Ain't No Mom Jeans

Thoughts From a New Mom: Don't Ruin This For Me

Readers, I'm delighted to introduce our newest contributor, Lane!  Lane (aka LCB) is not only wickedly funny, but...in her own words...

"I am currently...an intentionally unemployed social worker who is growing a human, following my husband's dream, trying to stay relevant, and practicing my mothering skills on two rescued dogs, Enid and Falcor."

If you, like me, can't get enough of Lane, check out her blog, the Overseas Trapeze.

xo,

S

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As soon as you announce your pregnancy to your loved ones and the world, hot of on the heels of joyful congratulations comes unsolicited advice. Enough of my friends are now mothers that this onslaught of information was not completely unexpected. I realize that within people's love for us and excitement for the changes coming in our lives comes their natural urge to help in some way. And sharing stories, tips, warnings and encouragement is one way of providing that help before the baby arrives, when there isn't much tangible to do. I am a firm believer in the wisdom than can come with experience, so I have taken many of these offerings to heart. I'm no fool.

However, in between the sage words and the enlightened encouragement, it is impossible to miss the stories, tips and warnings that have a bit of a cynical edge, a negative tone. Perhaps it is when someone asks whether you hope to breastfeed/cloth diaper/co-sleep/stand on your head during labor, and upon hearing your answer gives you the 'Tisk, tisk, we'll see about that! I said I would do (insert activity), too, but it isn't realistic. Let me tell you how to do it right from the start.' Or perhaps the person in question doesn't even bother to make up a question so they have a pretext from which to launch their rant, they just cut to the chase (I actually appreciate this, if only for time-saving reasons). 'Don't even think about natural labor/epidural/c-sections! You are a fool if you do!' or maybe 'Don't expect to sleep with your husband for a month/six months/a year/until 2034! Your baby will be in your bed until it's good and ready, and it's cruel to consider otherwise!'

Words To Live By: "Children Learn What They Live" by Dorothy Law Nolte

I was reading a back issue of the "Grandma Says" newsletter (published by the Growing Child folks - read more about how much I love them here)...and I came across this poem, published in 1972.  Apparently, this poem used to be posted everywhere:  schools, doctor's offices, daycares, etc.  Ask your mom about it - I'll bet she recognizes it. (mine did!)

If ever there were words for parents to live by, this is it.  

Reading: Growing Child Newsletters - Inspiring yet Practical Advice for Parents (based on your child's age)

Have you heard of the Growing Child newsletter?  If not, you are in for a treat. 
Growing Child is a monthly newsletter, sent via email (or post), that matches the age of your child.  When you sign up, you simply enter your child's birthday and voila!  You will receive the appropriate newsletter each month.

Growing Child newsletters cover developmental stages and quirks, tips and strategies for coping, as well as age-appropriate learning games and toy recommendations. 

What I like best, however, is the fact that their advice is real.  This is not a newsletter that will advocate the purchasing of expensive toys, or demand that that you redesign your entire house.  This is not a newsletter that assumes you have boundless patience, or endless amounts of time. 

This is simply a newsletter that started in 1971, and will, very patiently, explain to us newbie mums why manners are still important (hint:  it's all about "caring and consideration"), and what you can and cannot expect from your 2-year-5-month-old in terms of manners.  This is a newsletter that teaches parents specific language and behaviors to make us more effective parents (Say, "Hitting hurts Peter" rather than "Don't Hit"). This is a newsletter that encourages parents to focus on what's important:  helping your child develop courage and independence, empathy,  imagination.  

Mom Brain: Accidental Abandonment

At a ladies night out recently, we lighted on the topic of accidental abandonment.  People whose babies crawl out of the house and into the road to the amazement of stunned school bus drivers, who forget their children at gas stations, at daycare, at stores, or worse, in the car.  Of the six women present, there was a split between those of us who could understand how these things may happen and those who just couldn’t.  That is, until one pointed out that all of these circumstances seem to arise from the anecdotally well-documented affliction of mom brain--being too harried and too tired--plus, the kicker, deviating from routine. Somberly, heads nodding with the heaviness of being up past 10 PM, a bit too much Sangria, and with an eye to hedging our bets with fate, we all agreed it could certainly happen to anyone.  I’m glad to say I was on the side of understanding from the get-go, because after today, I’d have to eat my hat.

Attention Moms: Think 'Girls Gone Wild' is Dying Out? Think Again (And What To Do)

  Back in 2006, my husband bought me a fantastic book by Ariel Levy called, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture.  In this book, Ariel explores the stratospheric rise in popularity of shows like "Girls Gone Wild" and our current sexual stereotypes of women.  But this book is more than just a rant.

It turns out that in order for shows like "Girls Gone Wild" to be successful, they need....well...girls.  They need girls to cooperate.  They need girls to willingly take off their shirts for the camera. And they do.  Why?  Ariel goes on set with a "Girls Gone Wild" camera crew and finds that all it takes, in most cases, is the promise of a "Girls Gone Wild" baseball hat.  So yeah - there's something else going on.  Add to that, the rise in celebrity of porn stars.  Porn stars are getting their own TV shows, are being interviewed in magazines for tips on sex.  Which strikes me as funny.  I mean....people know that porn is fake, right?  YES - porn is actual sex, but these women aren't really having 12 orgasms in a row.  They are just pretending to.

More upsetting, however, were the interviews Ariel did with current high school students - both boys and girls.  There was the usual stuff: girls wanting to be prettier, girls wanting to be thinner...but what struck me as new was the additional (self-imposed) "requirement" that girls now also be sexually sophisticated.  Not just active, mind you, but sophisticated. Sophisticated in a way that really isn't achievable by anyone still in their teens.  So what we've ended up with are high schools full of girls who look and act the part...but who still have no idea how to orgasm.  The bottom line?  These girls aren't enjoying it.  Like porn stars, they are pretending.

Reading: Happiest Mom's Thoughts on Shopping For Yourself

There are few blogs that I read religiously.  The Happiest Mom is one of them. The Happiest Mom, aka Meagan, is the mom of five (and therefore qualifies as an expert).  I find her blog filled with some of the most well-written, thoughtful, and insightful articles I've read in years.  She manages to capture and convey the essence of motherhood without relying on old stereotypes or cliches.  Her voice is unique, yet I think you'll find it familiar.  She articulately puts to words so many of the things I feel, issues I struggle with.  I find her inspiring.  

What We're Reading This Week: Potty Training Books

OK, yes, I know many of these books have been around for quite some time, but they are, in fact, what we're reading this week. With my sweet potato rounding out his 26th month of life on Earth and preschool starting in September, we're gearing up for the marathon that, apparently, is the feat of potty training a boy child.  We're loving reading these books as we sit on each of the three (yes, 3!) potties hanging around our happy home and wanted to share:       

Rainy/Sick Day Activities: Water Cups

The easiest thing to do with a sick, fussy toddler, of course, is to pop him on the couch and let him veg out in front of the TV.  That's what I feel like doing when I've been barfing my brains out.  But when my two-year-old, who never saw an operational television until he was over a year old, started talking about the Wonder Pets like they were friends of his a couple of weeks ago, I realized it was [way past] time to put the breaks on the boob tube consumption.

This winter has been brutal.  With two kiddos, our sick days have doubled and it seems like one virus just snowballs into another.  In the past six weeks, we've had a crazy stomach flu, a cough & cold and now another cough & cold and each bug takes 7-10 days to work its way through the entire family. We're perennially tired, head-achey, generally achey and snotty.  So. . . our normally active lifestyle of play dates, playground outings, walks, music class, museums and running errands, has ground to a halt and we're all going bonkers with cabin fever.  

What to do with a tiny, sick little guy who can't go anywhere or do anything we usually do?  Well, in our case, water always does the trick, but we can't spend half of every day in the bath and the wood floors in my kitchen are going to warp from the time we spend at the sink filled up with water, boats and cups with Huck on his stepladder.            

Maybe you already do some version of this, but here's a stupidly easy, cheap and fun activity that keeps my little man happily engaged for 20 minutes or more.  It's great fine motor practice and is about a thousand times more water-wise than filling a bath or sink. We call it Water Cups.

Here's what you need:

- A cookie/jellyroll pan 
- Two shatterproof cups, different sizes, one filled with warm water
- A silicone potholder (optional, prevents slipping)

If your kid is anywhere near as obsessed with water and pouring as mine is, she'll love this activity, and so will you.  Strap him in his booster or high chair at the table while you check email or empty the dishwasher and let her have at it.  I put a silicone potholder on the table to prevent the cookie sheet, which keeps at least some of the water from slopping all over the table, from slipping and fill one of the cups with warm water.  Occasionally I pour the water from the cookie sheet back into one of the cups. 

  

Do you have some fun, cheap and easy activities to keep your tykes from going bonkers on sick or rainy days?  Email us your ideas and pics and we may feature them on our blog.

Happy cold & flu season, Mamas!  Spring is just around the corner.

- M

Review: Action-Packed Eco-Friendly Sprig Toys

My attempt at green parenting has been a precipitously slippery slope.  I started out with cloth diapers, a natural rubber mattress, all organic clothing, homemade organic baby food and exclusively non-plastic toys.  But what I've ended up with is 7th Generation disposables/part-time (like, when the mood strikes me) cloth diapering, a mix of pricey organic cotton and $2.97 Target specials (made, probably, by kids only slightly older than mine), frozen "all natural" chicken tenders & Whole Market taquitos, and more plastic toys than I can shake a stick at.  So much for my lofty green ideals. 

What happened between then and now?!  Well, lots of things, like gag-inducing encounters with the diaper sprayer, the sheer economics of dressing a rapidly growing kid in $30 shirts, picky eating, and, of course, my kiddo's preferences in toys.

We recently had a green toy coups, however, when I discovered Sprig Toys, a Colorado-based eco-friendly toy line.  For Huck's big 0-2, I purchased the Dolphin Explorer Boat (because anything to do with water is an instant win with the boy wonder) for $29.99, the dump truck and the loader, both $14.99 at Real Baby in Denver.  All three toys are paint-free and made of Sprig's proprietary SprigWood, a delightfully satisfying-to-the-touch bio-composite material made of reclaimed wood and recycled plastic.  If your little one isn't a classic dump truck/loader enthusiast, check out DuneBug's Sand Truck, which includes an adorable DuneBug character and wild flower seeds.  
 

The little man especially adores the Dolphin Explorer set, spending nearly an hour at a go on his step ladder at the sink and in the tub with his boat, captain and dolphins, and we're looking forward to spending warmer spring days at the playground digging and dumping sand.  For my part--and considering kids are spending record-breaking time in passive play with battery operated toys and electronic media--I adore how active he is in his play with these items--Sprig Toys are, as a rule, "kid-[not battery-]powered," which is just what this pseudo-green mama wanted.

Next Sprig Toys acquisition: The Discover Rig.  Lights, motor sounds and songs are powered not by batteries, but by a generator triggered when your kid moves it.  Also of interest, Sprig's Storybuilders: four classic story books with block-and-panel sets that allow kids to build and re-enact classic storylines.  If I had a little gal, I might even do Princess Penny's Story Building Palace.  I wish it weren't so. . . pink. . . but it would be a blast to build a little castle (as long as she can build skyscrapers out of normal blocks, too!) and hey, who doesn't like a pointy princess hat on a cute little faceless figurine?

Going as green as I can,
- M        

 

Best Breastfeeding Tip EVER: Power Pumping

The past week has been rife with life lessons for me.  1.) When you plan a romantic weekend away whilst breastfeeding, make darn sure your pump is working well and that you're working well with your pump.  2.) Having not heeded lesson one, when you get home on the brink of mastitis (romantic, I know) and your milk supply is demolished, power pump.  3.) When your toddler, who has a pernicious stomach virus, mentions poop even in passing right before a bath, save the suds for later.

I think lessons one and three are pretty self-explanatory, but I have to share the best breastfeeding/pumping tip I have ever heard during my 20-month (over two babes) breastfeeding tenure.  Let me repeat: ever. 

Three days after returning from said romantic getaway (during which I lost most of my milk because I just couldn't seem to let down for the pump), I called the lactation consultant at the hospital where both my boys were born to see if there was any hope--my poor little guy was hungry and my milk seemed to be dwindling further!  With precipitously plummeting prolactin levels and on the brink of tears (Rants aside, I'm a breastfeeder.  I don't ween until my kids can talk and walk.  Period.), I nodded through all the advice--pump after every feeding, fenugreek supplements, etc., and then she hit on a tidbit so priceless I can't even believe I'd never heard about it before: power pumping.

It's difficult and super time consuming to essentially double your nursing time by pumping after every feeding, particularly if you have an active or sick toddler on your hands in addition to an infant, so when the lc told me about power pumping, I saw light at the end of tunnel and got straight to work.  She told me to pump for ten minutes, rest for ten minutes, on and off, for a total of one hour (of course I did two), to simulate a growth spurt.  The best part: you can do it whenever you have time, so I was able to rebuild my milk supply after my guys were already in bed for the night. 

I power pumped and took fenugreek three nights in a row and saw a huge increase in my milk that I hadn't seen with the fenugreek + sporadic pumping regimen I'd been futilely practicing for most of the week. For three days,Little Lou had been taking full 8 oz bottles at bedtime after 20 frustrating minutes of succor-less suckling.  After the first power pumping session, he nursed for 20 minutes and took 4 ounces.  The second night, he nursed for 20 minutes again and took a 2 ounce top up.  The third night, he nursed 20 minutes and fell fast asleep, milk drunk.

Power pumping would not only be great for re-gaining a lost milk supply, but would also be a stellar way to stockpile milk if you're going back to a paid job or on a trip away from the kiddos.

Power to the pump, mamas!  Let it set you free. (And thanks much to the fab lc at St. Joes!)

- M