by Heather
Take baby to the grocery store for practice when you’re not totally desperate for a kitchen’s worth of food. Use a cart, but just buy a treat for yourself. That way, when you actually have to go grocery shopping, you’ll know you can do it.
Two ways to approach the cart:
- wear your baby in the bjorn and push the cart
- put the infant carrier in the cart. Make sure it doesn’t wobble.
Another handy grocery shopping tip is to ask them to bag all your cold stuff together in plastic and the rest in paper bags so if you need to prioritize what comes in the house and what stays in the car, you can do so easily.
by Heather
I am the first person to delete the blurry pictures and the closed-eyes pictures from my computer, and, unlike some parents I know, I make a strong effort to edit what I share with the world (despite what my MIL might think)… but what about the funny, goofy faces? Do those get chucked out too? Well, how sad.
Do yourself a favor and make a little collection of those faces only a baby can make and you’ll see the immense cuteness. I found this collection of Cricket’s silly faces over at Mama C-ta
Once you have a good series going, you can make a framed set of 3, an easy silly photo book, or a full-on kooky Tabblo.
by Whitney
We tend to both be a little firm on the topic of “No TV” for the babies each for our own reasons, I’m sure. Heather thinks that TV is a scary addiction for babies, not unlike crack. Besides my belief that it’s just not developmentally appropriate for a baby, I think the addiction actually threatens the parents, not the baby, as having your baby in a glazed-over state of relaxation sure is tempting.
If you already use TV, then you are probably smarter than we are, and your kid will probably turn out smarter than ours, too, with all those hours of Sesame Street logged before preschool even starts. But if you are afraid as we are, then you’ll relate to this. When your TV-deprived child rarely sees the glowing screen, they are even more transfixed by it. You can leverage it’s magic powers to accomplish the following while your baby watches the boob tube:
- Cut your child’s fingernails and toenails while she is distracted by Teletubbies
- Trim his hair while he sits in the high chair in front of the tv
- Pass time on a long trip with a portable DVD player
- Enjoy your friends and some beer at a sports bar while baby watches “the game”
by Heather
Since Julian never took a bottle, I was really scared into making sure Holden would take one, so he got one bottle each day since he was three weeks old (at least three times a week and no more than once a day).
My best tips for pumping:
- Free your hands. Get the easy expression pumping bra or make your own by cutting holes out of an old bra. Seriously, it allows me to have both hands free so I can surf the web, read, talk on the phone, or scratch my nose.
- Make the time. It is hard to find time for pumping… especially at first. I didn’t know when I could do it. If you do it right after feeding,
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