Sweet dreams

News flash for new mothers: Children are not born with a natural ability to blow their own noses.

You will stumble across this fact early in your parenting career, most likely at 2:00AM while your stuffy-nosed 3 year-old whines through sleepy-eyes about not being able to breathe. At which time you will attempt to teach this skill, from my experience without much success, with chances to continue to teach coming at 2:30, 2:45 and 3:15 AM. At which point you will submit (finally!!!) to using one of those over-the-counter medications herbal-mommies like yourself despise.

If you are reading between the lines you may be able to discern that this happened in my own home last night. The sleepy, somewhat irritated mommy was me and the stuffy-nosed 3 year-old was my daughter, Tootie (a nickname that needs to be changed before she gets much older!).

Being a self-taught herbal-mommy, I dislike using store-bought medications unless someone is seriously ill or in pain. Because of this, yucky-tasting tea blends and tinctures are the paths to healing in my home. Last night I came across another reason to administer the dreaded night-time cold medicine: so we can get some sleep! So at 3:15 AM, when I dragged myself into my sweetie's room for the last time, the necessary dose was given and restful sleep was had by all. This morning after brewing some herbal tea (sage, lemon grass and echinacea), I walked directly to my bathroom to locate last night's meds and place it on the counter for easy access tonight. Do I feel good about using it? Not entirely. Do I feel good about Tootie and I sleeping the 6-8 hours advertised on the bottle of said medicine? Yes!

Well, with another homeschool day ahead of me and nose-blowing lessons on the schedule, I have to sign off. Until tomorrow, sweet dreams.