motherlymusings.com

Do you struggle with your children’s bedtimes?  There are many parents that do.

Some of the best advice that I got from my mother-in-law was about bedtimes.  She said that her kids always had a bedtime and they didn’t get out of bed again until morning.  It didn’t matter if they were asleep or not as long as they were in bed.

My kids go to bed and usually stay there.  Sometimes they don’t go to sleep right away, they sometimes chatter away or play with their stuffed animals, but at least they are in bed.

I’ve heard many stories from several different mom’s who constantly struggle with bedtimes.  We’ve all heard the stories of moms who have had to use their vehicle and drive around for hours to put the child(ren) to sleep.  For some, it takes hours to get the child to go to sleep, with the child getting up out of bed every five minutes needing something (water, toilet etc.)  I know I would get very frustrated with that.  There are some that have different bedtimes for their children – for example child ‘a’ will get up at 6 am and go to bed at 8 pm and child ‘b’ will get up at 8 am and go to bed at 10 pm.  In this case the mom is parenting from 6 am until 10 pm at night.  And granted the job of parenting never ceases, we all need a break from the action of parenting – this mom would never get that break.  Maybe this works for these moms and their families, I know it doesn’t work for me.

Like I said, my mother-in-law said that her kids were always in bed at a certain time.  Looking back, I know that my mom had a set bedtime for us kids as well.  I’ve implemented that with my kids too.  Kids being kids will occasionally test the boundaries.  When this happens they lose a privilege the next day.  I try to keep the privilege associated with sleep time.  Such as, they lose the privilege of getting a story and a song before naps/bedtime the next day.

My kids all have a bedtime routine and they do not like a change in the bedtime routine at all (which is why they don’t risk losing it very often!).

Bedtime is the one thing that I’m pretty firm on.  Not only do children need sleep to grow, heal and stay healthy but I’m exhausted by the time their bed time rolls around as well and I need my parenting break.  Not to mention that I still have hours of work to do!

**Please do not take offence if you are using any of the bedtime situations I mentioned.  If it works for you and your family – great!  I only mentioned them because I know of some moms who were struggling with those particular situations.

Well I’ve finished the website that I was working on.  I actually ended up taking a week and just dedicating my work hours to completing it.  I was just so anxious to get it done, I actually contemplated not sleeping until it was done.  However being as I already suffer from sleep deprivation, by the time my normal bedtime rolled around, I couldn’t function any more.  Not only that but if I did stay up all night to finish the project all of my other projects as well as my kids would suffer the next day.

So now that that project is done and behind me I now feel like I can get back on to my normal work schedule.  Actually, I’ve been working quite a bit on scheduling lately.  I’ve started meal planning, I’ve finally got my husband agreeing to a budget (after 3 years!), scheduling my work time and of course my Mother’s Rule of Life, which encompasses it all.    So stay tuned!  I’m going to be doing some writing about my scheduling.  And of course if you have any ideas or if you would like to share any of your schedules, what works for you etc. with me, feel free to drop a comment.  Thanks!

It’s been quite a while since I wrote anything on this site.  I’ve found it somewhat challenging lately trying to find the time to keep up on all my work.

I am currently working on building another site for a new contract and it’s taking more time than I had anticipated.  I’m sure many of you can relate – it can be difficult to balance the 4 hours a day that I have available to work.  It would probably be much easier if it wasn’t broken up into smaller chunks of time.   Which on the most part the challenge of working with small chunks of time is manageable.  However with this new website, I’m finding it quite challenging.  I’m not sure if it’s because I have way too much going on right now (currently 4 projects) or if it’s the amount of work involved with the new site.

As soon as this new site is done though, I’m sure it will be smooth sailing!  (Is life ever smooth sailing?!)

Anyway, I’ve got some funny/cute stories to share about the kids so keep reading!

I was really hoping that my middle child, who is 23 months, would hold off on potty training until the baby is done breast feeding.  That was one of the challenges I had with potty training my son – it seemed like every time I sat down to breastfeed, he would need to go pee.

But I guess when a child is ready, she’s just ready and there’s nothing you can do about it.  I know this is terrible but I got so stubborn about not wanting to potty train her that she would tell me that she had to go pee and I told her “It’s ok, you’re in a diaper.” (Only when I was breastfeeding of course.)  Then she’d get mad at me and whine “toilet”.  So obviously she wants to be potty trained – so we’re going with it.  She’s doing really well, and has only had one ‘accident’ in the week that we’ve been training.

It still is rather frustrating for me to stop breastfeeding to run to the toilet with her, but she is doing really good and I guess that’s all that matters.

The other frustration is now the two older kids are fighting over who gets to use the toilet first!  If one of them is using the toilet, then the other has a fit because they want to use it!  It’s not like we don’t have enough toilets in the house.  There are two regular sized and two small people sized!  I guess it’s just another case of “I want it because he/she has it.”  I just never thought that they would be fighting over a toilet!

Kids are funny!

My Meltdown

Meltdowns are pretty rare in our house.  My oldest may have a meltdown once every three or four weeks maybe, for the middle child it happens a little more frequently – once every week and a half to two weeks.  And of course the youngest is too young to have a meltdown yet.

The most recent meltdown was a huge one and it was all four of us melting down all at once.  I should have seen it coming but I think I was too exhausted to think things through and hedge off any potential meltdown.

It had been a really crazy week as we had company staying with us.  We haven’t had anyone stay with us in over a year, so that in itself was a difficult adjustment for the kids.  And being as our company had come such a long distance, we tried to do as much with them as possible, which also meant late nights and lack of daytime naps.  So of course everyone was exhausted!

It was bath time and I always bath all three kids together, they love to play and splash with each other in the water.  Bath time is usually a lot of fun for everyone.  (Well except Mom, who has to clean up the mess!  But still fun.)

Just as I finished putting all three kids in the tub the middle child started screaming and crying to get out of the tub.  She hadn’t even been washed yet so I quickly tried to wash her as she was crying and screaming.  The baby started crying when the oldest dumped a pail of water on her head and the oldest started crying when I took him out of the tub for dumping water on the baby.  So by the end of bath time all three kids were screaming.  I kicked the two older kids out of the bathroom and laid the baby down on the floor to dry her off.    The middle child came back in the bathroom and hit the baby in the head with the bathroom door.  I got her back out of the bathroom and before I could reach down to move the baby the oldest child hit the baby in the head with the bathroom door.

By this time not only were the three kids screaming and crying but I was yelling at the two older ones, trying to hold the door, hold back my son (from slamming the door into the baby again) and trying to move the baby.  I was quite upset as were all my children.

Not only did I upset my children but my company as well.  I feel absolutely terrible for upsetting everybody.  I rarely yell at my kids, I’ve spoken sternly or sharply but not yelling like I did that night.

But I guess even as parents we are still only human and make mistakes.  As much as we want to be perfect parents, it will never happen.  All we can do is learn from our mistakes and move on, trying to be the best we can be.