mommapalooza

.... zzzz ....

It's been about ten months since Madeline has treated herself (and her hardworking mama) to a regular afternoon nap. We flew across Canada quite a few times in the space of five weeks in December and January, and I think that the travel and time zones are what did the nap in. She could still benefit from a daily dose of afternoon shut-eye, but professes not to see the logic when I try to convince her of that.

Sometimes when I'm preparing dinner, around five in the evening, I'll notice that the house has gone silent. Eeek! I know that Madeline is wiped out come evening, but if she naps at that hour she'll be up until nine or ten at night! My policy had been to immediately wake the sleeping child, and then deal with the consequences: utterly cranky child who can only be placated with her favourite unhealthy foodstuffs.

The last two times that this has happened, though, Chris and I have taken a different approach: we just put her to bed (albeit early and without dinner). It's gone quite well, though. Madeline slept straight from 5-11 pm last night, woke up and asked for her jammies (yes), snack (yes), and her bedtime stories (raincheck on that one). I think that she woke even later at night the first time. We get her changed and armed with a cup of dry Cheerios, and she dozes off again until morning.  It's so much more pleasant than finishing the evening with an over-tired and cranky three year-old ...

On big girl beds ...

So, we haven't bought Madeline a bed yet. She was sleeping in her crib until the day that it was packed up by the movers, two weeks shy of her third birthday. She's never climbed out, though she had recently started climbing in.

Since leaving Calgary, we've been splitting our time between her nana's house in Sherwood Park and her grandparents' house in Edmonton, and as Madeline's outgrown the Pack n Play, she's been sleeping in regular beds. She popped out a few times on the first night of sleeping in a bed, but since then, she'd taken bedtime in stride, kept to her usual routine, and hasn't fallen out once, despite being a master of nocturnal acrobatics.

Madeline's crib is set-up and waiting for her in Bangkok. I wonder how she'll react? I haven't been talking up the concept of sleeping in a bed just yet, so I am hoping that she and her crib (with the battery-sucking-but-beloved Fisher Price Aquarium) will have a happy reunion, if only until our sea container arrives in August. We have a bed there for her, if she wants it. I know that she's ready, if she wants to make the big leap ...

Unnappable

Today was Day 1 of Operation: Quiet Time. I explained to Madeline no less than three times this morning that after lunch, she was going to have "Quiet Time" and she could nap, read, or play quietly in her bedroom. After Quiet Time, she and I would do something fun together. Madeline seemed excited about it, initially. Honest. She actually told me that she was going to use her Quiet Time for napping, too!

So, after lunch (her favourite perogies, btw), I helped her make a nice nest of pillows and blankets on her bedroom floor, outfitted her with a drink and many books, said goodbye, and set the kitchen timer for 40 minutes. I think that she lasted about five minutes before she was asking me for one thing or another, ten minutes before she needed a cuddle and a story, and twenty minutes before she was outright howling in protest. The mission was aborted at that point. Boo. I don't know what I was doing wrong, either!  The kid fell fast asleep on my bedroom floor at 5:30 this evening. I let her stay there only long enough to check my email.

What to do tomorrow?

On another note, I've been enjoying my weekly emails from Babyvibe - they publish a Calgary edition. The one that I received today featured Natural Pod, which is the first retailer that I've heard of from Canada specializing in naturally-sourced products for children. I could never afford to shop there, but I think that the stacking rainbow puzzle is really cool!

I've been lurking on a local parenting forum, and I'm getting a real Stepford vibe from it. Today someone else new to Calgary posted, asking if anyone with similarly-aged kids wanted to get together for coffee, and the great majority of the replies just told her that they'd love to if she forked over the moolah to upgrade to the next level of membership. Geez. Would it have killed someone to say, "gee, how does Friday sound?" or "let's get together at Such & Such coffee shop"? Ugh.

Madeline and the Three Beds

After eating a solid lunch of  just-the-right-temperature porridge, Goldilocks - err, Madeline found herself feeling a bit sleepy. She carefully walked up the stairs, and considered her napping options. In one room, there was a queen-sized bed with a cozy comforter. She climbed into it, and laid down, but immediately knew that she was not comfortable. And Madeline knew why - this bed was not for napping! It was for jumping! This was the bed that she jumped on when she wanted to wake up her sleeping dad!

Madeline proceeded to the next bedroom. Again, a queen sized bed, this time topped with a coverlet. Madeline jumped up, hopped under the covers, and closed her eyes. But she knew that she couldn't nap there - this was the bed that she only pretended to sleep in when she was in a mood to fool her mom and dad!

Sliding off of the second bed, Madeline considered the crib in the corner. It was just the right size. It had the just-soft-enough pink sheet and a familiar pillow. There was an Ocean Wonders crib aquarium hanging against the back rail, in just the right place for a small hand to reach up and turn it on. Finally, it looked like Madeline had found the perfect place to take her afternoon nap. But no - the crib just wouldn't do, for reasons that Madeline's mom just could not fathom.

Where has Madeline taken her afternoon nap three times in the last seven days? On the floor, of course ...

Riddle of the Day

It's like a lame joke: How do you night-wean a two year-old toddler?

Why, very gently.

Madeline and I have made good progress with the weaning project. The night-time nursing sessions have been gone for over a month now, and I'm feeling so much better. And we're both sleeping better, which is also a good thing.

I did this on my own, and thus prepared myself to face hours of inconsolable wails. A few days before Night 0, I told Madeline that very soon I wasn't going to have any milk for her at nighttime, but that she and I still could cuddle. On Night 0, before tucking her into bed, I told her that if she woke at night, I wasn't going to have any milk for her; night-time was for sleeping, but that if she was hungry she could have some Cheerios, or if she was thirsty, she could have a drink of water.

Sure enough, Madeline did wake up shortly after midnight. She howled in my arms for about six minutes, but then asked for water and Cheerios. I tucked her back into her crib, and I didn't hear from her again until morning. I was shocked. I guess that sometimes it *is* possible to reason with a toddler!

The second night was similar, except she was angry for a much shorter amount of time. These days, Madeline usually wakes up once and calls for me, but it's a quick bed-side visit. Most of the time she merely asks for her cup of water to be refilled or a cuddle, and then she rolls over, taps her Ocean Wonders Aquarium on, and re-assumes her sleeping position. Two nights ago, she actually slept from 8:30pm - 7:15am without requiring my attention at all. Amazing!

Friday Links: The Carseat Version

• I stumbled upon Kids in Safe Seats, which is a volunteer organization promoting the safe use of carseats in the province of Newfoundland. Their information about the importance of staying rear-facing longer isn't up-to-date, but they do hold free seat checking clinics (and the schedule is on the website). The neat thing about this organization is that they've been keeping stats on correct and incorrect installations since the fall of 2000. Thus far, only a little over 6% of parents are using their carseats correctly when brought for inspection. I'm stunned.
• One of the other parents on the parenting forum I'm a member of posted a link to Top 10 Cars for Kids in Car Seats, and it's a really good article! To date, I've installed Madeline's Marathon in an elderly Ford Tempo, a Toyota Camry, a Toyota Tercel, a Chevy TrailBlazer, Mazda Proteges of both the sedan and hatchback varieties, a Nissan Altima, a Mazda 6 sedan, a large Lincoln something-or-other, a Chevy Malibu Maxx, and now, a Ford Escape. Let me tell you, bumpy seats, oddly angled seat-backs, and protruding headrests are the bane of my existence. I agree with the article naming the Malibu Maxx to their Top Ten - the rear seatback reclined so I could get a better fit with Madeline's carseat, and the entire rear bank of seats could be adjusted back so that there was plenty of room. My next fave would be my Tempo back in Calgary. It's too old to have anything other than a plain-jane backseat.
• Car Seat Safety with Winter Coats is another timely article about how to check that your child's warm winter gear doesn't compromise the performance of their carseats. Everyone knows that thick coats are a no-no, right? Even if you live in Alberta and it's 48 degrees below zero with the windchill factor it's a no-no :) Jokes about my traditional winter home aside, please read this article and make sure your little person will be safe in a crash. Keep the thick and puffy coats in the car in case you need them, but they don't belong in a carseat.

no rest for the weary (travellers included)

I believe that we were finishing up with breakfast yesterday when Chris directed my attention to the nifty article Hotel sleepovers take creativity in the Telegram. I read this article about travelling with young children with interest; it was timely because we had rented a heritage house in Burin for a weekend (Canadian) Thanksgiving holiday, and I had become really reluctant to stay in hotels with Madeline because she insists on going to be at the same time as we do - whether that's 10pm (cramps her style) or 7pm (cramps ours).

We thought that we had dodged that particular bullet with our current accomodations - Madeline had an entire room all to herself in the heritage home. We brought her night-night light and her little CD player for her night-night lullabies. Neither of us expected her to wake up at 2:30 in the morning on Saturday, and refuse to go back to sleep. She wanted to go downstairs and play and read. I feel like I wasted an hour with my futile attempted to coax her back into a slumber.  Downstairs, she was happy and w-i-d-e a-w-a-k-e. Neither of those words described Chris and I as we each took a wee-hour shift. 

I began to wonder if the summer of crappy sleeping she'd experienced wasn't so much caused by sleeping in different surroundings (our room when we had guests, my parents' house) but by the trusty Pack 'n Play. She's somewhere between 35-36" in height, and the PnP height limit is 35", so it's getting kind of cramped for her even when she does sleep curled up in a ball.  Who knows? Worried about a repeat performance in the pre-dawn hours on Sunday, Chris and I agreed that we'd go home early instead of subjecting the three of us to three nights of crappy sleep. Sure enough, Madeline met the day at 3am. I hung out with her solo until Chris was up for the day (and well-rested enough for the 3.5 drive home). I'm posting this from our rental house in St. John's, where I think I shall retire early tonight.

drama after dark

The task I had assigned myself for this evening was supposed to be packing up Madeline's stroller for our impending move, but I'm rather wiped out from the ordeal that bedtime has become. Madeline, while not a marathon night-time sleeper, was formerly a most excellent go-to-sleeper. A snack, a few stories, a hug for her bear, and I could tuck her into her crib and she'd drift off quite nicely on her own.

Currently, bedtime is something of an ordeal. My little girl will fight obvious fatigue for one more story ... and then one more story ... and then one more story ... and shows no signs of stopping. I don't know why this endless barrage of stories wears me out. This repetition is a classic toddler behaviour, no?  I've had to insist that Chris help out with bedtime, even, as I feel close to an anxiety attack after a dozen stories with no end in sight. Ugh. It's been about three weeks of this, now. I can't wait until she can read to herself ...

Gosh, I must sound awful. Complaining that my daughter wants me to read to her ...

I read this most-thoughtful post about toddler tantrums (a topic I am getting increasingly familar with, thank you) on Morphing into Mama a few minutes ago.  So some of Madeline's complaints I do respond to - often she's angry for a reason, like when her mom gives her milk in a drinking box when she really was asking for milk in a cup.  I'm clearly in the wrong in some of these tantrum-causing situations. But I do often ignore the baby drama. I haven't had a lot of luck using distraction instead.  I was really glad to stumble across MIM's post as there are a few ideas worth trying in the comments.

lessons

Sigh. Madeline's been fighting her afternoon nap a bit these past couple of days, and I can't help but wonder if it's a just a phase or a message that she's ready to transistion to one nap a day. She's nearly fifteen months, so I guess it could go either way. Wish I remembered who I lent her instruction manual to - I could use it back :)

Madeline has a few new tricks! She has a small plastic red chair that I keep in the kitchen, and on Sunday she pulled it over in front of the dishwasher and climbed up on it to reach the countertop! And yesterday, she scaled one of the kitchen chairs and was trying to clamber onto the table! I guess there's no better time than the present for the lesson "chairs are for SITTING" ...

Everyone's a Critic :)

I noticed, on a recent trip to Chapters, that Elizabeth Pantley has written the No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers. I have the regular version of the book, and I wonder how much of what she has to say is different!  I kind of regret not going to hear her speak at McNally-Robinson a few weeks ago when she was in Calgary, but I had other plans. 

Earlier that same week I attended the Raymond Parenting Sleep Clinic and I have mixed feelings about it.  On one side, there were some interesting points raised, like letting your child sleep in a crib at least until the age of three. Kitty Raymond advocates that for safety reasons - if the smoke detector goes off in your home in the middle of the night, it's better to know that your child will be in their crib instead of wandering around a burning house in a fright. I can see the benefits to that. The other interesting discussion was on the benefits of ending night feeding to give a baby's metabolism a rest and reset it for daytime nutritional intake. I never thought of that before.

On the otherhand, the main purpose of the seminar seemed to be about putting a warm and fuzzy face on the cry-it-out routine. I didn't need to take a seminar to hear someone suggest that I place my baby in a crib, close the door, and don't return until morning, or provide a hand-out detailing the steps to implement that program!  I'm sure that even parents who would never consider sleep training wouldn't need this spelled out for them.

shake it up baby

About two weeks ago, Chris and I decided that it was time to tinker with Madeline's bedtime routine.  I had to go to an evening seminar (ironically, on infant sleep), and I would have to head out before Madeline's bedtime.  This necessitated an end to my solo act of putting her to bed. Having Chris involved in bedtime was long-overdue. The routine had been "change diaper, put on jammies, put on sleepsack, read stores, nurse, bed", but having the feeding be the last thing before putting Madeline in her crib made it hard for Chris to be able to replace me.  The routine we've been working on goes more like "clean diaper, jammies, nurse, sleepsack, stories, bed" and Madeline is still a little unhappy about it, but she's coming around. I know that this abrupt change really amounts to dabbling in crying-it-out territory. It's taken us many months to get comfortable with the idea, considering that we started out co-sleeping and attending unfailingly to Madeline's requests for food and/or company, but it's interesting how our perceptions evolve as we continue to grow as family unit. It's important that Chris be involved in putting Madeline to bed.  We know that Madeline can fall asleep without being held and nursed. Of course, if I were her, I'd be protesting this change as well.   

P.S. One interesting thing - she is much more attentive to her bedtime stories when her dad reads them!