when Emily was a baby i was extremely rigid. what do you want, i was a first-time parent. She had to eat a certain time, she had to nap at a certain time and she had to go to sleep for the night at a certain time. granted, people thought i was crazy when i nursed her every three hours, and not when she was super crabby. and sure, it was annoying when i couldn’t make plans with friends because Emily had to nap. or we couldn’t go anywhere at night because she had to be in bed at seven.
it’s not that i thought her world would end if she didn’t go to sleep or eat at the proper times, it’s just that she and i had found the perfect groove and things worked their best when we were on schedule. i thrive on schedule and so did she. as soon as things veered off the schedule, chaos would ensue. and i don’t do chaos. at least not without a little xanax and some alcohol.
when Josh came around, i realized that keeping two kids scheduled was much trickier a task. he needed to nap, but Emily needed to be picked up from school. so, he went without a nap. joshie was nursing at 7, so Emily would have to wait to be put to bed. Josh needed to be fed, but Emily needed to use the bathroom. the world didn’t end of course, and i learned to deal with the chaos (although the drugs and alcohol certainly helped…)
now that i have three kids, i don’t even know what schedules are. i work thing like eating and napping and bedtime around all the other pressing issues. Isabella gets a nap somewhere in between the kids needing to be picked up from school. I used to nurse Isabella way before she was hungry – topped her up – so i could go food shopping and not worry about having to nurse her
(especially since i couldn’t do the whole nursing in public thing…but that’s a whole other post…and don’t get me wrong, it’s not that i have a problem with it – i’m all for whipping out the boob ala Maggie Gyllenhaal. go Maggie! it’s just that i was never able to make nursing a smooth process. there were always nipples flying and children crying and it was just a big ole mess)
in a bathroom somewhere.
i just laughed today when we were at wonderland and then we had to get lunch and drive Emily to a party and go to the butcher and go to our good friends’ son Noah’s second birthday party and then go out for dinner. Isabella would nap when we found the time to squeeze it in, or she wouldn’t nap at all.
i am a completely different person than i was when Emily was her age. then, i probably would have left Wonderland at exactly 12:45 to make it home for her 1:00 pm nap. i have 3 kids..i have to be resilient. i have no choice. and Isabella’s a completely different kid. Sure, she was exhausted, but she’s number 3….she has to be resilient. she has no choice.
what about you? rigid? scheduled? laid-back? did it change after you had more than one child? i often wonder, though, if Emily is the way she is because she was born that way, or because my rigidness made her this way. and i wonder if Isabella is more laid back and chilled because of the way i parent. it’s an interesting thing…
song of the day: Face Down by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
video of the day: any clip that combines Rick Astley (this was the first single i ever bought. i think i was in third grade) and Back to the Future is aces in my books:
I never put the monkey on a schedule. Even now, at 22 months, she has a different bedtime every night. She eats when she’s hungry, wakes up at 7:30 one day and 9:30 the next. It’s always worked for us…. 🙂 I highly doubt I’ll be scheduling baby #2! 🙂
Ali, LOVED this post. First of all, GO MAGGIE! We need more of that kind of flashing and less of the Britney/Lindsay unnaturally hairless vagina shots, kwim?
Anyway, to your question, no, I wasn’t rigid at all, even with the first. It wasn’t until she was about 18mths old that I noticed she did a lot better if we were home by 1:00 for her nap – or else we needed to be driving for a good 2 hrs around that time, LOL.
So, for a few years we could only go out for weekend MORNINGS, but now both our kids are beyond napping so the issues have changed from nap schedules to birthday party/playdate/soccer schedules!
I was just like you, Ali. My first was totally on a schedule…problem was he really didn’t need to nap that much or go to bed that early. The only schedule he didn’t have was nursing…he did that whenever he wanted because otherwise he cried 🙁
With my second she had to be flexible. Her brother was in school, he had playdates, and I didn’t want to be trapped in my house! I much preferred this and also wonder whether that is why she is so much better at dealing with change and why my son stresses if everything is not “just so”.
Oh well, they were both well loved!
I’m a little too selfish for strict schedules; ie. if I need to go somewhere/be somewhere, or heck, just feel like shopping, I pick up & go. Did this with both my boys and they are quite opposite so I firmly believe most of it is the child’s personality – they are just born that way! My 1st born is evidence of that. I think at 3 months he had this face that just said; “I am the boss, not you!” I try to be strict with bed time though, again pure selfishness, I like me time to unwind in front of the TV, I’m a TV junkie.
hi Ali,thanx for making me feel old.hahaha.grade 3 rick astley?never mind how old i was.well i’m pretty flexible with almost everything.but with 4 of them i’m not usually too tolerant at bedtimne.
In a way, I’ve had the opposite experience. With my first, I was carefree and let Emma do what she liked, when she liked. Which didn’t work very well. Not at all. With Becca, I suddenly found the need to schedule so that I could maintain my sanity. It took months, but I finally got the two girls to nap at the same time. And now? We live life pretty scheduled. Flexible, but with at least a vague idea of when to go to bed, you know?
Number three? I don’t know when you’re going to come, but boy are you ever going to bring chaos with you!