Naps are everything.

I fully understand the phrase: It takes a village to raise a child.

Being a first time parent, many times you wish your baby came with a manual.

I'm constantly reading parenting articles and texting my sisters and friends, "Is this normal?... Did any of your babies do this?"

We are extremely blessed with our little one, for many reasons. One blessing has been that she started sleeping through the night pretty early. I remember that first morning my husband turning to me and asking, "Did you get up and feed her? I didn't hear her crying. You better go feed her!"

Naps have been a different story.

My husband would come home from work and ask how my day was.

"Oh, it was good. Ceci took two good naps. I was holding her, of course, so I didn't get anything done on my to do list."

We kept asking each other when she should be falling asleep on her own. Every time I tried to put her down for a nap it was cry-fest.

At Christmas, I got together with my good friends from high school. All of us now being Mamas, we have a lot to share and compare as most of our little ones are close in age.

In our story swapping, and in further reading, I learned that my little one should've been falling asleep on her own for some time now. As in months ago.

(Before I get the eye rolls, may I remind you that I am a first timer. This is all new to me.)

I immediately had a break down.

Being a stay at home mama is great. I get to be with Ceci all day and snuggle with her all day. Well, yeah, but in the meantime, she trained me to be her pacifier and she learned to fall asleep with me.

An outpouring of more texts to my sisters and girlfriends went out.

Ceci needs to learn how to fall asleep on her own.

This is when the clouds parted and I found out that not all hope was lost!

We are slowly getting a napping schedule down. I have time to crochet, blog, bake and clean... now I don't have any excuses anymore.

As my friend Susan said after I told her about Ceci's first good nap in her crib:

"Naps are everything."

To you veteran mamas out there, this probably all seems very silly, but how else do we newbies figure things out?

We need to be supportive.
We need to share our experiences and mama-wisdom.


Now I'm going to share a little gem of a tip for you. This is something I took from my sister Alice and did last week when Ceci was napping.

When I bake cookies, my husband and I don't need an entire batch all at once. (That's just dangerous.) I bake about half a dozen and scoop out the rest and freeze on a sheet pan. When the dough is frozen, I put them in a zipper top bag and bake more cookies when we want them. I label the bag with the oven temperature and how long to bake them for. Because they're frozen, they'll take a few minutes longer than usual.

Any baking hacks you want to share?
Parenting hacks??

I'll take any wisdom I can get!

Colleen <3