to deal with, but there's really nothing to do about it because she has to go to bed!  I really think she just falls into the "light sleeper" category.  It kills me because I can't check on her at night like I love to do because  it almost always causes her to wake up, sit up, and start crying.  I dealt with the early wake up and feeding for a while, but she started getting up earlier, and was not really eating.  Add to the waking up early the fact that sleep and I aren't always on the same page, and I have trouble going back to sleep after that wake up call.  I decided it was time to sleep train that wake up out of our nights, but we also happened to put her to bed much later the other night, and she suddenly slept until 6:00.  So that's where we currently stand!  Vivian's bedtime has been moved back, and now the girls have bedtimes a little closer to each other, which actually makes life a little easier. 

And maybe, as I start to gain back some sleep, I'll have more energy for things like blogging!  :)

 

Behavior Plan

We've been having some struggles here at our house with listening.  And it's really hard for me to deal with having a child who doesn't listen.  As a teacher one of the things that I think is a relative strength for me is classroom management.  For the most part I've been pretty lucky with the students I've had, but you give me a group of 9 and 10 year olds and I feel like I do a pretty good job with behavior.  So the fact that I've been struggling with my own kid really is hard.  Now I know that kids are always better behaved for other people, but my child does need to listen to me, too!

Last summer I tried a sticker chart with Evelyn, but she really didn't understand the purpose and just wanted to pull the sticker back off as soon as she stuck it on.  Perhaps it was the wrong plan, but I let go of any plan for a while with that failure.  It wasn't until my friend The Control Freak posted an article about a behavior plan that it dawned on me that maybe it was time to try again.

I decided to employ a behavior jar to be filled with pompoms.  According to the plan, you picked a few key behaviors that needed to be changed and focused on those to be rewarded.  I decided we would have two jars, one for getting ready in the morning quickly and getting ready for bed without fussing, and the other just for general good listening since really that is our big problem.  As I said to a friend, we needed to fix the morning and evening because it just ruins both the start and end of our day!  And with the not listening in between our whole day just sucks!

From teaching I knew that the key to a good behavior plan is that the child needs to "buy in" and that requires a reward that is going to be meaningful.  Enter the Dum Dum.  Recently at the bank the teller offered a lollipop, and I said okay for the first time.  Evelyn was hooked.  Now I know that many people are not a fan of using food as a reward, and in general I am not either, but I knew it was going to work for my kid and that is what matters!

I gathered my materials and got to work...

Very quick and easy to put together!  And when Evelyn woke up from her nap I explained the Good Listener Jar and promptly started putting pompoms in.  We spent the rest of the afternoon adding pompoms for pretty much everything in order to get that jar filled fast because instant gratification is important when you're three!  

And, as with any good behavior plan, you have to be ready to make adjustments as needed.  I quickly got rid of the second jar for morning and bedtime because it is just as easy to include those times as good listening, and it helps get the jar filled up faster to only have one.  And if we're talking about filling up the jar fast, my kid quickly caught on to the fact that I had different sized pompoms and she always goes for the bigger ones when selecting what she's going to put in.  

It took about 2 days for her to get her first lollipop, and she's very close to her second.  I am getting a lot more, "Okay Mommy!" responses when she is asked to do something than I've ever known possible.  I've been able to back off a little on rewarding every little thing while still getting the desired result, which is exactly what a behavior plan is meant to do, and everyone is a little happier!