My son is lousy at falling asleep. Since the ripe old age of 6 months we’ve been jiggling and rocking this child to sleep. In his crib he slept through the night, mostly, and always after 20 minutes of leg numbing jiggling and rocking.
Thanks to my baby boy, whose whispers about “birdies” hatched my idea for the Discovery Window (pardon the pun).
While toddlers love the great outdoors not every day is suitable for outside play. So how can we can bring a little of the outdoors inside and a little wonder and education to our toddlers at the same time?
The Discovery Window is simple to put together and the possibilities for education and entertainment are as wide as your child’s interests.
Some days motherhood sucks.
Why doesn’t anyone ever say that? They should have a chapter in every baby book titled “parenting can suck too”. When you bring that sweet new baby home you never think that you’ll be horribly embarrassed when he chucks his sippy cup clear across the restaurant at lunch, that you’ll have to wrestle him to get him into a diaper while he kicks and screams like you’re killing him, or that you’ll want to put him in a box and ship him to Grandma when he won’t go down for a nap.
I actually managed to go an entire week without humiliating myself so no Mortified Mama Monday today. The craziness of the week has probably saved me from utter embarrassment. On the downside, the craziness of this week has given me a deep and dark craving for sugar, and hot baths, and a vacation in Tahiti.About a month ago Techie and I hired a nanny to care for Chibby in our home three days a week so that I could help with an upcoming project. I interviewed several nannies, did background checks, and hired a young, atheltic, and well spoken nanny. She came highly recommended and was working several other days a week for a pair of doctors taking care of their three children. My one sweet baby should have been a breeze. Being a proud stay-at-home mom of 18 months it was exceedingly difficult for me to leave my precious baby with someone else, but I did it. About a week after we started leaving him with the nanny I started noticing little “behaviors” popping up. All of the sudden there are fits about things there weren’t before and everything felt disjointed. I gave the nanny a schedule and showed her how we feed Chib and put him to sleep. All the while a voice inside was telling me to fire her.Friday, I came home to find my sons in shambles. For the first hour that I was home it was disaster. I decided to give Chibby a snack thinking that I was up against a cranky-butt-low-blood-sugar-meltdown. I was half right. I sat him down with some popcorn and he ate like he hadn’t been fed all day. I checked the refrigerator where I’d left a lasagna for the nanny to heat up for Chibby’s lunch. Missing from the lasagna was the tiniest square. Apparently our health obsessed anorexic nanny decided that a 1″ inch serving of lasagna was enough for an extremely active toddler’s lunch. As he finished up his snack and I swear a half gallon of milk, he promptly passed out on the couch….at 4:30. Moms: does that sound like a child who supposably had a 2 hour nap at 11:30? No way. Rule #1 of Toddler Care: Dont’ screw with the schedule. Toddlers need naps, even if you have trouble getting them to sleep, they need naps like they need oxygen. Donald Trump couldn’t say it any better. SHE’S FIRED.Are there more qualified nannies out there? Sure. I’ll probably hire someone to come in one day a week so I can still be of some help to Techie and his project but any work that I do in the future will be at home, with my son. I am stay-at-home mama through and through. No one is more qualified to take care of my son than I am. For Techie & I if that means living on a tight budget and working our tails off during naps and after the baby goes to bed than that’s what we’ll do. I have nothing but respect for the many mama’s who work outside the home. I have no idea how they do it. As for Chibby, he pigged out two days in a row and this morning he clinged anxiously to me until the nanny failed to arrive, then his beautiful blue eyes lit up like they haven’t in weeks. Mine too.
I caught an episode of the Super Nanny recently in which the children in the episode were watching TV and playing age inappropriate video games all day long. The children’s behavior didn’t even surprise me when I saw the parents saying “well we didn’t really think TV would have any effect on the them.” Despite being nominated for a POTY award the couple learned that while it’s not realistic to throw out the TV these days, it is completely necessary to filter.
When you were a kid the worst thing that could happen to you at school was to be the last kid picked for the team. Grace being my middle name and al,l I was always picked dead last. In fact i was often the odd man out….given a “special job” by the PE teacher. In other words you suck and we don’t want the other kids to suffer so sit here.
While I endured some teasing, I coveted that position, never getting sweaty and always enjoying a great view of the hot guys playing sports. I saved my energies for more delicate tasks like dancing and singing in choir and quite frankly have never need those valuable kickball skills as an adult.
In the beginning we slept well. Our Chibby was a superstar sleeping through the night even before 6 months.
Though he slept the minimum hours recommended for babies his age he snoozed peacefully curled on my chest or stretched out between us in bed. Then he began to kick in his sleep… so we kicked him out!
So occasionally Chibby comes to me butt stuck out, shoulders slumped, starring up at me like “mom i’m bored”. So because I love to hear him laugh histarically, we play a little game I call go go blankie (it’s not poetry but he knows what it means).
Once you do this they’ll want you to do it again and again but it’s good for you. I’ve never tried this on carpet as I have wood floors…if it works on carpet post a comment and let us know. Of course always be sure not to do this near open stairs and be careful etc. At some point they almost always fall over from the Gs!
I’m standing in the kitchen making sippies and I hear my son, who has stripped his clothes all off because he’s a nudist, toddling around the corner, his diaper making that little crunchy sound and his how-are-they-sticky little feet making that thwick thwick thwick sound.
I stumbled across an innocent little blog post this morning about a stay-at-home mom bumper sticker on a minivan. It was a nice little post from a working hubby who was showing some respect for the work that stay-at-home moms (& dads too) do. The post it self was short and sweet, but the commentary left by “anonymous” thereafter was inflammatory to this stay at home mom in particular.
