Most of you know that, in real life, I’m making things up as I go along. Yes, we have a general parenting philosophy, but no, I don’t ever feel like I really know what I’m doing. Which is why I love parenting books that both fit my philosophy and also give me parenting tools—and that’s why I was thrilled to be offered a review copy of Elizabeth Pantley’s No-Cry Nap Solution.

Elizabeth Pantley is the author of several parenting books, including some of my favorites: The No-Cry Sleep Solution, The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers, and The No-Cry Discipline Solution. Her “No-Cry” method involves making gradual changes, so that your baby adjusts to a new routine over time. (Aha! So “live with it” or “let the baby cry” aren’t my only choices? Yay!)

The No-Cry Nap Solution is about helping kids fall asleep for naps, and has lots (and lots!) of ideas for dealing with common nap difficulties. Suggestions range from pretty easy (eg, get some sunshine in the morning) to complicated-but-helpful (eg, chart your baby’s sleep with a nap journal). Pantley also offers suggestions for implementing a “hush hour” for non-napping older children, and includes sections on handling less-common sleep issues, such as naps for twins, naps when vacationing, and naps for colicky babies.

I don’t imagine this book will magically turn your non-napper into a three-hour-nap wonder, but I do think it’s a great resource if you suspect your little one isn’t getting as much rest as she needs. My older kids—who just take a quiet rest—are already resting longer and more cooperatively, and are coming out of their quiet times more refreshed. And refreshed kiddos make for a happy mama.

Learn more about Elizabeth Pantley and The No-Cry Nap Solution. Or just head down to your local bookstore—I know mine has a tall stack of NCNS on a table right up front. Nice.

I’m reading The Best American Essays of the Century, and came across this in Joyce Carol Oates’ introduction:

“My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment, and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.” (xx)

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Is there no comfort in art, or ought it never aspire to comfort? What if you identify with the art or artist in some way—what if art inspires a feeling of connection—do we not take comfort in that? Or is that beside the point? What do you think?

Given that it takes about an hour to get ready to go out for a walk—what with the getting dressed and fed, sock-and-shoed, sweatered, diaper changed or otherwise relieved, not to mention the locating of baby sling and keys, and the negotiating of a peace treaty outlining who gets to open the front door and who gets to open the screen door—given all that, there ought to be a rule that no one will need a diaper change before you get around the block. Scratch that, make it a diaper and complete clothing change. Forty-eight seconds after leaving the house. THERE OUGHT TO BE A RULE.

Six things about me, courtesy of Dani.

1. I like unloading the dishwasher, but not reloading it. Even though reloading it takes all of seven minutes and leaves me with a clean(er) kitchen.

2. Facebook is freaking me out. How does it know who I know? Why is it convinced I know people I don’t know? Etc.

3. After my birthday this year, my age will be divisible by 2 and 3 and 5 and 6 (well, obviously the 6, if the 2 and 3).

4. I want to buy scrabble tiles to use as a school supply, but I want the natural wood ones with black letters, not the maroon wood ones with white letters. So far I am having minimal success finding them—or anyway, finding enough of them to be useful. Where should I look, do you think? I’m searching etsy right now. (Me = a wee bit obsessive and also nuts.)

5. Searching etsy makes me anxious right now because it reminds me of the CPSIA nonsense. I feel like I better buy every cool handmade thing for kids before the new regulations go into effect, but I can’t actually buy every cool handmade thing for kids, so I just feel anxious. When I wrote to my congressperson, he sent me back a form letter about how he’s working hard to protect me from toys made in China. Dude, I am not afraid of toys made in China, because I only buy from companies whose manufacturing policies I trust. What I am worried about is that the new regulations will put out of business all the small businesses that make and sell the products I want to buy. And now we’re back to anxious again. (For the record, yes, I absolutely think we need better regulation and enforcement, but I don’t want to see better regulation of mass-produced toys come at the expense of handmade toys. Visit the Handmade Toy Alliance to read more about this.)

6. What else, what else… I can’t think of anything else, and those last two were long and should count for 1.5 each, right? No? Oh, here’s something: I’m using my burst of ambition to come up with goals for the year. I don’t know what they are yet, but I’m thinking about it. Feel free to offer suggestions. Did you set any goals for 2009?

If you want to play along: tag! Tell us six things about yourself.

When the kids and I got to the park today, there were no other people on the playground, but there was: an uneaten apple; a baby bottle full three-quarters full of thick, purplish-pink liquid; three stuffed animals, lying together on a platform at the end of a tunnel; one measuring cup that appeared to have been called into use as a shovel; one fuzzy blue lovey blanket; one fringed hair tie, placed on the lovey blanket; and one piece of sidewalk chalk.

So either a playground full of people was suddenly called up to heaven or abducted by aliens, or else a toddler brought a lot of things to the park and then melted down and was carried home, leaving all the belongings behind.

Or am I missing some other obvious explanation?

Okay, so apparently I’m the only one worried that we’ve already seen the best and brightest the year has to offer. I suppose we can’t all share my every neurosis.

I’m feeling suddenly full of energy ambition, either because
1) it’s January, and everybody else has brilliant New Year’s Resolutions and I think I should follow suit;
2) the holidays are over, along with the attendant busy-ness;
3) Sadie’s just come out of one of those interminable stretches where if she was awake, she wanted to be in-arms (and now she doesn’t! so I have arms! free arms!);
or 4) I’ve drunk too much caffeine, inspired by my sweet new teapot and teacups.

I just haven’t decided what to do with my ambition. Write up a schedule of projects I want to tackle? Try harder to knit? Or to use up my stash of sewing fabric? Organize something? Clean something?

Part of me is afraid to commit to any course of action, lest my ambition disappear.

Maybe I’ll just start with doing the dinner dishes and see where we go from there.

What are you up to?

Tonight is the biggest full moon of the year. The year. The year that started ten days ago.

Does that kind of make you wonder if it’s all downhill from here?

Some people are crafty enough to make their kids beautiful handmade holiday gifts.

My kids get craft supplies and how-to books instead.

This year they got Kids Crochet and See and Sew, plus knitting needles and crochet hooks and knitting towers and fabric scraps and wool felt squares and yarn. Lots and lots and lots of yarn. (It’s easy to go overboard with yarn, there are so many colors/weights/materials to choose from!) (They got some other stuff too, but we’re talking about crafts right now. Because I have a mildly amusing anecdote about the craft supplies. Ahem.)

So Abigail started asking Dane and I to teach her to knit on, say, December 25th at 11am or so, and didn’t let up, um, ever. Despite the fact that I did buy knitting needles, neither Dane nor I actually know how to knit. At all. Never even seen it done up close. So we did what I think any parent would do: we put the kids to bed early and tried to teach ourselves to knit. With the help of this book and also this one (though that one’s not exactly a knitting book). Obviously.

There was plenty of unraveling of yarn, much swearing, and absolutely no knitting produced by the end of the night. At one point Dane accused me of purling rather than knitting [???]. At several points I picked up so many stitches that they wouldn’t fit on my needles. (Where the frick are the extra stitches coming from?)

The next day I showed Abigail what I had kind-of learned, and she immediately began producing long skinny rectangles of knitted yarn. I, on the other hand, have spent the last week and a half producing this:

It looks rather more like a dead blue mouse than like the beginnings of an (admittedly very skinny) scarf. And why oh why is it skinnier at the top than the bottom? It’s just four stitches across, every row.

The kids would like their yarn and needles back now. I really don’t blame them.

On a related note, will 2009 be the year I get a real camera and stop taking random photos with Dane’s phone? Unlikely, but stay tuned.

Happy New Year, everyone! Alternatively: Happy First Work Week of the New Year! Or, as I like to call it, The Week Dane Goes Back to Work and the House Falls in Around My Ears. If you want to get descriptive.

And to make the week extra special, we’re sick. (Side note: I feel like every winter my blog posts are pretty much, I’m sick! I’m kind of better! I’m sick! I’m kind of better. The kids are sick! Now better. Wah wah wah, germs. And then it gets to be summer, when I whine about blah blah the kids don’t sleep enough because the sun stays up for like eighteen hours every day. I am nothing if not predictable.)

Now Dane’s standing behind me saying, “Really? You’re trying to blog now? Really?” And he maybe has a point, what with the fact that it’s 10:58pm and I’m sitting here with a pile of used tissue and the keyboard instead of getting some rest. Oh, and now Sadie’s awake again. Apparently it’s hard to stay asleep when you can’t breathe through your nose and you’re a baby.

Ah, well, the (nonexistent) resolutions will have to wait for some other (never) day.

Hope your year is off to a blissful start.