Questions and answers

As always, the topic of 'sleep' really gets people talking!!

A few lovely bloggers left questions in their comments on my floor-bed update but when I started writing my replies I realised the answers were worth a whole post on their own... so here you go:

Melissa from The New Mommy Files asked:

When did Finlay start getting up and going into your room after waking at night? Did you do anything to encourage this? I would love to see Annabelle coming in to join us on her own, as she currently cries until I come in to get her, despite having the freedom of the floor bed and an open door in the room right next to mine. I'm not sure if this is just her personality, or something I'm doing (or not doing).

When Finlay first started crawling we were living in our old house, where his floor-bed was in our room. As soon as he was able, he would crawl up into our bed when he woke at night (our bed is a low futon).

Then we moved to our new house, where he has his own room next to ours. Here, I leave our doors open and a dim light in the hallway. I remember the first few nights he woke up, I could hear him grizzling and I just called out his name until he crawled down the hall and found us. Now that he's walking he just stumbles, half-asleep, into our room when he wakes.

It's so hard to know whether it's just his personality driving him to get out of bed independently, or whether something we have done has encouraged him to do so.

Perhaps you could practice during Annabelle's daytime nap... waiting for her to wake up and calling her from your room until she gets up and finds you?

I definitely found that I felt more rested when I didn't physically have to get up out of bed during the night. I hope this helps!

Neptune from Montessori Ici asked:

Tell me, what is your plan at this point to help Finn wean at night? We are right at the same spot.

Ahhhh we have just started the night-time weaning and it is going pretty well so far! For the record, I'm really just making this up as I go along, so don't take my word as gospel... I hope our experience might help give you some ideas for your own journey :)

For the first few nights I repeatedly told Finlay in the evening, " Tonight after you fall asleep, we won't have any more milk until morning when the sun is shining through the window." I said this many times, in different ways, before taking him to bed and feeding him to sleep as usual. Then when he woke and came into our bed I repeated that we weren't having milk until morning ("when the sun is shining through the window"...). Of course he was upset and cried a bit but actually settled down much more quickly than I had expected. Finlay's comfort object is my ear (I know, cute, huh?!) so as long as he can hold on to my ear he has been happy to settle back to sleep. I suppose other children might use a teddy/blanket etc? Or if they don't need anything, even better!

Our challenge has been to mark a time when he can have milk again... I used the "sun shining through the window" cue so that he would have something visual to give him an indication of whether he could have milk yet. However, we're in the middle of winter here and the sun isn't rising until around 7:30am, long after Fin is ready to wake up and have his morning milk feed. Clearly I didn't think that through very well.

So, I have just been looking at the time and deciding that any time after 5am he could have some milk (and if he falls back to sleep for a bit longer, even better!). Hopefully as time goes on he'll be able to last a bit longer before the feed.

I hope that this experience of getting to sleep without suckling will eventually help him reach a point where he is able to fall asleep independently, every time. A long process, I'm sure.

I have also received questions regarding the Montessori mobiles we hung up when Finlay was an infant. I made all of our mobiles while I was pregnant... perhaps I should make a tutorial on these? Some of them are time-consuming but others are quite easy. A lovely project for new parents or as a gift for anyone expecting a baby.

This past weekend, my partner Brent attended the three-day Montessori orientation workshop I mentioned in this post. What a brilliant opportunity this was for him to fully immerse himself in Montessori philosophy (rather than the dribs and drabs he receives from me!) - I can already see the difference in his interactions with Finlay. This just reminded me how important it is for us all to continue educating ourselves so that we remain fresh, inspired, and able to respond intelligently to our children.

The workshop took us north to Matakana for the long weekend. This truly has to be one of the most beautiful parts of the world. Fin and I spent our days exploring beaches, filling our pockets with shells and the car with sand. And can you believe.... I left my camera at home! Ahhh well, just another reason to live in the moment, I suppose.

It rained on and off all weekend but were rewarded with some of the most beautiful (and frequent) rainbows I've ever seen. Call me a sucker, but I do love rainbows! Fin even started saying "wa-bow" over and over... I'm not sure if he was even looking at the rainbows or just responding to my excitement. Made me giggle and think of the double-rainbow guy...

Wishing you a happy weekend!

No longer content with cleaning our glass door, Fin insists on climbing the furniture to reach every window in the house...