young living/starting our journey with essential oils

One of my favorite things about blogging has been my ability to share things I love and use with my followers.  I don't review items often - in fact, those types of posts are few and far between and very infrequently sponsored - but when things like Merlin's Magic Sleepsuit, Sakura Bloom Ring Slings, and my Lily Jade bag come into my life, I can't help but share!  Lately I've been improving our life with essential oils from Young Living, and I wanted to tell you a little bit about my favorite oils, and why I'm so crazy about them.  

(and.....to make you look at this cute photo)

As you might have noticed, I'm pretty into being a "natural mama."  I babywear, we cloth diaper (I promise I'm going to share more on this soon!), and generally just try to keep things simple.  So when I started to want to address issues like immunity from winter sickness & Claire having sleep troubles, I wanted to do so as naturally as possible.  I've been lucky enough to find an online "village" of sorts via Instagram & Facebook, and that's how I found essential oils.  

I was totally skeptical.  Although I love going the natural route, let's be honest, it doesn't always work.  I'm the kind of person who, if I have a headache, I'm going to take a freaking Advil.  Because it will fix my headache!  Even if it's not my favorite route, I want results.  So when the peppermint oil in my kit fixed my headache the first time I used it, I was intrigued.  

When Darrell and I got into a "discussion" (really, an argument) and we both worked through it in a cool and calm way while I just happened to be diffusing "Peace & Calming" I was surprised.  

When Claire made it through a 3 hour car ride with an amazing nap and no tears, after I put lavender & coconut oil on her feet, I was convinced.  

Now, I'm using these oils every single day, all day long.  Peace & Calming in our diffuser is definitely a favorite, but they all have so much purpose.  I wanted to focus on Peace & Calming & Lavender first, because who couldn't use more peace and calm in their life?  

I like to dab Peace & Calming on my wrists if I'm about to do something stressful - like, say, if I'm headed to the DMV.  Lavender is always on hand in the kitchen, because if you mix it with coconut oil it cuts the unfortunate pain of a burn (I'm a total klutz.)  Every night before we lay her down, Claire gets a little lavender mixed with coconut oil rubbed onto the bottoms of her feet.  If I'm having issues with bad dreams (like when I'm pregnant!) I dab a tiny bit onto my temples "neat" before bed.  Sundays aren't the same without some Peace & Calming diffusing while we drink our morning coffee and pick our Netflix show for the day - come on, you do it too!  Sundays are for Netflix!  

Want to learn more about Young Living Essential Oils?  Add me on Facebook, or just send me a message!  I can show you how to order, and how to get essential oils involved in your life in the best way.  If you're ready to take the leap right now, you can click here to order a premium starter kit.  

vienna sling share/volume 4: heather and garra

I'm excited to bring you the fourth installment in the Vienna Sling Share series today, with Heather Talladay & Garra Schulze.  

First up is Heather with her gorgeous family (including baby number three - a boy - on the way!)  She's wearing her daughter Briar in Vienna Springs Huckleberry for their trip to pick out their Christmas tree.  

Some words from Heather: 

"Some days, I look at my busy family (and down at my growing belly) and think about how I just really don't know how people do it without baby wearing. Now that my littlest is growing into her toddlerhood more and more every day I don't wear her around the house like I used to. But whenever we're out and about she still loves to cuddle up in the sling, my three year old is in the Ergo with daddy, and it makes doing things with two littles so much easier. When she was just a new little bundle, and I had a not-quite-two-year-old to care for, and a husband gone at night school a few nights a week...well we just wouldn't have managed without it. I love the bond that wearing my babes  has brought, and it just seems like the most natural thing in the world to keep them close. 

For the week that I got to use the Vienna Springs sling, we were preparing for Christmas and going to pick out our tree. It was bitterly cold out, but having my Briar close to me in the sling kept me so much warmer. I immediately fell in love with the sling. The color and quality is amazing!! Laura, the owner of VS is so kind and generous, just the sweetest soul. Her slings are wonderful, and so well made. We were walking through the woods, and then went straight to a small-town Christmas event. The sling was supportive and made walking around town and getting on and off hayrides so easy!" 

Next up is Garra & her daughter Kennedy!  In her words: 

"I never imagined myself as someone who would wear their child. I had a lot of different views before getting pregnant with Kennedy. I thought I would formula feed or pump only, instead of actually breastfeeding. I said I would never co sleep, that I couldn't/wouldn't be a stay at home mom. Then I got pregnant. My views changed.  I wanted to stay home, co sleep, and especially breastfeed. I first learned about ring slings through my friend Ashlee (creator of the 4th Trimester Bodies Project) and thought 'wow that looks really cool.'  So I bought my first one a few months before Kennedy was born. Let me tell you, it was a definite learning curve. I practiced on dolls/stuffed animals before she made her arrival and was so excited to be able to wear her, keep her close and be hands free.

Over the past 15 months, babywearing saved my sanity. I have been able to shop, clean, and just purely get ready for the day by having Kennedy in the sling.

On the particular day when Vienna Springs Huckleberry arrived, I needed to get stuff done around the house for Christmas but with a teething baby, we all know that it usually leads to lots of cuddles so we can avoid the tears.  I knew I wasn't going to be able to get anything done unless I put her in the sling. We hadn't been using them much lately because Kennedy is at that point where she wants to constantly be down crawling around and would 'pop' her seat (a term for when babies straight their legs in the sling.) But because she wasn't feeling great she actually wanted to be right there with me. I was able to get my house clean, laundry done, and even wrap my Christmas gifts. Babywearing is a game changer and I am so glad I started doing research before Kennedy was born."

*A little disclaimer: Garra had lots of great pics from her week with Vienna Springs Huckleberry but she had a technical disaster and lost them!  Of course we still wanted her to participate in the sling share, so these are photos of her past babywearing experiences in some Sakura Bloom slings.  

claire at 7 months

You guys, this little girl.  She is becoming more her own person by the second.  She was 7 months old on January 9th (what is happening!?) and she is so entertaining and sweet, and sometimes so challenging!  

She's ambitious to the degree that she frustrates herself all the time.  See how much she's standing in these photos?  She can't really stand on her own yet but she sure WANTS to.  She spends most of her time propped on the edge of our ottoman scooting back and forth between it and the couch.  It seemed she was bored with sitting up as quickly as she learned how to do it.  On to the next skill!  She can crawl but she doesn't much care for it.  

She is sleeping like a champ at night although she is not the best napper - she needs to be held or in a carrier to nap, and I've not successfully gotten her to nap in her crib.  I'll admit, I don't mind the extra snuggles!  

She is finally interested in solid food which is a whole new adventure for us, but I wasn't rushing her.  Breastfeeding has been so easy for us that I was hesitant to introduce another task and mess, but this past week she has definitely ramped up her interest in solids!  So far she's eaten spaghetti squash, avocado, banana, coconut milk yogurt (her FAVORITE), strawberries, clementines, and bread - she loves bread and it keeps her occupied at restaurants, although we try to keep it to a minimum!  We are doing a combination of purees and baby led weaning - depending on the food, if she can't eat it or grab it well without help I'll puree it in our mini chopper, but if she can I just let her go at it on her own and have a sink bath ready!  

She loves to be read to, talked to, and has started to babble and say "da da da da" and "ma ma ma ma."  I think real talking is coming soon.  She is a total mommy's girl, but dad always gets the best smiles!  

Claire bear, we love you more than words can say, but slow down this growing up!  You're breaking your mamas heart and making it swell with pride all at the same time.  

happy new year!

IT's been a CRAZY few weeks around here - besides the hustle and bustle of the holidays, Claire and I both got hit with the flu and we're just coming out of it.  I tell you, you've never known panic until your 6 month old's tiny body feels like a furnace.  We're also learning to wrap (fun, but hard!) learning to eat solids (with very little interest, admittedly) and and learning to stand.  She's getting dangerously close, and I fear she'll walk before she crawls very well.  Sorry for the quick in-and-out, but I'm home with my still contagious baby today, so I leave you with this flood of photos and a wish that the first real full week of work this year doesn't hit you too hard!  

claire's sleep secrets/part 2: sleep training

A while back I wrote a post called "Claire's Sleep Secrets" detailing how we had gotten Claire to sleep through the night by about 3 months.  I stand by the advice I gave there - it gave us a lot of wonderful nights of rest and Claire was a happy newborn.  You can't ask for much more than that!  

But then the 4 month sleep regression hit us REALLY hard.  We stuck to our principles of letting her fuss a bit before picking her up, but she became more and more persistent.  At first she picked up her middle of the night feeding again.  Then she picked up a 3 am feeding.  Soon after she stopped letting us put her down awake - she would cry and cry until we rocked her down, sometimes spending 30 minutes or more confined to sitting with her in one of our arms until she fell asleep.  On her worst nights, she'd be up 5-6 times, ultimately ending up in bed with us.  We replaced the pacifier a lot.

I kept thinking to myself that this was the way I had planned to parent - I was finding the most in common with Attachment Parenting principles and I was scared of Claire feeling alone.  But then her naps went the way of her nighttime sleep - she was only getting short naps in the sling.  We stopped wanting to go out (it loses its appeal when you come relieve the sitter at midnight only to be woken up an hour later.)  We knew we had to do something.

We had briefly attempted cry it out at a bad time, around 4 months.  It didn't work at all - she wailed for over an hour (with lots of reassurance intervals) before ending up in our bed and the experience sort of scarred me.  I knew though that 6 months was a good age for forming habits, and after having a baby scream at me with her eyes completely closed (she was SO TIRED) one night I laid her down, closed the door, and left the room.  She cried.  Darrell went in after about 5 minutes and told her "we're here, we love you, it's time for sleep."  She cried some more.  Again, "we're here, we love you, it's time for sleep."  5 minutes later......total silence.  I was obviously terrified that something horrible had happened but no - I peeked into see her sleeping soundly.  Here's the craziest part - each time she woke that night (which was significantly less than usual anyways) she re-settled within 5 minutes on her own.  She didn't even demand a night feeding!  I thought for sure she would want to eat at least once, considering she had been nursing back down 3-4 times each night.

What we had been doing, we realized, was keeping her from learning how to put herself to sleep.  We had stolen that skill from her when she went through the developmental leap at 4 months.  Instead of reinforcing her skills, we coddled her a little bit too much.  At the time it seemed like the easy way out, but we were only making life hard for ourselves in the long run.

We resolved to do the same thing on night two - I spent the entire day a little bit nervous.  Surely it was a fluke....she would wail for an hour tonight, I thought.  But nope, the books were right.  She cried for about half the time she had the night before - less than 10 minutes.  We laid her down when she showed signs of being tired and there was very little fuss.  She awoke a couple times that night (I can't be sure what times) but her crying was so minimal that I hardly remember it.  She put herself back to sleep even more quickly.

Night three....I was terrified of.  I work out of town every Tuesday and Wednesday in my hometown & we stay with my parents.  She has a crib there, but it's in my room, so I sleep right next to her.  We laid her down when she acted tired at 7:15 ish, and she cried less than 5 minutes before falling asleep, just like Ferber said she would.  This evening she didn't wake up until 4 am - at which point she started crying, definitely realized I was in the bed across the room, and didn't stop.  I ended up having to leave the room to sleep on the couch in the living room where I slept until 7, when I went to get her.  She stopped crying pretty quickly after I left the room, but I'm nervous about how this will affect her sleep in the future when we're there - we may have to move the crib or my sleeping situation, and I'm not sure how we would make that happen.  Hopefully by next week she'll be sleeping through the night consistently and it won't be necessary to deal with the wake up when we're in the room with her.

Night four got even harder.  Have you ever heard of an extinction burst?  It basically means (in science) your subject is amping up the original behavior in a last ditch attempt to win the war.  Here you've got two choices.

1) Wait it out, knowing that this is just the peak of the mountain you have to climb over.

2)  Never sleep again.

Okay, that might be sort of dramatic, but it's mostly true.  Claire cried for almost an hour on night four.  What can I say?  She's smart and stubborn.  I was REALLY REALLY REALLY tempted to go in and save her but after letting the internet remind me that doing so would mean the past nights had been a complete waste and we'd have to start ALL OVER I instead grabbed a bar of chocolate and attached my butt to the couch for some louder-than-normal Gilmore Girls.  She did eventually fall asleep, only waking for a few minutes around 4 am and falling back to sleep really quickly.

On night 5 we were pretty much home free.  She didn't cry more than 5 minutes any subsequent night and we've all continued to sleep through the night.  Now she wakes up and babbles a little bit around 6 am (when she's really hungry) and I pick up her, bring her into bed with me, and we nurse and snuggle until about 7 am.  Sometimes after travel or a screw up in our schedule she'll revert to crying for a bit longer when she goes down, but otherwise she's been predictably good at putting herself to sleep at night.  In sum, sleep training kind of saved us all.  It's not something I ever thought I would do, but now that we're through it I feel like it was absolutely the best decision for our family and for Claire!