Jonty, the dinosaur who could not go to sleep #appreview

Jonty the dinosaur who could not go to sleep

 

Jonty reminds us of a Little Miss we have in our house. She struggled to go to sleep since the day she was born. We have sorted out most of the niggles, but even this week she fell asleep in the car on her way home. And she could not go to sleep after that...

Jonty is the sweetest character in this iPad app that is great for toddlers as well as children learning to read. It is also wonderful for learning to read a second language, such as Little Miss that is 7 year old and is only starting to read English now in Grade 2.



There is four modes in the app: Read to me, Read it myself, Autoplay and Add to story.

The story is interactive and objects can be moved, and some objects can even be added to the story. The child are able to record her own story and add it in. There is background music with a lullaby quality to it which really adds to the bedtime story routine!

There is an option to print colouring sheets for children.

Jonty the dinosaur who could not go to sleep

Interaction with objects on Jonty the dinosour app

Add your own story and objects on Jonty the dinosour

Beautiful illustrations on Jonty the dinosour who could not go to sleep

There is a Lite app available that's for free: Jonty the dinosour who could not go to sleep

There is also the full version that's avalaible for $2.99: In-App purchase available!


My only gripe with this app is that it is not available on the iPhone, and that is is only available on iOS.


Disclaimer: I got a free code for the full version!

A discussion about fear

This morning out of the blue I heard the small voice from the back of the car...( I thought she was still sleeping while we were driving to school.)

"I do not have to be afraid (she calls it "skrikkerig" in Afrikaans), because God looks after me!"

I don't know where this statement is coming from, but I confirmed that she has no need to be afraid.
She also said that when she was a baby, she was not as fearful than she is now.

I hope I could convey to her that it is not necessary to be afraid.
(What can I say more than she is safe with us and that there is no reason for her to be afraid?)

I have seen that she is apprehensive and reticent when meeting new people. Last night a friend of my daughter came to visit, and Mieka demanded to be picked up and held when the girl arrived.
She gets almost frantic until she gets picked up! (As if she is in some kind of danger...)

The other definite fearful trigger is of course not wanting to be left alone, and not wanting to sleep alone. She wakes up screaming when she finds herself alone in her bed. And she calls out to us!

I remember being very afraid when I was small, and the eldest also had trouble with the dark.

We try our utmost to go to her, and sleep with her, and we do not leave her on her own. I know how scary it can be lying on your own (I can still recall my own fear of the dark), feeling as if strapped down by the arms (ghosts) in the dark.

I hope we can help her to overcome it sooner rather than later.

It seems all of us go though this phase?

Sleep sorted! Really?

 

Three years and 7 months. You would think that sleep is not that much of an issue anymore. That sleep should be sorted by now...

Surprise, surprise!


Sleep is a total different ball-game for a three year old...

Maybe she has got our late night owl genes, or she's just a normal three year old?

The most recent phase is one where she goes to sleep in our arms. Demanding literally to sleep in the nooks of our arms... And also when waking up. Which can be a couple of times a night!

Getting her to bed at an acceptable time and getting her up a the break of a day. Not so easy...

Which means that she spends most of her sleeping time in our bed. Also no surprise, and I am not complaining!

There is nothing as sweet as waking up into that sweet face in the mornings...

 

We had a break from reality for a week. With sleep routines going for a dive!

But she went down even before her normal bed-time tonight! (Definitely something to do with that skipped afternoon nap...)

Fingers crossed for a good night's sleep before we check back into the rat race!

Happy sleeping!

Posted with Blogsy

Nobody as surprised as the surprised mother

I wanted to write the blog post last night, but we had a sleep fail night, and the off switch did not work, except for both parents! (Nothing new!)
We staggered out of our room after 11 last night, with washing that still needed to be hanged, and the lights to be switched off in the rest of the house... (No wonder I don't get time to read!)

The Toddler was 35 months yesterday. 3 is a month away.
And.... Ta-da-ta-dum!-ta-dum! is nappy free.
She announced last Thursday evening that she did not want to have a nappy on at bed-time, and that was it!

The status update on Friday
about the first nappy-free night at MomAgain@40 FB page

She is wearing panties 24-7, and she tells us when she wants to go...

Nobody is as surprised as me!
Something just clicked!

I was beginning to worry about the deadline of next year and the new school...She is supposed to be potty trained by then.

It just shows you! All in their own time...

"I can do it!"

It dawned on us last night! We don't need to buy those expensive pull-ups or Pampers or Huggies... anymore!
*Happy dance!*

Related posts:
Up close with the toilet
Potty training - report back
Wordless Wednesday #69 - More uses for the potty

Morning's first photos at day care #27 - week in pictures

Monday - not a good start for the week - Sleep fail

Tuesday - had to drop her off sleeping!

Wednesday - it was a good night!

Thursday - it was a good night! She bumped her head!
(The Winnie the Pooh plaster is her own doing. There is no blood involved!)

Friday! She only woke up now, but the sweets money in her hand helped a lot!

Happy Friday!

33 months on World Peace Day

The Toddler was 33 months on World Peace Day yesterday. #worldpeaceday

 It is a day in recognition of a world favouring peace, and for once not a day AGAINST something! We should definitely have more of these!

Days to call Peace to the fore in the World, for our children!


I saw this cute dress with the peace sign & "Peace" written on it at A-C-Kermans yesterday, and could not resist.

To get her to stand still for a photo is not always possible...

The Teen even tried taking a picture through a window...

Peace!

33 months is all busy and talkative and major Tantrums.
The tantrums are even more forced with louder theatrics.
And to get the off button for sleep stays a major issue!

But, she cannot get cuter than this! We are sure of it! ;-)

Sleep fail

#sleepfail What a boring topic. The toddler and not sleeping.You would have thought that by two and a half years we would have cracked the code for getting a child to sleep?


Not so!

We had two sleep drives this week already, and last night Hubby proclaimed he was not going to drive around again!

What happened? (Murphy had fun, for sure!)

After the usual bed-time routine stuff of bath, Dad reading, and me getting into bed with her, Little Missy was bright-eyed and ready-for-action!

We even tried all the lights-off-and both sleeping with her in our bed…
We dozed off, off course.

In the end I just gave up and took a bath with her supervising on the side!

At half past ten we got into bed with her and told her that she could stay awake, but we are sleeping now.
The reverse psychology (or maybe finally tiredness?) finally kicked in, and she was gone.

But it was too late for a toddler of her age, and this morning she did not want to wake up…
I left her sleeping on a mattress at day care!

Total sleep fail! (Hung head in shame)



Photo: Earlier this week at day care: The Toddler loves her Dora the Explorer shoes.

Sunday evening, and we are doing a sleep drive

The Toddler had such a great weekend with lots of sun and outdoors and play with friends and helping us to water the garden...
When she announced she is going to stay awake just now, there was only one option that we know addresses a lot of frustration... For all of us!
5 minutes on a sleep drive in the car, and we are back with a little one that has passed out completely!

Hope you had a great weekend as well!


Photo: Helping to water the garden in her swimwear on Saturday.

Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Up and down in the elevator

The fragment from a dream… that keeps on lingering afterwards!


I am in a hotel. It seems I am on holiday. The people that populate my dream I do not know. (In the dream I do.) I step into the elevator, and somebody else is there as well. We press the buttons, but it is only button 10 that is working, as well as the button to the basement. The lift does not stop on floor 10 or the basement. It just goes straight past… I am going up and down in the elevator!

I woke up with the fragment of a memory of the dream yesterday. I have been in the dream before…

That feeling has been lingering for two days now…

Not able to get out, and being stuck!

Does it mean something? Or is it because I spent the night with the Toddler in her bed, trying to keep the blankets covering us both while she is sheet cycling? Not sleeping very well…


Do you take dreams seriously?

Do you remember your dreams?

Dear Toddler: SLEEP!

Hair bow and coffee

We do not hold this against you:

When you sometimes makes us do the musical chairs on our bed and yours, we do not hold it against you!
When we keep to a strict bedtime routine, but you still do not want to settle...
When we have to drive around at night to get you to sleep...
Even though you are happy to go to sleep with Mom, and later changes your mind, and want Dad to come and sleep with you...
When you do not want to go to sleep...
When we have to switch off all the lights, and you are forced to come to bed...
When you sleep in the middle between us, and we hold onto the edge of the bed, fighting for a bit of blanket...
When you have a bad dream, and do not stop crying in the night...
When you still want to sleep in in the mornings and we have to dress you upside down...
When Dad thinks we are never going to sleep again, although we only had a little bit of upheaval before twelve at night...

When we see that cute little face early in the mornings, we do not hold the sleep issues against you!
All is instantly forgiven!

Luckily we are a team working around the clock. When I give up in despair, your dad steps in! And when he gives up, I am ready to take on the next round!

(This too will pass! This too will pass!)

Related posts:
Mornings first photo at day care #20 - Monday morning sleepy
The toddler is down at 8

Dragonflies & Astronauts: Beautiful!

The picture of a sleeping toddler was not to be on Saturday night when we went to see a show of The Parlotones…


We usually don’t have a problem and at eight (nine perhaps on a weekend) she goes down, but Saturday she was bright and breezy!
Murphy does not sleep!

But we left the Toddler with the Teen. We haven’t done that much up until now!
You would think that we have a babysitting minder in-house… But, we mostly prefer to take the Toddler with. If that’s not an option, we leave her with her grandparents!

We worry about that “what if?” something very bad happens! (Just in case…)

Anyhow, we left the Teen and Toddler with a Barbie movie! And it went well! Except for lots of bed jumping that had to be endured, apparently…
(The Teen doesn’t mind at all, because she is getting a bit of pocket money!)

We went to see the live 3D movie of The Parlotones show of Dragonflies & Astronauts! It was incredible! Some of their best music in a great post-apocalyptic (?) show! Loved it! They had some problems sorting out the technicalities in the first songs, but from there we were with them on the stage!

We were sitting with our 3D goggles, and I wanted so much to take a picture. Imagine me with the blackberry with the 3D goggles in front of it! I only got this very poor image…

I hope there is a DVD coming out? I hope they do it again?
I want some more!
In the meantime I am listening to all their songs…

Yes, it was nice! (I am officially a Parlotones groupie now!)

Cuppa Java Friday

Skinny Cappuccino at Woollies

It is winter here (duh!), and all we are talking about is the cold! I have said before that we South Africans are real moaners-deluxe when our weather goes to the freezers. And guess what? Our midday temperature goes up to 19 degrees!


Not something to complain at all, you would say? Proving my point!

I am looking forward to the weekend. It started well already yesterday with a free meal at Woollies Campus Square! They forgot about our lunch-time order last week, and invited us back again this week! They score tops for following up on complaints, and top on their coffee and harvest table! Woollies, you are definitely forgiven!

Hubby figured out how to take care the sheet cycling of our toddler last night. He picked her up while she was fighting him, saying she wants her Mama, and cocooned her into her blankets. That sorted the open sleeping for most of last night!
He came back down the stairs and told me: “Sometimes fathers are also worth something! We can also do good parenting!”
Of course! I have never thought otherwise!
I could not have done it without you! (Thank you! Thank you, Dries!)

Best of all for the end of this week: I am featured as a Mommalicious Mommy Blogger and had to answer a couple of questions! I love checking in to Mommalicious Mammas active page to see what all mommies are up to, and sometimes to ask a question as well.

I could even sent one of my favourite bloggers, Mama Poekie, who blogs at Authentic Parenting, to the website to ask for advice about gynecologists in Cape Town. She is going to come from the Congo for the check-ups and birth!

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

What are you up to? What are you drinking?

Morning's first photo at day care #20: Monday morning sleepy

Not a good way to start on a Monday... The result of not going to sleep at 8 last night. Although Mom and Dad tried!
I was thinking of the "Go the fuck to sleep" book that was a topic on last week's blogs via Reluctant Mom... It really helped!

(Book: Go the f to sleep - Adam Mansbach)

Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

The Toddler is down at 8

 

We had some sleeping issues during the holidays last week.  As soon as the regular routine gets shifted or moved along by a couple of minutes hours, everything goes out of the window!

No new revelation here! We all know it! It is our own doing (as parents!) when we let it slip... We were driving around again on Monday night while she was full of beans, singing songs...  While we were feeling like zombie parents driving ourselves into a coma...

Luckily when she went back to day care this week she was extremely tired, and it is now the second night that she went to bed at eight AND fell asleep immediately... Back-to-reality does have its merits for tired parents!

The photos are evidence of some of the late night art being done by the Toddler last week. She starts by cutting up pictures from magazines and making collages. Even the dices got a place on the collage. I think it is pretty nifty because she does it all on her own!
(The same as the collage on her sketch pad as well.)

Happy sleeps!

Morning's first photo at day care #17

It's Thursday! It does not look like I was a ball of beans last night, does it?
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Morning's first photo at day care #15 - You woke me!

The Toddler really wanted to keep on sleeping this morning! (So did we!)

She woke up at 22:30 last night and was not impressed with Mom not coming to her side immediately. Dad had to take over because Mom was busy helping the Teen to get that online visum form completed. In the end we gave up and saved the "stupid" (I want to use more stronger words here) form for tonight. We really have to spill our guts for these forms! I am being tramatized by the details we have to give! (I hate forms! I hate forms!)

I don't think I want to ever go overseas now! The forms is getting to me!

The Toddler was all bright-eyed by then, and in the end was giving me a full run-down of my bathing experience. She was standing right next to my bath, and telling me how to wash what! She only got settled again when all the lights where down, and we were passed out on the bed at 23:45!

No mystery the lady was not impressed with waking up today.
But she did give me a a little blurry smile when asked for it this morning!
No, it was you that was blurry with that shot, Mom!
YAWN...

Questions on a Sunday night

There are a few questions that a Sunday night brings to mind. Especially after I stumbled in a daze out of our room at 11pm, after having started the evening in the Toddler’s room… It was one of those sleep marathons, where we ended up sleeping before the Toddler!


The rhetorical questions:
(I don’t think there is an answer to one of them, but you are welcome to give me your answers. Wink smile!)

• Why the Toddler does fall asleep even before her bed-time on Friday and Saturday night, but on Sunday it’s a different story?
• Why does the weekend seem like an unlimited opportunity for doing those tasks that need to be done, and comes Sunday night it has not been done?
• Why do the weekends feel so very short?
• Why The Teen does have so many appointments to go to on a weekend when we have specifically declared it a stay-at-home weekend?
• Why do I plan to fit in some exercise over the weekend, but it never realizes?
• Why do we love weekends so much more than the week? (Does it say something about our jobs?)

Monday already!
Yeah, the weekend is only four sleeps away!

Chainsaw in the bedroom

I am a very good sleeper. I love sleeping, and have never struggled going to sleep. There is nothing that is more satisfying than SLEEP!

That is, until I got pregnant again, and since then I was more awake than I wanted. First with the uncomfortable pregnant belly, and then the baby and the nightly sleep deprivations...

I became aware of something else as well. Something which did not bother me at all before... There is a Chainsaw in the bedroom. It is real and it is very very LOUD! It makes sleeping very difficult! To drift away in that wonderful magical world of SLEEP... Very difficult!

I am lucky that as soon as I break into the threshold of sleep, I am away for the night.

To get there is the problem.

Ways I try to deal with the Chainsaw:

• Nudge or poke or stroke of the offending noise maker.

• Trying to straighten the cushion for another sleep position.

• Putting the cushion over my own ears.

• I have on occasion gone to sleep in the Toddler’s room. (It seems the Chainsaw does not bother her at all when she lies next to it!)

• When trying to verbalize the problem, I only get back that I have my own Chainsaw melodies... “sigh”

• On occasion I have tried to record it, and strangely it has worked very well. The offender wakes up, or the sounds are not that loud anymore...

The Toddler is growing up, and our broken sleep is getting less and less. With that of course the impact of the Chainsaw will grow less and less. There is real hope here! (Smile)

Until then, what other remedies do you suggest for dealing with snoring?

Day Care – a bright new year!

I am so glad I did not fire the day care last year! This year everything has changed, and I am leaving the toddler with a light heart every morning! She also goes with open arms to the new teacher!


The toddler has moved on to the next class. She is two now. The teacher speaks Afrikaans, and she is there already in the mornings. I can give her feedback about the toddler, and what to expect. When I go to pick up the toddler, I get feedback again about how the day went… It makes a world of difference in a working mother’s composure for the rest of the day.

Two seems to be a challenge this year! Did I mention the Terrible Tantrums! It is terrible and happens e-v-e-r-y five minutes! Eek!

“NEE!” (No!) is the favourite word of choice!

Now I also remember why my teen used to go to day care without any ponytails. We are struggling our arses off to get a ponytail in the toddler’s hair! I love the two ponies, but we are back to one pony in the mornings! (See Morning’s First photo at day care #7) Hats off to all you Moms who are able to sent daughters to school with hair all up and shiny with bows and clips! You are real magicians! We are trying to let the hair grow out without cutting a fringe. I have had it with fringe-cringe cover-ups after a visit to the hairdresser… (The teen, of course.)

I blame the New Year and a new class on the toddler being very insecure at night at this stage. We have done two nightly sleep drives in a row to get her to sleep, and she awakes again and screams at the top of her lungs. Very upset that we could have put her on her own in her bed! I definitely hope it is the reason, or we have a new sleeping pattern to overcome… I also want to get to bed by ten at night! Please, Toddler, please!

(Photos by her Grandfather James last week when Mieka stayed with them. This morning she told me: “Ouma kuier.” (Gran visit.) She loves going to them!)

Sleep adventures

I have just spent an hour with the toddler on the bed, and now Dad is trying some more. Another hour has passed already, and we are still hearing the giggle from the bedroom...

Sleep stays an “adventure” every night! Sometime she announces that she is going to bed, and we have to move to walk with her up the steps. Even when it is before her bed time. We do try to keep to the bed times! Sometimes she asks for “booby” and falls asleep on the breast. And it’s easy...

But sometimes we get nights, like tonight, where nothing helps! Especially when we have decided to drink that second glass of wine... Murphy does keep his ears wide open, you know!

Nowadays she also wakes up with a scream when she sees we are not sleeping next to her!

Sorry, have to go make a bottle... Dad has just sent me a sms from the bedroom.

Fifty minutes later, but Little Miss and Dad are finally down for the night. I had to lie down as well. Yawn!
Who says that sleeping with the toddler is not a fun adventure? (Sarcastic smile)

Now all that’s left is get myself off to bed...

Good night!

(Photo: Mieka earlier today, fast asleep on the coach!)

Related posts:
Cuddle at bedtime or cry-it-out babbies
List of tactics to get them to sleep