Child Spacing

In some miracle orchestrated by the baby making gods out there my husband and I have managed to have two sets of children less than 24 months apart from each other. Our son and eldest daughter are considered “Irish Twins” born 11 months apart. Three years after the birth of our eldest daughter our youngest daughter was born and our current pregnancy will make her and the baby (sex still undetermined) 15  months apart.

Because of our family dynamic we are often approached by concerned or curious friends, family members and even strangers regarding the topic of child spacing. All of these people are generally surprised to hear that we plenty of pros to offer up on closely spacing your kiddos and very few cons. Our two eldest are inseparable and can easily be considered each others best friends. They participate in the same activities, are in the same grade in school, enjoy the same movies and books, and play with most of the same toys. We were concerned at first about double costs but we soon realized both the activities they take part in, like soccer and gymnastics, and the preschools they have attended provide sibling discounts. Despite the organized chaos that was our daily lives raising two under two, we have experienced with our third baby what it is like to start over years after the other two have left the baby stage. We have had more time to bond with the baby while our preschoolers are in class but we often feel she is left out of their activities and play and we are looking forward to her having a built in best friend of her own.

Bed Time

From an early age my husband and I implemented a bed time into our little ones’ routines. Since the two oldest are so close in age – 11 months apart to be exact – they basically went through their toddler stages at the same time. Somehow the older they have gotten the more challenging bed time has become. In their innocent toddlerhood they did not see bed time as a bad thing, but instead as a time where they got hugs, kisses, cuddles, stories and plenty of “I love you’s”. Now they spend the 45 minutes following their supposed bedtime wreaking havoc, so much so that we have had to move up their bed time by 30 minutes in hopes that they will actually be asleep by the original bedtime.

We did all the necessary research when we decided to incorporate bedtimes into our lives. We know that children who have them are less likely to have behavioral issues and that irregular bedtimes have been shown to be linked with difficulties such as hyperactivity, acting out and being emotionally withdrawn. When the going gets tough we pep talk ourselves with all these fabulous reasons why we need to keep enforcing their lights out routines but that does not mean we enjoy it. We have looked up strategies for winding them down before the cut off time, reasons why they may be going through this phase and a multitude of solutions to this very irksome horror hour to no avail.

At the end of the day we have come to the conclusion that we may just have to wait this one out.  Bed time for the foreseeable future will just have to include 100 tuck ins unlimited forehead kisses, and “don’t hit your sister/brother” on repeat. The pros, to us, still outweigh the bedtime tantrum cons.

Tablet Time

Last year for Christmas Mammy and Tito, my children’s ever doting grandparents, bought them Kindle Fire Kid Tablets. I was horrified. My children were already prone to begging for television time and the last thing I wanted was for them to have another screen to become addicted to. Despite my early concerns though the tables turned out to be great gifts. First they come in different colors so by gifting my son a blue one and my daughter a pink one there was no risk of bickering over which one belonged to who. Secondly the kid fire tablet came pre-loaded with all sorts of content just for kids through the FreeTime App and all of the content was based on their age range. There is so much available for them though that the kids have no idea that they are even being limited. The FreeTime App also serves as parental controls. Once the children are in the app they cannot get out of it without the adult profiles pin. There are no loopholes, no back doors, no home button or backtrack trick exits, it is completely secure. With a timer option to limit how long kids can play as well as a reading tracker that blocks all games content until the reading goal is met this tablet was truly the best option for children.