It's Christmastime, again, and I forgot about my blog, again.

Well, what can I say... things have gotten really crazy the past few months. Joe started a new job up at Dartmouth Hitchcock and no longer has Daddy Thursdays with Owen. In addition he's been working until 6:30 or 7 every night so Owen and I are fending for ourselves from 5 onward. We've slowly started to adapt, but I didn't realize how much I depended on Joe's help during those suppertime/pre-bed time hours. While I was making dinner Joe could play with Owen, while I bathed Owen, Joe would clean up. We'd both read stories with him and then Joe would put him to bed. Now we come home, I try to pop dinner in the oven quick and start the wood stove, we eat, throw dishes in the sink and do a bath if there's time. Luckily most night Joe is home in time to read books and put Owen to bed.

Since Joe went back to 5 days a week, we needed to look for daycare 2 days a week, after lots of stress and searching we found the perfect place, Froggy Lane! It's about 2 miles from the house, and it's a wonderful in home daycare led by Joan and her daughter Jessie. Owen absolutely loves it there, and has really developed some rad skills since going there, including biting (every kid in daycare) but that's another story for another time. For now I'm focusing on the positive, no munching friends, and I'm so grateful that he's safe and happy :)

Crazy Baby

One thing I love about having a baby is teaching them tricks. Perhaps that doesn't sound right, I love teaching babies new and funny things. Owen is totally game for all of them.

We'll never sleep... god knows we'll try

We will sleep again, right? I mean, at some point in my child's life he's going to sleep through the night, right?




Here's all the reasons I'm told Owen doesn't sleep through the night (please note these are not in order of annoyance)




1. I nurse him in bed and we cuddle and sing until he falls asleep

2. We bedshare.

3. We don't let him CIO

4. When he wakes up at night I nurse him back to sleep.

5. When he wakes up at night we rock and cuddle him.




I get it, I really do. My son would probably sleep just fine all alone in his crib, just down the hall. In fact, I'm sure we'd all sleep better without getting kicked in the face by a squirmy baby. But here's the thing, my squishy, squirmy baby isn't going to want to sleep with his Mama forever and some day I'll miss the nights of cuddling. Some people say you have to let your child figure out how to soothe themselves, which I agree with, but I think there are other ways to do it besides at bedtime.




At first I sometimes felt like I was somehow not "living up to my mom duties" if Owen slept with us at 1 year, or 2 years or whatever, there's always so much pressure to get your kid in their own bed or to go to sleep by themselves at night, I thought maybe I was taking the easy way out by just letting him sleep with us. But now I'm really proud of our decision, we have a happy baby and happy parents and we're doing what we think is right for us.




And it's not forever, right?

A throw back to the days when all my son did was sleep!