Sleeping Break Through

The only place she slept well for about three months was in my arms. That was a long three months...

I'm not a baby sleep genius, in fact I often feel like this lady. Take a second to read it. 

Go ahead, I'll wait. 

Finished? Good, now you understand the last year of my life. Moving on. 

I had an epiphany today. I read this book (along with about 900 others, but this was the one that made the most sense to me) called Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child that talked about sleep as not the amount of time a child should be asleep or at what time, but rather the appropriate "hours of wakefulness." The idea (very simplified) is that tiny babies can only be awake for an hour to two hours at a time before their bodies need to sleep again. When babies are first born they are growing so quickly, they need a ton of sleep to rest their bodies and their brains. As babies get bigger they can remain awake and take in new stimuli for longer periods of time, thus resulting in a longer "period of wakefulness."

Here's the "well duh" part. I've been thinking about Wiggle's naps as how many, what time, and how long. What I should have been focusing on is the time in between naps. How long has she been awake and is she old enough to handle being awake for longer. 

She's ready for one nap? Instead of thinking about when the nap should be and how long, I should have been slowly increasing her "hours of wakefulness." Seems like I should have understood this from the beginning right? Well I have only two words as an excuse: Sleep Deprivation! Poor Wiggles. The first is always the guinea pig right? Baby number two will benefit from your hardships, just remember that when you are talking to your therapist someday!

Two days in and we already had a nice long nap 2 days in a row! In fact yesterday my child (yes, MY child!) slept for two hours straight. Thats right people, the longest nap my child has taken since she was literally three weeks old! Amen and Hallelujah! I could kiss someone!

To all the moms out there who are struggling with naplessness and/or nighttime sleeplessness, there is hope! It will get better. It might not be for a year (sorry, honesty sucks), but it will happen. Hopefully sooner for you than for me...

God bless and good sleep,
Jillian

The Simple Things

I had a post planned for these pictures about summer and childhood and how we need to cherish memories of our own childhood and help our children make their own memories etc. etc., but instead of a long wordy post, I'll just share these pictures and say simply: These are the moments in life that matter. Make them count for more than the bad stuff.

Bread Baking

Thanks to my sister-in-law who gave me a fantastic (and easy) recipe for bread, I have seriously considered making bread from scratch on a weekly (although realistically, more like twice-a-week...ly...) basis. The recipe is fast (a huge plus for the mother of a toddler), easy (a huge plus for those of us with a history of turning out hard, round lumps that make better doorstops than dinner food) and it tastes fantastic. Another plus is that you can make white bread or wheat bread. Same recipe, more healthy.

So in considering this I decided to do some actual math, because sometimes the "homemade" way is actually just harder and not all that much better for you or your pocket. Now, I'm not going to show you the math (for several reasons, not least of which is I'm not very good at math and I might be off by a cent... or two...), but the final tallies came out thusly:

White bread: .76¢
Wheat bread: $1.36

Wow! The bread we buy (and only on sale) is still twice that at $2.98. Plus each batch of this heavenly stuff makes two huge loaves! Ok, not that huge, we had two today and between my father-in-law, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, husband, child and, oh yeah, me there are about two slices left. No lie. That's it. 

And you know what else? I enjoy making it. I like baking and it smells amazing in my house all day long.

Lesson today: Make bread at home, not only is it fantastic, cheaper and not as daunting as it might seem, it makes you very popular with the in-laws!

Photo bombing brother-in-law. Told you. Popular with the in-laws!