I sleep where I want to sleep

LP is 21 months and it seems as if she has already entered her terrible twos. Her temper tantrums are getting worse and more often. All week she has been waking up in the night and throwing temper tantrums for no reason. This goes on for hours every night. I am at my wit’s end.

The other night LP ran to the couch and wanted to sleep on the couch. Our home is baby proofed so I was ok with it as long as I got to sleep. I left LP bedroom door open just in case she wanted to go back to her room. In the morning I awoke to LP gone. Thinking she went to her bedroom I went to go check on her. This is what I found in the hallway.

Parenting is hard but sometimes you just have to sit back and laugh.

happy parenting 🙂

We stick to a schedule…..Nevermind

When LP was born I pretty much let her run the show for the first month. Then at a month I slowly started to introduce a sleeping schedule to get her to sleep at night and stay awake during the day. You ever try to keep a sleepy baby up during the day….not fun. Anyways, after a month she was right on track and sleeping at night for 5 hours or more in a row at night. When LP started solids we decided to set an eating schedule.

When I first became a parent I heard a lot of debate about schedules vs following baby’s cues, and I thought why not do both! So we did. We established a schedule and got LP use to it and now at almost a year we don’t need to follow a schedule because LP knows her schedule and we follow her cues. She naps twice a day and she always gets sleepy/ fussy at the same times for the most part. The first nap she sleeps as long as she wants and the second is no longer than an hour. When we started with a bed time schedule it was bed time at 7pm sharp! Now it’s anywhere between 7-8:30 depending on her cues. When she stays up later we usually use that time for snuggling, bath time, reading or just quiet playing with blocks. Just because she isn’t tired yet doesn’t mean she shouldn’t wind down before bed.  We put her to sleep awake (something that we have done from the beginning) and put on some classical music. Sometimes she isn’t ready to go to sleep so she will play with her two stuffed animals that we keep in the crib ( LP is almost a year do not put toys in the crib with young babies) and soon she will lay down and off to sleep she goes.

Don’t get me wrong I have had my share of late nights up with LP. You just can’t think that your baby will/ has to always stick to a schedule. Natural parenting is about working with your baby and providing what she needs not what you want her to need. I’m not saying that I think you should let your child run wild but Follow their cues with a splash of structure. I think children like structure. They know whats going on and aren’t left wondering how the day is going to go. Everyone’s parenting style is different and what i do may not work for you, But it never hurts to get ideas from others and use the same idea and work with it to make it in to your own that works for you and your family.

Next up for LP is getting her off the Nuk, but we will leave that for another post. Happy Parenting 🙂

I’m a survivor

Since Little Pumpkin was a month old hubby and I have been so lucky to have a baby that sleeps through the night almost every night. My parents have always told the stories of how I was the perfect baby, “she cried the night she came home from the hospital and from then on slept through the night” you would hear my parents tell people whenever the subjects of babies came up. While I am sure I didn’t sleep through the night right out of the hospital, but I too have been blessed with a good sleeper.

Little Pumpkins day looks like this:

9am: wakeup and play with daddy

9:30: get changed and eat a bottle

Noon: Some solids and 4-6 ounce bottle

12:30pm:  Nap time

1:00pm: wakeup and play

2:30pm: Some solids and 4-6 ounce bottle

3pm: MOMMY IS HOME!

3:30pm: Daddy goes to work

4pm: Nap time

5:30pm: Wakeup  and eat Some solids and 4-6 ounce bottle

6:30pm: Bathtime

7pm: change in to bedtime diaper and PJ’s and Eat 6-8 ounce bottle

7:30pm: Sleeping

This has always been the way of Little Pumpkin, never complains, but for the last week she has been eating every hour it seems, waking up every two to three hours at night for feedings and chewing on everything she can get her hands on . She even tried to eat the cat! Mommy put a stop to that fast. So with every growing baby I am joining the many parents out there who have survived teething and growth spurts a there is only more to come. Not to mention the teen years, I remember how I was as a teen with my mom and I am not looking forward to being on the other side of that experience (karma).  So here’s to all you survivors out there in cyberland whether you are not getting sleep because your baby needs to be feed or your teen is out past curfew; I feel your pain.