Quiet Time

I've managed to get Katja into her room, hopefully for at least an hour of quiet time. We'll see. She dropped her naps about 4 months ago, and in all honesty probably could have dropped them sooner. It was at a point where it took me an hour to get her to sleep and she was down for an hour or two . . . she would then wake up screaming/crying and telling me it hurt. I can empathise with this . . . I always feel horrible after a nap. So, as soon as we moved into this house at the end of May, I stopped trying to put her to sleep. It was very stressful, caused me to feel a lot of anger towards her (probably frustration at myself because A Good Mother would be able to put her child to sleep when s/he needs it without any fuss, right? A Good Mother is always shadowing me).
Today is our first attempt at quiet time since then. She has taken the occasional nap, when she's fallen asleep in the car, but for the most part she's just go go go all day. Consequently, I use the TV to help me cope. I need to stop that, it feels so wrong.
She just came out (after 15minutes). I told her to go back, that quiet time wasn't over yet. She said "okay mom" and went right back. I have to say, I'm a little concerned that she might be getting into something . . . but there's nothing dangerous in there, so it can't be too bad. She needs this time as much as I do. She needs time for reflection and creativity. Just like I need time to meditate. To reflect. To allow my thoughts to fully form before jumping to the next.
I hope to be able to use this time each day to reflect on things. My own journey in life, my family, the state of the world and what I can do to affect positive change.
Yes, I think this will be a good change :)

Life Today

Today seems like it has the potential to be a good day. I think my anger of the past week might be hitting an end. I got the book Mother Nurture from the bookstore the other day, and all I can say is wow, I so have Depleted Mother Syndrome. I haven't read a lot of the book but I am very impressed by their position that nutrient status directly affects depletion . . . after all, I was recently denied by a doc who thought I was in denial because I wasn't on medication for depression and she feared she would be considered responsible if I "went into a deep depression" and basically implied I might harm my children or myself in some way . . . in all fairness, this is after I told her that I was suicidal in my very early teens . . . but jeez, that was over 15 years ago!
Anyway, I'm rambling, and that wasn't really the whole story (I forgot to tell her, for example, that while my 6 mo has never seen a doc, we were under a midwife's care for 6 weeks after her birth). Point is, the book is great even if I do disagree with their exact ideas of healthy eating.