On Getting a Good Night's Sleep

Oh there is nothing like waking up in the morning well-rested. I'm not talking about sleeping in (7 o'clock around here is a veritable lie-in). I am only talking about seven hours of uninterrupted, no waking up, no worrying, no monkey-mind, sweet. snoozing. slumber.

I can't say where my sleeping problems began (possibly when I began to feel that I had a "problem". I'm realising how much of this is in my head). It may have began when Husband and I began living together. He likes has to have the TV on to get to sleep at night. I crave silence. I used to wake up in the middle of the night to a blaring TV and not be able to get back to sleep. We have compromised by setting a sleep timer and keeping the volume low so that I don't wake up in the night and have to find a remote and shut it off. Or it might be that after having our first son I had a period of 8 or 9 months of restless legs. I was never diagnosed or anything but I called it the crazy legs. Sensations would zing up and down my legs at 3 am and I wouldn't get back to sleep. I finally heard that calcium with magnesium might help, and it did. I took a supplement into my second pregnancy but found that I didn't need it after delivering the baby. If I sense the crazy legs coming on I take a calcium with magnesium and it really does help.

My kids are great sleepers; I can't blame this on them. They are in bed by 7 and, if it were up to the 4 year old, I wouldn't hear from them until 7 or 8 the next morning. 2 year old gets up around 6. I wish he didn't always wake up his brother, but I can do 6. I like to be up early. What I dread, what happens far too much, is waking up around 3 am and not getting back to sleep until 5...and a little boy being up at 6. It seems as though my sleep cycle ebbs and flows, and if I get on a streak of waking in the night it will continue until exhaustion finally gets me a full night's sleep. So here is what I do nowadays to get a better night of rest:

• I read myself to sleep. Ten pages is usually what it takes. Once Husband is home again I will just read while he watches TV. We'll see how it goes. Getting to sleep is not usually the issue.
• one cup of tea (decaf, obviously) after supper. No other drinks. Waking up to use the washroom is a definite no-no. Also, green tea seems to rev me right up (probably in my mind). For me, no green tea after lunch time--just in case.
• It occurred to me that I'm listening for vehicles in my yard. There have been a number of break-ins in the area over the last few years and I may subconsciously be listening, so I finally remembered to lock the shed. I also lock the doors (does this sound naive? What I mean is, I consciously check the doors before bed. I grew up in this area, hardly anyone used to lock their doors. But I'm home alone with two kids and I'm finding that a quick check of doors at night removes one item of worry from my list)
• I pull the curtains. This one surprises me. I used to detest waking up in a dark room. We had the sheerest curtains possible in our old house. But for some reason this year after the time-change I started to wake up and wonder what time it was. This led to hours of fretting and my mind bouncing from idea to idea, topic to topic, future and past, regrets and insecurities. The fact is, I have no problem getting to sleep but staying asleep is a real trick. If keeping the room in darkness helps then that is what I will do.
• I got rid of my alarm clock 2 years ago. If I open my eyes and see that it is 3 am I might as well get up for the day. I can do this because my alarm clock is at the end of the hall and we don't have to rush anywhere. Most people are not this lucky.
• If worry is what is keeping me awake, I repeat 3 positive things over and over and over, explore those 3 things with my mind, consider them, repeat them until a feeling of well-being returns or sleep comes. This past summer, our house was scheduled to arrive in two weeks and we still didn't have a basement hole dug or a basement to put the house on. I don't know how but I slept like a baby every night. I was in the windowless basement bedroom at my parents and my mom always rushed across the hall to my kids' rooms upstairs if they woke. I probably stopped listening for them after awhile. If I did happen to wake up I took great comfort repeating "we have a very good well. It gives 17 gallons of water per minute. The road and the yard are built and beautiful. Husband and the kids love me." These three positive things got me through some stressful days and nights.
• On the subject of worry, making lists helps. If it has been written down I try to quit thinking of it. If it is out of my control, see above. 
• I close my bedroom door. 4 year old comes in if he needs me, 2 year old bellers like a banshee. If my kids need me I will hear them. I was leaving the door open just a crack and I think that when the furnace kicks in it sucks the door up against the striker plate and making a "click". This is enough to make me hop up to see if 4 year old has entered the room. Closing the door is a psychological barrier between me and them. Although I can actually hear just as well with it closed, I have told myself when I close the door that I will sleep more soundly.
• I never nap. If I am very tired from a poor night's sleep, I roll with that and hope that it helps me the next night. Having a nap makes it impossible for me to make it through the next day without sleeping at the same time. It must also make it easier to wake again in the night. At any rate, my policy is push through it.
• I have finally accepted the fact that I sometimes don't sleep well. Enough of the "If I go to sleep now I'll only get two hours sleep etc". When my mind is racing in the night, I tell myself that it will be a slower day here at home tomorrow. I try not to work myself up more by worrying about being tired. It helps to try to let go of that stress.

These are just a few of my tricks to get a good rest at night. I MUST start doing yoga and practice meditating for relaxation. Getting exercise and fresh air are very important, as is positive thinking and planning for the future. I read an everydayhealth article that helped, a bit. If you suffer from poor sleep, or anxiety, give it a read. Do you sleep well? If not, can you share any tips for a good night's sleep?

Low-Sodium Diet

Eating a diet that is low in sodium is harder than one might think. We don't keep a salt shaker on the table and I don't add salt to my cooking. I use mostly dried herbs for seasoning, and most of what we eat is homemade--much easier to control salt intake. I read food labels and do my best, almost all the time, to have my kids eat fresh fruit and vegetables rather than packaged, ready-made snacks.

As a new mom, sugar was my biggest concern when feeding my kids. Until my eldest son was diagnosed with childhood nephrotic syndrome, I worried more about sugar and barely glanced at the sodium content on food labels. While I still avoid sugary snacks for my kids, salt has become equally as unwanted for my family. The trouble is, food doesn't have to taste salty to actually be loaded with the unhealthy stuff.

Let me backtrack and explain why we attempt a low(er) sodium diet in our home. Salt leads to fluid retention, a symptom of nephrotic syndrome. When protein leaves my son's body in his urine, his organs and tissue begin to swell with fluid. As it was explained to me by our specialist, salt exacerbates the problem during a relapse of the syndrome. Currently, we are fighting off a relapse and may have to resume prednisone  treatment. Just reading the list of side-effects from this life-saving medication makes me panic inside. Panic inside. But if it turns out that he goes on it again, we resume our calcium and vitamin D supplements, maintain our healthy lifestyle, and be grateful that there is a treatment for this syndrome. And we hope he outgrows it soon. In the meantime, eating as little salt as possible while he has protein in his urine is a no-brainer. But, like I said, it's harder than you think.

The other day, searching for a snack for the boys, I reached for salted peanuts. I checked the label. In one third of a cup (about what I would have given them each) there is 6% of an adults daily sodium. Not bad, I thought, but spied some butter toffee nuts left over from Christmas. 13% of an adult's daily salt intake in the same amount of nuts. And they don't taste salty. Where I am headed with this, you can probably guess, is we have to really check the labels on everything we feed our families. Since that day I have looked for more information on low-sodium diets. I read on one site that for a snack to be considered "low-sodium" it should have fewer than 140 mg salt/serving. Back to the nuts. A third cup of salted nuts has 150 mg of salt, while a third cup of butter toffee nuts has 320 mg of salt. Blow my mind. They had an orange instead.

I am very interested to hear from parents of children with nephrotic syndrome. If you would like to start a conversation, please comment and we can email from there. We are less than a year into this and quite possibly relapsing now. I am grateful that there is a treatment, so grateful, but I would like to hear your experience with prednisone. My thoughts very often turn to those families that might not find such a simple treatment for a sick child, and my heart breaks for them. Go hold your babies close.

First-Attempt Quilt

I have been trying to keep busy this winter. You might recall I found some fabric in a charity shop before Christmas. I added to that collection over the holidays and decided to attempt a quilt. After enjoying hours of looking at patterns, I chose one that I thought I could handle.

I have worked on it after the kids are in bed, and when Husband was home on days off. It is coming along nicely but I have not decided if quilting is something I will take on as a pastime. Once I saw all the squares lying out together, I thought I might like to try another and do a better job of it. Some of my squares are quite "out of whack" but others are surprisingly neat and tidy. I can understand why people love making quilts--it is very satisfying to see the work come out as planned.

the material I used was either free or purchased at second-hand shops.
I purchased the white material and the backing (below).

 Since material and batting are costly, I wanted to learn to quilt using inexpensive material. I am not a fan of purple, but in all the colorful material cost about $4. The backing cost about $7 on sale, and the white was $6. The other day I found batting for $13, which would bring the cost of making this quilt to about $30 Canadian.

 I've finished the quilt top and will leave the final steps until next winter. In the meantime, I've cut the material for a baby quilt (a post and pictures to come soon!)and would like to finish it entirely before the weather gets nice enough that I'm outside every day. It was -20C in the wind today--I expect getting the baby quilt finished in time shouldn't be a problem!

I used to work at the women's shelter in town. When women and children leave the shelter to start a new life on their own, the shelter gives them each a clean new blanket to take with them. For Christmas next year, I plan to donate this blanket to a woman leaving a domestic violence situation, and if I can get one done I plan to add a crocheted baby afghan to the donation. Have you attempted a new craft this winter?

Rock Work

We are a family that loves rocks. Husband brings home landscaping rock and I continually find rocks in my boys' coat pockets. Our piece of land is very rocky, as I've mentioned, and before winter settled in for the year I started to use the rock as part of my landscaping plan.

I believe that we can have a beautiful yard without breaking the bank, and our philosophy is that if life gives you lemons you should make lemonade (or rock walls out of rocks, as the case may be). With that in mind I started two rock wall flower beds this fall. The two are joined by a wide stone path that can accommodate our four-wheeler and trailer or a ride-on mower (when we get one).

 The plan is to fill the rock wall with topsoil and have plants spilling down the sides of the walls, on either side of my stone path.

The dirt-covered rocks were picked from the topsoil
as we returned it from the pile it was in all summer. To
level the soil and plant grass we picked rocks...and picked...
and picked....

I ran out of time and the snow fell, so these walls will have to be filled with soil and planted in the spring. So many projects to look forward to!

This is just one of the stone paths that we have planned for our yard. I love the different colours of the rocks and really enjoy placing them in a pattern on the ground. Have you got a favorite garden pastime? 

Tree Update

This summer, before our house even arrived, we planted a shelter belt of trees along the main grid road approaching our acreage, and along the lane way to our yard. If you have been following the blog you might remember that I had ordered 180 one-year-old maple, 200 one-year-old poplar and 120 three-year-old spruce. This chunk of land is extremely rocky so it felt like we had to dig 3 holes for every tree we planted. It might not have been that bad, but by the time 500 trees were in the ground we were T.I.R.E.D. We had a lot going on at the time--if you're interested you can read more here.

We rented a post-hole auger for the weekend and Husband dug the holes. I followed with a bucket o' trees while we kept the boxes of trees moist in the shade. It is important to not let the roots dry out.

We began by staking a twine out in a straight line and using a measuring tape to space the trees. But our land is so rocky we ended up pacing off the distance and doing our best to keep things straight and evenly spaced in spite of the rocks.

You can faintly see the row of dark circles--holes waiting for Colorado Spruce

Spruce trees were spaced 10-12 feet apart, with a 16 foot spacing between the next row of trees (Northwest Poplar). We checked that the roots were loose and not bound up in a coil, and planted them to the depth that they had been at the nursery. In the picture below, you can see the darker line on the tree stem. Once it was planted and the hole filled I stepped all around the tree to ensure there were no air pockets in the hole. Then on to the next tree.

The trees are hard to see, but the row
 goes beyond the orange pail in the distance

The trees needed a deep watering once they were planted. It took almost 4 days to do all the planting and watering--in part because of the rocky terrain and also because we were using a long trailer to haul the water tank for watering. It was awkward to get into position so that the gravity-feed tank and hose could even reach the trees. I'm very thankful that we now have a water tank in a small trailer that I pull behind our quad. Once we were living at the house and had running water it was much easier to care for the trees.

We tried to water every couple of weeks during summer. It is recommended to water once a week during the first year, every two weeks the second year, and so on. For deciduous trees, give one last deep watering in August, and then stop. You do not want new growth to begin before winter. For evergreens, water late into fall and a generous final drink after deciduous trees have lost their leaves. The Government of Canada had a very helpful site, but since the prairie shelter belt program was cancelled the website no longer exists. You can still find plenty of information on line; I use the Alberta Ag and Rural Development site if I have any concerns about our trees.

All of the trees in these photos were purchased at treetime.ca. I was very pleased with the condition of the trees when they arrived, and I was especially happy that delivery was free. The trees arrived in 3 very large boxes, so delivery was an issue for me. Along with the poplar, maple and spruce, I also ordered Amur Maple, Siberian Larch and Paper Birch. I planted all of these in a plot so it was faster to water them. This year we will decide where to put them as we work on landscaping the yard. As of the fall, all of the larch had been eaten off by insects or animals, but the maple and birch appeared to be doing well.

birch trees in the summer

We have had some extreme winds this winter. In a two-story house it can seem especially windy, so I am considering where to plant trees this summer in hopes of blocking the west winds in the future. I don't want to block my view so will strategically place trees along the edge of the lawn. More on that when the time comes! This is an existing yard site so we have mature spruce and lilacs to the east and a hillside and bush to the north and somewhat to the west. Along the north, as well, our shelter belt trees curve along the lane and along the hill. When those trees grow up we will have wonderful shelter.

This winter we had enough snowfall to bury our little spruce trees in a nice insulated blanket of snow. Around Christmas things warmed up and a lot of that snow melted, and I got concerned that they would be exposed to the cold and wind--and there has been plenty of that! We have had more snow now, though, and the trees are once again tucked into a snow bank.

 Above, a spruce tree in the snow. Below, you can barely see the top of the next tree over. It is the little point to the left of the center of the picture.

I am looking forward to seeing how our trees fared over the winter. There are a few spruce that have browned off, so I might get a few replacements when I can assess how many I will need. I would also like to find some native trees in ditches and out in my dad's pastures to see if they do better than nursery-grown seedlings. But I will leave that post for another day!

Worth a Try

I follow the blog Little Home in the Country and have been introduced by Sherri to the Ripe Near Me initiative. What a great idea! Any gardener has (hopefully) experienced an excess of produce at one time or another. This site seems like a fabulous way to swap or sell that crop, and meet like-minded folks in your own community at the same time. Even if you are not a gardener, it is a way to locate locally grown food.

The site is new and there are (as yet) no members in my area. Hopefully we can get the word out and, by the time harvest rolls around, share some of our garden's bounty!

Happy gardening!

Still Kickin'

Well, February is here and along with it the annual struggle to put one foot in front of the other. Temperatures have been -20C and colder for what seems like forever. I consider myself so lucky that I don't have to struggle my kids out the door to a sitter everyday so I can rush in the frigid cold to get to work. Having said that, the daily routine can get, well, monotonous when going outside or into the basement are taken off the agenda. That said, we can't play in the basement anymore because it is now framed and the stack of drywall takes up all the free floor space. As well, the garage is being insulated and I hope to be able to park in it within days!

Winter can wear on us, but as I tell my 4 year old, busy people are happy people. Just because we are indoors does not mean we need to mope or spend our time in front of the television (although that sometimes happens, AHEM!!)

Here are some shots of the projects that are taking place around here these days.

Crocheting dishclothes is the perfect busy-work while watching 'lympics with 4 year old :)

headboard stripped of varnish and ready for a good sanding.
I may have to leave it raw for some time-- 4 year old refuses to let me paint it!

I looooove how this $3 garage sale chair turned out.
It is the 2 year old's chair--painted--so that it can be hosed down after meals!

Did I mention I love this chair?

My little brown rocker that matches this chair is still at the farm and my kids fight over who gets to sit in it. I found this chair at the local charity shop, another $3 find. I stripped it and painted it red and gave it a rough sanding. The boys keep it in the bathroom so they can reach the sink to wash their hands.

The winter has gone by so much faster in our new home. We have visits from gramma and we go to the farm often. Husband is away working so staying busy is really important. How are you passing the time this winter?