Tuesday, November 29, 2005

the beginning of the end of an era

last night, and the night before that, rowan slept all night long.

she's been sleeping on a futon in our room for about 6 months, and we moved the futon to her room about a week ago. the first two nights were hell. i nursed her to sleep at the computer as usual, put her to bed, and put the baby monitor in her room and the receiver under my pillow. she woke and cried in the middle of the night and i went to lay down with her there and get her back to sleep--which was easier said than done. it took about an hour of nursing each time. uggh. but i was determined to do what it took to help her make it through the night in her bed, in her room. and it paid off--for two nights now we have both slept all night, without nursing or crying.

i took some proactive steps to help her make this transition--fed her TWO suppers, the latter just before nursing to sleep, so her belly was nice and full. and i've been tweaking the cloth diaper set up so she stays *really* dry at night. i'm still learning all the cloth diaper stuff since getting a new (used) cd stash of big girl sized covers and AIOs. (we cd'd when she was little, but when she potty trained during the day at almost 2, we switched to pull ups at night.) and i've been getting her into full length pjs so she doesn't get chilly legs when she kicks the covers off.

i'm ready for her to night wean, though i know she isn't completely ready to give up nursing altogether. and i'm so proud of myself for helping her sleep in her room without force or letting her cry--which is, in my mind, something akin to murder. i know some people feel they have to do it but it's just not a possibility for me. i have been blessed with two children who learned early on their needs would be met, period, and i've helped them to communicate as early as possible so that crying wasn't their only means to get my attention.

anyway, a small victory. i know i'm doing it right when we *all* are happy.

Friday, November 25, 2005

a few days of sweet freedom, then back to the mines

being out of school for a few days now has been positively ethereal. the house is maintaining some degree of order, we are eating 3 real meals each day, and the laundry and custome tie dye orders are caught up. if i were a cat i'd be curled up contentedly among the verdancy of our houseplants in the rare and beautiful late november sun streaming through our kitchen window. but i am most definitely *not* like a cat (i'm far too busy), and i keep finding other corners to improve, furniture to move, books that need to be re-organized...you get the idea. i'm positively domestic this week.

it's at times like this that i really feel ambivalent about my grad work. i want the freedom and career capital a master's degree will *supposedly* provide. but i want to end up homesteading, teaching my kids to keep bees and gather mushrooms, not sitting in a campus office. but i have an almost primal bias against quitting anything, so i plod on. there are definitely bright spots in the program thus far but each day i am faced with examples, writ small and large, of how my ideal life and my daily life do not, precisely put, dovetail.

the one shining light that i can still make out is the promise that my own research will eventually be able to be worked on. i owe that to the families i feel so much gratefulness and obligation to for taking the time and energy to help me flesh out exactly what this strange, and lovely throwback of a parenting strategy called attachment parenting REALLY is. boxes and boxes of data--about 2000 responses, each several pages long-- to be analyzed yet, but my current student/assistantship duties prevent me from taking the serious, big-chunk-of-time necessary to do that. when i get to the point that i can begin working on my thesis for credit hours, i can really concentrate on them.

:sigh: