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The body is an amazing thing. It gets us to where we want to go, it can create another life but it's not until it is broken that we really appreciate it for what it is. I have spent so much time wishing I looked like someone else and the really hard thing to swallow is the older I get the more I realise how much I should have liked what I already had in the first place. 

Well, here's the thing. I disclosed this in a blog post not so long ago but just in case you missed it, I just turned 42. Yep 42. It's funny that when you're young everyone over 30 looks ancient but when you get to 40 - you think everyone who is 40 is practically a babe in the woods and even 60 isn't looking that old. Well, it seems that looking fabulous has now come in a dismal second to remaining healthy and I'm not even doing a great job as that. 

It appeared that I turned 40 and everything turned to shit. I know that sounds a little over dramatic, so I will expand on that.  I try to be healthy, I work out, I try to eat right (yes, I know I love a good cake... but who doesn't!?) and in general I try to look after myself but it seems that this has made no real difference. It's looking like 40 is the tipping point whether you looked after yourself or not. Once I turned 40 I got plantar faciitis - in a nutshell - it is a painful throbbing under my foot near the heal which some days is so bad I have to limp. Off to the gym to do my step and attack classes with booming music and some fast paced cardio - I think not. Once you start yapping to people about having it, you'll be surprised by the sheer number of people out there suffering with it and the really exciting thing about it (not), is that once you have it you always have it. So it is likely to reoccur even once it's sorted - you just don't know when (Yay - a surprise).

I know what you are thinking, boo hoo, get over yourself - but I am sad to say it has really affected my life. Another great joy of hitting 40 is that it becomes so much easier to put on weight and harder to get it off. So my usual routine of slogging it out at the gym to sort all that out has now been put to a stop as well. Far out! It's coming at me from all sides.

Not to be deterred and doing my best to continue to care for this body, I took myself off to a naturopath to help with the fact that I was feeling a little over it all and was pretty much tired all the time (well, tired and angry actually but we will just stick with tired at the moment). He recommended a number of tests to check my levels were all where they should be. Surprisingly my vitamin D level was great (which is funny as I don't ever stand in direct sun light and pretty much run from one shady spot to the next) and my iron was excellent. But - and here's one I didn't see coming, I have high cholesterol. What?! It turns out you don't have to be overweight to suffer from it (that's a myth).

I don't know what my next move is going to be other than cutting back on the cakes and biscuits (talk about sucking the joy out of my life) but I know what the next thing I will be researching online is going to be.

Have you just hit a milestone with your age? I hope your handling it better than I appear to be... let me know.

Cheers,

Lee



 
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You realise how completely clueless you are when kids become a part of your life. When you're single your most pressing worry is what to wear out for drinks on a Friday night. Once you're married you begin to question whether you actually need to go out at all and when kids become part of your world you realise how many variable there are to so many questions which had never even crossed your mind before they arrived. 
 
Do I let the baby sleep with me? Do I let the baby sleep in my room? If I do that, when do I move the baby into its own room? When do I move the baby from a bassinette to a cot? Do I really need a bassinette at all (I've heard my grandmother say she kept my mum in an open drawer... how does that even work?) And we haven't even begun to talk about eating yet - these are only the sleep related questions!!

So today I wanted to tackle a big one. Well big in that it has a direct impact to your own quantity and quality of sleep after you have made your decision. (And I might add that once you have a baby you then realise how sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture - please I'll tell you everything you want to know, just let me have a sleep!) The big question is, when do you move a child from their cot to a bed?

With my first son (who is now 9 years old) it was all trial and error. Mostly error, we realised a little too late because once you have made your choice you have to live with it. There is no turning back!! So with my first child we moved him from cot to bed when he was two. Mostly because he was so tall and we felt that he would be swinging a leg over the side of the cot any day and we were worried he might fall and hurt himself. So he was duly moved into his big bed at two years and 2 weeks. The result of that move was that he was too young to "get" the rules and kept running from his bed to our room at all hours of the night because he could. (Please I'll give you all my secrets - just let me sleep!)

I went off to the library and borrowed every book I could on toddler sleeping, (sub titled - keeping them in their own bed) and we tried a number of the recommendations out. The only thing that worked for us (and keep in mind that this was almost a year later of broken sleeps and he had not slept well as a baby either... I don't believe I got an unbroken nights sleep for about three years) was threatening to tie his room shut. Yeah, I know, I can hear the horrified intakes of breath from here - but when you're that tied you go with what works.

Please note that we threatened to tie his door shut.  The theory goes that you tie a rope from a door across the hall to your toddler's door and then tie the other end to their door knob. So that they are able to open their door only a tiny smidge yet still can't get out. We did not ever actually do it. Fortunately the threat of it was enough.

Now we come to that point again. My two year old is tall enough to swing a leg over the side of the cot and just get out. So what am I going to do about it?? Well, at the moment I have him sleeping in a backward kids sleeping bag (you know the ones with the arms in them, not the ones you go camping with kids in ..... and it's backwards because he learnt how to undo the zip and strip it off - and sometimes the rest of his clothes (houdini anyone?)). So in this way he can't swing his leg over high enough to actually get out of the cot.

My plan this time (based on my previous experience) will see him sleeping in the cot until he can no longer actually fit in there and then I have no choice but to move him into his "big" bed. At which time we will make a big deal (as recommended by experts) about what a big boy he is and how exciting it is to move to a big boy bed.... and then I guess we get back on with the game of sleep Russian roulette!! 

I'll keep you posted.

Cheers,

Lee


 
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Here's the thing with kids, you can't wait for their next exciting milestone and then they get there and it bites you in the arse. You know what I mean, you can't wait for them to walk ... and then they start running off on you in public. You can't wait for them to talk ... and then they won't stop or worse start talking back. Or the one which has today effected me  - you can't wait for them to grow little teeth so they can start eating whatever everyone else is eating and then they start biting other kids with those new, sharp little fangs.