Celebrating Holi

As if India weren’t colorful enough, the Hindu ritual of Holi—to welcome spring—will be making it even brighter very soon. Thousands of people gather to throw colored powder and water, often perfumed, at each other—and the hues are incredible. I thought these images, taken from above by German artist Katrin Korfmann were particularly striking, and resembled abstract paintings as much as brilliant photographs!

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Infancy. Again. “Sleep to come”

It is my veteran opinion that the conscientious art of sleep training occurs to a mother right around the time she needs it. I’ve seen it in myself, I’ve seen it in other mamas. They get a firm look on their face as they talk about the absurd lengths they’ve recently gone through to get some sleep. And there’s knowledge in their eyes–the infancy period is over and it’s time for the family to have some predictability. There’s a suspicion in the air that everything is being sacrificed for the baby. Dinner, other children, an affectionate marriage, mom’s energy and enthusiasm for life. I personally suffer from a faint sense of bitterness around this time. I don’t ask for it. I don’t want it. But it arrives, lurking in the back of my mind, when one small part of me knows the baby could sleep better, long, harder, deeper, than this. When I know it’s up to me to bring us there. When I know it’s been me that got us into this mess, by feeding willy-nilly at all hours of the day, and letting naps be on the fly or not at all, letting the 2am wakeup slip back in, and then an 11pm wakeup, and shifting bedtimes every day as my calendar demands.

Oh but it’s hard for those few days. When I’m in the moment of it I just want it to end end end. I can tell it is not hunger crying and I don’t want to be counted on to feed at 11pm but my surging hormones want to solve this now. It sounds so wonderful to go in and calm her. But you know if the exact same thing happens tomorrow, and the day after, it will not sound wonderful. And after that heady ten minutes of soothing, I’ll think to myself, what have I done?

And so you have to write a schedule down, or find one in a book, or tell your husband or call your mom. You have do something, out loud, that affirms the logic of it, that reviews and confirms what you’re planning.

With Joan at six months, I’m in this right now. I talked it over with Joe and realized that our day schedule had no predictability for her. As of the beginning of this week, she wasn’t even falling asleep on her own during the day. So I’m fixing that first–paying more attention to the time going by, putting her down for naps, awake, at the same time every day, timing the space between feedings.

And then next week we’ll tackle the nights; and after three or four nights we will all sleep happily ever after. Not really, of course. But I can praise a few of the results for you, from experience: after sleep training you do end up with a baby who can fall asleep on their own, who doesn’t wake up at the slightest discomfort crying out for you, who errs on the side of sleep rather than wake when changes come—like being sick or traveling.

This is the fourth and final piece in a series entitled “Infancy. Again.” by guest contributor Rachael Ringenberg. I’m so grateful she was willing to share these, all of which struck a cord with me and, I gather happily, many of you. Thank you, Rachael!

Rachael lives in Boston with her husband Joe, and their two daughters—2-1/2-year-old Lux and six-month-old Joan, and writes about having another baby on her blog Erstwhile Dear.   She can also be found under the name girlpolish on twitter or instagram. Read her first, second, and third posts.

Trip-planning tip: itineraries

The other day I was doing some office clean-up—trying to bring myself to throw away the outdated copy of Let’s Go France I brought on my first trip to Europe by myself in college—and I came across some old itineraries I’d made. I know there are all kinds of apps that do this for you now, but I still love putting together an old-fashioned, paper travel-itinerary. And I love looking back at them (even if now I’d rather they be scanned then add to the clutter).

People ask me about trip-planning strategies all of the time and I often forget about this, but making an itinerary yourself is a great one. (Now, I haven’t tried the electronic itinerary app, so take this with a grain of salt.) Here are four things I love about it:

• When I pull everything into one place and type in any missing details, I’m more likely to remember things—like the difficult-to-pronounce town we change trains in. And to notice what hasn’t been confirmed or thought through (connections and the like). And to bring the voucher you have to print.
• If we’re traveling internationally, I add notes about “body time.” This is a post-kid addition, but it was really handy for our trip to Bali to see where we stood in terms of body time at the end of each leg, in multiple countries.
• I type out the days and dates and can see immediately if we’re going to be disappointed to arrive in, for example, a market city on the day of the week the market is closed. And I get a better sense of time for packing and planning activities.
• But most of all, I like using them to gather ideas. I rarely like to schedule too much before we arrive somewhere, often preferring to see where the day takes us. But I also hate getting someplace and wasting too much precious time looking up what to do, don’t you? So I might make a list of possible activities for a city and keep it with our hotel and travel arrangement details. Or, if we’re driving a distance (like we were in Costa Rica, up top) I might list possible detours and things to look forward to along the way… especially food. (By the way, we did stop for the strawberry shakes and they were awesome!) How many times are you driving somewhere and looking in a guidebook only to find that you’d passed something you would have liked to have seen 20 miles back?

Honestly, I don’t always have the time these days. But if you’re already doing the work of researching a trip and underlining highlights in a guidebook, just go back and note those highlights in a separate list. Or, more likely, if you’re reading blogs and online magazines and looking at Pinterest for ideas, cut and paste ideas according to location.

Of course, the notes I make on these after the fact end up being really useful for making those really detailed Travelogues.

P.S. Tips for flying with a baby or toddler. And favorite things to pack for traveling with kids.