Inspiration

As I worked out at the gym today I ran through ideas that I had for my blog. I've had a pretty busy week, well actually a pretty busy month. I've visited Asheville, Charleston, SC and West Virginia twice. On Monday I head out for PA to visit my family. I was thinking about doing a blog about family today but just couldn't find the inspiration or the words to write. I might not to get to write tomorrow because today starts packing extravaganza.

Once I thought about it I realized that I wanted to do something different. Recently I've met someone (who's already been mentioned before). He has reopened that creative side of me that I thought was gone, quite possibly with all my teen angst. But then I realized that my blog is a form of creativity. The words are still here, and so are the ideas... I just needed the inspiration and support to write them down.

I want to thank Matt for that.

So, today instead of putting something new up on my blog I'm putting a poem up. It's a poem that I wrote some time ago but it means a lot to me and is one of my favorites. I've never titled it so it is just called untitled #1

odysseys of the mind

perplex me so

questions wanting to be asked

where are the words i am longing for

to phrase it just right

would be oh so beautiful

but to slip and lose the rhyme

causes pain to the page

that my pen has seized

flowing like a river

the pain is decreased

as i change, censor and say goodbye

to my original

where the words came unknowing

of what would happen

if i scribed them to this sheet

Happy Mother's Day

Today is a special day. It's the day to celebrate our love of mother's all around the world. Single mom's. working mom's, stay at home mom's, grandma's, soon to be mom's, new mom's, dad's who have to be a mom too and to all the other mom's I haven't thought of.

Many of us don't get a day off or a break. Having a child means that you give up a lot of things, sometimes including your sanity. This is true for dads and moms (so dads don't think I'm being partial here). But today, try to take a few moments for yourself. Even if it's just in the bathroom with the door shut and little fingers reaching under. Find that moment and remember why you're so happy to be a mom.

The Great Sleep Debate

Newborn Kaylee Sleeping

I slept like a baby.

Anyone who says this isn't a parent. When it comes to babies there are a lot of misconceptions. I read every book and announced myself ready for parenthood.

Those books are only slightly helpful. The real world experience of your own baby is the only true way to understand.

So here was one of my huge misconceptions regarding becoming a parent. I thought babies would just sleep when they're suppose to. At night. No one informed me, not even one of those books, that babies have to be trained to do everything we consider part of normal life. Things like sleeping and eating at certain times aren't instinctual and if we want 8 hours of sleep we better teach our babies how to sleep.

Once we got past the harrowing experience of having to get our daughter up every 2 hours to feed her due to low birth weight we finally had to take that step into teaching her how to sleep. With my daughter it was fairly easy. That's probably because at 3 months old I started putting her into her crib while she was only partly asleep. By the time she was 6 months old she was sleeping great and I couldn't understand what everyone was complaining about.

That obviously didn't last or I wouldn't be here writing this blog article.

Around 7 or 8 months her sleeping got messed up. I'm not going to say how or why, it just did and all of the sudden she needed to held and rocked to sleep. She would then wake up in the middle of the night constantly and want to play. She had to be entertained for at least 4 hours before she'd go back to sleep, she had to again be rocked or held until she fell asleep. I tried to retrain her sleeping. I tried every book I read over the next year. Cry it out, the no cry sleep solution. Nothing would work and I was at this point operating on no more than 3 hours of sleep at a time. After a year that's pretty serious. I finally understood. I began to think my child hated me and was trying an insane torture method on me.

At 1.5 to 2 years Kaylee was having issues with fever. She'd run 105's with no sign of a virus pretty much every 2 months for at least a few days. During one of these I put the air bed in the living room, laid down on it with her and went to sleep with her. Was I surprised when we woke up 8 hours later with the sun streaming in on our faces. We had slept through the night and her fever was broken. I decided to go against everything I believed in and set that bed up in her room and started sleeping with her. I told no one. I was embarrassed because I was co-sleeping. But after a year of no sleep you'll do anything. I was ready to dance naked in front of a bonfire of cooked hams if someone told me it would work.

So co-sleeping it was. Every night at 8pm I would lay down with her and we'd go to sleep. I was so exhausted at first that this was okay and I was happy to get the 12 hours of sleep. But eventually I wanted to sleep in my own bed sometimes and didn't want to actually fall asleep with her. That was around 2 years old. She of course protested this and I was now in the spot that is the reason you don't co-sleep. My daughter couldn't sleep if I wasn't in bed with her.

Before you get scared I will tell you that she now sleeps peacefully in her bed through the night and goes to sleep on her own. How I got there is the hardest part.

It took a year. Maybe it would have taken less time but I occasionally felt my new method wasn't working so I had would try something new and then have to start all over. Or something else would happen that would set me back to the beginning. So how did I do it?

It sounds easy, but it wasn't. I started with laying in the bed with her with my arm around her (the only way she would go to sleep). I explained that I was going to leave once she was asleep and would come back and sleep with her later. It took about a week for her to stop coming out and looking for me, but it worked! This all happened in bi-weekly increments (accept when I had to go backwards). Rushing never worked and sometimes I'd try to move to the next week only to find that she wasn't ready yet and had to go back.

So here's the list of what step I took every few weeks: Laying beside her touching her, laying beside her not touching, sitting beside her, sitting beside the bed, standing beside the bed, standing at the door, standing outside her door with it open and finally standing outside her door with it closed. We of course also developed a bedtime routine that was never deviated from and took an hour. She'd watch Blue's Clues, brush her teeth, I'd sing her a song and read a book. Kisses and hugs.

This bedtime routine has since been shortened. She now gets to choose books & songs or Blue's Clues. But it is still the same. She sleeps through the night, from 8pm until the sun comes up (that's the rule that she knows). I've had to be very strict about sharing my bed and getting up at night. She gets hugs and kisses for staying in her bed all night and she loses a toy if she gets up at night (accept special circumstances like nightmares, potty breaks and illness).

So I created my own sleep training. It was a bit of a combination of Cry it Out and The No Cry Sleep Solution. Do I think that going to co-sleeking was a bad idea? Yes. Would I do it again if I was in this situation. Absolutely, I would not hesitate for a second. Don't be ashamed if you have to do things like that just to get some sleep. I wasn't able to fix my daughter's sleep problems because I was so deprived of sleep. I could barely move during the day and was a bad parent because of all those problems.

The number one rule I've learned through accidental parenting is this; Who cares what others think and do what you have to. If you have to co-sleep then do it. If you have to use formula then do it. It's not a failure. It's not even a setback. It's just not parenting the way you thought you would.  

Toxic Relationships

Most of us have had them. They're difficult and many times we don't even recognize it for what it is until we're out of it. So how are you suppose to know if you're in a toxic relationship?

#1 Is it ever about you?

If you're in a toxic relationship then there is no give and take. Or if there is it is very rare. It's always about the other person, they never seem to have time to talk about what's on your mind or when you bring up your problems they mutter words like yeah or uhuh. They offer you no emotional support.

#2 You can't be yourself

If you find that you have to pretend to be someone else then it's not a healthy relationship. If you have to keep parts of your feelings and thoughts compartmentalized then it's time to get out.

#3 Do you have good times? Can you enjoy them?

Sometimes you will manage to have good times with a toxic friend. The question is whether you can enjoy those good times. Are the colored because of all the bad and unhappy? Or maybe this person is obsessed with being pessimistic so all they talk about are the bad things.

#4 Lies

This person lies to you. Sometimes it starts out as small lies, but you eventually start to catch them in big ones. Lying is never okay. If you really care about someone then you should speak the truth with them (unless it's does my butt look big in this, be nice too).

#5 Drama

It seems like some dramatic thing is always going on in this person's life. Now some people do legitimately have some crazy stuff happen, so don't judge too harshly. But does this person like to make a mountain out of a molehill? Is the month absolutely ruined because they weren't able to get the exact table cloth they wanted for their kids birthday?

So those are some of the signs. What do you do with a toxic relationship? This one's hard. You have to decide whether this person is completely toxic and adds no value to your life. Cutting someone out of yours is a huge decision and not something you should do lightly. Maybe the person meets 2 of the above criteria but not the others. It's a tough decision and should be well thought out.

But how do you do it? It's simple. But still the hardest thing you will ever do. You must tell them nicely and simply that you cannot be friends or a couple anymore. You can give them specific reasons why, but do not turn it into something where you point out all of their flaws. It is probably best if you plan what you're going to say in advance and maybe even write it down. Then you cut all contact. No Facebook, no email, no phone calls, no texting. Don't allow yourself to be harassed, bullied or allow your pity to drag you back in. You have to cut the cord completely. It's very hard.

How do I know? I did it. Over a year ago I ended a friendship with a toxic friend. It took a long time to work up to it. I will not put their name here to protect this person. Because no matter what happened, I hope this person will someday heal and become healthy and whole. Will I ever be friends with said person again? No. Our friendship could never move past where it had been before.

This person fed my depression. They were always focused on the negatives and never able to enjoy life. This person helped me focus on the negatives in my life and fed a female part of me I had never been interested in before and taught me to be a horrible gossip. I felt I could never tell this person the truth regarding certain things because they were very mentally unstable. I was always frightened I would hurt them. They were a "one upper". If something happened to me they had it happen to them but only worse.

Was it hard? Yes. It was harder than any boyfriend I ever broke up with and harder than ending my first marriage. Why? Because cutting the cord completely with the internet here made it difficult. I occasionally wanted to look them up and see how they were. But that would be going back on the deal I made with myself. So it's not allowed.

If you have a toxic relationship in your life think long hard before making any rash and difficult decisions. Am I happy I did what I did? Yes. It was part of the healing process necessary to make me the healthy person I am today. Remember that toxic relationships are very detrimental to us.

No Poo Movement

Pretty hair, still can't smile

No, I'm not talking about not pooping. That is exactly what everyone thinks when I say this and this movement really has a rather unfortunate name. Maybe they should consider calling it something else.

So what is the no poo movement and why on earth am I writing about it? Let me give some background here.

I have pretty wavy hair that goes over into curls if I care for it correctly. I've spent my whole life not knowing how to care for it correctly. I was either getting perms to help control my curls or straitening to hide the frizziness. I never liked my hair. But then who does right?

I do now. I love my hair. But it took a lot of work to get here. Back at the beginning of the year I started going to the gym every day. I used to only wash my hair every other day, to keep it from  being dry and breaking. My hair is very dry. But when I started going to gym every day I had to wash it, I was gross and dirty. My hair got very dry and was in terrible condition. I bought more expensive products, deep conditioner and leave in treatments. It wasn't helping much and my hair just continued to get worse.

I started with something called co-washing. Co-washing is where I only washed my hair with shampoo every other day and on the other days I only used conditioner. My hair responded amazingly. The life came back, it was moisturized and my curls looked pretty. After this experiment worked so well I moved onto something else I had read about. No Poo.

So now, what is no poo? It's not using shampoo on your hair. Shampoo is actually very unhealthy for our hair, it strips all of our natural oils and nutrients from our hair. The only reason people use it really is for scalp health and because it is what is socially acceptable in America.

You must think I am a bundle of nasty oily stinky hair. Nope. My hair is awesome and for the first time in my life I love my hair. It's beautiful, soft, my natural color is amazing, my curls are outrageously amazing. My hair has luster. I've never been able to say that. It actually shines. And it smells amazing.

So what did I do? Well, I started out with just conditioning every day. My hair was a little greasy for a few days. That is going to happen  because your scalp has adjusted to having those natural oils stripped away from it every day. It can take as much as 6 weeks for your scalp to restore the natural balance it once had. It only took my scalp about 7 days.

Then I continued to do some reading and decided to go over to a cleansing conditioner with no sulfates in it. Because this was a trial I wasn't willing to spend a ton of money on something like Wen. I bought L'OrealCleansing Conditioner. 3 weeks later my hair is beautiful, manageable and amazing for the first time in my life.

There is another option completely. You can wash your hair with a mixture of baking soda and water. This option is green and also gets rid if the harsh sulfates.

So, is no poo right for you? If you have the same texture as me; dry, wavy or curly, coarse. Then yes you should consider trying it. If you don't really have problems with your hair then maybe you should stick with 

your regiment. But just remember that shampoo is actually very unhealthy for your hair.

If you're interested in learning more about why shampoo is bad for you, go check out the info here.