Eleanor Update (With Pictures!)

So life has calmed down.  I knew that it would get to this point - after all there should be some advantage to having done this four times before - but it sure felt like it took forever to get here.  Now that waking up in the middle of the night is a distant memory it seems like a really bad dream that I'd rather not re-live any time soon.

When we got to Missouri, the first thing I did was pull out that swing and put Eleanor in it.  She cried.  I put the PRD on.  She kept crying.  And then maybe I cried a little.  After spending a day or two doing everything in my power to get her to sleep, I gave up and let her figure it out.  By the end of our vacation, she had - and she's been sleeping through the night ever since.

So a typical day for her starts around seven, when she is woken up by her adoring siblings who demand Eleanor Play Time as soon as she's done with her breakfast.  

At some point during EPT, she is declared the queen and dressed appropriately and given a throne and sometimes a crown.  Then she takes a nap.  Around eleven or so, she wakes up again and is manhandled played with again before going down for another nap.  Then we repeat that a time or two more before bedtime, around five or five thirty.  She gets another meal before I go to bed (but no play time as the girls are in bed by now) and then we start the whole thing over again at seven the next morning.

I always love my children, even when they're giving me the fits, but I sure do like them a lot more when I know what I'm in for on any given day - especially when the schedule involves a lot of napping with some smiling, cooing, and eating in between.

I'm grateful Eleanor and I have come to that understanding because next week I head down to North Carolina to spend some quality time with my family at the beach.  Usually Brandon comes with us, but this time he's got Tajik that can't be missed and so I'll be a single parent at the beach.  My parents won't be there either and so I'll really, really be a single parent at the beach.  It's a good thing Eleanor likes sleeping so much or the rest of my children would be stuck inside watching cartoon network all day.
And so life is good.  I'm not pregnant, my baby is not a newborn, I'm getting good sleep after a year of bad, and we don't have to get on another plane for three and a half months.  What else could a girl ask for?