u/The_Chilled_Arvo

We have a 3-year-3-month-old and an 8½-month-old, and both my husband and I work. We don’t have family nearby, and I’m finding the everyday workload pretty overwhelming.
Our oldest goes to daycare five days a week. That already feels like more than I’d ideally want, but we can’t currently make it work another way. For now, we’re alternating annual leave to care for our youngest and keep childcare costs down. Next month he’ll start daycare three days a week, with my husband using leave to cover the other two.

It feels like we’re constantly behind on everything: cooking, dishes, laundry, cleaning, tidying and all the little jobs around the house. We live across two floors, and there always seems to be something that needs doing somewhere. Dinner time is particularly chaotic, and by the time we can tackle chores, we’re exhausted. Even small tasks take ages to finish.
I’m not aiming for a spotless house, but I’d love for things to feel a bit less stressful and unfinished all the time.

What practical changes made the biggest difference for you at this stage? Meal shortcuts, routines, ways to divide tasks, things you stopped doing, or anything worth paying for if the budget allows?

We moved into a 2-floor apartment three weeks ago and our downstairs neighbour has repeatedly contacted us about various things from the get-go. I’m trying to work out whether I’m unreasonable or whether it’s time for a firm boundary.
We’re two working parents with children aged 3 years and 7 months. We make normal family noise, our older daughter runs around a fair bit, but try to be considerate: no shoes indoors, rugs/felt under furniture, no loud music/parties, and we’re generally upstairs with the kids by 8pm on purpose.
In three weeks:

25 Aug: She left a note asking us to arrange a meeting about noise and our plans for sound insulation. My partner had vaguely said we might consider it if we ever redo our parquet flooring when we were still getting to know her and tried to be polite , but it isn’t currently a priority (it would be very expensive and disruptive)
30 Aug: Around 8pm she came to our door complaining about “construction noise.” No construction was happening; our 3yo was playing and our in-laws were visiting. She again pressed us about insulation despite us already saying we weren’t planning it anytime soon.
1 Sept: She left another note telling us to move our bikes. They were on the public pavement, not touching her property though in front of her hedge, with about 1.5m of unobstructed pavement remaining.
Today (Saturday, ~8am): I vacuumed with a Dyson for literally a few minutes after my baby’s breakfast. She rang our doorbell twice (I ignored the first time), came upstairs and told me to stop. I was fed up and told her she was being unreasonable and that if she was that sensitive to normal noise, apartment living might not suit her.
We deactivated the doorbell because I’m tired of feeling that anything we do may result in her appearing at our door.
Later she left two more handwritten notes. One said: “I write you this letter because you don’t open the door for me anymore,” plus sarcastic comments. She again wanted to discuss various issues and made a point of saying she would not be moving out.

I deliberately didn’t answer because I didn’t want another confrontation, and I don’t think I’m obliged to answer my own front door.
She has also had conflicts with others in the building. Today she also refused a package for us and told our regular delivery man we’re “very weird.”

I accept apartment living requires consideration both ways, and if we were genuinely making excessive noise I’d want to know. But I’m starting to feel monitored and like she expects a say in ordinary aspects of our lives.
I’ve started keeping a dated log and all her notes. I’m considering one final written message: please stop coming to our door/leaving notes about ordinary day-to-day activities. If something is genuinely urgent/significant, contact us; otherwise complaints should go through the HOA. If the unwanted contact continues, we’ll document it and potentially raise it formally.
AITA for drawing that boundary? At what point does this cross from overbearing neighbour into harassment/formal-report territory? What would you actually do?

Edit to add that in all transparency , when she came up yet AGAIN this morning , I got quite pissed off and blurted out that she was completely unreasonable, should not live in a block of flats if she’s that sensitive to noise, and I’m ashamed to say but I also blurted out no one can stand you in this building (I know for a fact after what our neighbord opposite told us )maybe there’s a reason why it

Another edit to add that the previous owner was a very old guy who barely moved or made noise, so I guess it was a stark contrast with us

She herself burns stuff/paper right under our balcony and we cannot go out and sit on our balcony as smoke would fill our lungs

So I feel awful about this and I know it’s really not ok, but our 7mo usually sleeps in his room in his cot, he’s happy to fall asleep if we put a hand on his chest or hold his hand, and peacefully drifts off. We sleep in our room and when he wakes (we hear through the monitor) we either wait a minute to see if he’ll resettle, if not we go on and either feed of soothe him same way as bedtime . It’s not a big deal and the system is working pretty smoothly.

Anywhoo , last night we had the monitor on and we tended to his wakes, for some reason (I think the sleep deprivation played a role), the monitor was on mute after 4am, so we didn’t hear him. I wake up at 6am feeling particularly refreshed I must say, look at the monitor and see he had actually been crying his eyes out on and off between 4 and 5am. I almost don’t even want to go back on the recording to hear the crying as it breaks my heart.

Do you think there is any permanent damage to last night ? He was properly wailing and the idea that he was left like this for an hour just kills me inside, I can’t explain.
I’m not asking about solutions to the logistical problem (trust me we’re working on that) , really only asking about what impact you think it may have had… I feel awful

Hoi allemaal,
Wij hebben onlangs een appartement in Den Haag gekocht en willen de keuken bij de woonkamer betrekken. Daarvoor willen we de tussenliggende muur geheel of zo veel mogelijk verwijderen. We vermoeden dat dit een dragende muur is.

Ik probeer uit te zoeken wat precies de juiste volgorde is en wie we hiervoor moeten inschakelen. We weten al dat we toestemming van onze VvE nodig hebben en dat er waarschijnlijk een omgevingsvergunning nodig is.
Heeft iemand hier recent ervaring mee, met name in een appartement/VvE?
Ik ben vooral benieuwd naar:
● Begin je met een constructeur, of heb je daarnaast ook een bouwkundig tekenaar/architect nodig?
● Komt de constructeur normaal gesproken zelf langs om de bestaande situatie op te meten en te beoordelen?
● Maakt de constructeur vervolgens zowel de constructieberekening als de benodigde tekeningen voor de vergunningsaanvraag?
● Wie maakt eventuele overige bouwtekeningen die de gemeente nodig heeft?
● Regelen jullie de omgevingsvergunning zelf, of deed de constructeur/aannemer dit?
● In welke fase hebben jullie toestemming aan de VvE gevraagd?
● Nadat alles is goedgekeurd: hebben jullie een gewone aannemer ingeschakeld of een bedrijf dat gespecialiseerd is in het verwijderen van draagmuren en plaatsen van staalconstructies?
● Hebben jullie eventueel aanbevelingen voor een goede constructeur/aannemer in Den Haag?
Ik heb bij Gemeente Den Haag al een afspraak gemaakt om de oude bouwtekeningen van het pand in te zien, maar ik vraag me ook af hoe belangrijk die daadwerkelijk zijn. Kan een constructeur de bestaande situatie gewoon zelf opnemen, of waren de oorspronkelijke bouw-/constructietekeningen bij jullie noodzakelijk voor de berekening/vergunning?

Ik hoor heel graag hoe het traject er bij mensen die dit daadwerkelijk hebben laten doen van begin tot eind uitzag. Ook eventuele valkuilen zijn welkom!

Baby is 6,5 months old. We started sleep training a few weeks ago, with the pacifier, using Ferber check-ins with 3, 5, 10mn. He usually falls asleep a bit after the first or second check in, but we do reinsert the pacifier. Some nights he’s done great and slept with only one or 2 wakes, other nights, like last night, he was up every 2 hours. When he wakes during the night we feed or stroke or replace the pacifier.

For the rest we do everything by the book. His schedule is ok: 3 naps, wake windows something like 2.25/2.5/3/3.5 (low sleep needs baby, usually sleeps 12h45/13h total). He’s currently not ill or teething.

A lot of my friends had dramatically bad sleepers, then did Ferber with pacifier replacement and got dramatic results with their kids almost sleeping through the night pretty soon.
I’m sure the advice will be the just remove the pacifier altogether, but just checking if there’s maybe something wrong with my schedule also, or any other tip that might help?

Baby boy is 6 months old, and I swear he’s been on and off teething for weeks. We medicate with paracetamol appropriately for pain relief, but it wears out a bit after a few hours and sometimes that can fall in the middle of the night, or his bedtime. It’s hard to time it exactly

The thing is, this teething is constant, he’s gnawing on his fists like crazy, clearly in pain, and while during the day we can offer chew toys etc, at night all we have is paracetamol , and it just wakes him from the pain. I can’t really sleep train a baby who has physical needs for comfort and pain relief regularly, but how the heck will I ever be able to sleep train is he has a full set of teeth that still needs to erupt?

Little man is just over 6 months old. He was actually pretty decent between month 2 and 4/5. I’ve put off sleep training with my now 3yo daughter who sleeps and has always slept like crap, we’re now suffering the consequences from her bad sleep.

This time round we just can’t afford to suffer (even more) from bad sleep for much longer.

He’s become increasingly reliant on soothing touch and pacifier re-insertion and is now up easily every 2,5 to 3 hours. We also have some reverse cycling going on which we can’t seem to break.

Anyways, I know that we just need to place him down in his crib and do the timed check ins WITHOUT the pacifier, but the intensity of his crying scares me (we half tried a few nights ago and gave up) and makes me feel that I’m not teaching him anything other than yelling his lungs out.

Rant over but I really just need to hear success stories, bonus points if baby was 6mo and pacifier reliant

We’ve sold our flat, and buyers need 100% of the mortgage. Obviously we want them to get the mortgage and so the valuation needs to come up at their offer (a little bit over the asking price).

How does a valuator/taxateur value the flat? Should I have it as clean and spotless as for the viewings ? I’m guessing not, but equally the flat looked so good with all the stuff cleared out and everything clean and tidy, but it was a LOT of work, as were living in it with a toddler and a baby… any tips on whether there’s anything we can do to help the taxatie?

My daughter is turning 3, and her birthday party is in two days. We invited around 30 adults (including partners) plus their children, and we’ve spent quite a bit of time and money planning everything, food, decorations, activities, and two birthday cakes. It will be in a park near a large playground.

This afternoon alone I’ve had three people cancel. (Some whom I consider quite good friends too), I see a 2mn voice note and I just know it’s them explaining in length why they can’t come.

I know life happens, I completely understand if someone is ill or there’s a genuine emergency. But I have to admit it feels quite hurtful when multiple people cancel at the last minute. It’s almost like they suddenly remembered they had other plans or decided to do something else that weekend.
The messages are always along the lines of, “I’m so, so sorry, I really wanted to come,” followed by a long explanation. And while I’m sure many of them are sincere, part of me can’t help thinking: if coming really mattered that much, wouldn’t you make it work? Or at least know earlier that you couldn’t come?

Maybe it’s because I treat an RSVP as a commitment. Unless there’s a genuinely unavoidable reason, I would never cancel on someone a couple of days before, especially for a child’s birthday. So I think I’m struggling with the fact that not everyone seems to see it the same way.

There’s also the practical side: I ordered two large birthday cakes based on the RSVPs, so now I’m worried I’ll end up with loads of leftovers if a few more people cancel, especially as those cakes weren’t cheap.

Am I taking this too personally? Or do other parents also find it disappointing and a bit hurtful when people pull out a day or two before a birthday party?
I’d especially like to hear from parents who have hosted toddler birthday parties. Is this just something you’ve learned to expect?

Hello,

A little help is needed for the way forward with my almost 6 month old baby boy.

He is growing very well (actually, a little too well, he was born 50th percentile and is now 99th. He’s EFF according to hunger cues but his rapid weight gain has got the youth nurse to tell me to watch his growth and try to remain around 1000ml of formula (35fl.oz), so no problems of growth here)

His schedule is something like: 2.25/2.5/2.75/3. His naps are anywhere from 30 to 1h30mn.
Wake up between 6 and 7, bedtime between 19:15 and 19:45.

Issues are:
He used to wake up only twice a night to feed, more recently, wakes have crept in
Last night for example he was up from 1 to 2am, then 5 to 6am (and back to sleep for a little while). I don’t understand why, he had the perfect amount of daytime sleep and wake windows
He falls asleep semi independently, we sometimes have to go in after 5mn and put the pacifier in and he’ll settle and close his eyes. The pacifier is not something I want to take away yet, as it really provides soothing and it feels a bit much to leave him in his crib with nothing else.
He feeds well during the day and we started very slowly with purées and some BLW recently

If so I am DYING to know how. 5.5 month old falls asleep without a fuss independently and now takes one large feed around 1am, he is up for the day between 5am and 5:30am.
Shockingly, his sleep needs seem to have decrease one hour per month since he was 2/3 months old, according to Huckleberry stats. He was on 16hrs at 2 months, 15hrs at 3 months, 14 hours at 4 months, and were now at 13hr ish. Yesterday was the worst of all and had 11h40mn total.

I refuse to believe sleep needs decrease so quickly, what’s even happening? He is now firmly on a 3 nap schedule. With 2/3 hour wake windows. Bedtime around 19:30/20:00, I cap naps at 2:30/3:00 total otherwise shit hits the fan

Our house went live on Funda on Friday afternoon, it’s in one of the 4 big cities in the Randstad.
After about 36 hours (Sunday evening), we have:
● ~3,600 appearances in search results
● ~445 listing views
● 45 saves
I tried to find benchmarks online, but Funda doesn’t seem to publish any statistics on what is typical for the first few days, and I couldn’t find much from makelaars either.
For those of you who have recently sold a house in the Netherlands:

How many saves did you have after the first weekend?
How many viewings did that translate into?
Did it end up selling quickly or with multiple offers?

I’m mainly looking for real-world experiences rather than guesses, as I’m curious whether these numbers are relatively high, average or low. I’m slightly desperate to sell before the holidays 😅

My daughter is almost 3 (in a week). She often sleeps around 9:30 p.m. to 6:00–6:30 a.m. and many days doesn’t nap. She wakes up naturally, is healthy, happy, energetic, and developing completely normally. The days where daycare manages to get her to nap she sleeps even less (I’ve asked to cap her naps or make her not nap at all but they’re not so understanding, and I’m so tired I didn’t insist)

I’m not really looking for sleep advice. I’m looking to know whether anyone else is living this reality.
I feel like people don’t appreciate how much it changes family life. Friends whose children sleep 11–12 hours overnight and still nap (or even don’t have but still have a normal lenght night) have several extra hours every day to spend together, catch up on chores, exercise, or simply rest.

Meanwhile, we’re parenting through those hours instead. It genuinely feels like we’re living a different version of parenthood. I’ve always needed 8,5/9 hours a night to sleep and there are nights where that would literally be more than my toddler.

If your child has always had very low sleep needs, did it stay that way as they got older? How did you cope with having so much less downtime than other families?

Edit to add that those 8,5/9 hours of night sleep are WITH wakes (although they are very brief)

So I’m aware this will obviously vary very widely, however we have a 3 year old daughter and, despite the fact that I sleep on a floor mattress right up against her floor bed, she will randomly wake two or theee times on an average night by yelling/crying. It’s brief, I give her my hand or pat her, and she’s right back down.

However it does disrupt my sleep quite a bit, and I’ve been wondering at what age I can realistically accept that she will sleep (mostly) through the night without parental intervention. I don’t mind sleeping next to her, but it’s the waking up and needing to help part that’s really wrecking my sleep, after years and years of broken sleep, especially since I also have a 5 month old I need to do night feeds for.

So I posted this morning and my post got removed. My previously excellent sleeper (from month 2 to 4 let’s say - he’s now almost 5 months) went from waking just twice a night to feed and straight back to sleep, to needing quite a bit of help to drift off (frequent pacifier reinsertion and back caresses), to multiple (4 or 5) night wakes.

I read different takes on pacifier. Is it ok to use with ferber if I only put it in once at the start?

Also, my boy is a big guy, he’s 8,5 kilos at just almost 5 months, wondering if it’s realistic to ask him to have just one night feed? He had 3 night feeds last night (100ml, 60 then another 100 at 5am). We haven’t started solids yet

My son is 5 days shy of 5 months old and I’m wondering whether sleep training is appropriate or whether I should wait things out.
He used to be a pretty good sleeper. He could often fall asleep independently at bedtime and wasn’t a baby who needed extensive rocking or feeding to sleep. However, over the last few weeks his sleep has deteriorated significantly.
Current schedule:
Wake-up: usually around 5:30–6:30am (recently often closer to 5:30am)
4 naps per day
Wake windows: roughly 2 hours
Most naps are exactly one sleep cycle (35–40 minutes, usually around 37 minutes)
On a good day he’ll occasionally do a 1-hour nap
Total sleep is now around 13.5 hours per 24 hours according to Huckleberry

A typical day looks something like:
Wake 5:30am
Nap 1: ~35–45 min
Nap 2: ~35–40 min
Nap 3: ~35–40 min
Nap 4: ~35–40 min
Bedtime around 7:30pm

The main issue is nights. He used to give much longer stretches, but now he’s waking multiple times. This started before he recently got sick with a viral upper respiratory infection, although the illness has certainly not helped.
He is also very dependent on the pacifier when falling asleep. During nap attempts I often find myself repeatedly reinserting it because he spits it out and gets upset.
Today, for example, he woke at 5:30am and by 3:30pm had only accumulated about 1 hour 50 minutes of daytime sleep across three naps. He was rubbing his eyes and clearly tired, but would become upset whenever I tried to put him down for a nap.
My questions:
Does this sound like a baby who is undertired, overtired, or on an age-inappropriate schedule?
Are 2-hour wake windows still appropriate at almost 5 months?
Would you try moving to 3 naps, or is that too early given the short naps?
Does this sound like a situation where sleep training could help, or would you wait until after he’s fully recovered from illness?
I’m exhausted and struggling to figure out whether I should change the schedule, sleep train, or simply ride this phase out.

My son is 4.5 months old and I’m struggling to believe what the sleep data seems to be telling me.
According to Huckleberry:
June 2–8: average total sleep = 14h 25m (11h 15m night + 3h 10m naps)
June 10–16: average total sleep = 13h 31m (10h 12m night + 3h 19m naps)
So in the space of roughly a week, his average sleep appears to have dropped by almost an entire hour per day.
What confuses me is that:
His naps haven’t really changed much (actually slightly increased).
The difference is almost entirely coming from night sleep.
He generally seems happy, active, rolling, practicing lots of new skills, and doesn’t seem obviously overtired.
He’s 4.5 months old, which I know is around the time of the “4 month sleep regression” and a lot of developmental changes.
I guess my question is:

Is it actually normal for a baby around 4–5 months old to show this much variation in total sleep from one week to the next?
Could this simply be normal week-to-week fluctuation and averaging effects, or would you interpret a drop from ~14.5 hours to ~13.5 hours as evidence that his sleep needs have genuinely decreased?

I stopped breastfeeding 2 months ago, my partner handles most of the wakes while I sleep in another room, yet I’m still quite tired and randomly wake up at 4:30/5:00 am each day without being able to get back to sleep (I fall asleep anywhere between 21:30 and 22:00 and don’t handle any night wakes between those times)

I feel already a LOT better since I stopped breastfeeding and a bit of a fog has lifted but still quite drained by the end of the day. I have a 3yo toddler but she goes to daycare most days of the weeks. I handle all baby duties on my own every day except the weekend where we split with my husband.

Still, given that I don’t breastfeed and am given ample opportunity to sleep why am I still so darn tired !? I got everything checked and only have mild hyperthyroidism

Home all day with the baby, everything is on me every single waking moment, and in his sleep he often has microwakes where I need to intervene and pat his stomach before he fully wakes up.

I’m spending my day trying to do things only to hear moans of protest (not full out crying, but just moaning and grunting that will escalate to indicate he needs to be held or picked up).

Today he’s completely skipping his last nap even though I’m sure he needs it (put him down at the right time too!) Tried rocking him, feeding him, baby wearing him, caressing him… just constant squirming and moaning , only happy if he’s held and shown around the house or outside.

It’s 18:00 and his moaning is sending me over the absolute edge … what do you fricking WANT?

In The Hague.. the place has been put up for sale a few weeks ago already