We visited my parents this month and stayed in my old bedroom, complete with its sheep wallpaper that my mom and I had hung and the dollhouse I had received as a Christmas present.
Karsten and Sam enjoyed an air mattress in my younger brother's old room. Mikko, Alrik, and I squished together on my old queen bed, handed down from my older brother before me, after both refused to endure an entire night on the floor mattress that had been set up. Too many spiders in my parents' house, so I don't blame them.
Alrik was fascinated with the historical sleeping arrangements.
"This was your room when you were a kid?" he asked.
"Who did you sleep with?"
No one, just myself, I responded.
He was agog. "You slept by yourself when you were a kid?"
Yep.
He digested this for a bit.
"Wow, you were brave."
Does your mind go blank when your child says,
"Tell me a story!" before bedtime? I'm a professional writer of fiction, and I can't tell a children's story on cue to save my life. I've decided spontaneous storytelling is its own skill, and I needed to find a workaround. In case you're in the same boat, I will share it with you.
Just to burst your bubble right away, it's a terrible story. I'm just saying,
it works. My five-year-old loves the structure of it and wants to participate in it every night by telling the first part himself. I like that it's adaptable to both creative and literal-minded children, because you invite their feedback, and they can embellish the details as much as they want, or not. It also gives you as the parent an opportunity to feel "homeschool parent-y" by slipping in a little pop quiz about whatever topics you want. (You'll see.)
Once upon a time, there was a …
Now you ask your children what there was. Is it an animal? Is it a person? What's this character's name? What do they look like? Let's say it's this:
… purple giant chicken, and it was friends with …
Another round of character development!
… a friendly and unusually small spinosaurus. They really wanted to …
My kids are all night owls, which means they tend to gain energy as bedtime approaches. To help them calm their bodies and minds, I started a simple nighttime relaxation technique with the older two. My nine-year-old appreciates it the most and will ask for it nearly every night. Mikko and I both have the characteristic of needing a looong time to fall asleep, and he can get anxious about it. This sort of relaxation time helps put him at ease.
If you already have a background of relaxation scripts, you can adapt ones you love. I called upon my own childhood, when my parents offered me some simple relaxation ideas when I kept stealing into their room each night to whisper that I couldn't fall asleep, and my experiences with
Hypnobabies childbirth hypnosis, which helped me through three unmedicated births.
Have your child lie down and begin in a calm, soothing voice:
Squeeze your toes … and your feet … and your legs … all the way up to your bottom [or whatever word you use; we're a
butt family].
Have them practice isolating each muscle in turn. Mikko has coordination difficulties so at first had to use his hands to assist him in highlighting each body part to contract; however a kid needs to do it is fine.
I don't have a very good overarching theme for these images.
I just thought I'd celebrate Wordless Wednesday
(in my usual non-wordless fashion)
by sharing some fun pics from Instagram
(@HoboMamacom & @PirateFamilyFun).
On a trip to Barnes & Noble, I was pleased to see this sweet little sticker in the window:
People have been asking me where we sourced this Rainbow Dash hoodie,
so I will let you in on the secret: Amazon. Bam.
affiliate links in post
Welcome to the March 2015 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Day in the Life
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have given us a special glimpse into their everyday.
This month is fun, because I get to give you a peek into what our daily life is like. Sam and I co-parent, co-homeschool, and co-run family businesses. It's an interesting balance!
The day starts before the camera and I are up. Sam wakes early and sneaks downstairs for time by himself to write, a blanket around his shoulders and a glass of coffee at his side.
Meantime, I wake up to this:
Which is not bad at all.
Karsten, 4 months, and I snuggle as he wakes, and then Sam comes to rescue me.
Sam and Karsten head downstairs for a diaper change while I stretch out the kinks in my back from a night of cosleeping and perform my morning ablutions.
Alrik, 3.5 years, gets up around the same time, so Sam carries him downstairs for snuggles and milk in a sippy cup. Once he's more conscious, he helps entertain his little brother.
Welcome to the December 2014 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Greatest Gifts
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have suggested go-to gifts and gifting experiences for the holiday season for all your loved ones.
I couldn't resist when the topic was gifts this month — my mind turned to my
sweet new baby, and I felt the itch to make a list of all the gifts we
haven't gotten him.
See, the grandparents have been asking us what they can give Karsten. They asked when he was born in late October, and now they're asking as Christmas looms. And we keep answering them truthfully:
We have everything.
This is the third baby,
and the third boy. We're set!
But that means I've been around the block a time or two, and
I know now what sort of natural-parenting baby registry I would make if we weren't living in Hand-Me-Down City and needed to start from scratch. My btdt experience can be to your profit! Just copy this list of must-haves and would-love-to-haves on over to your own baby registry or holiday wish list, and outfit your natural nursery
like a boss.
Note that, since I'm
constantly nak-ing a newborn, I'm going to veer toward minimalist (my preference for
our small space) rather than comprehensive and crunchy, as is my family's wont. So this list will be the
essentials we needed for breastfeeding, babywearing, cosleeping, cloth diapering, and other attachment parenting choices. If you made different parenting choices (and that's valid!), you might need to add and subtract to this list, but it can still be a good starting point as you consider your options.
Cloth diapering: Keep things super simple, and ask gift givers to pre-load gift certificates to a
diaper service. Not an option where you live? Keep things still pretty dang simple, and go with
prefolds and
wool diaper covers, plus some
wool wash and
lanolin. If you're buying supplies yourself, eBay is a good spot to look for
high-quality but reduced-price diapers and covers.
You'll want at least six covers in small or newborn size and at least 18-24 of the small prefolds. Then you can move up (probably relatively quickly) to medium and park there for awhile, so don't blow your whole budget on the smallest sizes. The good news is cloth diapers have a good resale value! Throw in some
wipes, use a
small daypack as a just-right diaper bag (reasonable size and easy to sling on your back to have hands free for baby), and store your dipes at home, both clean and dirty, in a
wet-dry hanging bag. I thought we'd need a diaper-changing pad or table, and I was wrong. You can (and will) change diapers any-old-where. If you want to throw in some elimination communication, add a
little potty — it'll come in handy eventually either way.
Babywearing: My hands-down (hands-free, ha ha!) favorite carrier is my
handmade mei tai (
tutorial here if you sew, and tutorial for a
no-sew option if you don't!). If you want something available for purchase, other magnificent options are commercial mei tais and soft structured carriers like the
Babyhawk,
Infantino Wrap and Tie (frugal option),
Ergo, and
Boba. Any of these will work well for little babies on up through toddlers, so despite the initial price tag, buying one is a thrifty choice. And might I recommend my book,
The Natural Parent's Guide to Babywearing? It will help you learn to wear your baby with confidence and ease.
Yesterday was the
Carnival of Natural Parenting, and we all gave a little home tour. Only …
my home tour turned into a loooong home tour (despite our small space — how is that possible?), so I'm posting the second half, the upstairs part, today.
Turning upstairs now! This was one of the safety fixes we had to make to the place when we moved in: making these dowel openings smaller so a baby head couldn't squeeze through. We've considered covering the stair treads with one of those
wood retrofitting kits, but maybe it's just gentler on our clumsy kids for now to have them be carpeted.
We're slowly making a gallery along the stairwell of vintage postcards, maps, and photographs. 1920s, ahoy!
Top of the stairs. That clock is cracked because it's such an antique. That's a joke. It's from Pier 1.
And, yes, we routinely drag home odd pieces of driftwood.
Turning the corner, you can see our linen closet. Yeah, we don't actually have one of those. This will do for towels.
I had this idea that the upstairs could be an amalgam of beach-cottage style with a more formal but still livable Swedish Gustavian-modern look. Hence my Pinterest boards:
Hobo Cottage and
Gustavian Modern, Hobo Style. We've been concentrating on the downstairs for now, so not much has been done, design-wise, upstairs yet.
The hardest and best thing I ever did when it comes to little ones and sleep?
Adjust my expectations.
It's when I'm most stuck in my ideas that I should have a set number of uninterrupted hours of sleep in a particular environment at a particular time that I lose the most sleep! And the sleep that I do get isn't as refreshing or appreciated.
When I can let go of my need for "perfect" sleep, I can
enjoy and optimize the sleep opportunities I have as an attachment mother of young children.
Welcome to the January 2014 Carnival of Natural Parenting: The More Things Stay the Same
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have talked about the continuity and constancy in their lives. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.
We've now been cosleeping for six and a half years. And by cosleeping, I'm referring specifically to bed sharing. Just before Mikko was born, we bought a king-size mattress and put it on the floor of the single bedroom in our apartment. Even in the hospital, he slept in my arms, and once he came home, he slept beside us — and still is.
When Alrik was born,
we added him in. We experimented with putting a crib mattress on the side of the king, but mainly we just all piled onto the king — Alrik on the edge with a foam bumper, then me, then Mikko, then Sam, who sometimes ended up on the floor. (
There were four in the bed, and the little one said….)
Lately, and even though one of us is just a little two-year-old squirt, we end up doing jigsaw arrangements every night. Sometimes there's a hard skull in my spine. Often my bum or my knees (depending on which way I've turned) is hanging over the edge. When I come to bed after the three boys are asleep, I sometimes end up settling down sideways at the foot, like the family dog. Sam recently had a dream he was trapped in a tunnel — and awoke to find himself unable to turn over because of two certain little boys who had hemmed him in. Now we've been considering a third child, which would mean five in a bed, and — nope. Not with our bodies and our sprawlers, not in a king, and the king mattress is the widest conventional mattress you can get (76"). (A
California king is longer but narrower at 72", for those
pondering your family-bed purchases.)
We love cosleeping and bed sharing, but we need to find a way that works better to let everyone sleep comfortably.
Welcome to the December 2013 Carnival of Natural Parenting: The More Things Change…
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have shared stories and wisdom about life changes.
I've enjoyed learning more about the body's state of homeostasis: the
tendency toward stability, as controlled through
multiple and ongoing small changes.
For instance, our body's temperature might be an average of 98.6 degrees (
or not) — but only because the body constantly reacts to make it so, sweating to cool us, shivering to warm us, and many smaller responses that we don't even consciously register.
In other words, we're
always changing — and
always staying the same.
I feel a lot of homeostasis in my own life.
A long time ago, I wrote a
quite depressing post on how
postpartum sex after Mikko's birth kinda sucked, for a long time. I used words like "chafing" and "neutral" and "no physical sensations of pleasure." It was about nine months after Mikko's birth before I started enjoying myself again.
I thought I really should do a baby #2 update for you, since things were
completely, entirely different this time around. Go figure, right?
Warnings once more: TMI up the wazoo & likely NSFW. Let's be blunt, shall we?
I'll go through the topics I covered last time to contrast and compare.
Physical recovery
Once again, I had a vaginal birth without medications or interventions. Well, definitely this time, since
Sam and I were the only ones there! I probably pushed too fast in my excitement and surprise that a
baby's head was coming out of me before the midwife had arrived, so I did have a little tearing that needed stitches. However, not many, and the pain down there was just sort of twingey. My bidet (
!!!) helped a lot with those early days of soothing, and I had postpartum compresses pre-frozen for myself that I lurved. (I should really post my recipes for those sometime!) However, I was quite lochia-y and otherwise feeling worn out from the birth for a couple weeks. My uterus was very stretched out, making it a bit hard to breathe from the pressure on my diaphragm. (I had to lift it up and push it in when I walked for the first week or so.)
Anyhoo, I was much more hesitant this second time around to even
attempt anything in the pantsal region (that's a term; look it up) until
at least the prescribed six-week waiting period was up. I'm not even sure when exactly we did first re-attempt the horizontal mambo.
I do, however, remember
tensing up, bracing myself, waiting, waiting … and …
it felt GOOD!
The hardest and best thing I ever did when it comes to little ones and sleep? Adjust my expectations.
It's when I'm most stuck in my ideas that I should have a set number of uninterrupted hours of sleep in a particular environment at a particular time that I lose the most sleep! And the sleep that I do get isn't as refreshing or appreciated.
When I can let go of my need for "perfect" sleep, I can enjoy and optimize the sleep opportunities I have as an attachment mother of young children.
…
Here are a few tips as you transition to a new way of thinking about sleep.
Want to read more? Of course, you do!
Every month the
joint newsletter from Hobo Mama, Code Name: Mama, and Natural Parents Network wings its way to inboxes all around the world, bringing compelling content like the article I wrote for the June newsletter on Safe Sleep.
So
subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter:
original articles, linked resources around the month's theme, newsletter-exclusive giveaways and deals, fun polls, and more — all delivered right to your inbox!
Subscribe now to get the June 1 issue with the article above on sleep expectations!
And now you know why Sam & I have trouble finding a place to sleep…
Today's post is in the realm of passing on mama tips among the tribe. I'm sure other people have discovered this trick, but I've found it very handy and want to make sure it's out there where people can use it.
If your nursling has fallen asleep on the nipple and is comfort sucking, and you want to unlatch for whatever reason, what do you do?
Before I tell you what
I do, let me just say something about
comfort or non-nutritive nursing: It's totally beneficial so shouldn't be knocked. Particularly in early breastfeeding days, all that comfort sucking can help regulate and increase milk supply, so encourage it however you can manage if you have low supply issues.
Plus, there's no reason to feel like you "shouldn't" allow comfort nursing — don't feel guilt or pressure from silly people taunting you with "Your baby's using you as a pacifier!" No, no, no: Pacifiers are an artificial representation of comfort sucking on mama's nipple, not the other way around!
I'm Lauren Wayne, writer and natural parent. I embrace attached parenting with an emphasis toward green living. 
