Sing To Me Mama

We made it! Ryder turned 1 on the 22nd of March. We celebrated with friends, family, balloons and chocolate cake I can’t believe how fast my baby is growing up! His birthday was a very emotional day for me…I had my eye on the clock the entire day and kept thinking back on the day he was born and what I was doing at that time…10:00am…water broke…11:00am arrived at the hospital…11:30am…contractions started…3:00pm epidural…6:00pm time to push…11:20pm…Ryder came into my world…what a crazy day…it was like a dream when I think back. He is a dream. My little dream come true.

A mother of 2 said to me the other day…”The days might seem long, but the years go by fast.”

Here is a soup recipe the whole family can enjoy! Ryder, now almost 10 months old, eats it up and practically licks the bowl!

Sweet Potato and Butternut Squash Soup

1 onion, chopped
9 cups stock (veg or chicken)
3 med sweet potatoes (peeled & cubed)
1 butternut squash (peeled & cubed)
6 tbsp butter
1/4 cup maple syrup
*1 tbsp red curry paste (optional)
3 sprigs fresh or dried thyme
1/8 tsp nutmeg
Salt and Pep to taste

Saute onions in the butter. Add curry and simmer 6 mins. Add squash and potatoes, thyme, maple syrup and stock and cook until veggies are soft.

Puree and serve! If you want to get fancy, serve with a dollop of plain yogurt or sour cream and a few chopped chives or sprigs of cilantro.

Recipe By: Sarah Morrison

I read this quote in a Parenting magazine today – “As parents, we’re good at being our children’s cheerleaders – but we need to cheer for ourselves too.”

Another summer comes to an end and the feeling of fall starts to hang in the air My husband and I always refer to the fall as the  beginning of a NEW YEAR Even as a kid it always felt like New Years Eve was the night before school started We still say to eachother, “Smells like a back to school day” when that crisp cool smell of fall blows through the trees and tall grass and the crickets sing out and the sun sets on the fields of golden rod. I am more of a spring/summer kinda person…fall is beautiful, but I am not a fan of the cold winter weather it slowly introduces in the months of October and November :/ + I don’t look good in turtle necks

Looking back on this summer, we really didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. We went on a few day trips here and there, walked in the park(s), went swimming in our parents pools and spent a few nights at the family cottage in Cambridge Narrows … yet somehow, it all seemed new and refreshing Everything was new again looking at it through Ryder’s eyes. It was like introducing a little alien to our world. The sights, the sounds, the textures, and the smells were all fun to explore again. His tiny hands and feet feeling the pool water and waves in the lake … his toes squishing in the muddy beach banks and touching the flowers and grass we sat in at the park. He is seeing/hearing/feeling all these things we do every summer for the first time ever and I am just as excited to introduce him to the places, people and things I loved (still love) as a child growing up.

Even though I am not a fan of winter…the thought of Ryder seeing and touching snow for the first time makes me look forward to it … Christmas will be fun this year!!

This time last year, I took 5 pregnancy tests and they all revealed a bright blue + (positive) symbol .

Like most Mom’s, I have been obsessed with sleep ever since Ryder entered my life…it’s the first thing people ask me – “Are you getting any sleep?” – “Does he sleep well for you?”…even before he was born people would scare me by saying things like – “Get ready for no sleep!”, or my favourite – “Get your sleep now before the baby is born”… as if you can bank hours of sleep?? I heard this so many times when I was pregnant!! Made my blood boil! Being a big sleeper myself, I was terrified at what I was getting myself into…and what does that really mean any way? “Get ready for no sleep”?? A baby has to sleep at some point don’t they? … Don’t they? :/

Whenever I get together to chat with other Mom’s, sleep is the #1 topic…how many naps our little one takes in the day, what time they go to bed, how we get them to go to sleep, how long they sleep at night and/or how many times they are up through the night, what tricks and trinkets we buy to help soothe them to sleep… I had no idea it was so difficult to fall asleep!!…apparently, it’s something we all have to learn how to do…I had no idea! I thought it would be as natural as breast feeding (NOT)! haha!

One very important sleep fact I learned while reading a book on baby sleep habits, is that an infant should not be awake for more than 1 and 1/2 hrs to 2 hrs. No one ever told me this! I was forever trying to figure out why Ryder was being so fussy during the day, not knowing that he needed to sleep after every hour or so of being awake!! At 5 months old, he now naps 3-4 times a day – once in the morning, then around noon and then again at 3pm…sometimes, depending on how long he sleeps in the afternoon, he will have a short little siesta around 5pm  - then it’s bedtime…on a good night it’s 8pm and pretty well every other night it’s anywhere between 8pm-10pm :/!…we are working on bedtime :/

The only way to get my little man to sleep is to nurse him into a milk coma…then ever so carefully I place him in his crib with fingers crossed that his eyes stay shut when his head meets the mattress! This sometimes takes 2 or 3 tries before he is down and out for the night. Naps are similar, only instead of him sleeping in his crib, he sleeps on my bed as I nurse him to sleep beside me. If we are out and about, he will sometimes sleep in the car (he hates his car seat…most times he bawls until we’ve reached our destination… :/) or if we are at a friends place I will nurse him to sleep in my arms. I really shouldn’t complain, because he will nap and he will sleep for most of the night, it’s the getting him to sleep that troubles me :/. I have read a couple of books on sleep habits and they both say you should put your baby to bed drowsy, but not completely asleep…the idea is for the baby to learn how to fall asleep on their own without any assistance – ie: nursing to sleep….I wish it were this easy… :/

I have tried the “Let Him Cry” method, which requires you to put your baby down in their crib after nursing, drowsy but not asleep, let them fuss/cry for 1 minute, then go in and soothe them until they settle down, leave the room and if they start to fuss again, return to them after 2 minutes and soothe again, (don’t pick them up – just rub their belly or touch their face and tell them it’s sleepy time etc..), leave room, wait 3 mins and repeat adding 1 minute on every time until the baby stops crying and finally falls asleep…an hour into the first night of trying this method and Ryder was a monster…all red in the face and sobbing uncontrollably….broke my heart…I can’t bear to do this to him again anytime soon.

After many discussions with other Mom’s and reading up on sleep books, I find myself willing to try anything to get Ryder to fall asleep on his own without me feeding him into a milk coma every nap/bed time….Just the other day I purchased a battery operated fish mobile, a blankie, a new soother, and a light/bright musical crib aquarium. The soother is a no go…he used to be all about the soother a couple of months ago, but now he won’t have anything to do with it! The blankie (giraffe – name – Cherry) seems to be working. I give it to him when it’s naptime and of course at night…he cuddles, flips, sucks, and gnaws on it (it’s soaked with drool most of the time:)). I would have to say that Cherry is definitely becoming a signal for him that it’s “Sleepy Time”. I have not yet assembled the mobile, but I did hook the cool light/bright aquarium to his crib…and to my surprise this gadget seems to be working too! The light and moving fish catch his attention when I put him in his crib, so instead of fussing and crying, he’ll calmly stare at the aquarium light and fall as sleep…this of course has only worked a few times so far, but it gives me hope knowing he can fall asleep on his own without me beside him!  I know he will get the hang of it…he is after all only 5 months old.

My husband cracks me up…one morning after getting up through the night to feed Ryder, my stomach started to not feel so good and I thought I was going to be sick…I managed to finish feeding Ryder and placed him in his crib awake…of coure he started to fuss, but I was not feeling well and needed to use the washroom ASAP…so I woke my husband and told him I wasn’t feeling well and that he needed to go to Ryder and do whatever he could do to help him go back to sleep….after about 15 mins in the washroom, I opened the door and listened in the hallway expecting to hear crying and fussing, but instead there was silence….I peeked in at Ryder and he was sound asleep with Cherry in his arms and his aquarium light on and the sound of soft gurgling water (this is the sound the aquarium makes)…I went back to my bedroom, all proud of my husband, only to find him sleeping in the same position I left him before running to the washroom…I woke him and asked, “What did you do to help Ryder settle down?”…he sleepily replied “Ahhh….nothing??” . Ryder had fallen back to sleep on his own! Yay!!! So he is getting the hang of it…There is hope!

Nights that Ryder does sleep through the night (which are very rare), I find myself lying awake almost all night just waiting for him to wake up :/. My internal alarm clock wakes me up automatically every morning at 3:30am…I’ll listen hard with fingers crossed…sometimes there won’t be a peep coming from the room across the hall and sometimes my Little Dragon stirs…:)