some good words

Sleeping or lack of sleeping has been on my mind lately. Most of my blog posts include rants of Olives lack of sleeping or napping progress. I'm finding there is always something parent related that I stress on or am dealing with. Right now its sleep. Olive would sleep through the night for a few days straight and then all of a sudden it would be back to waking up every few hours and having the hardest time going back to sleep. I stressed, I cried, I got frustrated and I wondered what the hell I was doing wrong. I spent the last few weeks reading up on sleep and pretty much anything on the internet I could find and I came to the conclusion nothing is wrong with her, she is perfect, and just figuring it all out. Of course at 3am when she is crying and won't go back to sleep its hard to stay calm and realize this.

Ironically this morning as I was barely keeping my eyes open while I was feeding Olive I started reading through my mommy blogs and came across one of my favorite online mamas who wrote the most amazing post on sleep. It kinda summed up everything for me and made me feel better for the way I have been thinking. She also shared a lot of her experiences. I just feel like this really gave me a little confidence and reassurance that my instincts as a parent like not letting her cry and holding her all the time are the right things for us. I know I need to ignore any outside influence and own up to the way I feel. Also as I wake up in the middle of the night to her crying I have to remember patience and that she is just trying to communicate with me, not manipulate me. And when she won't go back to sleep I need to take some deep breaths and realize it won't be like this forever. Anyways the post Michael made is amazing and worth a read.

This was also in my inbox this morning and it kinda came at the right time. I read it a few times and really loved it.

In a product-oriented culture, there's a tendency to "productize" and "package" people. We often forget that a human being is a living process — a "human becoming."

Children are especially dynamic — often visibly different from one day to the next — and no two children develop precisely the same way. This can be a challenge for us when we've been conditioned to "need" the predictability (read: controllability) of static products.

Many parent-child struggles can be avoided simply by allowing children to be different than they were the previous day, or even the previous minute! A toddler may "hate" peas at the beginning of the meal and "love" them by the end of the meal, provided the parent doesn't pronounce the child a pea-hater in the interim.

Today, be mindful of the way you talk about your child. Note that labels tend to productize. You can avoid labels by focusing on the process. For example, "he's a fussy eater" becomes "he's figuring out his tastes."

Especially avoid "always" and "never" statements like "she never brushes her teeth willingly." Someday she will. :)