While beautifully quaint, this Scottish building boasts of all the creaks and groans of any antiquity.

Well, I thought I’d report back on the retreat/”weekend away.”  I knew it would be all right when there were no name tags.  In fact, the weekend away was more than good- it really was great.  We live in Scotland, so any kind of road trip is a sight to behold and the hour and a half trip south of Aberdeen (our city) to Arbroath was a lovely one.  While I remembered every snack available to man and the portable DVD player, I did of course forget the actual DVDs, a mistake my children did not appreciate at all.

Regardless, we made it to the Windmill Christian Centre and immediately enjoyed the view of the coast and the peaceful surroundings I highly recommend this facility by the way).  It is one large building with 3 or 4 stories and perfected suited for such an event.  The retreat director was thoughtful enough to put our family of 4 further away from the activity hub, but we still had 45 Uni students running up and down the stairs right outside our door, as well as across the hall to the bathroom at all hours of the night.  As I mentioned I would, I brought 2 sound machines in case we split the kids somehow.  Our goal was to cover the college kid noises, as well as the soft little coughs and sighs so typical of small children (yet still distracting to adults trying to sleep).  As it turned out, there was an en-suite bathroom (unusual for Scotland), so we put our son in a pack n play in there as he is the youngest (21 months) and the rest of us stayed in the main room.  We set up both white noise generators at opposite ends of the room, and I can testify that they worked!  Even when our daughter woke up in a coughing fit at 4am, that natural white noise (water fall) washed over my son as if he were in paradise- and indeed he was- blissfully unaware of anything other than sweet rest.  We all slept in and had a great time!

I will say how funny it was to explain to a British man what white noise is.  He was sure it was just another “American thing,” but his kid did not sleep until 8, did he?    Similarly, we had another family use our flat while we were away.  They have just arrived from the States and are still jet-lagging with their 2 small children.  The father’s comment was, “Man that noise thing really works!  My son was finally able to get some much-needed rest.”  Need I say more? (except maybe that the retreat god has been assuaged.  What a relief.”

Nothing like answering the same littany of boring questions 20 times.

I’ve never been that into retreats.  I’ll go, but I never look forward to it because it never ends up being very relaxing.  Whether you’re a college student or a career-driven adult, the weekend is something sacred, a time when you should be watching sports and sleeping in.   Instead, you sacrifice a weekend to go to a retreat because it’s going to be “so fun.”  Mm-hmm.  All the fun begins as you stick a name tag on and invite all eyes to stare at your chest (yes, I’m of the female variety).  Then, you get sub-par food at predetermined times, including a senior citizen’s early bird special at 5pm, leaving you starving at 8.  Then, you share quarters with either the friends who managed to talk you into this exciting event, or even better, with strangers you feel the compulsion to chat with to get to know (because that’s what nice people do).  At the end of the weekend, you realize you spent $100 to sleep uncomfortably and eat too many carbs.

I didn’t know it got worse.  Evidently, meeting your husband at a college retreat means that you owe the retreat god big time because somehow, without knowing how, you find yourself looking at a retreat with said husband…and your 2 kids- both under the age 0f 4.  This should go without saying, but a retreat with children isn’t really a retreat at all.  I mean, grandparents take my kids for the weekend or give us an adjoining suite, and I’m all about it.  Truly.  I would actually openly embrace a retreat as what it’s meant to be- time away from what you normally do.  However, packing up 4 of us and loading our car with sleeping bags, duvet covers (what the what?) towels, pack n plays, and car seats is only the beginning.  We are paying to leave the comfort of our 3-bedroom flat and the ease of our own routine to share a room at a retreat- and calling it “a weekend away” in a charming Scottish brogue does not atone for the fact that we are sharing a room.  All 4 of us.  If you read anything I write, you know I do not sleep with my children.  Not even in the hospital- I feed them, I love them, I grin at their sweetness, then I send them right back to the nursery because night time is for sleeping….not for listening to every coo, cry out, and bad dream.  We have 4 white noise generators for a reason- we believe in rest to the point that we invest heavily in the white noise. Praise the Lord our sound machines are portable.  I might set up all 4 in the room just for good measure.  What do you think?

Anyway, pray for us and that the retreat god will be appeased…I cannot endure this again.

My children may look alike, but they don't act the same, and they definitely don't sleep similarly.

Writing a book (I’m sure you’ll need it…ha!)

After you have one reasonable success with your first child, you begin to think that you are a credible expert on all things parenting.  You begin to make mental notes of important chapters you will write in your first best-seller for new parents.  After all, if it worked for you, surely it would work for others.  Then, in all your glory, you you have baby #2.  And this child, though wholly precious and wonderful, is simultaneously a terrible deviation from what you have known.  You start to slowly erase those chapters, and after a while, you completely delete your future failure of a book, coming to the same conclusion that millions of parents have come to before you- you don’t know anything….and you probably never will.

Before I sound too glum, I will add that after #2 grows up a wee bit, you regain some of your former confidence, though this time much more humbly, and therefore much more deserved.  Whereas it seemed that no plan worked for both children, you can look back and see a few threads of commonality that may be deemed useful- whether for #3 or for another poor soul working her way through the agony of sleep deprivation.

My 2

I’ll break it down for you as I experienced (and am experiencing it).  My firstborn is 3 1/2.  She is beautiful (truly ), extroverted, witty, clumsy, all legs and limbs, extraordinarily tall, brilliant, a go-getter, creative, and nonstop- none of which leaves much room for sleep.  My second child is not quite 2, adorable, hilarious, not too wordy, but all about sound effects, also brilliant (come on, all our children are geniuses, right?), fearless, climby, persistent, lovey, and easily worn-out- all of which contributed to his overabundance of sleep, none of which landed during the time of day it should have.  So, I ended up with 2 totally different sleep quotas to figure out.

Our context

I am a grown-up version of my son, minus the funny.  Seriously.  We are sedentary creatures when given a chance, and we love our sleep.  I am also type A (of the hundredth power) and a stay-at-home mom.  We started our family in Iowa and after having our son (#2), we quickly packed up, lived with both sides of the family for a month each, then moved across the pond to Scotland for a PhD.  None of that suited my temperament.  I am a nap-nazi.  I don’t like change, and I sure don’t like jet-lagging myself or my children.  I don’t like being flexible- it’s just not me.  I don’t like change (maybe I said that already).  Add in a few sleep books (Baby Wise and Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child were the 2 at odds in my head every waking moment those first 2 years) and what you get is a crazy, emotional mess called me.  You see, if the average child sleeps 12 hours at night and takes 1 3-hour nap, then I expect that out of my kids, too- after all they’re geniuses, right?  They should be better than average.  So, I scoured every page of every sleep book I could get my hands on, and that’s all I thought about.  I day-dreamed of being old and not having to deal with the issues at hand.  I felt like a failure every moment of every day, because if this is what I did for a living (I did quit my job I was good at after all) and I were to be evaluated, surely I would fail- neither child did what either book said they should do.

Putting the books down

So, I did what I imagine women of old did (certainly those that were illiterate)- I put the books down and I surveyed my children.  I realized that they were in fact babies and not machine (as my husband repeatedly reminded me) and that there was no formula (tho I would have paid handsomely for it).  I would recall helpful tips from the books accidentally, and if they helped (such as Weissbluth’s wisdom that you can’t force a child to sleep or Ezzo’s reminder that not all cries are for hunger), I used them- otherwise I discarded them.  I quickly came to the conclusion that my kids were just fine- they were better than that- they were (and are) awesome- they just need different things.

My values

So, I do believe in teaching your children to sleep in their own beds- if for nothing else, to preserve the sanctity of our bed as just for us.  I also enjoy the benefits of my kids going to sleep on their own (not thru feedings, rocking, movement in general).  This is mostly selfish- I enjoy putting them down and knowing they’re fine and will drift off on their own, and I can have babysitters who don’t have to be trained how to administer the perfect sleep move.  I am easily annoyed by excessive noise (such as screaming children), so I am a fan of white noise for all of us.  I crank it in the kids’ rooms in case one is down when the other is not (common), and use it on a lower volume in our room.  That way, if the kids are just chatting in their rooms in the morning, I can still sleep, but if they’re agitated, I don’t miss it- but I do miss the football game roaring in the night or my drunken neighbors rockin’ to Johnny Cash (yes, even in Scotland).  I do allow my kids to “cry it out” if I see it as worthwhile (getting over a temper tantrum or learning to sleep on their own), but I use my knowledge of their temperaments to know when (and how long) to let them cry and when to go in.  Once again, I have a different reason and amount of time for each child because I’m their mama- I know them.

Bottom line

I used to be quite judgmental about it all (remember the book I was going to write?).  I mean, if I was slaving over the perfect sleep schedule, shouldn’t everyone else be miserable doing it with me?   Now I see us as we are- unique, as are our children.  Some need more sleep, others less, and it’s easy to idealize those who need more.  However, I believe every child’s sleep patterns have pros and cons.  The bottom line is that you have to do what is right for your child.  Some will sleep the night on their own, and some may need a little encouragement.  Don’t be ashamed if yours doesn’t do it on his/her own.  Ultimately, you are the parent and you can decide how you want to tackle the issue- you can wait until later.  If you want to pick up your baby and hold her all night, go ahead- she’s yours.  If you’re happy with it, great- really.  I won’t judge you and no one else should either.  You have to do what you can sleep with at night (pun intended).  And maybe the most important thing is to erase the word “should” from your vocabulary.  Your kid will do what he does- deal with it, and you’ll enjoy him even more.  I did.

Living in Scotland

We live in Aberdeen, which is as far north as Moscow. That makes for some dark winter days.

Whenever I tell people that we live in Scotland, they practically get stars in their eyes and ask if it is wonderful.  Sometimes I say yes, sometimes no (it really depends on my mood), but I can always picture what they’re imagining.  If I am feeling particularly rude, I might mention that we don’t live in a castle, next door to Sean Connery or James McAvoy.  We live in a small flat that is cold more often than not.  We get more rain that I could ever have imagined, which does lend itself to lush vegetation and green, rolling hills.  However, we don’t always get to get out and actually enjoy aforementioned backdrops due to the cold, the wetness, and the dark.  While summers are great with a sunrise at 3 or 4am and a sunset at 10 or 11pm, the exact opposite is true for winter.  This morning, I didn’t even bother to open the blinds until 8:30am because there was no point.  We don’t even have to close the blinds to go to sleep November-February because I can guarantee that NO SUNLIGHT will be peeking through during that time.

How much sunlight do you get in winter?

The worst most extreme days are when the sun rises at 9am and sets at 3pm.  That means that Scottish children walk to and from school in the dark.   The peak is December 21st- we get 4 minutes back a day form that point forward: 2 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon.  I personally celebrate those 4 minutes- 4×7=28 minutes a week!  In all seriousness, that much darkness is tough.  Many people suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD).  In everyday terms, SAD is when people feel depressed as a result of the seasons.  Usually, it is the winter’s lack of light that affects people.

How do we cope with so much daylight in the summer and so little in the winter?

Well, these are opposite issues, but I’ll list a few things that keep us sane:

1. Kids tend to sleep more in the winter and less in the summer.  Deal with it, whether you like it or not.  Something about Circadian Rhythm, but their bodies adjust nicely.  We enjoy this and take advantage- if the sun is out, why not delay bedtime or a nap?
2. We usually get to go home (Texas) once a year.  We plan this trip for the winter- we try to overlap it with Thanksgiving and Christmas, so we can enjoy those days with family and miss a lot of the darkness.  This doesn’t work for everyone’s schedule/work, but it’s what works for us.
3. We never travel home during the summer.  Since school is year-round here anyway, there are lots of breaks that aren’t just in the summer we can take advantage of (such as Christmas, see #2), while staying home to enjoy the extra degrees and sun in the summer months.
4. To preserve sleep, we invested in blackout blinds.  They are worth every pound.  I prefer the velcro kind that adheres directly to the window so as to literally black out a room.  While it’s kind of a pain to initially install the velcro strips, once installed the blinds are easy to take off and on.
5. On the flip side, light therapy can be useful, especially if you’re prone to SAD.  My friends call it a “happy light“- true to its name, this happy light keeps us happy instead of wallowing in misery.
6. If there’s a sunny day in the winter (or the summer for that matter!), we drop everything and enjoy it.  There is time to work later, but you can’t count on the sun this far north.
7. We also find that having something to look forward to is helpful: a play date, a real date, movie night, downloaded TV shows from home, a trip, a visit from family, etc.  It keeps our minds off the dreary weather.

Hope that helps anyone out there who hates the winter as much as I do!

I have always prided myself on being efficient.  Give me 30 minutes where I’m not taking care of children (or my husband, for that matter), and I can conquer the world.  I love the feeling of accomplishment and that sweet satisfaction it brings me as I fall asleep.  In fact, one of the hardest things about moving to the UK was the lack of efficiency.  I’m not trying to be the stereotypical arrogant American, but I will say that a country that rains more than Seattle, gets less sun than anywhere I’ve been, and is as far north as Moscow does not seem to be the ideal place to not have clothes dryers.  I can handle not having dishwater- I can physically scrub, rinse, and dry them myself in less time than a dishwasher, so that’s NBD to me at all.  However, I can not physically air dry my clothes.  There is nothing I can do to speed up this process.   Granted using the radiators does help, but that also costs us- we joke that we’re here for a PhD, not an MD.

I digress, as usual.  My point is this- part of being efficient is multitasking.  Why not make a phone call while washing dishes (that’s what the shoulder is there for, right?)?  Or, why not prep dinner while the kids munch a snack and are relatively contained?  Or why not watch a girly DVD while on the elliptical?  I guess for me, I kind of got to the point where it was getting more challenging to draw hard and fast boundaries.  I mean, I stay at home so I can rear our kids.  That’s the point of me giving up the job I loved- it wasn’t a hard choice for me- I loved my kids more.  For me, that was the best choice.

So, I find that the god of efficiency (and therefore multitasking) has robbed us of quality time and even thorough results. For example, that phone call while washing dishes was not as thoughtful as it could have been.  The dishes weren’t as clean as they should have been.  That time with the kids sitting, smiling, and enjoying life was missed while I cut some vegetables that could have waited.  I am beginning to agree with this website:

Simply put, multitasking is trying to do too many things at once… Pressure in the modern workplace leads many of us to think that if we can do two things at once, we could save time, take on more and be more satisfied. What actually happens is that more mistakes are made, so we have to do tasks more than once, effectively lowering our achievement levels and creating frustration for those we work with and ourselves.

Now, I’m the first to admit that efficiency and multitasking can be very valuable resources, especially in the workforce.  Obviously, I am at home with my kids, but while one goes to preschool, the other naps, and that is when I work- than and after they go to bed.  I do love time with my husband, too, so getting as much done in as little time possible is essential for us.  However, I am not willing to sign off on lower quality work.  For me, I just need some time and a quiet place to think, free from distractions (don’t put me close to a sink, or I’ll try to get to work there, too).  I’ve found that sometimes I just need to focus on one task at hand and do that one thing well.

Being a mom and working from home isn't always as seamless as I'd like.

I work from home.  This sounded like such a good idea – my husband can do his thing, I can do mine and still take care of our little ones.  It has been a lot more challenging than I anticipated to say the least.

Here is a slice of daily “work” (in no particular order)

-Mama, I need you to check my bottom – 2 minutes to enter bathroom where 3 year old is bottom-up

-mailman knocks on door – 1 minute to explain he has come to _____ Road, not _____ Street, which is why the address is wrong

-mail contains info on getting kids’ swine flu shots – 5 minutes to read, 5 minutes to email husband to get his thoughts on whether we do the dreaded jabs

-daughter wants to play Clifford game before Mommy “works” – 15 minutes

-cell phone buzzes its sad little low-energy buzz – 2 minutes to find it, 1 minute to plug it in

-phone actually rings – 2 minutes to go see who it is and decide to ignore it b/c I’m supposed to be working

-3 year old needs one millionth toy she can’t reach in her “room time” – 1 1/2 minutes to chastise her for yelling down the stairs that connect to 1 year old’s room that has no door and which houses him sleeping (hopefully) and 3 minutes to go upstairs and retrieve said toy

-stare at passers-by through living room window- 1 minute

It all adds up (38 1/2 minutes) – and that was just the first 40 minutes of me sitting down to work.  I’m not kidding.  I’m still thrilled to be a stay-at-home mom, but I can see why few want to hire us.  We’re not very focused.  Who continues to crunch numbers, for example, if her 2 year old is throwing up on the new carpet?  (“Just a sec honey – hold it in, just one more minute while Mommy hits save…”)

Here are a few of the things I do to actually be a mom and accomplish my work:

1.  Work during sleep times/parent during wake times.  I don’t care how tired I’ll be, my kids will only be young once, and I am not going to miss it.

2.  Coordinate their naps – even if it means hard work.  Since I had #2, I have worked from home.  From the day I brought him home, he and my older one have slept at the same time- not for the same amount of time, but they go down at the same time.  Now that my older one has dropped her nap, she has “room time” where she plays by herself in her room.  This gives me work time, her a break, as well as a creative outlet that all the experts say is necessary for a well-balanced child.

3.  Turn off the phones/ringers.  I can call back later.

4.  Check email at beginning of work time to see if there’s anything urgent, then close it out, so I don’t see new ones coming in.

5.  Use white noise.  It helps drone out the neighbors and gives a peaceful hum that keeps me task-oriented.  (Here is a free white noise generator I like that you can try out.)

6.  Set reasonable expectations and goals and communicate those with boss – I can only accomplish so much during my work hours.  It’s important that my employer know my situation and know that my kids come first (so does my husband for that matter).

7.  Honor my work schedule/commitment – if it’s 10 hrs/week, work 10 hrs/week.  I am creative as to how I get it in (such as going to a coffee shop on a Sat morning, which is a welcome break for me from a normal day or working all during the week so that I have the weekend off), but I always honor my commitment, which keeps me employed.

8.  No computers from 5-7pm.  These are the fussy times for the kids and when my husband comes home.  My family gets my time when they need it, no question.  (My husband has the same rule and our marriage has changed as a result – we pay more attention to each other and the children, and we all have thrived.)

Is this website something you could have written (minus the reference to TS Eliot anyway)?

On Wednesday I received 72 e-mails, not counting junk, and only two text messages. It was a quiet day but, then again, I’m not including the telephone calls. I’m also not including the deafening and pointless announcements on a train journey to Wakefield – use a screen, jerks – the piercingly loud telephone conversations of unsocialised adults and the screaming of untamed brats. And, come to think of it, why not include the junk e-mails? They also interrupt. There were 38. Oh and I’d better throw in the 400-odd news alerts that I receive from all the websites I monitor via my iPhone.

I was – the irony! – trying to read a book called Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age by Maggie Jackson. Crushed in my train, I had become the embodiment of T S Eliot’s great summary of the modern predicament: “Distracted from distraction by distraction”. This is, you might think, a pretty standard, vaguely comic vignette of modern life – man harassed by self-inflicted technology. And so it is. We’re all distracted, we’re all interrupted. How foolish we are! But, listen carefully, it’s killing me and it’s killing you.

You probably could have written the 1st paragraph, if not the second.  How about the next two, though?

David Meyer is professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. In 1995 his son was killed by a distracted driver who ran a red light. Meyer’s speciality was attention: how we focus on one thing rather than another. Attention is the golden key to the mystery of human consciousness; it might one day tell us how we make the world in our heads. Attention comes naturally to us; attending to what matters is how we survive and define ourselves.

The opposite of attention is distraction, an unnatural condition and one that, as Meyer discovered in 1995, kills. Now he is convinced that chronic, long-term distraction is as dangerous as cigarette smoking. In particular, there is the great myth of multitasking. No human being, he says, can effectively write an e-mail and speak on the telephone. Both activities use language and the language channel in the brain can’t cope. Multitaskers fool themselves by rapidly switching attention and, as a result, their output deteriorates.

The example cited above is pretty severe, but it does remind us how unproductive and potentially dangerous distraction is.

What distracts you?  Is it as simple as noisy coworkers or as complicated as trying to accomplish too many things at one time?  What can you do to limit your distractions and live life more fully?  Really- think about it.

Oh my gosh.  I thought I would never get off that plane.  Babies were screaming nonstop- seriously.  And they weren’t even mine (I did bring 2, so that was a relief).  When my littlest one finally quit squirming and pointing at anything illuminated and saying “yight” and actually started to snooze (thereby allowing me much-needed rest), another child would wail…or a man would cough for the 100th time…or the flight attendant would loudly ask if I wanted something to drink…regardless of intent, they all interrupted any semblance of peace.  So, we did finally disembark and head toward our flat in Scotland.

Oh, our flat…while I really do enjoy life in the UK, it is not exactly peaceful.  I have mentioned before that my children are less than quiet.  Lying in bed trying to get over jet-lag, listening to hear if my children were struggling to sleep, I was shocked to hear how many noises assaulted me- car doors slamming, our neighbors having a conversation next door, the  local dogs yapping, the garbage cans being dragged out to the street, etc.  I said I was shocked- that’s because we normally use a white noise machine to drone out the ambient sounds.  However, this time (last  night), we couldn’t risk it since we had to be attentive parents for the sake of our jet-lagged children.

So, this is my ode to white noise.  Thank you for blocking out life so that I can sleep.  We will meet again soon.

Getting distracted at work can be pretty dangerous….and possibly embarrassing.

When I’m distracted at work, I don’t fall out of my chair or cause a computer to become animate and literally jump off my desk.  Maybe it’s because I’m your average female and don’t stare at men walking by.   Or maybe that’s not true at all.  I may be happily married and thus uninterested in checking guys out, but I do stare at people…a lot.  I look at their clothes and hair, picture a similar style on myself and either store it for future implementation or discard it altogether, possibly feeling pity for the poor soul currently wearing said style.  Regardless, I do find myself distracted quite a bit, and not just visually.  In fact, it’s conversational distractions that get me the most.  Never mind my resolution to gossip less, throw some juicy tidbit in my ear shot, and I am a goner.  Bless my heart- and the person’s being maligned.

What about you?  What distracts you?

This many windows in a row is not a quiet affair.

Life in the UK

My family of 4 lives in a flat in the UK.  This is our 5th place to live.  You see, each time we have changed careers or started a new grad school or had a baby (twice), we have moved.  We have owned 3 houses, 1 condo, and now we live in a flat that we let by the year until my husband completes his PhD.  Each place has had its own challenges, but this last move really got to me.  We were able to enjoy the symphony of flat life: crying babies, angst-ridden teenagers, domestic disputes that inevitably ended in raised voices and slamming doors, and hungry seagulls…not to mention our own noises.  Good grief.  Hubby needed to study, kids needed to sleep, and  I needed to work.  Noisy seagulls and angry teenagers skipping class outside my window were not exactly my idea of a peaceful nap time or a productive work environment.

So how did I reclaim my peace of mind?

White noise.  I’ll say it again- I love white noise.  I wish we had a better word in English to explain my admiration for this phenomenal invention.  Simply put, white noise adds just enough low-level background sound to cover intruding sounds.  I can turn it up or down as I need, and there are even units that self-adjust to cover varying levels of distracting noise. There are lots of options- some for the kids while they rest, some for better focus while we work or study, etc.  Here is a free one you can try out to see for yourself.  I think you’ll agree- white noise is fabulous. 

Good-bye seagulls.  Hello peace.