Manic Monday

As I sit at my desk this afternoon and reflect back on just what this morning has held for me I realize how much I have done. I woke up slightly before the baby and made myself a cup of tea. Fed breakfast to the baby, then bundled her up, laced up my running shoes, and took off for a short run. We returned, she played a little before settling in for her nap. I then showered, ate, crocheted a little bit, and am now writing this post. That's a lot of variety (though not much depth into each activity) but it got me back to thinking about the priorities I have now as a stay and work at home mom.

The house needs to be kept stocked, cleaned and presentable.
My daughter needs to be kept fed, cleaned, presentable, and engaged in meaningful activities.
I need to be kept fed, cleaned, presentable, and ideally filled with a feeling of accomplishment without feeling overwhelmed.
The cat box needs to be cleaned daily.
I need to have nutritious meals available to my family.
Ideally I need to be working on building my two businesses (I am working on the assumption that saying this will keep them in the thought rotation).

What that boils down to is: cook, clean, mother, self (wow that's a broad one), knit design and sharing the awesome doTerra essential oils.

What that tends to look like is: mother, run or yoga, maybe make progress on a baby blanket (my goal is to finish it before that baby is 6 months old), and have dinner at least planned out.

Right now my daughter is napping, so I rated the necessary activities in order of importance. Shower was first since I ran this morning, followed closely by lunch. I put on a show to watch during lunch, and since I started a second episode and it wasn't finished yet I decided to crochet on the baby blanket until that episode was over. During that time my mind was wandering thinking about this idea of priorities, leading directly to this blog post.

I generally think of my priorities in order of importance (with mothering ending up default at the top of that list, one year olds are not patient creatures). And while I have big ideas for essential oil classes, learn to knit parties, and dinner extravaganzas making those ideas come to life takes a bit more concentrated time than I have the luxury of lately. So things like run 2 miles and crochet while my daughter plays with blocks tend to take on a greater active priority. Heck, today I have been going to the dryer in the garage when we need a new diaper, because really that's not so hard.

When it comes down to the nitty gritty of my daily priorities, I would really rather not deal with them (you can ask how many loads of clean laundry I have to fold, but I will probably lie about it). Because in the end, I would rather enjoy time with my daughter than fold laundry. I would rather be able to bless friends with blankets for their new babies, than have a lovely pile of stuffed and ready cloth diapers. Heck, I'm really enjoying taking the extra five minutes to sit my daughter on a potty at diaper changes and read her a book.

So what it comes down to, I suppose, is while I can have my exciting and fun and big picture priorities laid out all nicely and logically, spending time with my daughter, doing things for others, and nurturing my soul are going to win out. And, for the most part, I am totally okay with that.

Now I'm going to go get those diapers out of the dryer :)

Fleeting moments of independence

Its amazing what happens to my psyche when my little one takes short naps. This week she decided to nap for only one sleep cycle at a time!! Yikes!! That's about 45 minutes. In that time, I have about enough time to wind down and figure out what I'd like to accomplish during her nap. Then she's up.

I have found that in that short amount of time I generally refresh my cup of coffee, check Facebook (yeah, totally shouldn't be) and start cooking lunch for myself. Maybe I get to eat my lunch before she awakens, but sometimes not. You can imagine what my housekeeping, personal hygiene, running, and business building pursuits look like lately. Currently, I'm listening to a podcast about essential oil chemistry, crocheting on a baby blanket for a 5 month old, drinking my coffee, and pretending like I'm actually inviting people to Evelyn's first birthday party. Oh yeah, and writing this blog post. So unless anyone can let me know where I can have additional arms installed on my body, I need to figure something else out.

Having routines for some of my personal care priorities has helped. Like having to drink a full water bottle before I get to have coffee. Or Evelyn and I take our supplements at the same time after breakfast, then get dressed. But that order of operations doesn't help when I have time to myself to work on whatever I please. If that was the case, then I would knit a sock, contact 3 people about essential oils, then write my blog posts. How long would that take?!? at least a day. Not a helpful solution.

Mind you, I could begin associating some of my regular chores with other common daily activities. Like after we get dressed in the mornings, we get a load of laundry started. Or after the baby is napping I pick up the kitchen, dining room, and living room. In addition to this, Paul had the idea of a physical chore chart (yes, this seems fully appropriate to me right now) that I can check things off as I go, then when he gets home he can see what needs to be done without trolling around the whole house. Isn't that a neat idea for how he can support me as our daughter becomes more and more destructive mobile.

So that just leaves my personal and professional projects. Yarning activities, blog writing (let along yarning writing), and sharing and educating about essential oils. All of those things seem to need to fit into the scant 90 minutes of nap time midday. That's not a lot of time to devote to these things, and she is awake now, so apparently this will be a 2 part blog post.

Sleeping Through The Night

Getting a baby to sleep through the night is a huge accomplishment. The problem is in the wording of that phrase, "getting a baby to sleep" makes it sound like there is some special formula. In my experience the proper phrase should be "facilitating your baby to sleep"*

I have two stories to share, the first my own and the second that of a family I know (so I have changed a couple things to keep it as generic as possible.

Last weekend, I woke up to deal with my own biological needs and heard Evelyn fussing. So once I was done with my business, I went into her room and nursed her like normal. This was not an uncommon event, and to be honest I liked it on more than one level. Everything was quiet and cozy in the house. The two of us snuggled close and dozey. Knowing that she would eat for at least a solid half feeding and get some much needed nutrients and calories** this night was no different than any other, except that she wasn't settling back down like normal. I feed her 12 minutes*** on each side and rocked her a bit. She still wasn't calming down like normal. So I layed her in her crib to see what would happen and went back to my room (have I blogged about how her sleeping in her own room dramatically improved her nighttime sleep??). My husband was up, so we discussed this wake-up a bit, then he decided to give it a try rocking her to sleep. Twenty minutes later, he returned a bit confused by her behavior. Normally both of these things would help her relax and fall asleep, but no luck on this night. So we did something that never seriously crossed our minds or appealed to our parenting style. We just let her fuss. And you know what happened? She went back to sleep. It's almost as if our assistance was getting in the way of what she wanted and needed**** Since that night she has slept soundly for 12+ hours a night. 

The second story has been an inspiration to me while Evelyn was sorting out her sleep. It is about twins and it is short. These two babies, parented by the same parents, in the same environment. One of them slept for a solid 12 hours a night from relatively early, the other would awaken to eat twice a night. While a part of me was envious of that second child only waking twice a night, the larger part of me really appreciated the non-advise bit of EVERY BABY IS DIFFERENT and clearly there was no secret to "getting" a baby to sleep through the night.

Sleep ALWAYS comes up when moms talk about their babies. In fact, if I want to strike up a conversation with another mom I don't yet know I tend to start with sleep. I believe it is because no matter how gross a diaper is or how frustrating feeding can be, neither of those systems affect OUR biological cycles like the nighttime cycles of our precious babes. Even once those previous bundles are sleeping at night, it takes some time for us moms to remember how to sleep through the night (I had one solid night's sleep the first night, and it's slowly getting better). 

I felt compelled to share this mainly because once baby does sleep through the night, it changes everything. Mostly for the good, but I do miss those midnight snuggles. I also wanted to put it out there as inspiration to the moms out there desperate for sleep, because I tried all sorts of things from full bellies, to every common essential oil scent in her room to keep her relaxed, grounded, happy, etc. the two things that actually made a difference were: us moving out of her room, and not interrupting a nighttime fuss. That second one we only discovered on accident. So really our girl wanted to do it on her own, and we, as parents, had to figure that out by trial and error. Luckily I still get bedtime snuggles :)

*sounds super nerdy, I know.

**my girl is mobile and curious. Combine that with a cat who loves to come in and snuggle with us and she's not a stellar daytime eater.

***12 minutes was just the magic time for the two of us.

****we don't personally think she has 'wants' per se, only needs still (even if the need is to put non-food stuff in her mouth)

:) for us the advise of "how your baby falls asleep when they go to bed is how they will expect to go to sleep when they wake up throughout the night" is utterly false! I nurse then snuggle Evelyn to bed almost every night. Thank God because I do really miss our midnight snuggles.