Thursday 31 January 2013

Things I love :)

 My son is at such an awesome age when he is becoming more mobile (but isn't yet), communicates in ways other then crying (much more then before), learns new things every day and EVERYTHING interests him. This stage is a much easier stage for the parent then many of the ones previously and it is SUPER fun.

    Some of the things I love that he does now:
Army crawl

Smiling when he can see family members
Laughing
Higher independence level


Trying to take toys away from me to play with
Seeing favourite things developing (toys, songs, stories etc etc.)

How excited and happy he is when we are doing diaper changes and bath times
Shrieking (yep I love it. Find it hilarious)
Love it when he says "mamama" before he starts crying (I know he doesn't yet connect me to the word yet but it still warms my heart)
Love when he sucks his lips in and tries to smile, it is just TOO funny
Love that when he feels shy he burrows his head into my chest
There is a TON more of course but these come to mind REAL fast :)

     Even when a particular day is hard I look at my son and at moments get swept away with love for my little man. Never before I got pregnant could I imagine the strength with which one could love, everyone knows you will love you're child but this is just beyond what I could have ever imagined!Of course I won't lie and say that everything is always rosy and wonderful. Sometimes I want to cry along him. Sometimes I feel so frustrated I feel like leaving the room. Sometimes I'm hungry or need the restroom and can't step away because he is crying but you deal with things the best you could and he great days definitely outnumber the bad days. Although even the great days can be tiring! Being a mom is so hard and I have the utmost respect for stay at home moms especially when they have multiple children ESPECIALLY  if those children are young.  With this in mind I remember reading this once upon a time (many probably have read it already but rereading this does one good I think :

"A man came home from work and found his three children outside, still in their pajamas, playing in the mud, with empty food boxes and wrappers strewn all around the front yard. The door of his wife's car was open, as was the front door to the house and there was no sign of the dog. Proceeding into the entry, he found an even bigger mess. A lamp had been knocked over, and the throw rug was wadded against one wall. In the front room the TV was loudly blaring a Cartoon channel, and the family room was strewn with toys and various items of clothing. In the kitchen, dishes filled the sink, breakfast food was spilled on the counter, the fridge door was open wide, dog food was spilled on the floor, a broken glass lay under the table, and a small pile of sand was spread by the back door. He quickly headed up the stairs, stepping over toys and more piles of clothes, looking for his wife. He was worried she might be ill, or that something serious had happened. He was met with a small trickle of water as it made its way out the bathroom door. As he peered inside he found wet towels, scummy soap and more toys strewn over the floor. Miles of toilet paper lay in a heap and toothpaste had been smeared over the mirror and walls. As he rushed to the bedroom, he found his wife still curled up in the bed in her pajamas, reading a novel. She looked up at him, smiled, and asked how his day went. He looked at her bewildered and asked, 'What happened here today?' She again smiled and answered, 'You know every day when you come home from work and you ask me what in the world do I do all day?' 'Yes,' was his incredulous reply. She answered, 'Well, today I didn't do it."

Monday 28 January 2013

Growth and Sizes

Infants grow SO fast. Many times have I hid some outfit because it was WAYYY to big ("no way he won't fit in this for ages") next thing I know well its almost to small. This happened a few days ago. I was putting on a sleeper for bedtime on Alek and had decided to try one on that 2 weeks ago had been huge on him. My thought process went like this : "well it will probably still be huge on him but the other ones I like are dirty and this one is so cute. Plus he may have grown a bit." Well to my surprise it was JUST right if I had waited another 2 weeks or so it would have been too small. Meanwhile, just approximately 2 weeks (maybe 3) it was huge, meaning his feet not only did not go into the feet part of the sleeper but were dangling way up there. UHMM.... WHAT!? How is that even possible!!! I mean I know infants grow a lot and fast but when something like this happens (and it has happened quite a lot) it just shocks me each time.

  Infants normally grow extremely fast in weight and height the first 2 or 3 months then start slowing down. I think something like an inch a month in the beginning (sometimes more sometimes less) and more like 1 cm ( more or less, each baby differs) after 6 months a month. My son has slowed down but only a tiny bit he is STILL growing approximately 3 centimeters a month. WOW that's awesome but even knowing this you don't seem to really grasp this concept until you see his clothes shrink so fast and NO it is NOT your washing machine (usually).



What has often happened for me is that I do not regularly go through the bags of "too big" clothing and have them hidden somewhere. Well when Alek was small I found out when he was approximately 4 weeks that I had forgot about half the 0-3 month clothing in a bag! Ooops, thankfully he still had about 2 weeks to wear that stuff! Or sometimes I think that he doesn't need the next size up yet but turns out some of the next size up can already have been worn. It tends to be forgotten that each brand seems to make slightly different size clothing for the same sizes. For example, Walmart clothing is for shorter chunkier babies, carters seems to run pretty big, Gymboree runs big (and their clothing though more expensive keeps the colour and holds up beautifully even after many washes), meanwhile children's place seems to run slightly smaller (or maybe I'm wrong don't take me up on it, brands seems to be mixing up in my head). Old Navy also runs pretty small at least height wise. So a tip is not to put away everything of one size just because one thing doesn't fit. Put things away as you see the particular item get small even if (and it does happen) one item from an outfit still fits the second piece may be small....well unless you have a lot of spare money for A LOT of clothing or were gifted a lot. Go through your big size bags every few weeks and a good idea if you have room in the closet or dresser is to keep the next size up ready in the dresser/closet already so you don't forget about them and maybe your child will already fit in some of the items. My son now is wearing some 3-6 still (very few), mostly 6-12, pretty much no 6-9 (hate that size, it was useless for my son), and some 6-12 is getting small so in the smaller brands some 12-18 will be coming out soon. Also keep in mind brands like what is sold in Sears that have weights instead of months are ALSO not exact I have one sleeper that said 16 pounds my son is almost 19 and still fits in it height and length wise so I'm not sure what 16 pound baby it is made for.

      A tip to those who have not yet given birth. Pick a spot or thing beside/on which you take a monthly photo of your child so that you see the growth clearly. I take photos of Alek on his Fisher Price Infant - Toddler Rocker...another good idea is beside a big stuffed toy. Also there are cool stickers that say how many months baby is that you stick onto their onsie for the photo, these stickers can be bought on Etsy or Amazon or probably even Ebay, just search up "baby month milestone stickers" or something similar. On Etsy they cost approximately $10 Canadian.

Anyways if you are worried about your child's weight or height percentile as many moms are the important thing is that the growth curve stays approximately the same (or the percentile gets higher) if its dropping each month then your doctor will mention what to do, often if your child is over 4 months they recommend adding in a bit of iron fortified rice cereal. If your child is younger they may say to supplement with a bit of formula a few times a day. I'm not a doctor so if your worried always talk to your pediatrician about any of your concerns. If they brush your concerns off maybe get a second opinion if you think they are wrong or you truly do think there is a problem? Most likely there is no problem and your child may just be a "slow starter" for growth or is just a small baby. Babies do come in all different shapes and sizes and some babies always make up the top percentiles while some make up the bottom percentiles and it does not mean there is anything wrong.

A good website for growth in breastfed babies, parenting, health and other information website is KellyMom

A pretty good American growth website is http://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts/2000growthchart-us.pdf

Personally I like to google Infant growth percentiles and not look and follow a chart line since I like tables more or the information directly. Though these are more Babycentre type websites not WHO, government or other official websites of the like.

A good explanation of which charts to use and what measurements will be taken at well baby check ups is given by: http://www.parents.com/toddlers-preschoolers/development/physical/chart-child-growth/

Sunday 27 January 2013

Bring on the Food.... Or Should We?


  Well today we tried out our first solids. Yeah, yeah I know I said Saturday but life got away from us. Yesterday was a busy busy day and well I can't say I'm sad since this just meant that he was one day closer to six months when we gave him his first food. So this morning my husband took a walk with our little one and I cleaned the house and the baby bullet and put the sweet potato in the oven to cook. As the sweet potato cooked we played with our little sweet potato he was thoroughly enjoying playing with two of his toys in his crib and attempting to crawl around while we talked to him. Then I took the sweet potato out since it has to cool off before pureeing. During this time I prepped the high chair (found the table for the high chair), found a bib and of course got our camera and video camera ready. Since I have been feeding our son since day 1, M was going to do his first solid feed. Then the potato cooled off and I added the sweet potato and breast milk to the baby bullet and ta-da the pureĆ© was ready in 10 or so seconds.
    So we sat Alek down in his highchair pulled it up from the semi lying newborn position to the fully seated position, strapped him in and put the table in place and the bib on.

My husband sat down in front of him with the bowl and spoon and I was ready with the camera and video camera. We were both excited and Alek seemed happy and excited too, he was smiling and kept reaching out. Well the first spoon went in his mouth a bit and we saw his expressiong change to....well maybe not disgust but a very obvious EWW. Well we decided to try a few more times and he kept sticking his fingers in his mouth and licking the sweet potato while making a grossed out face. He didn`t cry but he did NOT seem to like it. I then tried to feed him one a tiny bit and it went in...and then came out!
  We then decided to take him out and I gave him to spoon slightly coated in  sweet potato to play with and so that he could learn to hold a spoon. Well he put the spoon in his mouth and he made the same EWW face but kept biting the spoon so maybe he was getting used to the taste?

   Overall we tried about 4ish "spoons" of which he actually ate maybe 1/4 of a BABY spoon so not much. I was never planning to feed him as much as I had put in that bowl...that was just so that the picture would not look funny with under a teaspoon of food in it. Anyway, the plan is to try again tomorrow if we get another reaction like today we will give him a break of 1-3 weeks and then try again when he is bigger.


P.S Yesterday my mom taught me a simple knitting pattern so I could make Alek a scarf for next winter. It's going VERY slowly but I feel excited and maybe if it works out I can make him a matching hat!

Friday 25 January 2013

Catching Zzzz's

       You don't really know how precious sleep is until you become a parent. Sorry men but the women who breastfeed appreciate it double because breastfeeding makes you WANT to sleep so bad but you cant. Sometimes I admit I used to get so mad seeing my peacefully sleeping husband at 3 a.m and I on the other hand am breastfeeding again for the 5th time of the night. The first few weeks are tough.


     I'm sure ill look back on these nights with a smile and when my child is a teen ill remember how dependent he was and miss it but for now quite frankly on some days i am just so exhausted. to add to it I don't drink coffee and limit my tea so he doesn't get to much caffeine but lets face it a cup of strong coffee would do me good right about now

    Later on you child teaches you again to value your sleep when he or she goes through a growth spurt or the dreaded 4 month sleep regression. Yikes! You thought the first few week were tiring well it royally sucks when you know and have seen your child sleep through the night but then he/she regresses back to the schedule of a newborn. Although some babies do not reach the sleeping through the night phase and just regress to an even worse schedule.



     Last night Alek slept 2 hours (during which it was to early for me to go to bed) then I just got into bed almost fell asleep and he woke.  Ughh I knew then and there it was going to be a hard night since his first stretch of sleep is usually his longest. After that he was up every 30 minutes to 1.5 hours. Oh and he was STARVING each time. I don't know how, but my son sure can eat!

      I wrote in his journal that I've kept since the day I found out I was pregnant "I think we are out of the four month sleep regression" this was 2 days ago. He had been sleeping 6.5-8.5 hours for his first stretch of sleep again like before the sleep regression. Well I guess I jinxed it. Though the culprit may be the teething (one tooth I see the cap of and 1 you can see progressively lowering each day) or a growth spurt since he is nearing 6 months and that's one of the major growth spurts and he hits growth spurts slightly earlier usually. One way or another I hope he naps well and begins sleeping at night normallyt so that he isn't grumpy and we can play. He is normally so smiley and laughs so much and I know he is exhausted too. Meanwhile for now I'm going to enjoy this bump in the road but hope it passes quickly... like tonight!
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For new moms or those who are exhausted as well:

Everything baby does is a stage, treasure them all but hope the hard ones go by quickly and the fun ones last long

Sleep when baby sleeps if possible

Try and ensure your child naps because good sleep begets good sleep

Fresh air helps put baby to sleep so a walk a day if possible is great


If you need caffeine have a little

When feeding sit as comfortably as you can so your body rests at least

Remember they are waking to eat more sometimes because of a growth spurt or because they are trying to catch up on the food they missed during the day because they were distracted and learning

That's all I can think of now I'm so tired so I know I'm missing other points. Hug baby close these moments will be over with way too fast and you wont have a baby on your hands anymore but a growing and increasingly independent child. (Breathe in the baby scent as often as you can  I can already imagine how much I'll miss it)
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P.S for those who co-sleep :

Thursday 24 January 2013

Ready or not..

     Well today my son showed such obvious signs he is ready for solids they could not be ignored. As my husband and I ate he kept moving closer and just staring inside out mouths at times chewing his hand all the while. All the other signs are there as well.  Ready or not mommy but give me solids.We already decided that his first food would be sweet potato. Why? Uhhmmm it is extremely high in nutritional value vitamin A, beta carotene, potassium, vitamin E, folate and fiber and so on. An amazing site that should be a bible for baby food for all mom is : http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com and it says  "The Nutrition Action Health Letter rated 58 vegetables by adding up the percentages of USRDA for six nutrients (Vitamins A and C, folate, iron, copper, and calcium), plus fiber. Sweet Potatoes topped the list with a whopping 582 points; its nearest competitor, a raw carrot came in at 434."  The site also claims : "These wonderful vegetables are a great first baby foods,(even for the early solid food starter)."  The second reason I really like this choice as a first food is that we call him our sweet potato so it has an emotional meaning too that makes me smile.


     Since it is late today and tomorrow my husband is away we decided to try a sweet potato pureĆ© thinned with breast milk on Saturday  If he likes it we will continue with solid food if he doesn't we will wait another week or 2 before trying solid food again. The plan is sweet potato then avocado then probably squash and well I haven't thought what will be a first food but I`m really getting ahead of myself. I haven`t even assembled and read all the instructions to the baby bullet that my wonderful husband bought. (Yes in baby items I say this is a useless item. Why do I have it? I had no other food processor so I needed one and I said it is useless only if you already have a food processor.Its also nice to have the little book with the information about starting solids and recipes but I prefer the site above! Also the cube freezer trays and refrigerator jars are nice but could be bought cheap without buying the whole product.). Anyways now I know what I will be doing tonight or tomorrow night. 
 This whole starting solids thing is very exciting and yet there is momentary sadness, and shock on my part. I'm excited because this is another milestone another first. I'm sad because time is flying so fast. I'm shocked he's in the age he can start solids. I also heard that diaper changes are no fun after the start of solids. Also I was hoping to make it to the recommended 6 month mark for starting solids. Why not wait till the 6 month mark then? Well he is OBVIOUSLY ready and beyond interested. Today it was VERY obvious even my mom commented that he has never been been this interested he was watching all the food, the family eating, trying to look in everyone's mouthsall the while pretending to chew (copying the chewing mouth movement) and looking fascinated. I have read to look for cues, what makes reaching a specific day in life make a baby more ready to start solids than the day before? Not all people are cookie cutters and do everything at the same point in time. He is about 3 weeks shy of 6 months but he is very ready. We will try solids on Saturday and I will update then how it went! 

Wednesday 23 January 2013

LittleEcoFootprint

While on Facebook today I saw an ad for LittleEcoFootprint, this interested me and I pressed on it to see what it was. Well, its a members only monthly subscription to get a package each month. The super exciting part?  You don't know what you'll get until it arrives. It's a surprise. This is geared towards moms and children under the age of 3. Also it is wonderful because the products that are featured in these boxes are healthy, natural Eco-friendly and have been chosen by real moms. Any Canadian moms can subscribe and try it out. The boxes contain 5-7 product samples. If anyone is interested you can get $5 of your first month with the code WHOLEMOM20 or LITTLEECO20. 
  My first package is suppose to arrive sometime after February 15th. Im super excited and hope that the mom reviewed products are loved by me as much as they enjoyed them! ...The only problem is I am impatient and I always ruin surprises and I can't in this case.

Exersaucing and the Beach

On Friday I ordered an exersaucer I liked the look of on Amazon. It was a great price and seemed to have many toys unlike some of them. Right now its winter and this week with wind chill it feels like -15 to -29 depending on the day and time. Personally, I do not like cold and winter but I LOVE summer (not when pregnant, especially having been pregnant during the hottest summer in a LONG time). Anyways all this to say after looking at different products I bought a beach themed one so bring some at least fake beach and sun into Alek's environment. It is an Evenflo product called "Splash Mega"  and was on a great deal 44% of regular price. I paid $82 with free shipping and our 13% taxes. For all those not in Canada all our baby (and not baby) products are SOOOO much more expensive than in America.



Anyways, Today it arrived in a pretty big but very light box. Today Alek was in such a great mood and this made me so happy that it came so he could give it a test run! Normally I do not put things together but I was so excited that I did not wait for my husband to come home...I assembled it myself with Alek watching on from his Baby Einstein play gym that he loves. He played on it the whole entire time that I was assembling the exersaucer and washing and wiping it down.

Here it is assembled:



 It took me approximately 40 minutes to assemble and wash and rinse/wipe it down (including me being distracted to talk with Alek). The majority of this time was spent washing not assembling. My conclusion is that it assembles VERY quickly, which is awesome. It also is not hard to assemble except the legs are hard to push down... or maybe in weak or something. Though I'm sure all excersaucers assemble similarly, I cant speak to assembling others since I have never done so.

  Sooo.. Its assembled and I sit Alek in it after adjusting the height just right. Well he seemed excited not to be sitting or lying. Or maybe I was excited that he could stand AND my back would get a break. ....minutes pass and he is just sitting there. I show him the toys and how they work but he just sits there content to just stand leaning over and looking somewhere far of. HUH?




Then  my cat comes down and wont step away from the exersaucer. He loved it!

    In all reality I don't know what I was expecting, there are many toys and he was standing without me holding him I think he was just overwhelmed. Right before I took him out he began looking at the toys and examining them. I think once he gets used to being in there and balancing all the while playing he will love it!

    Review from my point of view. This exersaucer has a snack tray and place for a sippy cup (not relevant at least for another month but very awesome). It has a mirror for him to see himself.  Seven colourful beach themed toys (sandcastles, fish, starfish, sand dollars, and a pail). (see the pictures above)

    The toys allow for different learning and playing experiences  putting hanging toys in the pail (string very short so not dangerous), rattle, spinning toys, moving small pieces from one end to the other and wobbling toys. I love how versatile the toys are though I wish one toy squeaked or played a song. My son loves sounds and music and this product does not have it.

    The exersaucer isn't only for boys though it is mainly blue but it has orange as a secondary colour and let's face it all things that are gender neutral are more "boyish" looking.

     I'm going to try this exersaucer out later with him again but I have to say he didn't ask to come out of it. With the rocker seat or swing he gets bored quickly but he was in here 20-30 minutes and he didn't ask for  me to take him out, which is awesome and my back thanks this product.

..........................

....About 7 hours have gone by and I still haven't posted this blog. I've been taking a stroller walk and playing with Alek... cooking, feeding and the other daily activities. Anyways we tried it out again and I think I was right he was just too overwhelmed last time. This time he played with the toys really liking the spinning the sun. Overall... very pleased with this product and yes he did spend another 40 minutes in  it playing and listening to me read.


Tuesday 22 January 2013

Gender Intuition

Some people have amazing gender intuition, meanwhile others like me...DON'T. I was sitting today playing with my son and remembered something. A little under one year ago we were at a Bris for a family friend of my In Laws and a family member of the In Laws came up and said you better be having a boy we have to many girls in the family and smiled. In my head I was like "Well buddy your going to be disappointed". I was in my fourth month of pregnancy and was SURE I was having a girl. Now let me clarify this is my first child and I did not care whether my child was a boy or girl I just had a feeling I was pregnant with a girl. Anyways a week before my ultrasound I started having thoughts, very vivid ones about what if its a boy and how shocked will I be if I find out its a boy.

The day of my ultrasound came around and lo and behold I find out I am carrying a son not a daughter. I wasn't really shocked, surprised yes but not shocked. I guess those thoughts prepared me. Man oh man was my gender intuition wrong...it must have been broken. I think when I get pregnant again someday I would be to scared to be sure about my intuition because I was so wrong this time.


By the way for those who are reading Wives Tales (such as the way I was carrying)- many were wrong for me. The Chinese Calendar that claims to be 98% effective was wrong. Also the baking soda test was wrong for me.

Waiting on Teeth

    Teething is one of the rough patches that our little ones go through. Teething is painful for them and its hard on us. Today Alek was VERY unsettled whining and wanting to be held all day. To add to this its FREEZING and windy today so no way I was going to go for our daily walk. Well... because of teething he would not sleep longer than 15 minutes which obviously made him more cranky!

   Everyone says enjoy every single second with baby. Well, I fully agree, even after days like these. I just hope that days like these are rare and the happy days where he is smiling and in a good mood are plentiful.

  Alek seems to really enjoy Sophie the Giraffe, meanwhile today the one of the other teethers (a nuby one I think) did not help. Also does not get the appeal of the key type teethers that can be chilled. Im thinking maybe a teether called  "Teething Bling" mentioned in ttp://theeyesofaboy.blogspot.ca/2013_01_19_archive.html may be a good idea to try out so that I could carry Alek or sit him on my lap and he could have a teether that he wont drop on the floor constantly!

 P.S the suspense is building, I keep checking his mouth for teeth and its beginning to feel like when you turn the kettle on and the water will take forever to boil if you stand and watch it.

Hair

   As I watch my son's hair get thicker and thicker each day it makes me smile. It's so cute and he looks different each week. His hair is coming in lighter then mine but darker than my husband's with a reddish light brown look and the funniest thing is that its growing in way thicker in the middle and much less on the sides! Then again this makes sense because he was born with much thicker and longer hair on the top. When there is static his hair stands up almost as though he has a mohawk!    

   As this is going on my own hair is quickly falling out (one of the joys of being postpartum). Everyone told me this would happen but it started out late for me and I guess that may be why its still falling out with a vengeance. Now if that wasn't enough my lil man loves to pull on my hair. Well that's why we can make ponytails, no? Well he has the gift of finding the one stray hair and pulling it out. I'm hoping this stops soon or else he's going to have gorgeous hair and I'll have a few strands left. Yikes!

Sunday 20 January 2013

Welcome Post

Hello and welcome. I decided to try my hand at blogging and see how it works out. My name is Sasha and I have a 5 month old son, Alek. The topics I will be ...trying to cover though they are very vast are aspects of pregnancy, labour, baby/child merchandise and day to day life with an infant. When pregnant, especially being young, and having few friends with children everything felt very overwhelming but I found a forum group and it helped me immensely. Having people to speak to going through the same thing as you at the same time is amazing and been there done that knowledge was priceless for me. I am writing this blog in the hopes that someone will find my tips/lists or other tidbits informative and helpful. Please feel free to comment or add to what has been written.