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D.C. Area Babies
QOTD Monday
Hope I'm not stealing anyone's thunder here...on a little early and thought of a question:
What is something you have done as a parent that, before you had kids you said you would never do? What is something you thought you would do that you have not?
This discussion has been closed.
Re: QOTD Monday
1. I said I would never use TV as a babysitter...but I have to admit it is AWFULLY helpful sometimes...:)
2. I thought I would make babyfood and avoid buying it. Didn't happen. At. all.
1. I read everything I could on SIDS and planned to follow all guidance exactly. And when I realized that my daughter could only sleep on her belly at 4 weeks old, I had several long nights of staying up watching her...then decided I was okay with it. Happy, well rested baby = happy, well rested mama.
2. I planned to do baby led weaning. But DH was really uncomfortable by it, so we just did purees and are now slowly introducing some table foods.
Cosleeping.
Was absolutely positive I would never, EVER do it (like, not with a sidecar cosleeper or other type thing...in the bed w/ you no separators). But some nights, it was the only way anybody was going to get any sleep. At first I wasn't sleeping restfully, but after awhile we figured out how to make it work & ease my mind.
Also, I wanted to wait until 2 yo before TV with Sprout. Big fat fail there. A few months ago we used it to keep his attention as we tried to cut his hair & I admit to using it ever now & again to keep him distracted when either he's being a total grump & I'm at my wit's end, I absolutely NEED to get something done or I'm trying to cut his nails/hair/etc.
Good Questions..
I think MPD was going to do this week but I doubt she minds you posting either! Maybe we'll have 2 QOTD posts today.
1) Probably play with things that he really shouldn't be playing with. Sometimes he runs around the house with my toothbrush or flushes the toilet repeatedly. It keeps him occupied for a little while. Letting him climb the stairs on his own - of course I'm there watching him every step of the way but he does a really good job on his own.
2) Install baby gates everywhere. I'm not even sure I see the point in having one at the bottom of the stairs right now.
1) I never said never before becoming a parent, but one thing I do that I hadn't really planned on is let the kids be silly at the grocery store. I don't let them run around or pull things off the shelves, but if they want to goof off and play little games like jumping from one floor tile to the next without stepping on the cracks, and it means I can actually pay attention to food labels, I let 'em. The girls can get pretty silly at the grocery and I'm pretty sure I get a few "looks" from strangers. This just happened on Sunday which is why I'm thinking about it now.
2) Get them baptized. We only baptized the first one, then we stopped going to church when my second baby came along and as a result our second and third children are heathens. j/k
DH and I were just saying this weekend now that DS is over the age of one, and no longer takes a morning nap, we should start looking to go to church again (will be much easier to go to a Sunday morning service when we're not interrupting nap time). Now we've got to have that convo allll over again (I grew up Catholic, he grew up Lutheran, we both are really moderate about religion but still value it, so how do we find a church where we fit, yadda yadda yadda).
1. Sleeping with DD in bed. She usually wakes up at 4 or 5 to eat (still 3 months old) which means I only have 30 minutes to sleep after feeding her. Sometimes its just easier to put her down on the bed b/t DH and I and strip all the covers and pillows than to swaddle her back up and take her to the PnP
2. I also said I would put DD in her crib from the first night. 3 months later, she's still sleeping in her PnP in our room.
1. I never thought we'd cosleep. I wanted the babies in their rooms from the start. But after trying various things, we finally sidecar'd an Arms Reach Cosleeper and a PNP to our bed and we all slept in the "mothership" for the first four months. It was wonderful and sometimes I still miss having them so close at night.
2. I thought I'd love wearing a kid in the Ergo and envisioned DH and I wearing them out instead of putting them in a stroller at times. However, both my kids hated it. They screamed bloody murder whenever I even attempted to strap them in. So, the Ergo has sat unused in my closet for 17 months. If we have 3, maybe he/she will like it. If not, that'll be the first thing I sell on CL.
1. Co-sleep. DD always slept in her own bed but after about 2 months, DS started sleeping with us. I think he was 8 or 9 months before he started sleeping in his crib at night. He's 3.5 and still comes in our room in the middle of the night sometimes to sleep with us.
I said I'd never have 2 under 2. DD was an easy baby and once she was 9 months old I really wanted another child. Had I known what was I coming I might have waited a little longer!!
2. Wean before a year. I BF DD until she was one but I had a pretty easy time with it. I got mastitis three times with DS and after the third time I weaned him. He was 8 months old and 4 months of formula didn't kill him but I still have guilt about it.
DD1 9.24.06
DS 7.1.08
twins due 9.7.11 lost twin A at
DD2 4.7.12
I had volunteered for this week, but this is a good question!
1. Resort to bribery. Sometimes the promise of something as simple as dried cherries (which I would have given him as a snack anyway) just makes tasks so much easier.
2. Kind of related to #1, be a stern disciplinarian. I watched a lot of Supernanny. I know the proper time out technique. I had visions of a perfectly behaved little angel that benefited from swift discipline. One that I could put back in line with a simple stern look. What I didn't know was that sometimes a hard line time out approach means that your two year old spends the majority of a Saturday morning in time out (or fighting to get out of time out) and that is freaking exhausting and no fun for anyone. I try and I still do believe in the idea but I'm not nearly as consistent as I should be and sometimes redirection or bribery works 10x better.
If you decide to go the Catholic route, we've really liked St. Bernadette's on Old Keene Mill. Great choir, decent preaching, lots going on. DH and I are both moderate Catholics and we don't feel out of place there. I don't say this lightly about a Catholic Church, but we hated St. Michael's on Ravensworth. It was way too conservative for my tastes. It just makes me angry every time I attend mass there. I don't anymore, btw - I'm no glutton for punishment.
Have to comment here as well-I get so frustrated with the Arlington Diocese...it's SO hard to find a reasonable parish!! I lived in DC for a long time and there are so many more progressive options there. We go to OLGC in Vienna, which is not the closest one for us (and I'm pretty sure too far north for you, but it's very kid friendly and the homilies don't make me want to throw something
2. I thought we'd do fun "classes" on weekends like swimming, music, dance, and baby yoga. Now we're so busy during the week that I don't want to schedule anything on weekends unless I absolutely have to. I plan to do swim lessons this summer, but that's it.
1. Like many others, let the kids watch TV. DD went through this phase of waking up in the middle of the night ready to play when she 15 months and I was just too tired to actually play, so we turned on the only video we owned, Kid Songs to keep her occupied in our zombie 3 am state. This just naturally turned into letting her watch a little TV on the weekends. She still doesn't watch much, and DS still is not interested, but oh the lure of the TV when it is on....
2. I never thought I would use disposable diapers. When I was pregnant and narrowing down options for childcare, I just didn't hit upon the right DCP who would cloth diaper so I never pursued it. I still kind of regret this.
This, on both accounts. I didn't want to put the TV on ever, but on some days when DD is particularly cranky and I'm at the end of my rope it really is a lifesaver
I'm with you, we didn't leave our parish in the city lightly, but with two little ones, the drive, parking in Georgetown and then behaving for an hour was just too much for us. When they're older, we may reconsider going back to Holy Trinity (easily the best parish experience I've ever had). There are some decent parishes in the Arlington Diocese. I hate though that it takes work to find them. Have you gone to Our Lady Queen of Peace in Arlington? It's a pretty amazing place.
CIO
I resisted for a while, but the exhaustion and sleep deprivation got to me.
I can't think of anything for the second question.
Off to the beach
DS 7/18/2010
Handy 2.0 Due Early August
2011/2012 Races
12/17/2011 Christmas Caper 10K
2/11/2012 Have a Heart 5K
3/17/2012 DC RNR Half Marathon
4/22/2012 10M Parkway Classic
10/28/2012 Marine Corps Marathon
1. Another "I will never ever ever co-sleep with my baby" Mom here. When it's 3am, your baby's been up for 3 hours and you gotta get up and go to work in 2.5 hrs, you do what you gotta do to get *some* sleep!
2. I thought I would only speak Russian to my kids but sadly, I speak more English to them than Russian and thus, worry, they won't speak it (they do understand it fluently). DH is not Russian so that's my excuse but it's a poor one.
Oh definitely up your Russian speaking. My grandma was trilingual (Russian, Yiddish and English) and spoke in all three languages to my two uncles but by the time my dad came along 12 years later, she mostly spoke English to him. My grandma lived with us, but because my dad only understood Yiddish (no Russian) and didn't speak it, she rarely spoke to us in Yiddish. It make me sad that I lost out on that part of my heritage.
I never went to Trinity, but I have heard great things about it...I was a parishioner at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Mt. Pleasant and we got married there. We've taken the girls there a couple of times to see old friends, but it's definitely a hike and parking is no picnic... I have also heard great things about Our Lady Queen of Peace...it's just a bit far for us (we're in Fairfax) and we've gotten into a good groove at OLGC.
For #1, I don't know. I feel like we've been pretty consistent with what we wanted to do (BFing, CDing, making baby food, no TV still, etc.). Sorry if that sounds smug. I guess I probably would not have wanted to get him video games, but we have two educational ones on the iPad that we let him use from time to time. And like MPD, the bribery thing--I guess I figured we'd need to use it at some point but I do a lot more bribery/cajoling to get J to eat than I would have expected.
For #2, I definitely thought I would keep up with making food for him longer. We did it for the first year, but now when he doesn't eat our meals, he'll often eat something lame (scrambled eggs, organic chicken nuggets, PBJ). Not the end of the world but I feel like we should be having him try more varied foods. I also thought we would have started seriously potty training by now, but I can tell he's not really interested yet and I'm holding off because I'm lazy. And scared of getting pee everywhere.
TTC #2: BFP 12/17/11, m/c 1/7/12 and D&C 1/12/12
baby blog/cooking blog
I would echo the SIDS thing - that I wouldn't let her sleep on her belly and nothing in the crib before 1 year. Well, she's been sleeping on her belly pretty regularly since 6 months old (rolls over herself), the bumpers went in a couple weeks ago and she's been sleeping with a tiny little lovey for months now (can NOT go to sleep without it). All of which, ensure a good night sleep and I don't worry anymore.
I thought I would be stressing out about finding games and developmental challenges for DD, but she's really good at entertaining herself and challenging herself. So, I feel like I just sit there and watch her play most of the time. I'm hoping as she gets older we can interact more in that area.
My coworker highly recommended that church... need to talk DH into giving it a try...