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I have come to the realization that my baby is extremely LARGE.  Correction:  Not just LARGE as in, roundy and chubby, no.  My baby is pretty much a gargantuan when it comes to his height.  This is nothing new to me as all my babies have been pretty tall and have always seemed to be on the upside of the growth curve at all their visits, but August is not normal tall.  You know there’s something crazy going on when your 10 month old is just inches shorter than your 2 year old (who is also considered to be pretty tall himself).

The good side about this anomaly is that baby hand me downs from Isaak go straight to Gus, no waiting around in the closet or boxes getting dusty, nope!  The rule of thumb around here is pretty much, “If they don’t fit Isaak, then they’ll fit Gus!”  So thankfully, my shopping is limited with him and he’s never in need for new clothes.

The DOWN side with this growth craziness is he doesn’t fit in his baby bucket car seat anymore!!  I’ve actually never even heard of this before.  What kid can’t even FIT in his car seat?  Apparently, MINE.  I’ve made the buckles as loose as they can go to try to get them to wrap around my Gussy guy but alas, they don’t reach.  Again, it’s not size AROUND August that is giving me trouble (those chest straps I can buckle easily) it’s more the size LONG (that crotch buckle is nowhere NEAR snapping).

This whole situation has lead me to only one answer:  Switch Gus to a forward facing seat.  I know, I know, he’s only 10 months and I’ve never switched my kids so far from the one year point, but this is a necessity.  Thankfully he’s 23 pounds which makes him legal, it just seems and feels so weird.

He’s my last baby so I wanted to keep him small forever!!!  Has anyone else ever had to switch their baby to a forward facing seat so early?!

When I first found out I was pregnant I went into baby item overload, buying the majority of what I thought I needed in a month of all things baby craziness.  No joke, I was on the local yard sales sites 24-7 and every Saturday morning I was up and out the door at 6 patrolling the area yard sales like a professional shopper, which I am not at all normally.  I guess preparing for a baby brought out the bargain shark in me!

I love secondhand things, and love the prices even more, so I didn’t think twice about purchasing used stuff.  I think the only things I bought new were some soft crib sheets and several bottles!  So when a friend mentioned I might want to check the recall list for the stroller/car seat combo I just got for a steal, I didn’t give it much thought at first.  It looked perfect and I knew the couple we bought it from, so it was probably fine, right?

It looks safe...but looks can be deceiving!

Well, my paranoid mommy brain quickly latched onto this concept and began obsessing over it, running through worst-case scenarios, so by the time I got home I went straight to the computer and began searching the recall lists.  I had no idea so many products had been recalled!

Thankfully after about an hour or so of quite thorough recall stalking, I was satisfied that my new stroller/car seat combo was safe and sound.  There are so many recall lists out there, but the top two that I found most helpful were: http://www.cpsc.gov/ and http://www.babycenter.com/product-recall-finder.  They seemed to be the most organized the easy to use, and of course you can also go to the manufacturers website itself and do a product search.

We were blessed last week to receive not one but two toddler car seats, which was unexpected and wonderful.  Of course I will be checking up on both of them before Isaac’s sweet little tush sits in either, but the good news is I have at least another couple months before my son reaches the elusive 22 lb limit for his old infant seat, haha (:

Do you use secondhand items?  Why or why not?  And if so, how do you make sure they are safe and clean?

SUNDAY, Aug. 1 (HealthDay News) – Experts have long known that sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is more common in boys than girls, but a new study suggests that gender differences in levels of wakefulness are not to blame.

In fact, the researchers found that infant boys are more easily aroused from sleep than girls.

“Since the incidence of SIDS is increased in male infants, we had expected the male infants to be more difficult to arouse from sleep and to have fewer full arousals than the female infants,” senior author Rosemary S.C. Horne, a senior research fellow at the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, said in a news release. “In fact, we found the opposite when infants were younger at two to four weeks of age, and we were surprised to find that any differences between the male and female infants were resolved by the age of two to three months, which is the most vulnerable age for SIDS,” Horne said.

About 60 percent of infants who die from SIDS are male.

In the study, published in the Aug. 1 issue of Sleep, the Australian team tested 50 healthy infants by blowing a puff of air into their nostrils in order to wake them from sleep. At two to four weeks of age, the strength of the puff of air needed to arouse the infants was much lower in males than in females. This difference was no longer significant by ages two to three months, when SIDS risk peaks.  Continue Reading.

Say No To Strangers

The other day we were all getting ready to go out to dinner. My husband was in the shower and I was getting dressed. Serophina was playing in her room. Suddenly she comes into our room talking about how a man was knocking at the door so she opened it and he asked for her mom or dad. At first I was a little confused because I would never dream that she would ever answer the door to a stranger without coming to us first! But that’s exactly what happened! I followed her to the front door and sure enough there was a man standing right there on our porch with the door wide open.

We obviously didn’t hear him knocking because we were in the other room. Serophina heard it though and was more than happy to open the door for him to see what he wanted. Turns out he was a salesman for a home security company. Ironic, huh?

After he left, Kevin and I sat down with her to explain that she should NEVER EVER open the door to a stranger without us. At the end of our explanation we asked her if she understood and she said yes. She said “ I’ll never open the door for a stranger unless they’re nice because that man was a nice stranger. Some strangers are nice.”

No! No! No! She was getting it aaaaaaalllllllll wrong! She was simply too naive to be brainwashed about the evil ways of strangers.

We ended up dropping the subject only after she reassured us that she would never open the door unless we were with her.

Imagine the aneurysms I’m going to have when she’s old enough to ride her bike and run the neighborhood by herself. You know how we have microchips for dogs? Why can’t we do the same for kids? I know there might be some ethical issues involved there, but I would feel much better knowing that there was some kind of tracking device on my kid… just in case. Besides, I’m sure when she’s a teenager it’ll come in handy for a whole new set of reasons.

How have you talked to your kids about strangers?

I was chatting with one of my dearest friends the other day who has a one month old, and it brought me back to when Isaac was first born and I was clueless, confused, ill-tempered and weepy for quite some time.  Ok, I still am occasionally (:

Being a mom is easily the hardest but most rewarding thing I have ever experienced, but I think we all know how quickly it can become overwhelming.  So many new things to learn, so many questions, so many sleepless nights.

I was definitely congratulating her on some positives and empathizing with her on some negatives, and I got to thinking that we mother’s need our own set of milestones just like our babies!  Some encouragement and praise is always nice to hear, so here you go:      (in no particular order)

• Learning how to breastfeed — why don’t all those books on the topic warn you that this might be difficult, not to mention painful?  It gets better, I promise!  Good for you for giving your baby the healthiest start possible!

FYI:  I am assuming that learning to bottle feed formula can be tricky as well, so congrats to you too, I did not forget you (:

• Functioning on little to no sleep — isn’t it amazing that your body can change it’s sleep rhythms to your new adjusted schedule of every 2 hours or so?  Not to worry, you will eventually regain some of that lost sleep.  And your hubby will eventually learn how to give a bottle!

• Remembering how to brush your teeth and comb your hair — remembering to take care of YOU can take last place, so when you do finally look in the mirror, get scared of your frightening reflection, and fix it a bit, you will feel much better and your reflection will thank you.  I will not tell you how long I went without a shower…ew.

• Figuring out the car seat — maybe it’s just me, but some of these baby gadgets are entirely too complicated!  When you get the hang of hauling that seat around, locking it and unlocking it and buckling and unbuckling baby, you have reached this milestone, good for you!

• Surviving leaving the house with baby — your first time can be very scary; think of the germs, of all the stuff you need to pack with you, of possibly having to breastfeed in public, if baby screams at the grocery store, etc.  But once you go, you’ve achieved it, and each time will get easier and easier.

• Realizing that a messy house is not the end of the world, and neither is a microwaveable meal –  it’s ok not to clean or do laundry or cook right now because you are taking care of a newborn which outweighs all other things.  A little mess never hurt anyone, and if you are that worried about it ask your family/friends to have a cleaning party at your house.  Once you realize this you can focus more on the task as hand, a.k.a. that cute little person you are holding.

• Learning how to accept help — We are woman, hear us roar, and whatnot.  But soon you will learn if have not already that we all need some help, especially now.  Once you can accept the help and even (gasp) ask for it, your life will be much smoother, and a happy mommy means a happy baby (most of the time at least, haha).

Please feel free to add onto this list, I’m sure there are more but I ran out of room (:

Life is a highway, I wanna ride it all night long!

I’m lucky because Serophina is a very good traveler whether it be by plane or by car. She’s very flexible and tends to just go with the flow.

When we transferred from Hawaii to North Carolina, we had to pick up our car from California and drive it across country to our new duty station on the east coast. When we told people that we were road tripping from coast to coast with a toddler, they thought we were crazy. I was surprised by their reactions but I guess it was because they didn’t realize that Serophina was a good-natured traveler.  I routed the entire drive ahead of time, mapping out stops every four hours, booked hotels and even looked up museums, malls and restaurants that we wanted to stop at along the way.

I had lists of travel necessities and made sure not to over pack! Any good traveler knows that over packing can ruin a road trip in a hurry. I had everything organized in the car so that if we needed to get a snack, a sippy cup, a book or a dvd it was all within arms reach and we could get to it without stopping.

It was an eight-day adventure that the three of us have wonderful memories attached to. There was no fussing or fighting, just fun filled days of driving and sight seeing along the way. Once we got to Morehead city we were actually a little sad that our adventure had to end. Since then we’ve driven to closer destinations such as Virginia and Florida and all trips have been just as great. We’ve been so fortunate to have such good experiences that when given the choice to drive or fly, I’ll take driving in a heartbeat!