The Tirana Pyramid

 The Tirana Pyramid is a well-known landmark in the city, on the main boulevard between Sheshi Skenderbeg and the university. When I think of pyramids, I think of Egypt, of course, and of the Mayan and Aztec pyramids in the new world. Something in the way that the shape evokes mountains obviously invites climbing.

The Tirana Pyramid was built as a monument to Albania's cruel dictator, Enver Hoxha, and was a center for communications for many years. Now, it is a decrepit, graffiti-covered trash pit, more or less, although the current municipal government has ambitious plans to turn it into a center for digital technology innovation and training. 

It's also a kid magnet. It's something of a rite of passage for kids in Tirana to climb to the top, and yesterday my kids and their friend S. did just that! It was such a beautiful day out, that I suggested we all ride our bikes to the lake after school. Well, a simple bike ride turned into extended playtime in the park by the lake, and "can we stop and climb the pyramid?" on the way back!

My heart was in my throat watching them become little ants before my eyes, ascending on a slant, raising their arms in triumph at the top, then inching their ways back down again. 

Last year we enjoyed reading the Secret Series by Pseudonymous Bosch. In the first book, The Name of This Book Is Secret, our hearts were in our throats reading the thrilling story of Cass and Max-Ernest who sneak into a pyramid-turned-spa to rescue their friend Benjamin from the nefarious designs of Ms. Mauvais and Dr. L, who want to live forever.  

Whatever the context - communist Albania, Egypt, the Americas, a book of fiction - pyramids seem to confer a sense of magical power. I love that my kids met this challenge, this Albanian rite of passage, scaling to the top of this new height. I love that they came back down to earth, grounded with me again. 

Packing

I actually like packing. I like sorting things into categories. I like the 3D puzzle of suitcases and boxes. I LOVE getting rid of stuff. Sometimes I overdo it and get rid of things I wish I hadn't, later, but that's rare. "When in doubt, throw it out." I'm married to a pack rat so that balances things out a bit...

Today I sorted out the kids' books. Shpresa's son Samueli is helping me put things in boxes, creating labels, scouting dumpsters for cardboard boxes discarded from grocery stores. I have boxes of books to mail to Colombia, boxes to mail to the US, and a short stack of books that will go with us in our luggage. Yesterday I took Valerie with me to the post office and UPS to compare shipping prices. 15-20 kilos costs about $75 to send to anywhere in the Americas by post, and 337 Euros by UPS. I think we're going to take our chances with the post office! I made a list of the books in the boxes just in case, though. I also did a quick check on Amazon to see if it would make more sense just to leave the books here and buy them again in the US - I have probably about $1,000 worth of books here.

I feel like we're in really good shape to be ready to leave in just over 2 weeks. It's nice not to feel too stressed out (so far!!!)!

Favorites

Valerie has developed some very strong preferences for certain things, including the number 9. She looks for the 9 on the digital clock in her room, on the CD player display (although her favorite song is track 8), and among her magnetic number set. In fact when she sees the 9 on the clock her whole face lights up with a big smile and she claps her hands. This developed about the time she learned the word for the digit. (She can now name them all except 1 and 7, and counts to five.)

She also looooooooves this book. Especially the "very fine animal called the Iota," and the heart-shaped "Proo." Although I find some of the illustrations (and the overall theme) somewhat disturbingly colonialist (publication date is 1950), it's a fun book to read and I've memorized enough key lines that I can recite it while she flips violently through the pages looking for her favorites. For a while there we were reading it easily more than 10x a day!

Baby Whisperer Day 8: Learning

Now that Terry has read some of the material I've been working from, he's helped me fine-tune some of our techniques at key points where I think we'd gone off track.

1. I think I was picking up too soon, when she wasn't actually crying, but more just fussing and complaining. At that point, it's better to rub her back and soothe her than to pick her up.
2. I was also soothing when she wasn't actually upset, just annoyed. This did more to rev her up than calm her down. What she does a lot is get up on all fours, crawl to the side of the crib, and try to stand up. What I was doing at that point was to pick her up to cuddle and soothe her, but she'd fight me - pushing back with arms and legs - so I'd put her down immediately. Well, it's actually better to just lift her and lay her back down saying "time to sleep now."
3. I was walking away from the crib before she was all the way asleep. My rationale was that she needs to learn to fall asleep on her own, right? So I should walk away before she's all the way under. But the result of that was that within 20 minutes - sometimes 5 - she'd be crying to be picked up again. What I did today, instead, was to stay with her, one hand on her back (or side, when she rolled over onto her back) until she was deeply asleep. This took twenty minutes. AHA!!! We learned a long time ago from Harvey Karp of the "Happiest Baby on the Block" fame that it takes a full twenty minutes for a baby to drop into deep sleep. At exactly 20 minutes into her nap today, she startled, gave a little cry, and rolled over onto her tummy. But I was right there instead of off trying to work or nap or do chores, so I just laid my hand on her back and said "it's ok, you can go to sleep, Mommy's right here," and she went back to sleep straight away. This observation supports Weissbluth's claim that a nap under 30 minutes "doesn't count" - ah, of course! If it takes 20 minutes to fall into a deep sleep, then a nap that short isn't really restorative sleep.

There are two more pieces to our action plan that we're going to implement starting today:

1. No more nursing in the bedroom. Anywhere else is fine. This will help me be disciplined about not nursing her to sleep. After all, the first step to helping her learn to fall asleep on her own is teaching her not to depend on the breast to fall asleep. That's been the #1 problem disrupting my sleep since November.
2. Posters detailing exactly the sequence of the wind-down ritual, and PI/PD rules. This sounds excessively anal, I know, but I've been driving myself crazy trying to remember these things in a haze of sleep deprivation and some posted rules will help me. Also the babysitters can follow them when they're here. (Dot, don't worry - we know that Grandma's house is traditionally a haven from mom and dad's rules!) I don't want to be legalistic, but just less anxious about whether I'm doing the correct thing or not.

So. Last night she went down at around 8, woke up 9x, and was up at 6:40.

But... TODAY... she had a good long nap in the morning (9:10-10:45), and is currently 80 minutes into her second nap of the day. YAY!!! Both times, one of us was there to soothe her back to sleep before she fully woke up 20 minutes into the nap. We're going to do the same thing at night: at the first squeak, we'll go soothe her back to sleep instead of waiting until she cries like we have been. If she doesn't wake up all the way, she should go back down easier. Eventually she should go back to sleep without us coming to shush her.

I feel hopeful.

Quote for the Day

"It's been known for many years that the effect of lost sleep accumulates over time...If the sleep disruption is repeated night after night...there is an accumulation of sleepiness that produces in adults continuing increases in headaches, gastrointestinal complaints, forgetfulness, reduced concentration, fatigue, emotional ups and downs, difficulty in staying awake during the daytime, irritability, and difficulty awakening. Not only do the adults describe themselves as more sleepy and mentally exhausted, they also feel more stressed. The stress may be a direct consequence of partial sleep deprivation or it may result from the challenge of coping with increasing amounts of daytime sleepiness."

~Weissbluth, M. (2003) Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child: A Step-By-Step Program For a Good Night's Sleep. New York: Ballantine Books, p. 54.

Baby Whisperer Day 7: and maybe the kitchen sink too...

...so I've read most of the Healthy Habits book, and found it tremendously informative. The dude writes like a German Doctor. Fortunately I've read enough German philosophers and social theorists that in comparison it is very approachable. It just isn't the girlfriends-over-a-cup-of-tea vibe you get from Hogg and Pantley (especially Hogg - which is why I was so sad to learn that she passed away a few years ago; her voice is so reassuring and encouraging, you feel like you could e-mail her and she'd literally show up on your doorstep like Nanny 911 ready to save the day and solve all your problems). I like Weissbluth's research-based approach particularly; Hogg and Pantley do draw on published research but they are much more learn-on-the-job in their approach.

Anyway, one of Weissbluth's researched recommendations is to practice an early bedtime, like around 7 p.m. I have noticed that Valerie's waking time has crept earlier and earlier to around or before 8, and since I started the Log have documented a waking time between 7 and 7:40 a.m. every day. So Weissbluth says that the optimal nap times are around 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., with an optional additional nap around 5 or 6, and bedtime should be around 7.

So we're adding that to the mix, as of last night. We had mixed results: she went down easy at 7:30, but was up again at 8, 9:30, and 10:30. Then she gave us a break until 1. And another break until 3:30. But from then until about 5:30 she was just up and down and up and down. She fell asleep at 5:30 and woke up at 7:00. I got up with her, but she looked soooooo tired! Her eyelids were puffy and heavy, and she kept yawning. Nonetheless, I kept her up until 9 and she went to sleep again at 9:30. Unfortunately it was only a half-hour nap, which Weissbluth says doesn't count.

So here's my big dilemma - nursing to sleep, yes or no? Weissbluth says it's no problem, but you should follow up by leaving them in their cribs for the allotted nap time regardless of whether they wake up and cry or not. Hogg says don't do it, but do go in and pick up/comfort/reassure/put down. Pantley says it's ok, but break the latch right before they're asleep. I've been trying to do Pantley's thing but it really doesn't work for us.

Anyway, I made a nice chart of her sleeping and napping times (see below). While it doesn't reflect her night waking patterns, at least I can see that her nap times have been very irregular. We are going to try to establish more regularity there, but if in 3 days it doesn't at least ameliorate the night waking issue, we may have to try more drastic measures. I really can't go on like this.

Baby Whisperer Day 6: One step forward, two steps back

Last night was kind of a fiasco. Her third nap of the day didn't happen until 6 p.m., but she was so tired that it ended up just segueing directly into night sleep. Except that she went back to her old habit of waking up every hour... At around midnight, she woke up alert and babbling instead of weary and crying, so we changed her diaper, fed her some food and water, and read her bedtime books, all the while keeping things calm and mellow. She went to sleep then, but still kept up with the hourly waking. At 6 a.m. Terry took over the soothing back to sleep/PUPD and I dreamed about zombies chasing me. We got up at 7:30, and I kept her up until around 9 a.m. She ate some mushy pear and bananas with a little rice cereal mixed in. Right now Terry is trying to get her down for her morning nap and she's just not having it. We're supposed to keep trying for 40 minutes and then just let her get up, but I think she'll fall asleep soon. She's just overtired and upset right now.

My goal for today is to establish three good, solid naps so that hopefully she'll be better rested by tonight and do better.

I'm also reading another book I ordered, The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley. It's a similar approach, but allows for co-sleeping and integrates the Sears approach pretty closely, while Tracy Hogg (the Baby Whisperer) doesn't approve of Sears. Pantley offers some suggestions for co-sleeping safely that might have made it possible for me to continue doing it - you get rid of ALL the blankets, instead keeping warm by bundling up. Mom cuts openings in her pajamas/sweatshirts/parkas for nursing. Pantley says she was able to get her kids to sleep through the night in her bed with her.

I also ordered Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child but have only dipped into it. The prose style is much less engaging than the other two books - a somewhat irrelevant detail, but it does slow down reading. With Pantley and Hogg both, I felt like I was sitting down for coffee with the authors and chatting in person.

whispering to the baby

So I'm doing it: at the recommendation of a friend whose PhD is in attatchment theory, I'm trying the Baby Whisperer approach. No, not trying - there is no try: there is do, or do not. I'm fully committed, no turning back.

The books came on Thursday, I read them Friday, we set up the crib, and Saturday we began. Friday night was her last night in our bed. At 2 a.m. I looked at her sweet little face sleeping so gently next to me, and felt sad... at 5 a.m. I was like "can I put her in the crib now? How about... now? Ok, now?"

The sleep deprivation has been relentless. Friday morning at 5 a.m., after fruitless two hours of trying to settle her back to sleep, she and I were both crying and I told Terry, "I can't do this anymore." For probably close to two months she's been waking me up every hour, sometimes every twenty minutes, wanting to suckle back to sleep. It's just unsustainable.

So the basic principles of Baby Whispering are: establish a daily rhythm of eat, activity, and then sleep, and teach baby to put herself to sleep in her own bed. This is done by putting her down drowsy but still awake, and then practicing "pick up/put down" every time she cries until she falls asleep on her own. You don't leave her to cry it out, in the infamous Ferber method, but you stay with her, keep a hand on her back, and talk quietly to her the whole time. It's supposed to take 3-5 days to work.

I will keep y'all posted on how it goes!

Something nice

One of my students gave me this book today, authored - and autographed - by his own dad!