16 months 15 days

I guess 3 am is my new bedtime. Today they slept long again, until 8:30, and so I got up at the same time as Randy again and made their breakfast food. We gave them their medicine and fed them. I cleaned them up and dressed them, and Randy took them downstairs to play, while I went back to bed. After about 90 minutes he brought them back up for their morning nap. They boys slept in their beds, and Tammy on me. It took her half an hour to fall asleep, but then she slept 90 minutes. When we got up at 12:30, I was surprised to find the boys still in bed, meaning they had slept a full 2 hours, which they never used to do. As soon as we walked in, they were awake though.

I got to work making lunch, cooking pasta with meat and tomato sauce. As it goes relatively fast, everyone stayed upstairs. They were definitely getting pretty hungry, having eaten breakfast nearly 4 hours earlier, and came over to me a few times, wanting me to pick them up. But there is really enough interesting stuff to explore that kept them distracted. They found some empty boxes and pushed them around, which they really enjoyed.

It was at least 1 pm when we started feeding them and eating ourselves at the same time. They did pretty well eating, especially Tammy, and I got some banana and yoghurt after the main meal, since they enjoy them so much. I cleaned them up, put their clothes back on, and let them run around, while putting the dishes away and tidying up the kitchen. Then we all went downstairs.

It was playtime, and they had lots of fun. Sammy crawled around, and pulled the house on top of himself. Then Emmy crawled inside, as well as Tammy, and they collapsed the whole house, all on top of Sammy! But he didn't seem to mind.

We also got the Jenga bricks out. I was making a tower, that Tammy destroyed as soon as she spotted it. I kept making them, and she kept destroying them. And she was putting the bricks back into the bag. She likes tidying up!

Sometimes, Emmy has a toy, and Tammy takes it away from him, or the other way around, though the girl usually wins. They have so many toys, but sometimes they have to fight over the one.

As it was getting later, we went upstairs for the afternoon nap. However, Sammy kept crying, while Emmy fell asleep, and the girl was also awake. I finally got up with her and gave her her afternoon cereal and fruit jar at 4 pm, as well as her medicine. Then I picked up Sammy who was still crying, and Randy fed him. I tried to lie down with the girl again, being very tired myself, but she was not gonna sleep, so I finally gave up, and took her downstairs to Randy and Sammy, going back up, figuring that Emmy would wake up soon, which he did. I fed Emmy, and then we joined the others.

It was playtime again. Daddy was pretty tired, but Emmy didn't mind and enjoyed riding on him. And then he went over to the shelf that they had talked through so many times, and climbed into it. His head poked out at the other end, and I was concerned that he was gonna fall out, but he didn't. Instead he slid backwards until he was back on the ground. He did that several times. And he had a toy cellphone in his hand. Twice it fell out of his hand when he was sticking out the other end of the shelf, and Tammy picked it up and handed it back to him. What a sweet sister! I captured one time on video.

At 5:30 I left them to go get dinner ready; they protested as always, wanting me to stay. I guess we're keeping the 6 pm dinner time, instead of 5 pm, so that they also go to bed an hour later than they used to. They all ate really well - bread with cream cheese, berries, bananas, soup, and then leftover cereal from the morning. Then they enjoyed bathtub play time. Emmy sometimes goes under, but thankfully they have done quite a bit of diving in their swim class, so they don't really mind. Today he went under at the other end of the bathtub, and when I lunged forward to get him out of the water, I inadvertently put Sammy under, who I was holding with my other arm, so they both got to dive tonight!

Then it was bedtime. As Sammy and Tammy had never slept in the afternoon, they fell asleep pretty fast, while Emmy needed a little longer, but it was an easy bedtime tonight.

I was pretty tired again, and took a few minutes to just lie down before getting my food ready. It takes time to cut up all my salad ingredients. Then I ate, took a break watching a show while doing so, before going to work again. Thankfully I had enough energy to joyfully clean the high chairs, put the dishes in the dishwasher, and clean the whole kitchen. Now it's 1 am, and I have to choose wisely what to work on these next 2 hours. My office to-do-list is getting longer every day, and the need to write a newsletter gets more pressing every day.