Baby J Will Have No Toys

Good gracious, another ginormous recall. (I heard about this recall of 9 million Mattel toys on CNN, but you can also check it out on the CPSC site.) I think we'll just make toys for Baby J ourselves.

So far, we haven't been affected by any of the recalls that have come about in recent weeks, but I'm just waiting.

Too bad the lead in the paint that's causing the recalls isn't iron instead. Apparently Baby J is iron deficient. I've been trying to give him iron drops for the past week of so, and it's a nasty experience for both of us. (Plus, did you know that iron oxidizes when it's out of the bottle; i.e., now there are weird brown spots all over my bedspread from where drops of it were seemingly invisibly flung, only to leave their mark hours later...) So today I have to take the poor lad to have additional blood drawn to do a more complete lab workup to see if he really needs the iron supplement of if he's just "borderline."

I really hope there is a way to increase his iron without the drops. Isn't it better to get nutrients from food anyway, instead of supplements? I just need to be more intentional about what he eats. I feel like a total tool in the feeding department these days anyway. Being on 100% breastmilk was soooo much easier. Now I'm worried that I all the good I did breastfeeding will be for naught because he's eating so sporadically with table food.

I Agree...and I'm Guilty

This article on Babble really makes a lot of good points. I hope you go take a look at it, but in case you can't or don't want to, here is the graphic that goes along with it:

I am definitely guilty of a lot of what Katie Allison Granju is writing about here -- but I also always think that I fall short, and perhaps that falling-short-ness actually helps my son a little bit. I know I was relieved to read this article on Babycenter which talks about a little bit of dust and dirt in the atmosphere (and is it just me, or do you also, every time you hear/see the word "atmosphere" start thinking, "Brrrrr, it's cold in here, there must be some Toros in the atmosphere..." and no I wasn't a cheerleader in high school either -- but I digress) being good for the baby and helping him to develop antibodies and such.

I always worry about my house not being childproofed enough. But it's hard! We have waaaay too much stuff, and I'm working on that, but I think it's ridiculous to cover up every single furniture corner or sharp edge ever. I just have to watch Baby J everywhere he goes. But I don't think I would want to just let him roam free, even if I knew that a room were as childproofed as physically possible. I mean, he could still fall, bump his head, knock into a wall (you seriously cannot go around padding those, I mean, come on), etc. So I watch him. And I think it's going alright so far.

I am guilty of wanting fancy strollers, even though hardly anyone where I live cares. All the moms in my Gymboree group have Gracos, and we all live with it. The travel system is the way to go. But I would love to have the fancy pants Quinny, even though I can't find a good pic to add to this post to save my life!

Anyway, I know that it doesn't matter what kind of STUFF I buy for Baby J, or which books I read about/for him, it matters that I am available to him and loving to him, but set good limits and provide appropriate discipline, etc. So I think I will have to just hang in on that. Because I cannot be maxing out credit cards just to buy him a stroller.

One More Time, with Feeling

Well, so much for not Ferberizing. Turns out we sort of ended up doing it in the middle of the night last night, after Baby J had gotten up for his second feeding but wouldn't go back to sleep on his own. I put the blanket down on the floor of his room and was okay with the idea of lying with him and patting him back to sleep, but he decided he wanted to crawl (well, army crawl) around the room, which I was NOT okay with. Not at 3:30 in the morning. So I put him in his crib, where he cried and cried and cried and I ended up giving my husband the monitor and putting in earplugs. Not that I couldn't hear him through the earplugs, but they just helped to dull it a bit. After about a half hour he did go to sleep on his own, and slept till about 7.

So this afternoon at naptime I figured I had better not "reinforce negative sleep associations" as Dr. Ferber would say, so I made him take a nap on his own instead of with me, as we usually do on weekends and my days off. It was so weird to take a nap in the bed by myself. After about ten minutes of unhappiness, Baby J did go to sleep and napped well (at least an hour, which is really good for him). Then we got up and went to the park and he didn't seem to remember how mad he was at me when I was trying to make him fall asleep on his own.

So I figured, we'd better keep with the trend tonight at bedtime, just to make sure we're not undoing any of the hard work done over the past 24 hours. I tried to wait until he was REALLY tired and seemed ready for bed, and put him in his crib. He cried for about a half hour, and I went in every 10 minutes to check on him, and finally, right as I was going to check on him for the fourth time (leading into the 4th ten-minute span), he fell asleep. I hope this makes a difference in his night wakings. If he wakes up to feed, I will still feed him. And then I will put him right down, and if he cries about that, then we'll have to go with the intervals again. But hopefully this new way of falling asleep at night will help make a difference so that he can go back to sleep without feeding when he wakes up overnight. I sure hope so, because this is NOT EASY. In fact, it sucks sucks sucks. I hope he doesn't hate me now.

Let's not do that again...

Well, we did not Ferberize last night. I tried, but Baby J was so pissed at me, I just couldn't do it anymore. He screamed and screamed, and, you have to understand, he is normally such a sweet, smiley, easy-going baby that to hear him scream like that is totally abnormal. I just couldn't do it. I was in the midst of a ten-minute "wait it out" and I just couldn't stand it anymore. I went and picked him up, and he was gasping and hiccuping and just generally miserable, and I had to put a blanket on the floor of his room to nurse and cuddle him for a good twenty minutes before he settled down enough to fall back to sleep. Usually when I get up with him at night to feed, it's for ten to fifteen minutes at a shot...this time I was up for about an hour total, and it was miserable. So, maybe I'm a wuss, but I just can't do it right now. I know people say it only takes a night or two and then they sleep the whole way through and don't go through the dastardly crying fits again, but I don't think I can make it. And my husband just slept through the whole thing, snoring like a trucker, which actually was good, because if he were awake he wouldn't even have made it as long as I did listening to J cry. We'll see how things go. I hope someday Baby J just decides to get himself through the whole night on his own. We've been close before and then something has always happened to shake it up. Maybe we'll get back there again. All I know is it has to happen by his first birthday! But we have till the end of October for that.

Wish Me Luck

Waaaaaaa...I don't really want to do this, but I think it's time to Ferberize. Baby J just keeps getting up at night, at least three times, and I don't know if I can or should take it anymore. Everyone I talk to (seriously, there has hardly been anyone who has agreed that I should keep getting up to feed him, so if anyone reading this is of that opinion, I would love to hear it!) says I should just let him cry, that it will only take a night or so and then he'll stop waking to eat. So, let's see, starting tonight. I'll let you know tomorrow how we make out.

My Heart (and Wallet) Aches for This...

Cool Mom Picks featured this line of jewelry by Colleen Berg in a post yesterday, and in exploring the site, I found the next object of my obsession. These are little thumbrints on the lariat!!! How cute and wonderful is that! Should I get one of Baby J's thumbs now or should I wait for Baby Dos to come along (again, not happening yet, but eventually)... Maybe I could save my pennies by then?

Boobs, Butts, and Baby Gear

If you have any interest at all in the topic of breastfeeding versus bottle-feeding, you should read this article at Baby Toolkit. It is the best, most thorough article I have read on the whole dealio.

In other random topics, we are saying Bye-Bye to Swaddlers. I can't believe I've managed to keep Baby J in size 2 Swaddlers this long (he is going to be 8 months this Friday!) but since he's skinny, we've made it happen. I adore Swaddlers -- their softness, their woven absorbancy, oh, how we will miss them! Just have to wait for Baby Dos to come along (no, not yet) to use them again!

And thirdly, if you need baby stuff, head on over to Amazon.com where you can get supercheap stuffs like this awesome organic Kee-Ka blanket for only $11.41 and eligible for Free Super Saver Shipping -- it's usually $38!!!! They have tons of other Kee-Ka stuff on sale, as well as Bumkins bibs, and who knows what else. At the risk of sounding way too much like Mir at Want Not (who I could never be because she's way cooler and in the know about deals and steals), head on over to Amazon now!!!!!

No. No. Wrong, That's Wrong

These were the words of the nurse from the Public Health office when she called yesterday to follow up and see how Baby J was doing with the rabies shots. Except, well, I couldn't really lie (I just can't, I'm really bad at it and I always get caught) so I told her that when we went to the clinic the doctor didn't feel they were necessary, etc. from yesterday's post, blah blah blah, and that's when she said No. No. Wrong, That's Wrong. So I had her call the clinic to duke it out because I was not about to get in the middle of it, and after much research and talking to various helpful and un-helpful people, we decided that the right thing to do would be to just get the shots.

So he had two yesterday. My dear sister (of the non-blogging set so sorry I can't link to her) went to the clinic with me, and poor Baby J got one long shot (it seemed like it took the nurse forever to push the plunger in the syringe!) in each thigh. He cried and it hurt, but he recovered quite well. Was running a little fever this morning, but I called the ped and they said it wasn't a big deal since it hadn't even hit 102. So I guess we're doing the right thing.

All I could think about was Meredith's stepmother on Grey's Anatomy when she had the surgery for her hiccups and then died of an infection. But a doctor from the State Public Health dept assured me that this round of vaccines carries no more risk than the standard vaccines that they little guy has to get anyway. So, just keep us in your thoughts and prayers, and I'm sure we'll make it through.

Rabies, Baby

Oh boy. What a trying few days it's been.





We had a bat in our house early Monday morning. I woke up to my husband getting out of bed after hearing the dog barking and the cat crying (I heard neither of these things, but despite my baby-listening-ears, I am still a pretty deep sleeper.) He said he saw a bat go down the stairs, and then it swooped back up and went into Baby J's room and flew around before disappearing (we still haven't found it.) Thus began the frantic "Should Baby J get rabies shots" theme of the week.





I talked to the lovely people at Bat Conservation International who told me to call my state health department, who told me that I should get the series of shots for the little one. This, all because I read an article in Parents magazine that said that any time a child in unattended in a room where a bat has been spotted, he should get the shots.





Now, I have been super stressed out because rabies is a serious deal. It is fatal if you don't catch it soon enough. According to the doc I talked to today, there has only been one reported case worldwide in recent history (sorry this is not hyperlinked, but I'm not about to dive back into the crazy world of rabies websites) where a person has contracted rabies and lived once symptoms started to show.





There is a whole lot of a deal about this that I could write a book on, but suffice it to say that we went to our local emergency clinic (because regular doctors' offices don't carry the vaccine) to get the shots for Baby J, but the doctor didn't think it was necessary. Check with DH and my mom and they both were cool. My friend Jen said her friend Susan, who knows lots and lots about bats and has a one-year-old daughter, said if she had seen a bat flying around her daughter's room, she wouldn't be worried either.





I know there may be a case of better-safe-than-sorry going on and in this case we're not being better-safe, but I really don't think we'll be sorry. Baby J doesn't have any puncture marks, he didn't wake up crying (which I really think he would have if he had been bitten.) So does this guy: ""People sometimes mistakenly believe you couldn't feel a bat bite," French said.
"I've had lots of bat bites, and they hurt. They feel like sharp needle jabs." So...I think we're okay for now.





Still, this guy is not my friend.

I keep wanting to post, but then I think...hmm, what if someone knows it's me and I'm posting something inappropriate, or...well, nobody will read what I post anyway (which is still probably true at this stage of the game), but I've decided that I want to post more often just because sometimes I have good ideas, etc., and I want to talk about them. So there.

Anyway, today's project is deciding where to order little J's new t-shirt. My mom wants to get it for him, since she calls him "lovebug" and this great shirt from Kee-ka has a little lovebug on it.


I always spend way too much time deciding where to order items...trying to find things on sale, with free shipping, etc. Probably, if time really is money, then I'm spending waaaaay too much just to find deals when I should just plunk down the cash at the first place I look. Oh well, I'm off to keep doing my research...

Online Egg Hunt

This Easter, I am excited about everything. Probably because of the baby. Used to be that Easter seemed like an overgrown holiday, but now that I am also working at church, there's lots of excitement and planning and activities going on.

Found this Online Egg Hunt through a link on the Baby Cheapskate blog. I'd been looking for an online egg hunt, but I kind of hoped that it would be a little bit more tricky...

If you find one that's more difficult, let me know! I used to love egg hunts when I was little, not the mass kind where you can see all the eggs and it's just a mad scramble to collect them (I was (and still am) a pretty slow-goer), but the kind where they were REALLY hidden and you had to be very observant (a big compliment in my household) to find them. So, I'd like to find the same kind online. Although at least now I get to live vicariously through Jack. He's going to hunt eggs tomorrow at church. I don't think he'll really HUNT them, but rather shake, squish, or throw them when someone gives some to him. It will be fun nonetheless. Next year will be even better!