My pattern is to have NO pattern

So I just had a great EC (aka: Diaper Free) moment tonight that I have to share really quickly (for any other EC parents out there). I didn't realize until I got back just how cool it was.

I wanted to go to the store to pick something up but it was already 8:30pm so I was kind of in a hurry. I grabbed my wallet, my keys, and rolled up an extra diaper and stuck it in my pocket. And off I went! Oh yeah, I grabbed the baby too!!! This was the closest I've gotten to experiencing an outing without my four ton baby bag in tow, and I was damn proud. I just up and went, like back in the day when "leaving with a moment's notice" was still part of my lifestyle. And to add chocolate frosting to the cake, both the baby and I returned with a dry diaper! Yay for a good EC night!

Okay, on to my topic at hand:

Well, he's going to sleep later and later. Not quite sure how that happened. It used to be 8pm. Okay, 8pm-ish. Then all of a sudden, we've been getting him to sleep at 10pm. He sort of just skipped the nine o'clock hour. Last night, silence fell upon us at 10:30pm. I told my husband, "Maybe we should try to put him down 10 minutes earlier each night."

Tonight at 10:30, he was ready to run a marathon. Clearly someone bathed him in some coffee. Tonight's final bedtime? 12am. This was after a walk around the neighborhood to get him to pass out. Something very fishy is going on here. Perhaps we have lost all control and the boy rules the house.

However, lately I've begun to think it's a little sad to spend more time wishing my son was asleep than being awake. Yeah, sad isn't it? I mean, here is this little happy creature and all through out the day I would just look at him and say, "Why aren't you sleepy?" Looking forward to his naps because this is the time when I would (attempt to) "get things done." But he's six months old now. I've let six months pass by wishing he was asleep for all of it. I should probably start thinking of him as a human baby, not a bear in the middle of winter.

I'm facing reality now and acknowledging that even when he does take a nap I hardly get anything done anyway. I'm far too easily sidetracked to finish any project on the "list". So, I might as well just embrace his waking hours (which feels like 32 hours straight), and think of his naps as mere blips of silence in my day.

Sleep for us has been a family issue since the day he arrived. We all participate in thinking about it. The parents wish we got more of it. The child, not so much. Unfortunately, he's taken on his mother's trait of being a night owl. Like his mother, the boy is fully charged at 10pm. Ready to go and eyes wide open. Now I know how my poor parents felt every night that we battled this out. During my pregnancy I barely slept, often watching reruns in the early mornings. Early sleep training for the boy, I suppose.

I remember one "expert" adamantly said "Nine o'clock is WAY too late for a baby to go to sleep." I never liked her "expertise". Supposedly it was a support group, but I felt like it was an hour all about things we (okay, namely I) were/was doing wrong. And they incorrectly marketed the group as a place where all parenting styles are welcome and there is no judgement. I did find there was no judgement from her, as long as we agreed with what she was discussing. But in regards to things that were "wrong": Judgement. Raised Eyebrows. A lot of silence after my verbal contributions. Well, no, in retrospect it wasn't just silence. It just felt like dead silence to me. It was more along the lines of first getting a smile through gritted teeth, followed by some silence to process what I just said. And then smoothly segueing into the next topic that she had outlined in her notebook.

My one big complaint was that I wished she could have remained more neutral. However, when she says something like, "I have my own opinion about this which I won't share." but knowing exactly what that opinion is by the tone of her voice isn't exactly what I would call without agenda.

Okay, I lie. My other really, really big beef with her was that she wasn't up to date with the latest trends, research, or parenting styles. As an "expert", I expected her to be able to suggest several ways to try things. Not just say "Here's what you do." and then send us on our way (more confused).

She told me that most people (clearly she was included in this group) feel that a child isn't ready to learn how to use the potty until they are around three years old. Then several weeks after I had been trying and learning about EC (no thanks to her) I happened to mention that it was going well. Her response? "So, you're still sticking with that?" She had that same teeth gritting smile whenever I spoke. AS IF my way was putting a big cramp in how she ran her class. AS IF she felt my crazy ways were completely worthy of a call to social services. AS IF I was blowing her cover that she really didn't know how to hide passing judgement. AS IF what I choose to do was making my life much more difficult than it had to be. Little does she know that I haven't changed a poopy, explosive diaper since the first week that I started EC'ing, four months ago.

My child will not be sitting in his own waste when he's three years old. To me, that is worthy of a call to social services. But what do I know? I ain't no expert.

I'm fine with accepting her opinion as merely an opinion, but so many times I wished she would have been up-to-speed enough to offer us other opinions or ways of thought. Instead, we got: "This is what the research shows, so this is really the best way to do it." What happened to: what works for some may not work for others. Or: Try methods A, B, and C. They're all good methods.

Call me weird, but that is the reason why I joined the group after all. "It takes a village." Ya know, that whole thing...

I remember one time the group was talking about a particular book like it was the bible. And I asked, "What is this book that you all are referring to?" And the "expert" looked at me like I was nuts that I hadn't memorized each page before the baby was born, let alone hadn't heard of it. She says (paraphrasing here), "It's called The Happiest Baby on the Block by Dr. So and So. Blah. Blah. Blah. It's a great book. He tells you the eight important things you should do to calm your baby. You should read it."

Apparently I was the only one in the room to not have read it. My boy (in the early days before he was capable of smiling and laughing) was quiet, content, observant, and I dare say, HAPPY. Okay, maybe, MAYBE he wouldn't qualify as the happiest baby on the entire block, but since when did this become a competition? Isn't it a little too early to be putting so much pressure on him?

Needless to say, I never read the book. My boy is quite happy, thank you. He's smiling about 90% of the day, every day. On a side note, you know what really makes me laugh? I've heard that the doctor that wrote this book on child rearing doesn't even have kids. To me, that's about as interesting of a read as the book that Britney Spears' mother was writing on parenting before her underage daughter got knocked up. Clearly these people know what they're talking about.

I had to get rid of all my pregnancy books because they made me crazy telling me things that I "should be" feeling. I spent more time worrying about why I wasn't feeling something instead of rejoicing in the fact that I felt friggin' GREAT!!!! I clearly remember reading that if women don't experience morning sickness then there's a higher chance that there will be a miscarriage over women who spend their mornings leaning over the toilet bowl. Well, I did not have one day, not even a full hour of morning sickness. Can you imagine what my crazy neurotic mind was thinking???!!!??? For months, I cursed the day this author was born, and then I cursed myself for even buying the book.

So, come time for boy-raising, I decided that I'd do something a little risky and follow my gut for the mommy stuff too. Heck, let's just say intuition is my guide. So what that I've screwed up a few times here and there. So what that I let him stay up until 10pm. It's not like we're up watching America's Got Talent and eating popcorn. I'm actually doing things to stimulate his cute, little growing brain.

And by the way, Ms. Expert in Child Rearing, my husband happens to come home from work at 9pm. So, unless it's better to have my son go to bed every night after not seeing his Daddy all day, then I'm going to do things my way. It ain't like the boy has an important meeting to go to in the morning.

This is certainly not in any book, but this is how we do things around our completely schedule-less house. Here's a picture of the boy, lying naked, without a diaper on our bed. No blanket, no sheets. Directly on the mattress. Oh, and wait a minute! What's that on his face? I think that's the beginning of a smile. Yeah, my boy is happy.

So, it's too late for me to write about what I was really going to write about. I sort of went off on a tangent about my support group "expert". She'd have a conniption if she knew my boy's un-schedule. I guess today's topic was really more about how I've chosen to follow my heart and do my own research instead of just doing whatever it is that I'm told to do. Sure, I admit, this entry sounds a little fueled. But I'd like to think of it as having some passion.

Well, as the rest of my life goes, I'll have to finish what I meant to do another time. I think I was going to talk about patterns. Getting sidetracked is really exhausting.