The Rabbit Who Wants To Fall Asleep: A Book Review

Maybe you’ve heard of it, it’s all over the major parenting news sites. Maybe you’ve trolled the over 40 pages of reviews on Amazon, mostly for a good laugh. Maybe you haven’t heard of it yet, but after reading this, you’ll go read the reviews (because seriously, great material for chuckles).

It’s The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep. A self-published book written by a psychologist in Sweden and translated into English.

It claims to make anyone fall asleep. And for a mere $12, I figured that it wouldn’t hurt. Our bedtime routine this summer had creeped up to 2+ hours, and I was seriously at my wits end. Potamus just hates going to sleep.

The plot in a nutshell, is that Roger the Rabbit is sleepy but has a hard time falling asleep. So he goes to a Wizard named Uncle Yawn, and along the way meets a few characters who give him some helpful advice. Readers are asked to emphasize the bolded sentences, and speak slowly and softly in the italicized portions, and “use your best fairytale voice.” If you can get beyond some of the strange tense changes, lots of words on each page, and home drawn pictures, to the heart of the story, then this book is great.

We were on vacation the first two nights that we started reading it. Night 1, Potamus had about 6,785 questions about the plot. “Why is Roger a rabbit? Why can’t he sleep? Where is his Daddy? Why is Uncle Yawn a person and not a rabbit?” I thought I was going to punch something. The book takes at least 25 minutes to read, so with his gazillion questions, I thought surely we were in for a long haul night (given that it was a new place).

Five minutes after the book ended?

Out like a light.

He simply turned over on his side and fell asleep.

I mean, seriously. It was magical to not have to sing 5 songs, rub his back for 30 minutes, get another glass of water, another snack, another song. Asleep.

We’ve been reading the book every night since. About 10 days in total. He asks for it at night, after his other 2-3 stories. Some nights (especially when Boof reads it in his deep man-voice) he falls asleep after a few pages. Sometimes he muscles through to the very end, but is out after 5-10 minutes of lying quietly in bed next to me. The cadence of reading, the repetition and the use of relaxation and hypnosis/guided meditation techniques, seem to help him calm his mind and body.

I’d recommend it. It’s not perfect, like anything. As an English major I have serious issue with some of the poor sentence construction, and lack of editing. But for us, it has been a very helpful tool in creating a bedtime ritual that is actually soothing for him. While bedtimes are not a snap, the fact that he’s asleep within 35-40 minutes from when we start the the process, certainly feels like magic! I’d say give it at least 3-4 times of reading it before throwing in the towel (unless the kid is older and adamantly refuses to listen to it, of course! You know your kid best!)

P.S. Every time I read the story, Boof falls asleep. Even when he tries to distract himself with his smart phone. I start reading and he starts snoring. I tell him that means he’s chronically sleep deprived…but he disagrees. Ha!

Day 1 of the Hostage Situation

July 1st.

I am writing this from my kitchen table. The dog is barking. The kid is sticking his head in a box of sand on the floor. I have afternoon nausea. It’s fucking hot. And I’m regretting this whole “let’s save money and not have me drive 1.5 hours a day to get kid to daycare and back everyday. It’ll be fun,” I said. Besides, now with a new baby on the way, we gotta save money for the crazy expensive daycare. And six months of me not working. But I digress.

School ended for me two weeks ago, but with some work from home, and a meeting to go to, I’ve been shlepping Potamus to daycare four days a week. Which has left me time for myself, even if it’s just a haircut, or lunch with my sister-in-law, and some time to write. I’m in a manuscript writing class, so trying to get my words on paper is best while listening to a podcast, instead of listening to a 3 year old declare “look at me mommy, look at me,” as he climbs onto the windowsill.

But it’s now summer break. Day 1. Normally we have Fridays off together, so I figured this would be fine. We’d sleep in. Dink around. Get groceries. Watch a show. Play some games.

Instead it was watching shows and whining. So much whining. Our easygoing grocery shopping took 1.5 hours thanks to a question about every damn thing I put into the cart. And asking why I didn’t put other things into the cart. Seriously. “But why mommmy?” “Because I don’t need soap.” “But why?” “Because we already have enough soap.” “BUT WHY MOMMY?”

The highlight of the day so far was getting my kid to eat foods he normally doesn’t eat for me. English muffin pizza and cherries. It felt like a dissertation victory, which then makes me feel like a fucking idiot who has already lost her standard for self congratulations. Yay my kid ate 8 cherries. Big fucking deal. Last year I managed to teach a heroin addict.

Oh comparisons. My work self. My mom self. My self who wants to just watch the Kardashians uninterupted.

The pregnancy hormones are insane this go-round, and “keeping it together,” looks like sobbing. And yelling.

Why did I want another baby anyway?

My “saving grace,” is going to exhaust me even more I’m afraid. I signed up to counsel from 8-6 on Thursdays through the first week of September. I’m excited because the money, paired with the money saved from daycare, is going to be about five thousand dollars. Not something to scoff at. But working 10 hours in one day counseling students isn’t exactly a break in the way I like breaks…ya know?

I know I’ll get in the groove. Already this afternoon I’ve enjoyed some time weeding the backyard, and reading some stories while he sits on my lap. I am sad for these moments already as I experience them, for this time next year, there will be two grasping at me for everything.

Rainboot Mindfulness

In the span of a few months, the only full priced pair of shoes I’ve ever bought Potamus, has failed. True he’s worn them threadbare, with all his tromping and climbing and sliding. But I wasn’t prepared for the rain boot replacement, and then I showed up to school today and the gash in the side of the boot (that I had, perhaps, frugally thought I would repair with a big swatch of duct tape), and a ripped strap, and just general disrepair. And I realized, “dang, it’s time to replace these boots.” As it so happens, we live in Seattle, and it’s January, and it’s…RAINING.

Thank goodness I let my students out early today, so Potamus and I headed down to Fred Meyer by our house to pick out new rain boots. He was thrilled. The whole ride there he sang a little song that went something like “rain boots, rain boots, new rain boots,” and then included things like “mommy, me, scrummy, me, house, rain boots, new rain boots.” The melody is hard to translate, but it was adorable. When we arrived at the brightly lit shelves of the toddler rain boot section, I realized…good thing I only have one kid, because a) DANG THESE ARE EXPENSIVE and b) DANG THIS TAKES FOREVER.

I squatted down, frantically looking for a replacement size 9, which we  bought a size too big four months ago. And only finding one pattern (which he quickly rejected) we opted to try on some size 8’s that actually fit really well, but make me nervous that he’ll grow out of them in 3.4 seconds. He tried on butterfly boots “like aubrey,” and princess ones “like bella’s,” and didn’t want the sharks because they were “like madden’s,” and finally, after digging through all that rubber, he decided on the one pair of dinosaur boots that fit. Phew.

But wait!

The hemming and hawwing began again.

“They’re too big mama,” he said, which I protested because there’s no way they were too big. Too small, maybe, but definitely not too big. So we tried on the shark pair again. And then looked at the butterfly pair. He rejected the ladybug that was sorta ‘like aubrey’s’ but not exactly the same. We looked at plain red, plain yellow, you get the idea.

Oh the toddler indecision.

But after about five minutes into the haggling with my tiny, I was actually enjoying myself. I remember going to get shoes as a kid and feeling so stifled by the choices because a) I was gigantic and had gigantic feet and b) my mom was cheap on a budget, and c) there were 3 of us and we were always in a rush from one thing to another. I know that the luxury of spending 30 minutes hemming and hawwing over the perfect pair of rainboots will not be something I can do forever. But in the world of hurry up, where I’m always hustling him out the door in the darkness to school, or coming home and slamming things down to start dinner/snacks/tv show/cleanup, it felt nice to simply notice all the designs available for him to choose from.

And when he strutted out of the store, and on his own said, “thanks for buying my new rainboots,” I smiled and drank in the sweet moment that passes all too soon.

one, two, THREE!

Happy Birthday to my sweet sweet boy. Three years ago he made me a mama, and he’s growing into such a lovely person that I can barely stand it!

Tiny Human or Mini Adult

Today I shared this Offbeat Home article,“On being raised as a ‘small person’ instead of being ‘treated like a child,’” on my Facebook page. I resonated with the ultimate message, about the inherent dignity of children, but after having two texting conversations with moms of young kids, I started to really evaluate and re-evaluate my position on the whole matter.

My Facebook status said, “this is my parenting philosophy. Potamus is a tiny person.” But then I began to reflect, on how some adults treat children like mini adults. That they forget the cognitive and emotional place of being 2 or 3 or 4, and how children do not have the same life experience and/or reasoning of consequence and pre-frontal cortex control and development that adults do. If the teens in my class can’t emotionally regulate, or think about consequences in the future, getting caught up in the moment, then how could I possibly expect a wee toddler to do that? I think there are parents who treat children the same way they would adults, and maybe they think this is giving respect to the children, but expecting a 2 year old to have the same cognitive reasoning or emotional control, is actually detrimental, in my opinion (and I’m sure there could be research out there, but I’m just a wee blogger and not looking for a persuasive argumentative paper).

An example, that I could think of from my own life, was the difficult ‘adult’ decision that was asked of the kids in our family when we were faced with an impending move. I was 12, my brother was 10, and my sister 7. We had been living without my dad for a year. He was home on weekends, but spent the rest of the week three hours away working for a radio station in Eastern Washington. My mom worked an early morning school district job, then came home, got us out the door for school, and then went back to work at another school district job. She was exhausted by 5pm, and I picked up a lot of the slack. While not a little child, I was still a kid, and when posed with the rock and hard place choice of “move to where your dad works,” or “live like this for six more years until you graduate from high school.” At the time the choice seemed ‘easy,’ but the emotional fallout of moving to an entirely new culture and making friends and leaving everything I loved behind. Because we had voted, it felt like there was no room to dislike the choice. I felt stuck, and like if I had voted to stay I would have been making my mom miserable, who was stuck parenting solo. I think if my parent’s had just said, ‘this is what we are going to do,’ I would have been angry with them. I would have lashed out and blamed them and been upset. Instead I swallowed my anger and it sidled into depression.

Then, there are the families that I’ve worked with as a crisis counselor, where the tiny people are treated like friends. Where five year old are privy to impending parental divorce before their other parent is. The teenagers who are crying out for boundaries, but met with the wishy washy bubblegum popping mom who sneaks out to clubs in her daughter’s Silver jeans. The adult thinks they’re respecting the kid by being friend-like, but it puts youth in the position of trying to figure out adulthood without an adult role model.

A few weeks ago I read some commentary about body autonomy, and how when they “have children, we’re not going to force them to do things that their body doesn’t want to do,” and I liked that idea, because doesn’t it feel shitty to have someone bigger than you telling you what to do? Like a boss, or the government, or your parents at Thanksgiving who can’t seem to realize you don’t want more turkey. You know? But here’s the thing, when you’re 3, and you have an ear infection, and you don’t want to take the bubblegum liquid, your parents might have to hold you down, and stick their fingers in your mouth, risk being bitten themselves. You might be sobbing, and saying “no mama, no mama,” but you don’t know about burst eardrums or hearing loss. You don’t understand ‘it’s for your own good,’ because you’re three years old and it just feels like you’re being forced into something you don’t want. And that’s a true story, from the Potamus ear infection files over the last week. Because, my job as a mom is to get him to take his medicine, and wear a coat. I might give a lot of body autonomy and freedom of choice over dinner options (yogurt? peanut butter crackers? blueberries?), but we will absolutely not go outside in sub freezing weather in basketball shorts and a Spiderman tank top.

So after I posted, and texted, I immediately thought “oh shit, I don’t believe that article at all,” and yet…yes I do. Because Potamus is short, he’s still a person, and I treat him like the tiny human he is. But I don’t want him to be a mini-adult, and he’s not my friend, (though sidekick, I’ll allow). He’s aboslutely equal on the soul level, worthy of every human dignity, and yet it’s my role to shephard him toward his own brand of adulthood, and that means letting him be a child, not forcing him to grow up too fast.

I want to kiss our pediatrician

 

This summer has been ROUGH in the sleep department. Partly the sunshine streaming in the window until well past 9pm, partly an attachment toddler who wants his mama thisclose to him all.the.time when he’s sleeping, has led to a spiral of sleep deprivation that was just not working anymore. Potamus needed a good 2.5-3 hours of me laying in his bed with him before he would fall asleep. We’d start bedtime routine around 7, and it’d be close to 10 every.damn.night before he’d fall asleep. We tried mixing it up, doing really active things before bedtime routine started (running, wrestling, playing hard). We tried quiet activities before bedtime routine (reading stories, turning off all electronics, warm showers). NOTHING worked. Not only did it take that long to fall asleep, he’d only stay asleep about 1-2 hours at most, and then want Mama. Which meant, in my exhaustion, he was coming into bed with me before I had really even gotten any sleep for the night. 

Now, I’m not opposed to co-sleeping…when it’s working. But his restlessness would continue, even after he was snuggled in bed with me. He’d kick his legs and twiddle my neck, digging his fingernails into my chin…all night long. I would wake up crabby and exhausted and frustrated that it wasn’t going well. 

So I made an appointment with our pediatrician. I thought maybe it was growing pains? Or after a quick google search I saw things like Restless Leg Syndrome, or iron deficiency, or all sorts of other ailments. But I love our pediatrician and figured he’d be able to help. 

His diagnosis: poor sleep hygiene. 

What I love about this guy, is that he has a way of saying things in the kindest, gentlest way, while also sharing about his life. He said that the only way to get Potamus to sleep differently was going to be making the behaviors go extinct, which means, not reinforcing them, which means…not laying next to him for 3 hours to get to sleep. But then he told me that it’s not something I HAVE to do, but told me how to do it, if I wanted to do it, in a way that I would feel good about. And then he divulged that his family co-sleeps, and his son is almost 10 and ‘really small and immature for his size, and he comes into our bed every night to snuggle. he just needs to sleep next to a human being for awhile to feel safe.’ 

Yeah,  my pediatrician co-sleeps his older elementary school age son. So he’s not just telling me to leave a 3 week old in a crib to cry it out. I felt hopeful. He said it’d be hard, but it’d work. 

And so that’s what were doing. We read stories, and snuggle, and I give unlimited hugs. I’m still in his bed until he falls asleep, but I’m no longer laying next to him. And until 2am (ideally around 5 would be best), if he wakes up crying, I go in there and snuggle him, and put him back in his bed, and wait until he falls asleep. The first two nights were brutal. It took him awhile to fall asleep, and then he was restless for a good hour in the middle of the night (aka midnight). He’d fall asleep, but as soon as I’d creep out he’d wake back up. He’d want 4 more hugs and then he’d go back to sleep. 

My goal is not to eliminate co-sleeping for good, just alter it a bit so we’re all getting sleep. Because work starts back for me in 2 weeks, and he can’t be going to bed at 10pm and getting up at 6. He’ll be a crabby zombie. 

We’re at 4 nights this week, and last night he fell asleep ‘on his own’ (with me there) relatively easily. And at midnight he woke up crying, but in the time it took me to pee, he had soothed himself back asleep. I went in there and checked on him…zonked out. He came into our bed around 3am. Already he’s getting more sleep in a row than before, AND when he does sleep next to me there is snuggling, but no twiddling, kicking, tossing and turning. He reaches out to touch me, then curls into himself and passes out. Exactly what I hoped for in our sleep relationship. I like having his little warm body next to mine, but I also like sleep. 

I’m so thankful that I have a compassionate pediatrician who listens to my life and helps create a plan for making it fit into our lifestyle. I feel like I’m able to do a modified ‘cry it out’ (without any crying?) that suits my attachment parenting needs, without going to an extreme that doesn’t feel congruent with my values as a mom. 

So here’s to a few more hours of blissful sleep…for all of us. 🙂

 

Potty Training Bootcamp

Last week Potamus leveled up to a new classroom, and while my head was still spinning at that transition, his teacher said “just so you know, I’m ready to potty train him whenever you are.”

Gulp.

Potty training. 

Potamus is only 2 years and 8 months old and a boy, which I naturally assumed meant he would potty train later, because that’s what everyone and their great aunt/second cousin/hairdresser said. Yeah, I figured potty training wasn’t going to be on the radar until Christmas or later. But with the teacher’s insistence that it’d be a good idea, and his friends are doing it too, I gave in to the peer pressure and rolled with it. 

Mari suggested doing the 3 day bootcamp method she used, which was 3 days off (which I happen to have built into my schedule every week regardles) filled with juice boxes and snacks and shows and running around naked or only in his new superhero underwear. It didn’t sound so bad, and so I headed off to the store to get supplies and get my head on straight about this whole business. 

Because once we decided to go for it, we weren’t going back, which was my biggest fear in the whole thing. Yikes. Commitment isn’t my strong point, really. And here I am, a baby led weaning, free range hippie dippy attachment type who still co-sleeps who let Potamus self-wean from nursing and I was…gulp…indulging in a potty training bootcamp. 

But, we forged on. 

Day 1

He loved his potty prize box. I had found some toys at Value Village, and every time he sat on his training potty he got a prize from the box. Sometimes it was a toy. Sometimes it was an orange or chocolate chips or a few coins that he’s obsessed with. Mommy Slot machine at its finest. He loved it. He dinged the kitchen timer that Mari had loaned us shouting “potty prize time!” in his cute little voice. It was adorable. And somewhat messy. There were moments where I was like ‘um, this is insane,’ but went with it. Total for the day: 2 big pees in the potty, 2 accidents, & 1 poop in the underwear episode. 

Day 2

He woke up and went on the potty like he had done the day before. He took a potty prize, but didn’t seem interested, He seemed annoyed by my potty dance in glee that he had gone. I don’t know if it was the dynamic of having Daddy Boof home, or what, but he spent the rest of the afternoon reluctant to go on the potty, refusing all things related to the potty, and just generally seemingly annoyed by my mere presence. My mind went into a panic and so of course I went out and bought 30 more pairs of underwear (which Boof said was funny that I ‘commit to something and just go with it full force’ because it would have equaled to 8 pairs of underwear a day if we only did wash weekly. haha). I figured I was a huge failure, that my kid wasn’t ready, and that I was doing everything all wrong. Wah wah wah. Total for the day: 2 pees in the potty, lost count of all the accidents, including a poop in the undies episode. 

Day 3

I guess it clicked. All the little dribble accidents went away. Sure he peed in the house once when he was watching a show and didn’t want to go on the potty. I get it. He’s still learning. He also peed outside once, but I didn’t count that as an accident, more like a perk of being a dude with a ‘magic penis’, which is what I started calling it. Saying, ‘can you do the magic penis trick of peeing in the potty?” And away went the potty prizes. He was done with them. So noncholant about the whole thing. Like, dude, mom, chill out, I got this. Though he protests a bit in being asked to go use the toilet, he does so rather easily now. We even braved two hours over at my in-laws and he made it through that and used the travel potty! 

Day 4

School. 

He did it. All day. Same clothes when I picked him up that he went in with. Teacher said he even woke up dry from his nap and made it to the bathroom to pee. So proud of this little munchkin. While he hadn’t been showing INTEREST it didn’t mean he wasn’t READY.

 

But now, we need to get him to poop, ya’ll…ugh…it’s been 24 hours and counting…

Embrace the Rain

Okay, maybe I was a little hard on other moms in the whole bathing suit post I wrote earlier. Like maybe my point was lost, that it’s not so much about wearing a bathing suit (that was supposed to be my metaphor), it’s more about GETTING INVOLVED with your kid’s lives. It’s being in front of the camera so your kids will know that you weren’t just the photographer/bystander/witness of their life, that you were there both physically, but also emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

Yesterday it rained. I don’t mean a normal Seattle rain, where it drizzles and the ground is moist (ugh, I hate that word), but it was a DOWNPOUR. I had so much paperwork to do from my on-call day, that I kept Potamus home from daycare and we snuggled in bed until 9:45 and then he watched Wild Kratts and I did my mental health assessments for the crazy crisis counseling day I’d had the day before. It was a perfect day to stay inside, curled up on the couch watching cartoons and working from home. Even the dog was mellowed by the downpour outside.

And then, when Potamus came up for air from his Wild Kratts binge, he noticed the rain. And we were off. Puddle jumping outside in his bare feet (I barely convinced him he at least needed a coat). This kid is so his mama’s boy it’s not funny. I remember the squishy feeling of puddle jumping in bare feet…in college (yes, I went a year without shoes ya’ll), that I risked the judgment from my neighbors and let him be a little barefoot hippie rainy Seattle baby.

I wasn’t wearing a bathing suit, though Potamus probably wanted his swim trunks on. Because it wasn’t about wearing a bathing suit, it was about getting involved. Being present. Puddle jumping with my toddler, whereas a week ago I was swimming in a pool with him, because these moments count. They are the things that we grow up to remember. Like the memory of jumping fearlessly into my daddy’s arms in the swimming pool as a kid, and how on the ride home we’d sing The Muffin Man.

Wear the goddamn bathing suit. Wear the rain jacket. Or take off your shoes and jump in puddles with your barefoot hippie kid. It’s that simple. Really. The dishes will wait. The pounds may never be shed. It’s okay.

 

 

 

Why TV is NOT the devil

Potamus loves singing “The Wheels on the Bus” so much, that we introduced him to the Magic School bus on Netflix. Mostly because our voices are hoarse from singing that damn song on repeat. At any rate, he loves this show, and I am really loving how much he loves it. He watches enraptured at the story, giggles along when Ms. Frizzle does something funny, and then yesterday my mom-guilt about all the TV watching was transformed into amazement at my little boy’s thought process.

See, we were watching the episode where they go back in time to look for dinosaurs. And Potamus gets SO excited, and pulls out his spyglass (aka a napkin ring) and we were only halfway through the episode when he just kept pointing and smiling and jumping up and down saying “Dnsar” (or something to that effect). He then drug me all around the backyard looking for dinosaurs.

My baby is playing pretend.

He would point, and shout “dinosaur!” and then wave to this imaginary (invisible? maybe my backyard is inhabited by dinosaurs?) dinosaur, before tromping off through the grass and underbrush of the backyard (which showed me just how much weeding I have to do to get my yard looking even remotely good). I was blown away by this kid’s imagination. He took something from TV and then made it his own, just like I used to do as a kid.

So sweet to watch him be so excited about the make-believe world!

I Learned that in Mommy School

We’ve spent a lot of time at the park this weekend, trying to burn of some of Potamus’ energy, and today we had the pleasure of meeting up with Mari and her two kids to enjoy the sunny Seattle weather! As Potamus was running around, playing with his patriotic balloon, sliding down the slide, and climbing on anything he could find, he managed to get a nasty scrape on his leg. He was running helter skelter, balllon flying behind him, and he tripped on his too-big converse sneakers. The pavement was bumpy, and he skinned up his knee pretty badly. A few mama kisses set him right, for the moment, and he went back to play.

A few hours later, in the car, he noticed the skinned knee again and started crying. I told him that when we got home I would do work some mama magic to make his knee feel better. And I did. With my mama magic kit that I learned in mama training school: band-aids, neosporin, kisses.

He was thrilled with the process I used. He sat on the counter patiently while I washed my hands, and washed his knee, and dabbed a little neosporin on the wound. And then I showed him the bandaid, and we put it on, and he was thrilled beyond measure. He ran out to Boof, shouting “band aid” in his toddler babble, and I wish that I had a cool spiderman bandaid to put on, but he was pleased with the regular old one nonetheless. It’s one of those motherhood rites of passage, and I somehow managed a tenderness I don’t often feel.