Parenting Check in Feb 1

[karlamo]

Grab your coffee, it's Monday.

Welcome baby Lu to the group.

Parenting Roster
healz413
Manada
kevinandjesse
foodislove
megd893
calsurb
andstilltrying
jazibel
kh826
karlamo
jgy
sherminator
mahler5
wittyandwaiting
kona
strings
mrsnorris
2mrsks (mrs&mrsk)
jennicole
amberreva
shemarie82
officerofthelaw
ionaerebor
firstcomeslove2013

sdfonz619

QOTW:  Let's talk kids and money.  Do you have a college savings plan set up for your lo(s)?  Do they have bank accounts and if so what does that look like?

[karlamo]

I'm glad to be at work today. Last week both kids were sick and I was alone with them for 3 days straight. Ugh. We made it but it was touch and go there for awhile. My sister came to help which was nice except she has a broken foot so there wasn't much she could do but be a sanity saver to me.

L has been consistently rolling over and woke up at 3am to practice it. Which was adorable and not necessary at all. He seems "floppy" to us, more so than R did at this age. He needs to work on his core more. I got out our lobster clip on high chair and put him in it last night. He loved being at the table with the three of us. I hope this helps strengthen his core more. It's hard not to compare L to R.

R has all his apts this week, which I hope go well. He had his first taste of hot coco and he loved it. I need to make his 2 year apt for this month. I still can't believe he's turning 2. He has started doing imaginative play which is so cute. He makes his train people talk to each other and kiss. He is still nursing and we hope to wean him soon. He shows no signs of caring that he's 2 and still bf:)

QOTW: We have savings accounts set up for them that we put any money they get into but no college funds yet. We looked into them but have yet to open them up. We need to get on that. Both my wife and I had to take out student loans to pay for undergrad and grad. We went to private college so $$$. Lord knows how much these schools will cost in 17/18 years.

[healz413]

E is almost 5.5 months (24 weeks tomorrow). She's such a sweetheart. And her sleeping still sucks. 5 wake ups last night with significant time each time to nurse her into a deep enough sleep to transfer into her pack n play.
And naps are only happening in our bed with side lying nursing the whole time. She will also (usually) take a 20-30 min nap in a carrier if you keep walking the whole time. I go back to work March 9 and then M will be home with her so she has to learn to nap without nursing to sleep. And she is not getting good enough sleep at night with all of the wake ups.
So we hired a sleep coach/consultant and have our consultation tomorrow night and plan to start sleep training this weekend. I'm not looking forward to the process but I am looking forward to the results. Ellis will be so much happier and so will we.
She's getting really close to rolling from back to front. She still isn't rolling regularly from front to back but I think that's mainly because she doesn't really want to. She does it a couple times a week.
We fed her "solids" for the first time this weekend. We gave her mashed banana diluted with breast milk. She loved it! We are planning to do a mixture of baby led weaning (BLW) and purees and will start BLW when she can sit independently.
She's getting really good at pivoting on the floor on her back or stomach. And when she's in tummy time she's trying to get her knees under her. This baby definitely wants to move!
She loves her Jumperoo. This weekend she tried a jolly jumper at a friend's house and she also loved that.
I can't believe we are not far from her being 6 months old!

[2mrsks (mrs&mrsk)]

11 mo old, double ear infection & upper respitoey

Getting ready to move to possible daycare (vs family) and go broke

Finishing up a bathroom Reno and moving between 2 homes.

Also my dog has surgery this week.

Crazy week!

Qotw: r has a ton of $ lol. We started 529 last year and he has savings with baptism and Etc $

[2mrsks (mrs&mrsk)]

*respiratory

[kh826]

William will be 20 months on Friday.
Lucie is 6 days old.

Quick check-in!
Life is crazy, but good 80% of the time.
The other 20% is William struggling with having Lucie home and bring defiant and difficult. We are definitely seeing behaviors we have never seen from him before. It's hard, and I will write more when I have more time, but we are trying our best to work through it with patience.

We went to the grocery store as a family of 4 today, and we all survived. That felt like a large accomplishment.

Lu is very sweet and alert. She is also hungry all.the.time.
Still combo feeding (BF and formula). My supply can't keep up, and I'm ok with the combo. We will keep doing what we are doing for now and see how it goes.

William calls Lucie "Baby LuLu" and it is adorable.

Ok gotta run and eat something before Lu needs to eat again!

QOTW: William has a 529. We plan to open one for Lucie as well before she is 6 months.

[kona]

O is 18 months.

She has been sleeping about the same (up about 2 times per night). Although last night she slept straight through till 5:30AM. That helps me a lot because I haven't been able to go back to sleep after she gets up at 2:30AM lately. She is still talking up a storm. Her newest thing is to climb onto the couch and then want to jump off. I don't mind when we are right there with her but she has no fear.

I took her to a lab session at the college that M and I graduated from so the physical therapy students could get some hands on experience with kids. There were about 4 other kids there. She had a really great time playing. I'm hoping that might carry over to bringing her to the childcare center at the Y today. I'm having a lot of anxiety over leaving her there. I'm trying to be realistic about it because I know she is old enough now to play by herself and it really would be good for her to get out of the house more. Still, I have all the feels.

We are having some issues with our nanny/caregiver. I actually was going to start another thread but I'm not sure what I'm looking for, maybe just venting. She has been with us since O was 3 months. She shows up late (or on the edge of late) and I'm usually home early and O has been napping when I get home for about the past 6 weeks. There are other things like she doesn't strap her into the highchair, doesn't buckle the safety straps on the stroller (to prevent it from collapsing) and will only sometimes seem to follow the directions we leave (like we have told her numerous times that she needs to be changed every 2 hours regardless). She is really good with O, she gets on the floor and plays with her, likes to have music on which we love and O does like her. It's just getting frustrating. We pay her well and really she is only with O 12 hours per week but I get frustrated M-W and then it calms down the other 4 days of the week because she isn't there. Then we start all over again. I'm at a loss for a solution at this point.

QOTW:
We have a 529 and an ESA set up for O. There's not a ton of money in either of them. We contribute what we can. My dad is the only family member that contributes the 529. We will set these up for the next kiddo once he/she is here as well.

[karlamo]

Big hug kh826. I hope you're going easy on yourselves. You and J are keeping your head above water at this point. I'll pass along some tips that were given to me by my bf who has done 2U2 twice! Maybe some of this will be useful to you.

1. Lower your expectations. This is a hard one for me but those early days are just making sure both kids are fed, diapers are changed and they get play time. It sounds condescending but it became very true for me many times over. We hired house cleaners, got our groceries delivered and outsourced as much as we could those first few months.

2. Keep a baby device in every room of the house that way if you need to put the baby down to keep your toddler from hurting themselves or when they need something to happened RIGHT NOW, you have a safe place for baby. If you came to my house you'd find bouncy seats, swings and RNP all over my house. This advice alone has saved me and L many times over.

3. Be super patient with toddler. It's so hard to do when you're exhausted and all you want is to spend 1:1 time with your newborn. I was at the Dr.'s office and saw a poster that hit home for me. It said that bringing home a new baby to an only child is like having your spouse bring home a new partner into your marriage. Totally corny right? But when you think about it, I'd throw a fit and be all kinds of jealous if my wife brought home a new wife to live with us.

4. In the beginning I felt like I was always telling R to wait cause I had to do something for L. I decided I didn't want R to be mad at L for taking me away from him so whenever I needed to do something for R and L is fussing, I'd tell L, "You need to be patient, I'm with R now, you'll get a turn soon." In reality, L came first most days, cause he's a newborn and you can't let a newborn cry but it gave R the impression that he is still important too. Which his is.

We do a ton of baby wearing and I also use a yoga ball to bounce L on instead of a rocking chair. It allows me to take it all over the house and I pull it up to R's train table and play trains with him while I bounce with L or feed him.

L turned 5 months last week and it does get more manageable. Notice I didn't say easier. It will always be crazy because you have 2 kids now and they're both super young. But R and L have really started interacting with each other and it just melts my heart. I'm so glad R has a sibling to share this life with.

If you want any more tips for other things, let me know. It's all fresh to me as I'm still living this 2U2 thing.

[kona]

^^^ I want to frame this. We won't be there for 6 more months but this all seems like such solid advice. Thank you for sharing.

[karlamo]

kona, please vent away. Those are serious issues.
I can't believe she doesn't strap her in to keep her safe, doesn't change her diaper on time? That's scary and mean to leave child sitting in a dirty diaper for no reason.

If those things were happening at my day care center I would have a serious talk with them and if things still didn't change then I would have no choice but to take the kids out and find new care. Those are basic safety concerns. If she doesn't do those things what else is she not doing.
It's great that she plays with O but taking care of a child is more than playing.
Does she have previous child care experience?

[kona]

Yeah she has 4 kids of her own ranging from 6-16. She's in her 40s I would say. I think that's part of the problem, that she has her own perspective on how things should be done.

I agree we need to re evaluate the situation. We feel overwhelmed with finding a new caregiver though. Adulting is hard.

Thank you for your thoughts.

[mahler5]

C is still sick but I think finally better. I'm pretty sure we have the same upper respiratory infection. She's been breathing ok, so I'm not too worried. It is just annoying and hanging on for almost a week now. I was going to take her to her first day part time daycare yesterday but didn't want to bring her in sick even if she doesn't have a fever. Hopefully I can bring her tomorrow.

We took C house hunting with us Sunday. It's definitely harder to really look at a house with a toddler. We ended up making an offer on one and are waiting now. It was definitely C's favorite as it had toys in just about every room. It's hard telling her she can't play with the toys. Then she wanted to run in the next door neighbors yard and play on their swing set. She was especially upset by that! We definitely need to put up a fence ASAP if we get that house.

Nothing much is new with C. I really hope she likes her part-time day care place. I think she will. Two of my friends really like it. Although once the baby comes we will probably switch from 3 days a week to two. At that point it might make more sense to have her in a place where she goes for half days instead, as I will stay home with the baby for the first 6 months. L will watch them when I pick up a shift occasionally but I will cut way back. But I think keeping her there will be good if in the future i do go back more full time. I want what is best for her though. Consistency is good too. I don't want to switch things up on her too much when the baby comes. I do think having her still go some will be good for her though. She is getting more social. When we looked at houses L's parents came and I think C thought we were going to see her cousins we saw last week because she cried for them at the first house when they weren't there.

QOTW-- we haven't set anything up yet. We need to. Finances are making me anxious lately, especially since we just made an offer on a house that is on our high end of our comfort zone. Financially we will be much better off in 5 years after L's loans are paid off and I am working more, but still makes me nervous. I would have been fine with a cheaper house too but L is not, which is ironic because she is usually better than me at financial things. With this house we won't ever have to move though as it has plenty of room, even if we have a #3. Anyway, I digress. We need to set one up even if we only contribute a tiny amount now.

[kh826]

Thank you karlamo! Everything you said resonated with me big time! I have more to say, but well, you know... Gotta run! We are surviving and small victories feel monumental! Thank you so much for the support and advice!

[calsurb]

Hope I'm not too late on this one. I've been absent lately due to a months-long 3 credit hour course. Though I have been reading a lot of things and have been trying to keep up. Sarah is 8 months as of today and she is so much fun. She's had several colds over the winter but we've had 3 weeks in a row where she's been healthy and we're so glad for that. Parenting is going pretty well, she is sleeping through the night and is really coming out of her shell and babbling a ton. I keep hoping that she'll crawl one of these days but she's definitely taking her time and she's quite mischievous with everything she gets her hands on.

As for college savings funds we don't have anything set up yet and this is a great reminder that we need to. At this point we're currently trying to just gather our tax documents to actually make it and file our taxes before the deadline. I think I will and a college savings plan will come into play later in 2016.

Edited: Holy cow, Google voice butchered my words and I failed to proofread!

[sdfonz619]

Mila is 4.5 months, she is rolling over, constantly doing donuts on her play mat and has been getting up not only on her forearms, but also on her knees during tummy time. While she certainly isn't crawling just yet, she does scoot herself forward just for fun or for the purpose of getting a toy we have laid out for her. Now, instead of waking up crying, she "talks" and continues doing so even getting louder until one of us wakes up. MOTN wake ups are down to two, sometimes one on a good night, and transfer at night are seamless. We are still working on nap time transfers during the day.

QOTW: We established a savings account for Mila when we started TTC and auto deposit money into it every paycheck. We are also in the process of setting up a 529 for her.