The Proof is in the Plastic

At nearly 1 year old and now mobile (albeit by bum shuffling), Millie is well and truly at that stage where she is into everything! And unlike Callum who was pretty good really, she really is into everything!

With Callum, we decided not to take the ‘baby-proofing’ approach as we wanted to teach him, however frustrating it is repeating no & distracting them, there are things he isn’t allowed to touch. Thus making it a lot easier (in theory) when visiting houses where there are no children living and no child proofing has taken place.

For Callum, this approach worked so we are hoping to adopt the same approach with Millie too. Though I am sure it wont work for every child and Millie is infinitely more curious and persistent than Callum ever was. Quite frankly, Callum was rather lazy – I hear this is common for boys but I’ll make no comment aloud. This probably made our job much more easier.

One of the best bits of advice I got, which was from my sister, is to allocate a ‘child friendly’ kitchen cupboard, such as the evil tupperware cupboard, which your child is allowed to go in, pull everything out & explore. Thus distracting them from all the cupboards they aren’t allowed to enter.

The added bonus about this being the tupperware cupboard is that, if it is anything like mine, it is always collapsing and falling out of the cupboard anyway as piles upon piles of plastic tries to kill you. It is eternally messy! You tidy it and when the cupboard door is closed it comes alive & jumbles itself up again. So, with your child in absolute glee pulling out plastic cups, plates, bowls & take away cartons (*cough*) galore, you either don’t care about just picking it all up and throwing it back in again if short on time or it gets a daily tidy as you neatly stack it all back in again!

(Yes, rather embarrassingly, that really is my tupperware cupboard!)

So far, this tip appears to be working with Millie too. However, Millie’s refusal to go down the stairs backwards may mean we abolish the no stairgate theory!

Here we grow again! Sleep regression.

It takes me by surprise each time! But this time I recognised the warning signs from 8 months - the doubting my ability as a mum, comparing my parenting to when we had Callum. Hang on when I started doing this last time, I was reminded about the 8th month sleep regression so I googled & sure enough I'd hit the 12th month sleep regression phase.

Experience has taught me that to survive these phases I just need to ride it out. Go with it no matter how hard the sleep deprivation hits me. Acknowledge my emotional state is down to the sleep disturbance & trust that all will be right again in a week or 2. Stressing about it or trying to get Millie to continue sleeping through the night will actually just make everything 10 times more stressful & emotional for everyone.

This time I have 2 things to be thankful for: i) I at least get continuous sleep until between 5 and 6 which, compared to the previous sleep regression phases, really isn't that bad; and ii) I appear to be in sync with Millie & suffering from bouts of insomnia around the same time (maybe I'm growing or developing too!). I wake up just before Millie does so the actual sleep disturbance is a lot less...disturbing!

If I was going to add a 3rd advantage it would be that I recognised what it was early so when I do start to reach the emotionally unstable sleep deprived stage I'm more likely to keep my cool for longer...maybe...hopefully!

However, if you hear a crying banshee over the next few days it may well be me but rest assured it won't be for long!