5 Reasons to Travel Without the Kids

How long has it been since you travelled without your kids? How long since you and your significant other just took a trip for just the two of you? If you are like most parents then it has been a REALLY long time. In fact, I bet many of you are waiting until the kids are grown to travel right?! Well that is a big mistake and here are the top five reasons why you need to plan a trip without the kids like yesterday.

First of all, it is Cheaper!

Ok, this is a no brainer right?! It is certainly cheaper for just two adults to travel than it is when you add in more little mouths to feed, shelter and entertain. Is this article a joke, of course it is cheaper. Cheaper is a total given. Which is also the total destroyer of your first excuse to why you CAN’T take a vacation without the kids. You need to get over the guilt of spending a little money on yourselves. I mean, you literally earned it.

Refill your relationship’s cup.

You both love those little beasts, they are your heart and soul. I also know that after day in and day out of constantly putting yourself dead last that you need to refill your cup. Well guess what, your relationship has a cup that needs filling, DESERVES filling too. You both need a chance to remember why you do all those crazy running here and there things that you do. You both need to remember why you wanted to do those things together, why you choose each other. A trip just the two of you will help remind you of that.

Non kid friendly fun is SOOO fun!

If you are reading this then it has likely been a while since you and your love did anything that didn’t involve the kids. So you probably forgot how relaxing it is to just sit on the beach for a few hours without adjusting someone’s goggles, getting a snack box out of the cooler, or walking someone to the bathroom. Maybe you also forgot how cool it is to take a tour of local landmark, museum, or check out kitchy little shop. I would wager that you even forgot how awesome it is to sit at an outdoor patio with a pitcher of margaritas and the love of your life for lunch. Then head back to the room for some afternoon delight and a nap. You forgot about that didn’t you?

In case you are wondering the margarita pitcher hadn’t arrived yet!

Scope out kid friendly locations.

We have done a decent amount of traveling for a couple with younger children. We have traveled to places that we were glad we didn’t bring the kids. Some of them we were REALLY glad! There have also been places that we know we want to go back with the kids one day. By not having them with us it allowed us to scope things out for a lot less money and a lot more us time. We can see whether or not there are kid friendly restaurants, parks, fun activities, rainy day stuff without getting there with everyone in tow. So think of your trip as a cheap, relationship cup filling, day drinking recon mission.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Every day you spend the majority of your time making sure that someone else gets what they need from you. You make sure that everyone gets to practice, brings a sweatshirt, or remembers their lunch box. Every.Damn.Day. You both do so much for the little people in your lives that it’s easy to forget yourselves. It can also be easy to just let your relationships go into autopilot. Both your relationship with your partner and with your kids. It can be easy to take all of it for granted. By going away you actually remind yourselves exactly why you want to come home again.

 

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How to Get Your Baby to Sleep like a Baby

Congratulations on your new baby! Such a sweet little bundle of joy, it’s just heavenly isn’t it? At first any whimper will make you leap right out of bed in the middle of the night to attend to every need. In a few weeks though, you’re frigging tired. You need this little sweet pea to sleep on some kind of consistent basis so you can function. Let’s face it, coffee ain’t cutting it. The whole “sleep when the baby sleeps”, is crap. Especially if you have other kids, or a husband, or a job, etc. You feel like a zombie and need some sleep, like yesterday. Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered!

Side note: this is not to be used in place of solid medical advice from your child’s pediatrician based off your child’s specific health needs or medical conditions.

I was Tired Once too

I am no sleep expert but I am the mother of five beautiful children, four of whom all slept through the night by 10 weeks old. This includes a set of twins, which happened to be the last pregnancy. Don’t get me started, thats a story for another time.

Notice how only four of my five slept through the night early on? Well its simple as to why, my first didn’t sleep well at all. In fact, she didn’t sleep through the night until she was about six months old, maybe a year. I can’t remember, it was a blur. Like many older siblings, she is the reason for the following sleep routine plan. I was not going to go sleepless for that long ever again. So from my second child on I started doing this routine at the suggestion of a more experienced mother. Thank God for her because it works!

For the first month or so every baby slept on my chest. I slept sitting up in a recliner or propped up on the couch. These snuggles are not only the sweetest moments that you will every have canoodling with that little angel, but remember how they were JUST inside your warm, safe, quiet, womb? They do and the outside world can be a pretty big adjustment. Ever step out of a sauna into a room that is 30 degrees cooler? It won’t take long before you need to warm up. Plus by sleeping on your chest, your baby can smell you, hear you breathe, maybe even faintly hear your heartbeat. Whether you breastfeed or bottle feed, this sleeping situation will help your baby feel safe while transitioning to the outside world. Which will help YOU get some sleep.

Set a Nightly Routine

Consistency is key, vital in fact, for this part of the routine in order for it to work.

Start wherever you are but begin to establish a nightly routine. If you are consistently getting two hours of sleep out of the baby from 11pm to 1am. Start there. Every night at the same time, without fail, you need to make the following happen. Give the baby a nice warm bath. Don’t forget that they just came out of a nine month warm soak! This will be relaxing for the baby.  Give baby a little rub down to keep their skin soft. I think I used a bedtime lavender infused lotion but you can use any type of moisturizing lotion or cream after the bath. Next get baby all snuggled up in their jammies, swaddle them  and feed them. Whether it is bottle or breast doesn’t matter. Let them get a full belly. Think about it, wouldn’t you be sleepy after all that?

Now once baby begins to nod off, put them in their crib with whatever type of sleep aids, room darkening curtains, etc., you plan on using consistently to help them stay asleep. I had a small fan that provided white noise but wasn’t pointed at the baby.

Set the Tone for the Night

Once baby has nodded off into Sleepyville, then no more bright lights, no more loud voices in the nursery. Everything is about sleep from here until morning. Baby needs to eat again? No worries, feed them, burp them, and then back to the crib. Low/no lights, low voices, with little to no talking, all business. I only changed poop-y diapers at night, just wet waited until morning. As your baby gets older and grows then it will also be able to sleep longer, so now you have established a nighttime routine that leads to them in their cribs. As their length of sleep progresses, then so will yours!

Need to Change the Bedtime Start Time?

Once you get this going consistently for at least a week or two then you can gradually start moving bedtime forward by 30 minutes. 11pm was super late for us so we kept inching the ritual forward until we hit the bedtime that worked for us. Once the pattern is established and your baby knows what to expect, then you will have more control or the bedtime itself. As they start sleeping longer it will be easier too. First the routine is about establishing the ritual so the baby knows what to expect then you can play with the timing.

Deep breath and relax! You got this whole parenting thing!

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Aftermath of Head Lice: Talking to your child

The aftermath of head lice can leave both you and your child emotionally exhausted. We all know that head lice sucks, despite being a common rite of passage for many kids. Your child is embarrassed, you are grossed out, and let’s be honest, other kids can be really mean. How do you talk to your child so they are ready to face their friends at school again?

Let me guess, these nasty little buggers hit you out of nowhere right? You found yourself totally unprepared and overwhelmed the minute you figured out what was going on. Your first response may not have been the best one but once the dust settles, heads are treated, and sheets are in the wash, the next obstacle you face is helping your child emotionally move on. Here’s five simple ways to help explain the who, what, where, why they had it and how to talk to their friends about it.

Who Gets Head Lice?

The fact of the matter is that anyone can get head lice. Well, any human that is. They are most common in young children with girls being more likely to get them over boys. Head lice do not discriminate against anyone really. Clean hair, dirty hair, child, adult, they just love hair, any and all kinds! That means there was no way of really preventing them from finding your head to be the perfect home for them to raise a family in!

What Are Head Lice?

I assume you mean besides gross? Head lice are little parasites that find the human head the absolute best neighborhood to raise their family in. They are visible to the naked eye but can be pretty quick to scurry away from searching fingers. The real trouble is they lay eggs like crazy and those are really hard to see. Even if you have good vision a pair of reading glasses may come in handy in your search for them. Lice are literally thousands of years old, so they are persistent little bastards that breed better than rabbits.

Where Do You Get Head Lice?

99.9% of the time head lice are transferred from head to head by sharing hats, batting helmets, wigs, or sleeping close to someone who has them. They can’t fly, or even jump, they can only crawl. So they really depend on you unknowingly inviting them onto your head. Your child didn’t deserve them certainly and they had to have gotten them from someone else. That means there is no reason to be embarrassed. They just happen.

Why Head Lice?

In my honest opinion, only God knows why they exist. The good news is that they do not carry disease or infections that can be transferred to humans so they are really just a gross, itchy, but harmless nuisance.

How to Tell Their Friends

We all know that when we hear “head lice”, and we take a step away from the person talking instantly feeling itchy. Although I had them as a kid I don’t remember being teased about having them. I don’t really remember anything other than my mom combing through my hair with that tiny ass comb and hating every second of it. As I was researching during my what the fuck do I do now moment I saw a lot of things posted about the stigma of head lice. As I kid I didn’t really think about it, I was worried for my daughters though. I was afraid that they would be teased, bullied, or otherwise ostracized if other kids knew.

After talking to the school nurse I told them that they could lie, I’m not proud of that. I told them that they could just say that they were home sick. They didn’t have to tell anyone they missed school because they had lice.

My girls didn’t listen of course, and told their friends. They learned a valuable lesson in doing that, I did too. My older daughter said that this friend heard from that friend, who heard from another friend, BUT only one friend came to her to ask her if it was true. They told me that when someone said something to them they simply stood up for themselves. They told everyone that they had to have gotten them from someone else  who had them so what was the big deal? I have to admit that I was proud of them and ashamed of myself. They told the truth, defended themselves and then simply went on with their day. What more could a mom ask for?

 

 

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