How to Connect to Your Baby…and Yourself

“How was your weekend?” “Fine. Thanks for asking. How about yours?” Pretty standard, right? I’ve said it. That’s just what people say on Monday. But today if you’d asked me this question over a cup of coffee, my answer would have been different. Not longer really, just different. How was it then you ask? In a word, it was “connected”.

It was one of those rare treats of a weekend. Dinner with my husband, drinks with a couple we hadn’t seen in years, a family BBQ in the backyard, complete with roasting marsh mellows (in the fire pit we bought 3 years ago that has seen about as much action as my bread maker…not much…), a “clothes swap” with 15 girl friends where we all picked through each other’s unwanted items over gooey butter cake, each leaving with an armful of free “new” clothes… and to top it off, a beautiful Sunday morning walk with my 5 year old daughter and our puppy Trixie. Sometimes “fine” just doesn’t cover it.

Sure, the laundry is insane, a tall pile of bills still sits here by my computer begging for attention and my dog isn’t quite there when it comes to being house broken (as I just discovered on the dining room rug). No, I did not fall off planet Earth into Bliss-ville. I’m still here, two feet planet firmly on the ground. But this past weekend and the sense of connection it left me with, spending time with friends, family…and myself, makes the other things feel just a little bit easier to accept today.

And so it is with our babies. How’s that for transition? You knew I was going to bring this back full circle to parenting didn’t you? But I cannot help but think that this is exactly how our babies feel when we give them our full attention. It is the thing I like best of all the many benefits infant massage…CONNECTION.

Connect Through Massage

Speaking as a mother that once tried to breastfeed and change her babies diaper at the same time, I know the need for support in slowing down to just be with our babies. Simply creating special time for massage with your little one does this. It will leave you and your baby feeling, in a word, “connected”.

If we are moving fast, sometimes we can forget how connected we really are in this life. As parents, our children help make this “A-PARENT” for us. It’s part of their job description. They help us slow down and remember. This week, I invite you to connect with your children in a very simple way through massage. I hope you enjoy this short little photo film I created to help inspire you to make massage a ritual in your family. Just click on the title that follows…“KNOW LOVE MASSAGE”.

So crank up the computer volume and get ready to feel that awesome feeling that we all want…for our children and for ourselves…connection. I’d love to hear from you if you already use massage with your children and what you and your children have gotten out of it. I hope you have a good week and that it’s better than fine!

 

 

 

 

How to Get Your Toddler to Bed

We’ve been having struggles getting my 3yo to bed in a timely manner of late, so my son and I just made a “good night chart” that I’m hoping will help him get to bed and STAY THERE! I printed out a bunch of pictures from Do 2 Learn and asked him to color all the ones he thought had something to do with going to bed. He selected “take off clothes”, “put on pajamas”, “put on toothpaste” (to symbolize brushing teeth…he liked it better than the actual brushing teeth one), “bath”, “sleep”, “television” (he likes to watch “the Good Night Show” on Sprout as a calming activity in the evening), “no crying”, and “no kicking” (which he said means no getting out of bed). We also selected a food picture and he drew a circle with a line through it to show no eating after bath.

After he selected his pictures and colored the ones he wanted, I helped him cut them out. We then talked about what order they should go in and he glued them on the paper. The actual activities formed a column with the “no” ones off to the side as a reminder. I wrote a starting and ending time on the chart along with pictures of what those times look like on the clock in the living room. I’m going to hang it on the bathroom door, where we have a number of other family business papers he is familiar with. My son is quite pleased with his chart.

Contributed by Chris Keith.

How to Find Your Child’s Parenting Manual

Ok…where’s the manual??? How many of us have felt that way when we are first sent out of the hospital with our little bundle of joy held snuggly in our arms? It would be nice though. Just turn to page 3 on crying and you will see exactly what you need to do. Not sleeping? Please turn to page 12.

Well, this may be hard to believe, but our children do come with a manual. And we actually get a different one with each child, each manual as as unique as they are. And like all manuals, just because we are given the manual doesn’t mean we immediately have all the knowledge inside memorized just by holding it. No, we will actually have to READ the manual if it’s going to help us. Or in the case of the manual that comes with each child, we need to LISTEN to it. You see, this manual is called our intuition.

The hard thing about intuition and parenting is that so often, as new moms, we are clear about one thing…we know nothing!!! I know it feels that way. But I am here to tell you, and hear me loud and clear, “Yes you do!!!” If it feels like you were absent the day this thing called “a mother’s intuition” was handed out, relax. It might just be that you are standing there holding it in your hands, wishing you knew what it said inside, frustrated that you don’t. Hey, I got an idea. Let’s OPEN IT UP and let that information in!

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How to Introduce Your Baby to Real Food

I realize the food you’ve been feeding your baby isn’t exactly fake, but it’s certainly not the same as the food the rest of your family is eating. The goal is to get your baby eating the same foods as the rest of the family. Right now, we’re focusing on simply introducing these foods.

Up to this point, you’ve been feeding your baby breast milk or formula, cereal, and pureed foods. We added cereal and pureed foods slowly to identify any potential allergies. We’ll do the same thing with solid foods. If you’ve determined that your baby has a food allergy, avoid that food during this process.

Good Starter Foods
These foods are relatively easy to mush up with or without teeth. They’re also less likely to cause choking than other foods.
* Toast
* Crackers
* Bananas
* Spaghetti
* Canned Fruits in Juice – The idea here is to remove the peel. If you feel like doing it yourself, go for it.
* Cooked Carrots
* Cooked Peas – Mush them up slightly with your fork.

Foods to Avoid
These foods are choking hazards. Wait to introduce these foods until your baby has more teeth and is comfortable with chewing before swallowing.
* Grapes
* Hot Dogs
* Nuts
* Popcorn

Honey – No honey for the first year. It can carry trace amounts of C. botulinum spores that won’t harm you and me, but may harm your baby.

Milk – Avoid whole milk for the first year. Then replace breast milk or formula with whole milk. After your baby turns two, you can go down to low fat or even skim milk.

Real Foods They’re Already Eating
Chances are your baby is already eating some “real” foods. If they’re not eating them now, start introducing them now.
* Yogurt
* Mashed Potatoes
* Mashed Sweet Potatoes
* Pudding
* Jello
* Ice Cream/Sorbet/Sherbet

Remember that babies need a decent amount of fat in their diet. Don’t stress about the amount of fat in their diet. Babies also have a pretty good sense of when they’ve had enough. I know it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference between the “I’m done eating” look and the “that’s gross” look. Be patient and trust your instincts on this one.

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How to Find Balance for Life

If someone’s got a simple answer to the above I wanna know! I don’t propose to have the answer either, but I sure do a lot of thinking about it. As a mother of two, wife, business owner, best friend, daughter, neighbor, big sister, little sister, and Aunt, balance is one of the most important, if not at times elusive, things in my life. I think of it as not a place I expect to “get to” so much as a way I can choose to travel along the way. To say this in other words, I don’t expect to “get balanced” so much as I enjoy “feeling balanced”. Does this make sense?

What brought up these deep thoughts you ask??!! Today, cleaning out my home office (in a search of finding some much needed home office balance) I came upon my journal from New Years Eve, 2005. To give you some perspective, my youngest daughter Morgan was 2 years old and Reilly was five.

Here’s my journal entry from that day; the thing that led me to write to you on finding balance today:

Dec 31^st, 2005

“…I told Shawn (that’s my husband) that lately I’ve felt like I was living inside a pressure cooker. We’ve all been sick this past week, bringing the cooker to a boil. I’ve been living out of the “get it done” side of me, the part that wants to work it out, figure it out, get it right…manage it. I think of this as the Yang side of me. I’m tired of getting things done.

There is something about the words BE STILL that call me. I am tired. I want to lie down and just be. I want to slow down my words, tell my tongue to just HOLD IT. I want to feel the action of inaction. I think of this as the Yin side of me. To be, to receive, to allow. Where have you been Yin??!! Boy, have I been neglecting you…”

In my jounal, I then made a list of things I wanted to give up in my life and things I wanted to embrace in my life. I was preparing for the New Year no doubt. This flowed right into a “Need To Do” list and an attempt to put all these “needs” into my week in an orderly fashion. I had a little weekly calender all charted out and everything, M-F, 6am – 9pm. I’m laughing now as I look at this because I remember what happened near the end of this little New Years preparation exercise. I ran out of time slots. My week did not hold enough time to fit all the things I had on my NEED to DO list.

Take A Look At Your Life

These words alone are telling. Life was not a “get to” for me at this point in time. It was more like a “need” to. I didn’t feel like I had much control over my life. If I did, the list might have read “Want to Do” or “ My Important Things List”. This may sound trite, but it’s really important because words can tell us a lot about how we are feeling, especially when we can’t admit to ourselves let alone other people how we are feeling. Looking back, that was exactly how I was feeling. NEED TO DO.

Today, life is full. I still wear alot of hats. But when I look at my week, my “Want To” list is a little longer and my “Need To” list a little shorter. (Of course my kids are three years older which helps. Let’s not kid ourselves here.) Today, I don’t expect to HAVE balance nor do I chase after balance. I am aware of balance. I think about it. I admire it. And it sure is nice when I feel it.

What Do Your Lists Look Like?

Look at your life. Make some lists. What looks like a “need” or “have to” in your life? Can you shift any of them to fall under “want to” or “important things” instead? All the needs and have to’s in life won’t go away (like last week when I HAD to get all our papers in order to get our new car tags…) but many of them will. Doing laundry is now happily on my important things list…as well as my husbands. Did I mention this last little tip? You can take things off your list and put them on other people’s lists. Aughhh yes! Balance…isn’t it a lovely thing?