Snow Day-Crib jumping

 

Early this morning, I woke up to Anika in my room.
Anika: Mummy?
Me: What are you doing in here?
Anika: I jumped out of my crib
Me: Oh. Come up.

 

Anika comes into our bed almost every single morning because she gets up around 5/5:30 AM every morning no matter what time she goes to bed.  I'm not complaining about that. I'm used to it by now. We have tried black out curtains for a few weeks and those didn't work. Many mornings, I can get her back to sleep in my bed until my alarm goes off at 6, but many mornings I cant. I was always an early riser too, and Andrew and I don't require a whole lot of sleep, and she doesn't act tired or cranky. And, she goes to bed so incredibly easy and sleeps until then.  We never sleep trained or worked hard at getting her to sleep, so I am grateful for what we have...and we don't mind our morning cuddles. Well, she calls them huggles!  I call a hug a hug. Andrew calls hugs cuddles, so Anika last week asked me for a huggle- and it has stuck. I love it.

USUALLY, she calls for me and I go in and get her and bring her back to our room. Sometimes she doesn't want to huggle or go back to sleep with us and so she plays in her room. Her room is right next to ours.
We have tried taking the rail off her bed a few times in the past 6 months. I think she has been ready for a while, but every time we take it off, she asks for it back on! ha.

But, now that she jumped out, I am not giving her the chance to do that all the time and risk landing the wrong way. The only reason it took her so long to get out is because she is short/petite.

 

After Anika huggled in bed with me this morning, I checked outside: snow. I called a few people to see how the roads were and what the day was supposed to be like. Snow and sleet all day, so I decided to have my first snow day all winter. 
I took the crib side down and Anika napped in her converted crib today. We also have a toddler bed in the basement that I will move up soon.

 

Checking out the snow.  Anika is wearing a sweater that my mom made for me when I was a little girl.

 

 

So, above I talked about sleep.  And it brings me to my next question...how many of you use noise machines or fans? For yourself or for your children?
Growing up we didn't use anything at my parent's house.  When I was in college living in the city, I dated a guy who NEEDED his fan to sleep. He would need to bring it over to sleep over. I thought it was freakin ridiculous.  I couldn't believe he relied on something that much to sleep.  Also, I knew someone way before I had Anika who had to bring their noise machine camping with batteries! Omg, Use nature's sounds- you are CAMPING!

I used to love falling asleep to a tv. It drove Andrew NUTS! I still did it for a couple years into our marriage, but then he hated it so much, I wouldn't when he was home. Then...eventually, I stopped. Now, we don't even have a TV in our bedroom. I used to like watching the news in the morning when I got ready for work, but after Anika, I didnt even have time to turn it on before work. Also, we don't have cable anymore, so I cant even get the news. That is one thing we both miss not having cable- we cant get live news or sports, but there is plenty to watch on the Roku- hulu and Netflix for the amount of free time we have to watch tv. Ideally, we would like to get a digital antenna for local channels. I need to look into that and keep forgetting.

Ok, so back to noise machines.  As I have mentioned before, I am in an online natural mom group and I am in the complete minority and the only one who isn't into noise machines. I'm really surprised by this considering (in my opinion) noise machines aren't really natural...more like a gadget.  Anika was given a sleep sheep before she was born and we definitely used that in the early days- the heartbeat sound calmed her right down since she had been used to hearing my heart beat in my belly. Then, since the sheep is a stuffed animal, we sporadically used it until she was talking and told us she didn't like it and to turn it off.  Sometimes she would ask for us to turn her mobile on which played a short song while moving. I guess we just never wanted her to get used to NEEDING something to sleep, but it wasn't necessary for us either.  Andrew and I both fall asleep pretty much the minute our heads hit the pillow. I used to let Anika sleep in our living room as a new baby.  I would vacuum and do everything I usually do.  No one is ever quiet when she sleeps. We go about our business as usual. I will clean her room while she is sleeping in it. Piri barks if someone comes to our door or if she hears an animal outside and that generally doesn't wake her, but even if it does, she puts herself right back to sleep.

 

Another thing is I want to hear what is going on.  We have Piri to hear if anything is going on around our house and she will bark and wake me, but there was a brutal murder in our state a few years ago when the A/C muffled the sounds of intruders, and they didn't have a dog. I know my A/C in the summer  is loud and muffles out ALL noise, but I have Piri to hear over that :)

I guess every person is different and requires different things to sleep, but I am going to start asking my friends if they use noise machines or fans to sleep. I cant be the only one who doesn't use them for us or our kid!