Parenting

Let me start this post out by saying that Mal and I have learned a lot since we have become parents. A lot of what we have learned was adopted from our own parents, a small percent from what we read somewhere, and then there's the trial and error. When all else fails, we fall back onto the latter.

Finnegan and The Ray Lamontagne Method

Finn eating his fingers with a side of cereal.

You guys have all heard of the different methods for putting children down to sleep, there are so many out there. People swear by these methods with accolades of immediate effectiveness. I'd say we gave each method a fair shot, and even tried mixing a few...to no avail. I guess we were blessed with Madie being such an easy baby. We would literally feed & burp her, then lay her down in a dark room and she would fall asleep for at least two hours, easily. Then when 8:00 pm rolled around, we would lay her down with some music (Ray Lamontagne...that's all we had at the time!) and she would fall right asleep, and typically wouldn't wake up until 5:30 or 6:00 am. It was so easy. We really did not have to fiddle with any sleeping methods.

Finn is a different story. When he was initially born, we tried putting him to sleep to the sounds of rain (http://www.rainymood.com), and that seemed to work alright. Plus, it was a noise that we wouldn't really get sick of. He was a typical newborn and didn't sleep through the night for a couple of months. By August or September, he was sleeping until 5 or 6 am. But, then we moved to Maine and all hell broke loose. The driving, flying, sleeping in different houses, and changing three time zones rocked his world and we were back to square one. To get him back on track, we resorted to recommended sleeping methods. I have never really been a believer in raising children according to conventional parenting books and literature, but I was willing to give it a shot. We were desperate to get some sleep.

From the Ray Lamontagne concert we went to in 2011

I'll cut to the chase, none of them really worked as we had hoped. There were no immediate or revelatory methods that worked "within days" as many had promised. Based on our 'clinical trials', Mal and I came to a simple conclusion: lets stick with the Ray Lamontagne Method, and let the kid chomp on his fingers. And that's what we've been doing for the past couple of months. A touch of Ray and ditch the pacifier. It's by far the most successful method we have tried so far. He still struggles taking naps at times or wakes up because his diaper is so full that it's leaking, but he will sleep until 5 or 6 am 85% of the time now, which we'll take over 10% any day.

Madie Movies

Madie has always loved movies, especially if it involves a princess (that includes watching herself, of course). When she was two, we could hardly record her doing anything for more than 3 seconds before she would stop what she was doing to come over and watch the video that...due to it's 3 second duration...hadn't really recorded anything notable to that point. It was frustrating, believe me. Mal and I have had to go KGB on her and hide ourselves except the camera facing her. Luckily, we were able to capture at least some of her childhood.

Madie with her hooded cape that Mal made, playing as Belle

Madie just loves to watch movies. You know how kids obsess over one movie and watch it repeatedly, day after day? Madie's first movie she obsessed over was Winnie the Pooh. We actually introduced Pooh to her through YouTube, then she really caught on. We ended up buying a movie so we could just pop that in and not have to get a new episode every 10 or 15 minutes. She was allowed to watch one movie a day. It changed from Pooh, to Beauty and the Beast, to Cinderella. She was really getting into the princess movies. So much that she was quoting and re-enacting the scenes from them. I can't tell you how many times I've played as The Beast and her Belle, and we re-enact that scene when he takes Belle from the tower to her guest room. Or the scene when she runs away from the "wolfies".

This of course provided endless laughter and entertainment for us as a family. And, let's be honest, it's nice to pop on a movie to occupy the kids for an hour so that you can read, clean, or work on a project. It's just a nice break to have as a parent. In the past few months, Madie's moods have been somewhat controlled by her love for movies. When the movie was done, or if we had to turn it off to eat dinner, it would be a huge meltdown. She wanted more! Or, she was just impulsive and had a bad attitude afterwards. We tried reasoning with her to help her control herself after she watched a movie, but reasoning with a three year old isn't a reasonable task. A few weeks ago, we put our foot down and took away all movies. We all needed a long break from them until she was mature enough to be able to handle watching a movie. Madie has actually handled it well. She is to the point to where she doesn't ask to watch a movie anymore, and has been starting to entertain herself with her Lalaloopsy toys. We told her we can try watching movies again when we choose/buy/move into our new house (April/May timeframe). And although there are still meltdowns, there aren't quite as many as there used to be.