Why I let my 8months old “cry it out” although I still put my 5 and 10 year old to sleep?

Is your baby who has already started eating still waking up every 2 hours? Are you almost losing your mind? Have you tried and failed with all the sleep training methods and find cry it out too cruel? Are you in doubt of whether cry it out works at all? Do you want to know how it’s done properly? If you’ve answered yes to any of the above questions, then i encourage you to read along that post.

Before I start talking about cry it out. I want to tell you that I’m the kind of mother who values bed time quality time with her kids more than any other time. I believe that they can never be too old to be put to bed. That bedtime is the perfect time for cuddling and chatting about their day before they go to sleep. It’s the best time to show affection, let them know they’re loved and more importantly it’s when you will find out most about their day and true feelings about almost anything that matters to them.

So how come I can let my helpless baby who needs affection more than his older siblings cry it out to sleep at night?!
Well… My baby used to sleep well until the age of 5 months. He used to sleep for six continuous hours then wake up for a feed and continue sleeping again for four or five hours. At the age of five months, sleep regression hit us! He was waking up every two hours. I realised straight away that it was sleep regression. I waited for it to go away on its own but instead, things kept getting worse. At the age of 7 months. My baby was waking up every two hours, he would need to be fed, rocked and would cry almost every time he is put back into his crib. I wasn’t getting any sleep for almost two months. My husband who was also trying to help was also not getting any sleep. He went to work every day tired. I had to deal with my three kids with no energy at all. I also forgot to say that the quality of his naps was also bad. Even though he would nap a total of an hour and a half each time. He would wake up several times in each nap which meant I too couldn’t nap at all while he was napping. My energy level was down and it was affecting everyone around me especially that I’m the kind of mom who likes to be involved with her kids in fun stuff and not just lay tired on a couch and ask them to entertain themselves or watch tv until its bed time.

I started trying sleep training methods. I didn’t want to start with cry it out because its harsh i thought. I said I would start with Ferber. Ferber was basically cry it out but you would go in to check on baby every few minutes and you widen the gap each time until he falls asleep. Ferber didn’t work for us. After two weeks he was still crying to put himself to sleep and whenever i went in it was like starting all over again. Also it never worked at all with the night wakings. I decided to stop Ferber because there was a lot of crying and still no sleeping. At that moment, a friend sent me a blog post about a mom describing how cry it out was magic. Two things got me motivated most: the fact that she called it “figure it out” instead of cry it out. The point was basically that this method teaches babies to self sooth themselves to sleep between sleep cycles instead of relying on you. The second thing she said was that it only took one night to do it and her baby was sleeping through the night. Sounded too good to be true but it was the thing I decided to try last before I completely give up and just decide to surrender to the lack of sleep and have us all suffer as a family until he is 2 or something.

I did the “figure it out” method for the first night. My son cried himself to sleep relatively fast since he was Ferber trained. Night wakings were particularly bad. He woke up twice and cried himself to sleep for an hour each time. It is hard to describe my feelings as he was crying but the closest would be that someone was getting my heart out of my chest and squeezing it as hard as they can. But I stopped myself from aborting the whole training. I was determined to try it all the way and in the correct way before i judge it. I wasn’t sure how many days I would survive though. The next day I put him to sleep again and he cried for five minutes before he slept for a continuous 11 hours!!!! YES he slept through the night as of the second night! It was indeed magical. So yes, he cried a lot but doesn’t compare at all to the added hours of crying during Ferber or even without sleep training when he just couldn’t be put back to sleep. My life was transformed. His naps were now a continuous an hour and a half each. He wasn’t waking up in the middle of the naps. I was full of energy every morning and spent quality time with him.
Sleep training was interrupted by his teething. Once again he was waking up every two hours and needed to be fed. But this time there was a reason so I did wake up willingly every time with him to sooth him and breastfeed him but as soon as teething was over, I started sleep training again. This time, he only woke up once and cried for half an hour then he was asleep till morning.

I’m writing this post to yes promote “Figure it Out” method. I look at it as just a learning thing for babies. We have to help our babies learn to self sooth. They need to figure out how to put themselves to sleep between sleep cycles. The faster they learn this, the better off everyone is. Yes its difficult to not respond to a crying baby. But its for their own good. You sometimes let your baby cry it out in their car seats when you’re driving from a place to another. You have done worse trust me lol! If you have a boy like me and you’ve circumsised him then cry it out is much less painful! It’s not rational to imagine that one night of crying would cause permanent psychological damage to the baby! Especially with all the attention and morning cuddles he gets and the fact that he sleeps super well compared to how he slept when he counted on me to put him back to sleep between sleep cycles.

If you are convinced that you should atleast try it, then now comes the final and most important thing in this post which is how to do “figure it out” correctly so that you would minimise the crying and make it work as fast as possible. Remember i was lucky with my one night training. but the average is 2 or 3 days which again is not bad.

Steps:
1. This training is not recommended for babies less than 6 months of age. Also, before you start check with your doctor that your baby is ready to be night weaned. Never start this training if your baby is sick, teething or during an obvious sleep regression.
2. Create a bed time routine. This is the first but very important step in any sleep training. There has to be a regular bed time for your baby and certain steps that you take each time so that he is aware that its time to sleep. Babies are more comfortable with routines. So a sleep routine will make him more relaxed towards bed time. Create a bed routine for atleast a week before you start implementing the rest of the steps. Our sleep routine includes the following: Bath, then breastfeeding, then story (same story each night read in exactly the same way) then having him say good night to a few animal soft toys or drawings on the wall or whatever, then holding him and having him turn off the light and say good night everyone. Then singing a bedtime song (same song each time) as I hold him back to his crib.
3. Put him in bed awake. This point is extremely important. You have to make sure that when you put him in his bed he is still awake so that he puts himself to sleep. Remember, when babies wake up in the middle of the night they don’t remember falling asleep. They only remember the last thing that was happening before they went to sleep so if you feed them to sleep they will expect to be fed when they wake up to go back to sleep. If you were rocking them to sleep, they will expect to be rocked back to sleep and so on. Also a point that is different here than Ferber is that Ferber says you should put them in bed drowsy but awake but in figure it out, you should put them in bed when they are still properly awake but when its their bed time. so you don’t rock them until they are drowsy then put them. I found this point made a huge difference in them learning to put themselves back to sleep when they wake up in the middle of the night. After you put him in bed, you say good night, i love you, and you leave the room. ( i usually don’t leave the room but i completely disappear from his sight)
4. Be prepared for a lot of crying from both of you! Yes he will cry a lot. You will probably cry too. You will feel bad, stressed, confused as how this may be right in any way, guilty… and all the other negative feelings you can think of. Make sure your husband is aware of the training and how it works and that you both agree on it so that when one of you gets too weak the other would prevent them from stopping the whole training. Having said this, please be aware that only you can tell if you’re baby is ok so if at any point you feel something is not right, please follow your intuition. Also make sure there is nothing in the crib that can hurt him. As long as he stops for a few seconds when crying to catch his breath, crying for a long time will not harm him. Don’t feed him something heavy before sleeping on the first night because a lot of crying may cause him to throw up.
5. Only do this training if you are prepared for it. So don’t say it hasn’t worked if you give up in the middle and go to your baby to sooth him. then try again the next day. The next day is like you’re trying again for the first time.
When the baby wakes up in the middle of the night, don’t go to him. Let him put himself to sleep again. He may cry for a very long time but will eventually fall asleep.
6. When he wakes up in the morning, go with a smile and open the curtains and say good morning and cuddle. and of course during the day give lots of cuddles and never let him cry unattended during the day.
7. Each night he should cry exponentially less. You should expect him to sleep through the night after maximum 3-4days.

I hope that this will be helpful and that it would work and transform your life as it has done to mine!

The non-sugar coated truth about Pregnancy!

Dear Person thinking of getting pregnant or not thinking about it (it’s not always a factor for getting pregnant),

Ok so today i’m half way through the 9th month of my third pregnancy;  in other words, my hormones are peaking and my mood swings have never been wilder. Today I wanna share with the world facts about the miracle of pregnancy…..yep that’s the first word I hate when they describe pregnancy…  pregnancy is what you get when you have unprotected sex! It’s BIOLOGY! and guess what: it lasts for 9 months! A few minutes will change you for 9 months and change your life forever! of course its a fuckin’ miracle… Don’t get me wrong, you definitely get something beautiful out of it but come on… if it’s a miracle anyways, why the hell wasn’t it like two weeks! that would be a pretty cool miracle you know! so a 9 months pregnancy is indeed a miracle but don’t expect a cool one! They say every woman’s experience is different, this is somehow true but there are lots of common things.. This is my very own experience based on three pregnancies…

First of all there is the surprise of finding out you’re pregnant. It’s usually when you least expect it. I think coz this kind of adds to the action! So let me think of examples.. bear with me… ok so you’ve just gotten a scholarship together with your husband. you’ve been married for a year and you can’t wait to go and have some fun in London together, study what you both like, and just have a BLAST! YES! perfect timing to find out you’re pregnant with your first baby. Let me think of another example: after you’ve made like amazing plans on how you wanna have some kids-free break followed by leaving to live in another country and well you’re a fun person so you’ve already made all those amazing ski plans and winter sports and fun things to do in that city. You’re open to exploring it on foot and just having a nice break. You’re looking forward to that new experience and at the same time you have a lot of packing/unpacking and settling in to do but, like i said, you’re a fun positive person who will take all this lightly and turn it into something interesting! Anyways, so fun person: at that very moment when your excitement is at its peak, you will find out you’re pregnant (oh did i mention, you can’t really ski or do any of those winter sports when you’re pregnant)!

You will be shocked yes, but you’re shock won’t last more than a day because you will try to only focus on the good things about your pregnancy timing!!! usually a difficult task but you manage to accomplish it because you love the end result. You love babies and you wanna have many. People try to make you feel better because they are kind or because they are LIARS. I’m not really sure. but they will lie to you. If this is your first pregnancy, they will talk about how easy its going to be. and that no need to worry, you can handle it even if you’re going to be in another country doing your masters. The funny thing is, every time you get pregnant, they will lie. So when you’re pregnant with you’re third, they will say oh don’t worry every pregnancy is different! RUN WOMAN RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN! They are lying again. I’ve had three pregnancies with identical symptoms. Same shit and same everything, only i get older and it becomes more difficult to tolerate!

Now you start your pregnancy journey. First trimester.. what can i say. You know when you can’t get out of bed at all, you just can’t because no matter how much you sleep, you are exhausted. So you stay in bed but you really have to throw up so you manage to pull all your energy together to run to the bathroom and stick your head into the toilet and throw up. You think, ok i’m glad I threw up atleast now i should feel better. No you won’t. you won’t feel better. NOT FOR A SINGLE MOMENT for a good few months. So let me put this straight: if you’ve had plans for the first trimester, cancel them. Your schedule will be staying in bed, looking at the time hoping that bed time would be soon so that another day would be gone. you will run to the bathroom a few times a day and all you will be able to think of is what can you eat/chew that would make you feel human. You will be annoyed by all sorts of smells to the extent that you may ask God to take your sense of smell. Not just that, but the chances are you will hate people you once loved. Don’t ask why, just hate them if you feel like hating them. Also, never judge new friendships made at this stage. I’ve met two very dear friends during my first trimester and i would come home everyday tell my husband how much i hated their guts. Well apparently, my hormones didn’t like them but i ended up being best friends with them later. To cut a long story short, your life will suck at the first trimester. But don’t worry, be positive.
By the end of it, you’ll start feeling better but I’m afraid you’ll already be a different person; ana mesh 3arefny, ana toht menny, ana mosh ana. la de malam7y wala shakly shakly wala da anaaaaaaa.

Ok, its not all that bad… The second trimester is god’s way of saying: Take a break coz you deserve a little tiny one. So by the fifth month you will be feeling ok. you will be able to eat, your energy will be back and your tummy won’t be that big so enjoy this phase as much as you can. I won’t go into more details about second trimester coz this is not a positive post!

Ok, you get into the third trimester. Pregnancy Honeymoon Over! Big tummy, and if you’re like me, then your nose will be competing with your belly. Putting on your shoes will be a daily challenge. You will start walking like a penguin. And the more time passes, the more things you drop become lost items. You will NEVER try to get them. You may use your kids if this is not your first pregnancy. You can train them to be like collectors of whatever you drop. They tend to do a pretty good job at it. If however, this is your first pregnancy, you will need to learn how to let go. If you drop something, you were not meant to have it. Forget about it and move on. If you always loved sleeping on your tummy, then you won’t sleep anymore. There are also amazing mood swings. You’re gonna love that and so will everyone around you. So, be prepared to really wanna cuddle with your husband one day and then give him that really dirty look the next morning if he thinks you still wanna cuddle. He will be confused. He has every right but well… there’s nothing you can do about it. One day, you will love people, the next you will hate their guts. You will cry for absolutely no good reason as judged by others but for you the fact that you can’t see your toes and you miss them will sound like a very good reason to sob like a baby. If you are the kind of woman who likes to look good, I have bad news: You won’t look good nor cute and no matter what people tell you, DON’T ever think that you may GLOOOOOOW. It doesn’t happen. there’s no such thing as glowing in pregnancy. You may go shopping, download all those cute maternity looks from Pinterest and copy them. You may even believe you look good when you put on the clothes and look into the mirror but there will be that one evil person who will suggest taking a picture with you because you look oh so cute, and when you see that picture, only then, you will really see how you look, and you won’t like it. you will see an elephant with a big nose and a square figure. You will be reminded you’re not a maternity model. You are a pregnant woman and you’re NOT GLOWING.

Ok I think that’s it, I have given my honest review on pregnancy. I hope I haven’t turned you off.  On a more serious note, it’s not fun, it’s not cute, it’s exhausting on the physical and emotional levels, it affects you and everyone around you, but once its over, you get something soooooooo worth it out of that experience. You won’t forget about it like people tell you sometimes, but you will learn to be grateful for it because only through that process can you get something so tiny that will become the centre of the universe for you. So complain as much as you want but mix the complaining with some gratefulness and you’re all set for the next level!

Note: Don’t forget to get a nice maternity photoshoot. It’s a nice memory, i’m not sure of what exactly coz there is nothing real about it. It just confuses others about how pregnancy looks/feels like. But it’s still nice to get all those fake beautiful poses because at the end of the day, you don’t really want a picture of you struggling to put your shoes on, or using your belly as a table, or you crying over not fitting in your jeans, or  getting all your tops dirty while cooking coz your belly is always in the way. So Get the cute poses and tell yourself…This too shall pass!

 

 

What I hope to teach my daughter

As we raise our kids, we are usually overwhelmed by all the values we would like them to learn. We are confused about what to teach them and whats more important for each stage. I’ve collected a list of my favourite quotes/sayings which I plan to be focused on. They are like my guidelines when raising my daughter. They have everything I would like her to be/learn. It’s helpful to look at the list every now and then and evaluate whether I feel she is grasping those concepts or not yet and what it is I can do to help her learn more about them.

Here’s a copy of my list. My daughter turns 10 in a couple of months and I plan to print and give her this list on her 10th birthday to always keep with her…

You are a queen crowned in your curls. In a field of horses, be a unicorn. And at the end of the day, your feet should be dirty, your hair messy and your eyes sparkling. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it. Forget all the reasons why it won’t work and believe in the one reason why it will. But what if i fall, oh darling what if you fly. Make yourself so busy working on your own grass to notice if others’ is greener. No matter how long the winter is, spring is sure to follow. Change your thoughts, change your world. Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die! If it doesn’t open, it’s not your door. Falling down is an accident, staying down is a choice. Never say maybe if you want to say No. Always have courage and be kind. Love life and it will love you right back.

 

How Cairo worked for our family

We returned to Cairo in August 2015 after having spent 4 years living in London. We were worried about our comeback, how kids would cope, traffic, quality of life but most of all we were worried about a hectic lifestyle in Cairo. To our surprise, Living in Cairo for two years has been remarkably good! We’ve managed to maximise the enjoyment of what Cairo has to offer while minimising all the nuisances. I decided to write a blog post on that mainly because we didn’t follow most advise we got from others about “how to live in Cairo”. We created our own lifestyle rather than followed the existing one amongst many of the people we know and we ended up having a great time. So my advise in this post may not be traditional advise that you will hear from other Cairo residents, but I hope that by sharing it, you may find an alternative to the other popular lifestyle enjoyed by many others or atleast dare to make your own without following blindly.

1. Forget about the “Bubble” but definitely minimise commuting!

The first thing you hear amongst Cairo residents is “you will be fine as long as you live in your own bubble”. Many have moved to the suburbs and enjoyed a lifestyle away from the city.  They would tell you over and over how they rarely go to the city and that since everything now is available in the suburbs, there was no point of going there anymore.
Whereas for someone who permanently lives in Cairo, this may make sense; to get away from the city with all its chaos, it wasn’t really what my family and i were looking for. We wanted to be in the heart of Cairo. My husband and I decided it was good for my kids at this stage to get in touch with some chaos! This is what Cairo is about after all!
My daughter’s school was in the heart of Cairo and so is my husband’s work so the first thing we decided to do was rent a place in the heart of Cairo close enough to my daughter’s school. Minimising commuting is your first goal if you want to enjoy a happy life in Cairo. Cairo traffic kills, so even if you own a house which ends up being far from your family’s everyday errands, go rent a closer place. Many Egyptians still believe renting is like throwing money away. That’s not true at all, you are investing in your quality of life which has a cost and is actually worth every single penny.

2. Walk or Cycle:

I walked my son to and from nursery everyday and during winter I walked my daughter back from school. Walking in Cairo streets, which many upper middle class Egyptians now completely avoid, has so many benefits which in my opinion outweigh the reasons for not doing it. You will hear how there is no sidewalk to use, the streets are filthy, and that if you’re a woman, you’re very likely to get sexually harassed every single time. Although these are bugs that are true to a large extent, they should not stop you! My kids and I had lovely conversations about those things walking to and from their schools. In two years time, I was verbally harassed very few times. My daughter has encountered a couple of times how I’d handle sexual harassment and has learnt during those walks how its not ok for someone to comment on your body and have seen how I reacted to it but also how it never stopped me from enjoying walking or changing my dressing style to match what others would find appropriate! (lets also face it, nothing is appropriate enough).
My 3 year old son, would greet the doormen and vendors/beggars in the street. Walking has helped my children be part of the city and the area where they live. We would look at buildings, pick our favourite and talk about the ugliest! We would stop to buy fruits which they could pick. Walking was a learning experience especially in a city like Cairo!
The other thing I did was cycle! Having cycled in London, I was positive, cycling in cairo would be a totally difference experience worth exploring.  It took me a while to have the courage and longer to convince my husband of doing it alone and on weekdays. At the end, I think he gave up and told me to try because he thought i’d hate it and so only do it once and stop nagging him about it. I absolutely loved it though. I have to also say, i didnt encounter any sexual harassment during my cycling experience, cars were extra cautious around me and the weather was absolutely perfect for cycling. Pollution and bumpy roads are existing bugs but again don’t outweigh the massive pleasure of cycling by the nile! Needless to say, it took my husband a few times to see me cycle before he started cycling himself!

3. Get out more in nature and bring nature into your home:

For me, one of the worst things about living in Cairo as a family with kids was that you are exposed to very little nature and a lot of unnecessary ugliness! Our house in london overlooked Richmond park and you could actually see dear from our bedroom’s window. We used to go out in parks a lot and my kids loved being out in nature and around free animals. They enjoyed feeding squirrels and pigeons. Dirt and ugliness was the thing my kids commented on most yet less everyday. I was worried they would think its normal after a while. To avoid that, I made sure they are reminded of the difference between beauty and ugliness. I involved them in decorating a beautiful balcony that is full of plants and flowers. They were responsible for watering the plants and taking care of them. Whenever, we went plant shopping, they each got money to chose a plant themselves. The flower show that takes place in Orman park was a place we visited regularly whenever it was on. We’d go atleast twice a week. On weekends, we were not the kind of family that goes to the movies and eats out in a restaurant. We preferred outdoor outings more. Places like fagnoun, sightseeing, or a felukka in Nile.

4. Do a lot of Sightseeing

Sightseeing is not just for tourists or your kids’ school trips! Going to those places is fun for kids to do as a family and also teaches them a lot about the history so helps in their grounding! It’s also a much cheaper outing than going to a mall or putting kids in a play area and eating out! Also, if your friends won’t join, Just go alone! I feel we tend to wanna move in groups rather than as a family in Egypt which sometimes stops you from doing amazing stuff!

5. Whenever you have the time and money, travel around Egypt:

Not only coz its now very expensive to travel abroad, but Egypt has so much to offer when it comes to traveling. I would also argue that you can always travel in Egypt with any budget you have. So if it’s a time of the year where you are broke, you can still go camping in Sinai or to a bed and breakfast in Fayoum. We were on a very tight budget during the couple of years we spent in Egypt and yet managed to travel around and do the coolest things without spending too much money. For my birthday I usually prefer to get experiences rather than the typical watch, expensive bag or jewellery. When we lived in Egypt, I got three amazing gifts, one was a yoga retreat in Nubia,  a kite surfing class in Ras Sedr, and a tabla course in Cairo.
That’s another advise I have for couples in Egypt, they tend to spend a lot of money on gifts but if you decide to spend that amount on experiences, Egypt has a lot of cool stuff to offer.

6. Enjoy the best thing Cairo has to offer: Family, Friends and a rich social life!

This is a piece of advise you don’t really need coz it kind of forces itself upon you 🙂 Cairo has an unmatched amazing social life so get the best out of it. Yes there is also the social pressure but if you maintain the right balance, you get the perfect life.

Turning Cardboard and Recyclable material into Quality Time with Kids

Most parents are already aware of the importance of spending some daily quality time with their kids. Depending on the age of the child, quality time can either be through having a one to one discussion, one to one playtime, or anything that the child enjoys which the parent can participate in. One of the favourite quality time for kids is actual playtime with them. Many parents however are not really patient enough to sit and play with their kids. Some simply don’t enjoy that stage because they don’t know how to entertain kids and they don’t enjoy kids toys/games. They dread phrases like “mommy can you come and play with me?”. I personally enjoy playing with my kids but I do get bored from the repetition of games over and over and over! something which all kids like to do. They enjoy a certain game and they keep asking you to play that game with them.
Arts and crafts remains to be the most creative and entertaining activity you can do with your kids.
For  me, the discovery of it came when we moved for the first time and I was, all of a sudden, surrounded by all sorts of cardboard boxes. Disposal of them wasn’t as easy as it is in Cairo. So those boxes ended up staying in our house for a quite some time. They looked ugly and took a lot of space. Being the pinterest freak I’m, I started searching what I could possibly do with cardboard boxes. My daughter was 4 at the time. Following pinterest steps, we ended up working for hours on small projects using those boxes. My daughter enjoyed every single minute of it and those cardboard projects were her favourite toys. We made an oven, a washing machine, pirate ship, and a helicopter.

 

After the success of this project, my daughter and I became aware of how much fun it was. We therefore eversince, always kept a drawer in the kitchen for recyclable material. Things like, egg carton boxes, plastic bottles, carton milk/juice boxes, cereal boxes, shoe boxes and toilet paper rolls. Anything and everything.  Whenever she came up saying she was bored, we would open the drawer, check what we have and I would google what can we do with what we have. Really creative stuff always came up and there was always easy steps to follow.
By the time my second son was born, my daughter was already very good at doing stuff herself. She no longer even needed to google or check pinterest. She would look at the boxes and know what we can do with them.
She made my son this beautiful car when he was less than a year old. He absolutely loved sitting in it.

Cardboard was by now our number 1 entertainer. We especially used it when we had to spend long hours at home, whether because kids are sick or weather is bad. We did small projects and big ones. I remember doing my son his favourite story character when he was once sick. It was the hungry caterpillar. We did a caterpillar and a butterfly and acted out the story.
My daughter was now also really capable of coming up with cool stuff. She built her own castle for princess figures she had. The castle even had a functioning gate.
Their friends who came over for playdates were always fascinated by cardboard toys much more than real ones.

We even took using cardboard to the next level when we started using it for costumes. We would discuss what my daughter wanted to be and we would use cardboard to make accessories needed or even the costume itself. My daughter’s latest costume was a super cool barbie in a box costume. The challenge was to find an appropriate box but once we did the whole project took a couple of hours.

Spending regular time with my kids doing arts and crafts has had so many beautiful effects on both them and me. It’s increased their valuing for “things”. They no longer look at anything as rubbish, instead they look at things as useful tools. It has massively expanded their creativity and problem solving skills. My daughter who is 9 now will always come up with a creative way to using the stuff we have. She impresses me sometimes and I know its because of all the projects we made. Moreover, quality time spent doing crafts is a great stress relief for adults. You become so mindful in what you’re doing unlike regular play where you are probably thinking of a grocery list or things to to do list for tomorrow while talking to your child. Crafts need all of your attention so you end up having  to really focus on what you’re doing and thus becomes a form of meditation. Last but not least, it’s the cheapest way of entertaining kids. With the huge increase in prices of toys/costumes, making your own cost almost nothing. You need to invest in a good drawer of arts and crafts tools like glues, strings, paint, scissors, staplers, make pinterest/google your best friend, allocate a drawer for recyclable materials, then you are good to start your journey of making your own toys, spending valuable quality time with kids and investing in their cognitive and small motor skills.

Bird Taming

In Christmas 2015, my daughter who was 7 back then wrote to Santa asking for a pet. She has been nagging us to get her one for so long. Us as parents understood how beneficial it was for kids to grow up with pets. It teaches compassion and responsibility at a very young age. Loulie particularly wanted a dog but I have always explained to her that since our lifestyle involves a lot of traveling, having a dog would not be easy and would also be very expensive for us. Abandoning the dog when the time for our next move came was definitely not an option. She therefore gave Santa three options: birds, a hamster or fish. Luckily Santa went for the birds option!

Getting the birds out of the cage was never an idea I had! I didn’t even think it was possible. By time however, I just looked at them everyday and hated seeing them in a cage. I held my phone one day and googled getting birds out of the cage. To my surprise, this was actually something completely normal. That many people train their bird pets and allow them some free play time outside the cage. So it all started from there. I agreed with my kids that we would watch youtube videos on  bird taming and would follow instructions until we are able to allow them out of the cage

The steps we took were as follows:

1. Put our hands at the bottom of the cage for 10 minutes each day for a week so that the birds would get used to our hands being in the cage without freaking out.
2. Feed them from outside the cage with our hands food other than seeds so that they would particularly want to eat it. Our birds liked carrots, cucumbers, rocket, and lettuce. We did this for another week without stopping step number one.
3. Feed them the same treats but with our hands inside the cage. By now they should be used to our hands inside the cage and also to us feeding them treats so mixing both steps makes sense. We did this for a third week.
4. We moved the treats away from them and make our finger a sort of a bridge to get to the treat and we tell them “up up” so that to get to the treat they must step on our finger. Once this worked, it was a matter of just doing it a lot and using a certain phrase like “up up” so that the birds would associate it with getting onto our fingers.

In a month, one of the birds was now completely ready to get out of the cage. she was confident enough to stand on our fingers. The other one was less courageous but would follow the other one blindly in what she does so we focused on training just the one with the strong personality.

Birds who have been caged for a long time are not ready to just fly and explore the world so we knew we needed to take it slow. When they were first out, they would stick to the cage and then eventually they would start flying and exploring. They  don’t really fly around all the time. They usually have a preferred spot.  We had a very big window in our living room which our birds loved. They also love curtain rods and photo frames and we had a huge tree branch and swing hung for them from the curtain rods.  Our birds never roamed in the whole house, they preferred the living room and stuck to it.

My daughter was responsible for changing the water, and letting them in the cage after sunset. My son who was only 2 when we got them learnt how to be gentle with birds and absolutely loved interacting with them and feeding them.  They both played with them every day. They fed them treats. Our birds particularly  loved spaghetti!

The cage is always their bedroom, so sometimes, we’d be out and when we come home, they are already sleeping their cage. They would just get in to eat by sunset and stay in the cage and sleep there.  Ofcourse you need to be careful with windows when you have free birds. So whenever they were out, our living room windows would be shut. Although once something really funny happened. I was home alone, I was having a nap and it was very windy that day. I woke up and found the living room balcony open. To my surprise however, instead of the  birds escaping, I found two pigeons inside and the birds were just watching them roam the living room.

Having birds have never stopped us from traveling coz it was always easy to either find them a host if it was for more than 3 days or just leave them at home with enough food and water if it was a weekend trip.

The amount of positive energy they have brought into our home is amazing. Their sounds bring such good chi and the fact that they are free always gave a cozy child friendly feeling to our home. It was like our home was part of nature.

If you are wondering which pets to get your kids, I totally recommend birds as long as you will let them out of the cage! The steps we used worked for us but there are loads of videos on youtube that you can watch to learn more about training your birds. Always search for bird taming and getting birds out of the cage.

The following link is for a video of our best memories with our lovely birds: 

Two Red Lines…Again!

When I started having kids 10 years ago, my life has changed! Everything about me has changed. Sometimes I looked at the mirror and promised the mankoosha reflection of myself with lots of black circles under her eyes that one day, I will have the proper time for her. That when this day comes, the world should be ready for the new mozza in town! The one who has time to take care of her hair, nails, and overall look. The day seemed so close with miko approaching four years old until I saw with my two eyes (which still had black circles under them) two scary red lines drawing clearly on what my best friend had told me was a pregnancy test which she had bought for me and insisted I use straight away, I had argued I don’t really need it. At that moment the mankoosha reflection of me with lots of black circles under her eyes had looked back at me with a smile and almost grinned with a look in her eyes implying that the day I always promised her is not in another 5 years.
Well five years it is then… In the meantime, I will enjoy sleepless nights, continue the struggle to get everything done in the too very short 24 hour day, get super excited about every new skill my kids acquire, and be as playful as I can…
This time however I will document it all… motherhood doesn’t seem to be something I do on the side. It seems it’s all I do, and twenty years from now (when I’m that mozza I told you about) , I wanna look back at all the memories, remember all the little details and smile and be grateful!

This blog will be a place for me to share happy moments, scary thoughts, as well as tips on what worked for me as a mom and where i’m still struggling!