5 months old, waking 3-4 times a night. Wife exclusively breastfeeds. I dropped the hammer on that little baby last night. He moved into his room, the 3 yo boy moved out of the girls room in with him. And so did I, for a few days anyway. This is my 5th child to sleep train. I can literally do it in my sleep. Wife is showing renewed energy, signs of life. We waited long enough. Yeah he cried for 30 minutes while I progressively backed off my verbal re-assurances, sleeping in the unused top bunk that will be his someday. Yeah the 3 year old slept right through all of it. He startled once to a new room confused, I laid with him back to sleep. They won't even really remember their old sleeping habits in 3 days. The first night is always the roughest but when you hold the line it's over before you know it and you have good sleepers. (as long as they are together)

As a Christian, I am called to share my wealth with neighbors in need. She’s running the local 4-H meeting today while I’m at home with the youngest two. Truly the jewel of my crown. (Proverbs 12:4) #dadstr How has your wife brought Christ and you glory today?

If aiming to ease, there is wisdom in the advice to start with chickens, rabbits for some seasons, then maybe sheep once you’re ready to try a bigger thing. Habits of housing maintenance, food/water, etc are crucial and a little different for each animal (but also don’t need to be fancy). Not hard or complex, but jobs to be done. Animals do tie you down until you figure out systems and friends that can help free you for a trip.

6 acres. Cut my teeth with a family dairy cow and three sheep and eventually cried uncle. We went too hard on the homestead life at first, pared back a ton last year and even more this year ( a summer with an infant ). I think we know exactly how we can responsibly re-expand next season 😅

I totally get that. It was like that for a couple of days for me but I pushed through, now the novelty is over and all that’s left is camaraderie. It’s probably catalyzed by how we have massively structured our lives around their open time-space though, so they aren’t anxious or rushed in much. (Rural homeschool) They certainly aren’t starved for my attention , so I appear to have broken out past the wake of interruptions. The olders really enjoy and respect the “this is a quiet working space” boundary. The youngers come and go and give me hugs, but I do have noise cancelling headphones for sure. I also lowered my coffee intake to just one cup with food because I was so anxious and 2-3 black. The biggest revelation for me here was that I had no choice but to make this work, given all other constraints I refuse to let go of for this season of life (lots of kids, homeschool, steady job, etc)

Exactly! All the necessary monkey work was automated, is just even more fun now.

Update on moving back home to work near kids: The second grader can do math sitting next to the 5 month old. Next to me. Holy shit this is the exact answer to all of the dread we had about how to scale our homeschool. It was under my nose the whole time!