We haven’t done any product reviews on here for a while, but this one I really wanted to share with you. Even though I am not sure if our recent toddler sleep success is directly related to using this sleep trainer (it might just be a coincidence or a phase like so many others), I definitely think that it is a great product and could help some desperate parents with early bird kids.

Here is our sleep story: Milo has always been an early riser. Just like his mom he gets tired when the sun goes down and is wide awake at sunrise. As opposed to me his inner clock is stronger than any blackout curtain or blind. In the first 20 months of his life he has probably slept longer than until 7 AM only a handful of times. His usual wake up time used to be anywhere from 5:30 to 6:30 AM and he would announce it with a loud yell for MAMAAAA! So no sleeping in for me either.

When we got back from our trip to Germany in May I feared for the worst jet lag considering that his inner clock would be set even earlier. So, while we were in Germany I ordered this sleep trainer. At that point it seemed to be the best product on the market and after using it I can confirm that it has some major advantages over other similar products.

Here’s the big idea: You set the desired wake-up time. For the beginning of the training set the time to the current wake-up time and then move gradually later each time after the kid has adjusted. At wake-up time the display will change from a blue star to a yellow sun. Explain to your child that it is time to get up only when the sun is up. In the evening you can activate night time mode at any time – the sun will set and turn into a blue star. Explain to your kid that the star is now asleep and he has to sleep as well until the sun rises again. Little stars go out one by one and show the progress of the night.

Pros:

• Big display with big and easy to understand symbols
• Works as a night light with 10 different settings of brightness
• Works as a digital clock during the day
• Also has a separate timer for a day time nap
• Can be used as an alarm as well
• Has a key lock that prevents kid from turning on day-time mode himself
• Comes with a story book that explains how it works to the kid

Cons:

• Currently not available in the US. Therefore higher shipping costs, longer delivery, and has to be used with a plug converter.
• Key lock only available for locking night time mode, but not to lock in day-time mode

Other things to consider: I think this clock works best for kids that are old enough to understand consequences and connections like “if … , then …”. I also communicated to Milo that not only does he have to stay in bed until the sun comes up, but he also has to be quiet so that he won’t wake up the star. I ordered the clock from Langtoninfo and had no problems with shipping and everything arrived in good order within the time frame that was promised.

Recently Milo has been staying in his bed/room quietly until I go get him. I set his wake-up time to 7 and that is usually when I go in. Most of the times he is already awake, but overall there are way more days now that he sleeps closer to 7 than to 6:30 AM. On some days I accidentally slept in until 8 and still didn’t hear a word. Only his diaper was overflowing by that time. So, he doesn’t even wake me up anymore once the sun is up and he is allowed to. Therefore I am not sure if it is really the clock’s contribution that makes him stay quiet in the morning or he just enjoys his alone time in his room. Either way I think that this sleep timer can really help getting into the right sleep mood. Ask me any questions you might have.

 

You would figure that by now we are quite the experts in visiting my hometown Schweinfurt in Germany. Considering that I have spent 2/3 of my life there it should be nothing but a home-run for me. Usually we go there almost every year – although with adding more and more paying customers to the flight bill, we might end up with a more biyearly rhythm in the future.

In a small conservative town like Schweinfurt a lot of things stay the same forever, but apparently I myself change just enough to make every trip different and surprising. Also the contrast between the two countries brings a lot of things into perspective that you don’t realize anymore after living in one of them for a while. Without this trip I would never have known how used I have gotten to having a microwave as standard in every kitchen or being able to grocery-shop late evenings and Sundays. On the other hand I really appreciated how solidly built German houses are. You can totally sneak up on sleeping Milo when there is no floorboard squeaking and the interior walls and doors actually block sounds so well that I was not woken up every morning by a little voice calling “mama”, but was able to sleep in almost every day.

It was pretty great tohave so many people around us who wanted to play with Milo and he really enjoyed all the extra attention. Especially from his uncle Marc. My parents unpacked all our old toys from millions of years ago and even got a sand box just for Milo’s visit. He loved playing in there with his girlfriend Wilma. On other days we took him to the little animal / play park next to our house where he passionately fed the rabbits and pointed out all the baby animals. Milo learned a bunch of new German words like rein (in), raus (out), hoch (up), aussteigen (get out) – but we were unsuccessfull at training him to say cars or water in German.

Overall Linc and I had a lot of free time to ourselves since Milo was so well entertained by others. We attended our friend’s Tim’s wedding without having to worry about getting a tried boy to bed. In the second week we even left Milo for entire 3 days to meet friends in Hamburg and discover a new city.

Jetlag and flight were not too bad by the way. Milo adjusted pretty well within 3 days and even though he did not sleep much during the flights, he stayed calm thanks to many videos and observing the sky. If you don’t care about how many videos your kid watches for one day, any flight is manageable. Although we were lucky to score an extra seat on the way to Germany. Just on the way back it was getting pretty tight with two seats for 3 and a half people.

Somehow this trip back home turned out to be one of the best I have had so far. It was very well balanced with extended family time, friends time, parents only time, and small family time, free time and fun things to do. Surprisingly it was also one of the easiest going back to the US – without the usual homesickness for two weeks. Maybe because I had to go right back to work, and we came back to our own little house, and I now have a small circle of really good friends that I was looking forward to go back to. If only I could do this more often.

See here a photo gallery of our adventures: http://lincnic.com/gallery?album=14&gallery=39

Since most of my posts feature only a few shots from random angles in our house, I figured it would be nice to do a house tour on video  so that you can get a more 3D impression of how rooms and things relate to each other. Too bad we didn’t do one when we moved in, but I did my best to explain in this video what we did to which room and what the plans for the future are. From now on I will try to do this yearly.

See for yourself how short of breath I get these days when climbing up the stairs in our beloved house:

Man, I feel like I am running on steroids these days. No idea where all this energy is coming from, but I take it. After we finished the new guest room it took me only 2 weeks to complete the new nursery. And now we will get started on ripping down wallpaper in the big basement room. Just trying to get as much in the house done as possible before the third trimester heaviness and then newborn craziness sets in.

Luckily the nursery wasn’t too big of a project because the walls were already a neutral tan color that anybody can live with, so we didn’t have to paint for this room makeover. It is definitely a more toned down baby room than Milo’s bright blue and green, but hey – nothing to say against saving some time and effort and working with what you got. So all I had to do was to bring in a little bit of color and some baby appropriate decor. When I found these two mustard colored metal stars at my favorite thrift store for $6 the theme was set and stars and moon and night in general.

Perfect to set the mood for a well sleeping baby, right? I decided to pair the mustard yellow with a dark night blue and found those brand new black-out curtains for $10 on Craigslist. On the wall opposite of the crib I painted a big moon in the same color as the metal stars and added two wooden stars. Milo already loves that trio, he goes over to his brother’s room every morning and says hello to the moon. There is something about murals that makes him talk to our walls a lot.

For above the crib Linc and I made this starry night sky light board. I’ll post a separate tutorial for this thing soon. 

The most time-consuming project was painting all these tiny wooden stars yellow and stringing them up to hang as a mobile above the changing table.

See how Milo is thoroughly testing the new room for his little brother? I am afraid he loves it almost more than his own room right now and I really need to come up with something spectacular for his now empty wall.

Some other wall space in the baby room was filled with these prints I found and put in cheap frames from Walmart. That’s also where the $15 neutral rug came from.

Since Milo already switched to his big boy bed, we were also able to move the crib over and put the comfy nursing rocking chair in the room. Together with a new crib skirt and color matching sheets this room is officially ready to welcome baby in a few months.

All set for sleepless nights. Bring it on, baby!

 

 

So, now that the guest room moved into the basement we had an entire empty room to set up as new baby room. (More on the brand new nursery soon in a separate post.) Instead of keeping Milo’s room as a nursery and moving him into the new room, we decided that it would be better for him to stay in his old room for various reasons. First, there will be enough changes coming up for the poor little spoiled only-child. Secondly, he has grown to really love the tree I painted on the wall for him and says good night to it every evening. Thirdly, I just wanted to do something completely new for our new addition.

This is what Milo’s room looked like until now:

One change that was going to be inevitable for Milo has occurred a little sooner than expected. Since he figured out how to climb out of his crib a few weeks ago, we already had to move him to a real bed. Well, a real mattress that is. Until he becomes a less active sleeper we are keeping his new twin size mattress on the floor for safety reasons. He already tumbled out of it once, but was only startled, not hurt. Which is better than a fall from out of a crib.

The transition to his new bed went unexpectedly smoothly. Milo had already been wanting to lay down on the little pad in his play tent for the last couple of weeks, so all we had to do was slide the mattress right into the tent and he never wanted to go back to his crib. For the first couple of nights we kept the crib in his room – just in case. The good thing is that when Milo is tired, he really just wants to sleep. So all we have to tell him is to go to sleep and he will stay put on his mattress. That is still with the help of paci and blanki of course, but we will give him some more time with them. One step at a time.

Another change you might notice is that I did indeed take down the other way-to-high-therefore-useless shelf that came with Milo’s room. It has been unused and collecting dust for almost a year now, so there is my justification to get rid of it once and for all. Now the wall above his bed is kind of bland and definitely needs some nice art or other decoration bolted to it. I am thinking about a kite, bird or sun to go with his outdoor camping theme. Or I will build a bigger tent to span over his entire new bed.

Oh, and on an equally happy note I gotta tell you that the previously reported severe tantrum phase only lasted about a week or two. These days Milo is actually pretty happy and only occasionally gets upset when he can’t have an iPhone or paci. He seems to understand better what we explain to him and why he can’t do certain things. This probably goes together with his talking improving day by day and him being able to express himself better and better. I guess it still takes a lot of parental intuition and imagination, as well as English AND German knowledge to make sense out of what he says sometimes, but he just keeps happily chatting away and explaining the world to us.

Yesterday Milo and I went for our routine walk to the fire station where we usually have to wait for the fire trucks to come back. This time the fire trucks where there, but Milo still pointed to the bench and said: “Sit down wait”. Later when he wanted the neighbor’s boy to come play cars with him he said: “P(l)ay car Zach down”. Or he points at the elephant in his book and says: “Bfffff water” with a gesture of water spraying out of the elephants trunk. It’s sooooo cool to get to this stage where you can have almost real conversations and you get to actually hear what is going on in this little kid’s mind.

I have been meaning to blog about Milo’s first big Easter experience for about 4 weeks now or whenever Easter was, but life has been super busy lately. As always. So, here we go with a really short half-cheated post about Milo’s Easter 2012.

First, read and see many pictures of Easter preparations on our friend’s Kathleen’s blog.

On Easter Sunday Milo woke up to an Easter basket with his favorite new toy – a dump truck. Or “Bagger” how he calls it.

This thing came in very handy for transporting eggs during the neighborhood easter egg hunt.

Milo totally got the “search for the eggs” thing and couldn’t get enough eggs.

Hear the constant beep of his new truck in the background? The poor toy had to carry eggs back and forth for at least an hour. After using up two sets of batteries on the first day, we decided to declare his Bagger broken. Which only a few days later became true anyway because of Milo’s rough handling. Or shall we say exuberant love. Well loved lives shorter, I guess.

We did it! One day before our house was populated by some German visitors we officially finished the new guest bedroom in the basement and I have to say that it turned out great. We have been working on this for approximately six weeks and it was a real joint effort in the Tran house. Without my handyman I – the surface pretty maker – could not have done such serious handy work as installing lights and new drywall. Looking back, we actually accomplished a lot more than I dared to hope for in my original post about the basement plan. Here is the gist of it.

Just a reminder – this was the colorful craziness we had bought into a year ago:

And this is the new toned down guest oasis:

On our way to the final result we encountered many tedious tasks, such as removing wall paper with lots of water, vinegar, and persistant scraping.

Priming the walls with No-VOC primer because there is not much opportunity for ventilation down there and we did not quite want the baby to be born a natural paint addict.

Splitting the room’s lighting from the overall basement circuit and installing two new recessed lights instead of the one dim boob light.

For the sake of installing the new light switch in the room we also decided to take down the bead board paneling on one of the walls which we had never quite understood why it was there.

After taking it down we realized why it was there: Because the previous owners installed the wall framing flush with an existing corner and putting up drywall would have made for an ugly overlapping edge.

Which left us with the exact same problem – how were we gonna accomplish a smooth wall with drywall. Our solution: Using extra thin drywall and extend it to the part around the door over the existing drywall. Not exactly the Holmes-on-Homes way to do it, but good enough.

 

The trim and doors in this room were wearing many different shades of yellowed old white, so they got a fresh white coat as well .

I didn’t even have to bother with taping off the door hardware because on my mission to de-brassify this house and bringing it entirely to the 20th century I also switched out all the door knobs and hinges for brushed nickel ones.

On the final stretch I got sick and my awesome hubby had to paint the room all by himself with the perfect shade of light grey that I had found on the oops-paint rack at Lowes for $5 (and even No-VOC!). It’s amazing what a difference No-VOC paint makes. It might take an additional coat, but the smell during application is minimal and the next day the room is absolutely smell free.

It is actually a little lighter than shown in this photo (more like what you see next to the door above):

Finally, we cleaned the carpet and filled the room with all the existing stuff from the old guest room, plus a yard sale chair and a free dresser.

We are gonna hang some more framed postcards to fill the back wall, add a bookshelf and wall art to the reading corner,  and eventually also have to find a prettier solution for the electric box and modem corner:

But so far it is the most finished bedroom in our house and I am seriously worried that I won’t ever see my husband in our own bedroom again.