UO Thursday 12/14

becausescience

ShawnnaO

I hate feeling baby hiccups. They’re slightly painful, and I feel like I can’t sit still during them. 

syssa-o

@ShawnnaO I always like them the first couple times I feel them and they get seriously irritating. 

orbmaker

@ShawnnaO @syssa-o would I definitely know if I felt them? sometimes it seems like babe's bumping on a beat, sort of, but it doesn't feel too different from her usual, less coordinated moves.

syssa-o

 
I keep seeing the sentiment from above all over Facebook. I feel like it’s a nice idea and all but I just don’t agree at all. I don’t feel like anyone should tell us how to celebrate holidays in our own household. We keep Christmas fairly modest by all means but it is the only time we go out and buy the things that we would like but don’t splurge on throughout the year. How can we expect parents to all start comparing the Santa budget? It just isn’t realistic. 

For us, Santa usually just does a big - awkward to wrap - present so we can just leave it unwrapped with a nice bow or whatever (for instance, this year it’s a sled). 

[Deleted User]

@syssa-o I was a little surprised by that too, but then i saw them saying you could give all the super expensive, fancy gifts too, but just say it's from you and not Santa.  I kind of get the point they're making?  But at the same time it's sort of trying to ignore the widening income gap.  There are parents who can't get a single item to be "from Santa".  There are parents who can only afford to give essentials like a warm scarf.  So even if a wealthy parent only gave their kid one gift that was comparatively to their their other gifts on the less expensive side it's STILL going to be over the top compared to a scarf or nothing at all.  Maybe we should focus more on income inequality and less on policing which gifts to write "From Santa" on.  So TL;DR I pretty much agree with you.

UO: I think it would be easier all around to just skip teaching kids that Santa is a real man who gives you gifts.  I don't think I'm going to teach that to this little one.  

syssa-o

@antoto Youre absolutely right about what the big problem is here. It’s just another day to highlight inequality and all that jazz. 

We never “taught” our son about Santa I guess it just kind of happened with all of the Christmas propaganda etc . We aren’t religious either, so for us, Christmas is just a fun family day where we can eat good food and give each other things that we may not normally purchase for ourselves. 

When he is a bit older, I’d like to teach DS that hard work provides his gifts for him. Not that a man who determines whether he was naughty or not does but that mom and dad work their tail off to provide him with everything he has and that we are very lucky to be able to do so. 

LaurenAnn0405

Maybe this is a UO but I love the idea of Santa and my kids get so excited when they come down the steps Christmas morning and see all of the gifts that magically appeared there over night.  We try not to go overboard on the amount of presents and I wrap them all in special wrapping that hides in my closet so it's easy to tell what is what.  I'm a little holiday crazy in general so maybe that's just it.

My original UO: I've never done a maternity photo shoot and I don't plan on doing one.  Nor have I ever done a newborn photo shoot and once again not planning on doing it.  I take a ton of pictures myself when the kids are newborns/little and while they aren't always in cute poses or have nice props around them it still captures them at that stage which is what I really want.  Plus I've found out already that doing a lot of professional photo shoots (we do 6 months, 1-5 every year and first Christmas professionally and after that they're in school so they get yearly school photos done) you start to run out of room of where to put the extra photos and there's only so much wall space.  I honestly haven't even gone back and looked at my DD's pictures from 2-4 (we have a current one hanging on the wall that we replace with the new school photo).  So while it's nice and I totally understand why people want to do that, it's just not for us.

ShawnnaO

@antoto @syssa-o AGREED. We’re skipping the Santa thing. I’ll explain to my kids that Santa is a story about being self-less and giving to people, and we’ll explain Income gaps/poverty to them as they get older. 

@LauraAnn0405 yeah we don’t do maternity/newborn photos. I took pictures of my daughter in the hospital/during her first weeks and those pictures are things I LOVE and will cherish a lot more than if I had paid hundreds of dollars for posed photos. 

ShawnnaO

@orbmaker if you’re feeling a rhythmic little tap/or kick coming from the same place, that’s hiccups. They don’t nevessarily feel different from normal movements, there’s just a rhythm to them. 

syssa-o

@LaurenAnn0405 I totally agree about the professional pics. They are also extremely expensive. I have never paid for professional pictures. Our walls are adorned with candid pics that remind us of memories (more exciting than “remember the time we all went and posed artfully in the park?”). I did my own “newborn” photos with DS when he was a few weeks old. I used my iPhone and I was happy with the turnout. 

savedbygrace1213

@LaurenAnn0405 As a professional photographer myself I don't totally disagree with you, but I do think that it is important that us mommas need to be in the frame every so often and sometimes that doesn't happen unless you hire someone to do a shoot for you. And It doesn't always mean 'posed'. Usually when shooting families I try to get them to interact and be themselves. Of course, I do take a few of those 'Christmas Card' pics where everyone is smiling at the camera. 

We just got our family photos taken for the first time and DD is 2 already! And I love them so much!
I don't have hardly any newborn photos because I kept thinking I would do them myself and then I ended up having a C-section and couldn't even hold her while standing for 2 weeks! By then she was out of that sweet sleepy stage. 

[Deleted User]

LOL I am getting professional pictures taken and I already know they are going to be useless.  I think I'm just sort of desperately trying to do anything I can to ... I don't even know how to explain this... soak it all in?  I want to make sure I do anything possible to commemorate this.  I don't know if I'll ever be pregnant again and it just took so damn long.  Even knowing that these pictures probably won't go up around the house and will probably just get lost in a shutterfly book somewhere I still can't stop myself.

FFTC:  I'm even having professional makeup done for it.  lolll

vflux33

FFTC: I was the kid in school who ruined Santa. Though I currently wear my Jewiness/outsider at Christmas as a badge of honor, as a little kid it suuuucked. Everyone was invited to the Santa party but me and I didn't get it. So of course I asked my parents and they were like, "yeah Santa is totally made up and all the other kids' parents are lying to them," which I immediately repeated to everyone I knew. Sorry! 

I've definitely seen a lot of amazing professional photography, but there is no way in hell I'm doing a maternity shoot. Of course, I don't even do the bump pics here because I don't like my pregnancy body. I do have a friend who is a photographer near where I live and will probably throw her some business for a newborn shoot, but that is partially because unlike most of America I do not trust myself to take "enough" pictures when I'm all stressed at the beginning.  

I guess my related UO is that I think maternity photos are fine if that's your thing, but I think the naked ones are kinda weird. MH and I once went to a party at his coworker friend's house and his friend's wife had framed and hung her naked maternity photos in the kitchen, which was at the center of the house, and it was SO awkward. I am generally a sex positive/fine with whatever person, but that was just a tad much. 

LaurenAnn0405

I completely understand wanting to soak up the experience @antoto and for other mom's who have had a difficult journey in TTC they're in a totally different place than I am.  Like I said, to each their own!

@triplejplus1 I know that I'm guilty of taking a ton a pictures of my kids without being in the picture but I actually realized that I take a lot of selfies with them and I actually don't have many pictures of DH with the kids (which I figured out this morning when I was looking for a cute picture to post on FB with a happy birthday message to him )

npkat

My husband axed the getting newborn photos thing. He said there were so many other things we could spend $400 on, which I completely agree. I just don't want to look back and regret not getting them!

chasingroygbiv

We are a household that is all about Santa! I was raised visiting Santa every year, leaving treats, and running down the steps Christmas morning. Of course, if and when our kids ask, we will explain Santa and that no, a man does not come in our house and leave gifts, etc etc, but More so the magic and giving of “Santa.” We can give without needing recognition, we can believe in Christmas magic, yadda yadda. 

And after that convo, we will proceed with how we will not tell others what to believe and what not to, because it isn’t our place and it isn’t our business. We don’t need to ask others if they believe or not just as I wouldn’t appreciate them asking if someone believes in God. 

[Deleted User]

I'd be down for treating Santa sort of like a Disney character.  Like still having the character around and visiting Santa at the mall or whatever but also not saying he's a real actual dude who slides down the chimney and looks in on you all year, etc.

I wonder if my lack of enchantment with the Santa story is because I'm the youngest of four and by the time I could really start forming memories my siblings were already checked out of the whole Santa thing.

ShawnnaO

antoto said:

I'd be down for treating Santa sort of like a Disney character.  Like still having the character around and visiting Santa at the mall or whatever but also not saying he's a real actual dude who slides down the chimney and looks in on you all year, etc.

I wonder if my lack of enchantment with the Santa story is because I'm the youngest of four and by the time I could really start forming memories my siblings were already checked out of the whole Santa thing.

This. Even down to the being the youngest of four thing  I’m all about Christmas magic and getting the spirit, but my kids will know he’s just a story character. But they’ll also be taught not to ruin it for those who do believe in him. 

pregobeth

@vflux33 Yep, my husband was the kid that ruined santa for everyone too... He was from a TINY town in Tennessee, and there was actually a little news article about how Christmas was ruined by one little boy... I think it's just crazy. I was never really encouraged to believe in santa, and even when we were told that one gift was from him, we just looked at our parents like they were crazy. We didn't even have a chimney!   I'm with @ShawnnaO, that we'll probably just tell our kids that Santa is about the spirit of giving. 

Also not that into the whole expensive photo shoot thing. We haven't even discussed it, since it's so far outside of our budget. 

Mass-girl-at-heart

I was very serious about not doing Santa but as they got older and started seeing him around and asking it was just too much fun to pass up. My older DD is 8 and I’m bummed thinking her magic might be over soon. Even when we weren’t “doing the Santa” thing I still had their pictures taken with him, they are some of my favorite pictures of their first years.  

My OU is that the elf is super stupid. My kids asked why we don’t have one and I told them that it was really just for super naughty kids and if they ever see one in our house they should be very worried. 

[Deleted User]

@mass_girl_at_heart Oh my god I hate Elf on the shelf as well.  Make the madness END.

stlbuckeye132

@Mass-girl-at-heart @antoto We had basically an elf on the shelf in my house growing up, but that was before it was cool! His name was Christopher Pop-In-Kins because he just popped in! But he was super adorable and a little handmade felt elf (by handmade, I mean someone else made it and my mom bought it at a local shop) that just hopped around to different places in our house. I always loved waking up to try to find him as a kid. Now the elf on the shelf craze has ruined it! Why do the elves do bad things? Isn't that the opposite of what you want to teach your kids?

gh515

@npkat Are those the newborn photos that the hospitals offer, or like a separate real photographer to hire at home? At the hospitals around here, there's a photographer that comes in to take newborn photos in the hospital room (with your permission, of course), and then you can choose to buy them. I don't know if those are more/less expensive than hiring one separately, but you might have another opportunity to convince DH if you want.

(I had a couple friends who said they weren't going to buy the hospital photos, but ended up doing so once they were there... crazy hormones are probably good for in-hospital businesses)

missnc77

I grew up with a single mother that didn't make a lot of money, so I didn't really get to live a childhood with my head in the clouds, and it sucked. I hope DD and DD2 believe in Santa and the magical things about Christmas time. It's a luxury I never really got to have, so I'm happy to relive it through their eyes. There's plenty of times later in life to teach about hard work and money, but I think this is one of those times where it's good to just let a kid be a kid until they are at an age when they know Santa isn't real. 

ladybugsamom

Possibly a UO - but I have no problem with the fact that my kids believe in Santa.  I don't think we consciously "taught" them that Santa was real... it just kinda happened like @syssa-o mentioned.  My big kids (ages 11 and 10) were told a few years ago at school that Santa wasn't real... and they were upset.  When my daughter questioned me about it, I told her that it was perfectly fine for her to continue to believe in Santa if she wants to - so she does.  I think she knows deep down that he's not a real-life person and because of that I'm careful to reiterate the giving/loving/cheerful spirit that goes with Christmas.  That's what's most important, IMO.

npkat

@gh515 That is a photographer outside of the hospital. I am curious now if the hospital does them because what husband can say no to a wife that just birthed his child . Thanks for the great idea, I'll have to ask at my next appointment. And I don't want a ton, just a couple to make into canvas', give to grandparents, etc. 

LaurenAnn0405

I also hate Elf on a Shelf @antoto and @mass-girl-at-heart!  My mom asked me a few years ago if I wanted one and I firmly told her NO.  The holidays are crazy enough without having to worry about moving the elf to different places in the house and try to have them do funny/destructive things.  My co-worker took her elves with her to Disney World on vacation last week and hid them around the hotel room every day.  Waaaaay too much pressure.  DD asked me yesterday "do we have an elf at our house?"  I said "no" and she said "we have one at school, his name is Fuzzy" and my only response to that was "that's nice!"  Plus the elves are supposed to report bad behavior to Santa but most of the time the parents make the elves look like they misbehaved which is the opposite of the behavior they're trying to encourage?  Doesn't make sense.

heatherdubrow

We didn’t and don’t really over emphasize Santa, but both kids are in preschool and it gets discussed heavily this time of year. I try not to make a big deal about it while letting them be excited. We do one unwrapped gift from Santa and the rest is from us. 
Also, hell yes to hating that elf. My 5 year old asked why we don’t have an elf...I didn’t have a great answer for her.

Cowboycorgi

@heatherdubrow, why don’t you have an elf? Because you don’t want it to murder your family while they sleep! That’s why you don’t have an elf

The pre-made ones creep me out. I’ve seen some cute homemade ones though. 

chasingroygbiv

We do the Elf and it was the worst. Decision. Ever. Don’t ever start because there’s a great chance your kids will love it and you’ll feel too guilty to stop!   I will say our friends have an Elf, he’s extremely inappropriate (it’s more for her DH and Facebook, her kids are young), and it’s way too funny. Like NSFW funny. Hahaha 

heatherdubrow

@Cowboycorgi yes, exactly!