Food for thought.

One of the biggest holes in our Mexican life is the complete lack of libraries. Everytime we visit the U.S. I have a stack of books from Amazon.com waiting for me. It feels like Christmas and I can never decide which book to read first.


This time I tried to narrow it down to 1, but absolutely couldn't make a decision - so I'm reading these 2 simultaneously.

I have lightbulbs going off in my brain at the turn of every page from both of these.

My 'so far' review on SIA :
I have had the hardest time with Sullivan's sleep. He went through a brief period from 2-4 months where he would basically sleep through the night in his crib (I had the crib "side-car" to my bed which basically means I left the front rail off and pushed the crib even with my bed.) At 4 months, he came down with his first cold and that interrupted his sleep. From that point on, we have had "good" and "bad" nights. A *good* night involves him waking anywhere from 4-8 times and going back to sleep quickly. A *bad* night is. . .well, BAD! Once a week or so, he'll have a night where he wakes up every 45 minutes to an hour from the time he goes to bed until the sun rises.

He's always seemed like such a sensitive baby, so the thought of following the traditional (yuck!) advice of laying him down and letting him scream was *so* not appealing to me. Hence, the book choice.

Seriously, this is such an amazing book! Even if you don't have kids - read it! It goes into such detail about our need for sleep and the way our body-function declines when we neglect it.

I'm only a few chapters in (although I did skip ahead and get some tips for helping your infant to sleep. . .is he still an infant??) and already I'm finding little ideas to help me with my older kids. A) Adeline needs a nap everyday. The more she acts like she doesn't want to, the more I need to enforce it. She's too young, and leads too active a life (preschool, parks, rambunctious play) to not get her afternoon rest. B) Lack of sleep = "I can't do it" attitudes, afternoon meltdowns (duh), aggresive "play", and a whole host of other misbehaviors. C) When I find my temper is short and my sense of humor is lacking. . .*I* am probably missing out on sleep.

I was having the hardest time getting Guthrie to fall asleep tonight. He laid in his bed, but just talks to himself and talks to me (and tries his hardest to keep Addie awake in her bed next to his.) I was so exasperated that I finally lost my cool. I completely yelled at him that it was bedtime and now he was up so late that I wasn't going to let him go to school tomorrow and blah blah blah (more mean stuff.) I came out to sit on the couch and almost immediately read a little paragraph about kids' need to feel safe and nurtured even at night.

It was almost like Guthrie was giving me one more chance to be nice, because a few minutes later he called out, "Mommy, will you come check on me in a minute?" I went in right away and he was laying there pretending to be asleep. I leaned down to give him a kiss and he threw his arms around my neck and hugged me. Now, just a few minutes later, he's already asleep.

Its so nice to have a fresh perspective on sleep, and a reminder that I'm not the only one.

I also read a statistic in there stating that only 16% of 1-year olds sleep from the time they're put in their bed until the morning. 16%!!! I am obviously not alone in my sleep woes! For every mother that proudly brags about her 3-month old super-sleeper, there are 5 more of us sitting quietly in the back of the room thinking we must be terrible mothers. While I find comfort in numbers, they certainly don't bring more ZZZ's - so here's praying that the next few weeks bring happy nights - and in turn happier days!

The other book, "Remembering Wholeness" was a raving recommendation from my friend, Serin. I read the first 10-chapters online (you can too - she offers the introduction for free.) and am happy to find that the rest of the book is just as great. (For those of you familiar with "The Secret". . .think along those lines, only with an LDS twist.) I just love this woman's outlook on life and the way each chapter makes me feel like life is this wonderful adventure and I'm *so* lucky to be along for the ride.

Although the book isn't specifically targeted to parents, I'm finding it a PERFECT guide to the obstacle course known as parenting. The best thing has been getting Kyle to read (or at least listen to me paraphrase) along with me. When I have a *downer* moment, he almost immediately says something to get me back on track. We've both noticed a huge change in our house over the last several weeks - almost like this huge cloud has been removed. . .only we never knew the cloud was there in the first place, if that makes any sense.

Well, now that I've turned my blog into an infomercial, I'll go back to "Operation Clear Vacation Dust". Its usually a week-long task when we get back from a trip, but my new outlook tells me I can do it in 6 days. MWAHAHAHA!