Sleep like a baby - yeah, right!

Everyone has heard the phrase 'sleep like a baby', right?

It seems that everyone but our son understands it's meaning!

To Henry is seems that 'sleep like a baby' means to only sleep for half an hour at a time during the day, forty five minutes tops!

He fooled us into thinking that it was going to be easier this time around. For the first six weeks of his life it has difficult to keep him awake. He would sleep anywhere, through any amount of noise. His sleeps would last around 2 - 2 1/2 hours at a time. I should have known it was all too good to be true.....

These days, the boy just doesn't want to sleep!

Take this morning for example, here is what has happened so far:

6am - Henry wakes up for the day.
8am - he is put down for his first sleep of the morning. He wakes up again at 8:30am!!!!
10am - back to bed for another catnap (opps, I mean "sleep"). He doesn't want to go to sleep even though he's been rubbing his eyes like mad and yawning heaps. He is finally asleep by 10:30am after lots of rocking, white noise, swaddling etc.
11:15am - Awake once again!!

It's only 12:30 and it feels like it should be the end of the day already. I've had enough. Seriously. It's hard to adequately describe how depressing it is to be pacing around the house with a crying baby in the sling, trying to get them to sleep. You pace and pace and pace, passing mountains of washing as you go, dishes that aren't going to be washed anytime soon and all the while your toddler is screaming for attention too, but you know that if you stop moving, your baby won't go to sleep.

According to most books and websites, babies aged around 3 months need between 4-5 hours sleep during the day (broken up into two long sleeps and one shortish nap). At the moment, our son is getting around 2 hours sleep during the day in total.

For instance, one well known baby sleep manual suggests letting your baby 'self settle' after being awake two hours, and then 'waking them up' after they've been asleep for two hours, wow, that is some great advice. I can imagine parents to be reading it thinking 'that's easy - I'll just put my baby to bed and then wake them up two hours later', as if it was that simple. So when my son wakes up after only half an hour of being asleep, should I just let him lay there screaming for another hour and a half until the official 'wake up times'? nice one!

It's just depressing.

The silver lining for us though, is that Henry is an awesome sleeper at night (once he goes to sleep). He wakes up once and that's it - feeds, then goes straight back to sleep, so I can't really complain.

I just keep reminding myself that 'this too will pass'.

One day.

Good thing he's so darn cute.

I was once idealistic too.....!

Ah, my parenting ideals..... where have you disappeared to?

I'm sorry to say that they disappeared into the ether as soon as we had children.

You know  - the standards that you are sure you will aspire to (and attain) when you have small children of your own.

I remember taking a plane trip many years ago, with my husband. We were on our way back from Bangkok to Sydney - a nine hour flight. During that time, the family seated in front of us had a young kid that screamed the whole time (well, what felt like the whole time to us). I recall thinking 'his parents obviously haven't put enough effort into parenting him properly' and that 'no child of mine will ever carry on in such a way!' I also used to scoff at people who let their kids watch TV, gave them dummies, and let them 'run riot' in people's houses (our house, typically!). Boy have I changed my tune since then. I look back on those days and feel a huge sense of embarrassment at how opinionated and sure of myself I was, as though a child's behaviour could be a direct result of the energy and time a parent puts into them (and sure, there is some truth in that but at the same time it's not so straightforward).

Here are some of the ideals I used to uphold about being a parent:

My child/ren will never watch TV:
For many years my husband and I didn't own a TV (I hadn't owned one since I was around 19) and I was adamant that our children would grow up without a TV in the house too. I had read numerous books on the subject, and was very wary about children growing up exposed to media influences not to mention the effect of TV on young minds when children are at the age when they cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality. Well fast forward two years and our daughter now knows all of the wiggles by both name and colour and is fast being acquainted with Dora the Explorer. Let's just say breastfeeding a baby and occupying a toddler at the same time has proved more difficult than I anticipated. 'Feeding time toy boxes' just didn't cut it!

I will never have one of 'those kids' who run wild through my friend's houses:
Oh how far this is from the truth. I have realised over time that no amount of telling a toddler not to touch great aunt nellie's special vase or that beautiful antique dolls house that belongs to your trendy childless friends is going to deter them from doing what they do naturally - being curious creatures, the world really is their oyster and they are going to seize it with both of their chubby little hands. Literally. I know some people that spend the whole time following their child around when they go to someone's house, averting potential disasters, but that must be exhausting. You might as well just stay at home!

My child won't be a fussy eater:
I used to believe that fussy eating was a direct result of a parent being 'too lazy' to give their child 'proper food' (ie, home-made and free from additives and sugar and other nasties). This belief began eroding away when our daughter's reflux gave her an aversion to being fed - firstly by bottle and then she became very picky with what she ate as a result of months of being in pain without it being properly managed. I now understand that sometimes you will give your kid crap food for dinner - you may not want to, but when the little blighters downright refuse to eat anything else and you know that they will probably wake up hungry during the night as a result, a couple of chicken nuggets really isn't the evil you originally thought it was.

Our daughter will be breastfed, not bottle fed:
Before our daughter was born, I knew that we would be breastfeeding her. After all, it was the best source of nutrition and as everyone knows, breast is best. I had never gambled on having a child who simply refused to latch on from the moment she was born. After weeks of persevering, and three months of expressing milk every three hours around the clock I finally gave up.

No child of mine will ever use a dummy!
After spending the past few years before having children observing my cousin and her son who still had a dummy at age four, I knew that this wasn't a track I wanted to go down. But then we had Vivi and she would scream and scream in pain from reflux. For hours. The only thing that brought us some peace and her a bit of relief was a dummy. However, I am pleased to say she graduated on to chewing a grotty old bit of fabric instead.

Our child will fit into our life, and our life will carry on as normal:
Ok, who was I trying to kid here! and how the hell did I ever think that things would just carry on as though nothing had changed?! Talk about naive!

What were/are your ideals regarding parenting?

Muesli

So a few weeks ago we were at the Martinborough farmer's market, visiting Tim's Dad who has a stall there for Lighthouse Gin (a seriously nice gin that he helps produce). Anyway, as we were wandering around the market sampling the local delicacies, I came across a stall that sold, among other things, home made muesli. 'Try this', the trendy lady at the stall said 'it's packed full of goodies and I know your little one will love it'. She passed a small sample of the muesli over to our daughter, who gobbled it up, then added 'so will you be buying some of this today?'

I picked up a bag in the ruse of examining it's contents while glancing furtively at the price tag. $11 for a small bag of muesli! I mean, I'm all for supporting cottage industries and people at these farmers markets but I knew I could make this myself at a fraction of the cost - and get to put whatever I liked in it.

Needless to say, I politely declined to buy the muesli, although we did buy a bottle of an excellent sauce called 'wild meat sauce' - you can get it from:  http://glasseyecreek.co.nz/ and I would really recommend it!

Anyway, so today when pondering what to have for a quick and easy lunch (during the five minutes I got when both kids were asleep) I decided to make my own muesli. I mean, I wouldn't be an authentic 'yoghurt maker' if I didn't have home made muesli in the pantry now, would I?

And as it turns out, it's dead easy!

Here is how it's done, for anyone who is interested in such things.

Yoghurt maker's muesli

Ingredients:
3 cups rolled oats (I used Harraways)
1/2 cup coconut
1/2 cup pumpkin and sunflower seeds
1/2 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup bran flakes
3/4 cup sultanas (or any dried fruit - cranberries are also very nice)
1/2 cup nuts (I used almonds)
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup brown sugar

Method:
Heat your oven to 140℃. Mix the rolled oats, coconut, seeds, bran, and nuts in a large bowl. In a saucepan heat the canola oil, brown sugar, and honey on a medium heat until the sugar has dissolved. Pour the liquid mixture over the dry mixture and spread mixture out into a roasting pan. Bake for around 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from oven and mix in the dried fruit.

Seriously, how easy is that?!

Oh, and it tastes excellent when eaten with yoghurt (home made, of course) :)

Muesli fresh out of the oven!

What I love about being a parent

As yesterday's blog post was rather frazzled and a tad on the negative side, I'm going to spend this one writing about what I love about my children, and about parenthood.

We have two beautiful children. A girl, and a boy, exactly 23 months between them.

Our daughter is a whirlwind of energy. Her name 'Vivienne' is french for 'lively' and I don't think I could imagine a more appropriate name. From the beginning of each day she is constantly on the go, racing here there and everywhere - exploring, using her imagination, keen to discover new things. She loves having stories read to her, and her current favourites are the 'Greedy cat' series and 'Mrs. Wishy Washy'. She loves to sing and play with her dolls house, telling me all about what the dolls are doing. This morning it was: 'the dolls are in timeout' because 'they didn't eat their dinner' - her explanation as to why all the dolls were crammed into one room of the dolls house (with all the furniture too for good measure). She drives me mad with her obsession with 'The Wiggles' and insisting on naming colours for the wiggle they correspond to. For instance, her favourite yellow top is her 'sam top' (Sam is the yellow wiggle for those not in the know!) and her favourite purple cup is her 'Jeff cup'. She currently thinks it is hilarious to go into our bedroom in the morning and shout 'wake up Daddy' to her sleeping father. Vivi doesn't just sit back and let life pass her by, she actively pursues it and knows exactly what she wants. I admire her determination and persistance.


Our son, Henry is 15 weeks old. He has a cute little blonde mohawk and blue eyes. On the whole he is a really settled and sweet boy. One of the things I love about him are those little moments you get where you really understand the innocence of babies at this age - those smiles they give you that lights up their whole face, the way they hold their hands in front of them and look at them in wonder and you can just imagine them thinking 'wow, these are mine!'. I love the way that he curls his body up into the foetal position when I pick him up out of his bassinet in the morning. I love his perfectly formed fingers and tiny little toes. I love how fragile he is and how forgiving. He forgives me for not being able to run to him every time he cries, he forgives me for having to put his needs second sometimes as I juggle being the mother to two children. He forgives me my faults and gives me those sweet little smiles that melt my heart.


And as to parenthood itself? well this is probably a cliche but it has given my life so much more meaning. You no longer put yourself and your own needs first, but that of your children. Life before Vivi and Henry just seems so empty and meaningless now when I look back on it. As overwhelmed as I feel at times, and in the depths of despair because nothing is going as planned I still feel an incredible sense of privilege at being able to be a parent.