ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

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.

The fucked up thing is that some day our kids will be NOSTALGIC for the "simple" apps they played with as kids, in comparison with whatever far more advanced and immersive thing they have by college.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_08VMX2xp_k

parentz, how many holly hunter in raising arizona moments do you have? i have had a few full blown sobbing fits this year.

um sorry dude you're on your own :D

Actualllyyyyy I have quoted that specific scene while holding my child to make LOLs out of the fact that I was crying because I was holding my child.

There were some mitigating factors that I could cite to explain my emotional outburst but let's be real I would cry re holding this kid regardless because, though I am hard and emotionless on the internet, I am a complete puddle in real life. Also for real, I love her so mu-u-u-u-uch.

<3 <3

i can't even imagine how rad yr first christmas together is going to be u guys

I tear up over my kids every so often. It's a combo of overwhelming love mixed with a crushing helplessness and fear that something will happen to them. The other day, I didn't get a text back from my wife for three hours while she was watching them and I put myself into vertigo with worry. I was checking local news twitters for any word about a car crash or something. I mean, crazy shit. And it's not like she hadn't gone that long without checking in before. I just got all messed up about them because I basically pale and cower in the shadow of how little and wonderful they are. I don't fucking know.

Anyhow, y'all got some tips & tricks for potty training? I'm sick of buying diapers.

That sounds about right.

I freak out that either something will happen to K or that something will happen to H and K will grow up motherless pretty much every other day. I'm just not a tears of joy kind of guy I guess.

Actualllyyyyy I have quoted that specific scene while holding my child to make LOLs out of the fact that I was crying because I was holding my child.

― carl agatha, Monday, December 23, 2013 1:06 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There were some mitigating factors that I could cite to explain my emotional outburst but let's be real I would cry re holding this kid regardless because, though I am hard and emotionless on the internet, I am a complete puddle in real life. Also for real, I love her so mu-u-u-u-uch.

― carl agatha, Monday, December 23, 2013 1:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3 <3

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, December 23, 2013 1:46 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i can't even imagine how rad yr first christmas together is going to be u guys

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, December 23, 2013 1:46 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

todo esto

btw today is the first day of 2 weeks off from work and i am at home with baby bison and we are all snuggly yayyyy