Need to cite someone””a friend, a celebrity, yourself””for questionable mothering? Feel free to post pictures, videos or stories here.
Today’s ticket goes out to Taylor Wells, a regular Momonomics.com contributor and author of our NEW Best Life Ever blog, who resorted to pitching a mesh tent over her twin toddlers’ crib to keep them from escaping.
Freedom! At what cost?
Quote:
“Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.”
A few days ago, my eight-year-old daughter Sagey went in to say good morning to her toddler twin brothers, Dakota and Montana (23 months old), and found that Montana had ripped a hole in their mesh crib tent. (“Wait!” you cry. “A tent over your kids’ crib? Ain’t that barbaric?” Safety first, Super-moms. My husband, Philippe, put up the mesh tent to keep our little guys safe for as long as possible after we found Montana straddling the crib rail after naptime one day.)
But as Sagey entered their room, she found that not only had Montana ripped a hole in the crib tent, but he’d stuck his head out of the hole, and his head was stuck.
“That’s the end of the crib and the crib tent,” I said in horror as Sagey told me the tale. Into the big boy bed they went for nappy that day.
They’d been so excited about the idea and possibility of their big boy bed for months (which was in their room with the crib, along with the bed of their five-year-old brother Phoenix, with whom they share a room). They’d get in that big boy bed and pretend they were going to sleep, pulling the covers up to their little chins, and squealing in delight.
But somehow, now that it was the real deal, it wasn’t so appealing. They cried and yelled through their entire first nap sans crib until we later found Montana whimpering next to the door and Dakota sound asleep””on the rug. This from two little boys who’d been champion sleepers from birth, taking four-hour naps daily and enjoying “˜em. I chalk their sleep habits up to two things:
1. They’re twins and so they’re constant pals”“”“sleeping in the same crib, playing together, eating together, bathing together, going potty together (we’ve done diaper-free elimination communication, “EC,” with them since they were 6 weeks old). While they slept, we’d sometimes hear them wake momentarily in the middle of their sleep cycle, giggle a little or babble, and then fall back to sleep. They snuggle together in their crib””so just like when your kids sleep with you, they most likely sleep longer because they’re cuddled up with each other.
2. The Universe is kind when the kids are numbers 4 and 5. I was up through the night with the best of “˜em with my first two babies. My third was easier, and the twins are a breeze.
But now, after ditching the crib, my sleeping angels had flown the coop. One night, we found them in the closet an hour after bedtime, playing in the dim light, even though they could barely keep their eyes open.
The next day the same thing happened during naptime. We found them in the closet.
“I think they wanna be “˜contained.'” I theorized. They thought they wanted out of the crib, but now they wanted the security back. After all, they’d spent a lot of hours there for the first (almost) two years of their lives.
Sometimes our Spirit asks for something, but then our mind steps in and says, “Nope, not ready yet,” and so we sabotage it from happening. Sometimes we ask for freedom and get it, and then we freak out.
Our kids are mirroring what we do in our everyday adult lives.
As always, my kids are my biggest teachers.
Have the best day ever!
Namaste!
Taylor plus 5
Taylor Wells, M.A., M.Ed., RYT, owns Prana Power Yoga, Inc., Super-mom.com and Prana Super-mom Consulting. She is also a Boston Herald columnist and blogger, United Nations Yoga Peace Ambassador, activist,and happy Super-mom of 5 kids. She is the author of the “Best Life Ever” blog at Vitacost.com.