thank you Cheerios (and General Mills)

I never thought I would be thanking a behemoth food processing corporation, but I am. I really do not think my son could survive without Cheerios. He is thirteen months old now and his two favorite foods are Cheerios and bananas. His face lights up when he sees his Cheerios and when he is sick this is his chicken soup.

The Cheerios website even devotes a whole page to "New Parents". I guess they are well aware of their power over toddlers via their parents.

Laundry room blues

So if there is one thing I could change to make my condo better for my family now that we have a child it would be to add a washer/dryer.

I have the laundry room blues. Doing laundry while supervising a baby poses some challenges that I have not been able to solve. Mainly the challenge is what to do with the baby when you run down to the laundry room to put the laundry in the washer, change it to the dryer, and collect it to bring it back. The laundry room in our complex is only about a minute walk away, so each trip only takes at the most five minutes. But babies can get into a world of mischief in five minutes if they are left alone. By the way the same challenge applies to a lot of other daily activities (e.g. how to do the bathroom while watching your baby, how to take out the trash while watching your baby, etc.)

1-3 months (newborn phase): In some ways this was the easiest. My baby slept so much and he usually slept strapped to me in a baby carrier. He was only 7-12 pounds during this time period, so I could easily carry him down to the laundry room with me. Or I could run to the laundry room without him and he would be peacefully asleep the whole time.

3-6 months: This phase was still pretty easy. I still tried to run down to the laundry room during naps, but if he was awake I could put him in his swing or bouncy chair and know that he could not get into any trouble for the five minutes I was gone.

6-9 months: By this point my son was napping less and he was done with his baby swing. I tried carrying him down to the laundry room in his baby carrier, but the weight of him plus the laundry basket was a lot to carry. Also trying to pull stuff out of a deep washer while not squashing your baby is hard. Fortunately he was not crawling yet so I could leave him sitting on the floor surrounded by toys and pillows and the worst that could happen when I was gone was that he would topple over.

9-12 months: Things got complicated. My son is now 20 pounds and carrying him and a laundry basket with me to the laundry room will definitely cause me to break a sweat and/or hurt my back. If I leave him alone on the floor even for thirty seconds he usually manages to get into something or climb on top of something and either a) hurt himself or b) make an unholy mess (or both). I can put him in the crib which makes him sort of unhappy if he is not tired but at least I know he is safe while I am gone.

So the smart reader will be thinking why doesn't this idiot do one of the following:
a) do laundry after her son goes to bed
b) do laundry while her husband is home and can watch the kid
c) install a washer/dryer in the condo

So the bottom line is that I am lazy at night, bad at planning ahead, and not willing to spend the time/money. But a reasonable person could probably avoid all these silly little dilemmas. In the meantime I am envious of my friends who have washers/dryers. However, the one advantage of my situation is that I get to capture moments like this:

My son helping me do the laundry.

Correlation found between Autism and timing of pregnancies

New research finds that autism is 3x more likely in children who were born less than a year after their older siblings. In other words, something about the time elapsed between pregnancies is related to the odds of having a child with autism. There is speculation that the connection between autism and inter-pregnancy-interval (IPI) might be "related to maternal depletion of key nutrients such as folate".

I am always fascinated by how much mystery and controversy surrounds autism. In this case it seems likely that something about the pre-natal time period is increasing the risk of autism. However, it seems like a good idea to point out once again that correlation is not causation (for a related thread see my discussion of baby sleep and the problem of spurious correlation). The fact that the incidence of autism increases with a shorter interval between pregnancies does not mean a shorter IPI causes autism. However, this research does raise all sorts of questions that could lead us to new knowledge about autism.

As someone who has worked with both children and adults with autism I have always felt that autism was a very complex diagnosis that is probably a result of genetic, environmental, and social processes. Unlike something like Downs' Syndrome I doubt that autism will ever be linked to a discrete gene or chromosome. Although I am happy to see research exploring possible causes or contributing factors to autism, I am wary that research which points to maternal factors as a cause may lead us down the path of blaming parents. In the early 20th century "bad mothers" were commonly seen as causing mental retardation among children (see Trent's book "Inventing the Feeble Mind" 1994), and I would hate to see us return to that type of logic even obliquely.

Baby safety - the safest way to install a car seat: get a professional to do it for you!

When you are nine months pregnant and exhausted and trying to plow through your to-do list of things to take care of before your baby is born one of the most daunting tasks is installing a car seat. My recommendation would be to take the easiest and safest route: get a safety professional to install it for you.

Safe Kids coordinates nation-wide car-seat inspections. And by "inspection" they really mean "we will look at your pitiful attempt to install the car seat, point out 99 mistakes that you made, and then install it correctly for you."

Here is their link for locating a car seat inspection: Safe Kids Car-Seat Check-Up Locator

The San Diego Safe Kids program is run through Children's Hospital and you can call 858-576-1700 ext 5096 to set up a car seat inspection.

The staff were super friendly and helpful. The whole appointment only took 30 minutes. The staff understand that with the wide variety of cars and car seats on the market it is nearly impossible to figure out what the safest way to install a car seat is with only the little booklet the car seat manufacturer gives you and your car's manual.

Some helpful hints I learned from our car seat inspections:

1. the center seat is always the safest place for a car seat (in the event of a crash)
2. sometimes using the seat-belt to secure the car-seat is safer and more secure than using the LATCH system
3. if you have an SUV or station wagon with an open trunk then putting a cover over the trunk will prevent anything stored back there from potentially flying up in the air and hitting your child (really important for rear-facing babies/toddlers in the event of an accident)
4. Even though manufacturers give you height and weight guidelines for when you can turn a rear-facing convertible car-seat to front facing it is safest to keep the kid rear-facing for as long as they fit comfortably in that position (some background on this issue)
5. how to use receiving blankets to make sure a newborn fits snugly into the car seat

My understanding is that in most towns police stations or fire stations and sometimes hospitals also will inspect car seats. I think this is a great service. However, since the professionals at the Safe Kids site I went to explained that they are the ones who actually train the police/firefighters on how to do the installation I like the idea of getting my advice straight from the horse's mouth - so to speak.

Not just for infant car seats! When we switched from an infant car seat to a convertible car-seat we went back to the same inspection station and again really appreciated with how helpful they were in teaching us how to install and use the car seat.

Bare feet and strangers

My son does not like socks or shoes on his feet. He will often tear the first sock off by the time I have finished putting the second sock on his other foot. We go on lots of walks with him in the stroller, and although winter in southern California is not really cold, it is cold enough that I have had a lot of strangers tell me my son's feet must be cold with a disapproving glare.

sockless, shoeless, and happily playing with his feet

So I figure there are a few ways I can handle this...

1. put duct tape around his feet for warmth
2. shop for lace up baby boots that I could then double knot
3. keep him in pajamas all day since they have little attached feet
4. not go out in public

Anyone have any better ideas?

Currently what I try to do is put on the socks and shoes and quickly cover him with a blanket and tuck the blanket in so that he has a tough time grabbing at his feet. Also I give him something to hold so that he plays with that instead of his socks/shoes. Both of these tactics usually work for about two minutes until he gets bored and flings off the blanket/toy/bottle and reaches for his feet.

All I can say is it's a big relief that I don't live somewhere really cold!