Success!... and more failure

Ellie slept in her big girl bed two nights in a row! OK, so the first night Peter fell asleep with her, and I was there when she woke up. The second night, I fell asleep with her, and Peter was there when she woke up. The third night, I was ready to fall asleep with her again when she announced, "I no sleep in my big girl bed. I sleep in Mommy's bed. Come on, Mommy. Let's go downstairs." I had my eyes closed, pretending to be asleep, and I ignored her. Unfortunately, she hopped out of bed, went outside, and went downstairs yelling, "Come on, Mommy! I go downstairs!" So that was the end of that.

I've decided that we'll just wait until everyone leaves our house and we have some semblance of normalcy again. A whole lot of stuff happened at once for her. Halmoni came unplanned, Baby Bubber came a week early, Uncle Paul came, we moved her from her crib in our room to a big girl bed upstairs, and to add to the chaos, she's decided to potty train this week. Aigu.

I know I'm just being a weenie about her sleeping alone. I'm sure we could force her to do it, but Peter wasn't home last night, and I didn't have the energy to battle it out with her. Besides, when you have to breastfeed every 2-3 hours, you don't have unlimited time to try to reason with a stubborn two year old. Yes, I'm sure she's manipulating me, but I'm a sucker. What can I do?

Then Peter came home at 11 and she was still awake. He said he'd put her to bed, but they were talking and laughing at 11:45. That didn't sound like going to bed to me. So I'm not the ONLY sucker. Sigh.

So she's decided to potty train. That is, she's pooped once and peed once in her potty in the past week. She's very excited about it, and can't wait to tell me every time she poos - a minute after she's done it in her diaper. I got her Dora training pants, and I told her she could wear them when she pees or poos in the potty. That's pretty convincing incentive, too. She doesn't QUITE get it, but she's starting to. I'd just put her in underwear and let her have accidents until she figured it out if I didn't have a newborn. I think if it weren't for the baby, she'd be potty trained by now. I just don't have the time to be consistent with her. Any advice anyone?

Here's the latest on Matthew - he rolled over. Seriously. At two weeks old. He was sleeping on his tummy, and he started crying an hour later. I went to check on him, and he's flailing around like a roach on his back. Crazy. I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't seen it. He's been trying to hold his head up since he came home from the hospital, too. I hope that doesn't indicate that he's going to be an overly active child. I want nice calm children. We'll see how much nature (Peter's genes) and nurture (my primary care) will play into it.

I'm tired. Two kids is hard work.