Fussy dinner, screaming changes, late bedtimes?

Hello all-
The boys have developed a few habits that I am not sure about.
1) During dinner most nights (formula/multigrain cereal and a fruit), they start off fine, then scream. They keep opening their mouths to eat, but they don’t sound happy at all. Are they letting off steam or do they hate the food or are they not hungry?
2) Every time we change them, or get them dressed after baths, they scream! We try giving them things to play with, tickling, anything, but they just scream and scream. Any suggestions?
3) And is their bedtime too late? I get home from work between 6 and 7 most nights, and we have a routine where they go to bed around 9. This seems late… but it seems to be working. Anyone else have a late bed time?
Thank you!!!

 

Sometime fussiness is teething or illness, but it sounds like you have some over tired kids on your hands. Some people manage to make late bedtimes successful, but for most kids between 6-7 seems to be the magic bedtime hour. Once we started putting our kids down around 6 their behaviour magically improved. How are their naps during the day? If you can make it work try an earlier bedtime and see how they do.

 

Having some of the same issues at dinner time with our 10 month old twins. I know one is teething, but not sure if this is the issue. They seem to want what we are eating, but when I give it to them most of the time they throw it. Sippy cups with water have seemed to help a little. We are doing dinner at 5:30, bottles at 6 and bed at 7. My schedule may be a bit off since I cut down to 3 bottles, but they aren't finishing the last bottle as it is. Your bed time may not be an issue if they sleep later. Mine are up by 6ish. I started doing baths in the morning, but that may not work with your schedule. Sorry I don't have much advice since I'm right there with you.

 

Maybe they want to feed themselves more? Our guys started doing that around that age when they really wanted to self-feed instead of us feeding them. When we wanted to feed them cereal, we would also put a few pieces on their tray they could pick up in between bites of cereal, and that seemed to help. Puffs worked well until they were ready for pieces of fruit, veggies, etc.

As far as the screaming, we go through phases of that, too. I think it is normal.

Our boys have a bedtime of 8pm, and they get up at 7am. I think a late bedtime is okay if your kids can sleep later in the morning. Ours usually wake up at 7am when DH starts the shower for work (our house is all close together, and it wakes them).

 

Mine are food hungry all the time these days and they eat like horses. Tonight for dinner they each ate about 1/2 cup or more of pasta shells (like spaghetti) and 1/2 cup of cut blueberries (they love these). Last night they devoured baked chicken, blue berries & some puffs. We just recently stopped baby food all together b/c they just fussed and made a huge mess. The feed themselves. I find that this has made bed time much easier b/c their bellies are really full. We usually do bedtime around 8:30 just because we get the older kids to bed and it's easier to then do the babies b/c it's quieter, but tonight they both went to bed by 7:15. So I would try more table food and self feeding, they'll love it & I think bedtime will follow!

 

I feel for you - evenings like this are no fun.

1. I agree with PP's suggestion about trying to let the self-feed for at least part of the meal. Offer finger-foods before or while you feed baby-food, or start helping them with a spoon. I think we started spoons around that age, a huge mess but much happier babies. After a few tries on their own they would usually either let me help with their spoon or use a third spoon to feed them between their own tries.

2. Are you sure they are not tired? Or maybe it's just the normal unhappy evening hour many children have ...

3. We had a late bedtime too as long as we had two long naps of at least 2 hours each. Once they started shortening one of the naps, months before we switched to one nap, we had to move to an earlier bedtime. I really raced home from the office on my office days, they would already have had supper when I came and it was bedtime ritual with nursing and without a bath and off to bed the second I walked in the door. Looking at your schedules I think it might be worth a try to move bedtime a bit earlier to see if the evening is more relaxed, you would still have enough time to make it peaceful.
To see if it works you nedd to stick with any new schedule for a week or so to allow time to adjust.

Do you have any big development steps right now? Teething? Crawling, cruising, walking? The more active my LOs were during the day the earlier their bedtime had to be moved (in addition to taking into account the nap schedule).

 

Mine are 10 months as well and they have some pretty bad habits too

For feeding they HAVE TO have toys on their table otherwise they won t eat and they spend the whole time dropping them and expect us to pick them up again and again and again until they get tired of them and expect new toys on the table and the dropping on the floor starts again...

The nappy changing is a nightmare as well they won t stay on their back!!! as soon as we lay them down they flip onto their belly so it s a PAIN to clean them and put a nappy back on.I think I ll get pull ups ones soon

They re transitioning to one nap a day(at 10 months!!!!!!!) .If they have 2 naps they are both short and unpredictable. With one nap it s ok ,quite a long one (2/2.5h) but they get really cranky by lunchtime and sometimes like yesterday won t eat at all.

They do sleep really well at night 12/13h so I can t complain too much...they go to bed at 7PM.

You have to look at what time they wake in the morning to set your bedtime.A 11h/12h day is what I work on

 

Ours reaches 10 months this week too.
1. What I recently found working for us this week for one of our girl who cried lots asking for bottle in the eve. was that we didnot give enough solid during the day (at daycare). So we packed more solid for 3 x 2/3 of this pot: http://www.amazon.com/Vital-Baby-Babys-Orange-Ounce/dp/B00440D01S/ref=sr_1_4?s=baby-products&ie=UTF8&qid=1302841872&sr=1-4

After we did that, she has been sleeping better at night and happier in the eve.

2. About bath, i rotate toys and try to give toys they havenot seen a while , including rattle and let them holding on to the same toy when we take them out of the bath; then only diaper them in the bathroom then put on clothes after i move them to the bed room. If they are distracted with the bed room environment and want to crawl/stand, I just dress them while they stand/crawl and not fighting with them. One of the thing I also found we did wrong was that some time we are so ambitious to bath them right after we came home, and they just got hungry during bath time,

About changing diaper, I also hide cold chewing toys and bring out 3 toys at BM diaper change and give 1 by 1 (i.e. taking a chance on what they like to have during that diaper change). When that method works, they are distracted with the "new" chew toy and not minding laying still to be cleaned. I still have to clean faster as they tend to want to crawl away while I put on cream for them ...

3. We have late bed time too as we don't get home til 6-630pm. Then they just want to play with us before going to bed til 8-9pm, especially the days they napped well at the day care. We take any sleep and happy time we get = ) On day that they don't nap enough, they turn in around 7pm after the last bottle.

 

Ours reaches 10 months this week too.
1. What I recently found working for us this week for one of our girl who cried lots asking for bottle in the eve. was that we didnot give enough solid during the day (at daycare). So we packed more solid for 3 x 2/3 of this pot: http://www.amazon.com/Vital-Baby-Babys-Orange-Ounce/dp/B00440D01S/ref=sr_1_4?s=baby-products&ie=UTF8&qid=1302841872&sr=1-4

After we did that, she has been sleeping better at night and happier in the eve.

2. About bath, i rotate toys and try to give toys they havenot seen a while , including rattle and let them holding on to the same toy when we take them out of the bath; then only diaper them in the bathroom then put on clothes after i move them to the bed room. If they are distracted with the bed room environment and want to crawl/stand, I just dress them while they stand/crawl and not fighting with them. One of the thing I also found we did wrong was that some time we are so ambitious to bath them right after we came home, and they just got hungry during bath time,

About changing diaper, I also hide cold chewing toys and bring out 3 toys at BM diaper change and give 1 by 1 (i.e. taking a chance on what they like to have during that diaper change). When that method works, they are distracted with the "new" chew toy and not minding laying still to be cleaned. I still have to clean faster as they tend to want to crawl away while I put on cream for them ...

3. We have late bed time too as we don't get home til 6-630pm. Then they just want to play with us before going to bed til 8-9pm, especially the days they napped well at the day care. We take any sleep and happy time we get = ) On day that they don't nap enough, they turn in around 7pm after the last bottle.