I can see now, in hindsight, how easily it happened.

First, I had one baby. I did everything for him. He was a baby. Then, while that baby was still a baby himself, I had another baby. I did everything for them. Fourteen months later, a third baby arrived. Nearly one year later, while baby number three was just twelve months old, we welcomed another baby. A year and a half later, and we had…you guessed it…another baby. I have been in baby mode for six years. Sitting down rows of toweled babies, clipping fifty toenails one after the other, assembly line fashion. Brushing five heads of hair. Picking out five sets of jammies. Cleaning ten tiny ears.

Before I knew it, some of the older babies were, well, older. And as I said, I can see now how easily it happened:

The fact that our older children were now capable of so much escaped me. I was too busy filling five bowls full of barley and stripping five sets of sheets off beds to wash them to notice.

Slowly, recently only in some cases, it hit me. Thankfully not literally.

The kids were ready for chores. Real chores. Structured chore times. Accountability. Higher expectations. The education they needed to become good keepers of their own homes someday. A better understanding of responsibility. Of cause and effect.

And I was ready for some help.

It’s sad for me to see our children grow. On one hand, I’m so proud of them. I smile when Small Fry can read three word sentences. Beam when Nuggey keeps his lower case letters above the baseline and below the midline. Giggle when Big Mac grasps two variable equations with ease. But on the other hand, the fact that the babies I birthed are already able to empty the trash, do the dishes make their own beds saddens me a little. Not because I don’t welcome the extra hands in those areas; I really do! It saddens me because it means that they are well on their way to being big kids. Why, self sufficient adulthood is only around the corner, I fear.

I jest maybe just a little. Raising competent, well-rounded, loving, confident children who chase their own dreams and desires, coming fully alive using their own individual God-given talents and grow into adults is what my job is. And I’m glad I’m doing my job. There’s no one else I’d like doing it.

So, since moving to The Farm and especially since MckDaddy started working full-time, I’ve been very deliberate about structuring the MSC’s days more. The oldest three all officially have chores now, too. I say “officially” because they all used to straighten their beds, put their boots away, get jammies on, bring their plates to the kitchen after a meal and so forth. But those didn’t happen on a really consistent basis necessarily.

Now, we’re marching to the tune of a whole different (rather uptight) drummer, and it is suiting us so well! We still may relax in my bed in the morning, drink hot cocoa in the afternoon while watching a Christmas movie, make spontaneous trips to town for some play time and enjoy the freedom to do school when we want, when it works for us.

But now.

But now we also have chore time. Three times a day. We’ve been keeping up with it for a few weeks and have recently added bonafide chore cards to the mix. We chose to use these chore cards and chore station, though the specific system we are successfully using has less to do with my happiness about all of this than the fact that we have created, and are sticking to, a routine of some kind does. My sister and I had chore cards when we were growing up, too. My mom made them out of index cards and we each had a small file box of chore cards we had to work through each day.

Naturally, our MSC painted their wooden chore stations. It’s just what we do! When they were dry, we coated them with a healthy layer of Mod Podge, and I used MckDaddy’s power drill to put them on the wall in the kitchen. I love the chores already on some of the cards, like “floss teeth” and “put your clothes in the laundry basket.” I used the blank ones to create chores more specific to our family like, “put Legos in your room” and “gather eggs.” After breakfast, after lunch and after dinner, I call all of the children into the kitchen. I let them know it’s morning/afternoon/evening chore time. As a sort of incentive, and also to help them organize their days in their own minds, I also let them know what will come after chores. “Then we will get our snowpants on and go outside.” “Then the big boys and I will do school while the younger ones watch Dora.” “Then we will play with Plah Doh.” “Then you will have free play time until Daddy gets home.”

The system we happened to choose allows the children to earn tickets, bonus bucks and privilege passes for doing their chores, too. Getting more organized with our days, requiring (much) more of our MSC and all around helping them learn to be more responsible has been so awesome. Seriously. I already find that our days go much faster, I feel (and I think the kids do, too) a bigger sense of purpose about how we spend our time, finding time for school is actually easier now, structured and free playtimes fit better into our schedule, there is hardly anyone asking about watching videos and I just feel so satisfied as I watch my not-so-babyish-anymore babies wipe the table, unload the dishwasher and give the dog a bone.

What a chore! Well, not really.

When I was pregnant with our firstborn, my husband and I knew that he was a boy. We assumed quite a few things about raising Big Mac, even before he was born. Before long, my husband and I learned that making assumptions about children and parenting is folly. We assumed, before Big Mac was born, that we’d circumcise. We didn’t. We assumed we’d only let him play with wooden toys, nothing battery operated. False. We assumed since he was born over two weeks late that he’d be a big baby and a great sleeper. He was neither.

So you would think I’d have learned.

And, to some extent, I have. I chose not to assume that the great experience I had with breastfeeding my first baby would continue on with all subsequent children. Thankfully, it did. We don’t assume that our children’s pediatricians always have our specific kids’ best interests in mind. They don’t, so we’ve had to learn to do our own research, not assuming that their opinions will always be best for us. We don’t assume that everyone else will be supportive of our spiritual beliefs or parenting practices. Assuming can be great folly. I know that now.

I learned the other day, however, that I still have more to learn.

I can’t get lax. Fall down on the job. Start to assume things, even when they seem benign. How did I learn this? When I turned on Sesame Street in the cabin we stayed at recently in the Smoky Mountains. It seemed an innocuous assumption: Sure Sesame Street looks a little more colorful and flashy than it did when my sister and I used to sit at our small children’s sized laminated wood table and watch it while eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches. But I’m sure it’s still a totally safe program for young children, one that I would have no problem with the little minds and eyes in our home (away from home) watching.

I was wrong.

I didn’t realize it at first, though. See, we have chosen not to have television, even the most basic channels, back home in the Frozen Tundra. What does this mean? It means that I haven’t seen Sesame Street in years. And years. But, I mean, it’s Sesame Street. So, while I cleaned up the cabin, packed our stuff and folded laundry, I let our children relax on the giant log framed king bed, cuddled together until the heavy, soft blankets and watch the beloved, perfectly harmless television show.

Sure, I noticed that the puppets were a snazzier than before, the street corner looked a little more up to date and the human characters in the show were new to me. But it otherwise appeared to be the same old Sesame Street. There was Big Bird, doing his thing, great letter learning snippets and a Shoe Fairy theme woven throughout. Sure Neil Patrick Harris, an openly homosexual actor whom I have admired since his Doogie Howser days, played the fairy, a cheeky funny certainly meant for adults to find humor in. And I took no offense, as apparently all concerned thought it was clever, and I suppose it was. I can envision fists raised in opposition at the fairy reference had it not been subtly carried out by the man in question himself. I guess if he was okay with it, I sure was. And maybe I was reading into that whole thing. I sure did like his suit and musical Shoe Fairy number.

And when a young girl, maybe two years old, was shown getting dressed with her daddy and big sister, briefly topless, I had to smile. Our daughter is not even three and a half yet and, under certain circumstances, we still allow her to take her shirt off if she wants.

Nothing like not making a big deal about something that doesn’t need to be a big deal. The little girl was dressing. She was on Sesame Street. End of story. I for sure scratched my head when I saw a baby in a carseat atop a table later in the episode, improperly restrained. It’s no skin off my nose and certainly nothing I’d get my undies in a bunch over. After all, it was a Sesame Street episode, not a car seat safety video. However, I found it very interesting. Would the car seat safety technicians (what a dear friend of mine happens to be) get up in arms about the car seat scenario on Sesame Street? Every single blogger I know who has posted a picture of their child in a car seat has gotten a little, or a lot, of negative feedback. It’s understandably a sensitive topic, one that highly trafficked bloggers and insanely popular preschool television shows should realize their impact on. I had to wonder, as I saw the straps not securing the baby the right way, if Sesame Street realized how rebellious that segment might seem to some, or if they would get an earful after the episode aired.

Again, no biggie to me. It’s a show for young children. While safety is important, I don’t hold Sesame Street to some standard in which they must always depict perfectly executed safety standards for every scenario they ever include on their show. Should a baby in a carseat, improperly restrained or not, ever be put on a high surface like a table? No. But that didn’t even come close to making it or breaking it for me.

Our kids were still happily watching and I was still busily folding when the show finally neared the end. There was some guessing segment about what various professionals wore to work. Does an astronaut wear a tutu or a space suit? A fireman dons which, a swimsuit or some fireproof gear? Cute. Great learning. Happy PBS. Still relatively safe Sesame Street, with a bit of a thumbs up already from me for bucking the nanny state a little bit.

But then, I will admit that my mouth hung agape during Elmo’s World. There was some laundry folding bit, ironic as I was doing exactly that same thing, and there was laundry in a basket and Elmo looking at it. As a pair of socks were plainly visible on the top of the laundry basket, I overheard Elmo making a joke about “Sox in the City.”

Seriously. Seriously!?

To each their own, of course, but personally, I was disgusted. A play on words referencing the very adult television show Sex in the City on a preschool program!? Why in the world would that be necessary/appropriate/okay!? I have no idea, but Sesame Street was over at this point, we loaded into the RV and started to head for Kentucky. I have since learned that yesterday’s episode was not the first time a Sex in the City joke appeared on Sesame Street. It did also when Sarah Jessica Parker appeared on the children’s program.

Yup, I got a dose of reality yesterday. I was reminded that making assumptions, like assuming Sesame Street is still the perfectly innocent show it was when I was a pre-Kindergartener, can be folly. Lesson learned. Next time I hope I’ll really remember. And keep Sesame Street turned off from here on out.

Sleep, glorious sleep. It’s something that has long been important to me. My mother tells of how, even as a little girl, I needed lots of sleep. Nowadays, I still love my sleep. Rarely do I take a nap during the day unless I am pregnant, but I do function best with at least 8 hours of sleep a night.

When my husband and I had been married for five months, we learned that we were expecting our first baby. My first trimester carrying Big Mac was exhausting. I literally came home after school (I was a teacher.) each afternoon and went to bed. As we prepared for his birth a number of months later, my husband and I took Bradley Natural Childbirth classes for 12 weeks. I soaked up as much knowledge as I could about labor, caring for a newborn, breastfeeding….and sleeping.

It was at that point that a friend gave me Babywise. Is it just me, or does just hearing the name of that book stir passion in you? In my experience over the past 6 years as a mother, it seems that, for many people, Babywise is kind of like sushi. Either one is passionate about how amazing it is. Or one is outspoken about how heinous it is. Yet, I find it almost impossible to write a comprehensive post about babies and sleep without mentioning that polarizing book and the role it has had in shaping my beliefs about sleep and mothering.

I was a total “Babywise mom” before Big Mac was born. I read the book, and to me, the premise was clear: Children and their naps ought not to be allowed to regulate parents’ lives and the timing of their outings. Babies will best integrate into their new families if their eating and sleeping is carefully scheduled. It is preferable, better for baby and family, for babies to be taught to soothe themselves to sleep, not be coddled, rocked or nursed to sleep, for that will only cause the child to become dependent on those methods to fall asleep. It all sounded great to me. On paper. But in living out life with now five little hungry, tired babies, I’ve changed my mindset a little. While I’m a far cry from a “Babywise mom,” many an attachment parent could probably equally deem my sleep beliefs as unnurturing. As with every single blessed thing about parenting, it’s about balance. The paramount thing is finding the balance, whatever it might be, that works for you, your family and your baby. Because ain’t nobody else his mother except you.

It is the very need for balance, and in particular for knowing each baby’s specifics needs and situations, that makes me cringe at the labels like “attachment parent” and “Babywise mom.” Oddly enough, there was a time in the not too distant past when I considered myself both of these at one point. But in my opinion, labeling my sleep style beliefs as anything can be polarizing to the situation. And to the conversation. And a conversation about sleep is one that takes place between mothers all the time. “When did Jimmy start sleeping through the night?” “Do you follow Ferber?” “Does Ralphie take a paci at naptime?” “What time does Susie rise in the morning?” “Do you believe in the Cry It Out method?” Rather than draw a line in the sand about the right way or wrong way to do things, rather than follow a schedule or pattern for sleep across the board, rather than claim sleep is of no value to the family at large and a baby ought be able to nurse ’round the clock regardless of mom’s fatigue level, I want to do something different.

I’m simply going to tell you what I have learned about sleep after six years of parenting, book reading, sleep training, trial and erroring and loving on five little babies. These are the things I wish I would have known and grasped six years ago. This is what has worked for me, my babies and our family, straight from the lips of a recovering Babywise mom who is also a recovering attachment parenting mom. Here you have it, my opinions about sleep:

drop the labels, put away the charts

Getting your baby to sleep, and sleep well, is important. Trust me, sleeping is one of my favorite hobbies; it’s always a goal of mine to get my children to follow suit. However, adhering to a set of beliefs, be it those laid out in the Babywise books or those learned at your La Leche League meeting, is never going to be as good for your baby and for you as learning to know your baby, and what they need at any given time, will be.

start early, but not too early

For the first few weeks, dare I say even months, don’t let your baby’s sleep schedule consume you. Newborns typically sleep a lot. Unless of course, they are named Big Mac. In which case, they hardly ever sleep. But that’s beside the point. Until a baby is at least 12 weeks old, they don’t usually begin to organize their sleep (into sets of naps during the day, surrounded by wake times, with longer stretches at night, surrounded just by eating and more sleep) into predictable patterns. In those first few weeks, learning your baby, laying low as much as possible and recovering from giving birth, keeping baby close so you can bond with and know baby’s needs, finding ways to make sure you can get the rest you need, and doing what you can to make sure baby is getting enough to eat should be on a new mommy’s to do list at first.

(On the note of a newborn eating regularly, while I do hate to “wake a sleeping baby,” and rarely have had cause to do so, I do think a newborn needs to eat every 3 hours or so. If babe appears to be on course to go longer than that during the day, I will do whatever I can to rouse baby. Unswaddling, removing clothes, even using a cool rag on baby’s face to help them wake up enough to eat. Eventually, eating more frequently during the day is one thing that will help ensure baby is fed enough to go longer between feedings at night.)

Try not to worry about “sleep training” during the first few weeks of baby’s life. By 12 weeks or so, helping baby get their sleep more organized will be more easily accomplished. However, just because organized sleep needn’t be a priority during the first few weeks, there are some things I so very much wish I’d have known with my first few babies, that have helped me lay the groundwork for sleep patterns, that should be initiated as soon as baby is born.

initiate the groundwork

Initiating the groundwork for sleep, even before real sleep “training” takes place, is a smart idea. In fact, with most of my babies, starting simply by implementing a few of my sleep beliefs with my babies as newborns completely eliminated the need for me to sleep “train” them at all later! So, while the first few weeks are for cuddling, bonding and letting baby nurse often to bring in a good milk supply if you’re breastfeeding, there are some small things you can do to help lay a good groundwork. The next few points will cover these, after an important reminder.

remember that they are only babies once

Before I get on with the groundwork, I want to clarify something. Sleep is important. It really is. An overtired baby or an overtired mama are no good. But I have also found it very important to remember that babies are only young once. Sure it may hamper their sleep some if I nurse them to bed, but if overall we are well rested, and even if I just simply want to, there is nothing wrong with coddling a baby. A young baby cannot be spoiled, held too much, cuddled too often or picked up too frequently. The need for a mother to bond with, and intimately know, her baby is real. Following a sleep schedule or abiding by sleep rules should never come before the priority of a mother to be with, know, and bond with her baby. That is not to say that a bonded mother won’t ever “sleep train” her baby. It’s just that bonding should come first and be viewed as more important. I can say almost without hesitation that I doubt when you and I are grandmothers that we’ll wish we’d trained our babies to sleep earlier and cuddled them less by moonlight.

newborns need to eat frequently

I find that just remembering this truth helps me in establishing good sleep groundwork. I have heard about babies who slept “through the night” at 3 weeks and, well, I’ve never birthed one of those types! I don’t know what people mean by “through the night;” perhaps just a longer stretch at night gets that denotation. But really, a newborn should not, in my experience, be sleeping through the night without eating. Frequent feedings are important because newborns have very tiny tummies. Also, for breastfeeding mothers, a baby at breast more often is very important for establishing a good milk supply. For these reasons, I’ve never prioritized sleeping through the night for my young babies. I just let it happen when it happens, after laying the right groundwork. Our babies have all started sleeping through the night (with zero or only one feeding) between 4 and 7 months.

it’s okay to prioritize your own sleep, too

As mothers, we have to sacrifice so much for our children. It’s just the way it is, and it’s lovely on most levels. But stretch marks, saggy breasts and sleepless nights are anything but glamourous. I think it’s important for mothers to realize it’s okay to prioritize our own sleep, too. This will look different for every family. Some will put baby in a crib in another room, as I did for a time with Small Fry, for her baby gurgles and snorts kept me awake. Through the monitor, I only heard them softly and could sleep better. Others will sleep in a recliner all night with baby on their chest, if they have an upright sleeper. For me, I love to keep young babies in bed with me, so all I need to do is roll over, plop my you know what into baby’s mouth, and we both drift back to sleep. That way, baby and I are both getting good sleep. It’s okay to do what we need to do, as long as it’s a good option for baby, too, to get our own sleep.

don’t rush to a (seemingly) waking baby

Oh, man, if only I had known that, when Big Mac was a newborn, I didn’t need to rush to him when he seemed to be rousing 20 minutes into his nap. But I did. “Oh, you’re awake! Great, let’s get up.” I have found over the years that babies will often rouse, open their eyes, grunt and even let out a short cry or whimper, when they are coming out of one sleep phase and entering the next. It is not necessarily time for baby to wake up if they’ve only been down for a half hour. In fact, between 25 and 45 minutes is often when babies are cycling through sleep phases. Letting baby be for a solid minute, putting the paci back in, patting baby on the back, or rocking the cradle slightly may be all that’s needed for baby to keep sleeping. But if not, then of course a young baby should get up, eat, have some more wake time, and then take another nap later.

patterns are good!

If there’s one thing I loved about the Babywise books, it’s that they taught me about the sleep, eat, wake cycles for babies. Although there is so much I don’t believe in/care for in those books, the pattern of a baby eating a full feed after waking up, staying awake for awhile and then, on most occasions, going back down to sleep without more milk, is very conducive to laying sleep groundworks.

I nursed, or at least held and rocked, Big Mac to sleep every single time he went to bed, be it for a nap, or for nighttime sleep, until he was 19 months old and Nuggey was born. Had I known that was not really great for his self soothing abilities, I wouldn’t have done it for that long. Had I known it wasn’t good for his self soothing abilities, but still wanted to nurse, rock or hold him every single sleeping time for over a year and a half, that would have been fine. I can think of nothing wrong with nursing a baby to sleep, so long as the mother realizes that said baby may grow to have a difficult time falling asleep on their own, as Big Mac did. Once I knew that, I chose to feed my babies upon waking, let them stay awake for a while, and then lay them down as soon as they began to show signs of sleepiness. When they fell asleep without nursing, they learned to soothe themselves to sleep when they roused after sleep cycles. Then, I was able to ascertain when they were truly awake and needing food (crying and unable to fall back asleep) vs. just awake and unable to self soothe back to sleep (as Big Mac was, because really, with an adequate milk supply, no baby needs to eat every 45 minutes around the clock like he did. Oh, hindsight is 20/20!).

With every baby since Big Mac, I have, for the most part, followed a sleep, eat, wake time pattern. With many exceptions, though, as I’ll explain next.

statistical outliers: knowing your baby is paramount

Knowing what your baby needs at any given moment is really crucial. With labels, like “Babywise mom” or “attachment parent,” sometimes the focus is taken off of individual circumstances that might necessitate deviation from the “plan.” That is one reason I really don’t like plans, labels and charts when it comes to infant sleep. They just can’t account for the statistical outliers.

Letting a baby CIO (Cry It Out) is not my cup of tea, though it might be perfectly fine for some families in some circumstances. However, to across the board say that a baby who has eaten only an hour earlier should be left to cry it out, since the issue is clearly a sleep one and how else will baby ever learn to fall asleep on their own, simply fails to take other possible factors into consideration.

When Small Fry was 4 months old, I got pregnant with Stellan. Until I urinated on the pregnancy test, I didn’t realize it, and when my milk supply took a dramatic nosedive, that went undetected by me, too. Suddenly, our normally great sleeping baby girl was waking more, seemed fussy and just wasn’t herself. I offered her the breast more and more, and she took it, so I just “knew” the issue couldn’t be that she was hungry. But I was wrong. Finally, I started to pump one side while I would feed her on the other (I wasn’t a pumper at all before this), and I realized I was consistently only making a little over an ounce on each side every three to four hours! Once we got her hunger situation figured out, she went back to sleeping well. In that case, assuming the situation was only sleep related would have been faulty.

Now that I’ve had more babies, I focus more on trying to be in tune with them. I hardly ever let Flurry cry it out. I know he gets up twice a night, almost always at about midnight and 4 am, these days. He eats well during the day and scarfs a lot during those nighttime feeds, so I am confident that he is truly hungry, and I see no need to try to cut out one of his feedings. Conversely, once a baby is waking at night to nurse, but simply latches on, takes a few swallows and is back out cold, I know that they are just needing help learning to soothe back to sleep and not “needing” the milk anymore! Because I know my baby and have listened to his cries, I can usually (not always!) guess if something else, perhaps a cold, is brewing. Babies can be sensitive to lots of things, so I find that knowing, or at least trying to be in tune with, what is going on with baby is paramount when figuring out sleep.

consistent, still sleep location

Babies sleep better in a still, consistent sleep location. I have found that at almost all costs (even skipping a trip to Target or a fun outing), making sure that a baby (once he or she is 4 or 5 months old and is taking 2 to 3 fairly organized naps a day) is in his or her preferred sleeping location is worth it. Why? It helps them sleep ever so much better and longer, as well as waking rested, capable of staying awake for about 2 hours before needing another nap. Catnaps in the carseat or baby swing happen, but if sleep for baby is a priority, getting baby home and into his or her crib, or wherever they sleep the best, is important for deep sleep. If a parents’ daytime routine is important and errands must be run or older children picked up from school, then sleep disturbances for the baby will happen. If that is what needs to happen in your family, that’s fine, too! Baby will survive. A baby’s sleep must work for the entire family. But in our experience, everyone benefits from, as often as we are able, making sure our littlest one gets naps in his best spot, as catnaps in the car will usually thwart naptime. Organizing outings around our baby’s wake times has been really helpful for us in terms of getting stuff done and making sure he gets enough sleep.

recognize the signs that your baby is getting tired

I didn’t learn to clue in to these signs until Nuggey was a baby. What a difference it made! Once I realized these were signs of tiredness, I could put Nuggey down in his crib, fully awake, and he’d pass right out. If you are able to read your baby and put him or her down at the very first sign of sleepiness, sleep is much more likely to come quickly and easily. An overtired baby, one who is already so tired that he or she is crying, will typically have a hard time falling and staying asleep. Signs that a baby is getting tired, if they have been awake since their last nap for at least an hour and have already eaten, include:

being more vocal

making louder baby noises

moving their body more, jerkily

whimpering, whining

rubbing their eyes (babies usually don’t do this until 4-6 months old)

acting hungry yet refusing milk when offered

And lastly, if we don’t clue in that our baby is tired soon enough, he or she will resort to crying, a sure sign that we missed our window, but can hopefully still get baby to sleep! If we further were to theoretically ignore the crying, baby might fall asleep right there on the floor, or, worse yet, become inconsolable and unable to sleep.

early to bed, early late to rise

Probably the most key thing about sleep, which has revolutionized the way my babies (and therefore our family) do it, is this last point.

Shorter wakeful times, morning naps an hour after waking and early bedtimes are one of the best ways to ensure that baby can fall asleep easily and get the quantity and quality of sleep needed.

Babies around 6 months and younger will almost always need a nap after about 1 hour of waking in the morning. At the very first sign of fatigue (listed in the point above), I usually hurry baby to bed where he or she peacefully falls asleep without so much as a further whimper. An hour goes quickly in the morning, but once I realized that babies really do need to get put down as soon as they are tired, and that nap number one is usually best taken 1 short hour after waking, the rest of the naps that day flowed so much better!

The better a baby sleeps for one nap, the better they’ll sleep for the next. An overtired baby who had a disturbed first nap is actually less likely to sleep well for their second. And I have learned that, although it goes against what might seem to be common sense, that an early bedtime (6:30 or 7:00) helps a baby sleep better, wake less and rise later in the morning. Once my babies, at around age 5 months, are down to 3 naps a day, the last being around dinnertime, I try to stretch their wake times a tiny bit during the day, and then keep them up in the early evening by giving them a warm bath (loved by all of my babies) to keep them awake. Skipping that last tiny nap of the day by the time our babies are 5 months old, and in turn putting them to bed as early as 6:30 and never later than 7:15, has been one of the final keys in sleep organization.

Flurry takes two naps a day at pretty predictable times (one hour after he wakes in the morning and then two hours after he wakes from his first) and then has about a three hour wakeful time in the late afternoon/early evening, and nurses twice a night. From here, if he is anything like our others, he’ll gradually drop daytime naps and nighttime feeds…just in time for us to have another baby and start all over again! Haha, or not. But you never know.

All in all, I have found, especially as I’ve learned more and have implemented some groundwork early on with our last few babies, that I don’t need to adhere to any firm schedule or set of beliefs. While my sleep and daytime schedule is important, my baby’s sleep and eating habits are even more so. By following, even loosely, a pattern of sleeping, eating and waking, being in tune to my baby and letting sleeping through the night happen naturally, our babies have become good sleepers on their own without much extra work from us. By age one, all of our babies were sleeping through the night have had no nap or bedtime disturbances ever since.

If I may offer a note reminding us all to encourage rather than tear down other mothers, please make sure never to demonize or criticize another mother for her sleep choices. She may be simply uninformed, or she may be fully informed and just choosing to do something different from you because it works for her and her family. Being a mother is hard enough, and all of us go through sleep deprived phases. So the next time you meet a “Babywise mom” or “attachment parent,” remember how much you have in common with her as a mom instead of focusing on how you may think she’s doing things wrong.

Well, I hope what I shared was encouraging or helpful to some of you. May the sleep be with you!

“When I have children of my own, I am not going to let them run around like unruly hooligans. They will obey me and certainly won’t be jumping on couches. I will set the bar high. I won’t allow them to fuss and freak out when they can’t have their way. I will have great expectations for our offspring. Disobedient children? Not for me.” MckMama, B.C.*

*Before Children

As I’ve said in the past, I used to be the perfect mother. And then I had children. Indeed, something happened to the mothering map I had, with good intentions, drawn out for myself to follow. Once our firstborn came screaming into this world, that map fell by the wayside. Yes, it got coffee stains on it. I could no longer find the clean, crisp creases I had so carefully maintained BC*. No more could I remember how my map was originally supposed to fold than I could change a diaper with chopsticks. So I stuffed my map into the glove compartment. I quickly learned that I wasn’t really going to need that map as much as I thought. Mothering was not a sport in which one could gain perfection, nor did it have one clear route to a destination. Although trying to do one’s very best when rearing children is a noble goal, and sticking with ideals we had before we were parents might in some cases be wise, the great expectations I spoke of before becoming a mother? I have been learning that they weren’t exactly all they were cracked up to be.

Please don’t misunderstand me. Some would actually consider my husband and me to be strict in many respects. While we love to allow our children to get dirt under their fingernails, jump off picnic tables and wear their hair however they want, we still try our best to demand a level of respect from them. On the issues that matter, we require that they obey. My husband and I expect our children to do what we ask, when we ask it. I believe there is some discipline lacking in much of our it’s cool to just be your kid’s friend parenting mentality today. We don’t buy stock in that. For example, spanking has been a way that we have sometimes disciplined in our family (Though my beliefs about spanking have changed over the years, we still believe it to be appropriate in some situations, usually when one of our children is directly defiant or is old enough to be deliberately, willfully disobedient.). We also use time outs, privilege removals and behavior charts in other circumstances. We strive to know our children deeply, being aware of where they are at, emotionally and behaviorally, so that we are hopefully able to most effectively teach them to manage their behavior, growing into well rounded, self controlled, confident adults.

But.

But sometimes in the past, I got easily carried away with having my expectations set too high. I do want my children to obey, to learn to control their own behavior, to follow rules when we ask them, to not sass back. But those desires have often led me to being stricter and stricter with our children. Yet, as I’ve gone through the seasons of my relationship with God, I’ve seen a change in my parenting, too. I have learned to afford my children a lot more grace in my last couple years as a mother. Why? For me, it’s been a simple transition as I realize three things.

First, God gives us (Me!) so much grace, so many second chances, unending forgiveness and much mercy. He does this while also disciplining us because He loves us, allowing consequences to befall us even when we are forgiven and guiding and instructing us in love. I want to parent my children the way God parents me. There is no end to His patience with me. Why should it be any different for me with my own children?

Second, it has been eye opening for me to remember that, when our children misbehave and act badly, I really should not be surprised. After all, they were cut from the same cloth I was. And, starting with Adam and Eve in the Bible, we’ve all tarnished that cloth with our own icky behavior. Should I be surprised when my children misbehave? They are sinners, just like me.

Third, as I will give examples of in a moment, it has struck me that there was a real inequality, disharmony and poor balance in the things I was expecting of my children versus the expectations I had for myself in similar areas.

Instead of solely having great expectations for our children, what if I focused on meeting those great expectations myself? That is the question that came to my mind some time ago. Expectations are wonderful, necessary, important things for our children to have. But if I am not determined to be the best parent I can be at age 33, what right do I have to ask our 5 year old to be the best he can be? As I have heard it said many times before, children learn what they live. Giving our children a list of rules to follow, behaviors to demonstrate and no-no’s to avoid is, in my opinion, hardly the way to help our children grow into self sufficient, confident, emotionally mature adults. Especially if we are not modeling those things for them. Indeed, I have come down on my daughter for not being able to control herself emotionally when she cannot find her other shoe. “It is not a big deal. Stop fussing about it right now. Get yourself together. Calm down!” Really? The last time I checked, she was 2 years old. I am many years older, yet I still allow myself to get out of sorts emotionally, too. If I lose my contact lens, I’m likely to let myself get into a sour mood. Arrive at the post office one minute after it closes and I might have some choice words. If I feel slighted by my husband, watch me unravel, pout or cry. Yet, I give myself grace. I understand my own emotions, even allowing myself pity parties when I think I deserve them. And my children? They are years behind me in their emotional development. Doesn’t it stand to reason that I should cut them some major slack as they learn to deal with their own feelings of disappointment when the worm they found died, their younger sibling scribbled on their project or when I tell them we are done reading and now it’s time to go to bed?

I think so.

Great expectations. For my children. For me. Strict discipline. Grace. It is all a very delicate dance, a careful mix, a balancing act I am so very much still learning about.

They* say that when you bring a new baby into the house, it’s best not to disrupt your other children’s routine too much. Switching bedrooms, learning to toilet train or implementing a brand new structure are supposedly unwise ideas around the time of the birth of a newborn.

*Whoever they are.

On the whole, I tend to agree. With that being said, there are still gobzillions* of instances where things would work out just fine if, for example, a family moved while adding a new baby to their ranks. (Well, not literally moving while having the baby. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer not to imagine a poor woman giving birth in the back of a U-Haul truck. Or, really, any kind of truck. Or vehicle for that matter. But I digress. You’re welcome.)

*I swear, except I don’t, that that’s a real word.

I suppose it all comes down to what any parenting choice comes down to: We, the parents, knowing our own children and making case by case decisions that benefit our families the best. I was honestly not too anxious about how our older children would take to a new baby in our house. Stellan gave me the most pause, since he is still so young and certainly wasn’t able to fully grasp while I was still pregnant what was about to transpire.

But he has been doing great. In fact, they all have. Nonetheless, our family still has behavior struggles just like the next family. I’ve written on my blog before about discipline in general, a whole post about extinction, coping mechanisms including my one finger rule, and a thorough run down of all of my most “favorite” discipline techniques. As much as we feel strongly about the ways in which we gently guide our children when they do wrong, focusing on our children’s proper behavior is of great value to us, too.

To that end, I try to verbally praise our children when they display an exceptional attitude, catch a child’s eye and flash him a quick smile when I see him helping a sibling, and get creative with charts and stickers. Most recently, these little paper charts, images and initials drawn with black Sharpie, hang on the side of our kitchen island. Wanting MckFlurry’s arrival into our family to go smoothly yet simultaneously desiring a fresh start with our children, behavior wise, my husband and I chose a few areas we wanted our oldest three (Stellan gets involved, too, but he gets stickers on his shirt when he is doing great, simply because he likes that and can’t really understand the concept of accumulating stickers over time.) to work on.

I drew easy to understand symbols for each category: Showing love to your brothers and sister, listening to Mom and Dad, obeying with a cheerful heart and not grumbling, and using our hands for kindness.

When we find one of the children displaying a great attitude or exhibiting wonderful behavior, we let them pick a sticker out of our bin and put it under their initial in the appropriate category. Of course it’s heart warming to see how excited they get when a sticker is earned, but even more thrilling is the genuine pride they take in one of their siblings when that child earns one! “Good job, Nuggey! I knew you could do it!” Ten stickers on any one chart will get the child a special surprise. Our hope is that our children will learn to be more habitual about having a good attitude as we recognize and help make them aware of times when they do.

And, as you can clearly see, so far so good!!

Have you ever been tired? Tired of children, tired of macaroni and cheese, tired of diapers, tired of sore breasts, tired of crumbs on your floor, tired of being asked to be held, just plain tired of being tired? I have. Oh yes, I most certainly have.

If you are a mother, I’d venture to say you probably have, too.

I had an experience that moved me a few years ago, though. It was an evening I spent bathing my children that very literally revolutionized my perspective on mothering. Longing to tell you all about it, I shared a similar version of this post a while back. And now that we have a tiny, helpless, amazing, sweet, grunting newborn in the house again, living in the moment has risen back to the top of my priority list. I rewrote my post and share this version with you now, because I am more determined than ever this fifth time around to constantly remember that I’m gonna miss this. I long for that awareness for all mothers. You see, remembering that little truth, knowing that I am guaranteed to look back years from now and miss this arduous time mothering young children, is making these very first weeks of having a newborn some of the most precious days I have ever lived.

I hope that my thoughts here might speak to and encourage some other tired mothers out there. (And, to be honest, I’m posting it as much as a reminder for me as I am for you.) Here goes.

I am frequently asked, “How do you do it? How do you stay so calm with young children? I would go crazy with five so little!”

The answer? I’m not entirely sure. Part of it is just how God made me, I think. I have long felt that I was fashioned to be a mother. The Lord knew before the dawn of time that my husband and I would be blessed with five children within the span of five years. And while I certainly have my faults, many of which you are aware of as I am not afraid to blog about my failures and struggles, I will say that I am pretty calm with our children. Patience is something the Lord has blessed me with, and I am so thankful. Even though that is true, there are also times in my mothering when I stay calm in the midst of chaos because, frankly, it’s better than the alternative. You know, the whole I’m laughing just to keep myself from crying thing. Yeah, that. A shrieking mama going ballistic over a slammed door, spilled milk or baby woken from his nap by an older sibling is not going to make an already stressful situation any better for anyone concerned. So, for the most part, I stay calm, trying not to escalate any already challenging moments. And believe me, our family has plenty of them. For some time now, my focus has been on attempting to be in the moment with my children as much as I can. I don’t always succeed, yet that is always my goal.

But how did I get to be this way? To have this kind of perspective?

As I said, a beautiful bit of inspiration descended upon me almost two years ago. Right during bathtime. It was an inspiration which changed my parenting from that day forward. I’m not exaggerating or being facetious when I say that keeping this one little truth in mind makes it as easy as apple pie for me to stay calm. Yes even in the midst of toddler meltdowns, preschool tantrums, that afternoon we skipped naps and went to Target, and the much dreaded witching hour.

In times like those, I can stay calm, being grateful for my children even when things are stressful, because I remember that I’m gonna miss this.

Let me start at the beginning. It was dark out, I was wrapping up bathtime, and my husband was still at work. I was doing dinner, baths and bedtime myself those days. I can’t be entirely certain, but I’m sure it had been a long day with the kids. Most of the days were. Come to think of it, they still are. At that time, our oldest little guy was three, our second son was one and a half and our baby girl was a newborn. It is as clear as day still, this bathtime memory.

I was sitting on the toilet, hunched over the tub, preparing to get MckNugget out of the bath, sweating. Warm water and many warm bodies made our tiny bathroom, well, warm. Small Fry, too young to bathe with her brothers, was sprawled on the floor of the bathroom perched atop some towels that were possibly clean. And possibly not. She was sporting nothing but a diaper and a grimace. Big Mac was still in the tub; I hadn’t washed his hair yet. He was squawking to get out, saying something about the water no longer being warm enough, and Small Fry was bellyaching for attention. Or milk. You know, normal newborn stuff. For a litany of reasons, not the least of which was my utter fatigue, bathtime needed to come to a close. Pajamas were waiting; my pillow was audibly calling my name. I lifted Nuggey up out of the tub and wrapped my drenched second born in his green, hooded dinosaur towel. There was no sense getting worked up, at least on the outside. So I determined to stay calm and cuddled him in terrycloth while his siblings continued to whimper and whine. I slowly rocked him back and forth in my arms and sang Rock-a-bye Baby to my clean toddler. It was a routine, singing that song after I got our children out of the bath. We did it every night. One time through the song for each child.

As I wrapped up the song, I prepared to sit Nuggey up and attend to the deafening chaos that was the other children. After all, there was another boy to finish washing, teeth to brush, an empty belly to fill with breastmilk, diapers to find, jammies to slip on and beds to tuck children into. But as he sensed me about to right him, Nuggey tossed his wet head back into the crook of my arm and looked up at me, his forehead still glistening with bath water, some residual bubbles in his hair. “Uh-gain!” he squealed, his eyes twinkling.

Like the good mother I tried to be, I sang Rock-a-bye Baby one more time, but I told him firmly that it would most certainly be the last. My blood pressure was rising as the heat and noise continued to permeate the bathroom. Our other two children were giving no signs of calming down, and I was tired. Not only did I not want to sing any more, I was fairly certainly I physically couldn’t. Yet when I finished singing the second time around, Nuggey begged in his sweet, young voice once again for more.

I didn’t want to do more. My desire to be with my children at that point could definitely have been measured in the negative. As in, below zero. Less than no desire. I didn’t want to sing to him one more time. I was tired. Tired of children, tired of singing, tired of bubbles, tired of voices, tired of being awake, tired of diapers, tired of…well, you get the idea. Lengthening the day with any more singing was the last thing I wanted to do. But then suddenly, it was as if supernatural fairy dust was sprinkled from the heavens directly onto my head. A crystal clear glimpse of my very own future spread out before me.

All at once I knew that I was gonna miss this.

I was looking down at little Nuggey when this vision of sorts appeared to me. My son’s damp eyelashes, beautiful, long and dark, were batting at me. His tiny bottom was cradled in my hand, his soft, chubby legs thrown over my arm, his dinosaur toweled body entirely dependent on the strength of my tired arms as I held him in my lap. Yes, suddenly I could see my future. I was still sitting on the edge of the toilet, looking towards the open bathroom door. Nuggey, now a grown young man sporting a football jersey and facial hair, walked past the doorway down the hall, smelling of cologne and talking on his cell phone, waving at me as he walked by. It was going to happen. And soon. While I firmly believe that joys I won’t expect will also arrive when that time in my life comes, when our young children are teenagers and beyond, it still struck me like a ton of bricks. It was frightening, overwhelming and a bit horrific to me as a young mother. Tears began to fill my tired eyes.

I knew that when my children were grown, I was gonna miss this.

When Nuggey (or Big Mac or Stellan or baby Flurry or our sweet Small Fry) comes home from college, gives me a high five, asks for some money and then hibernates in his bedroom all summer listening to music, I’m gonna miss this. With that sprinkle of fairy dust, my future was shown to me in fast forward that evening. I was given the insight that my older self would give anything for 20 year old Nuggey to be a toddler again. Even if for just for one hour, heck even one minute, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I would love to rock him, sing and stroke his wet hair. But I won’t be able to. Once our children are grown, they are grown. There is no going back to toddlerhood, not for a day. Or an hour. Or a minute. I will have to be content with my adult children. I’m sure I will be and will look forward with much joy to grandchildren and beyond. But I am still positive that I’m gonna miss this.

And that night in the bathroom, years before the future I could clearly see even took place, I was being given my wish. Miraculously, I was able to rock Nuggey, a nearly helpless babe in arms, one more time. And then another time after that. And yet another. My world turned upside down as I began to see that the life I am living right now, the endless days that give me bags under my eyes and pounding headaches, are a dream come true. I am living a granted wish in reverse, and I finally realized it.

Given a breathtaking new perspective from which to see, I wiped the tears from my eyes and sang Rock-a-bye Baby as many times as Nuggey would let me that night. I lost count. As I rocked him, hot tears fell from my eyes onto the dinosaur towel. Eventually Small Fry found her hands and started admiring them. Or maybe she got one of her fingers into her mouth and started sucking it like MckFlurry often does these days. Big Mac grabbed a new tub toy and started splashing away, singing the ABC’s to himself. And more intensely than I ever had before, I relished that time with Nuggey in my arms. The love I felt for him at that moment, the gratefulness that he was still little, still with me, was so intense that it hurt. For now I knew then that soon enough he would be all grown and my arms would ache to hold him like a baby again. Even once.

Indeed, I’m gonna miss this.

My mind cannot help, now that I think about that evening again, but wander to those parents who have buried children. I have known friends who have experienced loss and have read blogs chronicling grief. Is there anything on earth those dear parents would not give to hold their children again, even for a moment!? In a million, trillion years they would not complain to themselves about having to sing Rock-a-bye Baby one more time, or losing sleep, or fingerprints on the glass, or peanut butter in their hair. Rather, I imagine mothers who have lost children would give their right arm and their left to be able to sit with their child and sing Rock-a-bye Baby until their voice was hoarse, their eyelids closing in slumber.

And women with empty wombs who pray and ache for children, yet remain with longing arms? What honor am I doing them if I take for granted the fact that I have children, healthy young children who are begging me to cuddle them, sing to them, build train tracks with them, come look at what they drew and listen to their jokes? For myself and those women who long for their own children, I decided that night to love my babies, not taking them for granted. To sing to them when they ask. And clean up their Cheerios without grumbling. Even to tuck them in for the seventh time in one night. Or seventeenth.

Right there and then, sweaty as I sat on the edge of the toilet in the bathroom that night not so long ago, I vowed to try my best to be ever thankful for the moments I do have with my children. Oh Lord, help me not wish away their young years, always hoping to get more laundry done or other children dried off. I desire to not live my mornings only for the hope of naptime, my afternoons with just bedtime in mind. I will relish each kiss, hug and song; I’ll let dishes pile up because I was asked to play Chutes and Ladders. I will teach our little ones to pick up their toys, even if it takes months of reminders. By wiping bottoms, telling the story of Jonah and the whale just one more time, smelling MckFlurry’s newborn head, kissing booboos (even pretend ones) and playing house, I will leave their childhood behind with no regrets. For I desire that no “I love you” is left unsaid, no cheek remains unkissed, no request to “Cuddle wif’ me!” will ever be turned down and no child awakened by a thunderstorm will be turned away from our bed. Even as the fish sticks with tartar sauce fly and the Sharpie stains our kitchen table, when there are 3 am blowouts and caked Desitin under my fingernails, as I am awakened every three hours around the clock to nurse our newborn and my body carries around more baby weight than I fear I’ll ever be able to get rid of, I know now that…

…I’m gonna miss this.