Beautiful Homemakers

From the first day my first son was born, I’ve asked myself daily “ If he died tomorrow, would I regret anything I did today?”   Up until he was four months old I couldn’t stand to hear him cry.  I could not “nap train” or let him cry it out – because if he had died I would never have forgiven myself.  I also could never have let someone else care for him.   The Contented Little Baby: The Simple Secrets of Calm, Confident Parenting by Gina Ford was hugely helpful in helping me train my son to sleep through the night at age four months.  Maybe it’s because I’m an older mother, but I cannot effectively function on less than 7 hours of sleep.  I thrive on 9, and try and always get it, and my husband also needs 8-9 hours.  While I am all for co-sleeping and breastfeeding on demand if you can do it, I could not.   Our son slept in a cradle where I could hold his hand by our bed, and I fed him during the night until he was four months old.  By then I was desperate for more

When our son was about 13 months old, I finally hit on a plan that worked very well for us.  I had been home with my baby since his birth, and was loving it.  But things were still too chaotic for my taste.  Even though I felt I was doing well, I wanted things to be drastically better.  I finally came to the realization that even if I stayed up all night cleaning, it wasn’t going to be enough.  There was still too much stuff . But I wanted 2007 to be so much better than 2006.  I wanted this house to become a home.  So I drew up a month-by-month plan (click here) .  I also needed a daily plan, so that I wouldn’t be cleaning all day long, and would have time to cherish, hug and play with my child, while getting the meals cooked, diapers changed, teeth brushed, house cleaned, myself dressed, etc. I had become a big grump because I couldn’t stand my falling apart house – and I don’t mean that it was just messy, but all the broken down items, unpainted walls, too much furniture, etc.