Children's Clothing Swap

Have any of you heard of or worked with this site?

It's an online, children's clothing swap community. It looks pretty interesting and am just wondering if any of you guys have had luck with this or a similar service.

My guy goes through clothes pretty fast and I love the idea of not buying stuff that he'll end up wearing just a handful of times.

Oh, here's a neat thing. Kodak is offering 20 free birth announcements. You have to choose from specific layouts, but the cool thing is that you can upload pictures and make your own thank you notes or greeting cards or whatever. They end up costing less than $3 with shipping.

Religion

So I’ve been thinking about how religion is going to play a part in my son’s life. I don’t go to church and haven’t been in a church in over 10 years. However, I grew up attending a non-denomination Protestant church and I think it had a positive impact overall. I never really felt all that connected to the idea of god or anything, but I think the basic tenets are good. Be good to others, forgive, love, etc.

Originally, my plan was to home-church. I had this basic idea in my head that there would be specific time set aside each week where we would talk about religion. I had in mind that I would cherry-pick the best parts of all religions and try to introduce these as principles to live by.

I still think the idea of home-churchin’ is a good one, the piece that I struggle with the most is the isolation factor. It’s just me and him. I don’t have full-time family out here in California, I’m not sure if my only sister will end up having kids of her own, I can’t even wrap my head around the idea of dating someone anytime soon – it might just be the two of us for a while. I think I need to expose this little guy to more community.

So I’ve been doing some research and came across the United Church of Christ. I’m impressed! The one in my town is incredibly gay-friendly – they have a gay flag hanging in their sanctuary!! They represent themselves as being progressive. They don’t have a set of doctrines that they insist members adhere to or believe in, but insist that they all learn from each other. I’m really intrigued by them. I’m going to check out a service this Sunday.

I’d love to hear what the rest of you are doing in terms of church-going.

Here's the latest picture of my little guy:

Rites of Passage

First meltdown in a restaurant yesterday. I feel like a real mom!

Crib Training 2.0

My son has never been a great sleeper and his most recent cold/fever has definitely set us back a bit. I think most babies, when they aren’t feeling well, just want to be held. My son is no exception to this rule. On Wednesday and Thursday night, I slept with him on the couch because it was the only way either one of us were going to get any shut-eye. He just would not stay down in his crib. I would rock and rock and rock him in the glider until he was fast asleep and as soon as his head hit the crib mattress, he would pop right back up and reach his arms out to be picked up. (Maybe I’m just a sucker, but I couldn’t resist!)

His fever is gone and his cold is on the way out (mostly), but a good portion of my weekend was spent trying to get him to sleep in his crib again. I guess 96 straight hours of being held can certainly make a crib feel like cruel and unusual punishment.

Last night, after an hour and a half of rocking and a few false starts, he finally stayed in his crib and slept the night through. The world is truly a glorious place after getting 7 uninterrupted hours of sleep.

First Fever

Well, it happened.

I arrived home from on Wednesday work to find my son with a 103 degree fever. Several months ago, right after C split, one of the scenarios that kept running over and over in my head was his first fever. I pictured it happening and being alone and scared and not knowing what to do. In my mind, that scenario was with a 3 month old baby and not a 10 month old, so in that sense, I think it was a bit easier, but it was still pretty brutal.

I gave him some Tylenol which he promptly threw up. Looking back on it, I think it was just spit up because he it only happened once, and it didn’t seem to cause him much discomfort. He didn’t sleep at all that night – he just wanted to be held and rocked in his glider. He was pretty cheerful and playful considering, but just couldn’t sleep. Around 3:00 am after a luke-warm bath, I moved us to the couch, which is where we slept together for the first 4 months of his life, and we had a little luck there. I was able to doze for a couple of 20-minute stints while he lay in my arms.

My babysitter arrived that morning so I handed him to her and crawled into bed to try and get a few hours sleep before going in late to work. He was so tired and so uncomfortable, he just cried and cried, so I couldn’t fall asleep. I know this is the understatement of the century, but there is just nothing worse than the no-sleep. All of my fear and worry about him is already there, all of my self-doubt about being able to do this on my own is right under the surface – and when I don’t sleep, they just multiply. It is so hard and takes so much energy to talk myself out of that fear and to soothe myself.

I took him to the doctor last night to rule out a bacterial infection since the fever stuck around for 24 hours and was happy to hear that it was only viral. We got home and his fever broke pretty fast. I managed to get him to sleep in his crib for about 30 minutes and we spent the rest of the night on the couch together. We were able to get some 90 minutes stretches in there – but not too many. At least it was better than the night before.

Anyone else have any traumatic first fever stories?

Hi Again

What a wonderful, terrible, beautiful 12 months.

I’m back after a long break and am so thrilled to see so many pregnancies and babies from all the bloggers out there!

I’m over the hump of trying to navigate single-motherhood, return to work, house-sale, move, divorce, name-changes, etc. Now I’m trying to settle into my life as it is each day rather than gearing up for the next big moving-on-milestone.
My son is almost 10 months old and gets better every day. I won’t go into too much detail about what transpired between 10 weeks and 10 months, but here are some highlights:

• He started as a terrible sleeper. For his first 4 months, he would only sleep latched on to me. I spent those nights ‘sleeping’ sitting up on a couch. At about the 4 month mark, when he could roll himself over on his stomach – it was a whole new world. Then came 5 and 6 hour stretches IN HIS CRIB at a time and now we are probably 50/50 with a full sleep through the night. The other 50% he usually wakes up once and needs to be rocked back to sleep – this is pretty manageable.

• Eating has been relatively easy compared to sleeping. He hasn’t really met a vegetable he doesn’t like. Fruit is OK as long as it’s heavily diluted in oatmeal or plain yogurt. We’ve moved on to some finger foods, which he kind of refuses to feed himself. In fact, he usually picks them or his sippy cup up and hands them to me so that I can feed him myself. Pretty funny.

• Still breastfeeding. This has been easy all along the way, the only bummer is how quickly the supply shrinks. He’s still getting about 10-12 ounces of breastmilk per day (1 nursing session and the rest in bottles) and about 12 ounces of formula.

• Day care – since my split, my mom has been coming out to San Diego for two weeks each month to help me take care of my guy. She and I have a great relationship and I know how lucky I am to have the help. Because of this, I am able to afford a babysitter the other two weeks of the month. I love my babysitter – I found her on a website called care dot com.

• He’s got two bottom teeth and his first top one just broke through.

• When he’s not crawling - he’s pulling himself up on anything he can.

• He is starting to play games with me like laughing and crawling away really fast so I’ll chase him.

I love being a mom. I knew I’d love it, I didn’t know how much. I know everyone says this and it sounds trite – but he is the greatest thing I’ve ever done.
I’m glad to be back.


Here's my guy:

Didn't see this one coming

My wife decided on Sunday that she doesn't want to be in this relationship anymore.

Our son is 10 weeks old.