Tag: momlife

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We Took Away Our Daughter’s iPad – what we learned

Does your child spend a lot time on their iPad? I bet they do, ours did too. We had one major rule though and that was, “don’t talk to anyone you don’t know in real life online.” Our daughter broke that rule and we took it away. What we didn’t expect were the changes we would observe over the next few weeks.

What did you just minimize?

Our daughter, like most kids her age, enjoyed playing games where her friends could interact with her online. She knew that she wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone that she didn’t know in real life. One day though her dad walked into her room and she quickly minimized something. Ummmm what did you just minimize? “Nothing”, she said. Of course her dad took the computer and found a benign conversation that our daughter admitted she didn’t know the person she was talking to. We reacted quickly and strongly because pedos don’t just start the conversation saying “hey little girl I have some bad intentions for you.”. So we needed to make our point. Computer and iPad were gone for an indefinite amount of time.

How long are we going to keep them?

Over the next few days my husband and I went back and forth about how long we were going to keep her devices. We didn’t really have a plan in place since this was kind of unexpected. After a couple days though we noticed that she hadn’t asked for it, at all, not once. So we determined that we wouldn’t do anything if she didn’t ask. Let’s just see how long we can go here.

She started playing with her little brother and sister again.

After a while we started to notice that our daughter was interacting with her younger siblings again. Especially her little sister. They started playing board games, going out on the trampoline, and other imaginative play. She still hadn’t asked for her iPad back so we were letting it go. We were noticing a lot fewer fights, a lot less yelling, and a happier daughter.

Her behavior improved.

After a couple weeks, we noticed that our mornings started to go more smoothly. She was now waking up before she needed to and getting ready without being told. I asked her if after we went to bed was she was going back on her computer before. She admitted she often did. Her mood was improving, she was more engaged with us and started asking her siblings to go outside WAY more often!

Three weeks later.

She still hasn’t asked for the iPad back and we haven’t offered it to her. Things have definitely improved around here and we are pleasantly surprised. Obviously we didn’t anticipate these changes, we hadn’t realized how much constantly being on her iPad was affecting her. Not only affecting her but the rest of us. It seems as though we are all a little happier without that iPad around.

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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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The Birds and the Bunnies: A Lesson by Nature

 

The Birds and the Bunnies: A Lesson by Nature

Mother nature tells the tale of The Birds and the Bunnies? A lesson in nature. Ahhh spring, isn’t it a beautiful time to see the flowers blooming, the leaves seems to suddenly appear on the trees and nature is everywhere! Isn’t it grand?

I was sitting at my desk working when I looked out the window to see two bunnies just hanging out in our backyard. We love animals around here, so I quickly grab my camera and slowly creep outside to take a few pictures of these adorable little creatures. My husband calls them ‘nature’s snack food’ but that’s another story. I am able to get super close, like surprisingly close. To be honest, it was kind of ridiculously close. Hey, aren’t you guys prey? Shouldn’t you be running by now? It hasn’t occurred to me just WHY I am able to get so close to these mobile hawk snacks.

Enter my little darlings

“Oh my goodness…come here girls quick”, I call to my darling innocent little ones who simply love all animals and nature. They come running out to see our wild friends. A few “OMG they are adorable”, “Mommy we are so close!”. My heart beamed thinking, “aren’t I just an awesome mom for being able to show them this tender moment with mother nature and her pets?”. Shortly after all of our “oohs” and “ahhs”, we realize that there is yet another ‘couple’ in our yard. We are remarkably able to get ridiculously close to these cuties as well. It still hasn’t dawned on me what is causing the seemingly docile ignorance of our presence to these otherwise flighty critters. Although I did start to think that it was a little odd that four wild bunnies would let us get so close to them. Let’s be honest here, my daughters can’t really be described as “stealthy”.

Bunnies Getting Busy

Suddenly before I could even realize what was about to go down, one of the bunnies jumped onto the back of the other bunny! They didn’t care that we were getting so close because LOVE was in the air and they were all twitterpated! They didn’t give two shits about us being there because all they could hear was some sort of slow love bunny R&B jam in their little bunny brains!

My brain screamed “GAHHH”! “Come on girls let’s go inside!”, I chime as I quickly corral my girls away from the amorous couple towards the backdoor but alas, I wasn’t quite fast enough. As I was opening the back door and shoving my daughters into the house, my older daughter said “why did the daddy kick the mommy? She just wanted a hug! Did he do that on purpose?!”, she chirped. What was my perfect mom, brilliant response? “uhhhhh, I don’t know baby…they are animals”.

:::face palm:::

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Are you dating your spouse?

We might be getting serious.

I’m currently dating my husband…or he is dating me…not sure really but we have been dating for a while now. I think things are getting pretty serious. We have been married for almost 11 years, together over 12. With the stresses of kids, two jobs, running a household, and holy shit stuff is expensive, we made a deal that we would go out together, just us, at least twice a month. We often run out of ideas and new places to go but we always go.

Why? Why do we do it?

We do it because once all the dust settles, the kids are grown moving on with their lives then it will be just the two of us. Just the two of us staring at each other across the kitchen table in the morning wondering, “Now what do we do?”. I don’t want to be sitting across from some stranger who I haven’t really seen or spent any time with in the last 18 years.

Nothing fancy.

Sometimes we just meet each other for lunch while the kids are in school. Then there are other times we hire a babysitter, schedule a sleepover at mom mom’s house and go out to dinner. It is almost NEVER something that would warrant 20 selfies and appear like we are living it up way more than any of our friends. In fact, the occasional selfie is rare but once in a while we are feeling millennial and take one. Date nights are more important than just getting away from the kids. Eating your dinner at the temperature that it was meant to be served at. Date nights are a reminder of just why you have this crazy life in the first place. You fell in love. You fell in love with each other and created the mayhem that now consumes you all day every day. I doubt you could you ever imagine not having this craziness!? I know I couldn’t and remembering why I choose to create chaos of my life with him, that is why I make sure that we are still dating.

 

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