These photos were taken last week at a nearby campground that’s closed for the season.

The last month or so I’ve been noticing that Toddler Girl has been having trouble falling asleep again.  She’s clingier in the daytime and has been getting more time outs than normal (all for not playing nicely with Wonder Baby).  What gives?  It took me a surprisingly long time to clue in (I blame sleep deprivation), but we weren’t playing outside.

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All summer we had worked very hard to play outside every day.  Summer turned into a glorious warm autumn of playing at the park and digging up the garden.  Then came November.  Wet, cold November.  It’s pretty hard to get excited to go out in sleet.  One day of bad weather ran into the next and we were getting a bad case of toddler cabin fever.

In “The Happiest Toddler on the Block”, Dr Harvey Karp talks about the importance of outside time for little kids.  Being inside is both under-stimulating (boring lack of obstacles to climb or variation to the scenery) and overstimulating (flashy screens and electronics).  He says it better than I do, but kids need to run around to decompress.

Now, this probably doesn’t come as any great surprise to you; it certainly sounded like common sense to me.  What I didn’t realize was how clear the correlation was between outside time and Toddler Girl’s sleep and behavior. She had been taking up to 4 hours to fall asleep at night, and when I started taking her outside that dropped to falling asleep within an hour, and usually right away.  On days we stay inside it’s not uncommon to have two timeouts (usually while I’m making dinner).  On outside play days, she rarely needs one.  It was like flipping a switch.  In retrospect, I think this was a big factor in her sleep issues earlier this year — she certainly wasn’t getting much outside time in early spring with a newborn baby sister.

So now, any day when it’s not pouring rain (I can’t wait for snow, snow is so much more fun to play in than freezing rain!) we are taking time to go outside.  She doesn’t even need to play, she can spend the whole time in the stroller or on daddy’s shoulders as we hike around.  She just needs to be outside.  Her soul is more peaceful when she can feel the breeze on her face and hear the birds in the trees.  And you know what?  So is mine.