Early Risers and Night Owls

by | Jul 24, 2018 | Parenting, Tips and Techniques

Regardless of whether you are a morning person or a night owl, you inevitably give birth to at least one child who is the opposite of you, especially if your partner is different than you are.

A lot of people and by people I am specifically talking about people, anyone from babies to octogenarians, seem to fall into the two camps of early risers and night owls. Or morning people and stay up all night people.

I am not sure where the middle people are. I think I am one of the middle people, because left well enough alone I get up with the sun, which is quite early in the summer and quite late in the winter and am happy to go to bed within an hour or two of sun set. Or in the case of last night I was falling asleep on the couch before the sun had gone to bed, but I think that was because I hadn’t actually gotten any siesta time yesterday, but I digress.

Regardless of whether you are a morning person or a night owl, you inevitably give birth to at least one child who is the opposite of you, especially if your partner is different than you are. Though I hear it can happen spontaneously too.

My first born was very definitely a night owl from the moment she was born. I remember my hubby complaining to my mother in law and her just cackling on the other end of the phone, because he was finally getting his just desserts.

My eldest also wouldn’t sleep all night at least once a month for her first 9 months or so, but again I am digressing back to sleep deprived points of my life.

So we gave up with the idea of putting small people to bed at 6 pm at night, because it never worked with our first daughter and that just sort of set the tone for our parenting. I suppose we could have tried to figure out what worked for each subsequent child, but the pattern was already set and they just kind of evolved into it.

Whoever is the baby doesn’t get sent up to bed around 8 PM to 8:30 PM, but everyone else does. And at this point no one is the baby so they all get sent up to bed. It takes them at least a half hour to sort themselves and settle down, and my hubby and I take a hands off approach and try and get some TV watching in for a few minutes before going to bed ourselves.

This has worked reasonably well for years. Lately my eldest whose biological clock is deep into puberty has been needing to stay up later at night. There is neuroscience behind this need and they have discovered that Melatonin release is a good two ours later in teenagers than it is in adult brains, so it’s not surprising that she may need to stay up later.

I am not a night owl. However from about the time I was 11 or so until shortly after my 18th birthday I was. And since I was homeschooled I would literally be doing my math or Latin or physics at 1 or 2 in the morning and then go to bed around 3. I would then sleep until noon and then get up again. My parents were pretty accommodating and I got a lot of alone time, which I needed during that development of growth. There also wasn’t social media back then and not much beyond email so I couldn’t get into a lot of trouble. I didn’t have a computer or a TV in my room so I was left with a radio which had to be kept low and my books. It worked for me.

The upshot of my kids going to bed a little while later than maybe other people’s kids (I was going to use the word average, but I actually don’t think any of us really know what average is in this department) and we homeschool, I get at least an hour in the morning (depending entirely on how soon I drag myself out of bed) and sometimes two or three alone. Which is the only way I stay sane some days.

If it is an overcast or rainy morning I get even more alone time as their rooms stay darker longer, regardless of any black out curtains they may or may not have.

My hubby is still a night owl. But he has learned to get up early in the morning and go to works o that he can get his work done and have more of his “best” time at home with the family. It is possible that as more of the girls move into more of a night owl routine themselves he may adjust his work schedule slightly so he can stay up with them more at night and have more bonding time. We will just have to wait and see.

In the meantime I try and let my girls keep their own hours for waking and sleeping, generally trying to insist they be in their rooms after dark until it gets light again. There is always much grumbling about having to get up early in the morning on the rare (usually less than once a week) occasions that happens. At some point I think we will set up a corner in our sun room for children who are having trouble sleeping or have later biological clocks than the rest of us. Short of setting up a room in the basement that’s the best I am going to be able to do right now.

Do your kids keep the same sleep schedule as you do? I think that might actually drive me crazy if they did, as I get the most tired when my kids get up with me and go to bed with me and I have no time to myself that is predictable and I know is coming.

Chase Young is the founder of The Mommy Rebellion a place for judgment-free parenting.  She’s created a place to get tips, tools and support for what it is truly like to be a mother, stories from the trenches that show you you’re not alone.  Tips that real mothers use.  Tools to give to yourself and to your parenting friends to feel more focused, have more patience and energy, and feel less tired and snappy .  
You can follow Chase here on this blog, sign up for her newsletter here and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

No-Good-Very-Bad-Days

by | Jul 17, 2018 | Parenting, Self-Care, Tips and Techniques, Truth-Telling

This week’s blog post is about how you choose to handle the no-good-very-bad-days that are bound to happen.

Some days you wake up and you might as well go back to bed. You just know it is going to be one of those Alexander-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-days kind of day. But you’re a grown up. You probably have a list of things that you need to do today, maybe an important meeting, maybe just a house that looks like a tornado walked through it, maybe you are providing childcare for someone else’s kid.

The no-good-very-bad-days don’t show up when you have space in your schedule. They don’t show up when you feel like everything in your world is going great. They don’t show up when you have nowhere you need to be, or no one you are responsible for.

No-good-very-bad-days show up when you are super busy. When you are so busy or there is so much that needs to be done, or you have had some very big changes in your life, that to add the shit frosting on top of the shit cake, here’s it is. A day that you just know isn’t going to be a good day.

Maybe you feel like you are starting to get sick. Maybe you are sick. Maybe your kids wake you up with them being sick. All over you. Or they are running fevers and put their hot bodies up against yours.

You’ve got two choices. You can get up and get this no-good-very-bad-day started, or you can try and get some extra sleep. Hit the snooze alarm a few times or just ignore it all together. I have done both, so absolutely no judgment here, regardless of your choice.

And throughout your no-good-very-bad-day you have choices. You can pretend that you have an assistant (or maybe you are lucky enough to actually have one) and cancel everything that is not super critical for you to do today.

You can call in sick. Play hokey. Decide to binge watch TV with your kids. (Secret from a summer of chicken pox, let each child pick one show and rotate and include yourself in the rotation so you can watch something that you have picked every now and then too.) At the very least you can prioritize what absolutely has to happen today and punt everything else.

Oh and give up on the meals. Pass them off to someone else, get someone else to cook, or decide that it’s going to be takeout tonight. Or cereal and milk or popcorn. Or if you absolutely can’t get out of cooking supper than make it breakfast. It’s usually super easy-going.

You can also decide to stack your day and try and get through those most important things first. Get that load of laundry started, get dinner in the crockpot, not stay in bed because your children are still asleep and get your work done early, or at least started on.

Try to laugh. On a no-good-very-bad-day, you might not want to wear your best clothes because you will be spilling stuff on it. Make sure your helmet is on and you’ve buckled your seat belt. Take some extra moments to breathe. Pass off as much as you can to someone else.

See if you can have a mommy play-date so someone else is helping watch your kids and you can compare your no-good-very-bad-day with another mom. Not in the competition sense, but in the we all have these happen from time to time sense. I have a friend who hangs out at the children section of her local library when as she puts it “needs adult supervision”. It can be helpful to just put your kids in a new safe environment which has extra adults who may be helping to keep an eye out on them.

It can also be helpful to just cancel everything and stay in bed. It’s not something we can always do, but it can help.

I often try and get the priorities done first so that I can later take a nap, an extended siesta or just curl up on the couch and read to my girls for a while on no-good-very-bad-days.

Oh and take your vitamins! They can’t hurt and will probably help. Go slow on the caffeine as getting super buzzed is not going to help and may contribute to the no-good-very-bad-day. And drink water. My go to solution for everything that ails you, go have a glass of water and then tell me how you feel. Of course, you may end up wearing it.

That’s okay. It’s only water. So it will be wet, and either cold or hot, but it shouldn’t destroy too much. I wouldn’t have any alcohol until you have reached the finish line of the day, see the above caffeine advice.

And maybe sit down and actually read about Alexander’s day, and see who had it worse. Your kids will probably enjoy listening to the classic. Hopefully, you didn’t have a dentist appointment, and maybe you really could move to Australia.

Of course my experience with Australian airports, I am not convinced you would actually have a better day there, but you never know. It might be better in Australia.

And tomorrow most certainly should be better, especially if you can go to bed early tonight. Because no-good-very-bad-days are exhausting.

Chase Young is the founder of The Mommy Rebellion a place for judgment-free parenting.  She’s created a place to get tips, tools and support for what it is truly like to be a mother, stories from the trenches that show you you’re not alone.  Tips that real mothers use.  Tools to give to yourself and to your parenting friends to feel more focused, have more patience and energy, and feel less tired and snappy .  
You can follow Chase here on this blog, sign up for her newsletter here and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

Creating the Gap in Emotions

by | Jun 1, 2018 | Parenting, Tips and Techniques, Truth-Telling

If you can create a pause before action, can you create a break from reacting?

 

My youngest is full of energy. Years ago we would have said she was full of spunk, was ornery or just a little shit. And immediately everyone would know what I was talking about. She’s the kid who had her first full blown temper tantrum because I refused to allow her to take the crib mattress as a sled down our stairs and straight into the wall. She was only about two years old when this happened.

She is the kid that will just slap a sister out of the blue for some remembered slight that happened. She’s the kid that the moment she walks into a room you know she is there. One of her middle names is “the great queen” and by golly she knows it.

She is the immediacy of a strong willed child. You know the one where the memes tell you to hang in there? Yeah well in this day and age there is not as much support.

If you have a strong willed child especially if they are not afraid to express their emotions that are not socially acceptable (so pretty much anything other than happiness) there is not a lot of support. I am pretty sure if she went to preschool these days she would already have the label of bully. Not because she is a bully but because you know she tries everything on, even dictating.

Why? Because she’s a kid and she’s still learning. Because she came into this world ready to change it, whether the world is ready for her or not. Because one of her special gifts is the ability to advocate, and she is learning to not just do it for herself but for others as well.

Case in point, last night my hubby and I were packing up a bookcase and the younger two were being the gofers of the books and then the full boxes going back on the book case until we are ready to move. At some point my 6 year old got really upset about something her dad said (as near as we can tell she misunderstood something and thought he was laughing at her, when in actuality he wasn’t). Because at that point in time I couldn’t take the amount of time to cuddle her and find out what was going on, her little sister did. I saw them cuddling on the couch with my 6 year old whispering what was wrong in my 4 year old’s ear and them going back and forth and cuddling.

Which is frigging awesome for the girl that randomly slapped her sister only the night before.

We are under a lot of stress right now. House buying does that to a person and was not something I realized before we were neck deep into the process. None of us are functioning at our best right now. And while sometimes I get filled with Mommy guilt, because I know I am not doing my best at the moment, I also know that how we react now, in times where things aren’t easy are just as important as the easy-going days.

A friend helped support me with my youngest and recommended a couple of flower essences that might help her feel better. After I ordered them and they arrived I explained them to my four year old with the description of, this is for when you feel like being really mean, and this is when you feel super grumpy and don’t want to be around anyone. And this is for when you are having trouble going to sleep, etc. And after a few weeks amazing things have started happening.

She now comes to me with the flower essence bottle and asks if she can have some because she is feeling whatever the emotion is that I suggested the bottle might help for. Her reading skills are still at the letter recognition stage, but each bottle has a different picture of the flower on it, so she can tell them apart.

Regardless as to whether you think flower essences work, they are still creating a lovely gap. My four year old feels a big emotion and realizes she needs help. She is able to identify the emotion enough to grab the bottle she wants (and she doesn’t always grab the same one and she is very intentional about which one she grabs) and brings it to me and then verbally tells me how she is feeling.

I then give her, her four drops on her tongue. Sometimes she wants to stay and talk about what is going on, but often she just says thank you and takes the bottle to put back where it goes and goes on with her day.

But it just amazes me that she is a) identifying how she is feeling b) realizes it is too big for her and she needs to get some help c) goes and gets the thing that might help her d) goes and finds an adult to help her get the thing and e) can tell the adult how she is feeling.

There are some adults who still can’t manage this process. And here is my four year old. Creating a gap between how she feels and her response to how she feels. Obviously it isn’t perfect yet (hence still some random acts of violence) but we are getting there. And teaching her brain to pause is going to bring some much good juiciness in the future. And the acknowledgment of the feelings and having someone else witness her feelings (which in turn validates them) is incredible. As is the fact that she is learning ways to deal with them herself and that is also empowering.

Chase Young is the founder of The Mommy Rebellion a place for judgment-free parenting.  She’s created a place to get tips, tools and support for what it is truly like to be a mother, stories from the trenches that show you you’re not alone.  Tips that real mothers use.  Tools to give to yourself and to your parenting friends to feel more focused, have more patience and energy, and feel less tired and snappy .  
You can follow Chase here on this blog, sign up for her newsletter here and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

Losing My Shit (I’m not the only one right?)

by | Jan 30, 2018 | Parenting, Self-Care, Tips and Techniques, Truth-Telling

Last week my hubby was home sick, I didn’t feel well but of course the kids were fine.  Seemed like the perfect recipe for some shit losing.

What is your recipe?

 

Some days we have no energy. As mothers there is just nothing left, we are stretched thin and there is nothing but the thinnest piece of skin between us and the world and if you touch it, if you blow on it, if you make it vibrate with your noise we just might get torn, be swept over the edge, have that be the end of us.

We most certainly will lose our shit. It will be gone, lost and what might erupt out of us is Goddess-Kali-like-volcanic-energy. We might swear, shout, scream and throw a tantrum that would put our two year old in the corner in a ball. We might just completely and utterly lose our shit.

No one wants to see that. We don’t want to admit that even ever happens (but it does, you know it does when we are pushed too far). So instead we ingest large quantities of caffeine, chocolate, sugar, alcohol.

We find a way to binge watch TV or to pick a fight with our spouse, because we are going to blow and if we don’t take immediate action, the mess we are about to make will not be pretty. Not a fucking pretty sight.

This is not something our kids deserve to see, or be on the receiving end. But I guarantee that most of us parents can’t make it through getting our kids to adulthood without at least one major scream fest. Some of us just try and keep it down to once a month or quarterly, but I guarantee it happens.

Does it have to be this way? Can we look back and find ways to keep ourselves from being so stretched thin that the slightest breeze tips us over the edge? Is there anyway to prevent this colossal blow up from occurring? Can we keep it from happening?

Well, your road is different than mine. But here are some of the ingredients that I have found that add to the recipe of blowing up for me:

  • Not getting enough sleep
  • Not getting enough help
  • The house looking like a total shit hole and no one but me gives a damn
  • Too many social events and not enough time at home
  • Driving for days
  • Not enough time to read a piece of fiction
  • Not any time to work on creating something with my hands
  • Life stress, like say moving
  • Not eating good food
  • Not enough sleep, oh did I mention that one already?

These for me are some of the key ingredients that make a volcanic explosion. Notice that baking soda and vinegar are not required. However not using them to clean things can be an ingredient.

Can I control some of these? Sure I can do my best to go to bed at a decent hour (though whether or not I get woken up is not necessarily something I can control).

I can allow my kids to only sign up for one extra curricular activity at a time. It won’t kill them to choose just one, I have four kids, it might kill me if they do more than one.

I can say no to social events, or more importantly keep one weekend day a week where we stay home, period, I don’t care how amazing your social event is, it’s not as amazing as my blow up later the next week because I didn’t get any time off.

I can hire a housekeeper. Haven’t done it yet, but you better believe it is on my bucket list, because my kids are not reliable cleaners….

I can make sure that I always have access to a good piece of fiction and that I can at least sneak away to read for 5 minutes a day.

I can have craft projects strew across the house so I am never far from one I can make.

I can speak to my hubby about my needs, and when they are not being met and find creative ways to get time off, like a long bath, a nap or just a sleep in day, or maybe he could just make the next couple of meals for me.

These things and more can happen and when they do the explosions get further apart. I am more often able to see they are coming and find a way to head them off, or explode away from my kids so they don’t have to be a part of it.

Will they ever truly go away? I don’t think so because I am human. And part of being human is losing your shit from time to time. Some of the most valuable lessons in life come from the shit losing.

Sometimes the only way to make space for something new is to lose something first, and yes sometimes that truly is our shit.

And sometimes those explosions turn out to be massive crying events rather than scream fests. Just Sayin’

Chase Young is the founder of The Mommy Rebellion a place for judgment-free parenting.  She’s created a place to get tips, tools and support for what it is truly like to be a mother, stories from the trenches that show you you’re not alone.  Tips that real mothers use.  Tools to give to yourself and to your parenting friends to feel more focused, have more patience and energy, and feel less tired and snappy .  
You can follow Chase here on this blog, sign up for her newsletter here and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

It Needs To Be Easier: 4 Ways I’ve Loosened Up My Health Rules As A New Mom

by | Jan 25, 2018 | Cooking, Parenting, Tips and Techniques

A real look at what eating healthy with an under year old looks like!

 

I’m a new mom.  I’m also a health coach.

Before I was a mom, I thought I was asking other moms (and men and women generally) to do things that were fairly simple.  I knew that I found these things to be easy, but I guess I didn’t fully realize how much something else can become a priority over oneself.

Because, at least for me, that’s what being a mom has meant these past 8 months.  I come in at best (but rarely) tied for first, and more often second to my baby boy.

So I’ve come up with a list of things that I normally did to keep myself healthy pre-baby… and the alternatives I’m using now because even 8 months in THIS. SHIT. IS. HARD.

Big Pot Meals – so pre-Finn my husband and I would make one or two big meals for the week.  It meant that we always had something healthy that we could grab and we didn’t have to purchase crazy expensive lunches in NYC.  What’s hard about this now is that cooking requires a set period of time wherein I can wield a knife without fear of chopping off a baby finger.  And since my kid doesn’t nap much (yea… that’s a thing…) OR care to be put down… that gets hard.

INSTEAD – I’ve started having singular, easy to throw together things ready.  A pot of rice all made, beans, a chicken roasted, veggies roasted, sweet potato roasted… pretty much all things roasted.  It cuts down on overall cooking time and I can quickly get one done before the kid freaks without having the stress of finishing everything overall.

Farmer’s Market – A variety of veggies is best for you.  And often they only have the standards at the grocery store.  I do plan to get back to the market in not too long, but really what this is about is the knife time mentioned above.  I’d love to hand chop everything, but time and available hands often doesn’t allow.

INSTEAD – So pre-chopped and bagged it is.  Frozen veggies (as long as they’re organic) are actually pretty great too, since their flash frozen at the height of the season.  This ensures that many of the nutrients are still available.  Just avoid the canned stuff if you can.  I’ll see you in the spring farmer’s market!  (Maybe…)

Smoothies are SOO EASY! – Lies apparently.  I mean, they should be.  But there’s lots of stuff to get out and put in and you’re trying to look up recipes that taste good but also pack a nutritional wallop and just no.  Not right now.

INSTEAD – I’m usually not a fan of the powders because I want my clients to take in as much real food as possible.  But this right here is the reason they exist.  For those times when it just feels REALLY HARD to get the nutrition you want, but have no hands.  This one I’d say use sparingly and DO take the time to research good brands that avoid unnecessary additives.  Take a look at the ingredients list (not the nutrition facts… the ingredients list) before buying.

Just get ten minutes of exercise in a few times a day! – OOOOOOK.  This one I do think is still great advice when you can.  But when you have the time to do this baby has a tendency to NOT be in the mood to play along.

INSTEAD – This is what specialized exercise classes are for.  I teach and attend Stroller Strides classes specifically for moms with babies who need to get some movement in but can’t do it kid free.  There’s classes like this that will accommodate almost any type of lifestyle.  Even if it’s not your favorite type of exercise, it’s worth it to keep your body moving and strengthening so that when you’re able to get back into your preferred exercise, your body is along for the ride.  (Ahem… this applies to NON-mothers too!)

I don’t just work with moms.  I work with CEOs, performers, managers, entrepreneurs, waiters… a whole bunch of different kinds of people.  And The list above applies to ALL of them as well because every single one of them was better at putting something (anything, really) before their health.  It can be hard to change your status quo so, yea, making these changes isn’t easy.

Let’s take the excuses away and figure out what WILL make this work in your life.  E-mail me at katie@keepingitrealkatie.com if you’d like help figuring out your unique lifestyle of health needs 🙂

Katie Gall helps people discover the full power of their body’s ability to achieve optimal health, create a habit of self-love, and live in harmony with their body.

Katie Gall is a Health, Wellness and Empowerment Coach. She helps people discover the full power of their body’s ability to achieve optimal health, create a habit of self-love, and live in harmony with their body.

The Thankful Tree

by | Nov 21, 2017 | Parenting, Tips and Techniques

Teaching Gratitude

 

Teach kids Gratitude

Is not in my experience an easy and graceful task.  At least not for my girlies.

But I know that by training our minds to look for gratitude, to look for the good things in life, we can, in fact, train our mind to keep looking for them, and this, this is something that is important to teach my girls, for me and my husband.

So back in 2014 the girls and I made the above gratitude tree as part of our November celebration and part of getting ready for the holiday season and Thanksgiving.  The girls helped me color in the tree and then they each helped write what was on each of the leaves and we added to it as the month went on.

And for the ages of my girls this perfect for their attention span, their need to do everything with their hands, and lots of color and texture.

We didn’t do it this year though, partially because I didn’t think of it, and also because we have a new piece of furniture on that wall.  But we do have a daily practice around gratitude.

Every night as we all sit down for our evening meal everyone is says something they are grateful for.  Preferably something from that day if it is time specific, so this time of year you can’t simply say that it is one day closer to Christmas, you have to also say something else.

Small or big, it’s all good.  Just the other day my youngest actually said she was grateful for one of her sisters, which is a big first for her, and considering how she has been treating them lately, really good to hear.

It is a nice ritual to set the tone of the meal, calm everyone down, take turns listening because we can’t hear if we all go at once, and let everyone have a chance to say something, which in a family of six can be a small miracle in itself at times.

How do you teach gratitude to your kids?  How do you practice it yourself, and is it something you model?

Chase Young is the founder of The Mommy Rebellion a place for judgment-free parenting.  She’s created a place to get tips, tools and support for what it is truly like to be a mother, stories from the trenches that show you you’re not alone.  Tips that real mothers use.  Tools to give to yourself and to your parenting friends to feel more focused, have more patience and energy, and feel less tired and snappy .  
You can follow Chase here on this blog, sign up for her newsletter here and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.