Someone's toddling around the house! At a couple weeks past eleven months, Oscar beat both my and Adam's walking ages. Here's the proof...
Do be sure to appreciate my ghetto-riffic toy. A peanut container with dried pasta inside-- never fails to please!
Showing posts with label Baby D. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baby D. Show all posts
8.14.2011
2.16.2011
Silly Monkey!
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a blog post about my very first purchase for Baby D:
At the time, I didn't know what the intended wearer would look like, or what kind of personality this baby would have. Heck, I didn't even know what Baby D's gender was!
It is SO.COOL. to see a million possibilities turn into one reality.
I am so blessed. :-)
At the time, I didn't know what the intended wearer would look like, or what kind of personality this baby would have. Heck, I didn't even know what Baby D's gender was!
It is SO.COOL. to see a million possibilities turn into one reality.
I am so blessed. :-)
1.24.2011
Knead It Monday: Wherein Baby D Tried to Foil Me
So I decided to try my hand with the whole wheat recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. It called for 1/3 cup brown sugar. Silly me, I decided I would have no need of any brown sugar in my Sugarless 2011, so I didn't bother refilling it when it ran out a few days before New Year's. So I substituted about 1/4 cup honey instead.
The directions requested that I mix the yeast with some of the flour, then heat the water, sugar, butter, and salt in a saucepan, and then add it to the yeast/flour mixture-- and then mix with a hand mixer for 3 minutes. I thought that was a bit odd, but I followed the directions (besides adding the salt; I thought I'd do that later, with the rest of the flour).
As I turned off the mixer, I heard a pathetic cry from the bedroom. That darn mixer had woken Baby D! So I let this weird yeast soup sit while I nursed Baby D back to sleep again. I tiptoed out, mixed in the rest of the flour and started kneading, when...
Baby D let me know in no uncertain terms that HIS. NAP. WAS. OVER.
So I washed all the gunk off my hands and brought him out. I finished kneading, put it to rise, and realized that I never remembered to add the salt. ARG.
Baby D was great until about ten minutes before I needed to punch down the dough. Then he made the mother of all messy diapers just as my mom called, so I was juggling a naked baby and a phone while the dough sat forlornly in the oven. I finally rescued it after a two-hour rise time, and separated it into two loaves. I forget why, but that also sat there for a while before I could put them into loaf pans for the second rise.
Fast forward to the end of the second rise, which also went way too long. Baby D was very angrily insisting that I feed him RIGHT NOW, and I was tired and hungry. For an instant, I started to take the loaves out of the oven so it could preheat for a few minutes, but I stopped with a very dignified, ladylike phrase: "Aw, SCREW IT!" I turned on the oven and let it preheat with the loaves inside and sat down with Baby D. Happy mom, happy baby, unhappy little loaves.
As you can guess, they didn't turn out the best. But one of the things I just love about homemade bread is that even when it doesn't come out perfect, it always comes out delicious, nonetheless! I might try this recipe again in the near future, but try mixing the yeast and water conventionally, and use brown sugar. And give Baby D away.
Just kidding about that last part, but I'd love it if he'd just sprout some teeth already.
1.01.2011
Time for an EC Update!
Happy New Year! Hope you didn't party too hard! We rang in the new year at - get this - a baby party. We were invited by a couple whose baby was in the NICU with Oscar, when I ran into the mom at La Leche League a couple weeks ago. Kind of random, but we showed up anyways to a party full of couples with their babies. We didn't know anybody there, but it was fun! And I actually met someone else in real life who is doing EC with her baby. Isn't this a nice segue into an EC update?
December proved to be a uniquely challenging month of EC. We had freshly come back from a ten-day stay in NY, which was murder on EC training to begin with. Then, Oscar caught a minor stomach bug from Adam. And then he started teething. All mayhem broke loose with his little digestive system!
Suddenly, I wasn't catching his movements. We would actually go for days when I wouldn't catch anything at all. :-( I'd hold the little guy over the toilet, wait, and... nothing. So I'd put a diaper on him, and about three minutes later, he would do his business. It was really frustrating!
And then Adam surprised me. Usually, he lets me go my merry way with all my crazy ideas, and just kind of amusedly observes me. And he thought this idea was particularly hokey. However, a couple weeks into December, as I was pouring out my frustrations, he encouraged, "Just keep going through the motions. He'll get it."
Knock me over with a feather! He knows it works!
Fortunately, we got the ball rolling again. Here were three actions I found helpful:
So now we're pretty much back to how things were before all the craziness started. Baby D, you have pulled through once again!
December proved to be a uniquely challenging month of EC. We had freshly come back from a ten-day stay in NY, which was murder on EC training to begin with. Then, Oscar caught a minor stomach bug from Adam. And then he started teething. All mayhem broke loose with his little digestive system!
Suddenly, I wasn't catching his movements. We would actually go for days when I wouldn't catch anything at all. :-( I'd hold the little guy over the toilet, wait, and... nothing. So I'd put a diaper on him, and about three minutes later, he would do his business. It was really frustrating!
And then Adam surprised me. Usually, he lets me go my merry way with all my crazy ideas, and just kind of amusedly observes me. And he thought this idea was particularly hokey. However, a couple weeks into December, as I was pouring out my frustrations, he encouraged, "Just keep going through the motions. He'll get it."
Knock me over with a feather! He knows it works!
Fortunately, we got the ball rolling again. Here were three actions I found helpful:
1. Going through the motions. Just as Adam said. It really helped me keep momentum through the rough patch, instead of giving up entirely.
2. Going coverless. Leaving Oscar with just a fitted or a flat on helped me know exactly when he did his business, and from there I got a feel for his rhythm again.
3. Pottying at specific, predictable times. One easy way I helped ensure a catch was to take him to the toilet every time after he woke up, whether in the morning or after a nap. That, in my opinion, is the optimal time for success because baby wakes up with a full bladder.
So now we're pretty much back to how things were before all the craziness started. Baby D, you have pulled through once again!
12.14.2010
9.28.2010
Okay, I'm officially a hippie now.
Adam's been telling me that for years, but now I have no choice but to agree on this one.
Shoot, I swore I'd never be one of those parents-- you know, the ones that blather on about their kid's potty habits and make you inwardly scream, "TMI! TMI!!!" But even hippies have to potty-train their kids. And you have to admit, a potty training one-month-old is a bit out of the ordinary. But I apologize for the TMI-ness, anyways.
So, I've been wildly interested in trying Elimination Communication, the art learning to recognize a baby's cues that it needs to eliminate, and respond by helping him use a receptacle other than a diaper. Babies, for the most part, are born with a dislike of sitting in their own waste. Hence why my little guy likes to spray every other time I take his diaper off (lucky me!). EC appeals to me because I don't see the logic in getting a baby used to ignoring that inborn dislike, and then trying to undo the damage later during the terrible two's or three's. Not to mention the decreased diapers! I'm all for that!
So Sunday night, I was like, "What the heck, let's give it a whirl!" and I put him in cloth diapers without covers so I'd know exactly when he went. From this, I was going to put together a rough idea of his elimination patterns. Supposedly, most babies have times that they'll predictably go: upon waking; 5, 10, 15 minutes into a feeding, etc. For other times, they will give cues: grunting, wiggling, staring off into space... It's all about learning your baby's individual cues and patterns.
Well, about 29854 wet diapers into it, I looked at the clock. It had only been a few hours! I'd had enough of pattern watching, and decided to try the real deal, since he had been dry for a little while. I held him over the bathroom sink, started making sssss pssss sounds.... and then he went!
This happened a few more times. I was absolutely floored by how little encouragement it took for him to do his business (although now that I think of it, is there ANY baby that needs encouragement to be a little poop machine?). I'm still working on learning his cues and figuring out a pattern, which is a little complicated since we've been going out quite a bit lately, and of course I need to put him back in diapers for that. Oy veh. But, of course, this is a skill that takes time to learn!
Today, I took a giant leap of faith and let him go diaperless. He's just lying on my lap with a prefold under his little baby butt, and so far, I haven't been a target, lol! Actually, while I was writing this, Baby D finished a feeding and started grunting. I've observed that he tends to have a bowel movement around feeding times, so I rushed him to the bathroom, and... sure enough, he had to go! Yay for us!!!
In short, this has been an activity that yields amazing results for so little time and effort invested so far. I'm hoping he's not lulling me into a false sense of security before he does something outrageous, the little stinker. I'll keep you posted on how it goes!
Here are some links about EC, in case you're interested:
http://www.diaperfreebaby.org
http://www.tribalbaby.org
EC YouTube video
Shoot, I swore I'd never be one of those parents-- you know, the ones that blather on about their kid's potty habits and make you inwardly scream, "TMI! TMI!!!" But even hippies have to potty-train their kids. And you have to admit, a potty training one-month-old is a bit out of the ordinary. But I apologize for the TMI-ness, anyways.
So, I've been wildly interested in trying Elimination Communication, the art learning to recognize a baby's cues that it needs to eliminate, and respond by helping him use a receptacle other than a diaper. Babies, for the most part, are born with a dislike of sitting in their own waste. Hence why my little guy likes to spray every other time I take his diaper off (lucky me!). EC appeals to me because I don't see the logic in getting a baby used to ignoring that inborn dislike, and then trying to undo the damage later during the terrible two's or three's. Not to mention the decreased diapers! I'm all for that!
So Sunday night, I was like, "What the heck, let's give it a whirl!" and I put him in cloth diapers without covers so I'd know exactly when he went. From this, I was going to put together a rough idea of his elimination patterns. Supposedly, most babies have times that they'll predictably go: upon waking; 5, 10, 15 minutes into a feeding, etc. For other times, they will give cues: grunting, wiggling, staring off into space... It's all about learning your baby's individual cues and patterns.
Well, about 29854 wet diapers into it, I looked at the clock. It had only been a few hours! I'd had enough of pattern watching, and decided to try the real deal, since he had been dry for a little while. I held him over the bathroom sink, started making sssss pssss sounds.... and then he went!
This happened a few more times. I was absolutely floored by how little encouragement it took for him to do his business (although now that I think of it, is there ANY baby that needs encouragement to be a little poop machine?). I'm still working on learning his cues and figuring out a pattern, which is a little complicated since we've been going out quite a bit lately, and of course I need to put him back in diapers for that. Oy veh. But, of course, this is a skill that takes time to learn!
Today, I took a giant leap of faith and let him go diaperless. He's just lying on my lap with a prefold under his little baby butt, and so far, I haven't been a target, lol! Actually, while I was writing this, Baby D finished a feeding and started grunting. I've observed that he tends to have a bowel movement around feeding times, so I rushed him to the bathroom, and... sure enough, he had to go! Yay for us!!!
In short, this has been an activity that yields amazing results for so little time and effort invested so far. I'm hoping he's not lulling me into a false sense of security before he does something outrageous, the little stinker. I'll keep you posted on how it goes!
Here are some links about EC, in case you're interested:
http://www.diaperfreebaby.org
http://www.tribalbaby.org
EC YouTube video
Three Things to Celebrate Today
1. Baby D is one month old today!
2. I was able tocram into wear my pre-pregnancy jeans for the first time again!
3. I got the little guy to eliminate in the toilet today! Several times! Yes, I am totally serious. I'm hoping to write a post on it tomorrow, but here's some reading for now, in case you're curious.
Call me vain, but I think I was the most excited about the jeans, haha.
2. I was able to
3. I got the little guy to eliminate in the toilet today! Several times! Yes, I am totally serious. I'm hoping to write a post on it tomorrow, but here's some reading for now, in case you're curious.
Call me vain, but I think I was the most excited about the jeans, haha.
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