Mini-Survival Kit for the first three months of parenting:

“Happiest Baby on the Block” the video is best – and it’s available through Netflix, but the book is good too.   The five “S”s for getting newborns to sleep helped us survive the first three month.  (Swaddle, side, shhhh, swing,  sucking)

         (Side note:  Swaddling was essential for getting my son to sleep – but we could not get him to stay in a          

         swaddle.  Not even the miracle blanket worked.  The only thing that kept him confined was the baby  

         bonkie.  My daughter didn’t do as well with swaddling, it just made her so angry that she would wake 

         herself up more.  But then, she didn’t really sleep for the first six months of her life, so she’s not a good 

         example to follow.)   

A white noise machine.  A friend gave us one and I thought it would be a complete waste.  That thing was a lifesaver.  (Our son responded to it much more than our daughter, but with our daughter it was good to help block out the noise of her rambunctious older brother).  I loved having one in the bedroom and one for on the go. The on the go sleep sheep is great because changes in noise levels can wake a sleeping baby when you transfer them in/out of the car, or walk into a restaurant, etc.  And there is no reason to ever risk waking a baby. 

A giant exercise ball.  That's right.  This has saved us through many, many, many a crying jag.  Bouncing a baby up and down to soothe him/her can be exhausting – particularly in the wee hours of the morning.  It also seems that a lot of babies like pretty serious bouncing instead of just a little jiggle and it can get tiring.  This way you can sit down and still give them the bounce they want (just be sure to get one that is large enough that you aren’t bending your knees too much). 

For my daughter the Ergo Carrier has been (and remains) a lifesaver, but my son never really took to any of the carriers. 

A guide to picking up (mommy/daddy) friends

I know, you thought you were done trying “pick up” anyone, but if you’re like most new parents, it’s a whole new world out there. 

First.  The rules of dating are out.  This is no time to be coy or play hard to get.  No one’s got the time and energy and let’s face it, after being pooped on, spit-up on, and vomited on, no one’s got any pride left anyway. 

Second.  Location, location, location.  It’s all about going to the right spots for a quality pick-up. 

Top spots for successful pick-ups

1.       Library:  A lot of libraries will have baby/toddler story times, and for most libraries, no baby is too young to get started.

2.       Walk with the baby.  A lot.  Preferably near your house so you are likely to meet people that live close to you.  If you see another parent with a baby, don’t be shy.  Use one of the pick-up lines below. 

3.       Pool. 

4.       Playground.  It’s better for picking-up parent friends with mobile kids, but if you’re kid isn’t mobile yet  you still might have some success at the baby swings. 

5.       Breastfeeding groups: Okay, this doesn’t really help out the Dads.  And this option might be out if you’ve been unable to breastfeed.  While most of the mom’s in the group are cool and understand that breastfeeding doesn’t work out for everyone, there’s always one or two nuts that will judge you and that’s NOT what you need right now.  (Oh, and a sidenote – if you don’t breastfeed, you are still a good mom.)  But if you are breastfeeding, it’s a good spot to meet other moms, and you get the bonus breastfeeding support. 

Agghhh!  How could I forget.
Farmers Markets  (particularly if they have any kind of live music)
Any kind of kid's concerts
Check internet for baby groups in your area.

Third.  You need a good pick up line.  Luckily, this is the easy part.  I’d say 90% of pick-ups start with “How old is your kid” followed by “What’s his/her name”.  Follow it up with some compliment, like “your kid has such big eyes” or “wow, he really likes his rattle” and you are good to go.  You can start swapping stories about sleepless nights and your babies newest tricks. 

You can then move on to “do you come here (library/park/restaurant, etc) often” is a perfectly acceptable pick-up line, there’s no need to resort to the skeezy bar pick up line.  Seriously, the standards are low out there and most new parents are as desperate as you.  Of course, that leads me to my last point.

Fourth.  Do some minimal screening.  You know, make sure the other person’s kid isn’t going to bit your kid (or at least, the parent stays on top of that issue).  Or that the other person doesn’t have crazy politics.  Finally (and this is going to be important for your own health and well being) you don’t want to pick up a baby-crazy person – you know, like if they are enrolled in 5 or more mommy and me classes or is insisting that their 6 month old can read.  (Sign language is perfectly acceptable, that’s a whole different post though).

Fifth:  Close the deal.  Get an e-mail address or phone number.  I know, it can feel awkward the first couple of times, but it is much more convenient than trying to just bump into them again.  At least that’s my opinion, my husband operates under a strict rule of having to see someone THREE times before he would ask for an e-mail or phone number.  Do you know what the odds of seeing a person three times are?  Sure you can say “maybe I’ll see you here next week”, but then someone takes an extra long nap one day, someone poops at the wrong time another day, someone gets sick, and then you never see them again.  He went almost a year before he made ONE Daddy friend.*

So there you go.  Soon you’ll be on your way to the baby equivalent of the booty call, a text with the words – “heading to the park, meet you there? “

*Funny story.  When my husband was on paternity leave he would take our infant son to a water fountain near our house.  There was another mom that would go there whose daughter was the same age as our son.   They got along great, and did the “maybe I’ll see you next week” thing.  So they hung out twice.  Then stuff came up, and then the weather got cold.  Fast forward to a year and a half later, and one day my son starts playing with a little girl at a playground near our house.  They are getting a long great, and the Dad and I chat for quite some time (I get his e-mail address of course).  I happen to mention some details about my husband, and the guy says – “I think my wife knows your husband!”  Sure enough, that little girl was the water fountain baby.  Yeah.  If only my husband had just gotten an e-mail address in the first place.  (Our kids ended up being great friends until we moved).   

Why you need parent friends. NOW.

Sure, if you are lucky, all of your closest friends just happened to get pregnant/adopt right around the same time as you and you have lots of wonderful baby playdates.  Or perhaps you had one of those awesome Lamaze/prenatal yoga classes and you are all still in touch.  If so, I applaud your foresight, or at least your luck. But let’s face it, for most of us, it is not quite that easy. And shortly after having a baby you find that you are going to need to find some parent friends.  

Not convinced you need any parent friends?  I get it, I didn’t want to be one of the mom’s that lost touch with friends that didn’t have kids, and I didn’t see myself as someone that had nothing to talk about except babies.  I had other interests too darnit!  Sure you do, and that’s great.  But trust me, you can find parent friends that also share interests and have lives outside of kids, and you don’t have to give up your baby-free friends. But you are going to need at least a few parent friends to get you through the months ahead. 

Here’s the thing, if you are doing the kid thing you should enjoy it, and part of enjoying it is sharing the wonder and joy of this amazing little person in your home.  And that wonder and joy  gets old very fast for people that don’t have kids.  Heck, it even gets old for people whose kids aren’t the same age. 

But let’s face it.  Having parent friends isn’t really about wonder and joy.  It’s about having someone to talk to when your kid still isn’t sleeping despite following every piece of advice in the book.  It’s about talking about the mixed feelings of having your parents “help out” with the baby.  It’s about railing about the inequities of shared parenting.  It’s about getting those random pieces of advice that you didn’t even know you needed.  Like it wasn’t until I was following around my little guy picking up all the raisins he was dropping that someone introduced me to these bad boys.  Who knew someone have invented something so genius?!  There’s a lot you just can’t get from books. 

So – you are going to need friends, and fast.  But you're in luck.  My next post is all about how to pick up your new friends.  

Enjoy the Moment

So my new mantra/goal is to enjoy the moment.  Okay – it’s really not at all new but I’m trying to be more mindful about it. 

The way I see it there are at least three aspects I should keep in mind. 

1.      Aspect  1 (Moments): Be present in the moment.  I need to keep my mind on where I am and what I’m doing at this moment, and not let my mind wander to other places.  When I’m with my son, my mind should be on him and not on what other things I need to be doing or accomplish.  When I’m nursing my daughter I should be enjoying that moment with her and not thinking about what mayhem my son is wreaking as part of his bedtime routine with my husband. 

2.       Aspect 2 (Moments):  Life is short, and kids grow up fast.  Two of my cousins lost their mom to cancer.  My heart aches for them, and for her.  A three year old girl in my son’s music class last year is fighting her own battle with cancer right now.  These are painful, wretched reminders to not take any life for granted.  But even without the tragedy, life goes by way too fast.  The cliché statement “the days are long but the years are short” is cliché because it is so very true.  These kids grow up F-A-S-T.  When I hold my baby daughter in my arms I realize that I no longer fully remember what it felt like to hold my son as a baby.  My head and heart remember, but there’s no way that I can ever fully remember that experience.   It’s clouded with the memory of how it feels to hold him now.   I’m glad that I know that I fully enjoyed that moment in time holding him as a baby and that it wasn’t wasted. 

3.      Aspect 3 (Enjoyment):  Life with kids is hard.  Really, really hard.  And so I want to always strive to enjoy it, even when I’m not really enjoying it.  It’s hard to enjoy my son’s nightly tantrums about going to sleep – the way he keeps popping up like a weeble doll and coming to the living room to sob “I don’t WANT to go to bed alone!”  It’s as heartbreaking as it is maddening.  But at least I can enjoy knowing that he’s at an age where he really, really just wants us to be with him – even if it’s every second of the day and it’s 2 hours past his bedtime.  And when he’s driving me bonkers because he just. needs. to. brush. his. teeth. And instead he is getting distracted by every. little. thing I just need to take a deep breath and admire how cute his little body is dancing around the bathroom while he admires the color of the tile.  And when he’s screaming about how he won’t eat his oatmeal because HE wanted to pour the oatmeal into the water – I need to just. …hmmm…I’m out of ideas.  Someone help me on that one because seriously I don’t know of any way to turn that one around.*

*I know, I know, all my examples about the times it is hard to enjoy parenting were about my son instead of my daughter.  I can’t help it.  Three is a tough age.  Why does no one warn you about age 3?? But that’s another post.  

Memory that made me smile

One of the things that I love about parenthood is the sheer number of happy, funny memories that pop into my head at random times.

Today I was remembering when my son went to his friend's birthday party this summer.

They saw each other from across the yard and my son yelled "NICK-YYYYY" and they ran toward each other as if they hadn't seen each other in years- instead of just a few days prior.

As he ran my son yelled "NICKY!  I HAVE A PRESENT FOR YOU!!!" and when he got close my son put down the gift bag, ripped out the tissue paper and pulled out the gift. 

Far from being upset, Nicky was thrilled to have the present and they both prepared to start playing with it.  Immediately.  Right there on the sidewalk. 

Since then I've stopped using gift bags and I wrap the presents instead.  It slows him down a little.

Making peace with the never-ending to do list

You know how no matter how hard you try, you never ever get your to-do list down to nothing?

Tasks just accumulate.

And wow.  It gets so much worse when you have kids.

Before kids, I'd at least know I could get something done.

But with kids.  There's no guarantee.  I could go days, or even weeks, and I won't get anything off the list.

Unless I put things on the list like "feed children" and "put children to sleep".

And my to-do list has taken on different forms.  It used to be one list.  Now there are several.  Much of it is on random pieces of paper because when I think of it I am no where near my main list and so I jot it down on  a scrap of paper and then it turns up later.  Like some kind of lost fortune cookie.  "Your world needs more light"  translate "buy light bulbs"

But I have to write it down because who knows when I'll remember to do it again.  Simple things.  Things that  there used to be no way I would worry about forgetting it.  Like responding to personal e-mails.

Or like sending a sympathy card.  How can I forget that?  But if I don't write down to do it, I will.

And I'm amazed at the things that will languish on the list.  Like start an "enjoy parenting blog".  That's been on the list for....hmmm....let's see.   Well over a year.

A year!  How can that be?

During pregnancy I would frequently start my to-do lists with "Grow Baby".  I would put it on because there were some days that I had such severe fatigue, I felt like that was all I could do.

I think now that I've got two kids, perhaps that's what I need to do again.  Just start the to-do list with "Care for Children", because seriously, sometimes nothing else seems to get done.

How is that possible?  I don't know.  Surely I should be able to get something done.

Usually I am at peace with my reduced productivity, and with the fact that the list will always be there, and it will always be much, much longer than it was pre-kids.

Because with kids, there's more that goes on it, and there's less time to do it.

But other days, like today, I feel like I am a hose that's been left unattended and I've got water shooting out  in all directions but it's not putting out any fires.

Okay.  Deep breath.  Time to look at that list and get something done!




And since never-ending got me thinking about this song - I'll leave you Modest Mouse's Never Ending Math Equation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-EW-C31J2g

Starting the Blog!

One of the greatest gifts I think my mom gave to me is a sense that she truly enjoyed parenting my brother, sisters and me.  It wasn’t just that she loved us, but that she really enjoyed being a parent. I think her enjoyment contributed to my own desire to become a parent, and it’s what inspired me to start this blog.  While I have a blog devoted to my kids – the complete saccharine blog of photos of their every move, cute and funny things that they say or do, videos that only their grandma’s and their devoted aunt are willing to watch etc, this blog is going to be about my thoughts about parenting.  I’ve been wanting to start this blog for quite some time, and I keep procrastinating because I just have so many ideas of what I want it to cover – but I’ve decided – I just need to start it!

I am planning on having several different categories – including

·         book reviews

·         parenting thoughts

·         unsolicited advice

·         mommy notes

·         shopping notes

·         recipes

·         happy moments

So why now?  Well, I know some awesome women that are about to become moms, and I’m hoping that they’ll enjoy reading this blog.  And that perhaps it will give them ideas, or help make parenting easier – and more enjoyable – for them. 

So, I will end this blog post with a “happy moment”. Yesterday my 3 year old son held up one of his 6-month old sister’s toys and very earnestly began instructing her on her colors.