Installation of program “Babby Sleep” was not successful. (R)etry?

Tags

babies, bath time, bedtime routine, johnson's, no-cry sleep solution, research, sleep, sleep profile, sleep training, studies

I’m so tired. 

Babby’s sleeping patterns are so unpredictable that I always feel blindsided. When (as on Sunday night) he sleeps soundly in three hour bursts, and nighttime disruptions are minimal (fuss, nurse, conked out again in moments), I’m like “WHAT DID I DO RIGHT??” and when, as in last night, he refuses to stay asleep for more than half an hour to an hour at a time, I’m like “WHY????”

I can’t find rhyme or reason to it.

It isn’t how much solid food he has in a day, because before last night’s disturbed night he gobbled fish sticks and green beans. It isn’t how much milk he gets, because he was on the boob all night last night. It could be the amount of nap time in the day, because he had slept surprisingly well yesterday afternoon, but then he has had just as disrupted nights that we have blamed on overtiredness due to LACK of napping during the day.

It feels like a crap shoot.

If you’re wondering how my no-cry-sleep-solution training is going, the answer is: haltingly. 

Because the kid keeps getting colds.

Every time I start the pop-him-off-the-boob-before-he-falls-asleep program, I notice a difference within 24 hours. Longer, more sound sleeps. It works. Problem is, I never really manage to advance the program because then the crafty kid comes down with a cold and can’t sleep because he can’t breathe and I abandon any sleep training out of desperation. When it’s the sixth wakeup before midnight, you just don’t care anymore.

JUST GO TO SLEEP. HERE, HAVE A BOOBA. HAVE ALL THE BOOBA.

A week later when he’s breathing well and no longer sneezing snot bubbles onto my nipples, I have to start from scratch again.

Then I read this Science Daily report about an online program offered by Johnson & Johnson that dispenses helpful advice to parents about sleep. Now, I have a soft spot for Johnson’s because I appeared in a commercial for their shampoo when I was three, and I remember it well.

So I did the report. You know what they told me?

Stargirl

Tags

book reviews, books, Jerry Spinelli, literature, stargirl

I pledge allegiance to the United Turtles of America and to the fruit bats of Borneo, one planet in the Milky Way, incredible, with justice and black bean burritos for all.

There are all kinds of books.

There are funny books and informative books and comfort books and junky books… and things like Twilight which Perfect Husband refuses to catagorize as a book at all. When I say, “can you hand me my book?” and gesture at a Meyer novel, he responds irritably “that’s not a book!”

But some books are more than just books.

Some books have a soul.

She laughed when there was no joke. She danced when there was no music.

She had no friends, but she was the friendliest person in school.

In her answers in class, she often spoke of seahorses and stars, but she did not know what a football was.

Stargirl is one of those books.

Whenever I read this book, I emerge feeling reverent, and sad, and joyful, and somehow cleansed.

I am a stone, a cactus thorn. I am rain

Cleansed of what? Conformity, perhaps. Selfishness. Obliviousness. Or maybe it’s more what I have been given. New eyes to see with, a new heart to feel with. A feeling of guilt. A feeling of hope that I can change.

She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.

She taught me to revel. She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh.

It is a celebration, more than anything else.

For years the strangers among us had passed sullenly in the halls; now we looked, we nodded, we smiled. If someone got an A, others celebrated, too. If someone sprained an ankle, others felt the pain. We discovered the colour of each other’s eyes. 

It was a rebellion she led. A rebellion for, rather than against. For ourselves. 

But there is a wistfulness, too. A feeling of “wouldn’t it be nice?” A sense of opportunities lost, and lessons not learned in time.

The Amish in Pennsylvania have a word for it.”

“What’s that?” I said.

“Shunning.

Like a flower or a newborn baby, it makes me marvel at how something so small can be so perfect. Spinelli’s prose is concise and flawless, and it has the same delicious flavour of legend you find in Maniac Magee. The story is short and simple – you could read it in an afternoon – but will change the way you see the world.

Stargirl, you just can’t do things the way you do.[…]You can’t just wake up in the morning and say you don’t care what the rest of the world thinks.”

Her eyes were wide, her voice peepy like a little girl’s.

“You can’t?

…at least, for a while.