Juncos

Two weeks ago, I put Baby E in the double-cross-front-wrap carry in my SPOC (simple piece of cloth) sling and delighted her by packing her around outside while I did yardwork. The older girls rode their trikes and helped pick up bits of plants as Baby E and I mowed the lawn, pruned bushes, and pulled weeds.



A mass of weeds was choking out a little bush in one corner, so I started pulling weeds energetically as "Friend Kitty" (a cat that often visits us) jumped up on a nearby wall and then wandered off.



Then I saw it: back in the corner, on the ground, was a nest with four tiny baby birds in it. One of the parent birds had flown up as I came near. Now both of them were fluttering around my head, frantically saying "Chip! Chip!"



I called the girls excitedly to come see the baby birds. They were newly hatched; not more than two days old. Their little nearly-naked bodies huddled together to keep warm, and their eyes were still sealed shut.



After we looked and took a few photos, I put back the weeds as well as I could. I tried to hide the nest, hoping the cat wouldn't find it.

A little research revealed that the birds were dark-eyed juncos, with the distinct hooding of the Oregon junco found throughout the West coast.

Early the next morning I went out to check on the baby birds just in time to catch the cat in the act of raiding the nest as the adult birds tried to drive it away. The cat had a bleeding gash in one hip, so the parent birds must have been defending the nest valiantly.

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I chased the cat away and picked up the baby juncos scattered on the ground. Amazingly, all four were still alive. They had grown a bit and gotten fuzzier even since the day before.



I knew I couldn't leave them on the ground now that the cat knew where they were, so I put the nest into a little box and had the girls take turns guarding it while I tried to rig something up. I thought maybe I could just block off that corner so the cat couldn't get in, but I'd seen the cat jump up on the windowsill nearby and over the back fence, so I knew it could probably get over anything I set up. The wooden birdfeeder I thought might work turned out to be too small.

Meanwhile, I knew the baby birds had to be hungry, and were probably in shock. One was bleeding a bit. The cat and the parent birds were all hovering around, watching my every move.

Eventually the girls and I took the nest with us to ask our friends across the street if they happened to have a birdhouse. Happily, they did--a bluebird house with a hinged front.

Baby juncos are used to being fed every half-hour or so, and by this time it had been hours since the parent birds had fed them. I put the birdhouse with the nest in it on the ground and sat some distance away until I saw the parent birds going in and feeding the babies. I left them alone for a while so they could get used to the nest box and feed the babies, but I knew if I left them on the ground the cat would get to them.

I was a little worried about whether the birds would be able to handle it if I moved the nest above where it had been, since juncos usually nest and forage on the ground. So I called the local rescue chapter of the Audobon society, which said that the birds would probably do all right with it as long as I didn't move it too high or too far away from the existing location.

After getting a ladder from the garage,I nailed the birdhouse to the side of the house, directly above where the nest had been. I left the door open so the parents would be able to find the nest easily.



As I took a few pictures before putting the nest into the birdhouse, I noticed that one of the babies had been in the same position for a long time, with one wing hanging awkwardly over the side of the nest.



It was the chick that the cat had dragged farthest from the nest; the wounded one. It was dead. I didn't know what to do with it, so I took it out of the nest and left it on the wall nearby. It was so tiny, with its pinfeathers just starting to come in and its tummy still showing the hatchling bulge.



I left the other three babies in nest, and put it into the birhouse, then backed off. But the parent birds couldn't seem to find the nest.

I went into the house for a while, but every time I came out they were hopping around the dead chick on the wall, trying to feed it, and ignoring the other babies in the nest. Even after I watched for a long time they didn't seem to see the nest.

Since one chick had already died, I was getting worried about the other three chicks. When I checked on them, they seemed to be weakening. One in particular was quickly losing strength. If the parents didn't start caring for them soon they wouldn't last long.

I moved the dead baby to the top of the ladder a few feet under the birdhouse, but it didn't seem to help.

I'd hand-fed baby birds before, so I knew it was possible--but a lot of work. The thought of trying to feed baby birds every half-hour in addition to nursing a baby and fixing meals for preschoolers didn't seem manageable at all.

Still, if I could feed them something it might help them hold out until the parents found the nest.

I found a recipe for emergency baby bird food and mixed up a batch on my stovetop. Since juncoes are seed-eaters, I used mostly baby cereal (oatmeal and brown rice) mixed with water, a slice of mashed banana, and an egg yolk, cooked together into a mush. I took a little of this mixture outside in a cup, and when it had cooled I fed them some on the blunt end of a wooden toothpick. They seemed to like it, chirping excitedly and then gobbling the food as fast as I could put it into their little mouths.

The parent birds heard the tiny cheeping noises (barely audible even to someone standing right next to the nest) and became excited. By the time the baby birds seemed satisfied, the parents were flying past my head and flitting onto the roof next to me, chirping excitedly. When I got down and took the ladder away, the parents flew to the nest within minutes.

The girls and I scattered birdseed around the yard, and the parents happily cared for their brood. I didn't want to upset them further, so I made sure we kept a distance from the nest.

Several days later, I couldn't stand it any longer. I had to see if the baby birds were okay. I'd been watching and listening and hadn't heard anything from the nest, and the parent birds didn't seem to be hovering close by any more. I was afraid the chicks had died.

When I climbed up the ladder, three fledglings fluttered almost into my face and into the trees nearby. They already had all their feathers and were flying quite well. They slept in the nest for another night or two, then were off on their own. Baby birds sure grow up fast!



Juncos usually raise two broods per year, so I hope the pair of juncos will lay their eggs in the birdhouse again. It's certainly a safer place than on the ground where the cat can get them.

The best-laid plans . . .

. . . gang aft agley.

Baby E, after taking a 3 1/2 hour nap this morning and another (much shorter) nap this afternoon, has been fussy and clingy, lethargic and wanting lots of nursing but not much solids. Since she has a low-grade fever even after a dose of Tylenol, we decided we'd better cancel our plans for a date tonight.

It's a good thing we did, since the babysitter never showed up, called, or responded to any of the messages I left for her.

Since our other babysitter also hasn't responded to the messages I left her a few weeks ago asking about her availablility, and the other two sitters we've used have either moved or are no longer babysitting, I think we're down to no available babysitters over the age of 15 again. The 13- and 15-year-old babysitters we use are great for our home group meetings when we're in the house, but I'm not really comfortable leaving all three kids alone for long periods with anyone under 16.

It's not our kids; everyone seems to love babysitting them and says they're some of the best kids they've ever cared for. Maybe it's our messy house. Maybe we need to be paying more, or going about finding sitters a different way. How do you all find babysitters?

The older girls seem a bit more tired and whiny than usual, too, so I'm thinking it's probably not just a teething issue for Baby E--which would suggest that my headache/sore throat/runny nose probably isn't just allergies, too.

None of us are terribly ill, though, just a bit under the weather.

At the moment the kids are eating dinner and then we're going to head out to pick up DH, whose car broke down. No, not the same vehicle that needs repairs due to the accident on Friday.

I'm reminded of James 4:

13 Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." [NIV]

Beeeeep!

Well, after thinking I wasn't too sore the first few days after the car accident, each day after that I've been more sore and fatigued. I have a physical therapy appointment today, but I might also make another appointment with the regular doctor, since he said to come back in if there was a change or anything got a lot worse.

It's mostly lifting/carrying Baby E that's painful. Which is one reason why I'm at the moment debating with myself about whether I should wake Baby E from her nap now or not, since she's been asleep for over 3 hours. She doesn't seem to be feeling well today, so I'm not sure whether to wake her up or let her sleep. Lots of napping hasn't seemed to affect her nighttime sleep much so far.

DH go up and fed the kids breakfast this morning to let me take a nap after having been awake with Baby E since 6 (which has become her normal wake-up time). After he left and Baby E fell asleep, the two older girls happily entertained themselves playing with Polly Pocket dolls and doing an educational game on the computer this morning while I dozed within earshot, getting up occasionally to help them with something.

All three girls have been playing together quite well lately, and the battles of the wills seem to have mostly subsided with M&M. Especially since she has some new Disney Princess clothes that she really wants to wear, giving her the incentive to get herself dressed with no complaints. :)

It seems that once every few weeks or months one of the kids will decide to test the limits with everything for a few days or weeks, and when they find out we're still responding consistently they go back to their normal cheerful cooperative selves. It's frustrating and annoying when it happens, but it always passes.

It's a normal part of child-rearing, I think. Often it reveals something we need to change or tweak in our parenting or the household in general, and that growth is a good thing.

I have to remember to remind myself, "This is a test of the Emergency Behavior System. This is only a test."

DH and I were talking last night about possibly using minutes of computer game time and similar activities as something the kids can earn. The kids don't have much of a need or appreciation for money at this point, but they do love playing their learning-to-read and beginning math games on the computer. DH and I are thinking of coming up with a system using play money or some other currency to symbolize minutes of computer and video-watching time, that they can earn or lose by their chores, behavior, etc.

Because I'm too lazy to write a real post

. . . and because it's already past my bedtime, and I still have to pack two e-Bay packages to ship before I can go to bed. I'm trying to get rid of the leftover inventory I have from last year, but this is definitely confirming my decision to quit selling on eBay, at least on any regular basis.


• Baby E is still sleeping! She's slept 8-9 hours at night consistently now since Thursday, and the last couple of days she's napped a lot during the day. I tried putting her down earlier for naps, and that seemed to do the trick. Two naps a day, and sleeping at night--I hardly know what to do with myself.



• This does mean we can't really go anywhere during the day, because we need to be home so Baby E can nap. But that's not all bad because I'm having issues with driving anyway, so it's a good excuse to stay home. I keep panicking when I try to drive because, even though I drive safely and carefully, I can't control the other cars on the road and I have had what seems like more than my share of being rear-ended.



• I'm feeling pretty miserable with either a cold or allergies on top of neck/back/shoulder pain and fatigue from the accident, plus two toothaches. So being able to get some extra sleep is a really good thing. I'm not sure how we're going to work out childcare for all the physical therapy/dental/car repair/insurance company appointments in the next few weeks, but I'm sure we'll figure out something.



• We had MM's birthday party on Sunday. It was very casual, just playing and eating at a nearby park. Lots of family and friends came. It was fabulous. I still can't believe she's 4.



• The girls have been quite well occupied playing with all the new Polly Pockets and Disney Princess stuff since then.



• Baby E stood up for about 30+ seconds, solidly, without falling down. She is getting very close to walking.



• BIL/SIL and their two kids stayed here Sunday and Monday. It was darling watching the kids play. Seeing two little girls and a boy play with Polly Pocket dolls together at the little table while the two babies play together on the floor nearby--priceless!
  
  Cousin J: "She needs a puwse . . . and whewe's hew hat? I need shooz dat match dis owtpit."
  
  MM: "Hewe you go . . . now she tan wide in the caw with dese ones."
  
  AJ: "I'm ready for something else, J. Could you please hand me something else for this Polly Pocket? Here, MM, you can have this skirt now."



• I'm having a lot of fun working on lesson plans for the coming school year. The girls are begging to start doing "real school at home" as soon as possible, so we may not wait until September. We're thinking about doing year-round school with several week-or-two-long breaks throughout the year and a month in the summer rather than taking off three whole months for summer vacation.



• DH and I get to go on a date with no kids this week! This is the third or maybe fourth time since Baby E was born nearly 11 months ago, so it's a very special occasion. I wonder where we'll end up going?

God as a Person

I just started reading A.W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God again. It's such a profound book that I try to read it through at least once every few years.

I have the book in the van so that I can read bits and pieces when I'm riding while DH is driving. The use of little moments of time like that is turning into quite a useful tool for me. I've been listening to parenting tapes while driving, taking a few minutes here and there while drinking coffee or waiting places to read my Bible, and am currently reading another Tozer book, Men Who Met God, in 2-minute increments while brushing my teeth. If I just have books and tapes in various places where I can easily pick them up and read for a minute or two, I actually get some reading in.

Here are some excerpts from the preface and chapter 1 of The Pursuit of God that say better than I did what I was trying to describe in this post: Pursuing God Himself, without letting non-essentials derail us, and seeing the Bible and doctrine as a way to get to know God and have an active relationship with Him rather than as important for their own sake.

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Tozer says in the preface:

It is a solemn thing, and no small scandal in the Kingdom, to see God's children starving while actually seated at the Father's table. The truth of Wesley's words is established before our eyes: `Orthodoxy, or right opinion, is, at best, a very slender part of religion. Though right tempers cannot subsist without right opinions,yet right opinions may subsist without right tempers. There may be a right opinion of God without either love or one right temper toward Him. Satan is proof of this.' . . .

. . . Sound Bible exposition is an imperative must in the Church of the living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience, they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.

And in Chapter 1:

The doctrine of justification by faith--a Biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort--has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be `received' without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man is `saved,' but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact he is specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content with little.

. . . We have almost forgotten that God is a Person and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can. It is inherent in personality to be able to know other personalities, but full knowledge of one personality by another cannot be achieved in one encounter. It is only after long and loving mental intercourse that the full possibilities of both can be explored.

. . . Religion, so far as it is genuine, is in essence the response of created personalities to the Creating Personality, God. `This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.' (John 17:3) . . . The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemed man is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion.

. . . Being made in His image we have within us the capacity to know Him. In our sins we lack only the power. The moment the Spirit has quickened us to life in regeneration our whole being senses its kinship to God and leaps up in joyous recognition. That is the heavenly birth without which we cannot see the Kingdom of God. It is, however, not an end but an inception, for now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart's happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead. That is where we begin, I say, but where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is in the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit nor end.

Mission: Curriculum--Accomplished!

We accomplished a lot at the curriculum fair today. DH and the kids ended up going along for the first part and helping pick out the math curriculum, and then Mom and I shopped for the rest.

I got some great deals in the used curriculum sale and then supplemented with some new books from the vendors' displays. My mom decided to give the kids a "grandma scholarship" to help pay for their first year's schoolbooks, so that was really wonderful. It was so helpful to have her expert opinion on all the different books, too.

I got mostly K-4 level books for MM and some K-5 for AJ, with some other Kindergarten books we can expand on for both girls and a few 1st-grade books for AJ to use in a couple of subjects to round it out and adjust to their skill levels. Some things we'll do together but adjust slightly to fit their levels, and other things we'll have the girls do separately.

I'll tell more about the specific books we picked out later. I also bought a teacher's planner and some graphs to schedule out the lessons for each day, so I'll be going through that in the next few weeks and planning out our school year.

Now I'm tired and very sore. My back and neck are really feeling the effect of being rear-ended yesterday and then carrying around heavy books today.

It turns out that our bumper was significantly damaged in the accident yesterday after all--I discovered that when I opened the back doors of the van today. The whole bumper is tilted in and down, which makes it difficult for the door to open. Once the door was open, it was obvious that the bumper was hanging kind of loose and crooked. So we'll need to get an estimate on the repairs this week, too.

Random Bullets of Naps--and a car accident

Well, it's been quite the eventful day.

I did go to the curriculum fair this morning, to scope it out and get my ticket for the used curriculum exchange tomorrow. I got rear-ended on the freeway on the way there.

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Traffic was a bit heavy, but not too bad. I was just driving along when I heard a crash. I was being thankful it wasn't me that was hit and looking to see where the accident was when I got hit. There was probably at least a full 2 second interval between the first vehicle hitting the second vehicle and the second hitting me. It was such a long delay between the impacts that it really surprised me to get hit--especially since I was moving at the time I was hit and the car behind me apparently had been stopped when they were hit. I'm not sure if the first car hit the second car hard enough to ram it into me or if the second driver stepped on the gas and ran into me in the shock of being hit.

I pulled over, got out of my minivan, and went back to talk to the other two drivers. The woman in the middle vehicle (a jeep) was hysterical, sobbing into the phone and holding her neck. She didn't seem to be badly injured, but she was very upset and said that her neck hurt. Wierdly enough, she never did get off her cell phone until the ambulance arrived. She refused to talk to any of us and just kept talking on the phone. The grandmother talked to us, tried to calm down the kids, and called 9-1-1. The paramedics put the middle driver in a stabilizer and took her on a stretcher in the ambulance to get checked out. I think she will be fine, though it's always good to be on the safe side with a possible neck injury.

The man that was at fault in the accident was very apologetic and asked if we were all okay, and asked if he could do anything at all to help the other family today. The kids in the car seemed pretty worried about their mom, but their grandma was able to calm her down a bit. The older boy (maybe 13?) went in the ambulance with his mom and the grandma stayed with the Jeep and the younger (8-10?) boy and tried to reassure him. I had a box of joice in my van and gave him that, which he appreciated. I hope they're all okay and not too shaken up.

I'm thanking God that neither my van nor I seemed to incur serious damage. I was so glad I didn't have any of the kids with me, since DH had stayed home from work this morning to let me go stand in line at the curriculum exhibit.

My neck and especially my middle back and shoulder are pretty sore, but I declined the offer of a ride to the hospital. I have an appointment to get checked out on Monday, which was the soonest my doctor's office had an opening. If anything comes up between now and then I'll go to the ER or same-day clinic, but I'm not expecting that will be necessary. I probably will get a massage or chiropractic treatment ASAP to hopefully fend off a fibromyalgia/CFS flare-up. I'm more worried about a flare-up than about actual injuries. I know what serious whiplash and similar injuries feel like, and this isn't it. I got a bit jerked around and have some sore muscles, but nothing to worry about.

Hopefully that will fill my quota of car accidents for at least a year. I couldn't believe this happened; it was in almost the same spot on the same interstate freeway that I got rear-ended on a year ago last January, when I was pregnant with Baby E. That was also a 3-car accident in which I was the front car. Only this time I was going South instead of North.

Now the kids and I are off to a baby shower . . . busy day today!

On another note, some random notes about naps and a few questions for you all:

• Nearly every day this week Baby E has taken and hour or two to fall asleep for both morning and afternoon naps. I don't know if I'm putting her down at the wrong times or if she's ready to transition to one nap instead of two, but I hope we figure out something soon. Today she napped for maybe two 10-15 minute periods out of the 3+ hours we spent trying to get her to nap, but that was it. She did play with her crib toys a lot though. :) Her lack of naps is making her a bit grouchy.



• Something we've been doing must be working, though, because her nighttime sleeping has been gradually improving since we started trying to keep a more regular schedule. She went down to three wakings, then two, then one to two for several nights in a row. We did have a couple of times where she decided to be awake for 3-4 hours in the middle of the night, but even with a few steps back the overall progress has definitely been in the direction of more sleep.



• She slept last night for 8--count 'em--EIGHT!--hours in a row without waking. Actually, she did wake very briefly around 2 a.m. and soothed herself back to sleep within about 30 seconds, with no adult intervention. What's more, those 8 hours were between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. She's up for the day at 6 now, instead of waking at 8 as she had been doing, but she's actually! sleeping! at night. This is cause for great celebration at the Kangaroo Cottage.



• Now if we can just figure out naps. Since Baby E had been waking at 8-ish, I've been putting her down within 30 minutes of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. every day. But she acts tired about an hour after she wakes up and then doesn't go to sleep until sometime between 11 and 1 and then takes her afternoon nap between 4 and 5. We'd like to get her going to bed for the night closer to 8, so napping from 5-7 in the evening just doesn't cut it.
  
  I've tried watching her closely and putting her down at the first sign of sleepiness, but we've got about a 5-10 minute window and after that she's awake for at least another 30 minutes if we don't get her down soon enough, it seems. Also, it seems so random. I would really like to have at least some level of predictablility so I can plan outings around her naps, since she doesn't nap if we're not home.



• So, I'm soliciting reader input on the subject of naps. What have you done for naps with babies age 9-12 months?
  
  
  
  
  1. What does/did your schedule for naps and bedtime look like?
  
  
  
  2. Do you have set times by the clock for naps, do it by the amount of time they've been awake, or just put the baby down when you see signs of tiredness?
  
  
  
  3. If the child sleeps longer than expected do you let them sleep as long as they want, wake them up at the normal time, or wake them after a certain amount of time regardless of what time they went to sleep?
  
  
  
  4. If they wake after a very short amount of time or stay in the crib for an hour without going to sleep, do you consider the nap over or continue trying to get them to nap after that point?
  
  
  
  5. If a child skips a nap or takes a late or unusually short nap, do you adjust other nap/bed times accordingly, or not?
  
  
  
  6. Any other thoughts/input?
  
  

Happy Birthday, M&M!

Today is M&M's 4th birthday. She's so excited to be four.

It's becoming tradition that the birthday person gets to decide what we have for breakfast on their birthday. This morning for breakfast, M&M decided we'd all make strawberry muffins. The girls happily helped me measure, dump and stir. Then they helped me cut up the strawberries.

M&M said, "I can weally cut up strawbewwies well now that I'm fouwr. When I was thwee-and-a-half I could cut pwetty good, but now that I'm fouwr I can do it weally weally well."

They cut up strawberries (they were soft enough to cut with serrated butter knives) and mixed them into the batter, then spooned the batter into the muffin cups and excitedly watched them bake.

It was cute to see them dancing around in front of the oven watching the muffins bake: "They're puffing up and turning brown, Mom! Look! Oh, goody, they're going to be so delicious! Strawberry muffins! They're OUR strawberry muffins; we made them! Yummy, yummy!"

When they were finally done, we devoured the muffins. They were delicious. When there was one left, the girls decided it would be fun to share it. So M&M was holding it and alternating between giving herself and AJ bites of it when there was a scream.

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M&M was crying frantically and holding out her finger. "AJ bit my fingew! She bit it! It huwts weally bad; so bad, it huwts, it huwts, owww owww owww!!!!"

She cried and cried, so hard that I had to try to calm her down for fear that she would hyperventilate. When I finally got a look at the finger, I was flabbergasted. It was bleeding, all right. AJ's tooth had gone right through the top of MM's finernail, near the center of the nail bed.

I've never seen anyone bite clear through a fingernail before. That must have been some chomp.

AJ, of course, felt terrible, and it took a long time to get M&M calmed down (especially since she wanted DADDY and he was at work). But I finally put hydrogen peroxide and a band-aid with neosporin cream on it, and distracted her with a new Hello Kitty video we'd gotten for her birthday. They're watching it now, while Baby E takes a nap.

Oops; video is over--I'll have to write more about MM later.

Intentional Living

Yesterday the girls had a full and happy day. They played inside and out, picked up the playroom with me, learned how to fold blankets together (that was their favorite activity of the day!) and then we went through the schoolbooks on our shelf, trying activities in different books to see what level the girls are at and what they enjoy.

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We had a lot of fun going through the schoolbooks. M&M read the first three lessons in the McGuffey's eclectic primer with great eagerness: words like boy, top, hen, rat, cat. AJ added letters to sequences on a worksheet, they both worked on their handwriting and coloring skills, M&M requested to do math (and proceeded to whip through 5 pages in her textbook), and we listened to the first lesson of a Spanish curriculum together.

After that I let the girls play with rubber stamps and paper, with washable ink pads. They really loved that.

A little later they helped me work on teaching Baby E the concepts "in" and "out" by putting toys in and out of a basket while saying "in" and "out" All three girls thought that was hilarious good fun, and we laughed until our bellies ached.

We've been pretty sporadic this year with schoolwork, along with everything else. I think the girls have missed the activity and structure. They play well together and do lots of coloring, building train tracks, etc. but, frankly, they're bored.

I've noticed that we have a lot more bickering, power struggles and grumpiness when they aren't busy with things that occupy their minds and energy enough. The other benefit of school is that it involves giving them my full attention and spending time with them, which also makes life more pleasant for all of us. The kids are so much happier and our home is so much more peaceful when we plan out activities and do them together.

Now that we're getting ourselves onto a flexible schedule, I am reminded of how well my kids do with predictability and structure. We are all happier, kinder, more clear-thinking and ready to learn when we have had enough sleep and are being a little more purposeful about how we spend our days.

The days when I get up on time (even if I'm exhausted) and basically keep to the loose structure we've set up for our days are the days when I have the time and impetus to do activities with the girls, get basic household tasks done, and then have a few minutes to spend time reading a book and/or having quiet time with God. The days when I allow everything to be chaotic are the days when I'm on edge, stressed and irritable and the kids follow suit. Those are the days we're frantically busy and yet get nothing accomplished all day, or we go through the day in a fog just trying to survive until DH gets home.

Structure and organization don't come easily to me, but they feel right to me when they're in place. And my kids seem to have an innate need for it--maybe they got that from my husband. Either way, I'm glad we're adding more of it into our lives.

I'm looking forward to getting a basic structure and curriculum plan laid out for this coming year. I don't plan to be rigid about it (I don't think I could be with my personality even if I wanted to), but we will plan ahead for the next few days or weeks, and have basic routines, lesson plans, structure, and times we do things. Hopefully I'll be able to make it work well in a way that best meets our family's needs.

Power Struggles and I-Can't-Do-It-Itis

I just finished listening to a tape called "Avoiding Power Struggles" by Dr. Becky Bailey. It's mostly a common-sense approach, but it's told in an engaging and memorable way. Her goal is to avoid both permissive and authoritarian parenting and to find a middle ground. The information is geared toward both parents and teachers, and deals with both home and classroom contexts. I found it helpful.

M&M has been my power struggle queen lately. Every. single. morning, we have a struggle over putting her clothes on. She wants me to get her dressed, and I know she can get herself dressed and insist that she does so.

For months now, I've been consistently at least making her TRY to do it herself, or do as much as she can for herself, before I will help her.

It ends up looking like this:

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Time to get dressed, M&M!

I can't. I need hewp.

No you don't. You're a big girl, and you know how to put your own clothes on.

I can't do it. I need hewp. Hewp me, hewp me. Boohoo!

What clothes are you going to wear? Get them out. Okay, good. No, don't hand them to me. You can do it. What goes on first? Your underwear, yes. OK, go ahead and put them on.

I can't. I don't know which way they go.

How can you tell which way they go? You know how to do this. Come on. Hold them up in front of you and look at the leg holes. Remember? If you can see the leg holes, that's the front. If you can't see them, that's the back. Hold them so you can see the leg holes. No, that's the top. Turn them around this way. Right. Okay, now put them on.

I can't. (Whine, whine. Halfhearted, futile attempt without really trying.)

Yes you can. Sit down. On your bottom, yes. Now put one foot through the leg hole. Good. Now put the other foot in. Yeah. Now stand up on your feet. You can do this. No, I'm not going to do it for you. You pull them up yourself. Yes, you can. Come on, pull them up. Now, please. Good job! See, you did that all by yourself. You can do it. Now, where's your shirt?

Then we go through the whole thing again with the shirt, and then the pants, and then the socks. By then we're both frustrated and exhausted, but I try to be enthusiastic and excited about how she did it all by herself without having too much of an "I told you so" attitude.

Alternatively, I'll tell her, "After you get dressed, then you can play your computer game for a few minutes." Since she'll take 2-3 hours to accomplish this if I don't set an expiration point on the offer, I'll set a time limit. "But you get to play the game only if you finish by the time the long hand is on the nine. You have 15 minutes."

By the time the long hand is on the nine, after fifty gazillion reminders (you have 12 minutes left--better hurry!) she's still running around naked, so she doesn't get to play the computer game. She cries for a minute, but then she moves on to something else and still doesn't get dressed. At which point I either end up yelling at or punishing her, and/or I start in with the "Get your shirt. Where's the hole for the head? Okay, put your head in the hole" thing until she's dressed.

I think I've gotten her dressed when she didn't actually need the help maybe twice in the last 2 or 3 months, and that was when we were in a hurry to get to church or something and I decided to just help her before the battle started.

I just don't tend to give in about that sort of thing. I've used all kinds of different methods from incentives to consequences to a combination, but I haven't just given in and gotten her dressed without her at least making a real effort in that direction first.

Yet still, nearly every single morning, she insists she can't dress herself. Even though every single morning she ends up dressing herself in the end.

Last week DH and I talked about it and decided that maybe M&M was looking for cuddling and attention out of getting dressed, so we agreed to try to make more of a point to give her some extra cuddling and attention in other contexts.

With the clothing battle we decided to try something new (since obviously what we'd been doing wasn't working well). We were tired of the battles, and it didn't really seem like one of those put-a-stake-in-the-ground-and-die-for-it issues. So the next morning I told her that I'd put her clothes on for her if she wanted me to, but if I got her dressed then I got to pick out her clothes. If she wanted to pick out her own clothes, she had to put them on herself.

That worked pretty well for the next few days. Most days she chose to have me put her clothes on her, and I chose clothes that weren't her first choice (but which I liked) for her to wear. But on the days she really wanted to wear a dress or her beloved Strawberry Shortcake or Hello Kitty shirt, she miraculously was able to put them on by herself with little to no help or coaching.

Then we hit Monday. She'd done her evening routine (which we'd been letting slide a bit) the night before, so her clothes were already picked out and ready to wear. So I didn't want to fall back on the "If I get you dressed, I get to pick out your clothes" thing again. The clothes were already laid out.

So I decided to try Dr. Bailey's approach.

"Guess what? You have a choice! You can choose whether you want to put on the dress or the shorts first. Which one are you going to choose?"

M&M visibly brightened. She had a choice! Wow, how exciting. She always likes choices.

"Dress first!"

Okay, go ahead and put it on.

I can't.

Well, do you want to put your head or your arms in first?

Ayms!

So she did. And then she started whining about how she couldn't put her shorts on.

Which foot would you like to put in your shorts first?

This one!

You decided to put your left foot in first!

Yeah, and now I'm going to put my right foot in.

Yep, there goes your right foot! Now you have your shorts on. Yay! You got yourself all dressed.

We both ended up smiling, and it only took a couple of minutes.

This morning she wanted to wear the ballet skirt I made with her Hello Kitty shirt from Aunt J, so after only a little bit of complaining she got dressed completely by herself with no help and no coaching other than a couple of hints about finding the front of her underwear.

She was, however, to hear her talk, completely and absolutely unable to dry herself off after her bath, brush her teeth, make her bed, or pick up the Cheerios she dumped on the floor. I helped her a bit with the things I felt she really needed help with, but most of the morning was spent with both of us getting more and more frustrated as she whined and dilly-dallied and I refused to do her chores for her.

When I tried to help her pour rice milk into her cereal, though, she had a meltdown--crying and saying, "NO! I can do it! I want to do it by myself! I don't want you to help me, Mommy! Noooo! I want to do it!"

I let her do it on the condition that if she spilled, she would clean it up herself.

She didn't spill it today, though.

Scheduling and health check-in

Well, we're making progress on the family schedule and adjustments to our routine. We've been as consistent as possible with both bedtimes and routines, and it does seem to be working. Last night Baby E woke up only twice all night, at 5 and 7, and then slept until 8--woohoo!

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She pooped in the potty after breakfast this morning and then I laid her down for a nap. She started acting tired around 9, but since she'd gotten up at 8 I held her off until her normal naptime of 10 a.m.

It took 45 minutes of screaming before she finally dropped off to sleep. I went in to try to calm her and gave her some teething medicine, but it didn't seem to help much. Now I'm not sure whether to wake her at the normal time she'd wake up, which would mean a 15-minute nap, or let her sleep for an hour and possibly mess up the schedule for the rest of the day. (Moot point: She woke up at 11:15, before I finished typing this entry.)

Last night I was reading a book about helping kids sleep better, and it mentioned that if a child was having extremely sporadic sleep habits and being awake for hours in the middle of the night as Baby E has been doing, it can be a result of their body clock being erratic. The way to reset and normalize it is to set a consistent schedule for not just sleep times, but also meal times, wake up times, etc.

That's what we're trying to do right now. I think all the kids like having a predictable day, anyway, and it will help when we start more structured homeschooling in the fall, too. Mom and I are going to the NW Curriculum Fair this weekend to fill the gaps in our school supplies, and then she'll help me do scheduling and lesson plans. I'm excited about that!

I've been keeping track of everything I eat and do with the pyramid tracker program at mypyramidtracker.gov this week. It's been really helpful.

I've discovered that, not counting breastfeeding, on a normal day I expend just under 2,500 calories. If I do something extra like hiking or more exercising than usual, it might be closer to 3,000. So with the extra 300 to 500 calories from nursing baby E, I'm probably needing to take in between 2,300 and 3,500 calories per day. I did find out that just with my daily life, doing house/yard work, playing with the kids, climbing stairs and carrying the baby, I'm getting quite a bit of exercise. That's nice to know.

You can eat a lot of fruits and vegetables before it adds up to 2,000 calories! Since I'm limiting simple highly-refined carbohydrates, dairy products, peanuts, avocados, added oils and refined sugars for health/allergy reasons, that almost makes it difficult to consume more than 2,000 calories a day.

I can eat 2 eggs, a cup of whole-grain hot cereal, a half-cup of rice milk and a cup of fruit for breakfast, a fruit smoothie for lunch, a huge 2-pound plateful of veggie and meat stir-fry with whole-grain noodles for lunch, a handful of veggies with hummus and a mocha rice milk smoothie in the afternoon, and then 3-4 ounces of meat, a cup or two of cooked vegetables, a salad and a handful of corn chips for dinner, then a cup of soup and/or some chocolate teff pudding in the evening for another snack, and I've reached about 2,000 calories.

The nice thing about the pyramid tracker program is that halfway through the day I can look at it and see that I've reached my goal for carbohydrates and sugars, so I need to limit those for the rest of the day, and that I need more fiber and calcium, so I need to eat something high in those.

My goal right now is to see if I can work up to taking in between 2,300 and 2,500 calories per day and see if that causes my weight to stabilize and increases my energy levels. I'm losing less than a pound per week taking in 2,000 calories, so I think it's likely that my body doesn't really need the full 3,000+ calories.

I do find that by monitoring my food intake I am eating more fruits and vegetables and fewer breads, which is a good thing. I'm also filling up a 2-liter pitcher with filtered water each morning and trying to drink it all over the course of the day. The first day and a half of this I felt worse--bloated, lethargic, and just kind of yucky. But after that I started to feel better, especially when adding a period of doing something active to my schedule in the afternoon when I usually get an energy crash. Getting more sleep is going to help, too, I'm sure.

Baby E's Version

We'll Play With You!

The girls heard a song written by Phantom
Scribbler's son, LG, called "Play With Me" and wanted to send this reply:

MM decided that she wanted her blog name to be M&M because it's easier to say, and she likes M&Ms. She's the one you can hear singing at first, until AJ chimes in with the "Play with me tomorrow" line. The point where they get so excited that you can't understand what they are saying (and Baby E chimes in) is when they're yelling TRAINS!!! They definitely share LG's and Baby Blue's love of trains.

Just before we started recording, we were talking about how we probably wouldn't be able to really play with LG and Baby Blue, because they live a long way away. But we can send messages, and pretend.

AJ said, "And when I grow up, I'll marry him and then we can live together in the same house."

Battle Plans

I'm excited this morning. I was in bed by 10:35 last night and settling down to go to sleep 10 minutes later. Baby E woke up a lot, but still I got more sleep than I normally do.

Our plan is starting to go into action. We've done better with bedtime and naps the past few days, and today I'm ready to hit the full-fledged schedule we laid out and try to stick to the plan.

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I've had a few recommendations that I get my thyroid function checked. I had a complete blood workup about 6 months ago, but I'll probably get one done again. I thought of the thyroid issue, especially since my mom has a thyroid imbalance, but every time I've had it checked (even when I was having trouble maintaining my weight in the past) it's been normal.

First, though, I'm going to work on my battle plan for a couple of weeks. My perception that I'm eating a lot may or may not be accurate overall, since the amount varies so much from meal to meal.

I found a sample menu for a 2,000 calorie diet on mypyramid.gov and I'm actually thinking I may not be not taking in even 2,000 calories a day. I usually eat more for dinner and less for breakfast, lunch and snacks than the chart shows, so it's hard to tell.

This morning I filled a 2-quart pitcher with water in the refrigerator. I'll get water out of it whenever I drink something, so I can tell how much I'm taking in. So far this morning I've had 24 ounces.

I found a great tool on mypyramid called "my pyramid tracker" that lets you put in everything you eat throughout the day, and it will calculate the calories and nutritional content for you. I'm going to try that to see how much I'm actually eating, and how balanced my diet is.

There's no way to add foods that aren't already in the database, though. Hopefully it will have all the foods I eat in it. It does have the brand of rice milk I use. I'd really like to find something similar that can be a little more customizable, or even something that could track multiple family members at once.

I think I may try to make an appointment with a nutritionist to work up a good plan for the entire family. But first I need to figure out what we're currently doing so we know what changes to make.

Food and Nutrition Issues Again

Last night I realized that the dial on my bathroom scale had gotten bumped, probably some time ago. Since I don't weigh myself often, I just thought my weight had finally stabilized, and I'd even gained a couple of pounds.

When I corrected the scale, I realized I've gotten below my normal-low target weight again.

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I'm down to 110 lbs, which is techically not underweight for a 5' 2" medium build woman my age, but I weighed more than that all through high school and most of college, even while playing sports and eating a very restricted diet. I'm right on the borderline between health and too thin in BMI (20), though if you look at just weight I'm closer to the mid-range of normal.

But I'm still losing weight. And this is even with making a point to be eating more since I'd reached my "no less than" goal of 115 a while ago. For the past couple of months I've been actively working on trying not to lose weight, and disciplining myself to eat when I'm hungry. But I'm hungry almost all the time.

I feel like I'm eating constantly, yet I'm still starving. Often I eat smallish meals--a bowl of cereal or an egg and a piece of fruit or more is a typical breakfast for me, and a sandwich and some fruit or veggies is a typical lunch--but lately I can sometimes eat 2 or 3 platefuls of food at a meal only to be ravenous again within an hour or two.

On Monday night I went to an event where I had two full plates of chicken and rice with broth and nutritional yeast, plus probably 8 stalks of asparagus and at least a dozen large strawberries, and by the time I was driving home I was so hungry I was eating dry nutritional yeast scooped out of the can. I hadn't skipped any meals; I was just hungry.

I know I certainly don't drink enough water. I haven't been consistent about taking my vitamins. I feel like I'm eating a ton, but I'm constantly hungry.

Of course, there are so many things I can't eat that I sometimes go hungry or just eat fruits and veggies rather than eat something that may make me or Baby E sick, especially when we're out somewhere.

DH has commented recently that it seems I spend much of my time in the evenings (and sometimes in the middle of the night) preparing and eating food (my favorite is hummus and salsa with corn chips or baked pita chips; yummy).

I'm not starving myself (which I have done somewhat in the past, mostly because of stomach problems), and I'm not purging (never have). I like my body the way it is. I'm not anorexic, but I do struggle to make sure I'm eating enough and healthily.

I have been working really hard at not skipping meals and eating enough, but apparently I'm still not eating enough to meet both my own and Baby E's nutritional needs. So I'm back to the old frustration of trying to gain or maintain a healthy weight.

That could explain a lot, both with my poor energy levels, fatigue and low immunity, and with Baby E's eating and sleeping habits. She's a big baby, and she eats a lot during the day but still wants to nurse all night. No wonder she's not sleeping well if she's hungry.

According to the calculator at dietician.com, I need to eat around 4,000 calories per day (including about 127 grams of protein) just to maintain my weight given my BMI, nursing status, and activity level.

If I wanted to gain a pound or two per week for a few weeks, I'd have to eat closer to 5,000 calories a day (with 140-150 grams of protein--the protein alone would be the equivalent of an entire 4-lb. whole chicken or nearly 2 dozen eggs, and that's just 10% of the necessary calories).

I can't even imagine eating that much food in one day. That's way more than a normal amount, isn't it?

I checked the calculator linked from nutrition.gov and it doesn't adjust for nursing or as many other factors, but assuming I'd add 500 calories because of nursing and none for exercise, it would still put me at needing to take in close to 3,000 calories per day. That's still a lot!

I'm having a hard time even picturing what the types and amounts of healthy, and hypoallergenic food would look like to equal 3,000 to 4,000 calories per day--especially considering that I can't eat dairy products, avocados, or anything with even a trace of soy (which does away with most condiments, desserts, prepackaged foods, the most common fats and shortenings, etc.). Rice milk, plain meats, and fruits/veggies just aren't that high in calories.

I guess I'm going to have to start keeping detailed records of what I'm eating and add it up to see how much I need to adjust my intake levels. I want to do the same for the rest of the family to make sure they're getting adequate nutrition, too.

I don't know how I'm going to find the spare time and energy for looking up the nutritional content of everything we eat, calculating/measuring it, and keeping records of it all. But I think if I can get my nutrition and calorie intake to a more optimal level it may give me a big energy and immunity boost, and hopefully get rid of some of the other health issues and symptoms I've been having.

Maybe it will help Baby E sleep better, too.

Keyboarding for Parents

Baby E has been fussy and fidgety this morning. I'm not sure whether it's her teeth or something else, but she doesn't seem to feel good.

She was making the "milk" sign repeatedly, so I sat down at the computer to feed her. First, though, I made sure to set the iced mocha smoothie I'd just made in a secure place on the desk, out of Baby E's reach. Or so I thought. The instant I sat down she made a grab with her foot, knocking it over right onto my keyboard.

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I caught it as quickly as I could, but not before half the contents of the large plastic glass were all over the keyboard, mouse, desk, carpet, my jeans, and even splashed on the monitor. I mopped up as well as I could, shook out the pulverized ice from between the keys, and am letting the keyboard dry upside down on a towel while I use DH's computer instead.

Now that Baby E has gotten proficient at using her feet to touch and grab things, I'm going to have to come up with new methods for sitting at the computer without letting her create havoc.

At the moment she's alternately using her left foot to try to type on the keyboard and to pat my arm. I'm attempting to type with Baby E in my left hand and her foot grabbing at/resting on/pushing/patting my right hand.

Somehow they don't teach these skills in typing/keyboard class. :)

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And now, a message from Baby E:

xkj

uih8y9uiuyhuhnbo9 cd9 //)?>>>>>>>>>>>>>A) xm nn,m,mz bv b
P7n vcvc c xcvcxvccfcdfd

Now she's throwing a huge tantrum because the computer isn't doing cool stuff like with the keyboard pounder. These letters and numbers appearing on the screen are no fun. She wants music! and flowers! and fish!

Farm Boy, fetch me that pitcher.

Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti

*As seen at MysteryMommy.

It must be time to watch The Princess Bride again. It's been a while since we've watched that extremely rewatchable (and quotable!) movie.

If you haven't read the book, I recommend it. It's delightful, and the movie (obviously) doesn't cover everything.

Monday Memory: AJ's worst illness

Baby E and I both have some kind of upper respiratory thing going on. Only time will tell whether it's allergies (I'm allergic to something in BIL/SIL's house and always get stuffy and sneezy when we stay there) or an actual cold.

Meanwhile, I'll share a Monday Memory about the scariest illness I've experienced with one of my children.

Did I ever tell you about THE TIME AJ WAS REALLY SICK?

AJ was a week shy of a year old when I weaned her. I was nearing the third trimester of pregnancy with MM by that point, and it was difficult nursing and being pregnant at the same time. I'd planned to wean AJ by her first birthday, but she weaned herself faster than I'd planned to wean her. She liked drinking out of a bottle or sippy cup a lot.

As is common after weaning from nursing, AJ got sick a LOT over the next few weeks. Right around her first birthday, she had a cold and an intestinal virus both at the same time. She was all stuffed up and feverish, with severe vomiting and diarrhea.

We couldn't get her to keep anything down. I even tried getting her to nurse again, with no success. I felt so helpless watching as she got sicker and sicker. She got severely dehydrated and became completely lethargic. She cried weakly for a while, then got too weak even to care. My baby was limp and listless, barely moving even when she vomited.

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Finally DH and I took her to the emergency room. We had to wait a long time, taking turns holding our limp and unresponsive child. We were both scared at that point. We were first-time parents and had never seen a child this sick. When we finally saw a doctor they gave her a suppository to help the nausea and diarrhea.

My most clear memory is of the nurse giving her the suppository while she laid limp on her tummy across the table. She didn't even twitch. The nurse gushed about "what a good baby" she was, saying she'd never seen a child take a suppository so calmly.

I wanted to punch the nurse. A child that doesn't have enough energy to flinch when medicine is shoved up her rear end is not good--that is a very sick baby, not a "good baby."

They sent us home, telling us to wait until she hadn't vomited for an hour before trying to give her anything, and then to give her one teaspoonful of clear liquids (unflavored pedialyte) and then wait two minutes before giving her another teaspoon. By taking turns giving her a teaspoon of fluids every two minutes all night, by morning she was starting to get a little bit of tone and color back.

The next night my friend JT (a fellow journalism student from college, married to another computer guy) called to see how we were doing. I told her how sick AJ had been and that the night it was worst DH and I were both afraid we might lose her. I was so glad she was doing better. She was still requiring attention around the clock, but was improving.

JT asked if she could do anything to help me while DH was away at work, and I thanked her but declined. I didn't want to risk getting her sick.

The next day, the doorbell rang and when I went to answer it there was JT. She said, "I knew if I called you'd tell me not to come, so I just came anyway. Here I am; what can I do to help?" She suggested that she could take care of AJ for a while, clean my house, or go grocery shopping for me.

I couldn't believe it. It was so helpful just to have someone care that much and be there for me, not to mention the practical help.

I don't remember exactly what JT did to help. I do remember that she was flabbergasted when she looked at my usually interactive and energetic AJ lying limply on the floor staring vacantly at the TV and said, "This is what she looks like when she's doing much better? Wow, she must have been really sick. How scary! Poor thing."

I think maybe she watched AJ while I took a much-needed shower, and then went grocery shopping for me. I don't remember the specifics. I just know that I felt incredibly loved and cared for by my friend.

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My Cousin's Wedding

We just got back from a 3-day trip to Seattle for my cousin's wedding. It was a great trip. We stayed with family members who have kids near the ages of ours, and everyone had a blast. I was even able to check in on my blog from their computer.

It's very late and I need to go to bed (our bedtime experiment will probably start on Tuesday), but here are some tidbits.

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• Baby E spent much of the time poking people in the nose and saying "nah", holding her dolly while rocking it and patting its back, smiling and waving at people, and trying desperately to get as close as possible to any baby she saw. She also spent a lot of time following the other kids around trying to participate in their activities, which was extremely cute.



• I managed to leave my dress at home, so had to re-wear the pantsuit I wore to the pre-wedding festivities to the wedding. But I was able to take it in stride and not stress out about it. It's certainly the first time I've ever worn pants to a wedding, much less pants I also wore the day before to a pre-wedding celebration with all the same people present.
  
  I guess I've come a long way since our first anniversary, when I completely freaked out about leaving my white dress at the B & B from the night before so that I didn't have anything dressy to wear for our anniversary dinner. Maybe I'll write about that trip for a Monday Memory sometime. Or maybe not.



• We met a baby at the wedding who was 3 weeks older than Baby E and quite a bit more advanced in the walking and talking departments. The two of them were charmed with each other and played together adorably, poking each other in the face and handing toys back and forth until they got into a screaming meltdown over a little book they both wanted.



• The kids were great during the wedding. AJ was particularly fascinated by the exchange of the rings. She's asked several times about my and DH's rings, and became intent on what was happening up front when I explained to her that DH and I had given each other our rings in just that way when we got married.



• MM and AJ had a great time running around and playing with the flower girls. MM asked everyone she met if they knew her cousin J, was flabbergasted that they didn't, and told them how great he is.
  
  I think that may be an improvement over her previous habit of telling everyone she meets (complete with trembling lip and puppydog eyes) that she misses her fwiend Ambew and doesn't want to live at our house any mowuh; she wants to live with Ambew fowevew and evew. Because she doesn't love anybody else except Ambew. She only loves Ambew, not Mommy or Daddy or Sister or anybody else--except Baby E of course. She still makes exceptions for Baby E.



• Baby E, after my post last night, proceeded to set a new personal record. I had mentioned that she could be awake for up to 4 hours after sleeping briefly and then waking in the middle of the night, even (especially?) after napping very little all day.
  
  I underestimated her.
  
  Baby E fell asleep last night around 8:30, but was awakened when we put the other girls to bed a half-hour or so later (we were sharing a room). The fact that we were not at home and there was lots of interesting action going on in the house probably didn't help the situation.
  
  First there was probably an hour and a half or so of rocking, singing and nursing--about an hour of which was E screaming angrily in DH's arms because he was sitting in the dark with her and trying to soothe her to sleep when she did NOT want to go to sleep; she wanted to get up and play.
  
  Then I laid down with her and nursed her again, dozing off briefly myself until I was jolted awake by the realization that she was crawling all over the bed playing and was in danger of falling off the edge. So I put her in the crib and laid down on the floor next to it, dozing off again while she alternately played and fussed for the next hour or so. Finally, when it was obvious she wasn't going to settle down any time soon, I took her out to DH who let her play while he and our relatives played Settlers of Catan and I went back to sleep.
  
  She finally went to sleep around 2 a.m., for a total of about 5 hours of being awake after she was supposedly asleep for the night. She woke up at 4, 5, 6 and 7--the last three of which she was already in our bed--but went back to sleep fairly quickly with nursing.



• At the moment DH is in Baby E's room trying to soothe her back to sleep after she woke up getting out of the car when we got home, fell back asleep nursing, woke up when I laid her down, went briefly back to sleep in the crib and then woke up again. It's been about an hour. DH is snoring on the bed in there, while Baby E, from the sound of it, is still awake in the crib (though not crying).



• Now I'm looking forward even more to starting our experiment with consistent sleep times and routines this week. I really hope it works.



• AJ made a cute little friend at the pre-wedding festivities. He was 11 years old, but not much bigger than AJ. He was sweet, happy and friendly, and played beautifully with AJ. She said he was her new friend that she liked a lot. He appeared to have Down's Syndrome. When it was time to go, AJ picked half a leaf off a tree next to the tire swing where they'd been playing, and said she was going to keep it forever to help her remember her new friend and how much fun they had playing on the tire swing.



• MM picked up a rock at our relatives' house to remember the weekend by. She selected it carefully from the driveway, and kept careful care of it all evening. Every time she mentioned it, she had to refer to it by its full name: "My rock that I got to help me remember the time we spent at J's house, and how much fun we had playing with J."



• As we were traveling home tonight, AJ said, "Let's talk about all the fun things we did the last few days. I'd like that. It was a great trip, wasn't it? We had a lot of fun playing with J, and I liked the wedding. Can we go to the wedding again soon? I'll remember the wedding forever and ever."



• The wedding was beautiful. The bride and groom are perfect for each other and obviously very much in love. A funny moment was when the groom, overcome with emotion during the special music toward the end of the wedding, tried to kiss the bride. She quickly turned her head so he ended up kissing her cheek instead of the lips he'd been aiming for. The crowd erupted into laughter while the minister said, "Just a couple more minutes. It's not time to kiss her yet."
  
  The joke resurfaced when it finally WAS time for the kiss, then again during the best man's toast.



• The best man, as the main part of his toast, wrote a song for the bride and groom. How sweet is that?



• We put the kids in their pajamas before heading home, and they all fell asleep. Which meant that DH and I got to have some actual adult conversation. Which was very nice.

Bedtime Strategies

I realized that in my last post I made it sound like Baby E always cries a lot when we put her to bed, and that's not really the case.

Basically, our approach to sleep so far has been the "whatever works" approach. We've found quite a few approaches that don't work, and we're still refining the method to figure out exactly what works for us--and for her, of course.

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From birth to 7 months, Baby E slept in the sidecar crib in our room. Essentially she was sleeping in our bed (sometimes in the attached crib that extended the space, frequently in the big bed or halfway in each). Often she'd fall asleep nursing or being held, and at other times we'd lay her down almost asleep. Sometimes we tried to put her to bed on her own, but often she went to bed at the same time we did. We were right there next to her while she slept.

For the first few months (well, once I stopped eating things that made her horribly ill and colicky, anyway) that seemed to work well for us. But after that neither Baby E nor I was able to sleep well in that arrangement.

Our problem was not so much getting her to sleep in the first place, as much as getting her to stay asleep. She'd doze off while we were holding or nursing her. If she didn't wake up when we laid her down or shifted her position in our arms (it didn't matter whether we were trying to lay her down 2 minutes or 62 minutes from when she fell asleep--the change in position often woke her even if she was limp-limbed and sound asleep), she'd often wake up 15-35 minutes later, maybe 50 minutes at the most.

Then she'd either be up every hour all night or she'd decide to be awake for one or two 2-4 hour stretches in the middle of the night. No amount of nursing, rocking, singing, lying down with her or letting her cry alone seemed to make any difference once she decided to be awake. She'd had her cat nap and was awake for the duration.

If Baby E and I both fell asleep while I was nursing her, which happened more often than not, I'd wake up an hour or so later. If I tried to detach her from suckling (the child can literally nurse-sleep for 3 hours straight) or reposition myself at all, she'd usually wake up.

So I'd end up either being up with her for the next hour trying to hold her off until it had been at least 2 hours since she last ate, or I'd just roll over and let her nurse on the other side until we went through the whole performance again an hour or two later, and then an hour after that, and so on through the night.

She was a very light sleeper and if either of us rolled over, got up to use the bathroom, or made any sound, she would usually wake up. If we kept the lights low and didn't speak or interact with her much, she might go back to sleep. But if it was necessary to change a diaper or anything like that, she'd probably be awake for a long time no matter what we did, even with me lying in bed with her trying to nurse her to sleep.

Figuring out that she had food allergies helped a lot with the marathon screaming sessions (which mostly took place while we were holding and trying to soothe her for hours on end) and at least cut down on the crying at night. I'm sure it helped somewhat with her sleep issues, too.

From the very beginning, though, if she didn't want to go to sleep nothing worked to make her sleep. We could rock and nurse her till the cows came home. If she was even extremely tired but not sleepy she'd just wriggle, fuss and play. We could put her in the crib and she'd just scream--and scream and scream. She could keep alternating the squirming and playing in our arms or screaming and playing in her crib literally for hours.

I don't know how she could manage to stay awake for so long. If I hadn't seen it for myself I wouldn't think it humanly possible for a baby to get by on so few hours of sleep over so many months.

Some nights she slept for 30 minutes, was awake for 30 minutes, slept for 20 minutes, was awake for 30 minutes again, slept for an hour, woke up for 20 minutes, slept for an hour and then was up for 4 hours, at which time the other girls were getting up and I'd need to get up with them while Baby E finally fell asleep for another 2-3 hours.

But every now and then she'd sleep great for a week or two, sleeping for 5-6 hours at a stretch and waking up briefly only 2-3 times during the night. For a couple glorious weeks once or twice, she slept for 6-8 hours at a time. We weren't able to figure out what we were doing differently at those times and reproduce it, though.

Any night she woke up briefly 5 times or less was a good night.

Her naps were just as unpredictable. Sometimes she wouldn't nap at all no matter what we did, and other times she'd nap for an hour in the morning and then 3 hours in the afternoon. Other times she'd nap for 15-20 minutes and that was all.

When we moved her crib into her own room in February, when she was 7 1/2 months old, the number of wakings per night went down significantly. She still ends up in our bed if she wakes every hour for more than 2-3 times, because broken and restless sleep is better than no sleep, but most nights since we moved her to her own room she doesn't wake more than 3-5 times. It helped even more when we started playing music on endless repeat for some white noise.

But what really seemed to help was when we started making a point to put her down consistently at the same time each day for naps and bed--and earlier than we were trying to put her down when trying to just follow her signals. It only works when we're consistent about it, but it works. And, somehow, it usually results in 3 or fewer wakings at night. So that's what we're doing now.

Sometimes she'll nurse or be rocked to sleep, and that's great. Other times no matter how much I nurse, rock or sing she just seems to get more and more wired. She'll flail around in my arms, either trying to play or fussing. She'll refuse to nurse and angrily throw any toy or comfort object I try to hand her. If I don't put her down on the floor to play she'll get more and more agitated until she's slapping my face in anger and throwing her body violently around, screaming.

Dr. Sears' advice notwithstanding, this child will often flat-out refuse to be "parented to sleep." In that case, often when I put her in the crib she'll cry for a couple of minutes or so and then settle down almost as in relief that I finally put her down in her crib where she can sleep.

If we wait until she wants to go to sleep, she will be up until sometime between midnight and 3 a.m. every night, and then wake frequently (sometimes for long periods) during the night. We just can't function on such a routine.

So it's on the nights when she's fed, dry and comfortable but refuses to settle down even with rocking and nursing that the method I laid out in yesterday's post comes into play. It usually happens that way for the better part of a week or two whenever her sleep pattern has been disrupted, but once she is getting adequate sleep and used to the routine she will go down with no more than a few minutes of fussing, wake up happy, and be much more contented during the day.

I think that Baby E is, probably more than most babies, affected by being overtired to the point that it makes her have difficulty sleeping. The "sleep begets sleep" saying definitely seems to hold true for her. Also, since she is a very light sleeper I've had to resort to using white noise a lot despite my concern of making her dependent on it. Once she's not so overtired we'll see if we can slowly wean her off it. If not, needing white noise to sleep is better than just not sleeping.

So now that we've found a method that seems to work while also preserving our sanity, the next step is making it consistent. It will probably mean hampering our activities quite a lot for several weeks or maybe even many months. I've always been one of those "just take the kids along and go do stuff anyway" kind of moms, but I'm willing to give that up for the most part if it means we'll get to sleep at night.

Obviously, many months of severe sleep deprivation have taken their toll. And I've compounded it by staying up far too late on the nights when Baby E did go to sleep early--either because my body's gotten used to a bedtime after midnight or because I'm somehow sabotaging myself, I'm not sure which. Maybe both.

I have been barely functional much of the time for the past year (the 10+ months since Baby E was born and the 6 weeks of early labor leading up to that). We're all tired. We're all tired of being tired. The older girls don't function well when we're not being consistent with their bedtimes, too.

So DH and I had a talk today. We're going to give ourselves a trial of at least a week or two, being very strict with the whole family's sleep schedule. We'll try to get ourselves, the older two girls and Baby E down to bed and naps consistently at the same times every day. No exceptions unless there are truly exceptional circumstances. We will plan our schedule around naps and bedtimes. No more fruitless attempts to get napping to happen in the car while driving, and no more skipping or delaying naps and bedtime for outings or company. After that time period we'll take stock and see if we want to keep it up, start being more flexible, or try something else.

The hardest part will be being strict with ourselves about going to bed on time, I'm sure. It's one thing to put the kids to bed on time; quite another to do it for ourselves.

Sleep Theories

Baby E finally seems to be over the worst of this teething episode for the moment. She has 3 or 4 teeth poking through the gums and her pain seems to have subsided somewhat. She's no longer fussy, clingy and crying for most of the day. She's sleeping for longer stretches at night, and she went down for her naps today fairly easily, without the hour or two ordeal it's been the rest of the week.

I've been thinking a lot about sleep issues lately.

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There are different schools of thought on approaches to baby sleep (and some of the differences apply to parenting in general, of course). One is that babies need to be scheduled and must be taught to fall asleep on their own, and that you will spoil them by responding to their cries before the allotted time. This philosophy assumes that babies must be taught independence and structure from a very young age. Sometimes this goes along with being very parent (or adult) centered. The child is expected to adjust to the way the parent decides to do things.

The other extreme is that babies should never be left to cry without some kind of intervention, and that it's important for them to know that a parent is always there when they are needed. This philosophy assumes that bonding, security and trust are the main goals of parenting an infant. The philosophies on this end of the spectrum are more child-centered. This is often very child-centered, and sometimes results in the parent structuring life around the child's needs and desires.

There are all kinds of teachers and methodologies on every point of the scale from one extreme to the other. They all seem to be adamant that their way is best, and that you will do severe (and possibly permanent) damage to your child if you do things a different way.

I tend to think that the best approach is somewhere in between. That there has to be some kind of balance between structure and flexibility. That the needs of parent, baby and other family members all have to be balanced together.

But picking an actual method is the trick. Each approach seems to have some great arguments in its favor, and lots of people who are convinced it works.

So I compromise by feeling guilty when I let Baby E cry and feeling guilty when I don't.

Theoretically, we do have a method that seems to work fairly well. But it seems that every time we travel or Baby E gets sick, or whenever we allow her to skip naps or keep her up late because we have company or are out somewhere, we end up back at square one. It can take up to two weeks or more of consistency before she settles into the routine again after any variance. So it seems like we're constantly trying to recover our routine after a disruption.

We try to make sure she's completely fed, dry and as comfortable as possible before putting her down. The amount of time we spend rocking, feeding and nursing varies according to whether she seems to be settling down and relaxing or not, but once she's in the crib we try not to take her out again.

I don't mind letting her cry for a while when I know it's just stubbornness or she's blowing off steam, but if she's truly sick or in a lot of pain I won't do it. This week she cries and fusses a lot even if I'm holding her--all morning off and on (the last few days more on than off) from the moment she wakes up until sometime in the afternoon, not just at naptime.

Generally I go through the routine, make sure she has a full stomach and a clean diaper and lay her down. If she's still escalating after 10-15 minutes or so instead of winding down, I go in and try to calm her down and then leave the room again. My limit is about 20-35 minutes of flat-out non-stop screaming or 60-90 minutes of sporadic screaming before I will get her up.

If she seems like she's winding down instead of up I might leave her longer, but if she's still escalating at that point I will get her up and try holding her, nursing, giving teething tablets, or that sort of thing. I'm just not comfortable letting her go much longer than that, because in my experience with my kids it makes them much more clingy, unhappy and difficult overall in the long run when they cry and cry with no answer.

I really don't like the idea of letting her cry for a long time with nobody answering her cries, and I honestly don't think it's good for her to be screaming so hard for a really long period of time day after day (one commenter on Moxie's sleep thread said that her kid cried and cried every single night for 12 or 18 months!). It would be okay if it were just for a few days and then she didn't cry so much, but that's not what has happened for us. (CIO worked with AJ, but with MM after a few weeks of 1-2 hours of screaming every night we gave up and tried some other methods.) At the same time, I want her to know that she can't manipulate us and just stay awake forever.

DH and I agree on those things, and when she's not ill or in pain we do OK, but we haven't hit on a good way to handle things when she is truly hurting. We've been sick so much this winter that it's made it difficult to stick to a routine when we make exceptions for illness.

When there is nothing wrong and she is just being stubborn, she fluctuates more in her crying rather than just constantly escalating over the course of the hour or whatever. In that case we don't get her up again once she's in bed for the night, but we will go in and talk to her after 20 minutes or so and sometimes try giving teething tablets or changing a diaper (she sometimes poops after we lay her down for the night, and we won't leave her in a poopy diaper all night) or something like that if she's not settling down. Sometimes we'll stay in the room while she cries in her crib, except on the nights when it seems our presence is causing her to get more worked up instead of calming her down. At times it has been a 2 to 4 hour ordeal even with not getting her up or not taking her out of the room, and we're just not willing to leave her crying alone in the room for that long.

Anyway, I think I'm going to have to turn into one of those moms who tries never to be away from the house at naptime or bedtime, because it seems she just doesn't handle disruptions in her routine well. It seems Baby E might need more consistency than we're giving her.

Park Pictures

Baby E is pretty miserable with cutting teeth (I think she's working on eight now, 3 of which are poking through a little). She's been crying a lot in the mornings and not napping well.

Yesterday after a couple of hours of crying, I took the kids for a long car drive, hoping she'd sleep in the car. We went to visit my grandparents. E did nap a bit and was much happier out of the house with some distraction, so we stopped on the way home and picked a flat of strawberries. Delicious.

After dinner I took AJ out for some special mother-daughter time. Here are some pictures from our time at the park. It's the same park I took MM to last time.

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Good germs

AJ is sitting at the table drawing a picture:

Mommy, I'm coloring germs that are healthy for you. They're called bacteria. These are germs that live on your skin--are those called bacteria? I'm coloring good bacteria. They're the germs that are good for you. Not viruses. Bacteria.

Stress building or stress releasing crying?

Moxie has a great post up about two different styles of kids' crying related to going to sleep. Be sure to click over and read the whole post; it's excellent.

She says, "There are babies who release tension by crying, and there are babies who increase energy by crying. If you treat them both the same way, you're going to have trouble"

Her descriptions of each type are superb:

• "A kid who releases tension by crying will not always nurse or be rocked down to sleep. It may happen sometimes, but often times the kid will get progressively more active and jittery, almost manic, as the nursing or rocking session goes on. He or she may cry during the rocking/nursing, and not settle down in a few seconds. It's almost as if the kid wants to cry. If you leave the child alone, the child will wail initially (for anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes), but then settle down to a fuss or whimper, and will soon fall asleep. A child who releases tension from crying will often wake up happy and refreshed, and will play alone in the bed, co-sleeper, or crib for awhile before you come to get them.
  
  A kid who gains tension by crying will go to sleep easily (and maybe exclusively) by nursing or rocking. It may take awhile, but rocking/nursing is a sure, gradual path toward relaxation and sleep. If left alone before s/he's asleep, s/he'll start to cry. And will cry and cry, increasing in intensity until the child goes hoarse or throws up or you give in and go to comfort him or her. Many kids who increase tension by crying, even if they go to sleep peacefully and happily, will wake up crying or grumpy and need to be gotten immediately from the sleeping area.
  
  If you have a kid who releases tension by crying, the child seems to need to fuss or cry a little before falling asleep. If you don't recognize it, you'll be miserable. You can rock and rock and rock, and your child won't go to sleep easily and will end up crying anyway, but you'll think you're doing something horribly wrong that you can't comfort your baby to sleep. In reality, the child just needs to release tension by crying or fussing, and will go to sleep easily after a few minutes of this."

This describes Baby E perfectly.

Unfortunately, both descriptions fit Baby E perfectly, depending on the day or the sleep session. Sometimes she screams and screams when we put her to bed, whether we're in the room or not, and the only thing that will calm her down is rocking and/or nursing. Other times no amount of rocking and nursing will put her to sleep or even relax her, and if I put her down in the crib she will cry for a few minutes and then quickly drop off to sleep, almost as though in relief that I finally put her into the crib.

I think that rather than picking one method or the other as I've been trying to do, I'm going to have to try to figure out whether she's escalating or destressing each time and try to take it from there appropriately.

And then sometimes neither method works.

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Yesterday she was obviously very tired and ready for a nap. I rocked, nursed, sang to her, put her in the crib and let her scream, everything I could think of with no success. I'd hold her and she'd slap my face and throw herself around, fussing angrily. I'd put her in the crib and she'd scream and scream. Even teething tablets and ibuprofen didn't help.

Finally, after two hours of this, I put her in the crib and left the room. She cried for a couple of minutes, then played happily in her crib until she fell asleep some time later.

Today I made the mistake of nursing her before her nap, and she fell asleep for about 2 minutes while nursing but then woke up again when I laid her down. She screamed frantically. After getting her up and feeding her on the other side, she calmed down but was wide awake, even though obviously still tired. Rocking her wasn't calming her down. So I put her in her crib. Taking Moxie's advice, I talked to her first and told her that it was time to take a nap, and that she needed to go into the crib for some quiet time and go to sleep.

Talking to her about it first did seem to help, as did the fact that I stayed hear her room and let her see and hear me working around the house nearby. She cried halfheartedly for a few minutes, then started playing.

She played in her crib for almost an hour, then started crying again. By that point naptime was over, so I got her up and fed her lunch. She was still rubbing her eyes and fussing. I don't know how she managed to stay awake for so long when she was obviously so tired.

Then I debated whether to try to lay her down again or just keep her up until it was time for the next nap.

What would you do?

As Moxie pointed out, not only is Baby E cutting six teeth, but she's also developing several dramatic new skills. Both scenarios tend to interfere with sleep.

She's trying to learn how to stand on her own, she's picking up new words and hand signs, she's starting to use the potty, and she's doing all kinds of new things.

Yesterday, I think it was, I was sitting at the computer with Baby E when DH came in and sat at his computer. Baby E looked at him and said something like, "Ooh-duh, Dada! Ooh-duh, Dada! Dada, ooh-duh! Ooh-duh." Then she started flailing her hands, obviously trying to communicate in a gesture. She was waving her hands up and down, then she made the "milk" sign at DH, which she tends to do when she wants something.

He took her and she continued saying "ooh-duh" and making motions toward . . . DH's keyboard. She wanted to play on his computer.

He said, "You want to play on the computer?" and made typing motions with his hands. She beamed and copied his hand motions.

He turned on the keyboard pounder program for her and she typed away delightedly on his computer. She threw a huge tantrum when it was time to stop.

Yesterday afternoon I took her into the bathroom to see if she wanted to use the toilet. She started saying, "Otter! Otter!" and trying frantically to get into the bathtub. I tried to be understanding. "Water? You want to take a bath? Baths are fun, aren't they? But I'm sorry, it's nap time right now. You can't take a bath now. Later you can."

She screamed and threw herself around crazily, hitting and pushing me with her hands.

"No, you may not hit Mommy," I said. "I know you're mad, but it's not okay to hit. You want to take a bath, don't you? You love the water. But we can't do that right now. Sorry. We just can't. It's time for a nap."

She was furious, and continued her tantrum for quite some time. But it did seem to comfort her a bit that I understood what she was trying to communicate.

Finally I got the idea to let her wash her hands in the sink. Getting her hands into the water for a few moments seemed to be a decent compromise, and she calmed down after that.

If nothing else, it helped me to know that she was just throwing a tantrum because she couldn't take a bath, rather than crying because she was hungry or in pain.