Book Review: The Sleepeasy Solution: The Exhausted Parent's Guide to Getting Your Child to Sleep from Birth to Age 5

First of all, these 2 authors are amazing! I am finally a well rested, happy mother again! My son had H1N1 last summer when he was 7 months old, then afterwards had chronic colds and ear infections so it really messed up his sleep. On top of that my husband deployed to Afghanistan, and I moved back with my mom. So my little guy had a lot of stuff going on all within 2 months. Well ALL of these changes really confused his sleep cycle. He was waking up every 2-3 hours, and staying awake for anywhere between 1-4 hours. I was getting very little sleep, and thus was tired and cranky and he was tired and cranky. We were not a happy pair! Finally, after my husband came home, and we got settled into a regular routine as a family again we started to attempt sleep training. What a disaster that was! We tried rocking him to sleep, feeding him a nice snack before bed, having a sturdy routine, etc. The worst was letting him cry it out. Well he cried, and cried and cried...then threw up continued crying and started gagging/choking on his own throwup. We didn't try that again. Finally, I did an online searches about getting babys to sleep, went onto different blogs etc and stumbled upon this book :The Sleepeasy Solution: The Exhausted Parents Guide to Getting Your Child to Sleep from Birth to Age 5. Amazing. When they say results in less than 1 week, they mean it!

I read a couple of different chapters, (the ones that most applied to us), and started applying them. We started a new routine, snack, brush teeth, rock and sing 1 song, read 1 book then say a prayer and down in the crib. We let him cry for 3 minutes, then went in gave him a hug held him until he stopped crying then laid him back down. I was prepared to do this for hours. 45 minutes later he was asleep, and only woke up once! When he woke up, I sang him his song and laid him back down and he slept until 6:45 am. It was the most sleep both of us had gotten in weeks! The 2nd night he only took 30 minutes to fall asleep and didn't wake up at all, 11 straight hours of sleep! He was such a different baby that day! He was happy, and loved life, gave me lots of love, and was having fun again. (I must admit, I was the same way!). By the end of the week, he was falling asleep in under 5 minutes (we didn't even have to go back in his room after laying him down the first time!). He sleeps so much better now, even for his nap he goes right now, and now he even points to his room and says "mama ny ny" (his way of saying night night) when he's ready.

Jennifer Waldburger and Jill Spivack (the authors) truly take in the feelings, frustrations and fears of the parents. They help you decide what is best by giving you different options and different ways of combining methods and techniques to have a truly personalized sleep plan for you and your baby. This is my baby sleep bible! I recommend this to anybody who has even a slight sleep problem with their baby, with growing, teething, new environment etc...this book has tips for getting great sleep during all of these milestones! Love it!

Chocolate Milk

My husband and I drank chocolate milk last night together. Our kiddo was asleep and suddenly I wanted some chocolate milk. I felt like a little kid again, and it was great! We gulped down our milk just like our parents always told us not to, but somehow the chocolate milk tasted better when gulped. I won't tell my kids not to gulp their chocolate milk! If I had a straw I probably would have blown bubbles too...you know, to keep the chocolate all mixed up in the milk for greatest chocolate to milk ratio, as well as chocolate milk to chocolately bubbles ratio. :)

What is real romance?

Ladies, let me ask you something. What is romance? How is romance normally portrayed?

Most people see romance as Hollywood portrays it. Candlelight, chocolate, flowers etc. A lot of people see romance as sex. I've come to find that our expectations of the men in our lives are unreasonable because of the expectations Hollywood gives us, that authors of romance novels give us. We want the constant surprises, the love letters, the flowers, being swept off our feet, the sweet words whispered in the dark after hours of passionate yet loving love making. We want the sex Nora Roberts gives her characters, the passion portrayed in the Notebook, and the surprises/tenderness from P.S. I love you. Yet, we don't understand why our guys don't give us that! Well my friends, its because its unrealistic. Thats not romance, not REAL romance, not real love.

Romance is honesty with each other, romance is having a good time sitting together on the couch doing nothing. To me, romance is him taking out the trash or doing the dishes without being askd because he knows it helps me. When he goes to the store, getting my favorite soda or candy bar. Doing little things just because he was thinking about me. Getting a random text while he's at work that he loves me...When he does things for me, without being asked its great. It makes me love him more. When we are playing with our son and he looks at me and smiles or winks, thats romance to me. Romance is just being happy together and trying our damndest to have fun despite whats going on with finances, with family, with everything outside of ourselves. Its being together. Romance is being crazy, doing the dishes together and getting into a water fight, its the simple things in life. Ha, its wearing flannel pajamas at 8pm on a friday night and loving it. Its everything that Hollywood isn't.

Now, ladies, don't get me wrong! I'm a sucker for flowers and chocolates and the surprises and great sex etc...definitely. I have just come to expect the realistic from my guy. I know that sometimes he'll come home with a bouqet of my favorite flowers. I know that when he knows I'm having a bad day, he'll cook dinner AND clean up afterwards. When I'm up in the middle of the night with our son, he lets me sleep in the next morning if he's home. You don't have to give up getting pretty flowers or surprises all the time, just look for romance in the little acts that he does. Look for romance in the everyday things he does.

Little, daily acts of love are worth more to me than the grand gestures.

You got steamed...

Rewind 2 weeks. My son is playing outside with the dog while I get the wonderful task of dishes. He must have thrown some of the dogs food out into the yard (we live in Tucson, our backyard is rocked). My oh so brilliant dog licked up the food taking some rocks with him. We wake up in the morning to find doggie puke with rocks in it all over the bedroom floor. Yay. So my hubby gets the steam cleaner out to clean it up (Yay for him doing it without my having to ask!!) .

Fast forward to yesterday. My son, whom I love and adore, spilled his juice all over my beige rocking chair...No big deal right? Get the steam cleaner and its a quick clean, dinner is in the oven and should be ready by the time I'm done with this. Wrong. I am so very wrong. I pull out the steam cleaner and, oh no. The water from 2 weeks (!) ago is still in there. Not the clean hasn't been used water. The doggied puke water. Yuck yuck yuck YUCK. So now I'm cleaning the water tank out and "what is that? It shouldn't be green...oh my gosh its MOLD". So now, what was going to take about 10 minutes has turned into me sanitizing the water tank. So I'm bleaching the water tank, and the stove chime goes off telling me dinner is now ready and I'm up to my arms in puke infested bleach water and dinner is ready. I pull the dinner out of the oven and then return to the water tank. Thinking my son is in the living room with his daddy I'm not paying any attention to my surroundings. Suddenly he's crying and is right next to me! He has burned his hand because he was trying to reach the top of the stove (he didn't catch the pan, but the metal part of the stove was over-warm, no harm done to the fingers!). So. I run his fingers under some cool water (his fingers are barely pink), finish rinsing the stupid water tank and dish up his dinner so it can cool. While its cooling I throw the cushions in the washer (I've washed them before no biggie) and we sit down to eat dinner. Later after the monster is in bed I go to put the cushions in the dryer. "Wait, what the heck?! The washed ATE the cover of the cushion and cut part of the foam". I walk into the living room and tell my husband "next time empty the stupid water tank, I'm going to bed".

I need a large glass of wine.

Vaseline Debacle

OK. So my husband and I are sitting in the living room watching t.v. and our son is running back and forth down the hallway like a half crazed marathoner. He's got some toys in the kitchen so we don't worry too much when its been a 2 or 3 minutes since we've seen him streaking down the hallway.

We are stupid.

My son comes down the hallway COVERED. in. Vaseline...the walls, his hair, my brand new bedroom furniture have just been greased to a nice shine by my 15 month old's grubby little hands. Those hands by the way are COMPLETELY covered in giant globs of Vaseline and poor baby, looks like he's about to cry because he can't keep his fingers from slipping on each other!

We don't know whether to laugh or get upset. (We ended up laughing, by the way!). So we clean him off..and people Vaseline is NOT easy to get out of a squirming toddlers hair. So lots of soap and water and 30 minutes later we're cleaning off our furniture. Of course we told him to show us where he got it, then told him no, that its not yours to play with blah blah blah...

The next day I find him trying to get the Vaseline out again. I have now hidden the Vaseline and consequently can't find it. Go figure :)

Of course we are laughing about it now. What parent couldn't laugh about it, I think its part of parenting being able to laugh and make jokes about stuff like that. Otherwise we'd all be in mental institutions and our parents would be raising our kids. Anybody else shiver a little bit at that lovely image??? If we can't be in a padded room, we might as well be laughing at the stuff that could put us there!

Men and Dependability

First and foremost, I love men. I have 3 important men in my life. My husband, my son and my dog. Men are great. Most of the time. There comes a time though, when things need to get done, and not a man in sight. Interestingly enough, even my 16 month old son and my 2 year old pit-mix disappear when the to-do list appears. Coincidence? I think not!

Now, I am not one to nag or pester about doing things. Rather I'm the one who if I'm the only one working, everyone else in the house knows that I'm working. Doors are closing louder, pots and pans are banging around. I tend to get a little OCD when I'm mad and inevitably the entire house is clean by the time I've decided to not be mad anymore.

All of this being said, there are only few things I want from a man: consistency, dependability and for God's sake pick up your own socks! :) Not a long list. Not even a tough list in my opinion.

Being a dependable, strong man are highest on my list because as a woman I feel that's what is needed first in a man. As a collective whole, I believe women want to know what to expect from the men in their life, they want to know when he says "yeah I'll change the oil", or "yeah I'll pick up the dog crap in the backyard", their engine isn't going to blow and they aren't going to be stepping in dog feces because he didn't do it when he said he would. It all comes down to follow through, and do it on a regular basis.

Men: We want to believe that we can depend on you. Not just to do the things we ask you to, but to do the things we don't ask. If you see that something needs to be done, and we're busy, step in and help without being asked! Major brownie points, FYI. We want to depend on you, your strength and wisdom. We want to know that when we do ask you to do something, or you say you're going to do something, that it is going to be done in a timely manner. It doesn't always have to be done right away. But a week later? Too late, and I am now doing it myself, and am mad. Chances are dinner will not be cooked, and don't even think about anything happening in the bedroom tonight!

To me, when follow through is lacking, you are telling me "you aren't important enough for me to do what I am saying I am going to do". Maybe you just forgot, maybe you were really going to do it later. But guys, seriously, dishes in the sink 2 days after you say you're going to do them isn't either excuse at that point :). Guys,we want YOU to be our go-to friend. Our fix-it man. We don't want to go to friends and family to get things done. We chose you, and we need you to be consistent and dependable. The need isn't just because we want it done, the need is because every time you follow through you are being a man of your word, and best of all you are being an honorable man. Do what you say you're going to do when you say you are going to do it! And if you need perks, you get dinner cooked and something may be happening between the sheets tonight!