Look what I did this week!

My friend Kim, blogger extraordinaire, over at Yep, they are all mine has a new thing called "Grab a beer and look what I did last week." In the spirit of blogging, friendship, and friendly blogging, I'm participating, even though I think it's really selfish of Kim to start a tradition involving beer when I'm going to be pregnant for four more long months. But I digress. Here we go.




Everybody, grab a beer raspberry leaf tea and look what I did last week!

The weather this week was incredibly disgusting. It was rainy and windy, the kind of rainy and windy where your umbrella turns inside out and your pants get soaked. I spent much of the week hunkered down inside; understandably, there are no pictures of that. Here's what was worth documenting from this gray, soggy week:

(1) We celebrated Asher's friend Lilli's birthday at Bouncetown in El Dorado Hills. Omg, this place is sooo much better than Bounceopolis in Folsom. Why did I not know about this sooner? Asher spent the whole time going down the big slides. I am fascinated by how he can be so fearful about things that seem innocuous and then so brave about things that I would think he'd be scared of, like these slides.

Then it was back to Lilli's house for pizza and cupcakes. No surprise, my kid loves cupcakes.

 

 We tried to get a nice group shot of the kids. This was the best we could do.

Declined to be photographed: Liam

(2) A serious need for retail therapy, plus the fact that all my boots just bit the dust, got me out in the rain to Nordstrom Rack, the best place ever for shopping for anything you'd ever need. I came away with boots, cardigans, dish towels, tights, a cake server, and cocktail napkins.

Rain boots and fancy cowboy boots? Yes, please.

(3) Pedis and cocktails (or mocktails in my case) with some of the hot mamas. I hadn't had a pedicure since October, and the toe situation was getting pretty dire.

Much better!

As an aside, are the flowers on the toes a California thing or just a thing that has popped up in the last several years? I don't recall ever seeing flowers on the toes of anyone when I lived in Michigan or North Carolina. Midwesterners, I need answers here!

(4) I made these cookies, which I swear were the best cookies I have ever made!! I substituted milk chocolate toffee pieces (available next to the chocolate chips in the baking aisle) for the chocolate chips, and OH MY GOODNESS!! Sorry there aren't pics; I didn't know they would be anything special, and now, 24 hours later, there is only one left. I am going to try every combination of toffee chips, chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, and nuts in this recipe.

(5) I like to clean house on Sunday afternoon and Monday morning to start the week out (sort of) fresh. Things have usually been neglected on Friday and Saturday, so I need to swoop in on Sunday before we get nominated for Hoarders or something. Seriously, how does a house go from fine to wrecked in, like, a nanosecond??

I swear this kitchen was JUST clean!!

This too!

Oh what a glamorous life I lead!!

Sleep training update, night 3

And it worked!!!!!!!!!!! Tonight Ash put himself to sleep without getting out of bed once. We only had about 20 seconds of tears (his, not mine), which he resolved on his own. I checked on him a few times at increasing intervals and the fourth time found him snoring away.

At times like this I almost feel like I know how to do this parenting thing. How long until he throws me another curve ball and reminds me that I'm totally just winging it? :)

Sleep training update

Not to get overconfident, but sleep training is a WIN so far!!

Last night, the wee one woke up at 3 a.m. (typical), so I went and tucked him back in and promised I'd check back in five minutes, and he said ok. You guys, you do not understand how huge this is. No tears, no begging me to stay in his room, nothing. He just laid down quietly and was back asleep in ten minutes. I could have cried tears of joy.

Then tonight, we only did 40 minutes of the back-and-forth game, and with no help from Daddy, who is playing poker (better bring me some money, honey!). The tears were also minimal and seemed largely forced for dramatic effect frankly. After 40 minutes, he was clearly fighting the sleep, so I just asked him to please stay in bed, and he did. Again, tears of joy.

I'm not getting cocky, because I know my kid, and we could very well establish a pattern where we do the back-and-forth game for 20 minutes every single night, but I'll jump off that bridge later. This is such a major victory for us. Hooray!!

Faking it: Parenting edition: Sleep training

** Let me just preface this post by saying that I really really don't want sleep advice. I have read many books and gotten about as much advice as I can handle from "veteran moms." I am very sensitive about this issue. I am putting this out there for moral support, both to get some myself and to give some to any other parents going through this. **


Ever since Ash was born, we have been trying to figure out how to get him to sleep. He is not by nature a good sleeper; or rather, he is not good at sleeping on his own. If he had his way, he would sleep in our bed with him and I tucked into one big sleep sack together. We have tried many different approaches, ranging from accommodating him to brief attempts at letting him cry it out (it's not my style, and I could never really do it), and many things in between. For years we ended up doing a family bed, which worked just fine for all of us, until it didn't work for me any more AT ALL. That was about a year ago. Since then, when we moved him into his own room, he has gone through periods of sleeping just fine and periods of waking up every two hours, the latter corresponding to periods of extreme grumpiness for Mommy.

We have been in one of those latter periods lately, and I can't take it any more. Last night, after sitting up with him from 2:15 to 4:15, I kind of lost my mind and decided right then and there that we were going to supernanny him. For those of you not familiar with Supernanny Jo, that basically means just taking him back to his room over and over until he passes out from exhaustion. Ideally, you only need to do that for a few nights before the kid figures it out on his own. Well, when you start it at 4:15 a.m. with no discussion beforehand, it makes for a long night. Picture two hours of total meltdown, followed by one hour of sleep. But then he was TOTALLY LOVELY today. The picture of sweetness. This bolstered my resolve, as obviously the trauma of the previous night had no lasting effects on his psyche.

So today we enthusiastically talked up our new plan where he goes to sleep by himself, without Mommy or Daddy in bed with him or sitting on the floor or in the rocker or whatever tomfoolery. We promised to check on him regularly, and he seemed highly ok with this plan. And he was...until after 10 minutes of laying in bed by himself, at which point he decided that this plan was not for him (even though I checked on him after 5 minutes as promised). Cue the beginning of supernanny time.

From 9:18 to 9:42, I put him back in bed approximately 20 times. All the while he's crying and trying all manner of emotional warfare with me (begging me to make him feel better, mostly). I live blogged the next 20 minutes for you:

• 9:42 - Put Ash back in bed, crying
• 9:43 - Put Ash back in bed, crying
• 9:44 - Put Ash back in bed, crying
• 9:45 - Put Ash back in bed, crying          
• Put Ash back in bed again, crying
• 9:46 - Put Ash back in bed, crying
• 9:47 - Put Ash back in bed, crying
• 9:48 - Put Ash back in bed, crying
• 9:49 - Put Ash back in bed, no longer crying - PROGRESS!
• 9:50 to 10:01 - continuous cycle of me putting him in bed, him uncovering himself before I even get out of the room, me making it the eight steps down the hall to my room, turning around and putting him right back in bed. He's not really protesting anymore, even yawning sometimes. He did make one desperate last-ditch effort by asking for a snack, which I ignored. More progress?
• 10: 02 - By now my legs are tired, and he is clearly playing a game of how many times can he see Mommy (he's in a big Mommy phase right now), so I send in reinforcements: Daddy. He regresses back to crying, but Mommy needs to sit for a minute.
• 10:03 - Daddy promises that Mommy will check on him in 5 minutes if he'll stay in bed
• 10:08 - He stayed in bed!! And I checked on him as promised. He was 90% asleep but still asked me to check on him in two minutes.

Now it's 10:25, and SILENCE. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

Like an angel

 So we went from two hours of meltdown last night to 40 minutes of crying and 20 minutes of tear-free protest tonight. That seems like a step in the right direction, no? I'm trying not to get too optimistic, but maybe tomorrow we can get down to 30 minutes of shenanigans. I'll keep you updated.

Typical

My son is obsessed with trains, so we have a train track permanently set up in our living room. Invariably, when we ask Asher what he wants to do, he replies, "Um, let's play choo choos."

This is Asher's train:

Derails around every corner due to unmanageable length

 Also these:

Waiting on a turntable. HANDS OFF!

And these, too:

Resting in the shed. DO NOT TOUCH!

This is what Jake and I "get" to use:

"Scrappy," the lamest engine on Sodor

This is some sort of metaphor for parenting, no?

Food boot camp, and a shout out to my mom friends

Before I had a kiddo, I had visions of myself making all my own baby food from locally grown organic vegetables, of my kid enjoying a wide variety of healthy foods, of being a family of good eaters. When Ash started solid foods, he ate one jar of (organic, natch) sweet potatoes and promptly decided healthy was not for him. Food has been a constant struggle for us. Now Ash subsists almost entirely on yogurt, apples, grapes, french toast, Clif Bars, and jelly sandwiches (no peanut butter for this kid). That sounds not too bad, I know, but when that is practically all your kid eats (ok, also french fries and smoothies from the gym), it gets old, and you start to feel like you've perhaps failed in the feeding-your-kid department. Plus, in the interest of full disclosure, Jake and I probably allow too many treats on the side. What can I say - my kid wears me down.

Jake and I have been saying for a long time that we're going to do a food boot camp, where we only put meats and veggies in front of him, and let him starve until he breaks down and eats. But let's face it, Jake and I are softies. Never going to happen. Instead, tonight we instituted a food chart. The deal is, when Ash gets five stickers (like tonight he got one for eating broccoli), he gets a treat (first a trip to the frozen yogurt place, then a train he's been asking for). So we'll see. Keep your fingers crossed.

This food issue is the thing most likely to make me feel like a bad mom if I think about it too much (which is why I mostly avoid thinking about it). In recent days, I also happened to have read several books/articles written by moms who feel like failures, feel completely overwhelmed, feel like all the moms in the world except them have it together. It's the new problem that has no name, maybe? Apparently a major source of this angst is a feeling of competition with and judgment from other moms. I guess I've been unusually lucky, but this has not been my experience AT ALL. I'm surrounded by moms (mostly from my two awesome moms groups) who, despite the fact that they DO seem to have it together, don't make me feel like a loser. When I go to one of my mom friends and say, "I really wanted to leave Ash at the store today," I don't also have to say, "Not that I would, of course, I love him and feel very lucky to have him." They know. So I just wanted to give them a shout out here. I've been feeling very grateful lately to know so many moms who support and inspire me. XOXO to you all!