Today Lena discovered Nico's belly button. What wonderful new worlds are opening up! They can tickle each other! Nico is enjoying lying on her back on the floor or the dog bed. I guess it's a new perspective, like when Lena does downward dog.

Last night Lena signed "go to sleep." I couldn't believe it. I tried to get them to nap--Lena started, but Nico wanted none of it, so Lena got back up to play. But Lena was clearly exhausted (we had a playdate and Circe barked the whole time, so I think that stressed her out; it stressed me out). So I let them nap at 5. At 6 they were still sleeping, so soundly that I got up (which they almost never let me do during naps--maybe ten times in their lives!). But all did not end well. They mostly stayed asleep for the night, but only when attached to me. Around 9, Lena decided to get up and play for an hour. Nico had to sleep on top of me all night. It was not comfortable. I didn't get much sleep and was in a foul, angry, resentful mood this morning. Which I don't enjoy. But, in addition to a fairly controlled fight in front of the girls (which I hope we explained and managed to model "effective conflict resolution" rather than scar them for life), we've also decided to try setting up a bed with guard rails in the nursery so they can get used to sleeping in there. I feel like I'll get even less sleep for awhile, and I'll probably end up sleeping in there frequently, but maybe it'll be good.

We also need to get me more "time off" than the hour and a half I had last Saturday (after 11.5 months). Give the girl an inch....

(Above is a picture of us picking out our tree with our beautiful new car two weekends ago!)