Unbelievably, I’m 18 weeks pregnant already. How on earth is this happening so quickly?
We had our second trimester ultrasound this afternoon and it was fun. Apparently the baby was so wiggly the tech had issues getting all the pictures she needed. And, since my placenta is in the front, that’s why it’s so difficult for me to feel the movement. And guess what? We’re having … Read the rest of this entry »
I realized the other day that I’ve been TOTALLY slacking off in putting up pictures of Gwen. I’m feeling super busy these days … although I’m sure finally having The OC: Season Four on my computer is NOT helping with my productivity!
As you may have noticed, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about parenting types and styles. I am completely confident that attachment parenting is for Brad and I, but beyond that, how does one discipline?
I’ve got a couple of books that I’m hoping to read soon. With Gwen well into toddlerhood - my goodness, I feel like she’s had a toddler’s mentality since she started crawling! - we’re thinking more and more about discipline and I’m finding myself more and more confused as to what feels right for us. The only thing I do know is that I don’t want to hit, and I don’t want to punish. I want to discipline - to teach our children the correct way of being in relationship with others.
Here’s my list of soon-to-reads (I hope!):
I bought a Graco Soft Seat Potty Trainer a few weeks ago and have been sitting Gwen on it once or twice a day. Normally, she sits for a minute and then emphatically announces, “UP!” and then stares in it. And giggles.
(She’s really far too cute.)
Today, though, it had been almost 3 hours since she’d been changed, so we headed upstairs to change what I thought was going to be a SOAKED diaper. She was dry, so on the off chance something might happen, I plopped her on the potty and handed her a book. I was going to read it to her, but she pulled it out of my hand to look at the pictures and immediately peed!
YAY!
I know it doesn’t mean that she’s going to potty train even REMOTELY soon, but I was pretty excited that she peed on the potty. I think we’ve got a pretty smart cookie on our hands who will figure it out fairly quick once she puts her mind to it, and hopefully with a few more happy accidents like the one today, she’ll figure it out sooner rather than later!
So you know how I wrote a while back about being so disappointed in not being able to find a used Phil & Teds buggy?
Shortly after that post I noticed an aquaintence had an almost three-year-old and a Phil & Teds. So, being the crazy kook I am, I straight up asked if they were almost done with it and would they be willing to sell it to me?
They decided that they weren’t quite ready to live without a stroller as their daughter wasn’t terribly interested in walking everywhere and she accompanied them daily to drop their oldest at school.
So, after a good friend was able to trade her UPPAbaby Vista for a Phil & Teds for the upcoming arrival of her second baby, I thought to myself …
“Hmmm … I’ve got a Bertini in my basement that I was going to sell on Kijiji to put toward my Phil & Ted fund. Maybe I could offer to trade them?”
Followed closely by …
“Good gracious, my grandmother would have no idea what I meant with that sentence.”
So, I put the question out to them, brought the buggy over for them to view and it was a done deal!
Tonight, I became the proud (and terribly excited owner!) of an Apple Green Phil & Teds E3 Sport Buggy with storm cover and doubles kit.
YAY! I’m so excited, I want to go wake Gwen up and take her for a ride! Or maybe not! I think I can wait until morning 
I’ll take some pictures tomorrow.
Here are a few interesting sites/articles I’ve come across in the last week … enjoy!
“An infant taking the recommended amount of soy formula is consuming a hormone load equivalent of 4 birth control pills a day! Is it any wonder we’ve seen such a dramatic rise in precocious puberty with young girls starting their periods at 6 and 7?”
What is Effective, Practical Parenting?:
“Let’s be honest, and above all, practical. Quality discipline combines knowledge of age expected behaviors, reasonable standards, clear expectations, proactive discipline and consistency. Anything less is not effective discipline.”
What Not To Read [about Pregnancy and Childbirth]:
“Don’t read What to Expect When You’re Expecting … This book is chock full of enough scare-tactics and medical promotions to frighten and confuse any mama-to-be right into a panic attack (if not premature labor).”
The Natural Child Project - Common Objections to Homeschooling:
“If there were no other reason for wanting to keep kids out of school, the social life would be reason enough. In all but a very few of the schools I have taught in, visited, or know anything about, the social life of the children is mean-spirited, competitive, exclusive, status-seeking, snobbish, full of talk about who went to whose birthday party and who got-what Christmas presents and who got how many Valentine cards and who is talking to so-and-so and who is not.”
“What many don’t realize is that a two year old saying they didn’t eat the cookie when you find them with chocolate in the corner of their mouth is not a child lying. So if your 2 year old isn’t lying about the cookie what are they doing? They are entering the words as magic stage … When a toddler perceives that they have displeased you they will seek to make things right and they truly believe that their words have power. Words are magic to them. When they ask for things, they get them. When you tell a story they experience it. And when your 2 year old says they didn’t eat the cookie they believe they have undone the act. With their words they have fixed the problem and mommy can now be pleased.”
I’ve been doing some reading on co-sleeping and found a great article called “The Con of Controlled Crying”. Here’s an excerpt:
Controlled crying and other similar regimes may indeed work to produce a self-soothing, solitary sleeping infant. However, the trade-off could be an anxious, clingy or hyper-vigilant child or even worse, a child whose trust is broken. Unfortunately, we can’t measure attributes such as trust and empathy which are the basic skills for forming all relationships. We can’t, for instance, give a child a trust quotient like we can give him an intelligence quotient. One of the saddest emails I have received was from a mother who did controlled crying with her one-year-old toddler.
After a week of controlled crying he slept, but he stopped talking (he was saying single words). For the past year, he has refused all physical contact from me. If he hurts himself, he goes to his older brother (a preschooler) for comfort. I feel devastated that I have betrayed my child. - Sonia
Can you imagine? I can’t. I’m so glad that I read this article - on the nights when it’s the hardest, I’ll be able to remember that quote.
For more articles on baby sleep, co-sleeping, baby training, etc. check out this page. Enjoy!
So a flurry of activity has occured here in the past few days. My $188 compression stockings developed identical twin runs on the heels and I was unimpressed, to say the least! I made a call and headed out to the pharmacy where I got them and chatted with the RPN there about my symptoms and such. Read the rest of this entry »
Gwen tries to mimic everything. But she’s got quite the little vocabulary of words she actually uses correctly! Here are her newest words.
My favourite is when she tries to say ‘architecture’, as it comes out ‘akipoo’. And glasses sounded like ‘asses’, which is also very entertaining.
