circumcision

Oh joys!!!  You’ve found out you’re having a boy!!!!!  Such an exciting time! 

So now, there is this decision you have to make.  This decision is one of the first decisions you will have to make for your child that will impact their ENTIRE future!!!!!

The question you have to ask yourself… Do I circumcise my son or not.  The answer has to do with several determining factors.

~Religion.  Is it customary in your religion?  Is it something that warrants a celebration?

~Family.  Is it something that has most often been a normal thing to do in your family?  Is daddy’s noodle an anteater or a mushroom?

~Personal preference.  Men and women both can understand this reasoning.

~Cleanliness.  Not sure how true this is.  I have heard that uncircumcised noodles do not get as clean.  I’m pretty sure it’s all just about who is cleaning them.  So… dirty dude, dirty wiener.  Easy as that.  I don’t see why this factor would matter.  Who knows?  Maybe I’m wrong.

~Geographical Location.  Where you live has an impact of some parents’ decisions.  What is the ‘norm’ in that specific area, the culture.

~Insurance.  Does your insurance even cover the cost of a circumcision?  A lot of medical insurance plans and government assistance medical programs do not.  Their pediatrician will usually do it in his office for nice chunk of change.  What do you do if you want to circumcise your new baby boy, but just don’t have the money to pay out of pocket?  I wonder if you can get a bank loan for foreskin removal.

Once you have made your decision.  You have officially made one of the very first lifelong decisions for your child.  Either way you decide… Is he gonna be happy with my choice?  If you decide not to… Is he gonna try to cut it off himself later?  Will girls still like him?  If you decide to do the snippy…  Won’t that hurt his poor little thing?  How could I possibly pay somebody to desecrate this sweet little innocent baby?    What if they do it wrong and it makes it go crooked?  What if they cut too much off and he has to live with a super tiny weeny forever?

We made our decision for both of our boys.  There was really never any question which way were gonna go.  Just because its customary in our faith involving no celebration, its what usually happens in our family, personal preference for both deciding parties, it’s the ‘norm’, etc.  There will most likely always be worry in your choice, but just be sure about it and stand confident that you did the right thing for your son’s little thing.

If you are having a hard time and still on the fence with this situation, Good Luck.  That’s all I can say.  It’s a really hard decision.  One of the firsts of many.

* my first precious baby boy, 3 days old *

baby proofing

Even though I completely believe in baby proofing your house…

I also have this theory that if there is nothing to mess with and learn it shouldn’t be messed with at your own house; There is going to be a TON of stuff to mess with EVERYWHERE ELSE you go.

So there has to be a happy medium.  I think you should thoroughly keep things locked that could potentially hurt your child…  cleaning products, guns, breakable, anything hazardous.  However, you also need to be able to say NO to your children. 

What worked for my kids:

~When they would crawl up to something I didn’t want them messing with, I would make a loud sudden noise, ‘eh’, ‘no’, uh uh’, clap or snap, to get their attention.  You run the risk of startling them pretty good, and if you totally freaked them out, they might cry.  Sad, but it’s all about learning their lesson at this point.

~If they still make a move for it… say “No, little dude, that is not for you.” / “No, sir” / “No ma’am”…  However you are going to say the word no, just make sure you actually say the word NO.  I always shook my head when I said no to reiterate the body language/verbal combo of the word NO.

By saying no, you are verbalizing what they can and cannot do in your own home.  I feel by locking the necessary/harmful/dangerous/expensive/treasured things and teaching them lessons on the other things, you will be giving them a preview of what real life is really like!  You can’t touch EVERYTHING in real life, but you can touch some stuff.

Just don’t over babyproof your house and (hopefully) your kid will not act (as) foolish in public.  You can’t keep them in a padded bubble forever!

* keep her out of hazardous chemicals under cabinets *

* keep her out of the master bedroom during mommy/daddy time  ;-) *

* keep her out of the dishwaster. knives are usually on the bottom, people *

haircuts

Whether it’s their very first haircut or just their regular much needed trim, DON’T FORCE IT!  You are traumatizing that poor child when all they want is to have long luxurious locks!!  Haha!

I have been a hairdresser for 7 years now.  One important thing I have observed is children’s attitudes when its time for their cut.  Kids should never be forced into having a haircut.  Especially for their first haircut!!!

If you force a child to have a haircut for the first time and there is crying and snot and tears involved, you are going to traumatize that poor little turd!  Make sure for the very first haircut that you do not have to hold their head or bribe them the entire time.  If you feel like you are getting stressed out, your kid is TOO!!  If the only thing they relate to having a haircut is torture, you are never going to have a pleasant experience even when it comes to the slightest trim.

Before their first haircut, talk to them...  explain to them that it won’t hurt and they will look totally awesome when it’s done.  With my oldest, I have to make sure he knows how much the ‘ladies’ will like his new doo.  If you get down on their level and talk them into getting a haircut, hopefully their first experience will be enjoyable.  If their FIRST haircut experience is pleasant, they always will be.  Don’t force your child to get a haircut.  Just let them be who they want to be… If you make their haircut experience pleasant and enjoyable, they will make YOUR experience the same.  

Some tips when getting A FIRST HAIRCUT that may help at the salon/barber:
~Bring kiddo a change of clothes for the occassion.  You might want to bring some sort of small plastic baggy and a camera.  Bring someone else along with you who can take pictures while you help your little one stay focused and behaved.  However, DO NOT bring every one of your friends and family plus their significant others.  All you are doing is aggrivating your stylist as well as your child.
~Make sure you go to the right stylist/barber!  If you have your own trustworthy stylist, go to them.  If you have a friend or relative that is familiar to your child, go to them.  Ask other mommy friends if they can refer you to someone.  Otherwise, ask when you go into the salon if you can have someone who is good with kids and/or first haircuts.  There are also places specifically geared towards kids.  Trust me, children can sense a trustworthy stylist.  I think they just have an instinct and can tell who is or isn't discouraged by doing a kids haircut.  I LOVE doing kids haircuts... but I know some stylists would just prefer not to.  You may feel awkward about asking a question like "who's good?", but who cares what anyone else thinks!  You want it done right the first time!  Your job is to attempt to make your kid's first haircut wonderful!  (Or at least semi-ok?!)
~Encourage your child to sit in the salon chair by his/herself.  (They will usually give them a booster seat if needed.)  If they won't sit by themselves, have them sit on your lap.  The stylist should put a cape around both of you.  (Having another individual to take pics comes in handy here too.)  Just try to keep your wiggle worm still without force. The aforementioned 'change of clothes' is in case your kid won't wear a cape... or has yanked it off of, or just so they're not itchy afterwards.
~Ask the stylist to try and save you some of the longest pieces of hair.  Most people want to save the first cut locks in a scrapbook or something.  This is what the plastic baggy will come in handy for.
~Let your kid know that if they behave, they will be rewarded at the end.  Bribery is a wonderful tool.  Some shops have lollipops for them.
~Have them face the mirror, they ALL like to look at themselves.
~Stay calm, keep them focused and entertained.  Good luck!

* Brody's first haircut *

mommy friends

Sometimes, you get to an age where all of your friends and acquaintances are having babies.  You look around and suddenly don’t have that many single friends anymore.

These mommy friends will help you along the way.  I learned a ton from my mommy friends who became mommies before I did.  The best way to learn is from experience… even if it’s not yours personally.

Take a lesson from these mommy friends.  Whether it’s learning something that you should or SHOULDN’T do with your kids.  They are there to help you with questions and concerns.  You never know, you may be able to ease your mind about some illness or crazy rash before you can even talk to your doctor.  Just remember that there are gonna be other mommy friends and single friends who learn from you one day.  So, just like your kids are learning from you and witnessing your behavior, so are other mommy friends.

Thanks to all my mommy friends who were always there for me and my silly questions!   =)

** some of my oldest and closest mommy friends **

sick baby

Its one of the most traumatic firsts in a baby’s life… my poor baby has a cold!!  Even though it’s just a head cold, it still worries us as parents.  Especially when the baby is too young for medication.  Nowadays, there are all these rules about what you can and can’t give your baby.  They even took pretty much all of the over-the-counter cold medicine away.  I am not sure what or if anything happened to a child to make them discontinue these things, but it sucks.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, if these meds are harmful, then by all means… get rid of it.  It’s just tough especially being a first time parent and you hear the tragic baby cough, the sneezing, wheezing and all of the gallons of baby snot pouring down your sweet baby’s face.  Ugh!  It’s awful!!!

The first thing you want to do is rush them away to the emergency room!  Quick…  Call their doctor!!  No, no.  It’s actually healthy for babies to get the occasional cold.  It helps build up their immune system.  (Now, of course, excessive sickness is a-whole-nother ball game… talk to your pediatrician for sure.  They may need probiotics and antibiotics and all that other kind of mess.)  Take comfort that the occasional little cold is perfectly fine and containable.  We can’t keep them in a bubble forever!  We can and should separate them from any other children in the house though if needed.  =)

This helped my sick boys get some much needed sleep:

~ Get a Tylenol/Motrin chart from your pediatrician.  Then go to the store and buy some infants pain/fever relief, baby vapor rub, lavender night time baby wash and a humidifier.  Read the instructions and set up the humidifier in the baby’s room, remember to use cold water.  When you turn it on, make sure you can see the moist air coming out; not so high that it makes a dripping sound though.  Get it started in baby’s room during bath, bottle, bedtime, etc. so it gets the air in the room nice and breathably moist.  Bathe little sicky in the lavender baby wash to help them sleep better through the night.  Give baby recommended dosage infants pain/fever relief, make sure you read the chart carefully.  Now, here’s the kicker…  put infants vapor rub (I suppose you can use regular, but infants has way less of a strong smell) ON THE BOTTOM OF THEIR FEET, then put socks on their tiny little tootsies.  I usually rub what’s left on my finger on my babies’ chest, but make sure they can’t get to it at all.  Put them in a super comfy onesie with feet (leave their socks on).  Last thing is just make sure they have a nice warm bedtime boob or bottle.  *FYI Nursing/drinking liquids helps break up congestion in their chest.  Do these steps and they will sleep peacefully and comfortably (hopefully) all night long.  When your kid is old enough for children’s gummy vitamins, just add that to the regimen.  I’ve done it and still do it with both my boys when they’re sick… works every time.

We just want our babies to feel better.  Hopefully this works for you.

pacifiers

I was mortified when one of the baby nurses at the hospital gave my older son, Brody, a pacifier when he was two days old!  Her reasoning was that ‘he just seems to keep wanting to eat’.   Ugh!  I NEVER wanted my kid to have a pacifier!!   She just so happened to be my cousin, so I gave her a piece of my mind!!  I have since apologized for my crazy, hormonal outburst of insanity.

If something similar happens to you, Fret not…  that pacifier saved my sanity many, many times.  If your baby will take a pacifier, it may keep a lot of the crying down and later on, help with teething.  If your baby has colic, the pacifier will be very beneficial to you and baby as well.  Jaxen only took a pacifier for a few months.  It did not serve its purpose during colic.  :-/

So Brody and his pacifier (“Pat” is what he named it) were inseparable.  I always had extra pacifiers everywhere!... my purse, diaper bag, every room in the house.  Brody also hid them throughout the entire house.  “Pat” was a permanent fixture, it was in every picture of my son, he never let it out of his site and his teeth were starting to go crooked.   (One of) My worst nightmare!  My kid’s teeth are gonna be jacked up and he’s gonna have this crap in his mouth until he’s six years old!  AHHHHHH!!!

Here’s what we did with Brody:

We figured 2 years old was the oldest we wanted our kid to be running around with this crap in his mouth…  When it was getting close to Brody’s 2^nd birthday, we sat him down and explained that big boys don’t need pacifiers and he was about to be a big boy soon.  We just kept saying little things to let him know the time was approaching for him to grow up, be a big boy and get rid of Pat.  We made sure not to belittle his attachment or make him feel like he was doing anything wrong.  Just hinted around here and there about how babies use pacifiers and he was about to be TWO YEARS OLD!  Wouldn’t you know… the night before he turned two years old, after reminding him of his impending birthday, our little dude threw Pat in the trash and exclaimed “I’m a big boy tomorrah!!!”  Woohoooo!

All went well with the death of Pat….  Brody did great adjusting to not having it, he really didn’t even ask for it more than a couple of times.  He never put it in his mouth again.  And his teeth are perfectly straight, I might add.

 ** these worked best for both my boys **

colic

If you haven’t already heard or found out on your own… colic is horrendous.  Some babies have ‘it’ for a long time, but most only show signs of colic from about 1-4 months (4-16 weeks) old.  If your baby is older than that and you just assume it is colic, go to the doctor.  From what I’ve learned, it could be something more, usually reflux.

My littlest, Jaxen, had colic.  If my oldest had had colic, I most likely would never have had another child.  It was awful!  He would scream like clockwork.  Certain times of the day, I just knew he was about to have another screaming fit.  If I can remember correctly, it was 5am, 10am, 3pm, 8pm & 11pm.  Each time the screaming lasted anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours.  By the time he got done crying, pooped, ate and then slept for a few minutes, it was time to scream again.

He didn’t want anyone else except for me to hold him.  It was awesome.  For the pity party crowd… my husband was laid up for 10 weeks with a bad case of gout in his foot ever since I was in the hospital delivering Jaxen, I was recovering from a c-section and taking care of a 3 ½ yr old and a colicky infant.  JOYS!

There are tons and tons of links to homemade remedies for infant colic.  I, of course, found and tried most of them.

Here’s what I found worked for Jaxen:

~Boil 1 cup of purified drinking water with 2 fresh bay leaves and/or ½ soft peppermint stick.  Bring to a boil and let it simmer for about 10 minutes.  Turn it off and let it cool down.  Put it in a baby bottle (1oz or whatever they will take) and give it to your little screamer.  (*bonus* your house will smell amazing!)  My baby would not take a bottle; I actually had to give it to him in a dropper.

~During my research, I found that overfeeding can make colic worse.  Well, for some reason I had enough breast milk to feed a small nation.  Jaxen would choke a little when feeding because of the amount and urgency of my milk expressed.  So, I pumped for about 10 minutes or less, then breastfed the baby.  He got fuller because he got more of the hind milk, which seemed to help him sleep.  And he wasn’t getting water boarded by the overflow of milk anymore.  Win, win. 

~Heat to the tummy.  [*ALWAYS PUT BABY TO SLEEP ON THEIR BACK*  I hate even writing this because I don’t want to anyway be liable for anything happening to your children.  Watch your babies!  I WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE.  This is just what I DID.]  I read several articles that mentioned putting a heating pad on the colicky baby’s belly; that it might help with digestion.  Call me crazy, but… I’m NOT putting a heating pad on my infant!  So I figured there were a couple ways I could add heat, my hand or by using his own body heat (by lying on his tummy).  When he was lying on his back, I would hold my hand on his tummy, rub it a little.  Sometimes when I was holding him and he fell asleep, I would transfer him to his bed and put him on his belly.  Take note!!  I watched him like a hawk always making sure he was still breathing.  If I couldn’t see his body moving up and down from his breath, I held a mirror up to his nose and watched for fog.  It made me nuts worrying about him!  Constant checking on him made it virtually impossible for me to get anything done!  However, it was pretty much the only way I could make a successful transfer from my arms to his bed without him waking up.

~Gas drops.  Find some infant gas relief drops; I just used to buy the store brand.  This really seemed to help my little man.  I gave him the recommended dosage after every time he ate.  After a little while, you could tell he knew as soon as he tasted it that he would start feeling better soon.

~Pacifiers help a little… the sucking reflex helps them calm down a bit.  Jaxen would only take the pacifier for a few minutes at a time.

~Walking in circles holding the screamer.  Jaxen would sometimes calm down a little if you held him and walked around.  However, notice I used the word “sometimes”.

~Basically, if your infant has colic, just figure out how to do everything one handed.  Figure it out.  It might be your savior.  Don’t worry about spoiling them at this stage in the game.  As long as you can figure out the limit for holding baby all of the time, and when the colic is over, you break them quickly.

My suggestion is to try everything to help your baby settle down.  Try to remember that colic isn’t your baby’s fault.  Try not to get so aggravated.  If your patience level has reached its limit, ASK FOR HELP!  Family members & friends are in your life for a reason!  They would LOVE to help you, especially if they know you are at your limit.  Don’t be afraid to tell someone, the last thing you want to do is hurt your baby out of aggravation and frustration.  CALL SOMEONE.  If there is absolutely no one, let the baby cry in his bed.  Go take a 15 minute break, go somewhere where you can’t hear the crying.  Take some deep breaths, relax for a second.  If you’re lucky, baby will cry himself to sleep.  He/she is actually physically uncomfortable and can’t do anything except let you know that they are uncomfortable.  So try home remedies, old wives tales, whatever you need to do.  Your baby just doesn’t want to hurt anymore.   And, of course, you don’t want to hear constant screaming anymore.

As soon as Jaxen’s colic was gone, it was almost immediate relief.  He has been the sweetest, happiest baby ever since!  He really made up for the lack of sleep those first few months too.  I just assume he’s so grateful that he is not in discomfort anymore… I know I am!  

baby talk

Seriously?  Why does this even need to be discussed.  Do you understand that when all your baby hears is baby talk, that’s the only way he’s gonna know how to talk when he starts talking?

I hear people talking all goo-goo-ga-ga to their babies all of the time.  I, personally, think this is ridiculous.  It actually makes me a little nauseated to even hear it…

If you are, indeed a ‘baby talker’, when your baby starts talking, he or she is potentially gonna have some sort of speech impediment.  You may be one of the lucky ones whose kids come out brilliantly from years of baby talk torture… who knows.  AND most importantly, you are going to have to teach your baby how to talk twice!  After your baby figures out how to say ‘nap nap’, ‘eat eat’, ‘ba ba’, ‘num num’, then you have to teach the right words later on in their life! 

To reiterate my point of view on the baby talk:  Change your tone of voice, yes!  Don’t say different words.  If your tone of voice is soothing and comforting, that is what babies respond to.  They are little sponges though, learning every second.  Happy tones, giggles, smiles, REAL words.

Why not teach them the right way the first time.  Seems logical to me….

We never talked ‘baby talk’ to our first son and he was speaking in complete sentences by the time he was 1.  He clearly said ‘Daddy’ at 6 months old.  He is now 4 and I am and always have been very impressed with his verbal skills.

About me

Hi everyone!  My name is Katie.  Born, raised and still residing in Central Florida.  I am very new to blogging, but very excited!  I am a 31 year old hair stylist of 7 years, wife of 6 years and mother of 2 boys.  My oldest is Brody, he just turned four.  My baby is Jaxen, he is almost 9 months.

I wanted to start this blog for moms because I get a lot of people asking me for advice and then thanking me later.  If, for some reason, my advice is so spectacularly awesome… then I want everyone to have it!   ;-)

*NOTE:  all babies are different, just like all pregnancies are different.  In no way, am I suggesting that these are sure fire solutions for your individual child.  These suggestions/tips are from my personal experiences and what I have read and researched on my own.  I AM NOT A DOCTOR, NURSE OR ANY OTHER MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL.  I WILL NOT BE LIABLE OR HELD RESPONSIBLE.  Like I’ve said before, these are MY SUGGESTIONS based on MY EXPERIENCES.

I welcome your feedback.  Please follow me!!!! 

Thanks for reading… Enjoy!

~Katie