"Homework" for a three year old

This is Logan's "homework" box. We call it homework just to put a positive association to the word -we could have just as easily called it box-of-fun. Logan isn't forced to sit down and do it. And it is not something we do every night. I make sure there are three different activities in his box each day and set it out on our kitchen counter. He chooses if it's an activity he wants to do or not. Logan is three years and four months so we're just keeping things fun. But at the same time as parents I feel we have a responsibility to do some schooling with our children at home too. So many little things can be turned into positive learning experiences if we just put in some extra time (e.g. our ice experiments). One activity we've been having fun with is learning about measuring. Logan got the book How Big is the Lion for his third birthday. It has really kept Logan's attention and he likes leaning how to use the iruler that tucks into the pocket on the book.

We have a lizard that grows when put in water called Greenie

So we traced him on the first day and are tracking it grow and then we'll track it shrink. Really, really simple but it helps him understand the concept and gets him working with numbers.
We also have a few preschooler work books from the dollar store. I find ripping out the pages and putting it in his box so much better then trying to do a page in the book -he would get distracted and want to move onto another before finishing the one he was one. I always put one page of phonics into his box and then one from the numbers workbook or a page from a colouring book.

Doing homework helps with Logan's attention span and it also gives him some one-on-one time and an opportunity to get lots of praise; something he needs especially since he has to share Mommy and Daddy with his sister.

You have to start somewhere, right? Logan isn't great at printing but it's good practice even just learning how to hold a pencil property.

He really likes the connect the dot ones -right now he finds the next number and we draw the line to it together. It's going to be really neat to see him progress to doing this by himself.

Rainy AND Snowy Weekend

We had both rain AND snow this weekend. Someone needs to send Mother Nature a memo and let her know it's almost May. We kept busy this weekend doing lots of fun things inside.
Making muffins is always fun for Logan. After dance class, Logan helped by counting out the muffin liners and putting them in the tin.

He loves licking the spoon just as much as eating the muffins.
Tip: We use an ice cream scoop to fill the muffins up -great for toddlers and gets the perfect amount in! Logan now knows how to press the button on it himself.

We went to the larger library in the afternoon. Logan found a few books about dancing and even a book on Usher!

Reading the Dance book

Reading a book that Logan picked out called the ABC's of Art -it shows a famous painting for each letter of the alphabet. Logan even recognized a bunch of them from the Little Einstein videos.

We went on a "treasure hunt"; up the elevator to the top floor!

Logan spotted a painting on the wall: "Look, Mommy! It's an art show!!"

Logan's always excited to help out in taking care of his sister.

It wouldn't be a complete weekend without dressing up as MJ and singing and dancing.

Logan's been wanting a headset like Micheal has in some of his concerts. He has a microphone stand and a microphone but no headset! Oh no! He use to hold the microphone at the side of head for these parts. We looked at the toy stores for one and then Allan just took the XBox headset and tied up the cord for Logan --perfect!

Playing with magnets

Snack time!

Doing something a bit different for bath time...

We worked on some Mother's Day crafts. We were watching the show Calillou and we saw him make flowers out of paper and pipe-cleaners. Looked pretty easy in the cartoon so we gave it a try ourselves!

We used foam instead of paper and drew out flower shapes to cut. Logan was having some trouble cutting the shapes so instead I cut a circle and he put snips all around the edges.

Poke a pipe cleaner through and you have a very simple and easy preschooler craft for Mother's Day!

We also decorated a box for Uncle D.

Logan loves stickers and we have a bunch of these, so this was a good craft --plus it actually turned out looking very nice too!

Logan gathered all the books about babies and read them to Kalia and I.

In Logan's swim class they took the boat again to the deep-end.

This time they had the kids get out of the boat and stand at the side. Each one took turns jumping into the deep-end with their life jacket and then floating on their back and kicking. We're so happy that Logan is enjoying his classes and it's such an important skill to know too!

We also met up with Uncle D -to give him the box we decorated and to ask him to be Kalia's Godfather!

Well rested and blessed!

Ahhhhh...it's amazing how much more enjoyable mommyhood is when you are well rested! Logan's overnight sleeping patterns are pretty good now -to bed around 8pm, up for a snack at 4am and then morning routine around 7:30.

The soother issue is getting better. Logan is in 'soothie rehab' to help him with his addiction. Instead of taking it away I'm just limiting it's use -putting him to bed without one when possible, not giving it to him in the car or stroller...basically helping him see he can self-sooth without it. From what I've read there is a real need in babies to suck before 6 months -it makes sense evolutionary as it wasn't long ago that we didn't have bottles and formula and survival-of-the-fittest depended on this sucking reflex to get enough nourishment.

Okay, some book reviews....

The Sleep Solution is a good starter book as it reviews pretty much all the 'schools of thought' on how to teach your baby to sleep. However at this stage I didn't really find anything new but it is a good overview. On the loosing the pacifier in the night issue, the author just says if the baby is old enough put a bunch in the crib so they can put it back in their mouth...but nothing about what to do if your baby isn't old enough!

I found the Secret of Problem-Free Nights to be a nice fast read and helpful. The author talks about your baby's Core Night -the block of time your baby sleeps through each night. For Logan it use to be between 8 pm to 1 am, it's now stretched out to around 8pm to 4am. One piece of advice is not to feed your baby during this time as the baby has shown he can mange for these hours without food; if he wakes up just settle him back to sleep while keeping him in his crib. This works for us but I can image it's easier said than done for other babies. Anyways, there are tons of tips and a lot of information is given in quick bullet form - worth the read.

In Search of Sleep wasn't too helpful at all for me. Written by the editor of Today's Parent, it's a good read if you're feeling bad that your baby isn't sleeping through the night -she stressed that you are not alone, you're not a bad parent, etc. etc. but her 'grab-bag of tips and tricks' aren't really anything special and is repetitive of every other baby sleep book without any of the detail. Anyways, I'd advice a new parent to skip this one and take a nap instead.

The Quest for Sleep

Apparently Logan has slept through the night. According to the Baby Guru, Dr. Sears, sleeping through the night is a five-hour stretch. Unfortunately I continue to a have more extensive definition. I think most people do.

Here is a quick look at Logan's sleep pattens from our Trixie Tracking.

What a difference a month can make! He's gone from sleeping in three to four stretches and now has one long stretch of sleep and then tries to make it to 7:30am. Three things have contributed to this:

1. Eating more volume in the day every four hours (8,12,4,8) with some flexibility if needed

2. Bedtime is after his 8pm bottle: draw blinds, turn on white noise, bottle, pjs, 'Good Night Moon', cuddle, into bed sleepy but awake

3. Morning routine does not start until around 7:30, crib music can be turned on after 7 if needed but no more starting the day at 5am!

Here is how his bottles are working out...

You can see how when the feeding were sporadic in the day so were the feedings at night. After getting him use to the 'every four hours' thing, I slowly lowered the volume and frequency of the night feedings. He now has one small 'snack' around 3am which is being reduced so soon that will be out too.

However more tweaking is needed! Logan is put to bed when sleepy and knows how to fall asleep on his own. This is an amazing skill we have taught Logan as I have read of people having to drive their baby around in the car, having to rock them to sleep for an hour or babies who only want to sleep in their bouncy chair or swing. However he really relies on his soother to help him do this -especially now that he isn't being feed as much at night. The problem is now he needs us to pop his pacifier into his mouth when ever he wakes up and finds it is not there. He makes a fussy noise and if you pop it in he goes off to sleep in an instant; like he never really fully woke up. However if you let him be and hope he'll drift back to sleep the fussing escalates to a full cry and he's wide awake. Replacing the pacifier takes twenty seconds and the light doesn't even need to be turned on -however when it happens six or seven times every twenty to forty minutes I really don't get any sleep. Even if he falls asleep at his bedtime without a pacifier he'll wake up later and want it.

Hence this is the real problem -Logan is sleeping very well for a two month old but his mommy is not. I'm no fun when I'm tired -I'm grumpy and sometimes I take it out on my hubby. I'd rather take a nap then take us out to a playgroup. I'd rather drink coffee and watch daytime tv then go out for a walk. So I think the next struggle will be to phase out the pacifier. How do I do this? I have no idea. Dr. Sears says "If you have a baby who really needs a pacifier, then use it, don't abuse it, and quickly try to loose it' but don't go further on the loosing it. I'm not a fan of 'crying it out' so I don't think we'll do 'cold turkey'. I dunno. I could use some advice....

It's all good, baby, baby!

Today I actually feel awake! I think it's the first morning in two months were I felt that I didn't need a nap as soon as I woke up. Ahhh! It feels amazing!

I picked up The Lull-a-bye Sleep Plan from the library yesterday and put it work right away last night. Even though the author calls out the No Cry Sleep Plan and The Baby Sleep Solution books, I'm going to use a combo approach. I was not looking forward to 'sleep training' since even the 'no cry sleep plan' actually has a bit of crying. I just don't feel comfortable with that. However the Lull-a-bye plan has no crying and it actually seems to work for Logan.

So this is the plan going forward: Before giving a bottle to Logan at night when he wakes up, I offer a pacifier first and talk softly to him AKA the lulling to sleep -without taking him out of his crib (unless he's going ballistic and then only until he calms down). Basically I go from head to toe and say good night to him softly ("good night Logan's eyes, good night Logan's cheeks, good night Logan's ears..") with the occasional coaching ("Mommy is here, it's bedtime, it's time to learn to go to sleep.."). The idea is that they are soothed by your voice and learn how to relax and fall back asleep...soon without your help.

In addition to this we're moving on a modified Step 2 of the The Sleep Solution, which is slowly decreasing the volume amount of the second feeding and increasing the volume of daytime feedings which are every four hours.

I never really thought you had to teach a baby how to fall asleep. I guess I though they just gradually did it themselves; slowly sleeping longer each day. I never really thought about the need of teaching good sleep habits.

Logan taking a proper afternoon nap in his portable crib after I 'lulled him to sleep' -he's been asleep over an hour so far! A load of laundry is in washer, bottles are cleaned, I've eaten and now might even get a cat nap in myself!

Na'eema

Logan and his friend Na'eema

So I'm trying to do the Baby Sleep Solution with Logan. Step one is having him eat every four hours in the day, be most awake between 4 and 8pm and put him down to bed after his 8pm feeding. so far it's gone okay. It's nice that I know now when he is going to eat in the day(8,12,4,8) as I know what to pack when we go out. For example, when we went to the baby show I knew at 11:45 we should start to look for a calm place to sit because it was almost time to eat. Better than having him freak out at random times because he's hungry. However it's not the most flexible. Logan met Na'eema last night but it resulted in his 8pm bottle in the car and a little bit later bedtime. This disruption in our routine may have had a role in last nights drama.

I went to bed around 10pm last night and maybe got 4 or 5 hours of sleep. After I finished washing and getting the next bottle ready at 4am this morning I actually walked into a wall on my way to bed. Today I'm just going to follow what my brother-in-law does and do a 'Jedi mind trick' on myself and just pretend I got eight relaxing hours of sleep. Anyways, this Friday it's time to work on Step 2 and I'm afraid because I know it isn't going to be easy...

Baby Sleep Solution

Katya, my co-worker at CCO is doing a massive bike ride to raise money for cancer research -over 200 kilometers in two days! I'm totally amazed and proud of her for doing this challenge. Pretty much everyone has a friend or family member who has been touched by cancer. Five dollars is not a sacrifice but little donations add up. The research it supports could help saved a loved ones life or maybe even your own. I challenge everyone reading this to go here to donate five bucks -just skip your Starbucks Latte and get a karma boost instead.

Thank you Tito Simon and Tita Fan for my play mat!

Today is day one of trying out the Baby Sleep Solution. I read this book last night and it's a bit of the 'BW', 'Happiest Baby on the Block' and the 'No Cry Sleep Solution' -except this lady says start at eight weeks and by 12 weeks your baby will sleep through the night -not just six or seven hours of sleep but up to twelve and take two regular naps in the day. Um, yeah, I'm totally all over this one! The 'No Cry' book basically says you're out of luck until month four.


So this is day one of following the first of four steps. The first step is getting your baby to eat every four hours in the day (8am, 12am, 4pm and 8pm) and try to get him to be the wake the most between the last two daytime feedings (4-8pm). This needs to be established first before working on the night feedings. Anyways, you can track our progress on our Trixie Tracker page.

Here's one of the charts from our tracker showing the propability of Logan being awake or sleep. Hopefully in four weeks the 8am until 8am will be become solid black.

Another Day

Allan is checking the Logan Report from work all the time now. It's good that he sees what I'm going through and I think he feels more connected to Logan too. I didn't think he'd be that into it but last night when Logan woke up for a bottle Allan went downstairs to the computer and updated the site -at 2:30 am. Al has even made both Google and the Logan Report open up every time we open up our browser at home. Oh, Logan's Blog even made it onto the Trixe Tracker 'buzz' page LOL

The book of today is the No Cry Sleep Solution. It is highly recommended by Ben Stiller so it has to be great, right?

Pretty much there everything they are saying in this one we are already doing or have read in the Baby Whisper (!!). I think I might come back to this one after Logan reaches 5 months and/or 15 pounds as that is when they can sleep through the night.

What the book says:

• swaddle (we're using this, which is okay -he can 'escape' from it if he wants to)


• dark room, low light when night feeding (we've got pull down blinds and a dimmer switch)


• white noise (got it!)


• simple routine (we're working on it)


• little stimulation at night feeding (very little talking, slow movements)


• at 3 months put down in crib when drowsy (we've been following the BW advice and doing this from the start)
  

So there. Now you don't have to read the book if you have a newborn.

On a sidenote, I thought this was a bit freaky: Newborn to four months -naps, night time sleeps and total sleep time = unpredictable and varies widely. Great. :P

Here is a picture of Logan demonstrating the 'Eairh' sound -which he followed up with a fart and poo. LOL The Dunstan Baby Language thingy seems to be accurate!

After this I changed his diaper and he was ready for bed.

In other news -our house is delayed until the end of August. They called today and said it is because of the weather...I guess the coldness and snow slowed them down. Or maybe it's just an excuse? I also found out that our street number is '9'. Nine turns out to be a very interesting number too -We're going to go with the Chinese on this one as they say it's lucky.

Logan's New Chair

Here is Logan in his new chair, it's a Fisher Price Infant to Toddler chair. I got it on sale at Walmart -Thanks to the wonderful people at CCO for the gift card!



Not surprisingly, I researched the different options...I wanted something I could easily move to upstairs and also have downstairs i.e. baby in one arm and chair in the other. That cut out all the swings. I read a lot of reviews on chairs and this one seemed to get the top marks. It has toys which you can detach, it rocks or stays still, it reclines and when he's older it can go upright, it's washable and it has a vibrating option.



Having something to rock Logan in has been very helpful and fits into what it said in the Happiest Baby on the Block book/DVD. I would recommend the DVD to our friends who are newly parents. The author isn't really saying anything new (AKA the Baby Whisper says it too!)but to see him apply the techniques is very useful. It's something you really have to see, as reading about it really doesn't do it justice...



Basically it's the five S's:

Swaddling (We did this for the first three weeks, now I'm going back to doing it for nighttime sleeps)

Side or Stomach position (I don't use this often, I only hold him like this if he's really freaking out)

Shushing ('Big up' to cousin Christine's recommendation; since birth I turn on the noise machine for night time sleeps)

Swinging (His new chair!)

and Sucking (Logan has a favorite pacifier but often he doesn't want it).



Okay, one more picture just because he's soo cute!

Baby Say What?

Logan has been a bit of a handful the last two days. Yesterday I was reduced to tears because he would not stop crying or go to sleep long enough for me to shower. Before he hardly cried and was what the baby whisperer would call a Angel or Textbook Baby. WTF??!! He is far from being a colic baby but I've found these last two days rather hard.

While I'm good at spotting and naming Ikea furniture, my other 'talents' include researching and analyzing. Therefore this weeks posts will be a record of my efforts to become 'Super Mom' and hopefully will be useful to our friends who are pregnant or newly parents.

What is baby saying?

*I know I've bigged it up a few time already but bless my cousin Christine for telling me about the Baby Whisperer. I read it while pregnant and now look up stuff in the index all the time. I had never changed a diaper or bathed a baby before Logan and this book covered it all and gave me confidence in my mommy skills. It also has a great table that covers the cries and physical movements of the baby and 'decodes' it for you.

*Here's a video on Dunstan baby language...Learn the 5 different cries:



Neh = Hungry
Owh = Sleepy
Heh = Discomfort
Eairh = Lower Gas
Eh = Burp

Week 37

So here is our house -it actually has a roof and windows now!!!

As per my Cousin Christine's advice I have bought and read the Baby Whisperer. (http://www.babywhisper.com/) And it really made sense to me and I plan on giving the EASY schedule a go.

But me buying into this EASY schedule is interesting because at the same time I have given up the part of me that wants to be in control and am trusting in my body and baby to know when the time is right for Logan's birthday and that we (me, dad and baby) can do the birthing naturally.

I came to this realization of possible conflicting things today and I really don't know what to make of it -are they even confliciting? Hmmmm...