Getting Back in the Habit

Posted on September 4, 2009 by Gwen

I would love to insert a joke about a nun here, but the only nun jokes I know are the dirty ones my very Catholic grandmother has told me.  I will just let you know that most of them are enough to make almost anyone blush, especially when they are told by my grandmother. Did I mention that she was very Catholic and Irish?  (Well Australian but that is another story I think I will tell very soon.)  I am currently not writing for as many blogs and when I went from writing posts every day to three times a week I got out of the habit.  I do post to twitter a lot but it isn’t the same.

I need to be writing more.  I need my personal blog to be a jumping board for more writing jobs.  I need my personal blog to be a portfolio as well as a personal journey as a mother with two children.  I need to be working more on journaling the accomplishments of my second son as he is growing and changing so incredibly fast.  I need to get into the habit of writing again.  I need to get into the habit of writing better again.  I don’t want all the work I have put in the last year to disappear.  I want to become a better writer.  I want to have more of an audience.  I want to have more of a conversation with commenters.  I want to have commenters period.  I want to be at BlogHer next summer and be proud to talk about my blog.  I know this all leads back into the writing.  There will not be an audience without content and good content at that.   I am not talking about search engine optimization, just good old fashioned words blending together to become something more.

So here is my pledge.  I will write here much more often.  I will be more honest with my writing.  For family reading this may mean some posts are not going to be your cup of tea.  I will endeavour to improve my writing.  I will give myself more deadlines.  I will write some reviews including book reviews, but I may move them over to a review blog.  I will  start posting to Menu Plan Monday again, though that is more for my personal organizational goals rather than any particular writing goals.  I will  start writing down some of our family stories.  (I think they are valuable as writing exercises as well as being a history for Aidan and Quinlan.)

I know that this is not perfect and I will need to work on all aspects of my blog, but I think it is a good start.

Posted in Aidan | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Where is a Sleep Guru When You Need One?

Posted on September 3, 2009 by Gwen

When my now 10 month old was only 2 months old he slept like nobody’s business.  He would go to sleep around 11 pm and not wake until 5 am, nurse for a bit and go back to sleep for another few hours.  I still like between 8 and 9 hours of solid sleep myself, but it was doable.  Then somewhere between 5 and 6 months Quinlan decided (well at least his body decided) that it was time to actually start pushing out some teeth.  They take forever and come in 1 at a time.  They must also hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.  At least this is my inference because of the waking and general crankiness.  Just so you know, the waking happens between every 1.5 to 3 hours.  Quinlan usually gets his biggest chunk of sleep from 7:30 pm till somewhere between 11 pm to 2 am.  Unfortunately I hardly get to sleep before 11 pm at the earliest.  It is usually closer to 11:30 or midnight.

Quinlan is still not much of a napper unless he is attached to the breast, in the stroller (moving), in the car (also moving) or lying on my lap on the nursing pillow.  This is not a good thing either.  About the only good thing I took away from the Weissbluth book was figuring out your child’s tiredness signals.  At least with this Quinlan shows them much better than Aidan ever did.  These signals are what told us that Quinlan needs to be going down to bed at around 6:45-7:00 pm.  If we push the time it is harder to get him to nurse to sleep, though Anthony can usually lie down with him and get him over the edge to sleep.

Quinlan Sleeping as an Infant

The Good Old Sleeping Days

So with Quinlan waking so many time during the night now Anthony and I are incredibly sleep deprived.  I have a hard time getting back to sleep especially if I get up to soothe, feed and generally move Quinlan back to sleep in his crib.  I will do this for the first session but after a while Quinlan ends up in the bed with us.  Neither Anthony or I sleep well with Quinlan in the bed.  He doesn’t sleep for longer periods, we just don’t need to have the extra step of going into the boys’ room to get him.  He has started shunning the soother (in the wee hours) and will cry when Anthony tries to soothe him.  I am at my wit’s end.

Before we get any comments about this, we don’t want to keep co-sleeping and we have no intention of ever trying Cry It Out ever again.  It was horrific for everyone when we tried it the Weissbluth way and didn’t work except to make it that much harder to get Aidan to sleep at all.  We will not try it for Quinlan and because we need to have the boys share a room it isn’t something that is at all practical either.

I will be checking out a number of sleep books from the library and some twitter friends have promised to lend me some as well.  Watch the blog for updates and reviews of the sleep books and training methods.  Maybe there is something we can do with the child who stands up the nanosecond he stirs.

Posted in Bed Time, My Boys, parenting mistakes, Quinlan, sleep, teething | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Lovable Labels: Review

Posted on September 1, 2009 by Gwen

I was asked if I wanted to test and review Lovable Labels by Jeanette of Limelite PR.  I told her as long as they were happy to have a frank review then I was willing.  I was given a Back to School pack of labels and I had them mailed to my in-laws’ place in Nova Scotia so I could test them while we were on vacation there.  I figured if they could last while we geocached, go through the dishwasher (several times), go through the washing machine (hot water) and dryer or line and help tag our bags while going through the airport we would be doing a thorough test.

Things I Disliked:

  1. You can only put one name on them.  Especially with the  bag tags it would be useful to be able to have the name on one side and contact information on the other.  It would also be useful in a household of more than one child to be able to split the tags up into two names.
  2. The monochromatic colour schemes.  It would be nice to have some other colours or a more mixed pack of colours.  I would love to see some green and orange.
  3. More choice of icons and the ability to mix up a few different icons in the set of labels.
  4. The shoe labels have a clear cover that are exactly the same size.  It would help make it easier to cover the show labels if they were at least a little bigger.
  5. The ball chain comes apart very easily and I will change it to a key ring so that my 10 month old will not choke on the bag tag.
Aidan with his personal Bag Tag

Aidan with his personal Bag Tag

Things I Liked:

  1. They really stick.  All the tags that have been through the washer, dishwasher and dryer over the past two weeks have stayed on.
  2. They came quickly after I ordered them with the correct name and icon.
  3. They are cute and readable.
  4. There are enough labels to make sure that all your child’s belongings are tagged.
  5. My son loves the icon he chose and that he has a lot of his belongings tagged as his own.
Lovable Labels

Lovable Labels

Would I spend my own money on these labels?  I think if I could easily have a mix of two names I would.  This year at preschool I am not so worried about Aidan losing too many things, but next year when he starts Kindergarten I will want to label everything.  It is so much easier to label and find things in the dreaded “Lost and Found” box than to go through and hope you remember what they were wearing.  As a teacher I would be happy if every child labelled their belongings as well.  It saves so many disagreements over who actually owns an item.  Just make sure that you have both first and last names on your labels because there is likely to be another child with your child’s first name.  Well at least if you fell into the trap we did.  Although if Aidan keeps his silly name all I need to do is label everything Doctor Beaks.  No one else will have that name, right?

If you would like to get your own pack of Back to School Labels I have a discount code for you for the next two weeks.  Head over to Lovable Labels and choose the Back to School Mega Pack from the front page.  When checking out use the code leftcoastmama to receive a 10% discount off your order.  Lovable labels is a Canadian company but they have US distributors as well.  The discount code works in both countries.

Since I am in the midst of writing my about pages, including my policies for doing product reviews, I will state the most relevant here.  I was not paid to review these products, though I did receive a Back to School Mega Pack of labels with Aidan’s name on them.  I was not asked to write a favourable review and I made sure they were not expecting one.  If you have any questions or comments about the labels feel free to leave a comment here or email me at leftcoastmama@gmail.com

Posted in Aidan, Gwen, organization, Product Reviews | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Lovable Labels: Review

Twitter Updates for 2009-09-01

Posted on September 1, 2009 by Gwen
  • ANother Migraine & trying to get back into the swing of things. Not going so well yet. At least laundry is done & the suitcases unpacked. #
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments Off on Twitter Updates for 2009-09-01