A Gentle Discipline Reminder and a Book Recommendation

I find as I watch three toddlers (one my own) day in and day out that I need more reminders to be gentle. I picked up one of my books that I've been reading, "Biblical Parenting" by Pastor Crystal Lutton. It was exactly the reminder that I needed. I was suprised at how practical some of the information in the book is. I was expecting more of a theological type discussion - which there is much of. But she gives some practical steps of positive discipline. I'm not done reading yet, so I don't claim to know all of her methods yet. But she talked about telling toddlers to "listen to my words" when giving them an instruction. And then asking them if they're able to "listen to my words" and then helping them "listen to my words" when they're not. Actually, this method is not new to me and in fact it's one that I like and try to use a lot. However, reading this came at the right time because I needed a reminder. It's definitely not a lazy person's method of discipline. One can holler "no blah blah blah" or "stop blah blah blah" from across the room. But to physically go over and help a child listen, well, it requires lots of getting up and down. I really liked one point she made about helping. It's not meant to be a punishment to help. Children at the age of toddlerhood are not developed in their ability to stop doing something they're enjoying in order to do something that they don't want to do or isn't as fun. So, when an adult helps, they're doing just that. Teaching a child how to stop fun behavior and do what needs to be done. It's nothing to get upset over. Now the toddler may whine and cry, throw themself on the ground, or whatever. But it's because of their immature development and lack of ability to transition from a fun activity in order to do something that needs to be done. So as a parent, my role is to help my child accomplish this without shaming him or making him feel bad about something that he is not developmentally able to do. I'm probably not explaining this nearly as well as the author did, but I think this book is worth a read. I would especially recommend this book to anyone who's interested in the idea of christian or biblical parenting. The author goes a lot into passages in the bible that are often used to support spanking. I think she does a great job of putting the passages in their context and explaining true meaning.

Allergic Reaction

Well, we started off the day at Prompt Care because Boo had a rash when he woke up. He was pretty cranky all evening yesterday. That's so not like him. He's such a happy guy most of the time. He's been on an antibiotic since Wednesday for his ear and sinus infection. Sooo...my guess was an allergic reaction to the antibiotic. Soooo...we went to prompt care since it's the weekend and his usual doctor is unavailable. The doctor there said it definitely looked like an allergic reaction and gave us a script for a different antibiotic. No more zithromax for us I guess!

My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

So yesterday was an interesting day. I wanted to pull my hair out by the end of the day! So here you go. Here's what my day was like!

Boo had been feverish on and off since Monday night. Tuesday night he was pretty cranky so I cancelled daycare for the next day. Good thing because that night his fever shot up to 104.1. So I got up at the crack of dawn to wait for the doctor's office to open and try to get him in that day. Finally I was able to get a hold of someone around 8:00 am and got him an appointment for 11:15 am. He continues to sleep on and off all morning. We get ready to go and I realize that the tires need air. Thank God I had a one dollar bill in my wallet (I never carry cash). So, no big deal. We stop by the gas station to air up the tires. The ones on the driver side were low. I checked the ones on the passenger side and they were fine.

So, anyways I get my coffee from Innkeeper's and we head to the doctor's office (which is in a different town about 15-20 minutes away). We get there with time to spare. The diagnosis - ear and sinus infection. Awww...poor Boo. He's a trooper though. So after the doctor's appointment we stop by Walgreens to get his medication. I drop off film and pay for same day processing. I figure we'll pick it up after going to HyVee. We head to HyVee because I wanted to get some bananas and soup and such as these are good for a sick little one. Soooo...this is where it gets interesting.

We pull into HyVee and someone comes up to my car before I even get out. I open my door and he asks me in an angry voice, "Do you know you have a flat rear tire?" I say, "No. I just aired up my tires this morning." Anyhoo, the guy stalks off quickly without another word as though I've done something to personally offend him. What the hell??? So, anyways, I walk around to the passenger side (remember, these tires were fine this morning). Flat, completely flat. Bummer. So now is when I start to panic inside my head a little bit. Who can I call? T is at work. My mom is at work. My dad is at work. Well, crap. So I figure, might as well go in and get what I came to get. I figured this would give me time to calm down and think. So, I get my stuff and get some cash back in quarters in case I end up needing to use the payphone (I don't have a cell phone).

So, I get out to the car and figure I'm just going to have to change this bad boy myself. Poor Boo's sitting in the shopping cart and it's a bit chilly (it could've been worse, but he is sick and all). But I didn't want to put him in the car in case I jacked it up wrong and it fell. Obviously I have tons of tire-changing experience. So anyways, I get the donut out, get the tool bag out, and get the jack out. I'm starting to think I can do this and then I realize I have absolutely no idea how the jack hooks onto the car. I'm standing in the HyVee parking lot staring at the jack as though it's the most foreign contraption I've ever seen (and sadly that's not far from the truth). By now I'm making a concerted effort to keep the panic off of my face. Tons of people walked past by the way. Just thought I'd point that out. Anyways, enter my good samaritan. I guy walked up and asked if I needed help. I must have looked incredibly pathetic as I said "yes." So he changed the tire and pointed me in the direction of the tire store located at the mall across the street. He informed me that the donut is low.

So...we're off to the tire shop. As I'm getting ready to cross the street towards the tire store a car pulls up next to me and honks. I roll down my window. "Your back tire is flat." I figure that the woman that pulled up misunderstood that I had a donut on the back. I hollered over to her car, "It's a donut. It's low I know." "I know it's a donut and it's pretty damn near flat" is her reply. "Oh, well I'm headed across the street to the tire store now." So then she says "ok" and drives off.

Sooo...at the tire shop. And yes, that donut was flat. I finally give poor Boo his medicine. He slept in his stroller while we waited. Of course the tire's hole was in a place that they can't fix. And of course they don't have any used tires in the size I need. So now I have a brand spankin' new tire on my car.

So I drive home and intentionally left my film that I paid same day processing for at Walgreens. Because now I can't afford to pick it up. So I'll be picking it up on a different day but still paying the higher same day charge. Ugh!!

Then I get home and see that we didn't have enough in the bank account to cover the tires (which is suprising, because I really thought we did). So, I start to panic yet again. And then, "aha", I remembered that I had a daycare reimbursement check from my working days that I had yet to cash. Granted I was saving it for Christmas shopping, but whatever. Anyways, I knew it was in the pocket of my black jeans that I wore the other day. I put it there instead of around the house because I was trying to keep it out of T's hands. Well, I searched and searched and black jeans are nowhere to be found. I got a sick feeling to my stomach as I know I heard the laundry running early that morning. So I headed to the basement and there was my black jeans in the dryer. And there was the check in its pocket. Totally not cashable. Bummer. There goes that plan. So I resign myself to the fact that we may overdraw our account. So all in all it was a pretty crappy day.

I think what made the day seem worse was the fact that I had a flat tire and those that felt the need to inform me about it also felt the need to be pissed off about it. I'm still scratching my head on that one.

So, since I try so hard to be positive. Here's my list of all the things in the silver lining yesterday:

Boo's illness was not serious. He'll recover from a sinus and ear infection just fine.
The tire did not go flat on the way to or from the doctors. This would have been bad. Think stuck on the side of the highway with no phone. A good samaritan changed the tire for us. My initial feeling about my bank account was correct. There was enough money. Our online banking showed the money taken out, but did not show the actual transaction until the next day. Huge sigh of relief. I now have a new check from daycare reimbursement account on its way.

I'm on a roll

Three posts in one morning. I'm on a roll! Here's an article that I found that I thought was pretty great. I think it's a great description of attachment parenting for those who may not realize that they're an "attachment parent."

Are You an Attachment Parent?

Story of a co-sleeping family

I'm not sure that I've posted on co-sleeping as of yet, and since it's a pretty big deal as far as attachment parenting goes, I thought I'd attempt a post on this topic.

We started out when Boo was a newborn co-sleeping. At that point he was in a co-sleeper that was attached to our full-size bed. Our co-sleeper looks similar to this:

Co-sleeper pic

When Boo was younger he was pretty content to be in his co-sleeper. I would curl up next to the co-sleeper and he would curl towards me. He liked to sleep curled right to the inner edge. I would take him out when he needed nursed during the night and swaddle him and lay him back down when we were done. I had to sit up to nurse him because we couldn't seem to figure out side nursing at all! As Boo grew he decided that the co-sleeper wasn't close enough. He'd start out the night in the cosleeper and was usually okay with that. However, once he was out for that first nighttime feeding he preferred to stay in bed with mommy. So I'd hold him while we slept.

As he grew he started to move more and sit up and crawl and all of those wonderful things. Then it was time to put the co-sleeper away. :( At that point in time Boo would usually fall asleep on my lap for the night while I was downstairs watching a movie or tv program with the hubby. So we'd take him to his crib in his room and let him start the night there while we got to have some time to ourselves. This didn't work every night, but some nights it did. Once he woke up and let us know that he was hungry, unhappy, etc... he would come into our bed for the remainder of the night. At some point after putting the co-sleeper away we learned how to side nurse. Yay - oh happy day. What a difference it made!

When Boo was 7 months old, I went to work full time during the day. That was a very hard time. I did not enjoy being away from Boo at all and the money that I was making (not much) was hardly worth it. I was so happy to have my nighttime to reconnect with him. There were fewer nights that he started out in the crib as a result. As a working mom co-sleeping really helped me to get plenty of sleep. Even though Boo was waking to nurse, I didn't feel tired from this. Boo's food supply was lying right next to him so neither one of us had to fully wake for him to nurse. Once he was done he'd turn over and drift right back to sleep and so would I.

I quit working full time when Boo was 13 months old. I decided I'd had enough and wanted to open a home daycare so that I could be home with Boo, but still bring home some necessary income. As Boo got older we continued with the starting the night in the crib thing, with him spending a good part of the night in our bed. Except for now. I decided to clean out our bedroom and my way of doing this was moving everything into Boo's bedroom so that it could get organized before coming into this room. Problem is I ran out of money for this project (see part where I quit working above) and I still need tons of containers, shelves, etc... to make this work. So now we can't really get to Boo's crib because his room is so full of unnecessary crap. So, for the time being, Boo gets the whole night in bed with us. I must admit that I look forward to having that little bit of time at the beginning of the night where I get to stretch out in bed. It does get pretty cramped in a full size bed with three people! BUT, I do feel like it has been the best choice for us and we're happy with it despite some of the challenges.

Here's some articles that I found online. At some point I'll try to move some of these to my permanent links on the right side of this blog.

Ten Reasons to Sleep Next to Your Child

Cosleeping

Mothering's List of Articles

Enjoy!

What I've Been Up To

Well, all of my productivity went out the window over the weekend as I started reading the Twilight series. Actually, my original intent was to read the first book in preparation for the movie that's coming out. Well, here I am all four books later and my house is starting to fall apart. So now it's time to play some catch up around here! Anyways, it really is a great set of books for anyone that's into fantasy fiction. I tend to be drawn to fantasy fiction. I suppose that I enjoy fantasy fiction so much because it allows me to live in a completely different world for a time. Everyone needs an escape from reality once in awhile!

I'm killing time right now while I'm waiting for the doctor's office to open today. Boo had a fever Monday night and much of the day yesterday. It was back up last night, and a bit higher than it was on Monday night. So I'm hoping if I call first thing when they open, she can squeeze him in quickly. I'm hoping he doesn't have another ear infection, but one of his ears has looked a bit drippy as of late. So that very well could be a problem.

Anyhoo, I better get up and ready while he's still sleeping.

Just Some Random Muttering

I've started a new dc kiddo. She only comes three days a week and she comes at seven. My current one doesn't get here until eight. So that means I have to drag my lazy butt out of bed an hour earlier. Bummer! But I am happy to have another female in the house. I'm at max capacity for under two - even after getting licensed. The rest of the kiddos will have to be two or older. Although, I have one now who turns two in February, so I'll have a toddler spot open up then.

There are so many things I need to get done for licensing. I look around and the house just seems such a wreck to me. There's still areas that need to be painted. I'm thinking about maybe this weekend doing some scraping and painting on the areas that absolutely have to be fixed for licensing. The thing that sucks is that our landlord doesn't know what color is on the wall and doesn't know where the paint is - I guess he used to have some. Soooo...that means I'm going to have to try to match it and just let the wall look splotchy until we can afford to pain the whole thing. But...whatever. I just want it done so that it doesn't hold me back from licensing.

We're set to redo our lease soon and the landlord has casually mentioned that buying the house on contract could be an option. So...I'm needing to research that as I know nothing about how that would work. We definitely won't get a house with our credit anytime soon, so this could be a feasible way for us to get around that. The thing is, we're not sure where we're headed and want to be careful about getting too tied down. So we're just not sure at this point. But it's nice to know the option is on the table right now.

Boo had a bottle today

I've been having an ongoing issue with breastfeeding for over a week and a half. I was bit while nursing Boo awhile back. Since that time nursing became more and more painful and finally nearly unbearable. I tried Lansinoh. At someone's suggestion I tried a nipple shield. That just encouraged him to chew because it must've felt like a teether to him! Soooo...with the wound continuing to not heal (every time it seemed on the path to healing it got reopened), I finally chose the method of last resort. No nursing on that side. It's terrible because Boo always wants both sides. So I really didn't want to go this route because I knew how incredibly sad he would be. So today's been a bit rough. He's been eating on one side only and I've been pumping and giving him what I pumped. Earlier today he took it in a sippy cup. However, after his nap (which is when he usually cuddles and nurses while dc kiddo sleeps) he pitched a fit when I put the milk in his sippy cup. Soooo...I had to get out the bottle and give the milk to him in the bottle and I held him just like we were nursing. It was kind of weird as I haven't given him a bottle since he was several days old. I had some issues getting started with breastfeeding back then. Anyways, so it felt odd giving him a bottle. But he was much happier with the bottle and all cuddled up to mom. So, whatever works, right? Anyways, I'm hoping this heals fast as this really is a pain and I know he's rather sad about one side being off limits!

AP Talk Going On

There's AP talk going on around here. The LLL leader and I have talked together, albeit briefly, a couple of times about getting an AP group together here in Galesburg. I was at her son's birthday party with Boo today and we talked about it briefly again. Soooo...we're going to try to get together sometime and actually get something going. The closest AP group that I know of is an hour from here and it's a part of Attachment Parenting International. I've never been able to make it to a meeting. It's just a long drive for a Saturday. So, needless to say, I would love to have something local to socialize with other AP parents and also provide Boo with some more playmates. I'll keep you posted!