Screens? No thanks

In yesterday's post, I forgot to tell you why I thought Friday and Saturday were so horrible, but Sunday was so much better.

Augie had been playing two little games on the iPad for a couple weeks - two innocuous, not-stupid-kid-game type of games - he'd play for a few minutes and then get bored and moved on. And then we (and by "we" I in no way mean "we", but one of us in particular) started to show Augie videos on the iPad, and then introduce him to really stupid games - and suddenly Augie was asking for the videos all the time. Rather than limiting his screen time, we (read note above) just kept giving him the iPad. All was well and good when he had it, but as soon as it was taken away, he started crying and whining and begging to nurse, and he would not give up. And this pattern would repeat over and over during the day. It was ugly.

Saturday night we talked about what role we wanted screens, and specifically the iPads, to play in our family life, and we (this time I really mean we) realized that we don't want any screen time for our family - at least when we're all together and interacting with the boys. Not for us, not for them.

So Sunday morning, neither of us got our iPads out, and when Augie asked for fish or monkeys or buses (games and videos he likes), we deflected and moved him on to something else. He didn't have a single meltdown all day, and he didn't ask to nurse except at his normal times, and he finally took a nice long nap.

Could be coincidental, could be causal. Either way, the iPads are on the shelf when the kids are up.

Unrelated to this post, here are a couple bed pictures:

Leif and I took a lovely long nap together this morning, and then in the afternoon he put himself to sleep for a second (considerably shorter) nap. We've been struggling with his sleep, but today I paid close attention to the clock to make sure I wasn't keeping him awake too long and getting him back to bed at the right moment, and that's when he put himself to sleep. It's so hard to figure these things out at this age because they change so frequently - just as soon as we've figured out his sleeping/waking patterns, they change. So I figure by the time I get us settled into a routine, it'll be obsolete.