ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

What kind of Xmas/Hannukah presents are you guys getting your kids? Evie has only requested "ballerina stuff" and "princess things" so I'm struggling trying to think of ideas that are more engaging/creative/activity-focused.

duplo, puzzles, one of those little play kitchen sets

d's aunt got her a dora microphone that just constantly sings dora songs <- what fresh hell is this

I don't think we're getting Ivy anything. We just bought her a shit ton of stuff and I'm not working so no extra money and she's two weeks old and doesn't care.

Maybe I'll get her something to celebrate her supposed-to-have-been due date.

It's frustrating bc she has so many toys that she never ever plays with but she'd throw a fit if we got rid of them. And for her bday we got her a balance bike and she refused to ride it and now it's just in our storage room.

you should see our garage. it's like the kid version of the johnny cash "hurt" video.

LOL

I'm thinking of getting Owen a guitar, since he has expressed interest in playing. Ben seems interested in piano, but we already have one, so I need something else for him.Other than that, they want fucking Skylanders everything.

Reading Beeps a bedtime story she brought home from school called "Santa's Snow Cat". Book's about this cat who falls out of Santa's damn sleigh and into New York City. I guess I may have hesitated a little when I got to the part where Santa lands on the World Trade Center and tries to find the damn cat. "What are you looking at, Daddy?" -- all of a sudden, I'm cast in a really awkward scene of a TV movie on Lifetime or somewhere.

May as well have told her, she's going to think it's "funny" like I crack JFK jokes anyway. Can't blame anyone for that, just like no one can really say anything about the inflatable Titanic bouncy slide they have at JumpZone. It's just weird and makes me feel old to have had such intense feelings about something that's just a chapter in a history book.

Beeps said the buildings looked like a video game (it was a nighttime scene.) Book's ©opyright was 2001, so I'm sure it was a big seller for that year's holiday shopping season.

I'm sure this is not breaking news for anybody on this thread, but wow, babies sure do hate the nasal vacuum bulb.

Yup. I'm not convinced one of those has ever actually been successfully used, but maybe I just had an unusually jerky baby.

We moved to a new place and my daughter is afraid of the ceiling fans. She keeps glaring at them and doesn't want to walk under them. I would just take them out, but we've spent a good amount already this year fixing up the place? Should I just wait for her to adjust to them?

she'll get used to them i imagine. that's funny though, J is MESMERIZED by ceiling fans, they are so fascinating to him. though he's really afraid of this tiny little cow that moos when you squeeze it. kids are funny

When she was a little baby, I had a toy that made this noise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5niRvJBELo

and she was totally scared of it. Would start crying if she even saw it after a while. I kinda want to dig that thing up and see if it still has that effect.

btw, nose bulbs take the patience and concentration of a surgeon, but we used them to great effectiveness when our girl was little. You just really want to be careful not to scrape the inside of their nasal passage because jeez, that has to be uncomfortable. The best alternative for me was to just put mouth to nose and inhale. That's not going to get a booger that's really stuck in there though.

We have one of these - http://www.fridababy.com/shop/nosefrida/ - though we have not used it yet. The hospital also gave us a bulb syringe. How and when to use either is a source of some anxiety for me. I supposed it's too much to hope that she'll just never need it...

I always wanted to try the frida! In the first two years or so, we used the bulb a lot. We bought so many Little Noses Stuffy Nose Kits.

You can rinse them out and sterilize them with alcohol, but they do get nasty after a while.

I don't think there was anything K hated more than the nosefrida. Not even the rectal thermometer.

how's life, are you saying you used to suck the boogers out of your child's nose?

haha yea i didn't want to ask

also J is strangely calmed by the rectal thermometer

The nurse told us not to use a rectal thermometer bc Ivy is so small it would be easy to hurt her. We got an ear therm, but her ears are to small, so we got a forehead one and it's great and I take her temp about 500 times a day bc I'm always afraid she's too cold.

<3

Yes, I used to straight up suck boogers out of my kid's nose. It works.

We only used an armpit thermometer. Nurses and doctors would always scoff at us because they are supposedly inaccurate, but it was reliable enough that you could add a degree to the read-out and get the correct temperature.

with your mouth?

I'm saying.

lol, K is even afraid of the point-and-shoot thermometer. She's a sensitive kid, what can I do.

I was basically the same as a kid, so I can't really complaint.

She also, like a lot of babies, hates having her hair washed, but doesn't get the concept of putting her head back, so I developed a technique which I feel sort of morally iffy about of doing it quickly and then clapping and saying "Yay! Big girl!"

Yes, I used to straight up suck boogers out of my kid's nose. It works.

We only used an armpit thermometer. Nurses and doctors would always scoff at us because they are supposedly inaccurate, but it was reliable enough that you could add a degree to the read-out and get the correct temperature.

― how's life, Monday, December 9, 2013 2:18 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

with your mouth?

― Euler, Monday, December 9, 2013 3:41 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ive done this a few times, i dont give a fuck, come at me and i'll spit baby boogers in ur face motherfuckers

irl lol

FYI the NICU nurses all took baby temps in the armpit. Hell, a couple of times when I was admitted and I took poorly timed drinks of ice water the nurses took my temp via pit.

that's true parental love, xp

french parents do it in the butt

even after they grow up!!!!

hence a certain reluctance to put thermometers anywhere near their mouths, which just reinforces the whole thing

so weird

At the hospital last week they used these cool scanner thermometers - they start on the forehead and scan over behind one ear. Kind of strange and really quick.

That's what our pediatrician uses.

I love the scanner thermometer. Had to use it a lot the day after August got her last shot, last month. My cousin's baby suddenly got a fever and they took her temp and it was 99.3 and then within the hour she started having convulsions and a super high temp. My cousin said it happened like within 45 minutes. It was an ER visit and a huge scare. I don't want that so the few times August has had a temp, has been after shots, I just take her temp constantly all day. A pediatrician told me rectal is the only correct way to record a temp. So last month I checked her with the rectal once and it corresponded exactly with the scanner so I never checked again with the rectal. Made me nervous using it too.

During her 24 hour fever though, I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night and took her temp to find that she was no longer 99.5-100.1 but 102.4. I FREAKED and did the lukewarm washcloths at 3am and then gave her a dose of baby Advil which took the fever away super fast.

Oh, and when she was itty bitty and getting boogies all lodged up in her nose, I finally just sucked them out with my mouth, gagged a bit the very first time then did it again and again, only thing that worked and she didn't mind. She hated anything in her nose and Little Noses was torture. Once she got a bit older, I was able to clear her nose during a bath.

I had three nose bulbs, after the first one never worked for noses, I used the other two to get saliva, mlk or phlegm out of her mouth when she was gagging or choking on it. This happened a few times when she was itty bitty. Those bulbs were great for that stuff.

God alfuckinmighty toddler colds are a full-time job

Even better when both parents get sick too.

we're 1 for 2 there but I expect mom'll be getting on board soon enough

Hello ilx parents! Do any of you know of a simple baby/toddler picture book that has two identical versions: an app/e-book, and a traditional book? This seems to be a harder thing to find than I would have expected.

This parents sucking shit out of the kids noses is blowing my mind.

My cousin's baby suddenly got a fever and they took her temp and it was 99.3 and then within the hour she started having convulsions and a super high temp.

Sounds like febrile seizures. I had a hand full of these when I was an infant/toddler. My mother said they were terrifying. :/

ljubljana, Goodnight Moon?

http://a.tgcdn.net/images/products/zoom/ea15_goodnight_ipad.jpg

heh, pp, I hadn't seen that.

Euler - sorry, I should have been clearer: it would have to be a non-classic, for a fighting chance that kids haven't seen it before. (For sure we'll still find that some kids have already read it, whatever we get). This is for a research project looking at certain aspects of how parents read e-books and traditional books to kids.

I just read Goodnight Moon to a friend's 3-year-old a few days ago. I then heard his ten-year-old brother unexpectedly mumbling 'will you read me a story too?' So I read five or six pages of swashbuckling navy stories. It was my first time with non-infant bedtime story reading. I think I did ok, though my range of expression was not up to audiobook standards.

Funnily enough I think most publishers try to put something in the ebook that isn't in the print version, so it's NOT just the same thing on a screen. Good luck!

Our kids have books and then they have what they look at on the iPad. Most of the app material is from shows and movies. The boy likes this Toy Story 3 app that reads the movie to him like a story, with words on the page, still-life illustrations, etc. It's like it slows the story down for him to catch the more subtle aspects he missed from the film.

They also watch a cartoon based on an app where you tickle a cat's belly and she purrs. Welcome to 2013.

A couple years ago, I had a nook. My daughter used it too, mostly for silly little apps where you pop bubbles or make animal noises or whatever. I made a lot of effort to look for children’s books for her, but the selection was disappointing. Off the top of my head, I remember Splat the Cat, The Monster at the End of This Book, and some of the Biscuit series.

Reading Rainbow has an app* though I don't know whether there are actual books involved.

*Levar Burton talked about it a lot at the last Star Trek convention I attended.

Thanks guys, I'm looking into those - Biscuit might be promising, as these would be very young kids (17-19 months). Reading Rainbow looks good too - I downloaded the app, but my phone is playing up so can't check it out yet.