The last few weeks have been busy! I’m taking a class on Thursdays on Parent Child Relationships focused on Toddlers and it has been so fascinating. The class is run by two graduate students and I am loving it. I haven’t read a single parenting book, so it’s been great to learn things about parenting and communication with my kiddo. I definitely recommend classes like this because even if you don’t learn anything you get to know other parents and also learn that you are doing great, no matter your parenting style.
On the design side of things, I’ve been thinking about a lot of the trends I’ve seen lately and how to adopt some of those styles while really making things my own. It’s hard to do and I’d love to know how others do it. I also read this interesting article in the New York Times about making over a playroom to help your kids learn and enjoy their time playing without excess stimulation. We don’t have a playroom, we chase our daughter in circles around our living room and kitchen. Her toys are strewn around, but we’ve actually implemented some of the strategies the author suggests, just out of convenience. I’m going to try to be more conscious of these techniques in everything we do. I aim to have a house that’s comfortable and cozy, which means kids should enjoy the spaces as much as us parents.
Second to last NYTimes story, this other one is about parenting, and lays out a bunch of data about breastfeeding, sleep training and working moms. It’s a good read and made me think a little bit harder about why I chose to breastfeed, sleep trained my daughter and if I consider myself a “working mother”. For breastfeeding, I honestly didn’t really think I had a choice, now that nursing has run its course, I do wonder what I’d choose to do if we have another kid. We trained our daughter to fall asleep on her own, she was already a pretty good sleeper, but we were never into the idea of co-sleeping. I have had issues with sleep since I was in college, I had also seen my sister and brother-in-law successfully sleep train my nephew. When I had a three-month-old and I found out soon she could sleep 12 hours at night, it seemed like the only practical thing to do. The nice thing about this amazing routine is that when she veers from the routine, it usually means something is wrong. As for being a working mom, it has never occurred to me to not work. Staying home isn’t for me, I’m honestly not up to the challenge, but there are days, when I get snuggles and laughs and hugs and kisses and hear her say new words, that it is tempting to quit and spend all my waking moments with her. Moral: don’t feel guilty, because, spoiler, the data shows that the kids turn out fine whether you sleep train them or not.
We did some yard work today, planted our haul from the Hardy Plant Society’s Hortlandia plant sale, I finished painting the stair rail (photos coming soon), cleaned our grill, later than I should have (it caught on fire) and ghetto-rigged our bed to have a headboard so we can put off buying one.
I’ve also read a few good books lately that I recommend: Geek Love, Asymmetry, Still Life (by Louise Penny - guilty pleasure mystery novel), We Should All Be Feminists and The Fifth Risk. Now I’m reading Not My Father’s Son (memoir by Alan Cumming, much better than I was expecting and I’m starting to really love memoirs) and Dead Mountain (research done into the mysterious deaths of nine hikers in the Ural Mountains in 1959).
Another article about why you should get rid of your lawn.
And finally, what we’ve been waiting for since we moved in, our gorgeous dogwood is blooming.