Mom Life According To Elisa

I learn all my best baby sleep tips from the amazing consultants at Sleep Wise Consulting. For our sensitive little girl, paying attention to what she ate helped so much with her sleep. Check it out:  Eating the right foods (and avoiding the wrong ones) can significantly impact how well your toddler sleeps. After age one, babies’ nutritional needs shift, and it’s easy to unwittingly cause sleep problems by offering the wrong foods at the wrong times. There are two major changes in a baby’s dietary needs after her first birthday. To begin, milk is no longer the primary source of nutrition, but rather solid foods are now more important. Secondly, cow’s milk can be introduced. When you start cow’s milk, you’ll wean formula. But cow’s milk is not simply a replacement for formula. It plays a very different role in a toddler’s diet, and it needs to be offered in a new context. Read the full post over at Sleep Wise's page

I highly recommend Sleep Wise Consulting by Katie Pitts when it comes to sleep. The ladies on her team seriously make magic! Check this article out on why good naps beget good night sleep: Babies who take good naps will sleep better overnight. It may sound counterintuitive, but we promise it’s true. Keeping a baby up longer during the day will not tire them out for a good night’s rest. In fact, one of the most important factors in sleeping through the night is a well-rested baby. What Happens When a Baby is Sleep Deprived? To understand why this is true, let’s take a look at what happens when a baby is not well-rested. Have you ever stayed up later than usual and experienced a second wind? That surge of energy is from the stress hormones, cortisol, and adrenaline. Your body produces them because it senses that something is wrong. You did not go to sleep when your body clock said it was time. This is what happens to a baby who misses the right time to go down for a nap. The di...

Short naps are so frustrating but they CAN be fixed! Read about it here !

Toddlers get upset very easily. Their frustration tolerance is low because, well, their general capabilities are low. Imagine for a second that it took you five minutes to do one button on your sweater. Now apply that to a billion other things and you have a window into what life is like for a three-year-old. There are  many things a toddler struggles with , but one of their greatest limitations is their language ability. They cannot always properly explain what’s bothering them nor do they have the words to handle conflicts. Lacking both the words and the abstract thinking required to express complex (or even not so complex) feelings causes problems. Toddlers will attempt to handle situations with yelling, crying, pushing, and grabbing. Since all these are generally frowned upon, they usually end up  punished  while the original issue remains unsolved. Poor things. Continue Reading

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While awaiting your firstborn, you may have visions of folding laundry or reading a book as your little one coos to himself a few feet away. Then reality hits and between feeding, changing, and doing strange acrobatics you’d never have expected to get this little guy to sleep, there’s no time for anything else. Our babies need us, and that’s a fact, but there are lots of creative ways to hack mom life. Getting your baby comfortable playing alone is one of your best tools. So how in the world do you do it? Well, my first piece of advice is going to sound a little harsh… Continue Reading

There comes a point in every toddler’s life where his favorite word becomes NO! Often this contrariness catches parents off guard, leaving them bewildered and frustrated. Discipline becomes a struggle and punishments seem futile, usually leading the way to a full-blown  tantrum . It doesn’t have to be like this! Here are a few tips to help you turn your little one’s no into happy compliance. Continue Reading