Eric and Elisa are back at nursery today, since they have just spent almost two weeks off nursery with us at home celebrating* Christmas. We thought they should go back today, despite the fact that neither Jon or I are back at work, so they could get used to going again.
(Disclaimer: “Celebrating” is used here very loosely)
These two weeks of Christmas have been very bittersweet. There has been joy, but not as much as I was expecting. Instead we have had lots of tantrums, lots of fights over toys, lots of throwing food on the floor, lots of bad sleep nights…
Last year they were 7 months old and were crawling a bit, but their level of understanding of the world was very limited. This year, at 19 months, they are very clever and want to do many things. However, they still struggle to express themselves, as their language is still very limited, so they get frustrated very easily.
We had two good days. Christmas Day was good. We woke up in the morning, opened our presents, had breakfast and drove to Ratley to spend a couple of days with the grandparents. They ate very well their Christmas lunch and played nicely. The day was really good. The night however was awful. They didn’t have a nap in the afternoon and they slept terribly at night. They both woke up in the middle of the night with cold sweats and it was quite hard to settle them back again.
Boxing Day was good too, they ate more or less ok and we forced them to have a nap by going for a drive around Stratford. However, I was scared to have another bad night like the one before and decided to go home after bath and bottle, rather than staying overnight like originally planned. Now, I have no idea if staying over would have been bad again, but it honestly can’t have been as bad as the journey from Ratley to Basingstoke. An hour and a half of non-stop screaming from Eric. Unbearable.
Then back at home we had a good day, when our friend Alan came to visit. The kids were awesome and behaved so well. Ate all their food, had a nap and played nicely… If only all days had been like that. But, no. We had more tantrums and more fighting over toys.
I am finding this phase quite tough. I despair at times, and get frustrated myself because I don’t know what to do. I think it’s time for me to go back at reading baby books…
Let’s hope that next Christmas is a million times better 🙂
