ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

well, that picture ruined my day

I sat outside evie's room with "do you want to build a snowman" on a loop for an hour and she was still awake and now I'm insane

looool

let it go, is my advice

Heh.

RIP NA. He couldn't let it go.

I sat outside evie's room with "do you want to build a snowman" on a loop for an hour and she was still awake and now I'm insane

http://f.cl.ly/items/3J333f00362h1x2D0O0S/frozen-snowman.jpg

does recorded music usually put evie to sleep? with my kids it just makes them jump around even more

I better get my raver baby mix together now

Early on, Stet put together a Spotify playlist of things which F seemed to like and it now has a magickal effect at troublesome bed/nap times because nine times out of ten it goes Guns of Brixton > Under Pressure > Ashes to Ashes > honk shoo.

aw, we're "honk shoo" people! I first heard of it when I was reading some book to my daughter. Never heard that before in my life, but I like it better than any other snoring onomatopoeia.

does recorded music usually put evie to sleep? with my kids it just makes them jump around even more

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, July 29, 2014 6:40 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't think it makes much difference, if she's hyper she wants to dance but if she's sleepy it doesn't keep her from sleeping. The one slight positive is it sometimes keeps her quiet, even if she's not falling asleep.

When she was a baby I would play "Little Bird" by Elizabeth Mitchell on a loop because it seemed to help her fall asleep. I rigged up the iPod dock so it would play all night in hopes of getting her to sleep through the night but then I got worried that this would make her go crazy so I stopped doing it.

I did kind of lose it last night after sitting out there in an uncomfortable chair listening to that song for an hour and she was still wide awake. I felt bad, I just lost my patience. But we do need to work on her going to sleep without one of us (me) hanging out in the hallway.

"we need to work on" in parenting is a sad resignation

ie I feel your pain

I'm sure this has been discussed before, but what is the consensus on flying with an infant, lap or their own seat with car seat? We were just going to do lap for an upcoming trip, but now I'm all paranoid about it. Even holding her in our lap, I know that the likelihood of something happening to injure her is very low on the plane. The drive to and from the airport is more dangerous than a flight would be. I could pay $263 more and get her own seat.

I'm also paranoid about checking the car seat, for fear that it will have some invisible structural damage from the friendly airline employees tossing it about.

you are a little paranoid dude!

but seriously though i wouldn't worry about the checking a car seat. those things are pretty sturdy.

and how old is your infant? we are cheapskates so we have never paid for the extra seat. but once J was old enough to be crawling we would pray that an adjacent seat would be vacant. when you have a screaming kid who is crawling and playing everywhere it is really nice to have the extra seat, we've been lucky enough on a few flights and it made a big difference.

and J hates the car seat enough as it is so we never felt like strapping him into a car seat on a plane

we are somewhat relieved that we will be forced to buy an extra seat for him when he turns 2 in a couple of months. i don't know the rules though - once he is 2 and has to have his own seat, does he need to be in the car seat?

We flew from Boston to Cleveland with twins on our laps and we were fine. We also left the car seats and strollers at home and rented car seats along with our rental car (PS: if you're a member of AAA, you can get free car seats from Hertz). Baby transportation in the airport was done via BabyBjorn.

Daughter will be 10 months at the time. I'm not really concerned about the actual act of holding her, keeping her occupied, etc. It's totally just an irrational fear of the unlikely event of extreme turbulence ripping my child from my arms and smashing her into the overheard compartment. That .0000000001 percent chance (made up statistic) has me paranoid.

In all my years of flying, I have never actually seen someone bring a car seat on the plane and strap an infant in it. Everyone that I can remember has been a lap baby.

We flew from Boston to Cleveland with twins on our laps and we were fine. We also left the car seats and strollers at home and rented car seats along with our rental car (PS: if you're a member of AAA, you can get free car seats from Hertz). Baby transportation in the airport was done via BabyBjorn.

― Star Gentle Uterus (DJP), Monday, August 4, 2014 6:47 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

baller moves imo

that said at a certain point the extra seat is a total godsend

http://o.onionstatic.com/images/26/26978/original/700.hq.jpg?2844

Oh snap that's massive.

I love the Onion magazine

lol

if only more of these were in mens' restrooms though

otmmmmmmmmmarcos

Those Koala stations are actually not that great -- they're uncomfortable and difficult with a toddler my daughter's size. She hates them.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8c/Debbie_Downer.PNG

I've never come across a koala that had all, or even most, of its original parts, but it's been a while.

Ha in Minnesota, land of pleasantries, I've never come across one that wasn't in perfect shape and scrupulously clean. Also I'm shocked when a men's bathroom doesn't have one, outside of like show venues and bars that don't serve food. I'd say I've seen maybe one place without one in the entire year of Michael being around.

Best so-glad-that's-not-me moment I had was eating fast food with my son while the couple in the next booth over negotiated with their two daughters and newborn. The girls went out to play on the playground, and the husband was all "uh-oh!" Mom was just "it's your turn, Jerry."

Dad and baby go off to the back and 20 seconds later are back at the table. Husband shrugs his shoulders half-heartedly and goes "No Koala." Poor woman answers back with ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

It's rare for there to be baby changing facilities in the gents' here. Stet only does nappies when we're out if they have unisex loos or a separate room (Westfield shopping malls and John Lewis department stores have great family rooms with breastfeeding cubicles and double toilets too).

August has been taking her diapers off herself, putting on a pair of panties (she has six at this point) taking those off and putting on another pair before taking those off and going without anything. Every now and then slips on a swimming diaper. It's hard to keep up with all the changes on top of her changing outfits constantly. So when I asked her to please get dressed this morning and she picked out a jumper with apron and panties, I thought... morning, grocery store...hmmm feel bad but I don't trust you to tell me you need to potty or myself to find you a potty that you wouldn't mind sitting on so I put her diapers on. We are at the grocery store, I had what I came for and was just browsing when she raises her dress and I see that she has nothing on. It was time to go.

Little man went ham at the family birthday party tonight, he will now be opening every wrapped present he sees for the rest of his life, no matter whose they are

oh I hope there is video of this

omg Tera I'm sure that was far from funny to you but that made me laugh.

lol. wonder where the diaper ended up.

So teething is a real thing that is happening.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

As we entered the second hour of Ivy absolutely not sleeping and I watched my sleep allotment dwindle, I thought long and hard about letting her cry it out. But we have upstairs and downstairs neighbors whose bedrooms are vertically adjacent to Ivy's and she has a very lusty and raucous cry when she's feeling ignored so I didn't do it. But if we lived in a house in the middle of a field, I probably would have given it a try. Instead, she got to lay on my lap and grab my face and kick and giggle and squeal and wave at ghosts (I mean I assume that's what she's always waving at) and I cried it out quietly to myself.

aw.

She has one little bottom tooth (CUTE) and she's been grabbing at her ears and sucking on her gums being generally fussy/discontent and I can kind of see the outlines of her top teeth so I'm thinking she may be getting a couple at once.

Yeah "cry it out" is tough in the urban setting. In my experience you're going to have to go there eventually so ... maybe just give your neighbors gift baskets with cookies and ear plugs?

i never even thought of that as a dude with a house. sorry to you dudes, that must raise the tension level dramatically.

have you considered hating your neighbors, that might help

We had a 30 minute howler of a crying fit at bedtime last night because she wanted to play with her hexbug nanos instead. So much raw sorrow.

We had some really shitty stressful moments resulting from having a crying baby in an apartment, but the asshole neighbors eventually moved out and everyone was cool after that. In our new place, we only have neighbors upstairs and they seem chill and they have a dog who likes to run around on their creaky floors early in the morning so they can't complain about any crying.

imo neighbors who are pissy about a crying baby need to fuck right off

otm

fortunately we've never had to deal with that, our boo radley 78 collector duplex neighbor complained about him jumping up and down once the last time we saw him (in november) but otherwise we've had zero issues. i always hate to hear those kinds of stories, though.