jennifer patel

In his previous life before us, Alex slept on a mat on the floor with his foster mom in Korea. Since I had time to read a plethora of books before we went to get him, I decided that we were not going to start any habits that would need to be changed later. As a result Alex slept in his own bed, in his own room from the very beginning. I had grand plans to do the same for baby Z. Since I'm not breastfeeding, I was going to have him sleep in his crib from day one. But... Then we brought him home and I realized that he was going to be upstairs and I was going to have to walk upstairs multiple times a night. I consider myself in shape, but nothing winds me faster than walking up one flight of stairs when I'm tired. (or always, actually) The next plan was to have him sleep in the Pack'N Play in our room. Baby Z nixed that plan pretty fast as he would not sleep in there... We had a baby box...he nixed that too. It turns out he wanted to only sleep in the Rock thi...

One morning I woke up at 6:30 A.M. I brushed my teeth, put in my eyes, let the dog out, watered the plants, woke Alex up for camp, got Z up, changed and dressed Z, poured milk for Alex to put in his cereal, heated up a bottle and started feeding Z by 7:45. Alex sauntered downstairs around 8:15, poured his cereal, added the milk I poured and ate. Cereal is only one part of his breakfast. The hot portion of breakfast consists of a waffle (frozen from a box...gasp!) and an egg. As I was feeding Z and Alex finished his cereal, he looked across the table and said, "I'm waiting for the rest of my breakfast." I stared at him for a long time, going through the options of what to say and how to say it. Finally I let him know that it was probably time for him to learn how to make his own breakfast...all of it. With careful supervision (a.k.a. major micromanaging) he has been cooking his own breakfast for about a week now. Obviously things started out rough as seen above...