It seems like when we get home from work each night is when our work day really begins. We pick up the girls by 5:30 and head on home. Amelia needs to eat (or be distracted) immediately because she’s always hungry, and she’s been conditioned to eat as soon as she gets home. If we don’t feed her, she’ll scream at us until we do. Because of this, sometimes we try dropping one of us off at home before we pick up the girls to start on supper. If we need to go grocery shopping, I’ll drop Becky off at home and head to the grocery store so she can have supper ready the moment Amelia gets home. Katie doesn’t care much about supper and we usually have a battle throughout to get her to eat much (unless it’s Mac & Cheese, Beef Pasta or Spaghetti Noodles).
Lately after supper we’ve been going downstairs where we play with the toys and the jumping pool and usually watch a video on the big screen. Sometimes we play hide and seek and other times we play "pirate" where Katie goes and sleeps on a bed and Amelia and I come in and pretend to be pirates. We ask her for "Gold, Gold, Gold" or treasure or money, and when she says she doesn’t have any, we take her prisoner. The girls love that game, and Katie likes to be the pirate too.
Every other night we try to squeeze in a bath. Once we get them in the bath, they’d pretty much stay there the rest of the night if we didn’t get them out. Especially when they’re by themselves and have something to play with. If they’re together, eventually Amelia will be crying over something Katie did. Amelia loves to get her hair washed, and Katie wants to do it "by my own self" because she can’t stand to get anything in her eyes. One night recently Katie was in the bath for over an hour playing with letters and road that can stick to the side walls of the bathtub.
Amelia’s bedtime is 8 o’clock. She really likes to have us read her books now, so as soon as we get in the room, she’ll accumulate all the books and bring them to you, because she expects them all to be read to her. Because of this, we’ve had to remove books from her room – I think we’re down to about 7 now. The cutest part is when she does the "Map" song in the Dora books. I’ve always sung the little map tune, and now whenever she sees the Map, she tries to sing it herself. "I’m map, I’m map, I’m map, I’m map, I’m map!" The words are hard to remember. After the last book, she’ll jump out of bed and try to find another book somewhere in the room, so I have to grab her and hold her as I turn off the light and turn on her Baby Einstein music. Some days I can sneak out after I laid her down (on her stomach so she can ball up like a turtle), but most nights I have to pretend to be a sleep lying next to her for a few minutes before I can escape.
After we lay Amelia down, it’s time for game time with Katie. We usually play one of her cadre of Dora games – Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, or her new game Dora’s ABCs. She loves to play games, and she loves to win. I play Chutes and Ladders straight with her, and for all the times we’ve played it, I think I’ve only one once. In Candyland we play it straight from the beginning, but when she gets close the end, I make sure to look ahead a couple cards to make sure she doesn’t get one that sends her backwards. I usually win about one out of every 4 games, and once I win, we immediately have to play another one to stop the whining. In the ABC game, you just match a letter to a picture of something that starts with that letter, so I have to mess up to make sure she wins.
At 9:00 it’s Katie’s bedtime. We usually read 2-3 books which usually means we pull out her big Dora Storytime book and pick stories out of there. Her favorite is Dora’s Treasure hunt, which I have memorized now, in case anyone wants to hear it. Once we finish reading, she comes up with some excuse why we need to sleep in her room or give her water or do something. She doesn’t like to sleep alone and bugs us about it every night. We may have to start using the "no pee in bed" incentive process to get her to start sleeping by herself.
After that we watch some TV and go to bed, and 3-4 nights of the week I come downstairs to write blogs, watch basketball scores, do taxes or blankly stare at things in Wikipedia. That’s pretty much our nightly routine.
Eric's space 