Encouraging helpfulness

I have been musing this recently.  At the moment I have two children, one is nearly 2 and the other is 3.5.  They have such completely different temperaments and personalities and require totally different parenting.  Sometimes things I took for granted as being "difficult" I now realise are only difficult when your child has the personality of my eldest but equally some things that were easier with her are proving more difficult with my younger girl.

One way in which my children are *completely* different is to do with helpfulness.  Clearly we want our children to be helpful but my youngest is just naturally helpful whereas my eldest really needs some help to be helpful.

I've come to the conclusion it is all about looking for opportunities, this might mean pushing yourself outside of what is easiest in the absolutely right now but hope I will reap the rewards later.

Some examples of encouraging helpfulness in my two are

N likes to help cook so here she is helping make tonight's dinner

She wanted to help make Daddy's packed lunch one day, so here she is putting some fruit in a pot for him to take to work.

M wanted to help carry home N's nursery bag

Passing me the laundry to hang on the washing line (to be honest, now that I am nearly 34 weeks pregnant this is about as helpful as it gets)

As N has got older I have tried to explain how helpful it is to just do things like getting dressed without a fuss

Other things the girls will do is put rubbish in the bin (N can even sort the recycling out for me) or put books away on the book shelf.

I try to get the girls to help tidy up each evening before bed, this is very much a work in progress and despite being much more into carrots than sticks it does sometimes only work if the threat of time out for "not listening" to my request is made.

Largely, though, my girls are good and I am happy to help them grow in this area of development.

Some Positive Sleep News

Hallelujah!

Finally I feel I can stop complaining, at least for now, and celebrate that my wee girl seems to have worked out how to nap 2-3 times a day and also how to sleep through!  She was going every second night for a while and then last night and the night before she went through on her own!  (Obviously) She did wake once or twice but she went back to sleep all on her own with no intervention from Mummy or Daddy, I am very proud!

I am hoping it might long continue, and if it does, then maybe we can hold off on the sleep training!?

Well done little girl! Now if I can only work out why *I* couldn't sleep last night!

Some Positive thoughts

I feel my blog posts have all been a little negative recently, so I would like to counter that by telling you some of the great things in my life just now, from little things I do, to great ways I have to learned to enjoy each day.

Naomi is loving her solid foods, which means we are having great fun weaning.  She gets so excited for the food and starts visibly shaking with anticipation for the next mouthful.  We tried to take a video of it, but whenever her dad got the camera out, she just started staring at him and stopped doing anything in any way cute.  Although, that was quite funny in itself!  Her favourite food is broccoli and you can guarantee she will yum up anything you give her if it has that in it!

I am also, just loving watch Naomi develop and learn in all sorts of ways.  She learned to roll last week and you can now see her try and work out how to roll the other way (she currently only does back to front!).  But even sitting in her high chair you can see how much better she is at it.  Her Dad told me she looks really grown up now compared to when he left for a conference only a week ago!  She is particularly cute when she is working out how to use her hands, though she is increasingly working out about her feet!

One of my biggest blessings in life, though, is my church.  I just love it so much.  Such a wonderful environment to have a baby in.  Everyone is looking out for each other, and given that my faith is really important to me, it is lovely that it such a helpful environment to bring children into.  On a Sunday morning when we all get together, the worship is done with children in mind, they can have a drum to bang on, or  a balloon to play with, or a space to dance in!  I even love that we have the coffee break half way through so all the parents can caffeinate themselves; how else would they get though the sermon?!  I have only bought about 6 pieces of clothing for Noami, for everyone just hands out the the things they don't need at that time.  One person I spoke to says that because her boys are the oldest she sometimes sees things her boys wore about 7 years ago, she likes to try and guess who passed them to who for them to end up with someone that she might not know so well!

Also, though, I love my friends.  I know them from church where I know lots of people but there are a couple of people that I don't know I could make it through each week without.  They are up for coffee if you need and know those moments where they need to take the baby from you, for a cuddle, or even a walk!  They ply me with helpful advice and let me rant and moan but also when to tell me to stop being unreasonable and suck it up!  They also invite me to things they are doing with their children for the realise I don't always know what is going on because i haven't lived here that long.

And finally, for today anyway.  I love the geographical place I live.  It is a lovely wee town with everything within walking distance.  Parks that are lovely to walk through and places to play for Noami.  There at least three ways to get everywhere so I never get bored and it is just a pretty little place.  Sometimes as I am walking into/through town I just can't believe how lucky I am.

What are you thankful for today?

Radio Silence Ending!

So sorry for my radio silence this last week, I was just enjoying having my friend to stay far too much and then we were visiting family and before I knew it I had hardly posted anything in over a week!

So, while "normal" posting about various parenting issues will recommence tomorrow, I thought I would just do a wee post saying that I just cannot believe how much Naomi is progressing and changing just now!

She is discovering her feet at the moment, I love how much entertainment can be got from just lying on your back holding your toes! Tonight she found her right foot for the first time (she had the left one down a few days ago) and I loved the look of surprise on her face "What, you mean I've got one over here too!?"


I also love watching her take *everything* in, she can sit for ages just watching stuff, anything, although her favourite seems to be to watch me cook! But anything will do, a bit of clothing, another baby, a toy, anything!


She is eating well now, she knows what it means when the bib goes on and the pot of food is there, she waits in anticipation of the contents and so far we haven't really found anything she doesn't like, though broccoli is a definite favourite.


She is definitely growing as a result of all that food, I have just done another round of clearing out her clothes to get rid of the things that don't fit, I could swear it was only 5 minutes since I did that last!  I'm going to take her to baby weigh-in clinic in a couple of weeks, though I am expecting her to have put on a fair bit.

Even with her sleep she is learning all the time.  She is much better at settling when we put her down in the evenings now and although she still wakes often in the night it does seem to be getting a little easier to settle her then too.  She is starting to get the hang of napping too, with more and more worthwhile naps taking place in her cot (rather than the pram or the sling)

I already feel like my little girl is growing up to fast and she is only 5 months old! Can you imagine what I'll be like by the time she tries to go to university?!

When it all feels too much...

I have been a Mum for exactly 112 days, this time 16 weeks ago I was in the middle of the long process of labour and since that moment my life has been turned upside down, but I LOVE it! I love being a Mum, not least of all because I believe it is what God made me to be but also because when I look at my daughter smile I can't imagine doing anything else or being anywhere else.

I love how she learns, I love how she explores and works stuff out and I love her cheeky personality. I very much get those moments where I sit and look at her and can't believe I was involved in any way in the making of such a beautiful and precious wee person.

I love our walks in the park and our trips to the supermarket. I love our time in baby groups and even our time in the house reading books together or even just watching TV (I know I shouldn't let her, but that is another blog post!).

I love that when we first brought her home from the hospital the only way she could communicate was with crying but now she chats to us, smiles at us and shows us many of the emotions she is learning to handle. I love that this time last month she couldn't get things in her mouth with any precision but now she can get anything (and everything) in there! I love that this time last week I had never seen her roll over, and now she has done it, twice!

That said, sometimes being a Mum all feels a bit too much, and we all need to talk about these times more. By staying silent about the times when we dread going to bed because we know it is only a matter of time before we will be woken, or about the times when we don't want to breastfeed any more because we feel bound to our babies, or about the times when we just want to have a night off but can't we perpetuate the feelings we have that everyone else has it more sorted than we do. We need to talk about the hard times as well as the good or our bad days will feel even worse for thinking we are alone in feeling that way.

This week I have been reflecting on the fact that one of my friends is struggling a bit, she is tired and her 7 month old shows no interest whatsoever in food and weaning is proving just far too difficult. I don't want things to be hard for her, but before I had this realisation I had been comparing myself and my struggles with my daughter to a picture of parenthood that didn't exist in reality. I was letting myself think that my friend had it sorted and had all the answers, and realising she doesn't has been a really freeing experience for me.

So, let's be open, I am exhausted at the moment as my wee one has stopped sleeping well at night, I need to start weaning shortly but I am not sure if I have the capacity for it and although I don't think I have postnatal depression (I have been depressed before, I know what that feels like) I am having many down days at the moment and the tiredness isn't helping. I no longer find it easy to be around my husband because I don't feel like I have anything to talk about other than Naomi's bowel movements and I have no capacity at ALL for anything intimate which can put a strain on any relationship! Let us all talk about those bad days together, I suspect it will make them easier to cope with and that in turn they will be fewer and further between...

Nap Rehabilitation

So, my little girl doesn't do naps! She falls asleep alright but wakes up as soon as I put her down, or on the rare occasions she does let me put her down (or stop pushing the pram if she has fallen asleep there) she wakes up after about 10-15 minutes.

Her Dad and I decided enough was enough, she was becoming a COMPLETE nightmare at the end of each day because she was just exhausted and so just cried for about 3 hours till we put her to bed!

The nap rehabilitation, as I have dubbed it, has been going okay. To start with we let her nap for as long as she could lying on us/being held by us. We didn't even try to put her down, just so her wee body could get used to the idea of resting. Once that was in order we have now moved on to trying to get her to stay asleep for a little longer in the pram or even better in her cot (although I am not always at home, so the pram is just as good in many ways!).

We had already had some limited success with putting her down on a blanket on the floor (easier to negotiate as there aren't things to wake her up by lifting her over the sides of the buggy/cot) but generally she was only having one “good” nap each day and it still didn't feel enough, though perhaps over the last few days she has been doing a bit better.

Today, though, she has amazed me. This morning she fell asleep in the pram on the way to a friend's house and she stayed asleep for 2 hours!! Then after an hours playing she fell asleep again, I woke her up after an hour as I thought it was getting silly! She then played happily at a baby group before falling asleep again (as I write this she has been out for about 25 minutes!)

I worry now though that she won't sleep at night, it is increasingly becoming an issue that she wakes in the night, and I am not really sure what the cause is, so I don't feel particularly equipped to deal with it! My leading theory is currently teething, but time will tell!

Do you have any napping tips? We will gladly hear them!