Hooray for warmer weather

Today has actually not been that bad. I was not expecting to have a good day when faced with the morning. Bethany had a rather bad night, and kept half-way waking up and crying. She talks a lot in her sleep, but it's hard to understand more than a few words. She must've been having bad dreams, because she kept saying things like, "No" and "I miss Mommy". Once she told me she was scared of the noise from the cars. Finally around 3:00am, I got tired of getting up every 15-30 minutes to soothe her back to sleep and just brought her to bed with us. That doesn't work as well as it used to. There just wasn't that much room, and I couldn't sleep anymore, so I gave up and slept on the couch. Nate told me later that she kept wiggling and kicking and talking the whole rest of the night, so he didn't get much sleep, either. Meagan woke up really early, crying, too, and made enough noise that everyone just woke up. I was so tired and afraid that I was going to be really irritable, but it worked out better than I thought it would. I got them some breakfast, then turned on a movie for them (breaking my rule, yes, I know, but I figured it was for a good cause). I stayed up with the kids for a bit, then went to take a nap. I got frustrated with Meagan at first because she kept coming in the room every ten minutes or so, until I took her downstairs and threatened the two of them. They left me alone then (which surprised me really) and let me get some sleep. At one point I did hear them running past my room, but since they didn't bother me, I went back to sleep. Turned out all they were doing was hauling all their blankets downstairs, so their beds are bare. The next thing I knew, it was almost 11:30. I dragged myself out of bed and got them some lunch and got Bethany ready for school. But I'd slept enough that I actually had the energy to get some things done.

After Bethany left for school, Meagan helped me make some gingerbread cake, then went down for a nap. She's fought her naptime lately, and I expected today to be the same, so I was going to bribe her to stay in bed with a shopping trip later. I asked her if she wanted to go to the store, and she said, "No, I take nap first." Shocked as I was, I still expected her to get up, but she didn't. In fact, she slept for two hours, and I had to wake her up to go get Bethany from school. She was not happy to get up. She sort of stumbled out of bed, came to the door, then said she was taking a nap and went back to bed. I don't remember ever seeing her do that. I went and put some socks on her, and she tried to just roll back over to go to sleep. I had to carry her out to the car, and finally she woke up.

We got Bethany from school, and Evelyn and Brie as well. Usually we just drop them off at home, but today they stayed with us because Brandon and Tanya had gone down to take care of business with the house they are in the process of buying in Portsmouth, about two hours away. I took all the girls with me to run some errands. I wasn't sure if that was going to be a good idea or not, but they were all really good. We went to Lowe's and got some play sand, then to Toys-R-Us and got some sand toys and a ball for the backyard. Then we came home and they had a great time playing in the sand and on the swingset. It was probably the best way I could've spent the afternoon with all of them, because they didn't get bored, and didn't trash the house. Even after I dragged them all back inside so I could make dinner, they were still good. The four of them lined up at the piano and "played" and "sang" for quite a while. They entertained themselves rather nicely while I made dinner. Now dinner's over, they are all in their pajamas and watching Backyardigans, so they've gotten a relatively small amount of TV today, which makes me happy. In a few minutes, I'll go turn it off and put them all to bed. They played hard enough outside today and chasing each other around the house later that I'm hoping they've worn themselves out and will sleep well. Here's hoping, anyway.