A baby has a special way of bringing joy to every single day

Hidden crib dangers

So I suck at this post every day for a month thing. Oh well! I tried at least. Maybe next time.

I came across this article today and thought I would share it. There are so many misconceptions and misinformation about cosleeping, that it’s nice to see an article about the dangers of cribs for once. (Not that I ever want to hear about any babies being harmed, but I’m glad the information is getting out there for parents to see.) I firmly believe that cosleeping, when combined with common sense, is far safer and definitely a more natural way for babies to sleep. (And there is no nicer way to wake up than seeing your child grinning up at you in the morning.)

One of my half-written posts is actually on the joys and benefits of cosleeping (and a rebuttal to some of the “dangers”), but I’ll leave that for another post and just concentrate on cribs for this one. Here is a quote from the article.

Though cribs are designed for a family to leave a baby unattended for many hours at a time, they are the most deadly nursery product. One missing screw, one broken spindle or one loose mattress support can turn a crib into a deathtrap.

It made a good point at the end.

Rachel Weintraub, director of product safety at the Consumer Federation of America, wonders whether crib companies, in an effort to compete on price, have cut corners on designs and materials and failed to institute strong quality-control checks at factories overseas.

“Is the quest to produce lower cost cribs leading to a sacrifice on the quality of the wood and other parts?” Weintraub asks. “They are making their products overseas, so they’re getting the benefit, but they’re not taking additional measures to deal with increased risk.”

With all the attention China has been getting in the news in the last year: adding melamine to their dairy products, lead paint, etc., it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they are also cutting corners when making cribs.

I only wish the article had mentioned cosleeping as a safe and viable alternative to cribs. It’s great to get the information out to parents about how dangerous they can be, since I don’t think many parents realize how many accidents happen every year in cribs, but without giving them alternatives it may not change much.

Cooperation

I have started a few posts and then not actually finished them or hit publish over the last few days. I just don’t really feel like I have much interesting to say right now. But now Meredith is sleeping and I tried to lie down with her and she wouldn’t sleep, so I’m staring at this and just going to type whatever comes out and then publish it, ha!

Meredith’s lip is looking tons better. A week later and it’s almost healed already. It’s amazing how fast kids heal. We’ve been a little paranoid about her falling as I was worried even a small bump would break it open again, but already I think it’s past the point where that’s a danger anymore.

She still amazes me all the time with how much she learns just from watching us, how sweet she is (always giving us or the pets hugs and kisses), how big her personality is, how cooperative she can be… We were in my bedroom this afternoon and my closet door was open. I have a bunch of scrapbooking supplies and papers on the floor in the closet. She was happily playing while I laid on the bed reading. I looked over and she was beelining for the scrapbooking stuff. I called her name, and when she looked over I smiled and asked if she could please not play with my scrapbooking stuff. She pointed to the sock basket that was nearby, and I said that she could play as much as she wanted with them, and that was that. She never even glanced at the scrapbooking stuff again.

A little later she picked up a bread tie that had fallen to the ground. I asked her, politely, if I could have it. If she had refused or said no, I would have let her keep it and just watched to make sure it didn’t end up in her mouth. But she didn’t even hesitate, she just handed it to me. I thanked her, put it back on the bread, and continued on. Sometimes she gives me things but then wants them back, and I will often give it back to her, wanting her to learn that giving something to someone doesn’t necessarily mean it will disappear.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not always so easy. It’s just that it’s rarely as hard as some parents make it out to be either. She is cooperative most of the time, if I give her the chance to be, and I feel that she wants me to be happy because she loves me and not because she’s afraid of what would happen if I’m not happy. Of course, we haven’t hit the two’s yet, but I’m really looking forward to them. :)

Stuffed and Smothered Salmon

I got this recipe from Paxye and it’s become one of our favorite fish recipes. We try to have fish at least once a week, but don’t always succeed. Twice a week would be ideal. I bought some sole, which we’ve never had before. I’m not sure yet what we’re going to do with it, though I found a spinach and mushroom stuffed sole recipe that looks good and we might try. I forgot to take pictures of the salmon, but if you’re curious click on over to Paxye’s page linked above. It’s just as good as it looks!

Ingredients (amounts are approximate)

salmon filet
goat cheese
tarragon
salt and pepper

1/4 cup sour cream
3 TB mayonnaise
3 tsp mustard
2 chopped green onion (I’ve never actually added this because I keep forgetting to buy it)
3 TB parmesan
1 TB tarragon
1 TB dill
salt and pepper to taste 

Butterfly a salmon fillet and stuff with crumbled goat cheese, tarragon, salt, and pepper. Place in a baking dish.

In a bowl, mix together sour cream and mayonnaise. Add mustard, chopped green onion, parmesan, tarragon, dill, and salt and pepper. Spread over the stuffed salmon fillets.

Bake at 450 for about 10 min per inch of thickness.

Split Lip

Meredith split her lip last night. :( Poor baby. She was playing with Kris on a hill and fell and bit right through her lip. Both sides were bleeding and today it’s very puffy. We were a bit on the fence on whether to take her to the ER for stitches, but it stopped bleeding pretty quickly and is actually a fairly small cut. I posted a picture for some friends and they agreed that wait and see was probably the best approach. Stitches here for a child as young as her mean being strapped to a board and held down. It sounds traumatizing for both of us. Of course if I thought it was necessary I wouldn’t hesitate to do it anyway. I’m not sure it could be stitched anyway where it is, and then I’d also have to try and stop her from playing with them. I am a little worried about scarring, but stitches don’t necessarily prevent scarring either.

Kris’ sister got a very bad burn on her face when she was around Meredith’s age. The doctors told his mom that she would have permanent scars because of it. Kris’ mom used vitamin E oil on it every day and it healed faster than the doctors expected and with no scarring. Maybe it wasn’t the vitamin E oil, maybe his sister just has really great skin (and if so I hope Meredith got her skin), but regardless I think I’m going to pick some up today.

Last night:

This morning:

You can see in the picture how red her nose is. She obviously hit that too though luckily it wasn’t bleeding at all. That picture doesn’t really show how puffy her lip is. The area inside where she bit it is very white. It looks like the world’s worst canker sore.

Things like this make me so glad I still nurse her though. She was sobbing last night, and I quickly cleaned it up a little bit to see how bad it was, gave her Arnica, then started nursing. The nursing calmed her down enough that we could clean it up better while she nursed and get a better picture of whether we should be heading to ER. A lot of people don’t know this, but the act of nursing produces hormones in the baby that act as pain relief. Breast milk has antibiotic properties, so was probably great to help clean the cuts inside and out of her mouth.

Once she was calmer and had nursed her fill, we gave her some frozen blueberries to try and help with the swelling (she wouldn’t let us near it with ice). We ended up giving her some Motrin too, as it was obvious she was still in pain and it was extremely swollen. She slept snuggled into the crook of my arm all night.

Today it doesn’t seem to be bothering her, though it’s still pretty swollen. I wish things like this didn’t happen to our babies. :(

Pictures!

So I’ve jumped on the NaBloPoMo bandwagon. November is post every day month. I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that, and I don’t want to end up just making fluff, filler posts to fill space, but we’ll see what I come up with. I think I may rope my darling husband into writing a few more to help me out. ;)

For today, here are some pictures from Halloween.

Life in a nutshell

I’ve been really bad about keeping my blog up to date. Hopefully I still have readers out there! October was really busy for us, though (mostly) a lot of fun too.

We spent Thanksgiving with my relatives in Langley. My mom’s brother, sister, and mother all live there. In particular, I’m very close to one of my aunts (my mom’s brother’s wife, follow that?) and my cousins. My aunt is like a second mom to me, and I’m far more like her than my own mom. She is much more open and understanding about our way of parenting as well. My mom and my sister drove up and met us in Langley.

Then we came back here, and a few days later my mom and sister came over here and stayed for a week. It was nice to see them, but my mom is a bit of a stressful person to be around. She has major mood swings and will sometimes get angry for seemingly no reason. She also seemed to feel the need to micromanage Meredith and was constantly telling her to be gentle with the animals (even if I was standing right there petting the animals with her and she was fine). She also liked to call Meredith a “drama queen” (even when there were very obvious reasons why she was upset) and rolled her eyes when I picked her up or hugged her when she was upset. I’m sorry to say it, but it does make me glad not to live in the same city. Now that I have my own daugher, I also find it sad to think that she was so disconnected from us that she thought we cried so much for no reason. Sometimes I don’t know the reason, but the majority of the time there’s a very obvious reason, be it teething, stress from traveling, etc. My sister was also labeled a drama queen (and still often hears that), and yet my mom will storm off (for no reason that we can figure out!) at times and expect someone to follow her and ask what’s wrong and sympathise with her.

It was great to spend the time with my sister though. I consider her to be one of my best friends and Meredith adored her and at times actually wanted to be with her more than with me! *sniffle*

Halloween was fun. I was visiting with a great friend and her son. It’s so wonderful to spend time with parents who have similar values to me, and her son (who is older than Meredith) is such a sweet kid and in a really fun stage too. We went through baby clothes (she is pregnant) and it was almost enough to make me want another soon-ish. But I’d like to wait a little longer in case my milk dries up or Meredith weans herself while I’m pregnant as children sometimes do. I haven’t got my period back again yet anyway. I don’t want them to be too far apart though!

I got home, and to my surprise a really great friend from Calgary was here, just for the day. Turns out WestJet was doing a special for anyone with the last name Web, Sweet, Candy, or Orange. They could fly for free just the one day, so he came out to visit us. We went to a Halloween party just for a couple of hours, then came back here to hand out candy. I dressed Meredith up and took her out just for about 20 minutes, around our co-op and a little bit next door. She had a great time. Many of the people let her pick out a candy from their bowls, and she would put it in her bag herself and then reach for another and most of them let her have another too. I will have to post some pictures tomorrow if I get a chance. We actually didn’t end up with much candy though because I put a lot of it into our bowl to give away when we got home again. I kept a few things for Kris and I to eat and we let Meredith try a little as well.

Meredith is teething again. I thought she might cut the tooth on Halloween, but she didn’t. It looks really sore this time around. It’s quite swollen and red. Lots of nursing and a little bit of Gumomile seems to be keeping it tolerable for her this time though. She still has her teething necklace too. I think that combined with the traveling and having guests has made this month a little bit stressful for her, and at times very small things can make her very upset. I think it’s often a build up and the small thing that seems to have caused the problem is really more like the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.

Regardless, I adore the stage she is at right now. She is so much fun, and I just love everything about her. She loves to help out, and will help with laundry, dishes, putting things away, or any other little jobs we give her. She is picking up a lot of signs and has made up a couple more of her own, and her spoken vocabulary seems to be expanding as well. She definitely knows what “no” means, and though she’s never said it yet, she will shake her head or nod when we ask her questions. I love that I can ask her things and she can tell me the answer now. Sometimes there is still some guessing involved, but it makes it so much easier.

Anyway, I am going to try to update a little more often this month, even if it’s just short. It should be a slower month for us, though we will be helping a friend move at one point. I hope everyone out there who celebrates it had a great Halloween!

6 Random Things

I’ve had company (my lovely sister and my mom) here for the last week and we were in Vancouver before that, so I haven’t really had a chance to sit down and write. I have several ideas for posts now though (courtesy of watching my mom with Meredith, let’s just say she is not the kind of parent I aspire to be). We’ll see when or even if I get those written though.

For now, I was tagged by two people (Alice and Annie) in one day for a meme, and since I haven’t come on here in a while I thought that’d be a good way to get started blogging again. The meme was very slightly different (the wording), but it’s basically the same thing.

1. Link to the person that tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs
5. Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website
6. Let your tagger know when your entry is up

1. I used to wrestle in school. (How’s that for random? ha!) Wrestling was a mandatory unit in gym class, and the wrestling coach was my gym teacher and asked me to come out for the team. I actually found it really fun and not to brag, but I was good at it. I won every single match I ever did,  and got the gold medal in the city championships. I also was on the running team and ran 5km every other day with my dog and my best friend. Oh to be in that good of shape again…

2. I am a science nerd. I absolutely adore biology and microbiology and used to read college bio textbooks for fun. I still love to read all things science. (Which reminds me, I need to find some interesting science blogs.) This comes in handy when reading studies about things like cosleeping and vaccines, because I know how to look at the results, as well as how easy it is for two different people to interpret the exact same results differently. My very favorite part was genetics, though I haven’t really kept up on that and don’t remember a lot of it now. In high school, I had ambitions for a while of becoming a geneticist.

3. I’m ambidextrous. I don’t actually write with my left hand, but I can (just not well). I think if I were to practice, I’d actually be able to write just fine left handed though. But I can pretty much do anything else both hands. This comes in handy sometimes, especially in sports. Table in the way of the cue during pool? Try the other hand! Bad angle for putting in mini golf? Switch sides!

4. I love music. I play piano, flute, and piccolo well. In the past, I have taught myself in various levels of quite a few other instruments. I played in an orchestra here for two years, and as a teenager was in several different bands/orchestras in and out of school. Kris and I actually met in a marching band.

5. I don’t wear make up, and never did as a teenager either. I think it was my way of rebelling against rebellion, (or something?). Like, the cool kids were doing it and I was not a cool kid. I’ve also never really seen the point, though I think I’ve always had relatively high self-confidence. But I felt like if I had to plaster a mask on myself for people to like me, I didn’t need those people as friends anyway. (No offence to anyone who wears make up, I’m talking specifically about the kids in school when I was a teenager who put way more than necessary on.) And I am not the type of person who wants to have to spend that much time on myself before leaving the house.

6. I’ve never been drunk or high/stoned. I’ve never been a partier, though I have been to parties in the past where most of my friends were drinking or smoking pot. It’s not that I don’t approve or anything like that. I’ve just never been interested. I’m usually the designated driver (quite happily). I think it stems (like all things, right? ;) ) from my childhood. I grew up watching my mom drink and turn into someone not herself and I never wanted to be her.

I’m foregoing tagging people. First, because the people I would tag have likely already been tagged anyway, and second because Meredith just stopped nursing and is taking off, probably to go upstairs. But, I know I have more readers than commenters (though I do love comments btw, hint hint :) ), so if you read this blog and have a blog of your own and want to do it, consider yourself tagged.

Punishments and Rewards

One thing that video I posted in my last post got me thinking about again is praise. I think most people out there don’t even think there is any controversy or differing opinions on the use of praise. Praise is positive, and therefore must be a good thing, right? At the end of the video, he discusses not taking good things for granted and providing feedback when you appreciate something someone is doing.

Which I think is a great point, btw. Too often the good is taken for granted while the bad is nitpicked and nagged about. I called in to a “How’s my driving?” line once because the trucker I was calling about was great. The lady I talked to was pretty rude at first, and seemed annoyed. When she realized I was calling in to praise the driver, not criticize him, her entire demeanor changed. I have to wonder how often she actually got positive calls?

Anyway, the problem with praise, bribes, etc, is that even though they seem like positive things, they can still be conceived as manipulative. Alfie Kohn has a good article which explains some of the reasoning behind it. I recently finished reading his book Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason for the second time. I highly recommend this book to any parent. He backs up all his points with lots of data and research, and has such an interesting perspective. I don’t agree with everything he says, but there were other parts that really struck me. I was going to quote from it, but I could really quote most of the book, so I don’t think I will. It really is a great read though.

I’m on the fence about praise. I think genuine, honest praise and feedback is a good thing. While I want Meredith’s motivations to be intrinsic, I do want her to know that I appreciate her help or enjoy her art or whatever it is she’s interested in. Of course, I want her to know I love her and am proud of her no matter what.

But I do find some praise silly, and even degrading. And I notice so many parents saying “good job!” over and over again about every little thing their kids do. I like to try to find other ways of saying it. “Good job” implies that something else was a “bad job”. Like if a baby takes her first steps, and the parents exclaim “good job!”, does that when the child couldn’t walk it was bad? Of course it doesn’t, but how does it come across to the children to be praised like this? My mom said “Good poo!” to my daughter when she was four months old. Someone explain to me, what exactly makes a poo good or bad? I like to thank Meredith for helping or for, say, waiting for me when we’re out on a walk and there’s a busy road nearby, but I try to avoid falling into the trap of constant “good jobs.”

We do celebrate with her, especially when she is excited about something. We will sometimes cheer when she poops in the potty or figures something out she’d been struggling with. We take her cue a lot. If she doesn’t seem to think it’s a big deal, it probably isn’t. But if she seems really proud of herself we want to acknowledge that too.

We also like to talk about things with her. Rather than saying “good job!” if she puts her toys away, we might thank her and say “it’s really helpful to me when you put your toys away” or something along those lines. Along the same lines, if she hits I might tell her that it hurts when she hits and give her an alternative (either stroking me, or hitting the couch). That way we’re not asking her to just take our word for it that that’s the way things are, or that she has to do things because we said so, but actually giving her a reason. I think doing this also has the benefit that if similar situations come up in the future she will be better equipped to process it and decide on a course of action.

On the other side is punishments. I found this great article by Jan Hunt: The Parenting Golden Rule. She brings up some good points about how there seems to be a double standard. What applies to an adult doesn’t necessarily (or even usually) seem to apply to children. The other day my mom told me that it was okay if Meredith cried, and it wouldn’t kill her. Well of course it won’t, and I am not under the impression that I can always prevent her from crying, but if an adult was crying somewhere, he or she would certainly expect anyone coming across them to try and find out what’s wrong and help them out. And yet, it’s okay to ignore a crying child just because he or she is smaller than us or can’t communicate what she needs?

For me, discipline isn’t a punishment and reward type of system. Discipline is such a loaded word in some circles, but really, it’s root comes from the word to teach, or to guide. I don’t think discipline needs to be conditional, coercive, or manipulative, it just normally is.

Dog-Friendly Dog Training

Katherine over at Our Report Card posted this link on her blog: Ian Dunbar on dog-friendly dog training. It’s a 15 minute talk, but very interesting for dog owners, parents, and really anyone interested in relationships. A lot of what he says is exactly how I feel about being a parent, but he words it much better than I could.

I have to say, after watching it, that while I do follow what he says for Meredith, as far as being respectful, assuming her intentions are good, and realizing that she doesn’t always understand what I want and isn’t just trying to push my buttons, I certainly don’t always follow it with my dog.

Now don’t get me wrong. Dogs and kids are two very different creatures. Dogs do have a hierarchy and I think that while Dr Dunbar discusses all the similarities in raising each, there are a lot of differences too. And I’m not sure how to apply his methods to aggression or chasing the cat. I mean, I can’t ask her to sit and then reward her by letting her chase the cat. But it certainly has me thinking a bit more on what is working with her, and what isn’t. And I know yelling when she chases the cat doesn’t work. Locking her in the kennel when she’s aggressive may work in the short term (in that she doesn’t try to eat my friends when they visit), but it certainly doesn’t change anything.

Really I’d like to have her on a leash at all times, and be able to give her feedback constantly about what she’s doing and help her see what she should be doing, rather than telling her what she shouldn’t be doing without giving her any alternatives. It’s hard when I also have a 14 month old though. I’ve been trying to keep her with me more. The problem is that when she’s off leash again, it seems like she forgets anything I did with her while she was on the leash. It’s something I’m going to have to think about and keep trying new things and try to find something that works. I need to recognize when something really isn’t working and stop doing it over and over again, especially since that’s a parenting style that I really don’t like either. Plus, just like in parenting, all it does to punish a behaviour without giving options is stop a behaviour while you’re around, but the behaviour probably continues when we’re away.

Lastly, I want Meredith to grow up knowing to treat everyone with respect, regardless of size, age, race, species, etc. I want that to extend to pets, and while I think I treat my animals with a lot more love and respect than many people, it’s definitely an area where I could improve.

In other news, I am planning on probably creating a private section of the blog for discussing certain things that are a little more personal. For those who use RSS readers, I don’t think private posts would show up there, but I probably won’t have many anyway. You would need an account to see them. Unfortunately, the way our server is set up, you can’t create your own account for the blog. But if you’d like an account, let me know what you want your user name to be and what your e-mail address is and I can set one up with a generic password that you could then change to whatever you wanted it to be. Let me know who you are too if it’s not obvious already. ;)

Money Matters

Okay so I’m not exactly original when naming posts, sue me. ;)

Kris and I are thinking of buying a condo to rent out. We like (love) where we’re living right now. The rent is cheap, the people are nice, it’s a safe community to raise a child. But we’d like to get into the housing market sooner rather than later. So we may become landlords.  

The thought kind of scares me.

I’d like tenants like us. Quiet, long term, easy going.  We don’t feel the need to call and bug a landlord for every little thing. We often do our own minor repairs and normally we don’t even ask to be reimbursed for the parts.

But how do you tell what someone is like from meeting them once and having them fill out an application? With the rental market the way it is in Victoria and Nanaimo right now, I’ve read that sometimes you will get 30-40 people interested in one vacant unit. I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard to narrow it down somewhat, but that’s still a lot of people to try to have to choose between from one meeting of each of them.

We’re hoping for a two-bedroom unit near the university in Nanaimo. Hopefully we would be able to attract students mostly in that case. I wonder if I could ask for a copy of their transcripts before I chose? The A+ students are probably the ones that work the hardest and don’t party. (Ha, just kidding. I managed to pull off A’s without studying, though I didn’t party either.)

Regardless, our plans have been put on hold until the markets recover somewhat. We haven’t lost as much money as some people, but it’s enough that we don’t want to just withdraw it at a loss. It’s kind of sad to look at our investments and realize we have less now than we did a year ago even though we’ve been putting in our max every month. I try not to think about it too much, though Kris likes to announce how much we’ve lost each day so it’s hard not to think about it! We are in high-risk funds though, so I think when the markets go down ours go down more. Hopefully, when the markets go back up ours will go up more too. That’s what the analysts and our financial advisor (aka my father) have been saying anyway.

Hopefully we aren’t entering another Great Depression like some others are predicting. I’m glad Kris has a stable job that has clients worldwide.