haircut

[Some of the] Things I've learned this week:

1. Giving a super-energetic 8 month old a haircut is not that easy. The $17 I cheaped out of paying Snip-its to do the job probably would have been worth it. At least hair grows back! I cut off at least 1.5" in some spots! The first picture is pretty bad b/c I hadn't combed it after the cut. 2nd picture is more representative of the final product.

2. No, all the people who tell me starting my child in the nursery earlier would have helped with separation issues, you were not right. Asher, unlike his big bro Owen, started the mom-to-mom nursery at around 5 weeks old. Asher, as of about 7 months old, began to have as bad or even worse problems in the nursery than Owen. He lasts about 15 minutes before he is so fussy a worker has to try to distract him. All distraction techniques fail and by about 10 minutes after that they are forced to buzz my pager. He is hysterical and I can hear him before I even get downstairs. As soon as I retrieve him, he cheers up right away (although the heaving chest shudders take a while longer to subside). Well, there are just a few meetings left for the year, so at least we made it most of the way.

3. Never underestimate the power of sleep-deprivation to affect your child's behavior. Owen and I have really been at it with each other the past few weeks. Owen has virtually ceased all napping the last few weeks. It is very difficult to get Owen to bed early enough to compensate for lost naps and keep him rested. Boy does it show! He gets so defiant and intentionally naughty and cranky and volatile. I know the signs because I get that way myself when tired. The mom-to-mom speaker this morning (and mother of 6 kids) spoke straight to my soul and her talk must have been written with my week (and general experience) in mind. You think you adequately handle this job if you talk to the right people and read the right books, you don't find it *too* tough to be patient with your child, you think your love for your children is unquenchable. Then slowly, over months and years, with increasing complexity of life and needs, your own resources start to get sapped. You find that the seemingly bottomless reserves you started out with are not bottomless. You think a few nights' sleep or a good vacation will refresh your supplies, but a good night's sleep buys you about 15 minutes of patience first thing in the morning and then you're right back to sapped. You start becoming more irritable, more grouchy, more short, more explosive...and not the mom you *ever* planned to be. You are shocked that you act the way you sometimes do. Oh how I feel this lately, and I'm not yet at the end of year three of this lifelong journey. Answer: Allow God to teach me through this experience that I on my own will always fall short, that I am not enough, that He is the source of life. He is stripping away my self-reliance through the nitty-gritty of motherhood, and the things I really need I can't drum up...but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc. Practice the presence of God with habits of time and mind...the speaker's prayer was a deep breath and a constant, short, 'God, be _______ in me right now (patience, wisdom, etc.), and a pause, full of faith for the answer. The speaker had such an exact summation of my struggles that I had to record this for later reminders.

4. Deciding to night-wean Asher was tough, and doing it was tougher, at least the first night. It seemed to be time, because he started getting confused...staying awake and expecting nursing at other times of night if he woke (rather than just the one feeding we'd had consistently for a long time), and I think getting up at night is tiring both of us out, after 8 cumulative months of it. That feeding was not going away on it's own, and it would probably only get harder to get rid of once he's pulling up and smarter. Well, that was the reasoning at the start of the night, but after sending in Daddy to pick up, reassure, and sans feeding apparatus at 3am, and not getting back to sleep with fussing and crying til 4:45am, one's resolve starts to waver...he was more persistent than Owen!! But, night #2 involved only 2 brief 5-minute cries. Hopefully tonight he will just sleep on through, and not test to see if we were really serious :{

5. I love my family! I am so extraordinarily blessed.