Better than Winging It!

Please check out my book in progress! I am looking for collaboration from my friends and family to write this book of parenting tricks. Please submit your best kept secret tricks on taming tots and partner. I am looking for those tricks that leave you at the end of your day feeling like you nailed the whole parenting/spouse/and career bit.

See what I have written so far with my two first unedited examples on: transfering your babe to the crib and connecting with the kid after work

Better than Winging it!

*A book for sleep-deprived, caffeine crazed, career/kid/partner juggling parents on how to try to keep it all together and still keep the love at the end of the day*
This is a book in progress designed to shell out the best tricks learned by *master and/or calamitous* moms and dads to new parents that have helped them feel more connected to their children and each other and keep above tidal waves of career and the daily struggle.
This book will be a collaboration piece prepared by me, my friends, my family and colleagues who are doing the best they can to keep their families healthy and happy despite constant pulls from turbulent times. The format of the book will be short pieces of advice for specific topics in family life that have been extremely helpful for me as a scientist mommy. These are simple but essential ways to remedy all sorts of domestic issues! I quote my own career mama, “Keep it Simple!” I add to hers, “and try to laugh at your situation if you can”.

Examples of topics the book will cover are:

• Sleep! How to get more for you and yours

The transfer: How to get the baby out of your arms and into the crib (while staying asleep!)

O.K. so you have nursed, rocked, jiggled, and sang the Star - Spangled Banner for the 99th time. You hear a steady rhythmic breath filling and emptying the depths of baby’s lungs. She is now finally asleep in your cozy warm arms and it is now time to plan the ESCAPE! First, take a deep breath because you are not nearly done, the hardest part has come and you will need every last sliver of Ghandi patience after a full day of incessant snack demands, butt-scrubbing, barking like a momma seal, and receiving insults from your boss on your apparent incompetence. O.K., now release the breath and think only about a warm cup of green tea or a fluffy pink pillow with your name embroidered in gold on top. Are you feeling Zen? If yes, you can proceed with step two: to ever so gently, nanometer by nanometer, as deliberate and solid as the excavator digging up your front sidewalk for the last six months, lower your precious package down into the squishy crib you want baby to call home for at least a half hour of neuronal growth and pruning. Now baby is just one millimeter from the top blanket, he has not yet stirred. Congratulations so far! But you are not even close. Here’s the hardest part, the RELEASE. This must not happen abruptly! The trick is finally here. Ever so softly allow the baby to begin to put weight down into the mattress but do not let go of baby, yet!! As you lower baby keep a firm hold of baby. Keep the constant pressure of your chest and arms on baby during the lowering. Once the baby’s entire weight is against the mattress pad and you have reinforced your hold so that baby does not begin to flail you can now ever so softly begin to let your fingers, one by one, loosen mildly from the baby’s embrace. This process usually takes about 1 to four minutes depending on the degree of slumber. As you make your nanometer movements away from baby keep your breath in sync with your offspring. Once you have evacuated your arms and fingers from under the baby’s head and torso, steal away from the crib at the same banana slug pace, with every nanogram of patience reserve tip toe without tripping on any baby field bombs, those cursed so-called toys your in-laws send to deliberately sabotage you with their fuXXXng outcries of three blind mice or Beethoven’s symphony number 9. Steal off, your free now to eat cake or run on a treadmill, pick your therapy wisely.

• Who are you again? And, why are you biting my ankle?

Breaking out of the coma: From computer, rush hour, or deadline to home: How to let it all go and connect with the kid

This hurdle may be the biggest challenge for all work-crazed parents. Believe it or not, there is a simple solution to this non-trivial problem that fuels every working parent with exponentially growing feelings of guilt and inadequacy. The inability to be present, to be in the moment, to not be distracted while your son is trying to recruit you into his clan of pachycephalosauruses in their daily ritual of head-butting or arugula grazing seems harder than any inane task from toilet sterilization to cheese grating. Why is this so hard? We don’t want to admit it, but we would sometimes rather do the dishes than play with our kids when we get off work! I think it is because after a full day with our overly ambitious experiments, projects and timelines and interacting with competitive co-workers we just want to GEL OUT! But it is time to let it all go and pay attention to the kid for at least 3 hours before they nod off. So, here is the solution:
Sit down on the floor! Isn’t that easy? Sit down, if you need a beer in hand, so be it, but sit down or laydown on the living room floor, and your little pachycephalosaurus will do the rest. That is the brilliance of our tots. They will guide us out of the coma; we just need to be eye level with them so they can dehypnotize us!