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[May252013] |
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Dumb question - the Playtex sippy cups have a clear (with characters on it) outer layer and then the inner layer that is the actual cup. Are these layers supposed to come apart so I can add water in between for insulation?
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[May242013] |
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My pediatrician claims that it is very hard to find separate vaccines for Measles, Mumps & Rubella in the US (so I must give the MMR or nothing at all). Curious if anyone has insight into this? Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.
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| Age Guidelines for Toys |
[May242013] |
How closely do you follow the printed age guidelines for toys, games, books, etc.?
My son is now 2.5 but we've been regularly using age 3+ toys since he was about 18-20 months and we bought him an outdoor plastic playset with small slide for his first birthday that I was just reading the guide on that says 5+. It seems like any toy worth playing is 3+ and a lot of it just seems CYA kinda thing but our son is supervised and stopped putting things in his mouth before the age of 2. He seems plenty able to use these toys as intended. There are some things which seem legitimate 3+ that I wouldn't buy him but I've been musing lately at how little I pay attention to it anymore because I pretty much know what he can and can't handle without looking at the guideline.
What's your experience?
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| Organizing Imaginext toys? |
[May232013] |
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I have a question for anyone here that has a bunch of those giant Imaginext toys. How do you have them organized/stored? We have a castle, two Batcaves, evil villain lairs, jail, Spiderman tower, space station, etc. and they've been neatly (though barely) stacked on top of our Imaginarium train table. My boys love playing with them and make cities, but the train table has finally been completely broken and needs to be thrown out. That leaves me with the conundrum of where to put the giant toys. They have a play corner in our family room, so it's not like the toys will be out of sight in their rooms (I am against toys in bedrooms anyway). I also really don't want to spend $200 on another train table that won't be used as a train table, and all the toy organizers/chests I've looked at are too small to fit a giant castle/Batcave. Any advice would be much appreciated!
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| how to bedshare safely |
[May232013] |
My son never slept in our bed, he slept in a bassinet next to it until he outgrew it and we moved him to a crib in his own room. He was also a bottle baby. Our daughter starts the night in a pack n play next to our bed, then comes into our bed halfway through the night when she wants to nurse with me, and stays there until we wake up in the morning. I use one pillow for me, keep her at chest level (for easy boob access) and have a blanket around my legs and not around her.
She just turned 3 months old though so I'm becoming concerned about her rolling. Should I be buying a bed rail for my side? How do I keep her from rolling off our bed? I could put her between her dad and me (instead of me being in the middle as we do it now), but I've read that the father is more likely to roll onto the baby than the mother is so I don't want to do that. I know our best bet is a mattress on the floor against the wall, but we don't have an extra mattress and there isn't space to do that in our bedroom anyway. Our bed is only a full, so it's pretty tiny, and with my husband in bed with the two of us she can roll away from me like 1.5 times and end up falling. I'd be less worried if there was more space between her and the edge of the bed, but there just isn't. I'm guessing a bed rail is probably our best bet, but I was wondering if any experienced bedsharers had any better ideas.
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| Snack suggestions |
[May222013] |
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Flying for 11 hours with a 3 year old boy, and all I can think of to take as snacks are sugary candy type things. Any ideas for a long flight, plus long drives? I really don't want a hyper kid running around the plane.
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| Red face after Ranch dressing? |
[May182013] |
My 19 month old loves Hidden Valley Ranch dressing, but every time he has it, his face turns red on the areas where it touched. He has no other side affects, and I've looked at the ingredients to try to figure out what it is, but I can't pinpoint anything specifically. I remember his face got red like that one other time when he ate either banana peppers or an off brand of pickles (unfortunately, I can't remember exactly which). The only similarities in the ingredients is in the preservatives, but its not an exact match- sodium bisulfate in banana peppers and pickles, but disodium phosphate in the ranch. However, they both have sodium, so I'm thinking it's a possible culprit? But isn't sodium essentially salt?
I don't know guys. I mean, on the one hand, it's just a little rash, and it goes away after about an hour and doesn't seem to bother him, but on the other, I'd like to know more about it. I guess I'll tell the doc about it at his next appointment, or do you think I should schedule one sooner to address this?
I know there's not really any specific question in there, I'm just looking for other parent's thoughts on the matter.
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| Unexpected results. |
[May152013] |
My son, who is currently in Kindergarten, recently completed the IOWA Acceleration test. This supposedly infallible tool (in the words of the Accelerated Learning Specialist) indicated that my son is recommended for promotion to the 2nd grade.
However, being fixated on his small size (he's wee - still climbing the percentiles after a preemie birth) and overall laziness in writing, the principal of his school refused the acceleration.
A few more details - after my normally rule obsessed child began coming home "on yellow" around November break I requested a meeting with his teacher to discuss giving him more challenging work. She suggested acceleration testing, and he began going to math and reading in 1st grade. After a few weeks, he began asking me to homeschool - a little digging revealed that this "subject acceleration" was taking place in the time that previously occupied his recess. Another meeting, and he was released to the playground for 1/2 his recess with his friends.
This morning was the results meeting. Where I was informed that the district was discontinuing subject acceleration due to budget cuts (I had no idea sending my child down a hallway was so expensive) and they want him to go to first grade, which I might have been okay with, in spite of my son's test scores - if he hadn't been going to the first grade for math and reading since December.
Obviously, having him basically repeat the 1st grade is not an option. Private school is not an option for us, unless we win the lottery, or find a school that wants him for test score padding. We live in an allegedly excellent school district, and in fact purchased a little cracker box of a house to be in this district.
My choices are: A) fight the principal by going over her head. But I'm not sure I want to have an adversarial relationship with the administration, since I have a younger daughter who will likely also need advanced instruction. B) Homeschool him next year with a 2nd grade curriculum, and go for the STEM academy in the 3rd grade. or C) Something I haven't thought of yet.
I am applying to the Davidson foundation for a gifted advocate for him, but school ends in 10 days. I'm really quite angry that a testing process I requested in November has taken almost 6 months to complete - leaving me almost no time to appeal the decision or find a viable solution that doesn't involve auditing the 1st grade. Suggestions? Commiseration?
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[May152013] |
So our baby jogger stroller just came in which I am very excited about be ause we have it and because now I get to leave the house with some ease.
However it stinks, stinks of production chemicals. We have already washed it down once but it still smells. Much less then it did. I neeeed to use it today but I was worried about the smell of chemical being around three month old. It will inside for about an hour, in a bus for about an hour too but outside for the rest. Is it really a big deal? I cannot believe stroller compantines would let their products go out smelling so much if they are meant for babies.
Also aside from the cleaning instructions, what else. An be done to clear the smell, any tips or tricks otherwise not disclosed
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| Baby number two on the way....how do we deal with the first one? |
[May132013] |
So hubby and I are expecting again! Baby number two is due December 12. Our daughter will be almost three (her birthday is late January). We live out of state from my parents as well as his. And by out of state, we live in Atlanta, Georgia, my parents live in Chicago and his parents live in California. So not nearby. We are now starting to think about how is this going to work whenever I go into labor? We are going to try to ask our next door neighbor if she could watch our daughter ( she has babysat her before and is great with her.) Dd is sort of comfortable with her but not overly so, she is more comfortable and friendly with out other next door neighbor who has also watched her and is somewhat of a grandmotherly figure but she is older, in her mid seventies and seems to have a hard time climbing stairs so I think asking her to watch our daughter is going to be out of the question for an overnight and who knows how long. I also have a good friend whose daughter is close in age to ours and our daughters know each other well. They go to the same daycare but my friend is also pregnant and due in late August so she will also not be able to help.
So if our neighbor who is able bodied can come and help for a few days, how do we go about this. Those of you who have been in similar situations with all family out of state, how did you go about it? And once the baby is born, did your husband stay with you in the hospital or go back home at night and periodically during the day to be with the older child at home and give the neighbor a break? My husbands parents coming spontaneously is out of the question since they live so far away and it is a small fortune in airfare from Fresno anyway. My mom is way to cheap and too selfish to drop that kind of airfare last minute to get down here. The only possibility is my dad who might do such a thing. Maybe. Also to note, I do have an aunt and two cousins who live in the metro area but each one lives 45 minute drive away in non rush hour traffic. And to be honest none of the, have spent enough time with dd for her to actually know them and be comfortable with them. My aunt might do it....but I have my doubts. Plus she drinks a lot and I would be very uncomfortable having her with the responsibility of watching our daughter alone like that.
My cousins wives have offered to help at times, but they haven't spent much time with our daughter and both of them have multiple children at home. One has three, the youngest is five and her husband travels a lot for his job. The other has two sets do twins one set going on 10 and the other going on 7. One of which has a serious heart deformation, so they both have their hands full.
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| Introducing nuts and seeds into diet |
[May132013] |
Hi All,
Happy Monday!
So, I'm wondering if any of you have had experiences with bringing nuts and seeds into your family's diet?
I've been slowly retooling our family's diet into a healthier one. I don't have some sort of plan per se, and am mostly playing it by ear. At this point we've cut out all the artificial dyes from our kitchen. We're omnivorous, but keep mostly to chicken and turkey, and I occasionally look for meat alternatives that Hubs and the kiddos will like and/or not even notice. Fresh fruits and veggies are also pretty big in our house.
Basically, at this point I'm just keen on trying new things. At the moment, I'm wanting to play around with some raw food recipes, and I know that a lot of those incorporate various nuts and seeds.
Our kiddos are two and three years old, and we've got one more on the way. So far, we've got no known food allergies between our kiddos (or ourselves), but I want to play it safe if I end up introducing these new foods into their diets.
If you've been through similar dietary changes, how did your kiddos respond, and how old were they? Do they already have other allergies that may have made you wary? (My son has fierce pollen allergies, for instance. Lots of outdoors allergies, actually.)
Might you have other suggestions for how you've gotten your family's diet to a healthier place?
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| I Am Fartacus |
[May122013] |
I decided to post about an awesome Kickstarter project that is struggling that I'd like to see succeed.
It is a children's book called I Am Fartacus (website here, Kickstarter page here). Basically, it's a silly book inspired by a 9 year old's imagination, and illustrated by him. More than that, though, it's a start to a movement to help kids become creative and write the types of stories they want to be told. In the words of the author, "we wanted to promote a kid’s creativity, as well as the parent-child collaboration that so many people enjoy."
The budget the author is asking for is very modest (under $5k, which is very small scale compared to most Kickstarter projects, even most other children's books). More than that, though, the author is promising an e-book to anyone who pledges $10 or more EVEN IF the project fails -- and unfortunately with less than a week left and a little over half way to go, failure is looking more and more like the probable outcome. (And in case you didn't know, Kickstarter is all or nothing -- if you pledge and the project does not succeed, you do not pay a penny and neither does anyone else. The author gets nothing.)
As an English educator, I am very excited about the prospects of involving children in their own story times and publishing their works, and as a follower of this community, I know that you are all parents very invested in the well-beings of your children. It is my hope that at least one of you will see this project and support its success, or that you see this book and say, "My kid would love that!"
If this is not your cup of tea, then ignore and move on, but I wanted to share.
Once again, here is the Kickstarter page. There are less than five days left. Thanks for your time.
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| Art for Sale |
[May122013] |
Hi there,
Is anyone in this community looking for any pieces in particular? I have a bunch of stuff and no where to store it. I have postcards, mini prints, LE prints, I even have three original paintings.
Pictures and contact info under the cut....
( Read more...Collapse )
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___xoheather
