busy mom montessori

(No affiliate links) Many of us moms need to buy stocking stuffers not only for children, but for adults as well, at least for ourselves and/or our partners, if not others. This year my mom asked her adult children to help out with stocking stuffers for everyone. I had a lot of fun finding inexpensive, quality and useful stocking stuffers that I could buy in bulk for my siblings and parents! I had fun thinking of things that almost any adult would find to be a helpful addition to their life. These are gift ideas that work for anyone. They are generic, yet meaningful in their usefulness. I thought I might as well share the fun with all of you and make double use of the time spent. I can save other moms some time! I only bought a couple of these things, but I thought of a lot of ideas. These are real, useful things that happen to be so small that you can buy a lot for not much money. I also tried to find things that are eco friendly because they make other things last longer or keep you

 Today we went for a Sunday walk. Since I’m an old school Sabbath observer, I look to rest and find delight in simple joys each Sunday. It’s a day of respite from the relentless goals that stress me out all week. Today on this delightful spring evening walk, I had the thought, “If I deserve this kind of respite and delight on Sunday, why not every day?” Or in other words, “why should I save this feeling I get from not working on mundane tasks and going on relaxing nature walks for Sunday, when I need this kind of renewal all week?” So I’d like to go on walks every day. I’m afraid that they’ll be a drudge though once they become a task. I guess the only thing to do is try it out and iterate from there.

 A lot of Montessori parents avoid swaddling their newborns in the name of allowing freedom of movement. This idea makes me incredibly nervous but I have been trying it and it hasn’t been too bad. I do use white noise liberally however, and that does work wonders. I see Howie calm immediately when I put it on. I also feel like he doesn’t startle as easily as Clark did. I kept Clark swaddled even when he wasn’t sleeping. I also want to get one of those Nested Bean Zen sacks and try it out because Howie is getting more restless as he is no longer a sleepy newborn.

So Clark was using the potty pretty well at 24 months. But after we went on vacation for a few days, he regressed majorly. On the vacation he kept his diaper dry almost the whole time, until I think maybe the morning of the third day, and it seemed like that threw everything off. After that he peed his pants a LOT for what felt like three weeks. I worked hard on putting pants back on him every time so that least he would have the consequence of having wet pants. Finally, I looked to the troubleshooting section of The Tiny Potty Training Book by Andrea Olson. She said that the vast majority of the time potty regressions are the child asking for more control. But when I read that I immediately suspected that it was the opposite with Clark. He's not good at pulling his pants down and getting on the potty with pants around his ankles, I had been leaving him to go potty by himself and I assume that he felt like I left him out to dry. So I started taking him every two hours. And just lik

 For a couple weeks I tried to give Clark a different kind of water play sensory set up every day, but I kind of gave up. For example, I did reusable ice cubes in the water and gave him a second bin to put them in. I did duplos. I did frogs inside of soap foam. I think the frog one was the last one I did. Clark did not like that one. He acted super distressed that each frog was soapy and wanted to tell me all about it every time he found one. He also disliked digging them out of the soap. And then, in general, he didn't spend as much time with the bins as I hoped he would. Though that's not completely true since a couple days I think I got 20 minutes out of it. I had a realization during this process that he needs to eat at 2 every afternoon, and usually these activities were bumping into that time and that's largely why he would get unsettled and listless. So basically, I want to try again but starting as soon after 12 o'clock lunch as possible.

Seriously, this is my biggest hang up. I'd like every daily habit to go in the same order for Clark every day, but I don't want to brush teeth until after we eat, and then I always forget. I guess as I am writing this, now I see that it is very clear that the event teeth brushing can be connected to is the end of breakfast. Seems simple enough. I will try that out. Seriously though, I feel like no matter how much I may be able to figure out an order for everything else, tooth brushing always throws me off enough that everything else feels like it can't be in order either. That was, until I realized that tooth brushing was the only problem. After I realized that, everything else didn't seem like such a nebulous blob of confusion. Am I the only one who gets caught up in things like this?