What to do with old pajamas

By the time the hand me down pajamas made it from my first son to my second son it didn't take very long for him to wear holes in the little attached footsies. So the other day I just cut off the footsie part.

Cute Boy Cute Feet

Probably works best if you live in warm climates like me, but you could always do this and add socks. Also works for when they should probably move up to a larger size of pajamas but you do not want to have to go buy a new pair right away ;)

The Onion does it again: The Pros And Cons Of Vaccinating Children

The Pros and Cons of Vaccinating Children

Life gets busy and I have a million ideas but not much time to write blog entries.

But The Onion never fails to provide good fodder for this blog...

Schools!

My older son is not going to be in kindergarten for another year and a half and I am already feeling anxiety about schools.

So once again The Onion hits the nail on the head with this story.

Intrepid Middle-Class Parents Embark On Daring Search For Mythical Perfect School District

The 5 second rule for the win!

Since having children I have completely changed my stance on eating food that has been dropped on the ground.

This recent article seems to offer hope that eventually the scientific method may prove the validity of the 5 second rule.

"For the study, Anthony Hilton, a professor of Microbiology, and his students considered a variety of foods – toast, pasta, cookie, and a sticky candy – to see how much bacteria (E. coli and Staphylococcus) they attracted when allowed contact with the floor. They allowed the food to lie on various types of flooring – carpet, laminate, and tiles – for 3 seconds to 30 seconds.

Not surprisingly, the longer the food was allowed commune with the floor, the more bacteria it accumulated. And the surfaces differed in how likely they were to transfer the bacteria, with carpeting being the least likely, and tiled surfaces and laminate the most likely. “We have found evidence that transfer from indoor flooring surfaces is incredibly poor with carpet actually posing the lowest risk of bacterial transfer onto dropped food,” said Hilton in a news release."

Next, I want someone to check out just how unhealthy it is for my 4 year old to eat goldfish he finds in the creases of his carseat that have been there for a minimum of one day but on some occasions may have been there for much much longer...

Here is the handy cheat-sheat included in the Forbes article:

I'm just like all the moms at the salon

So I went to get a hair cut yesterday, something which is often stupidly difficult to plan ahead and fit into my schedule.

Once there, relaxing in the chair after a massaging shampoo and while the hair cut was well underway I looked at my phone. It was already almost 5:00 and I told the hair dresser I would have to skip the blow dry because I had to run to go pick up my kids afterwards.

And she told me I was the third mom that day to tell her she would have to cut the pampering short because she had to run to pick up the kids!

So despite my best efforts it turns out I am just like all the other moms!

Interesting side note. She told me men never told her they had to rush to pick up their kids. And that men who brought their kids in for hair cuts often were stumped by the question "how do you want the hair cut?" She said they usually ended up texting with their wife who had explicit instructions.

Any other moms out there find it hard to get a hair cut?
When you do are you checking your phone/watch the whole time?

Toys with adjustable volume

Here is something that I seriously do not understand at all. Lots of my kids' toys have a button on them that you can toggle from quieter volume to louder volume. What kind person actually sets the toys to the louder setting?!

Kids are loud enough. Toys that make sounds get irritating enough after the first ten minutes. Why would anyone deliberately want the toys to be louder than the bare minimum?

Toy company design teams if you are reading my humble blog, what we really need is not quiet and loud volume. We need on/off switches that are child proof so that when I want all sound disabled I can make it happen in a way that my three year old can not turn back on without my assistance.

OK, enough ranting.

Tired parent bloopers

When I am tired I do really doofy things. This tendency is obviously exacerbated by having a newborn or an older baby who is teething, sick, or just decides he would rather not sleep.

For the first time in my life when my second son was about 4 months old I made the classic tired person mistake of driving all the way to Target getting myself, stroller, and baby out of the car and then realizing I did not have my purse. Moreover I had no clue whether it was in my apartment or sitting on the ground of our building's garage in my empty parking space.

Of course there are shocking and tragic stories about tired parents forgetting to take babies out of car seats or putting them on top of their cars and driving away. Let's ignore those colossal and terrible mistakes and focus on the funny and silly ones. What have you readers, those of you who comment anyway, done when you were tired?

Another stupid thing I have done several times when woken up too early in the morning by a baby is take a shower, and at some point midway through the shower completely forget whether I have already washed my hair and then end up washing it twice. Usually after I put the shampoo in the second time I realize that I already used it once.

So what do other people do when exhausted or distracted by the kids?

The Tummy Time controversy

A recent New York Times Health Section had an article with the headline: ‘Tummy Time’ May Not Be Needed.

As this article discusses a new study of Canadian infants born before and after the introduction in 1994 of the "Back to Sleep" campaign shows that there is no difference between the groups in when they started rolling front to back or back to front. Other research seems to indicate that there is also no difference between when kids who sleep on their tummy and back walk (although some of this research shows tummy sleepers did crawl and roll earlier).

Now on to my anecdotal evidence, which as we know is rationally less important but emotionally more relevant. My older son hated tummy time from the get go, but I felt obligated to try it and did for the first few months. He learned to roll both ways at about 4 months. As soon as he learned to roll onto his belly he always slept on his belly, but otherwise did not like to spend time on his belly. If I remember by 8 months he was pulling up to stand up on his own, but not crawling. By 9 months he was traveling short distances by scooting around the floor on his butt in the sitting position, but not crawling. Sometime after he turned 10 months old he finally started crawling. He only crawled for about two months. About two weeks after his 1 year birthday he started walking and within a couple months he was an expert walker and to my dismay runner. I am 100% confident his lack of tummy time did not lead to any problems. He is a very athletic and coordinated kid who learned to run way too fast for me at a very early age.

Little baby baldie.

My younger son loved being on his back from the get go, and big surprise also hated tummy time. He is 7 months old now and since birth has had a little bald spot on the back of his head from where his head rubs when he is in his crib or bouncy chair. At 4 months he learned to roll from his tummy to his back, and since then attempts at tummy time have lasted exactly 2 seconds, which is exactly how long it takes  for him to roll back onto his back. Time will tell if he is a early or late walker, but thanks to my earlier experiences I am not so hung up on crawling this time around. And to be honest it is sort of nice to have a baby that stays put when you put him somewhere!

What both these articles and the medical research emphasizes is that the "milestones" of rolling and crawling are not predictors of developmental delays. They encourage parents not to worry about when their baby crawls. This is not to say that other milestones are not important. A five month old who is unable to hold his head up or a nine month old who is unable to sit unsupported I am guessing would warrant further attention. In the meantime I am not going to feel guilty about depriving my baby of tummy time.

Painting is for kids and parents :)

In the last six months my three year old has really gotten into all forms of coloring and drawing, including painting. I wasn't so keen on joining him when he was using his fingers and the thick chunky paint, but now that he is using a paint brush and watercolors I am finding painting with him to be hugely enjoyable.

There is something so relaxing and satisfying about painting with the water colors. And I'm not talking about being creative, I am talking about me printing a picture of some animal or airplane or car that my son wants to paint then fastidiously painting within the lines.

For example, here is my latest masterpiece.

My new stress reduction technique.

It's not as entertaining as watching Arrested Development or as healthy as going for a jog or a long walk, but it is very calming after a long day. And to be honest last night after my boys were both asleep I spent a few minutes painting by myself!

Meanwhile my son has made great progress in the art department, a big achievement for a kid who is pretty bad at sitting still. He went from thinking crayons were for chewing at 18 months to painting and coloring in the lines at 3.5 years old.

18 months old: crayons are non-toxic for a reason right?

3 years old: using tools appropriately and coloring in the lines!

Unsung Milestones: My 3 year old learns to lie

My older son is 3.5 years old and the other day he started telling one of my all-time favorite lies. A lie that I remember fondly telling my parents time after time when I was a kid.

It goes something like this... My son is in his bedroom making worrisome sounding noises. The noises that sound like maybe something is breaking or about to break. So I say in a sort of stern mommy voice, "What are you doing in there?" And my son replies, "Nothing."

That's it. Blatant lie. In that case I think he was kicking toys around his bedroom. It's happened a few other times, always when he is doing things he knows he is not supposed to be doing.

Now I'm curious if kids generally start doing this at about the same time or if our son has picked up some advanced deception skills somewhere. Any comments from other parents?