Re: moving
Why? For a better situation (family support/space/etc.)
How? By throwing money at the problems. That’s the only way I know how…it was so hard.
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How big was this pine tree?
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This is rapidly the conclusion I’m reaching. I know why I’m doing all this, it will be amazing after, blah blah blah. But a nice lady who probably showers every day and has a neat house told me that we will get a lot more money if we don’t show with the dresser or the bookshelf with doors (living room)…these two pieces were my solutions to staying same during the staging process. I’m afraid of what she’d have said and thought if I hadn’t cleaned six times before she came.
The money thrown at the outdoors has been good. And now we’re going to see what quotes are like for a cleaner and/or the kind of movers who also pack. And then we will be allll better and happily ever after.
Thank you everyone for your amazing support and feedback. My takeaway is that we should all have had magical support and free movers and nannies and cleaners.
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About the height of an adult person (it was potted)
Yes. I would like these things for all of us. I am looking forward to you getting your space.
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We moved twice with Pikelet before she was two, including three months when we didn’t have a permanent home and were staying with family.
Do not recommend. Would not do again.
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I had originally planned to have Full Service Movers for this move, but it’s very expensive and I didn’t want a bunch of people in the house in the Unprecedented Times, and I would still have to go through everything and decide what goes and what doesn’t.
Packers pack everything including half eaten bags of marshmallows and they only put about 4 things in a box. LOL
I’m happy with the way we’ve done things, under the circumstances, I’m just tired of it. 3 weeks…
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Oh yeah. That’s a big reason why we did family- it was last summer and still pretty early on, and we would have had nowhere to go while they worked, etc
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Moving with small children sucks. Sucks even worse during a pandemic. We threw money at the problem, as mentioned above. And the whole thing was awful. If it feels awful while you’re doing it, you’re not doing it wrong. That’s just how it is.
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Why won’t my child sleep past 5 am?
(This is partially rhetorical, partially looking for advice)
He (18 months old) naps from 12:15 pm - ~2 pm, goes to bed at 8:30 pm, and lately is waking up at 5 AM. We’ve done sooo much sleep training and schedule adjustments, but this seems like too little sleep for his age, right? He’s otherwise healthy, happy (when he gets what he wants), and very very active.
Oh, and today for his nap he cried/whined himself to sleep with “mama dada balllll”. Maybe I should throw a ball in there for him to cuddle? 
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So this is super common. Early wake ups are the biggest toddler sleep struggle from what I’ve read. One of the things that taking cara babies recommends is to paradoxically move their bedtime earlier. A 7-7:30 PM bedtime seems to be the sweet spot for a lot of kids, and can actually lead to sleeping in later. The other thing is a lot of people if they’re still breast-feeding in any capacity will opt for a snooze button feed. That’s where you breast-feed them when they first wake up at five and then put them back down again. Not sure if something like that as an option.
But also kids are just sleep terrorists and 6-7am is a totally normal wake time, so 5am isn’t wildly out of spec 
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My daughter did this for a while. We got her a clock that has a sun turn on when we are ok for her to wake up. She is still VERY much a morning person but she at least let’s us sleep until 6:30. It took a long time to get her used to the clock though.
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We have one of these clocks as well for our almost-5-year-old, and it’s AMAZING. He’s a rule-following sort of kid, though, so ymmv.
@AnneBeddingfeld, is your kid unhappy when he gets up? I know it’s hard to go back to sleep when you can hear them, but could you let him sit there by himself for a bit to get practice being alone and playing solo? For our two year old, sometimes toys/sturdy books help her be calm when she gets up, but sometimes she just ends up playing for her whole nap time, so I have no helpful input on the ball issue 
I cannot describe how wild the concept of kids waking up in a good mood is to me 
you mean all kids don’t wake up instantly sounding like they’re being tortured?? 
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She is SUPER CHILL about being alone in bed most of the time. Maybe because it’s the only time her brother isn’t yelling at her about how to play his game, or how what she’s saying is wrong, or “don’t you want to come hang out in the bathroom while I poop? Please? Please???”
Yeah my kid would come out of his room anyway and say the clock was broken. There’s been a couple of times we would wake up ass-early (like 3AM) and he was already out in the living room like “What? I feel rested, it’s time to get up.” 
We’ve managed through a lot of effort to get his wake ups to 5:30AM. For a while they were 5AM or 4:50 or 4:45 … my natural rhythm is to be a night owl so I was losing my dang mind.
Your kid and my kid should hang out together. Like, 24/7. They’d love it, we’d get some peace! 
My kid wants me (or anyone really) to sit with him even if he’s just watching tv. I cannot take any more Ninjago at this point, I just can’t.
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Haha. We used to have those plastic handle-cover things so he couldn’t turn the doorknobs. He got it off once and came into our room crying because he broke it and we needed to fix it. Very very different kids. I can’t imagine getting up that early every day, I’m so sorry.
I’m so lucky that he accepts his sister as a substitute witness to his life. Literally everything needs acknowledgement. I understand that he just wants interaction, and I love him so much, but we’ve seen every episode of Rescue Riders and Octonauts at LEAST 4 times and I don’t want to also listen to him relay what happened in each episode during dinner forever.
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Oh my gosh it’s a vision of my future. Even “independent play” means “mom is sitting within 5 feet of me while I independently play and GOD HELP ME IF SHE MOVES”
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Day care. Dear god I miss day care. And you’re shouldering the brunt of it with Mr. B working, at least Mr. Meer and I both work full time so our not-work hours are the same.
I definitely just put my kid to be thirty minutes early cause I’m over him. Will probably pay for it tomorrow at 5AM.
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Yeah - I do think I need to move his bedtime up a little. We went to an 8:30 bedtime after the time change. He was sleeping from 7:30 to 5, and then with the time change it was 8:30 to 6ish, and now it’s creeping back up again. sigh
I’ve bought all three of Cara’s courses, and while the ABCs of sleep was a game changer for us in terms of sleeping through the night, those early morning wake ups are still challenging.
That reminds me that I should get one of those as well. I read somewhere that we should start using it around this age and it may start working in 6 months or so
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