Tag: parenting

Your Daddy

Published on by a.simple.mamaLeave a comment

My dearest children,

You are very lucky.  There are many lucky kids out there, but few as lucky as you.  You have so many people who love you, but one of the most important people is your Daddy.

Your Daddy loves you in a way that only a Daddy can.  Your Daddy will be your rock, your go-to-guy, the main man in your life.  He will be your best friend, your worst enemy and everything in between.  You will have days where he’s your favorite and days where you are mad at him.  There will be times you come crying to Mama, and many where you will run to Daddy with your tears.  Daddy will be your hero, the one you compare all other men in your life to.  Your one and only Daddy.

You will call him Dada, Dad, Daddy, Pop.  You’ll share your most important memories with him.  You’ll play catch in the yard, kick a ball around, ride on his shoulders, wwrestle in the living room, share your secrets with him.  You’ll look to him for advice.  Sometimes you’ll listen, sometimes you won’t.  When you’re older you’ll ask him about when you were young.  You’ll laugh at his jokes, you’ll giggle at his stories.

Your Daddy is a patient man.  He is strong when Mama needs a break.  Daddy can wrestle and play after a full day of work.  Even when he’s sick on the couch, if you come grab his hand he follows you to play.  He snuggles with you and kisses your little head.  He rocks you to sleep.  He makes you laugh and laugh.  He is silly, and you love it.

He will give you a bath and let you splash and splash.  He will play in the mud, let you play with the power tools, take you in the garage to let you help him.  He’ll let you sit in his lap while he plumbs the sink or fixes the house.  He will let you invade his personal bubble and not blink an eye.  He will love every second of it.

Your Daddy was ment to be a Dad.  He tells you he loves you, and even better he shows you how much every day.

I hope even on the days where you aren’t your Daddy’s biggest fan, that you will know how very loved and how very, very lucky you are to have Your Daddy. ♥

5 Stages of Accepting Toddler Sleep

Published on by a.simple.mamaLeave a comment

For the past few weeks your little one has been on an indeterminate pattern of either sleeping through the night with not a peep, or waking between 1 and 3 times seemingly inconsolable.  Each time they wake it takes anywhere between 30 seconds of rocking/singing and 3 hours of everything you can possibly think of to get them to finally wear themselves out enough to return to sleep.  Last night was no exception to this new sleep pattern.

11:30p – Your toddler decides that your 2 hours of sleep is enough for the night.  Not his fault that you don’t go to bed at 7p when they do, right? Besides, his needs are more important than your own, and if he’s not sleeping then, well…no one is.

So, after 10 minutes of wailing coming from the room across the hall it’s clear that your little one will not be putting themselves back to sleep.  Enter Mama.

You try to offer water, turn on the night-light, check the diaper, sing the usual Twinkle Twinkle…all with the quick hope that this will be only a 1 wake-up night.  You place your little one back in bed not-quite-asleep and return to your own hoping their fussing will subside as they drift back into dreamland. {Denial}

11:45p – Well shit.  That didn’t stick.

This time both you and the Hubby get up.  Re-check diaper, rub J’s legs – arms – belly hoping its growing pains, offer water, offer food – which he takes 30 minutes later, sing songs, talk calmly, play music, play white noise.  J is pulling at his jammies so you un-zip them to make sure he’s not sweating…he’s not, but you blow on his belly which sends him into a round of sudden laughter!  You can’t help but laugh too at your little one’s total randomness.  10 minutes of blowing down his shirt followed by laughter and “yeah’s”…but still no eye rubs or any sign that your little one is ready to return to sleep.  Hubby has to work tomorrow, so you let him go back to bed and you retire to the living room to walk and sing and walk and sing. {something resembling Anger}

12:30a – Ok. Your legs are about to give out and yet your little one is now more awake than ever and now is fighting you even harder.  Time to try the TV babysitter/hopefully the light will put him to sleep like it has you so many times…At least then you’ll get to sit down and close your eyes, right?  {Bargaining}

 1:30a – While you could easily sleep in this chair, your little one hasn’t so much as yawned in the last hour.  And the strange cartoons on at this time of night are making you seriously wonder how things like this make it on TV.  You realize you may not get to sleep at all the rest of the night.  You’ve already tried putting him to bed 2 more times only to be reminded by screaming that he clearly isn’t going to do that.  Nice try Mama. {Depression}

2:00a – You’re finally so exhausted that you resign yourself to listening to some screaming if it means you can lay down in your own bed.  You put your little munchkin in his bed with his blankie and his stuffie, close the door and let the screaming ensue.  As long as you know he’s safe, not hungry, not poopy then you are OK with letting him have a little scream therapy – aka: wear himself out by yelling.  {Acceptance}

2:30a – One last effort finally pays off.  You snuggle your little monster one more time as he finally drifts into sleep land once again…

Only to wake at his normal 6am.  WTH?!  Clearly missing out on 3 hours of sleep hasn’t effected his sleep timeline in the slightest. Damn…

And then you remember…only 10 short weeks until you’ll have 2 of them. Thank goodness you don’t have to work tomorrow, even though you know it’ll still be a day full of cranky Toddler and sleepy Mama.  Then again you wouldn’t trade the extra snuggles for the world. 

5 stages

Mama-ism: You’re life will never be the same

Published on by a.simple.mamaLeave a comment

There’s lots of things you’ll discover about being a parent.  So many ways that you life will never be the same.  Changes you will make to your life without so much as a thought about it.  Some of them you’ll think back on and wonder how the transition happened so effortlesly.  Sometimes you’ll look back and wonder how one little creature could have such a huge impact on certain aspects or habits of your life…

The most common question I’ve found myself asking is in a group setting where we’ve spent the entire time talking about J or things child related…What did we used to have conversations about before we were parents?

But the one that caught me most by surpise?  As a parent, your bathroom and personal hygene routine will never be the same!

Ever pooped with your little one sitting on your lap?  If you’re a parent (especially a mom), your answer is probably yes!

Yup…never thought you’d cross that line…sure, when you got married you stopped making the effort to close the bathroom door when you pee…but you’d never put that in the same category as letting another person sit on your lap while you pooed.

I’d never really thought about the oddness of this particular new habit until a friend of mine asked if I’d ever peed with J on my lap…ooohh if only that were the extent of it!  Maybe you could avoid doing this if you were at home where you could stash the kiddo somewhere safe while you relieved yourself…but what about when you’re at the store by yourself?  They don’t have child holders in the stalls so you can use both hands to use the potty…so you get really good at using one hand to do your business and the other to hold your little one – who’s too big to be in a carseat and too little to not wander out of the stall while you’re stuck on the toilet!  Oh the conundrum of being a parent!

There’s also the showering with the door open or the little one in the boucy seat right outside the curtain…the getting dressed or undressed with a constant audience…and every other possible thing that you’d normally try and keep “in private” suddenly becomming a 2+ person job.

Ain’t it grand 🙂

TV?

Published on by a.simple.mamaLeave a comment

We’ve all met the parents that swear they will not let their child watch TV at all.  And we’ve all met the parents that use the TV as a 24-7 babysitter, too.  From one extreme to another.  I never gave it much thought really, until I became a parent of a toddler of my own.

The Hubs and I have the TV on fairly regularly whenever we are home.  Mainly as background noise – sometimes for music specifically – but generally it’s habit for us to turn it on when we get home from work and are making dinner etc.  Never really occurred to me that that may be considered a “lot” of TV time.  I don’t think that the shows that we choose are inappropriate for J to be around, so I’ve really not considered what our habit of TV time means for him.  Then again before he reached toddler-age J wasn’t really that aware of or interested in what was on the magic screen in the family room anyway.

When he got to about 15 months, we started to use cartoons as a way to keep J occupied for a few minutes at a time while we made dinner or needed a few minutes of adult conversation without interruption.  I also started using it as a tool at work for when J was having a hard time finding something to occupy himself and I needed a few solid minutes of “work” time.

Now, only a month or so after we introduced these kiddo shows to J, he’s starting to ask for TV time – especially when at work with me – but also at home.  Some days he seems really interested in the shows – singing or dancing along with them, and other days he goes between watching and playing.  His favorites are Bubble Guppies, Tickety-Toc, Peppa Pig, etc. on Nick Jr.  All of which I am totally OK with him watching 1 or 2 episodes at a time.  In my opinion as long as the show has a good message and isn’t followed by 1000 crazy commercials, it’s probably better than most of the things J may see anywhere else – in public, in books, etc.

I guess I’m finding a certain value to having another tool to use to help J focus on something for more than 30 second intervals.  At some point he will be in a child-care setting where he will need to be able to sit for 15-20 minutes at a time for circle time or a story and among the many other things that we do as parents to help teach him this skill, a cartoon here and there most days works too.

I try and stay aware of how much TV J is watching still – some days he gets to watch more than others – and some days I feel more or less guilty about using the TV as my “babysitter”.  But honestly, what parent hasn’t used TV as a babysitter at least a few times?  Why is it that as parents we second guess and worry so much about the ways that we choose to raise our kids?  Especially when it comes to something like TV that is present in almost every home & school in the nation?

A time for change

Published on by a.simple.mamaLeave a comment

One of the biggest mistakes we made as first time parents was getting J in the habit of nursing to sleep.  Didn’t seem like that big of a deal until recently…but there’ve been a few things recently that have made this mistake very evident, and the consequences not so fun.

1 – as J gets older and I continue to nurse him, he doesn’t so much nurse for nutrition but more-so out of habit.  As part of that, he tends to “play” more than actually drink anything.  As my nips are quite sensitive now (yay pregnancy) this “play” tends to feel almost like torture – either being painful or just plain annoying.

2 – Since J doesn’t have much opportunity to socialize with other little ones being at work with me, the Hubs and I have discussed a few options – either childcare, or mommy/toddler classes – as a way for him to get this social interaction a few times a week.  If he does go into childcare, he has to be able to fall asleep on his own, and his nap schedule would change pretty significantly.  Likewise, if we do any toddler classes, they tend to fall right in the middle of his naptime as it is now.

3 – when the Baby comes, I won’t be as available at bedtime as J is used to now, as I will be splitting my time with Baby and Daddy will be helping with putting J to sleep as well.  I’d rather start to change J’s expectations around bedtime now then throw him another curveball when the baby comes and changes his whole life anyway.

So, we made the decision on Thurs. night to change a few of these things since I know that we’ll have a full 3 days in a row where we can implement these changes.
Change #1 – no nursing at bedtime.  We kept his bedtime routine the same otherwise, but instead of spending 5-10 minutes either nursing or rocking J to sleep, we simply snuggle him for a few minutes then lay him down in his bed and leave the room. This has worked spectacularly for the past 2 nights…I am simply amazed…
Change #2- only one nap a day instead of 2.  Today I  tried an 11am nap, but J wasn’t having it, so we did a 1pm nap instead after getting home from lunch with Daddy, and he slept for an hour and a half.  Plus he didn’t throw a huge fit earlier in the morning, which makes me feel better about only letting him take one nap.  I think this is still going to be the biggest transition though…and I’m kind of dreading it and how it will work at my office when I won’t be nursing him either…
Change #3 – less nursing in general.  Today J didn’t nurse at all.  He didn’t ask for it either.  Plus I’m OK with giving my sore nips a little break.  I don’t know that I am done with nursing J, but I certainly don’t intend on nursing him before naps or bedtime…we’ll see how that all works out going forward.

The fact that the last day and a half has gone so well with these changes makes me feel like my intuition as a Mama is working as it should.  Trust your gut! If you feel that it is time to make a change with the way you are doing something with your little one, why not give it a try?  In my case I have to be 99% convinced that it is the right time and the right decision, but so far my gut hasn’t led me astray when it comes to J and his needs.