![\"\"](\"http:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/img_3606.jpg\" "\\"Solutions\\"")
<\/p>\nParenting always includes a few bumps along the road. Nothing you can do about that. But I’m always pleased when (as Jon often puts it) I draw upon the resources of my culture and discover that I am able to smooth these bumps over a bit. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
p{color:gray}. Photo: “Stop, Mama! Don’t get worried — get solutions!”<\/p>\n
h3. Bottle<\/p>\n
You may recall that we were having some trouble with Rosie “taking a bottle”:\/news\/2008\/no-thank-you\/ a few weeks ago. While I wouldn’t say that we’re completely out of the woods quite yet, we have made remarkable progress due to some regular practice and a somewhat titillating-looking new “bottle”:http:\/\/adiri.com\/products_html\/natural_nurser.asp that we obtained at a rather “high cost”:http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B00143Z9EO\/octothorppres-20 (but with free shipping). Rosie had a hesitant practice run or two with this bottle shaped like a boob — but then we left her, the bottle, and quite a bit of milk (pumped under carefully sterile conditions) with our fabulous “babysitter”:\/news\/2006\/friends-2\/ so that we could go see a “play”:http:\/\/timelinetheatre.com\/fiorello2\/index.htm. Mama worried the whole time that Rosie would holler for the real thing all night long, but we returned to a happily sleeping and sated baby and rave reviews from Allie. (We think it might just be that Allie’s the most terrific babysitter!) <\/p>\n
One of the best side-benefits of learning about this unusual bottle is reading their list of “tips”:http:\/\/www.pumpstation.com\/pumpstation\/dept.asp?s_id=0&dept_id=3279 on how to get a baby to take a bottle — concrete and helpful, plus a good reminder that helping babies learn this is just a process.<\/p>\n
h3. Sleeping<\/p>\n
You may also recall that Lucy has been distressing us with her “early wake-ups”:\/news\/2008\/early-bird\/ lately. Putting her to bed a bit earlier was helping for a night or two, and covering her windows with aluminum foil for a total black-out certainly didn’t hurt. But then her 4:54 am wake-up on Father’s Day motivated us to research some new solution. Enter Google. Among the many ideas I read, I found one that seemed promising.<\/p>\n
# Purchase a fancy new nightlight with your toddler. Find one that looks cool.
\n# Purchase a timer for the light.
\n# Tell your child that the light will turn on in the morning when it is time to get up — but while the light is still off, it is time to sleep.<\/p>\n
So far, Lucy seems to be responding well to this kind of structure! I like it better than trying to teach her how to read a clock (too young still) or putting an actual sounding alarm in there (too disturbing). Lucy is enjoying her crazy blue fish night-light, and we are planning to delay her waking time in five minute increments until we can get back to a godly hour. <\/p>\n
h3. Training<\/p>\n
I’ve even received some training to _prevent_ problems in the future: I took an infant\/child CPR certification class! Our church offered it a few weeks ago, and Jon watched the girls (along with Grandpa Boyd’s help) so that I could learn some emergency-intervention skills.<\/p>\n
I was a bit worried that I’d have a meltdown thinking about seriously injured children all day, but I managed to get through the whole class without crying — and now I have something productive to do when my mind starts imagining toddlers with concussions.<\/p>\n
I also learned that “AmeriCorps”:http:\/\/americorps.org\/ has volunteers that will offer a class of this kind for free to any religious or community group, so you should think about hosting one yourself. I highly recommend it — I’m really glad to have some emergency situation skills.<\/p>\n
Hopefully I won’t ever have to use _this_ solution!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Parenting always includes a few bumps along the road. Nothing you can do about that. But I’m always pleased when (as Jon often puts it) I draw upon the resources of my culture and discover that I am able to smooth these bumps over a bit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}