Light of my life

Life is toddling along at a normal pace now. School holidays are over, so I now have regular activities to occupy my perpetual-motion toddler. Seriously, how is it that she can literally never stop moving? If I jumped around and ran and skipped and hopped and rolled and danced and wobbled and joggled and wriggled and squirmed half as much as Mapera does, I'd be stick-thin!! Maybe that's the secret to losing the baby weight - losing weight the toddler way...hmmm.

She is definitely improving with her behaviour, and I put it down to better sleep. Up til recently Mapera has been waking every night (without fail) at around 2 or 3 am (just when you're getting your high quality REM sleep) and standing at her door shouting for us to let her out. She has a gate on the door after I nearly suffered a nervous breakdown following a full week of getting up 5 or 6 times a night to put Mapera back in her own bed.

We were racking our brains as to how to break this habit with her, and we found an answer one day when she was playing dens. She sleeps in the bottom of a set of bunks, and Daddy hung a sheet all around the top bunk so her bed was completely enclosed. She wanted the den up when she went to bed, so we happily left it in place. The next morning we were awoken to the usual "Mummy! Please you take my gate off?!" but I didn't feel like it was the middle of the night. When I looked at the clock it was 5am! Although this was still to early for me to even consider getting up, it was a marked improvement on the previous wake up time. Fortunately, Mapera went back to bed without much fuss and woke up again at the normal time of 6.30.

So, we had moved the initial wake up to a slightly more civilised hour, but I really want Mapera to learn to stay in her room until it's time to get up, even if she is awake. She was coming in to our bed for a morning snooze, but recently, she's not been going back to sleep, and it's not easy to relax with a 2 1/2 year old poking their fingers into your ears.
She has all her toys and bears and dollies, so she could theoretically play happily in her bed til it was time to get up for breakfast.

Tareka hit upon a plan to put a light on a timer in her room. We got an old bedside lamp, a plug in timer and rigged it up well out of reach. We sat Mapera down and explained to her that the light would come on when it was time to get up. If she woke up and the light was off, she had to stay in her bed, if it was on she could call out to us that it was time to get up.
She was really keen on the whole plan and happily repeated the instructions back to us (especially the bit about getting up and calling "Mummy, the light is on!"). So we crossed our fingers and went to bed.

At ar0und 3am a little voice called out in the darkness "Mummy, the light is on!"

Bother.

I got up, checked that it wasn't actually on and pointed this out to Mapera, who agreed that it was off and that she should get back into bed.

Then at 7am, just as the news came on the radio alarm in our room, our little voice piped up again "Mummy, the light is on!". Looks like we may have got it after all.

We've now been using the light trick for about a week, and apart from that first night, Mapera has not called us before 7am ONCE!! I'm going to give her another week with the gate on the door and if she's still waiting til the light comes on, I may be able to take it off at last!

Bad Mummy

Well, this blog seems to be a bit of a schizophrenic caper from my life as a Mum, to various ways of attempting to make money.

Today is about parenting. How not to do it.

Bad Parenting 101:
1. Ensure you go to bed late every night (hell, the kids are only going to wake you up anyway!)
2. When your baby wakes every hour, go in and stuff a dummy in their mouth (it's night time, they don't need anything else)
3. When your toddler climbs into bed with you at 4.30am, whisper angrily at them to be quiet every time they say "Mum" (they definitely know they are supposed to just snuggle up and go back to sleep, you've told them enough times)
4. Get up at 6.30am and stomp into the kitchen telling your skipping 2 year old that they can only have cereal (you can't be bothered to follow their usual routine, surely they can deal with that, can't they?)
5. Decide that you will stop giving the baby a dummy on the same day your toddler gets an ear infection, and after you've all had 3 nights of nicely broken sleep (I'll cope, what's one more sleepless night?)
6. Spend 1.5 hours at bedtime repeatedly taking toddler to bathroom for "poos" and waking tired baby (who is suffering from dummy withdrawal) in order to avoid a potential toilet accident, but knowing toddler is really stalling.
7. Give up and give baby the dummy.

Ah, bad parenting at it's finest.

I now have 2 sleeping children - thanks to the Pamol (Calpol) and the dummy.

One good thing to come out of all this, after spending a day getting Kaitereo to settle herself without a dummy, now when she wakes at night, I can leave her for a few minutes and she'll go back to sleep....won't she?

Miserable failure

Well we haven't cracked it after all. Last night BabyM got up out of bed every time she woke up. Eventually, at about 5am I put her into her cot and she finally slept til about 7am.
She's exhausted today, but when we put her in her cot for a day sleep, she climbed out! I feel like I just can't win. Hubby has even suggested getting a lock for her bedroom door, and I'm almost at a stage where I will agree.

We've decided to just get a round handle for now, which she won't be able to open for a while, and I'll put a mattress on the floor so if she does climb out of her cot, she won't be able to get out of her room, but she'll have a comfortable place to drop off on.

I feel like such an evil parent, effectively locking my child in her bedroom til she conks out on the floor from exhaustion, but we have tried everything else we can think of.

I think we've cracked it!

Well BabyM is back in her cot for day sleeps and it's worked a treat. She's sleeping properly during the day again, and the first night she had one short wake-up and last night she slept through HURRAH!

Updates on my projects:
Today is a day off, so I've been off to my craft group this morning, making a mosaic pot stand. It's looking really nice, and I'll be adding it to my stock list once I have a few other things to sell. I'm still working on a website and have found a free webhoster who can give me a .co.nz address, which is fantastic. I'm knitting a pixie hood for BabyM and after that, I'll probably make a whole load of knitted toys as I have lots of oddments of wool that I want to use up.
I also need to finish the journalling in my latest scrapbook album, but I'm hoping to get together with some other scrappers and make an evening of it, so that can wait for a bit!
My fellow crafty friend, Liz, is back from her holidays now, so we're planning to get together soon and finish off painting some dough models we made. She's keen to have a stall at a market in the future, so we have a goal to build up a decent quantity of stock and start selling once the weather improves.

Sleep deprivation

Well BabyM has had 3 days in a row where she has continually got up out of bed during her day and night sleeps. Day sleeps I was resorting to putting her door gate on and leaving her til she dozed off on the floor, then transferring her to her bed (which was working, but only after a good hour of her getting up and me putting her back), night sleeps it was just a constant 2 hours of her getting up and me putting her back, all around the midnight to 2am mark.
Last night was the final straw. I had figured she was waking up due to the cold, so she was wrapped up extra warm and had a heater, and she can't possibly have been cold, but she still woke up at 4am and spent 2 hours getting up every time I put her back into bed. Finally she stopped getting up at about 6am, but lay in her bed and cried for 20 minutes before dozing off. She then decided that 7am was getting up time AAARGH!!

We've been doing a star chart for her and she was getting a star every time she stayed in bed for a full night, but I think after 3 days of no stars, she's really not getting it. She may be a little young yet (21 months). I was really feeling like I was slipping back into depression and considering going into counselling, but I saw my Midwife this morning and she said "just do whatever you have to do to get your sleep and you'll be OK", so I have told BabyM she is going back in her cot for day sleeps and we'll leave her in the bed for nights until Friday, but if she gets up during the night any time before Friday, she's going back in her cot at bedtime too.

I was hoping to have her comfortably sleeping in a bed when Baby2 arrives, so she won't feel like she's being pushed out by the Baby when we do move her, but it's either this or I really will go insane!