Hey dads. How’s your day/week/existence going?
My wife, spontaneously (actually to procrastinate), decided to start sorting through our thousands of saved but unsorted phone pictures of the kids etcetera. Kinda magical to revisit some forgotten moments through the years.
Will make it a hell of a lot easier when I finally get round to picking a handful to send to my own parents. (Specifically curated so that when my mum ends up ‘accidentally’ putting another one on Facebook I don’t have to go too nuclear. Just regular firebombing.)
Overall things are going well here. But lately my two year old has either been having nightmares or has just been generally screaming around 3am each morning. My 4 month old simultaneously started a sleep regression.
We are a bit tired over here.
But going through pictures is always nice! It’s great to relive those moments and see how your kids have grown.
I misread that as ‘gently screaming’ which seemed… nice, oddly. My condolences on your increased blood-caffeine level.
Toddler still hasn’t slept through the night, and if anything his sleep is getting worse. At this point we don’t even get him down in the cot like we used to.
We absolutely nailed our eldest kids sleep stuff, but with the second everything fell apart.
The fact children are not carbon copies of the previous sibling is incredibly frustrating. We could do it so much better a second time!
It’s honestly starting to effect us as a couple now. I changed my hours to help out, but that’s causing severe burnout on my end. Little man not sleeping is causing burnout for Mummy and yeah, it all feels so utterly hopeless.
That’s rough. When our guys had issues, we did the “leave em in bed and let them scream it out” thing. After fifteen minutes we’d go in and soothe them, then wait twenty five before soothing, etc. I don’t think it works for everyone, but it did for us.
I hope you get it sorted out soon.
Hang in there buddy. You and your partner can get through this, and once you do the memory of trouble will fade.
My daughter cottoned on to the fact painting with poop in her bedroom would get our attention after bedtime. That was so, so, so stressful to deal with at the time. Now, we can look back and laugh about it.
It feels like a long time now, but later it will be a snapshot of the time and you all will have so many more happy memories to look back on.
You can get through it. Focus on the little joys, when you can find them.
Our older kid (preteen) has started raging out when we ask him to do stuff. It’s frustrating. We’ve talked it through, and it seems to be because he doesn’t like it when we repeatedly ask him to do x. So now we have a rule: we’ll ask twice and give him five minutes. That has worked for the past few days.
What happens after the five minutes?
I used a similar tactic for my (then) 4 year old. I’d give her a choice (getting dressed v brushing teeth) and if I didn’t get a response after two minutes I’d make the decision for her. That seemed to work… although it’s less effective now.
That’s when we start haranguing. So it’s five minutes to get his shit together.
All my kid pictures are in Google Photos. It shows random pictures in a “memory” tab. It’s really nice to scroll through.
One of my favourite things to do is to look through the ‘1/2/3/5 years ago feature’.
It’s funny, because I know parenting toddlers was exhausting and difficult, but looking back at those pictures just makes my heart swell.
Teenaged daughter got a job at my local, so now I can’t drink as much without getting into trouble.
ADHD wife developed a new obsession with sorting out the spare room, which is nice.
I found out I have to have surgery.
Been a weird week.
Good luck for the op buddy!
Drinking less is probably good for you anyhow ha.
Having a wife with ADHD is really good for DIY.
