Sleep Training and Booster Dumping

I come to tell you a story of sleep. It is a tale of infant sleep involving mantras, noise, daily classes, and a boatload of anxiety. At the moment, I am writing this tale from a couch near a fireplace early in the morning. Yesterday the weather in Minnesota was what can only be described as weird. Now, after a flash-melting experience, I am confident we have a flash-melting phenomenon on the roads, highways, and byways. I am looking forward to that daycare commute and a trip to Walgreens for my Moderna booster. I will type fast and if all goes well, send this later today. A man can dream. (Something I do a lot more of now that Roman is sleeping better.)

The itinerary:

A Christmas card, of sorts.

First, I try to hit some of the main points I know you've asked yourself in the last weeks, then I'll share some content I've enjoyed. Somewhere in there, I'll ask you for your address so you can get the Hasler Christmas card 2022. Yep, 2022. Start thinking now if you want to get a staged or candid photo of the family next year around this time. Maybe we will have a dog by then. Who's to say.

Updates:

Eliot:

The burn is mostly gone! Amazing what a trip to the burn unit will do for a toddler's leg. There are some pink spots on Eliot's upper thigh where the burn was, but you'd have to know it was there to know it was there. You'll hear people say, "the body is amazing" or "toddlers are magic healers," and until you see something like this, you'll think you understand but, I'm not sure you do. Or at least not sure I did.

The Big E update is that next week we’re going to pull the trigger on ear tubes for him We’ve just had one toto many ear infections and rounds of antibiotics. We keep treating the infection and not the cause, so we’re going to treat the cause. We did have some marginal success with a chiropractor, but we’re too far down the road with the tubes and scheduling these things is weird, so we just jumped and YOLO, ear tubes here we go. So long ear infections, (he said, hopefully.)

Roman: 

I was on a work call not too long ago holding Roman. Someone scheduled a late meeting, and I hopped on holding him after daycare pick up. They asked me: is that Eliot? I end up talking about Eliot a lot more, primarily because, since August, he's the one who has had the most going on. Roman sort of got his come-uppence this month when we made the slightly drastic decision to start sleep school.

Since mid-October, Roman moved from a lousy napper/good sleeper to a lousy napper/bad sleeper. This is the worst combo you can run into with infants. While I enjoyed the 2 am time we spent together, bonding, as he fell asleep in my arms, in a rocking chair, it wasn't sustainable for my health or well-being. However, with a simple google search, we came across a company with a reputable-looking website and an easy-enough scheduling option to set up an introductory phone call to discuss our options. 

Things moved pretty quickly from there. They shipped us a Ring Camera and a Hatch light, and we were ready for day one of a two-week program, with a money-back guarantee that they'd help us get Roman sleeping through the night. 

The first three nights, the most significant difference was that we played mantras over a Bluetooth speaker the whole time. Leen and I recorded ourselves saying a "bespoke" mantra that would help Roman soothe, and then the guru behind the program sent over an additional mantra to play in succession. So for 12 hours a night, there was a gentle hum of adults speaking Roman to sleep. All in all, that sort of worked. Much to our amazement and a bit to our disbelief. Roman was sleeping better. 

The fourth night was when things got real. Since about, oh I don't know, let's call it day three of life, Roman has been a pacifier kind-of-guy. So many of our sleep issues stemmed from his insistence on rubbing his hands aggressively on his face and displacing the pacifier. Try as we may to keep his hands at bay, they'd get out, knock the pacifier away from his mouth, and tears would ensue. So on night four, mantras piping, we began moving towards weaning the pacifier. 

Sleep School Graduate: Roman Reed

This company's biggest sleep aid is something they call the Hug. If you have children, you likely know about sleep sacks. The rest of you, welcome. The Hug is like a sleep sack built directly into the sheet. A sleep sheet, if you will. Two armholes, a compartment the size of the mattress for the body, and a zipper to keep him snug. Skeptical as I was about this, I saw videos of kids flipping and twisting about in their hugs in our daily courses. Children as old as five standing in their Hug and infants as young as five months were flopping onto their backs in it. 

At night four, we introduced Roman to the Hug, and well, he hated it. 

The sleep advisors suggest moving the mattress to the floor for the night, so you can more easily soothe nearby instead of leaning over a crib. As anyone who has ever spent time leaning over a crib can attest, this, while sort of weird to put your baby on the floor, is preferable to leaning over the crib. In the Hug, on the floor, still pacified, Roman slept poorly. It took an hour for Roman to fall asleep (lots of crying). It took lots of time for Roman to stay asleep (lots of crying). I lay on the floor, holding his hand, repeated mantras, and did some recommended soothing techniques, such as patting, pushing, brushing, etc. 

Somehow we made it through the night, and I was buoyed by the fact that I don't know, I guess the second half was, like, better than the first? 

The next night is when we ditched the pacifier. It took Roman 45 minutes of crying and me soothing and me patting, singing, brushing for him to fall asleep. But then, he slept all night. He woke at 4 am, and I gave him the pacifier for the home stretch. 

The next night, I expected more of the same, and holy shit, he went to sleep in under five minutes without a pacifier and slept all night. 

We had a few marginally bad nights (took 25 minutes, cried three times, and I needed to soothe him over a monitor, etc.), but for the most part (KNOCK ON WOOD), we've had good luck with this program. Unfortunately, I have developed massive anxiety associated with his sleep now. So every time I put him down is still super stressful, but then he settles and goes to sleep, and it's like magic. 

If you are struggling with a baby toddler or child who doesn't sleep, happy to suggest you try this program.

As my friend Sarah told me, "I wish someone had trained me to sleep. Maybe I wouldn't have such bad nights now as an adult." We're hopeful that training Roman young helps him be a better functioning adult come 30 years from now. 

Sam:

Last time

As mentioned in the lede, I am getting a boost today. The last time I got one, I basically died and came back to life, shaved my beard into a mustache, and wore that for 8 months. THAT WAS TEN MONTHS AGO. This year should prove to everyone that time flies even when you are not having fun. Here's hoping my boost goes well, and who knows what sort of crazy decision I'll make afterward. Only time will tell. 

Leen:

Love of my life. She's great. I cannot stress how great she's doing with the transition to America and, more specifically, Minnesota. I swear, every time we listen to the radio, we hear something like "hottest day on record for X," "coldest day in the history of Minnesota," "first time ever for this event," "Most extreme winds blowing." This place is undoubtedly testing our comforts, and she's doing great. I've settled on setting the thermostat a half a degree celsius warmer in the house and using the fireplace more often. I got her an excellent coat for Christmas that I gave to her in November because getting a winter coat at Christmas means that you're coatless for two months in the middle of Minnesota winter. 

That's the Christmas card content update for you. Thanks to everyone who sent us theirs. You look great, with your cute families in your nice sweaters. 

Please, and I'm serious, send me your address so I can return the favor next year. 

And now: the dumps!

Four Day Workweek

Let’s talk about the workweek. I was listening to a podcast (Plain English), and he discussed the future of work. There was a guest on, and she was discussing how certain bosses and CEOs feel entitled to all your hours during the workday. Even during the many hours at the office that you were most definitely not working — playing ping pong, bantering around the coffee maker, searching Twitter — those were theirs. More so, those hours extended out to the commute to and from the office. With fewer hours spent bantering at work or commuting, what comes of those hours in the current world? Does the 40-hour workweek still make sense in a world where some professions realize: I can do this in 30 or 25. Well, the UAE just made history by being the first country to lean into this concept and introduce the 4-day work week. Granted, this is more of a 4.5 day work week, with a half-day on Friday for prayer, but still, pretty cool shift. Especially as it moves them off the Sunday-Thursday schedule that most of the Arab world is still partying on. I am hopeful that more countries or companies will make moves like this to work less and shovel more. 

Formula 1 Final Controversy

Speaking of the UAE, did you see what happened last weekend in the final race of the F1 season? If you are like me, perhaps you’ve recently become enamored with F1 on account of the Netflix show Drive to Survive. With beautiful people, who, as my friend Taylor put it, are all assholes, driving fast cars in exotic locales, the sport is pretty fun to engage with. I think the problem the sport probably had in terms of connecting with an audience is that there is so much that goes on that you simply have to know to follow. The Netflix show did an excellent job of giving the helmet-wearing drivers some personality. I mean, for the entire race, you don’t see them. So it’s hard to really get a feel for who they are as they speed around the track. The big news was that the title race came down to the season’s final race. If you watched the race but didn’t understand why what happened happened, then read this. I personally do not like the result. Still, I am happy about the narrative it sets up for next year. 

Parental co-parenting strategies

In light of the parenting news shared above, I found this column about each parent leaning into their strengths funny. Since most of you won’t read it, I will select an excerpt, and maybe you’ll be swayed, or you’ll at least understand the gist of what’s happening:

“The secret to a good parenting partnership is for parents to play to their strengths. For instance, my wife is organized, diligent, loving, and caring. She’s great at staying on top of all the responsibilities that come with raising children. She schedules their activities, orders their sports equipment, keeps in touch with their teachers, and makes sure they have clothes that fit. And while she’s doing those things, I keep our two sons entertained in the other room with a good, old-fashioned wrestling match.

…Now, sometimes the kids get hurt when we roughhouse. It doesn’t usually happen, but when it does, my wife is always there to help with their boo-boos. That maternal instinct kicks in, and she’ll come running from whatever she’s doing to take care of them, even if it means skipping the book club she’s been so excited for because she finally found time to read the book and hasn’t spent time with adult friends in over a month. That’s how dedicated she is. She knows that we each have our strengths and that one of hers is taking care of those minor bumps and scrapes. That’s what makes us a great team.”

NBA MVP and Champion 

There were some excellent profiles of celebrities out there that I read recently. I will spare you the Jeremy Strong one that caused a lot of uproars because of his castmates all shit on his method-acting. I will spare you the Alison Roman one because I’m not sure any of us are ready for her to make a comeback. So instead, the one I will share with you is the GQ profile of Giannis Antetokounmpo. The man just brings such much joy to seemingly everything he does. It’s a nice read on a crummy day. He worries about swearing too much and talks about how cold Milwaukee is. It’s all very relatable, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. There was no discussion of his nickname, the Greek Freak, but I wonder if he could do it all over, he’d go with something else. I have a hat that just says “Freak” on it, with the Nike swoosh on it, and it’s a great hat, but I’d like it, even more, I think, If it just said “Greek.” Though maybe someone would think I was in a frat. 

A list on your way out the door

There are many lists I could post here. There could be the one about 8 things new parents need to do to get more sleep (lol), or the 7 Wanderlust destinations to satiate your travel needs (excellent), but instead, I will go with the 9 color trends that experts predict will be huge in 2022. We will paint some rooms in 2022, and while we already bought the paint for one of these rooms, the rest of the house is up for grabs. One of my newfound hobbies is looking at paint colors, right alongside looking at local real estate. I think I dig October Mist the most and Very Peri the least. But that’s just me. Take a look yourselves, send me your accent walls, share with me your remodels. I want to follow it all. 

That’s all I have for today. Hope you have a nice one and if I don’t talk to you before then:

Happy New Year and let’s chat in 2022.