Pretend you're a professional baker and get ye some SAF bread yeast!!!

Ok, I feel pretty dumb.

My bread machine book says to use SAF yeast (which is what bakeries tend to buy in bulk), or regular bread machine yeast if you can't find it.  I have just been using Fleishman's bread machine yeast 'cause I couldn't find any SAF in the grocery store, and never thought to look it up online.  Until now.

I received 2 of these.  It's not a brick, it's just vacuum-packed.

The comparison:


SAF from Amazon.com:  2 pounds is $11 (so 4oz is $1.375).  You use 2 tsp per loaf (and 4oz = 48tsp), so you get 24 loaves for 4oz.  Cost:  $0.06 per loaf.

Fleishman's:  4oz is $8.  You use 2.5 tsp per loaf, which gets you 19 loaves.  Cost:  $0.42 per loaf.

6 cents per loaf vs. 42 cents.  SAF wins!  At 3-4 loaves/doughs per week, this convenient change saves me about $70 in just bread yeast in a year. 

If you were to bake 2.8 times a month on average, you'd easily use up the 2 pounds in 5 years.


There's no competition.
 
Considering how much bread (and pizza dough, and pastry dough, etc) I am making, enough to buy my flour at Costco to stick in a 5-gallon bucket, 2 pounds of yeast is not too much.  For people like me (as opposed to a professional baker who leaves it at room temp and uses it up quickly), the yeast is supposed to be kept in the freezer, where it stays just as potent for 5+ years, but I would use up the 2 pounds in a year.  There was enough in a 1-pound pouch to fill a pint mason jar, the empty 4oz Fleishman yeast jar, plus exactly 2tsp for a loaf of bread.  If you don't have a bread machine, be aware that it also works just like regular yeast except that you can just throw it into the recipe dry without having to prepare it.

I tried a "Pane Italiano" in the bread machine, and set it to be ready at the time I woke this morning.  Dang... the smell of coffee and fresh hot buttered bread makes me feel like it's a special holiday.  Using a smaller amount of SAF yeast was a success.


Want some? 

Do it.  Get yourself some.  Or heck, if you provide an airtight jar of the appropriate size the next time you see me, I will gift you up to a 4oz sample. 

A baby's view

Last weekend Ryan and I sat outside in the morning for some coffee and fresh bread*, talking about life and the need to clean up the backyard, and Torin was staring and staring off to the side.

What is so fascinating?

We finally realized what he was staring at... pretty red and green leaves back-lit with sunlight!

Oooooooh...

It was a good morning. 


*I had used the timer on the bread machine for one of the 6-hour french bread recipes to be ready right when we woke up.  The coffee maker has a timer too.  It's like they were made for each other!

Sleep Training Plan: A mix of graduated extinction (Ferber) and no-cry methods

Knowing what I know now, I would have started the plan at 6 weeks of age and then sleep-trained by 3 months (the earliest that the pediatrician recommends), instead of starting at 3.5 months when the horrific 4-month sleep regression hit and then sleep-training at 5 months.  I could have saved myself from SO MUCH sleep deprivation.  I also would have had a video monitor from day 1 so that we could have avoided the night he wedged his head in the crib corner and cried longer than he otherwise would have. 


For the actual sleep training results, see this post.  He got into the swing of things after 4 nights, and never cried more than 22 minutes in a whole night.  By 2 weeks his bedtime, eating schedule, and naps were nearly ideal with no crying at night, and surprisingly he began steadily gaining weight percentiles for the first time.  Thank you for the request to post this info, I had no idea so many people would be interested.



The prep work:

I read a ton of books and online material and mixed in some science to try to develop a plan that felt kinder than tossing him in a room to cry it out.  It was really hard to piece together all the info in the midst of sleep deprivation because my eyes would cross after reading a single paragraph, and I really wish I'd done the research while I was still pregnant!  Torin suddenly couldn't be put down "drowsy yet awake" anymore after 3 months old, when the "4-month sleep regression" hit hard (waking hourly), so I was desperate enough to slog though all the sleep methods.  He began the formal sleep-training exactly 1 week shy of 5 months. 


Here's the plan!


6 weeks before sleep training:

• started using white noise, a loud fan 
• started weaning off the swaddle (one arm out one night, then the other arm the next, until we were doing 2 arms) until he was in a warm sleep sack a week before sleep training
• made his crib fun: lots of tickles/play after each diaper change, plus a long mirror so he could do tummy time with his reflection buddy 
• eased his bedtime earlier (to 9:30 from 1am) with the help of nursing in total darkness
• tried to get him to nap ANY way possible at 10am and 2pm... used a swing friends had just given us. He usually only naps one of those times each day. Still working on this.

3 weeks before sleep training:

• at least 30 minutes spent outdoors before noon so the morning light could help his circadian rhythm.  For some reason this was the hardest to do!  Something about getting out of the house before noon when you're bone-tired just feels impossible. 
• let him toss and turn and mumble at night if he wasn't crying so he could try to get used to putting himself back to sleep. This kid can toss for an hour at a time. 
• weaned him from eating every 2 hours to every 3-4 at night by rocking instead of nursing to sleep right away (eventual goal: 6 hours). 
• started a better nighttime routine involving a book, then diaper change, then baby stretches how my sister demonstrated (he giggles like mad), then massage from toes to head with a calming voice (I try to hypnotize him, haha), then brushing him from head to toe with my hands as I breathe out and picture his wakeful energy draining out his toes (sounds weird, but it calms him), then nursing to sleep in total darkness.

Day 1 of sleep training:

• first night in his crib, using a sound monitor to hear when he wakes. Brought over his fan for white noise, kept room dark.  (Ended up getting a video monitor after finding him wedged in the crib corner one night... in retrospect I would do this from day 1.)
• put him to bed a half hour after he usually falls asleep (pretended the time change didn't happen) so he's in his sleepy zone. Specifically made sure he was awake after nursing so that he was putting himself to sleep instead of relying on me. 
• was going to do Ferber (check on him at 3 minutes, then 5, 8, then every 10 minutes until he stopped crying)... but didn't need to yet.  I do not think he was awake enough after each nursing.
• I'm going to do the naps in the swing until a week from now, then transfer him to the crib once he's sure the crib is for sleeping.
• I put a $10 blue light filter on my ipad (where I record his sleeping and eating notes) to help my body produce melatonin at night.  My computer has the f.lux program which is fantastic for this, but I can't put it on the ipad without jailbreaking the device.  This might indirectly help Torin too.

Following days of sleep training:

• Start inching bedtime upward until 6:30-8pmish, moving 15 minutes every day or two.  His ideal bedtime should reveal itself when he is happy most of the day (aka, not over-tired), going to sleep easily, getting in his naps, and waking on his own between at a stable time which should also end up somewhere between 6:30-8am.  (We are at a good place after 9 days of sleep training, 7:15 bedtime routine, asleep by 7:45-8, 8ish wake time, happy baby all day with 1-2 naps.  Might stay at this later bedtime because 1) Ryan gets to see Torin before bed most nights that he's home, and 2) I like to sleep in.)
• Put him down more and more awake until nursing isn't a sleep association, so it doesn't have to be the last step of the bedtime routine.  (By 2 weeks of training, I don't nurse right before a nap and he goes down mostly easily.)
• Wean him down to eating only every 6 hours at night.  (We are at about 5 to 5.5 hours by 2 weeks of training)

Ferber Results: So much quick success!

It's been 2 weeks, so let's see how it went... 


The brief overview of results

• Night 1:  0 minutes crying
• 2:  15 minutes... first time he's ever slept 10 hours total in a night!!  First time I've slept 4 hours in a row in the last 2+ months, it feels sooooo good.
• 3:  9.5 minutes
• 4:  7 minutes
• 5:  22 minutes (started stretching meals slightly)
• 6:  0 minutes!
• 7:  5 minutes
• 8:  0 minutes!
• 9:  11 minutes... found him completely out of his covers with his arm caught between the crib bars.
• 10:  21 minutes... after going in to find him wedged very tightly in a corner (with his neck bent and arm through the bars and no way to get out) and realizing this was probably why he cried so much, the guilt made me order a video monitor.  Much peace of mind has been had since receiving it.
• 11:  5 minutes
• ... and so far up through day 14, still no crying at night.  Naps, he still cries from 2-6 minutes each.  Last night he hit a record of going almost 6 hours between meals, which is my nighttime goal.

 

Sweet sweet silence and baby sleep.

So far, so good.

As you can see, there was very little crying to be had!  There is actually less afternoon/pre-bedtime crying and grumpiness with his new sleep routine than when I was nursing/rocking him to sleep, so there is no way that I can say that the sleep training was hard on him overall.  I think there was no fuss from him the first night because I nursed him too far into sleep, but he did put himself to sleep the following nights after waking alone.

After getting the monitor, it appears that he does the same amount of twitching or rolling his head back and forth before falling asleep (20 minutes at least), except the difference is that he doesn't complain.  When I was in the room because his cradle was next to my side of the bed, ANY twitching whatsoever would make him wake and scream unless he was in my arms being actively rocked... and if I set him down in the crib when he was not deeply enough asleep, I'd have to start the half hour of rocking over again.  The result is that I get so much more sleep now.  He does too.


Our new normal.

A typical night is that we do the bedtime routine, I nurse him until he's groggy, then I lay him down... it takes 30-45 minutes.  I say goodnight, turn on the monitors and leave, and then without crying he rubs his eyes or sucks his thumb for up to 20 minutes to put himself to sleep.  He wakes at least twice at night with fussing noises, and will either cry for up to 2 minutes per waking and go back to sleep (because it's not time to eat yet) or I go in and feed him.  He wakes in the morning babbling to himself contentedly, and full of smiles. 

IT IS SO AWESOME.

The video monitor is a great help, since my going in to see him makes him cry more... we can put him to bed, turn on the monitor, and watch him sweetly put himself to sleep while we eat dinner.  It is weird having baby-free time for the first time in 5 months, but also a relief because I can decompress at the end of the day. 

In the past 2 weeks we have also gradually changed his bedtime (the moment of falling asleep) from 10:45 to 7:45-8ish.  Starting the bedtime routine at 7:15 and sleeping by 8pm seems to be pretty optimal for him, causing a wake-up of 8ish in the morning plus a day of babbling and easy playing until the afternoon when he needs a nap to refresh him.  The sleep training has been very healthy for his general happiness.

We're also working on naps... generally he gets a 40-minute nap around 3pm, and I'm trying to add in one about 2-3 hours after he wakes in the morning too but he's a bit more resistant.  Wood blinds and heavy curtains have definitely helped, since he sleeps far more easily when it's as dark as possible.


More sleep = better weight gain?

There was also a strange phenomenon starting late on the third night... Torin began drinking from both breasts at nearly every meal.  From his first month, he's always been a one-sided eater no matter what I tried.  Now all of a sudden he is hungry and awake enough to want both, and still eating every 2 hours during the day as usual.  He's also been gaining a percentile of weight every 3 days or so (aka, slightly gaining faster than average) now.

Is this because growth hormone is released in sleep, and now that he's sleeping more and for longer chunks of time, he is suddenly in a growth spurt?  The doctor says he's skinny 'cause he is in the 50th percentile for weight but 100th for length, so I wouldn't mind him getting a little chunkier.


A note for the future.

In retrospect, I should have done the sleep training far earlier, since it would have benefited us both and I would not have reached a breaking point in soul-deep sleep deprivation.  I would have started the 6-week lead-in to the sleep training when he was 6 weeks old, and then done this method of sleep training at 3 months (3 months is also when his pediatrician says it's ok).

Torin was so easy to train either because he has the right personality for it, or because he was developmentally ready, or because the right preparation helped, but this blog post is really for the next kid, to remind me how easy it can be.

Dusty ghosts of the past

Yesterday I went on a filter-cleaning spree in preparation for the pollen season.

The whole-house "washable" filter was disintegrating, so I searched pretty hard to find new and better replaceable filters... it's a weird size so Home Depot doesn't have them, and 2 years ago I couldn't find any online, but Amazon has some now.  The room air filter (a HEPA, yay!) that we use for the baby's white noise was looking good, but the pre-filter was super clogged with dust.  The vacuum's filters got a good cleaning as well.  Then I began to dust the house from the top down, but stopped halfway due to baby (seriously, he hates when I start any project!).

Today my goal was to figure out if our fridge has a filter for the water dispenser (it doesn't), so I found the manual and started reading.  Did you know that you're supposed to open the bottom grill and clean out the dust that settles in there?  The manual says the fridge will run more efficiently.  Fantastic!  I popped open the grill... and witnessed the horror of all horrors.  The thing was seriously half-full of dust and cat hair.  SO MUCH CAT HAIR.  It was like the first time we looked at the whole-house air filter with the home inspector before we bought the house... the guy said that it looked like the previous owners had never cleaned the filter.  I don't doubt that this was the first time the bottom inside of the fridge guts had ever been cleaned.  It filled a plastic grocery bag. 

Oh yeah, and I can't purchase the water filter part because it can't be sold in California due to Prop 65.  Maybe it's time for a new fridge.  (EDITED:  Sears customer service got back to me very quickly with a replacement part that will work with our fridge.  Yay!)

I am so allergic to cat hair.  What other appliances do I need to watch out for?!  I thought we had completely purged the house.

The sleep training that wasn't?

Torin had ZERO minutes of crying on his first night of sleep training.  Am I doing this wrong?!

We did the bedtime routine, laid him down in the crib for the first time, and he just blinked at me and fell asleep after a few moments.  I woke him up twice more to make sure I was actually putting him down awake, but got the same results!  Ryan has theorized that fairies switched our baby. 

He did wake about once an hour for the first half of the night, since the monitor picked up the sound of his head tossing and turning, but he only made one peep and just kept putting himself back to sleep.  He woke hungry (and mumbling) only once every 4 hours (I was going to let him eat every 3, so this is great), and then returned to sleep as easily as at the beginning of the night. 

I went into this expecting a battle, and ended up with peace... and got 6 hours of sleep total, which is a miracle.  I don't know whether to be proud of him, or very very suspicious. 



In case anyone's interested, I'll post again on the matter probably a week from now, once I'm more sure that his sleep has settled and it's not a fluke.  If it ends up being a relatively easy transition, I'll also reveal the exact prep that I did for 6 weeks before attempting the first night of sleep training... I pulled a ton of info from books, internet first-hand experiences, and science in order to form a plan that I thought might make it easier for him to accept sleeping alone in the crib and putting himself to sleep.  I do wish I'd come up with a plan before having a baby rather than trying to scrape together all the sleep info when I could barely function due to my own sleep deprivation. 

A Library Quest, Part 2

Waiting before the event... 

I could not get a library card because I didn't have proof that I lived at my current address.  No matter, I will come better prepared next time. 

I walked in early at the same time as another parent, and we waited outside the Story Room where there were extremely simplistic puzzles for small children.  She said that we should stand up and wait in line about 5 minutes before the story-reading event began, because there's usually a fight to sit in the front, and the average is about 35 people in the room (they count at the end of every day). 

The lady warned me that some of the other parents can get pretty aggressive... my "don't worry, I have a brown belt in jujitsu" joke didn't get more than a sideways partial smile out of her, and she clarified that other parents tend to ask a lot of probing questions.  It made me wonder what questions she didn't want me to ask her, and we watched each other out of the corners of our eyes.


Sweet!  Bring it!  Probe away!

Sadly, there were only 5 other kids, and no talkative parents.  Everyone seemed really confused at the smallness of the group, but I'll blame the beautiful day luring the parents away.  All things considered, it was a nice welcoming atmosphere (lots of smiles for the baby!), I was told that it was never too young to start and that it was wonderful I was getting him into reading young.  The 15 minutes was just about Torin's limit with sitting still.

I found myself trying to figure out the other caregivers.  There was a much older mom, a fitness-guru mom (complete with water bottle... it was so cute!), a mom with a distracted look, grandparents, a dad (the friendliest-looking one, who sat next to me).  Don't worry about the labeling of stereotypes... I presume that I appeared to be the clueless new mom.  With 17 parent/kid pairs that normally attend, there's sure to be someone Torin and I will click with.

The structure of the story time was pretty solid... very simple songs with hand/body motions interspersed with 3 books.  The books are left behind so that the kids can check them out from the library, and at the end a blanket is taken off of a table full of plastic stacking toys and the kids go to town.  The toys looked very clean and I hear they are wiped with disinfectant each week. 


Will we go back?  

Yes.  The kids were all much older that Torin (the upper limit is 3 years old), already walking/running and saying words, all kind of the same age.  They all probably carry multiple transmissible diseases.  But Torin was in awe of the lady singing the songs, and I could see his brain working really hard to figure out all the new information, so I think it'll be good for him.  There's a break in the meetings until next month, but we'll be sure to go back.

But I will not sing in public.  You can't make me.  NEVER!!!

A Library Quest

Tomorrow is a big step for me. 

I am going out there into the community to say, "Hey, my name is Kendra, and I have zero local friends." 

The library is less than a mile from my house, and I'm ashamed to say that I've never even stepped inside.  I looked it up last month, and they have a weekly story time for babies up to age 3... perfect!  I have a baby below age 3!  It's free!  It involves reading and books!  Surely there must be another potential friend there who similarly has free time on Tuesdays, lives in my town, loves reading, is interested in free stuff, and has a baby around Torin's age.  Friendships are built on less every day.

It feels exactly like dating... sidling up to the bar, eyeing the lady at the corner, asking her what she's reading to see if she wants to talk, finding a point of shared interest, exchanging that knowing smile and then phone numbers... except this time I have to get by on my personality alone.  Uh oh. 

Where's the library where I can just wiggle at a local mom instead?