My favorite blog post from one of my favorite blogs

Crappy Pictures is a hilarious parenting blog, and for those of who sometimes feel crazy trying to take care of our kids a recent post, "Parenting - I Quit", hits the nail on the head.

Here is a preview:

Yes I adore my kids, I know the author of this blog also adores her kids. But anyone who has not been driven to the brink of desperation once in a while by their kids either has a little baby who has not learned to do crazy toddler things yet, is not spending enough time with their kids, has the world's only perfect child, or should be nominated for sainthood.

Go read the Crappy Pictures blog, it will make your day.

Apparently I'm a big boy

My husband and I love the fact that our three year old's language skills are improving everyday. I love the way he tries so hard to use words and phrases correctly, but makes really funny mistakes.

Last night my son wanted to play puzzles with me. We have these 12 piece Melissa and Doug puzzles that come in packs of four that he has loved since he was about 2 years old. He has the dinosaur puzzles and the vehicle puzzles.

He asked me to "take turns" with the puzzles, explaining that he wanted to do a puzzle then it would be my turn. When it was my turn I started my puzzle then asked if he wanted to help me fit the pieces together. He said, "Mama you don't need help, you a big boy."

For any readers who do not know, I am most definitely not a boy. But gender doesn't make much sense to three year olds and the whole "his" and "her" vocabulary mystifies my son.

Looking at the world through my son's eyes it makes perfect sense that to him "big boy" is a phrase which means "you can do something by yourself". I am constantly telling him big boys get dressed by themselves, big boys go on the potty, big boys put on their own shoes, etc. It just cracks me up how his brain synthesizes this stuff. 

Youtube Kid Snippets

A good friend told me about the Kid Snippets channel on Youtube and pointed me to some of the hilarious videos of adults acting out kid conversations (kid voices and adult actors).

Try math class, drivers ed, or dance class.

I'm always happy to find humorous ways to waste my time online, feel free to share other ideas in the comments. And I do love lolcats, so don't be shy.

Why I love the interwebz

The interwebz can't always solve your problems. But it can usually make you laugh and remind you that you are not alone.

This morning I googled "three month old baby won't go back to sleep at night" because my baby boy is having a spate of horrible nights when he is up for 1-2 hours after breastfeeding and just won't go back to sleep. I found this fantastic response, excerpted here from the AskMoxie.org blog.

Unfortunately, if you've tried all the tricks (rocking, singing, swaddling, sitting on the couch with the lights off and Food Network on very low in the background, bouncing him on the balance ball, gripe water, mylecon, chamomilla pellets, standing on your head singing the theme to "Barney Miller," praying to the diety of your choice, singing "Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep little asshole" to the tune of "Lullabye and Goodnight," sobbing uncontrollably, threatening to send him in a box to your mother's house, getting a white noise machine, handing him to your partner and going into the guest room to sleep, and just lying next to him on the bed listening to him cry), then there's probably nothing left to try. Once he goes through the next developmental spurt (at 12 weeks) he'll probably start going back to sleep after he eats again.

I haven't tried the "go to sleep little asshole" trick yet, but the idea had me spitting my coffee out in laugher. And I won't write it off, every night is a new opportunity for desperate measures.

Here is the cutie pie who is driving me to madness in the middle of the night:

I can't wait until we do some sleep training and get this kid to be able to fall back asleep on his own!

In Love with Grocery Delivery

One of my friends mentioned to me that since the birth of her second child she found our local grocery delivery service from Safeway supermarkets to be a lifesaver. When she told me this it was like someone handed me a winning lottery ticket. Grocery shopping was never easy with one very active toddler, and now that I have the toddler plus the newborn it was going to be a holy terror. Yes, my husband or I could just go shopping on the weekend or late at night when one of us could stay home with the kids, but really who wants to waste their precious free time that way?

So I tried grocery delivery through Safeway, our big local supermarket chain. The first delivery is free so you have nothing to lose.

Here is what I like about it:
1. When you login to their website you can shop by history online, which mean they keep lists of everything you ever bought. So if there are staples you buy all the time you can find them and add them to your cart immediately.
2. You can shop on the couch in your pajamas while breastfeeding - enough said.
3. The fee for delivery is minimal and depends on (at least for Safeway) the amount you are spending and the delivery window you select (i.e. one hour, two hour, four hour) The more you spend and the bigger delivery window you select the lower the delivery charge. That said I think the highest charge I saw on their website was $13 and the lowest $4.
4. Safeway emails out promotions and free delivery coupons, so I have yet to pay anything for delivery.
5. My store specifically says on their website that delivery truck drivers do not accept tips - so no added expense there.
6. They bring the groceries to the door, and even better will carry them right over to the kitchen counter for me to unload them!

Here is what I don't like:
1. I have only done delivery twice, but the last time I did it they brought me a gallon of milk that had a "sell by" date of just a few days away. I know this is not a big deal, but I like to find the containers with the latest sell-by dates.
2. You do inevitably forget one thing on your list and if it is crucial you may need to run out the store to get it. Of course a more organized menu-planner and shopper could avoid this issue.
3. You do not get the joy/pain or wandering around the store finding items that you'd like to try or that you did not know you wanted but you decide to buy.

Here is what I do not miss at all anymore:
1. Racing through the store trying to accomodate a toddler whose attention span for sitting in a shopping cart is 20 minutes (even when provided with a snack to keep him busy).
2. Figuring out how to carry both the newborn and toddler in the store using some combination of carseat, shopping cart, and baby carrier.
3. Finally getting home and realizing I need to find the shopping cart stored in our parking garage in order to load the groceries from my car into the cart, then up in the elevator, down the hall and into our apartment (while managing kids). Oh right, and then I need to go back down to the garage to return our the apartment building's shopping cart.

Here is the FAQ about Safeway Grocery Delivery. Happy stress free shopping!

Finding a gift for a grandma with everything

I Heart Grandma Design Mug

Shutterfly custom cards for Valentines Day, Easter & Mother's Day.

View the entire collection of cards.

My grandma has everything she wants and needs. Except for enough photos of her great-grandchildren. So after planning on making a photo mug for her for a long time I finally did it on Shutterfly. It only took about five minutes once I had photos selected to use. Have any of my readers used Shutterfly or other websites to order photo gifts? How did the gifts turn out?

 

Bye Bye Infant's Tylenol/Acetaminophen

I had Kaiser health insurance for six months and loved their comprehensive services. Since during that time I was pregnant I have continued to receive a series of emails from Kaiser called the "Healthy Babies Newsletter". The most recent newsletter geared toward 2 month old babies informed me that manufacturers are discontinuing infant tylenol/acetaminophen, which is a extra concentrated version of their liquid children's medicine.

Here is Kaiser's description of the change and their very helpful dosage chart. Parents like me who have lots of infant tylenol left in my medicine shelf appreciate the notification of the change and also the clear instructions for the correct dosage of both versions of the medicine. Also I'm glad I read this now, because I can just picture myself searching fruitlessly for twenty minutes in the pharmacy for infant tylenol before finally going to ask a pharmacist only to learn it does not exist any more.

Here is an excerpt from Kaiser's newsletter:

"Before you give your child any kind of acetaminophen* (Tylenol) for pain or fever, we want you to be aware of an important medication change.

Concentrated infant acetaminophen drops are being phased out and will no longer be produced by manufacturers. Instead, a new liquid formula is available.
The new liquid formula has a different concentration (strength) from the infant drops (older formula). Infant drops are 3 times more concentrated (stronger) than the liquid suspension, so dosing directions will be different.

If you give your baby any form of acetaminophen, please use extra caution. You may have concentrated infant drops on hand at home. These drops are still safe to use as long as you use the correct dose for your baby's weight."

And here is Kaiser's handy dosage chart:

Weight Age	Infants' Concentrated Drops (Dropper) 80 mg/0.8 mL	New Infants' Liquid (Syringe) 160 mg/5 mL	Children's Liquid Suspension 160 mg/5 mL
6-11 lbs. 1-5 months	0.4 mL (40 mg)	1.25 mL (4  0 mg)	1.25 mL (40 mg)
12-17 lbs. 6-11 months	0.8 mL (80 mg)	2.5 mL (80 mg)	2.5 mL (80 mg)
18-23 lbs. 12-23 months	1.2 mL (120 mg)	3.75 mL (120 mg)	3.75 mL (120 mg)

Thank you Kaiser!

Here is more info on the upcoming change on the Tylenol.com website.

Funny Pregnancy Photos

Just thought I would post a link to some pregnancy photos that made my day.
I think pregnancy photos are really hard to do well, they either look cheesy or ridiculous. These ones went beyond ridiculous...

Awkward Pregnancy Photos

A classic example :)

At least in a lot of these cases it seems like they were going for "funny" instead of serious. A sense of humor makes everything better.

The Step Stool - Kid stuff vs. Regular stuff

So I wanted to get my son a step stool so he can start practicing brushing his teeth over the sink and the dinky little one we have from Ikea is too short to help in this scenario.

The problem is when you look for step stools for toddlers there is a little niche market of adorable, but way overpriced items. Actually I am going to go ahead and say a lot of toddler/kid items are overpriced simply because they are for kids.

Even the most basic looking two-step stool I could find, made by Kidkraft started at $30.

But with a short trip to Home Depot I was able to get a less aesthetically pleasing, but more useful step stool for $10. Also my Home Depot stool has the added advantage of holding up to 300 pounds, in case my kid grows into an obese adult who still lives at home. The stool is 18" tell, versus 10" for the Kidkraft stool. Most importantly the top is ridged and I am not worried about slipping if he spills water on it in the bathroom. Meanwhile, the comments on Amazon indicated the socked kid feet can easily slip on the wooden Kidkraft stool.

So to make a long story short, I have learned my lesson. Always check to see if you can get better products for a cheaper price before buying the "kid" version. As an added bonus you can keep using them after the kids grow up and I am still 5'3" and can't reach the top shelves in the kitchen!

Croup

Yes, this illness sounds like some sort of medieval disease or a wild bird. However, at least when my son got croup it sounded worse than it was - literally he sounded bad, but he recovered pretty quickly.

He did not have many symptoms beforehand, other than an intermittent cold that seemed to last months (and coincided with cold season and his starting day care). In the middle of the night I woke up to what sounded like a weird wheezing barking sound coming from my son's room. Sometimes croup can be really serious and cause babies to have trouble breathing. In my son's case he was still able to get air all right, he was just uncomfortable.

The next day we went to the doctor even though he was breathing fine and had no symptoms during the day. The doctor said in many kids croup just appears at night and will only happen for one or two nights. Fortunately that was what happened with us. That night I heard the barking again, only much milder and he slept better. By the next night the croup was gone.