How to Cut Baby's Nails

I am still a novice mom learning to be better everyday, but cutting nails is one of things that I am good, nay GREAT, at. Fortunately, with a little bit of practice, a cooperative (read: SLEEPING) baby, and a great pair of clippers, you too can be a confident in your baby manicuring skills.

First things first.  Arm yourself with a great pair of clippers.  I think The First Years American Red Cross Deluxe Clippers are the cat's meow.  The magnifying glass is a throw away, but the clippers themselves are incredibly sharp, which is a good thing.  Think of it like shaving; you are far more likely to injure yourself when using a dull blade.  The same holds true for clipping!  Have faith, you can do this.

Once you get proper clippers and are ready to cut:

1.  Wait until baby is passed out.

2.  Put baby on tummy in his crib.

3.  Position yourself comfortably and gently pull pad of finger away from nail.

4.  Slip the bottom half of the clippers behind the nail but on top of the finger pad.

5.  If you are clipping fingernails, cut at least 3x per nail creating a rounded edge: once on the right side, the next on the left side (creating a point for the tip and avoiding sharp corners when the nail grows out a little.), then the last clip should be cutting off the point.
5a.  If you are clipping toenails, clip flat across the nail so you avoid ingrowns.  It can happen, take my word on that!

Here is a crappy youtube tutorial I made:

If you DO nick baby:
-Stay calm.
-Run the finger under cool water.
-Apply pressure with a tissue or cloth until it clots.
-Do not put on a bandaid!
-Remind yourself that this is much harder on you than it is on baby.
-Give baby lots of cuddles until you feel better.

Gear Changes for 2013...

Cori and Everett (8m)

1.  Baby Swing - Baby holding receptacles were once a hot commodity in our household, but now that E is fairly mobile and much more independent, they are much less in demand.  The swing was a space-saver, portable version that I could put on the kitchen island as I cooked, or in the living room while I pumped.  I would never have done without and he did enjoy his time in it.  Now, onwards and upwards!

2.  Bottle Warmer - As soon as I got home from the hospital and realized that at least some amount of pumping was a necessity for us, we invested in a decent bottle warmer.  However, once Everett was around 4 months, we started taking the breast milk straight from the fridge and little dude never seemed to mind.  We are lazy.  Now, we have officially retired the bottle warmer and my kitchen counter is inflicted with one less eyesore.

3.  Infant Seat -  E never did love the infant seat.  Now that he is 20+ lbs, lugging around this bucket seat is hard on my back, plus he's pushing the height maximum.  We are very happy to have moved on to using our Stokke stroller seat and Diono carseat in place of our infant seat.

4.  The Bumbo - It's easy to retire something that you never really used.  We found the bumbo to be uncomfortable and ill fitting.  We attempted to do some meals in it, but it never really worked for us.  SAYONARA! 

5.  Mobile - This is the hardest one for me.  The mobile represents newborn-dom, and while I'm happy to move on from this stage and love to watch him grow every day, it's just such a sweet reminder of little, helpless newborn Everett.  He has already tried to take this down, so it was definitely time to retire it, but it will forever be a keepsake of a time that was so sweet and so special.

Natty & Georgia (7 months)

1. The bouncy seat.

It made it possible for me to work while Georgia was awake in the early days and served us well for about four months but after that, her limbs dripped over the edges of the thing and she could headbutt the toy bar, so it went into storage.

2. The boppy.

Look at my itty bitty! I never used the boppy for breastfeeding. Pillows around my middle never made any sense to me. The boppy is a fantastic baby-holder though. Even that had a time limit, however, and Georgia was done with the boppy at around 5 months. I know some kids like it in the early days of sitting but she never has.

3. The swing.

I've been reluctant to take the swing apart, even though Georgia hasn't been in about two months, because when you need it YOU NEED IT. The only way I was able to eat dinner with both hands from months 2 through 4 was because of the swing.

4. The snap-and-go.

I loved this stroller in the days before Georgia could ride in a shopping cart or sit in an umbrella stroller but now I hate how much room it takes up in the back of our car and how hard it is to get things in and out of the basket underneath. She's still comfy in her bucket car seat but it's time to move on from this stroller. See you in hell, snap and go! Or at least until we have another little baby.

5. Bye-bye, play mat. This is where Georgia happily spent part of every day for the first six months of her life. I knew it was time to take it down when Georgia started to pull herself up on the soft, not-for-pulling-up soft bars.

Putting this one away made me cry.

Mid Boot Camp Update

Today, I come to you today a little less flabby and a little bit stronger.

In sticking with my resolutions, I started a fitness bootcamp class 3 weeks ago.  This is such a silly name because it's not much more than an interval fitness class on a fixed (MWF) schedule for an hour each day.  We meet in a park very early in the morning and get done about the time most people have just had their first cup of coffee.

A typical workout looks something like this:
 3 sets of 25 - jumping jacks, push ups, burpees (10 min)
 stretching (5 min)
 3 sets of hill sprints/jogs/walks, side steps (10 min)
 3 sets of different ab work (10 min)
 high kicks, frog hops, lunges for the length of the field (10 min)
 3 sets of arm work with bands plus curb kicks (10 min)
stretching (5 min)
 
What I like:
 It gets me out at least 3x a week.
 It caters to any fitness level and changes as you change.
 I am home before Bran needs to leave for work.
 We never have two identical workouts.
 Instructor makes sure form is good so I don't get hurt.
 Working out in a group keeps me honest and motivated.

Boot camps like these are now found all over the country.  In fact, in my 'burb in LA, there are at least two competing companies who offer great groupon deals at least bi yearly.  If you are considering joining one, I really encourage you to go for it.  Make sure you do a little research before you join; there are many different "flavors" and if you live in a larger city, you can almost certainly find one that suits your needs (higher intensity, later in the day, etc).

Now what sort of progress have I made?  I can now run a hilly mile without getting out of breath, I can feel my abs are starting to bounce back (if this is post pregnancy, you want to be careful here) and I generally feel stronger than I have in quite a while.  The scale hasn't really budged much, but my pants are fitting better and overall, I just feel better than I did just 3 weeks ago.

The Ikea Highchair - Best $25 I've Spent So Far

If you're anywhere near an Ikea, I really think you owe it to yourself to check out the ANTILOP highchair. You should also having some meatballs while you're there. If you aren't anywhere near an Ikea, you can buy it online. I would not recommend having the meatballs shipped. All in all, I am super pleased with this highchair and since Ikea doesn't allow shoppers to review products online, I wanted to go into more detail for anyone wondering about it:

Things I love:

• This chair is small and simple. It seems like the right size for my little gal but I can see it will grow with her too. 
• No upholstery, which means nothing to stain and no plush crevices for food to hide in. The entire thing can be taken out on the back porch and hosed down when it needs to be cleaned. One day, it was freezing out, so I popped the whole thing in our shower and cleaned it off that way.
• Pop the tray off and the highchair can be pushed up to a standard-height table. We can push her chair right up to the dining room table when we're having a meal in the dining room. This will be particularly nice when she starts to color or do crafts.
• This chair is super light and I can carry it easily from one room to another with one hand.
• The tray is small enough to be easily washed off in a standard kitchen sink, yet large enough to serve a nice meal on or to use for playing or coloring.
• $25. The whole thing is $25. It was so affordable, I didn't bat an eye when I bought a pricier travel seat to use in restaurants. For under $100, I had two awesome seats!
• The assembly was super easy. The legs pop into the seat with a quick twist, like a beach umbrella pops into the anchor pole.

Things that may be less lovable:

• The ascetics may not be your cup of tea. I think it's cute but my house is full of hand-me-down furniture and crud from Ikea. I'm not winning any design awards here, people.
• This is not the type of highchair that allows a kid to independently climb in or out of the chair. To me, this is a big plus, but some might find this annoying.
• It's lower than other highchairs. Again, this is a big plus for me but I imagine a taller parent might find this to be a pain in the back.
• This chair doesn't fold up. This could be an issue in a very small house.
• The tray can be difficult to pop off. Many highchairs have trays with buttons that let you slide the tray in and out but this tray "clicks" into place and needs to be kind of pried up to take it off. It took about a week for me to really get the hang of it. I'd say this is the biggest downside but it no longer is an issue for me.
• There is no real adjustability in the seat. Your kid needs to be sitting independently very well to use this seat and if baby passes out in this one, it's going to be a face-first slide.

Let me know if you have any questions about this highchair. I'm a big fan.

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Little Baby, Big Chunks of Food

Months ago, I was being weird about introducing solids to little G. My, how things have changed!

Georgia has never been one of those babies who showed a lot of early interest in food. She never stole a fork or grabbed at a piece of toast. She never imitated chewing or looked hungrily at us as we ate dinner. She is also a breastmilk junky, nursing before and after every nap with snacks in between (I dream of life after breastfeeding, just like Cori but try not to anticipate when it will end because I'm leaving it up to her for now.) The time is right for food though and she was showing other signs of readiness, so we started introducing foods in earnest right around Christmas.

The term baby-led weaning is stupid… if you’re American. The term originated in the UK, where weaning just means introducing food, as opposed to the in US where it means the tittie bar is closed stopping breastfeeding. Some people are starting to call it baby-led eating, which makes more sense, but really, we’re just skipping purees and spoon feeding.

We started with mashed up roasted sweet potato. I just peeled and cut a bunch of sweet potato into cubes, tossed them with a little olive oil, and roasted them at 425 for about 20 minutes. I then put everything in my mixer with the whisk attachment and it took about 3 minutes for the machine to mash everything while still leaving it decently chunky. Then we put her in the high chair with a little pile of sweet potato mash in front of her and just let her do whatever she was going to do.

Like all the crap in our kitchen?

For the first week, she just squished and squashed and moved the mush around with very little making it to her mouth. At that point, we added in avocado and that’s when she moved from just playing to playing and eating a little. I offered her dice that was fine enough if she put a whole chunk in her mouth, it wouldn't choke her. In retrospect, I should have just offered her a BIG chunk, they work so much better for her! Avocado was the first food she really started to go for once she could hold a big piece of it and gum it like crazy.

Choking is less of an issue than you might think. Eating this way, the baby gags a LOT and if you don't know what you're seeing, it can scare you. A baby's gag reflex is MUCH more forward than an adults, so they will gag when something isn't anywhere near the back of their mouth. Of course, you want to know about how to respond to a choking baby (youtube videos helps me refresh from my old infant CPR certification) and there are theories that babies who self feed are safer eaters in the future because they have more experience with chunks. Here's some good info on gagging versus choking.

Meal times take a LONG time and it can take her a LONG (10+ minutes) to get something to her mouth. I look at time in her high chair as more sensory play time than meal time and I just don't let myself stress about how much food actually gets into her belly. If I only gave her 5 minutes in her high chair, she would not learn how to self-feed. She probably spends 30 minutes in her high chair at a feeding but she is working the whole time. Yes, a lot of it ends up on the floor.  Yes, the dog is getting fatter.

It is really important to be thoughtful about what kinds of foods you offer. First, it’s important not to offer things that are too slimy or soft (cantaloupe is a notorious choker.) Then, as you select foods, you have to ride the line between soft enough to gum but firm enough to hold.

Avocados are great because there is a natural "handle" where the pit was. Other foods I cut into shapes that are easy to grab—a bow-tie shape works really well. I also offer her foods cut into finer dices and she seems to really respond well to the variety.

We also will load a baby spoon with some food and put it on her tray. She loves to feed herself with the spoon! Very neat. We also offer her water in a little cup a few times during her meal. This encourages her to swallow if she's shoving and gumming a lot without actually swallowing.

I love this style of feeding because she can eat meals with us without DH or I having to spoon feed her and we can just eat as a family. She's eating more every day and her fine motor skills are getting to be really awesome. Yesterday, she picked up peas with her fingertips! When you’ve got a baby to watch, who needs television?

Smoking Crack Whilst Jumping on a Trampoline: Things I'm Looking Forward to Post Nursing

Pregnancy can read as a list of things you are not supposed to do.  As soon as I got pregnant, I put away the good face creams, the Tylenol, the booze.  Everything was googled before it was applied or ingested.  Little did I realize, I wasn't in for a mere 9 months of this.  The life modifications would last the entire duration of the pregnancy PLUS whatever time I spent nursing my little one.

Now that I am going to be done lactating in the foreseeable future (which I am still having mixed feelings about), I am very much looking forward to all the things I'll be able to do again.  When we first got pregnant at practically the same time, Natty and I were talking about the ways our life had immediately changed.  She lamented that there would be no more smoking crack while jumping on a trampoline in our immediate future, but now I might JUST BECAUSE I CAN! 

Bye-Bye Breastpads  - Not only will I be saying goodbye to breastpads, I will be saying hello to my normal, cuter bras.  What a joy it will be to have more than 3 options and to not have to worry about where we are in the laundry cycle to make sure I have a clean one ready.  Also, I don't know if it's just me, but while nursing I have not felt comfortable enough to go braless, even in my sleep, so that is another major plus!

Overindulging - I would be lying if I said there haven't been times that I have had one too many during the duration that I have been nursing, in which case I have pumped and dumped.  However, now I will be able to come home from a date night or evening out without paying my 30 minute toll to the milk gods before I can go to bed.

Teeth Whitening Strips - There are differing opinions on whether or not teeth bleaching agents are safe during pregnancy and during breastfeeding, but I decided to play it safe.  Because of this, my pearly whites are now pearly yellows (thanks a lot, black tea and light skin).  I have had great success with Crest White Strips in the past and am now happy to have the green light to use them again.

Cori, Untethered - There will be no more scheduling around the pump, no more midday pit stops, no more toting around a bowling ball bag full of milking equipment.  I can sleep in without feeling like I have two water balloons on my chest, filled to the brink, ready to burst at any moment.  It will be glorious.

Retin-A -  It seems like every older woman with great skin has this same secret weapon in her arsenal.  Retin-A helps with both fine lines and wrinkles.  I happen to have worse skin on both fronts since childbirth, so I'm very excited about slathering this cream on to help.

Perhaps I'm using this post as a way to make myself feel better about being nearly done with nursing (definitely within several months)?  It's good and bad and happy and sad, but I can feel it deep down inside of me that Everett and I are about to move on together.   But it's good in more ways than one.