June 2014

A parent’s perspective – baby comes first

Published on June 26, 2014 by a.simple.mamaLeave a comment

Ever since we’ve become parents, the Hubs and I have spent less time away from home, less time away from each other, and as little time as possible away from J. As soon as that little one enters your world, they become your #1 priority. Besides that, you WANT them to be your #1 priority. You will find yourself choosing spending time at home with you little one and you family over spending time away. The things that you enjoy doing and find yourself missing doing, you will find yourself choosing your little one over those things. It’s a choice that you start to make automatically. It’s barely registers as a “decision” actually. It became so automatic to us that we don’t even question it anymore.

A close friend asked the Hubs to go on a long weekend camping trip the other day. In the pre-baby days, the Hubs would have jumped at the opportunity – backpacking and camping with the guys for a few nights in a row would have been close to heaven for him. Fast-forward to post-baby days…total change of mind. The Hubs didn’t even ask me if it would be OK for him to go away for a few nights. Instead he already knows and already has decided that he doesn’t like to be away from J (and maybe me too) for more than a night. A baby changes everything.

What was particularly interesting about this specific situation was that this friend got pretty upset about the Hubs not wanting to spend more than one night away. It wasn’t that Hubs couldn’t spend more than one night…although it wouldn’t make me very happy…but that he did not want to. Funny how it changes, huh? It has very little to do with the Hubs not wanting to spend time with his friends doing something he enjoys, and has everything to do with spending as much time with your little one as you possibly can.

I remember how the Hubs and I used to be in the pre-baby days. Knowing us we probably would have been a little annoyed at a friend who would turn down what seemed like an awesome opportunity to get away for the sake of having a family or something similar. I get it, I’ve been there. But now it’s almost comical when someone uses your choice to stay home with the kiddo as a means to be upset over your decision. Your whole perspective changes the minute that little one comes into the world.

Pregnancy the second time around

Published on June 20, 2014 by a.simple.mama4 Comments

To preface this post, I love being pregnant. There’s something so magical about the whole process. I missed being pregnant. Which is probably why we didn’t wait very long before we decided to try for baby #2… There are many many positive experiences that pregnancy brings. It is a feeling that many many women long for and only some are lucky enough to experience.

Now that I’ve cleared that up…

Some days, especially these days during the middle part of the first trimester, I wonder why I would want to do this to myself all over again. MORNING SICKNESS = the shittiest way to start off such an otherwise wonderful experience. How your body is supposed to think it’s a good thing that you feel like total crap is a mystery to me.

“You have that pregnant lady glow”

“You try throwing up all morning, you’d have that glow too”

– Friends

If you’ve had to experience morning sickness, you will wish that the first trimester moves at the speed of light…There’s nothing fun about the first trimester outside of learning you are pregnant and hearing the heartbeat for the very first time somewhere between 8 and 12 weeks…

With J I don’t remember my MS being quite this bad…but then again I was getting a full night sleep, and had a few extra pounds on me too. These days I’m being sucked dry by a voracious 1-year-old and still being waked 1-2 times a night by said little monster. I guess that’s part of why people said I was crazy for wanting another baby when the first doesn’t sleep through the night yet…

With J I did have crazy awful heartburn…bad enough I had to be on Zantac for 75% of my pregnancy. And I remember having some nausea with J until my 14th week or so, but it was never bad enough to keep me from functioning. This time around I’ve had a few days where I’ve struggled to get out of bed. On a really bad day I’m lucky to be functional before 10am. And on those days I fight strong nausea all day long. Eating helps (assuming I have enough energy to get food down) and water helps too. I make sure to keep lots of snacks at the office so that I don’t get too hungry, and I suck on Jolly Ranchers like they are going out of style. I’m just at 9 weeks now, so I’m readying myself for another 4-6 weeks of MS hell…hoping that this is the trade-off for not having heartburn this time around. I think that’s a fair trade!

I am also going to continue to breastfeed J through this pregnancy. If he self-weans in the meantime then so be it, but otherwise I don’t have any real ready to wean him otherwise. My midwife is supportive of this, which is awesome, but she did warn me that I need to really watch my nutrition (since I should basically be eating healthy for 3) and that I will be extra tired. Oy, well nothing like preparing myself for 2 babies right from the beginning huh?!

We’ll go in at 12 weeks for our first ultrasound and will get to hear the heartbeat then too. Most docs will do an ultrasound at 8 weeks, but mine waits until 12 for the first one. And sometimes you are lucky enough to hear a heartbeat at 8 weeks, but my uterus tilts back towards my spine and would make it impossible to hear a heartbeat that early on. So 3 more weeks till we get to see/hear all that fun stuff.

Sticky Fingers

Published on June 20, 2014 by a.simple.mamaLeave a comment

We have officially entered the age of the Sticky Finger Baby. Nothing is off limits, at least in his eyes, and everything is within reach…tabletops are no longer safe! Anything below counter height is fair game. J’s even learned how to climb or step onto other things in order to get those few extra inches he needs to reach whatever-it-may-be that is surely taunting him just out of reach.

He also loves paper. Like has a weird addiction to it…I may have to stage an intervention…Every time I turn around he’s found some kind of paper to chew on. Little stinker! Do babies have Pika? I’m not kidding you, he’ll rip off the corner of a cardboard box, tear through envelopes like they’re nothing, and bite off an entire corner of a 3 ring binder before you even know he has access to any of those things!

That begin said, an office is like a haven for this little paper eating monster…envelopes, paper, tissues, sticky notes galore. I do my best to keep them out of his reach, but you try and keep tabs on every piece of paper in an office space…uh huh.

My desk is rather large, but the usable space is now limited to only the area 6 inches from each edge…otherwise it’s fair game for Mr. Sticky Fingers!

And you can’t possibly be mad at that little face!

I finally had to yell at him the other day after he’d not only pulled every file off my desk, but also pulled out all the files’ contents and spread them all over my office in the course of about 30 seconds. He just turned around and looked at me with a scrunchy nose.

I imagine he was thinking “what do you mean “NO”? These delicious paper items are for me, aren’t they?!”

This Little Monster Turned 1

Published on June 14, 2014February 6, 2020 by a.simple.mama1 Comment

A year already! Man how time flies…seriously, it’ll hit you pretty hard cuz you won’t barely see it coming. Before you know it your little baby turns into a little boy.

For J’s birthday I chose a Monster Theme. Seemed appropriate for a little one who is constantly tearing into everything and going-going all the time!

I found the invitations on Etsy for only $8! Awesome price for a super cute custom invite, then just print it yourself 🙂

Then I used inspiration from Pinterest for the cupcakes and smash cake

I found candy googly-eyes in the cake stuff isle at the grocery store – perfect addition to a simple cupcake and some butter cream frosting. For the cake and cupcakes I used box cake but made a few substitutions to make it a little less box-cake-y. Use milk instead of water, add an extra egg, add a 1tsp of vanilla, and use butter in place of the oil. Super easy substitution and I thought it make the cake a little lighter and tastier than usual too. For the cake I baked 2 – 9″ rounds then stacked them and cut it into a googly shape. Then I used a piping bag and a grass/hair tip to get the stringy texture for the frosting. It wasn’t the quickest process, but looked pretty good for being a novice cake decorator. I used doughnut holes for the eyes, and found a cute #1 candle to add.

The cake smash didn’t go quite like it’s “supposed” to though. J wasn’t very interested in eating the frosting or the cake…

We though that as soon as he tried some of the frosting he’d be hooked and get the idea….

Guess we were wrong…

We tried moving him out of the highchair to see if that would help any…I think even T had better luck with the cake smash then J did!

Then daddy stepped up and showed him how’s it done

Opened some pretty awesome additions to J’s toy collection too!

But I think the part he liked the BEST was playing in the MUD! What a silly messy boy!

And we got to share some pretty Awesome news with our family and friends too…

This Little Monster is gonna be a BIG BROTHER!

A little Torticollis, a little Flat Head Syndrome

Published on June 10, 2014February 6, 2020 by a.simple.mama1 Comment

As new parents there are and will be many many things that you’ll do wrong. Or that you’ll be totally unaware of. Or that you’ll have no idea even exists as a potential problem, until you do that thing and it affects your child.

As new parents ourselves, we had no idea how hard surfaces and a tendency to turn his head one direction would cause not only a giant flat spot on the back side of J’s head but that it would also affect the muscles in his neck. When he was really tiny I’d lay him on my desk at my office (which was the best place to keep an eye and a hand on him)…this is way before he started rolling, don’t worry. Who knew that this hard surface would lead to such a flat area on the right-back side of J’s head?! And who knew that you had to pay close attention to the side of the head your little one likes to lay on?! Well, these are all things that you learn ONLY if these things happen to your kid!

We’d only just noticed that J’s head was a little flat right before we headed to his 3 month appointment. Of course the Doc noticed as soon as he walked in the door. Dead giveaway is when the baby isn’t looking straight up at the ceiling…for further reference. Apparently what happens is that when they tend to turn their head only to one side (J preferred the right) that the neck muscles tighten on that side, and stretch on the other side. So to resolve this you have to stretch the neck the other direction to loosen that side and even up the lengths and strengths of the muscles. So began the many weeks of neck stretches. BTW babies don’t particularly like this. You have to hold them down and gently tilt their head the opposite direction of whichever way they normally tend to tilt it. Then you also rotate their neck from side to side. Yeah…so much fun to do this while they are screaming at you. Makes you feel like you’re torturing them.

The flat spot on his head the Doc described to us as when you push on one corner of a cardboard box and the opposite corner also tilts out-of-place. J had “plagiocephaly” as shown in the pic below.

To correct this and avoid needing a helmet, we had to very closely watch which side of his head he laid on at all times. For the first few weeks we had to do everything in our power to keep him from laying on the right side of his head. Not so easy, let me tell ya. It involved tilting his body to one side when he was laying or sleeping, and using extra padding around the head support in his car seat. We also used the Tortle – a hat or sorts that was created specifically to help with torticollis and Flat Head Syndrome in infants. It worked pretty well when J was still little enough not to squirm too much, but we had to stop using it once he could wiggle his head enough to get the “tail” of the hat moved around. Another product I learned about much later was the Baby Elephant Ears – this product would really help towards prevention of torticollis and FHS, and is super cute too!

Luckily for us it only took a few weeks of doing the exercises and making sure to even out which side J laid on to get the flat spot to mostly go away and for the neck muscles to even out. By his 6 month appointment he was as back to “normal” as we would be able to get him.

Such a silly little oversight, but something that I warn all my new parent friends about. J will always have a slightly flat spot and misshapen head to go with it, but luckily we caught it early enough to correct it enough that you can’t tell unless you know what you’re looking for. Even after years of childcare for infants, I’d never seen either Torticollis or FHS…but hopefully now you can share this information with your fellow first-time parents and avoid a little headache 🙂