Finally a nap!!

For Molly, that is. Kate has been sleeping great. She goes to bed around 8:30 most nights and sleeps through until around 5 a.m., nurses for about 10 minutes then goes back to sleep until 8 or 9. Then she takes like four naps a day, too. It's great!!! Meanwhile, Molly is having a tough time. It all started at the beginning of July when I foolishly suggested we let her skip nap time to go to the parade. She hasn't had an afternoon nap since!!! Instead she's been having an hour of quiet time, which involves her playing right in the doorway of her room, making noise, coming out to go to the bathroom, waking up any adult who happens to be sleeping to ask if quiet time is over yet, etc. At the end her bedroom is a mess, she's no better rested than when it began and nobody has really had a break from anybody else. You would think that she would sleep better at night but it's worse. She crashes early but then she's up crying in the night, calling for us to come in and give her hugs and then she wakes up around 5 or 5:30 a.m. and plays noisily in her bedroom, usually calling for us at least once until her sunshine comes on at 6:30. Needless to say, she's a mess by the afternoon most days -- lots of crying, stomping, throwing things. It's hard to sort out what's sleepiness, what's adjusting to the baby and what's just being 3-1/2, but the end result is the same -- exhausting!

That said, we've been having a lot of fun. I wish I had it together enough to take pictures but I don't have enough hands. Last week we finally went to Sandy Pond, the little swimming beach in our town. It was a spur-of-the-moment idea (we have a lot more time on our hands without Molly's 2-3 hour nap) and it actually worked. There was enough shade close to the water to keep Kate out of the sun and supervise Molly in the water, Molly was really well behaved and got to splash around for a long time, and when it was time to go there were no arguments and I managed to get all the gear and children back to the car without incident.

It was so nice that we went to a different beach two days later, one we had never been to before. It was a little tougher because the shade was so far from the water, but we made it work. Toward the end Kate even fell asleep in her car seat so I sat it right at the edge of the water and Molly got to swim past the rope to the deeper area where fish were nibbling our legs.

OK everybody's awake now. Time to run!

The girls.

Jim's had several days off work lately. We kicked off his latest mini vacation with a trek to the Cheesecake Factory, which we'd never been to before. Yum!!