A Daily Dose of Zen Sarcasm!

Like a Pacifier For The Sleepless Soul

Oh I know.... I've been so bad at blogging lately.  Or rather it's not that I've been bad as much as missing in action.  But, well, those of you in the audience who have had kids (i.e. been also possessed by your biological imperative and gone nutters) know what's going on.

And by "going on" I simply mean that I've been going to bed at 9 pm and waking up at 7 am feeling wiped out.  Insert any and all shenanigans in between.

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I have been promising to review "The No-Cry Nap Solution" because it's a great book, and I will do so today.

Let me tell you: few things are the result of such happy serendipity as my getting this book when I did.  Which is to say that I got it about a month before little Don Meow was born and I started pecking at it here and there. 

At first it was a few chance encounters here and there.  Herr Meow's little-brother adaptation period has gone really well, but his naps have always been a little tempestuous: there is this whole "waterboarding" feeling that used to pervade in the atmosphere in the minutes leading to the little guy's nap, as if somehow suggesting that he lay down in the comfort of his bedroom and rest his body and soul for about an hour were tantamount to shaking his hand with my left one or spitting in his eye.

Naps= unspeakable horror.

And then, like a sunbeam through the clouds, came the advice of Elizabeth Pantley into my life.  When an authority on sleep can tell me within the first page that she, "...thought she knew everything there was to know about sleep..." and yet goes on to disclose the findings throughout the book, such as the biological evidence that supports the need for naps, that she was not aware of until writing it.

Reassurance is good.

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"The No-Cry Nap Solution" is the latest book of practical sleep advice from Ms. Pantley -- who is also the author of "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" and "The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers."

She is also the mother of four, which definitely vouches for her expertise alone in the been-there-done-that department.  But hers is not just empirical expertise alone: her advice is filled with practical and rational solutions that are good common sense and do not feel like the parent is imposing authoritarian discipline on the child after a "breaking in" period.

The book is approachable enough that you can read it cookbook-style--skipping around and finding your particular bit of troubleshooting necessity as you see fit-- or you can be riveted and in sleep shock and read it from cover to cover like a cliffhanger of a novel, suddenly realizing that, yes, your older kid is just damn busy all the time and sees naptime as some sort of lesser pastime with which he cannot be bothered.

Ah... the sweet sound of answers bubblilng up in the mists of tired. 

I am happy to inform that my über-busy three year old just needs a firm and soothing hand.  Now if only they sold infinite patience pills at the CVS down the street, we'd totally be in business.

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Overall, I heartily recommend this book, if anything because you need a guiding hand that does not make you feel like a total failure-- like many parenting books can-- and instead provides you with calm and collected solutions that do not feel like you're imposing medieval torture on your child.

A Perfect Day

After a whole day of doing nothing but reading Twilight --in between acknowledging my family-- do you really expect me to do a whole entry?

Boy, you guys are rich.

So instead I will send a shoutout to my friend Ami, who was the one who recommended the book series to me (you bet I'm going to be reading the rest of the series!) and I will probably go see the movie.

Because, well, now that I have the book under my belt, it's kind of a must, right? Right!  So who's with me?

Hope you're all having a happy Saturday!

Go To Zen Sarcasm Reviews Please!!!!!!!

Hey all!  You need to go over to my review blog, Zen Sarcasm Reviews, and read my latest review on Marlo Thomas's new book "The Right Words at The Right Time Volume 2".  (do ignore my sad-looking graphic right now-- it shall be fixed soon) 

I think you'll not only like my review --because, c'mon, it was written by me!-- but you might find this is a great book to give to someone who is an inspiration to you for the Christmas-- yes, it's that good!  And you don't have to thank me for doing your Christmas shopping either.  I'm generous that way.

This is not my NaBlo entry, but please do help a fellow blogger out!

When "Nothing" Is Really "Everything"

If I were still Roman Catholic, I'd nominate Naomi Stadlen for sainthood.

Okay,  I just totally lifted that from what Frank McCourt said about Lynne Truss-- she of the awesome Eats, Shoots and Leaves. 

However, Naomi Stadlen --the author of the book What Mothers Do --Especially When It Looks Like Nothing-- gets my awesomeness award.

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Being a mother is like falling down the longest and strangest wormhole ever.  And at least Alice's wormhole dumped her, albeit unceremoniously, someplace magical and wonderful.  Motherhood is a wormhole with no end, and Naomi Stadlen's book -- a collection of snippets from conversations with new and not-as-new mothers interspersed with facts and quotes from research and from many other mothering books-- is here to reinterpret the obvious in a compassionate and erudite way.

From the outset, picking up this book was like having a warm embrace and a gentle hand patting my back and telling me, "There, there, love.  It WAS that hard in the early days."  Reading about the frustration and the exhaustion mixed in with the joys of motherhood -- unedited and without as much outward pushing of an agenda as most other books about the subject tend to do-- was comforting and reassuring and, most importantly, it described chapter by chapter the reasons why while my own personal life is wonderful and challenging and exhausting and rewarding and frustrating, to the outward world the only description I can ever muster of what I do is that I am a "stay-at-home mother"; a description said with a shrug of the shoulders and a certain self-conscious grimace, meant to urge the querent to hurry the eff up and ask me another question that I may be able to answer a little bit better, or at least be able to answer with words.

The book is divided into chapters such as "So Tired I Thought I'd Die", "I Get Nothing Done All Day",  and " Snapping at My Partner"-- which may sound horrible to a person who's never had kids, but which will ring so very true to anyone who does.  In each section, we read voices that sound so much like myself or like my friends and acquaintances who've been through this process with me, it was almost eerie.  And when she contrasts these contemporaries of mine with accounts from many many generations ago --including several quotes from Plato's ideas on raising children-- the overall effect is as relieving as it is unsettlingly familiar.

Throughout the book, Ms. Stadlen tries to keep the focus on a vindication and a validation of mothering and motherhood and away from comparing and taking sides in the mothering debate along the all-too-familiar breastmilk-vs-formula and stay-at-home-vs-working-mother warfields.  While I think she does a good job of steering clear of the main battles in these divisive mother lines, it is clear that her stance --and to a certain degree, her advocacy-- is more along the lines of the breastfeeding/stay-at-home/crunchy-motheresque persuasion.  This could be unpalatable reading to mothers whose choices are diametrically different from the ones listed above, but at the same time it is also a validation of how their own choices have made their jobs as mothers challenging in their own unique ways.  In fact, one of the best things about this book is the stressing of the uniqueness of each mother and child bond.

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From my own point of view --validated by this wonderful book--  having a child and rearing it yourself day in and day out amazingly looks like nothing, both from within, as you spend your days tra-la-laing yet another little ditty with an Elmo voice; and from without, as you meet people with jobs and responsibilities and titles that represent money in the kitty while you --it is widely assumed-- sit in your pajamas and go about your day in a leisurely manner, only having to worry perhaps about changing a diaper here or there.

I have never felt as not-alone about my role as a mother as I have reading this book.  Thank you, Mother Talk , for allowing me to read this excellent book and share it with my blog friends.