Parenting from Scratch

I’m feeling pretty grown up about our new bedding. We’ve maintained our old sense of style by adding the wrinkles. Here’s hoping the dogs don’t trash it.

So, last Thursday morning (What is it with Thursdays lately?), right when I was about to leave for work, I went into Sadie’s room and discovered this (this is taken a few minutes later):

Yep, Sadie’s crib rail split. We’re not sure if one of us did it, putting Sadie back in sometime in the course of the night. Or if we need to be concerned that The Company is going to come looking for Sadie. Either way, suck-ola. So! I might have been a little hasty when I commanded, TAKE THE DAMN THING APART! I could just imagine Sadie busting through it that night, or gouging her eye out on the jagged wood (and I use the term “wood” lightly here). Sadie thought it was fantastic (say CHEESE):

How fun to have her bed on the floor! I’d been thinking off and on about transitioning Sadie to a low bed, especially since hearing a friend of mine talk a little about what she’d learned about low beds in the Montessori tradition. I definitely hadn’t quite planned on doing it yet, and I really had wanted to be slow and deliberate about it (as I was moving her from the bassinet/our bed to the crib/our bed to just the crib). But I’d just heard how good Sadie has been sleeping on her cot at daycare, so I figured, what the heck. We’ll give it a shot.

So I mulled this over on my way to work. And the whole morning, I kept thinking of how not-entirely-baby-safe Sadie’s bedroom was. Sure, she could hang there unattended for a while with one of us in the house, awake. But the thought of her roaming her room in the middle of the night, with a diaper pail to get into and who knows what else… So, I took the afternoon off. I did a tiny bit of shopping and found at an antique store a little table and stool that seemed just the right size for Sadie. I rearranged furniture and cleaned the floor. I was actually getting a little excited.

I took out most of her toys and left behind just a handful. The Montessori concept as far as sleeping goes is that all children, even babies, shouldn’t be restricted in their movement–night or day. I was prepared that Sadie would likely wake up in the night, as she does in her crib. But I kind of imagined Sadie getting up, playing with a puzzle or baby doll, and then putting herself back to sleep.

I was obviously out of my gourd. That night was a total train wreck. I’m sure that if you start your baby from infancy in a low bed, having a night like we had happens every so often. It took me nearly two hours to get Sadie to sleep, eventually letting herself wear down by running from the low bed to me and back, again and again, nursing every handful of laps. She slept soundly from 9:00 to 3:30 in the morning, but then she was up! Up. As in, took Trevor and me until 5:15 to get her back down. Not okay. And the way we got her back to sleep? Trevor rearranged the room halfway back to how it was and put the crib back together. He duct taped the split part and put that part against the wall. Not exactly ideal, and I’ve got some phone calls to make to see about a replacement part. Some of my work has stayed, though. We all really like the table and stool and the dressing area. Sadie can pick out what she wants to wear, and she even will put her shoes back when she’s not wearing them. She’s definitely a big girl, but I think we’re going to wait quite a bit longer before trying the big girl bed again.

Does anybody have any tips on how to make this transition easier next time? I’m sure just her being developmentally more ready will make a big difference. But I’d love to hear some success stories.

Wowza. I’m glad it’s Friday. This has definitely been one of those weeks where, if it’s not one thing, it’s something else. I don’t like being a Master Complainer, but I need to get this off my chest.

This week we’ve:

• Had glass bottle of very sticky soda smash on the kitchen floor. Cleaned it up, but not well enough.
• Woken up to ants all over the sticky mess. Got rid of the ants and the stick mess with the steam mop.
• Cracked two horribly rotten eggs from our darling chickens (first time I’ve experienced that).
• Come home to Willow in her crate, surrounded by a pool of diarrhea and vomit (the crate that’s in the bedroom, our one carpeted room). This led to a multitude of complications, including the house reaching 85 degrees while we attempted to air it out.
• Experienced the at-least-weekly cat vomit in the morning.
• Woken up to another kitchen ant attack.
• Probably had other absurd things happen that have blissfully escaped my mind.

BUT! We’ve had some good, too:

• Sadie and I joined our friends for a end-of-the-summer swim and takeout dinner.
• I went to my second ICAN meeting and felt really good about it. Went more in-depth about Sadie’s birth story.
• Coincidentally bumped into a woman from the ICAN meeting as I was fleeing my poopy house and was invited to my first La Leche League meeting. This provided the perfect escape from the house–Sadie and I were able to eat dinner, play with other babies and talk about breastfeeding while the house aired out.
• As I write this, running late for work, Trevor is kindly fixing me breakfast so I can take a breather. Thanks, love.

Oh, how I hope this Friday and weekend go better than the rest of this week.

Is not that hard to make. I recently made my second batch, and I remembered to take some (not so awesome) pictures while I was at it.

All you need to do is:

1. Get a clean container and a scoop;
2. Grate one bar of plain Ivory soap, and put it in the container;
3. Add one cup of washing soda;
4. Add one cup of Borax;
5. Add one cup of Oxyclean (the kind without fragrance or any other extra stuff);
6. Put a lid on the container and shake to mix;
7. Add, five drops at a time–shaking to mix between–15 drops of tea tree oil; and…
8. Wash your clothes.

It takes maybe 20 minutes to do, and our first batch lasted a good long while. I’ll see how long this batch lasts.

There are a lot of homemade laundry detergents out there, even liquid, if that’s your thing. Here’s where I got started.

This can be messy!

Contrast between washing soda and grated soap.

Oxyclean.

Ingredients and finished product. I can get all of these, except the tea tree oil, at my nearby mainstream grocery store.

I feel like many people, before Sadie was born, talked a lot about how after we had Sadie, we’d be doing laundry all the time. Of course, we’re cloth diapering, so that was a no-brainer. But all along, I’ve been pretty pleasantly surprised that, other than the cloth diapers, we’ve only added one load of laundry to the week’s chore (usually done on Sunday), and sometimes only once every other week. It’s just kind of depended on how many outfits Sadie’s gone through in a week.

Enter solid food. And a messy eater.

Solid food + messy eater + time spent in the hamper = black spots on Sadie’s clothes!!!! Son-of-a-bitch! Turns out, people with kids are washing their kids’ clothes more often so that, you know, MOLD doesn’t grow on them.

I feel like a slob. Like an idiot. And kind of pissed off that now we’re going to have to figure out washing Sadie’s “soiled” clothes more frequently than once a week.

Anyone have any recommendations on getting the mold spots out? I’ve tried Oxyclean.

Okay, so I’m skipping a couple, because they’re blurry and it’s just more of me looking scaryfat in a pool of water.

April 2, 2009, 8:56pm. I've made it to the pushing stage. Trevor gets in the pool with me to help me through the contractions.