Twitter Etiquette: Lesson 1

First, Let me say, I'm addicted to Twitter.  I love nearly everything about it.  I love how its one great big chat room where you get to pick who is in yours and interact as much as you want to, or not.  And while there seem to be very few rules on Twitter, here are a couple that if more people followed, we'd all get along better.


1. Don't Auto DM me. DMing, or Direct Messaging, is a great tool for sharing information that simply doesn't need to be public, whether it's your email address, a personal note of thanks, or simply a message you don't want to clog the tweet stream with, DMs are fabulous.  I love DMs. I love them so much, I, like many others, even get email notifications of new DMs.  I also get my email on my cell phone.  When I have new email on my cell phone, a little red light blinks. And blinks.  But Auto DMs, impersonal and generic, usually something along the lines of "Thanks for following, please check out my website/e-store/blog/colonoscopy pics," really irritate me.  Why? Because they get sent to my email. Which gets sent to my phone. Which beeps red until I open it.  And foolishly, when I see I got a Direct Message, I usually get excited that someone thought of me and wanted to have a conversation, which, because I'm a nerd, makes me feel a little excited.  However, when I stop what I'm doing to check my Direct Messages and find it to only be said invitation to see colonoscopy pics or someone's site, it's really irritating.  At this point, I've wasted my time, gotten my hopes up and been let down, and I've also questioned whether or not I should have followed the Auto DMer.  In that moment, I know I won't be recommending the offender for #FollowFriday.  


2.  Non-sequitur linking. Do not @ respond to a question about sewing with a link to your site about air filters.  It's rude, off topic, and ultimately going to lose sales.  No one wants to buy from someone who uses disreputable marketing.


3. Half-tweeting.  Do not RT (retweet) the half of a tweet that agrees with your world-view and leave out the half that makes the point the tweeter was originally trying to make.  It's lazy, tacky, and rude.
For example, if someone tweets, "breastfeeding didn't work for my first baby, so we used formula, but I grieve the nursing relationship we could have had."  Do not even consider half-tweeting it as "breastfeeding didn't work for my first baby, so we used formula."  
Or, if someone tweets "Yeah, I like iguanas, except for the part I hate them." Don't half tweet "Yeah, I like iguanas."  Just don't do it.


4. Be polite, children.  Ultimately, remember that for the most part, there is a human being with different thoughts and experiences, but ultimately with the same human feelings as you sitting at the other end of that twitter account, and have a little human decency.

Wordless Wednesday: Make a Wish

Wordless Wednesday

Rockin' Out Geek Style

Alright, short and sweet today.
I need your help.
I am looking for music recommendations for the growing geekling child.
We already love rocking out to They Might Be Giants and the fun sciency song "The Sun," but we need more!
So please, what are your favorite nerdy music suggestions?

WHO Gave You My Address? An open letter to Mead Johnson & Company

Mead Johnson Nutrition,
2400 West Lloyd Expressway-B215
Evansville, IN 4772


Dear Mead Johnson Nutrition/ Mead Johnson & Company

 I don't know who gave you my address, but as a breastfeeding mother, I'm less than thrilled with the discount formula "checks" you sent to my house. The "nutritional building blocks he needs now" don't come from your "Toddler Formula," they come from breast milk and real foods.

I also think you should know that bolding and capitalizing "PREMIUM" really isn't trade markable, but more over, there is nothing premium, other than the price one pays, about your formula. In order to be distributed and marketed as a breast milk substitute, any formula has to meet certain FDA established guidelines.  Other than the fact that yours is a formula created by chemists to be more like what a toddler needs than what a newborn needs, you're not special.  I'm a little irritated that you're trying to mislead parents with said bold capitalized words.

I'm even more mad that you had the gall to print "Getting the right nutrition seems easy with breast milk or infant formula, but now it is a bit more complex.  Make sure your toddler gets the nutrition she needs after infant formula, for growth, brain and immune system development" with your product.  That you went on to say your product was chemically formulated "to help toddlers get balanced nutrition when they need it most with essential vitamins, antioxidants, iron and DHA [chemical soup de' jour] helps provide a strong foundation for healthy development," only adds to my displeasure.

This implies that getting the right nutrition with breast milk is an illusion, because it only seems simple and doesn't have added vitamins, antioxidants, heavy metals, and acronyms we're told we need, when in fact, breast milk provides the nutrition a toddler needs for growth, brain and immune system development.  Any formula trying to do similar is imitating breast milk, and the phrasing on this propaganda you sent my house is clearly crafted to cast doubt on the nutritional value of breast milk and continued breastfeeding past one year of age.

The World Health Organization recommends that infants be breastfed exclusively to 6 months, and continue to be breastfed until at least 2 years of age, and beyond 2 years as is beneficial and mutually desirable to both parties of the nursing dyad.

The precise World Health Organization breastfeeding recommendation is:

"Breastfeeding is an unequalled way of providing ideal food for the healthy growth and development of infants; it is also an integral part of the reproductive process with important implications for the health of mothers. As a global public health recommendation, infants should be exclusively breastfed(1) for the first six months of life to achieve optimal growth, development and health(2). Thereafter, to meet their evolving nutritional requirements, infants should receive nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods while breastfeeding continues for up to two years of age or beyond."

You can read more about the WHO breastfeeding recommendation and the Global Strategy on Infant and Young Child Feeding here.

Promoting any special toddler formula with misleading wording regarding the nutritional value of breast milk is disingenuous and certainly a violation of the WHO code (International Code of Marketing Breast-milk Substitutes) and despite the fact that the United States does not yet enforce said code through fines and other penalties, violation of the WHO code costs lives every year.   

Breast milk inarguably supports the healthy and proper development of the immune system, and research has shown time and again that breastmilk evolves with the growing child's ever changing needs to be the appropriate food to nourish growth and immune system development.  Also, breastfeeding, not just breast milk, also has the added benefit of helping further develop a strong sense of attachment, trust and security in the child.  Formula can't do that.  Lovingly feeding a toddler can, and I am not saying that formula can not be given in a way that furthers those bonds, but formula itself can not.

I also noted that in the image of your product, it boasts "Great Taste!" and that it comes in both unflavored and vanilla.  Not only is it not a real food, it's natural ingredients readily identifiable, it's also artificially flavored, because our children need more of that in their diets. 

I also find it interesting that after using misleading language about the value of breast milk, you proudly use the words "Milk Based" on your product's canister- because while species appropriate breast milk is apparently not good enough, cross-species breast milk chemically reconfigured certainly must be.

So Mead Johnson Nutrition, you tried to mislead me.  You treated me like I'm not smart enough or informed enough to understand what you're trying to do through your advertising. I'm angry.  I won't be rushing into the grocery store to get five dollars off the price of your magic new chemical soup of growing, and I certainly won't be giving your company's products preference when buying.  

You don't value the health of my children, and that right there says a lot to me.

Sincerely,

Slee Fenton, Proud Breastfeeding Mother to a Very Healthy 11.5 Month Old Baby

Wordless Wednesday: Opie

Wordless Wednesday

"That Interval Every Woman Loves"

While working on Beethoven's Ninth at rehearsal last night, the Alto section was having a tiny bit of trouble with a spot in the double fugue. Don't worry, you don't have to be a music nerd to read this.
They were having difficulty getting the right note, so the conductor stops us and they go over the section a few times, then she says, "it's not that hard, it's the interval every woman loves."  A major fourth.  For the non music theory nerds out there, a major fourth is the same interval you're accustomed to hearing at a wedding at the "Here Comes the Bride" moment.  That's a major fourth.

I kind of wanted to laugh because I've never been a fan of the traditional Wedding March, and a lot of people I know have walked down the aisle to something else.  Last May, my best friend walked down the aisle to the final movement from Beethoven's Ninth, ironically.  That's "Ode to Joy," for the non-nerds. Another good friend entered to the ever popular Canon in D. I walked down the aisle to a remix of Sarah Brightman's cover of A Whiter Shade Of Pale.

Seriously.  It's awesome. Not quite the Smashing Pumpkins introit I wanted, but good enough for a wedding without live music. I *did* play some Smashing Pumpkins during the reception line though.  I figured, if I had to stand there that long meeting spouse's extended family and friends, I'd "Stand Inside Your Love."  But I wanted something with a little bit of a symphonic edge without going overblown classical.  One of these days I'll sit down with the entire play list from my wedding and give you guys a good laugh.

Did you walk down the aisle to something fantastic or have otherwise unconventional music choices in your wedding?

Ring Around Your Finger

When spouse and I had been married about a year he got a phone call.

No, perhaps this story is best told another way.

When spouse was in high school, he got a class ring. He wore this ring that was always just a touch too big just about everywhere. He developed the habit of slipping it off and on his finger, like a nervous tick. And one day, the fall after he graduated, at a football game about 20 miles from home, he realized he'd lost it. Where? When? He didn't know. He only knew it was gone.

When spouse and I had been married about a year, he got a phone call.

A young man told him "I found your class ring. I called around and talked to your niece, and she gave me your number." Well, our niece was a student at the local high school, from which spouse had graduated, and it seemed reasonable. Heck, her family had just moved and it wasn't unreasonable that it had been lost in their garage and relost in their move. It just made sense. A kid finds a ring, he asks the girl he knows with the same last name, and she tells him whom to call.

But no. He doesn't know her. He was simply calling people with that last name. He doesn't live in this town. He lives in a town 8 miles south of here. He says he found it at a football game.

This seems reasonable. His school was playing spouse's school and he was looking around and found it, right? No. His school was playing a school some 20 miles from here and he was messing around beneath the stands and found it.

Spouse graduated from high school in 1984. It was 2004 when our phone rang. The ring had laid beneath the stands for 20 years at a school which neither party attended for 20 years.

Irony- that was my high school's football field, and for the record, my school whomped BOTH of their schools.

Last spring spouse was working on clearing the fence row at the cemetery one crisp and cool May afternoon. When we got home, he realized he had lost his wedding ring. He and Mongoosine quickly hopped back in the van and drove, 20 miles, back to the cemetery, and spent an hour searching for it in the rain.

Today, at the same cemetery, clearing twigs and branches, guess what was glinting between the dry blades of grass...

Boikido Blocks Winner

I know it's long in coming, silly me, I lost track of the date!

So drumroll please....

The winner of the AMAZING set of Boikido Blocks is .....

SARAH!!!!

Congratulations, Sarah, you have 48 hours to respond to the email I'm sending you, because I really don't want to have to select an alternate.

For everyone else, you can follow Sarah on Twitter of at her Blog. She's an awesome breastfeeding, babywearing, AP mama of two.

Pink Saturday: Planetarium

So other than pink sunny cheeks and a little pink on her shirt, Mongoosine wasn't much more than tickled pink to go to the planetarium over Spring Break. But she did LOVE it.

She got to see scaled models of the planets, learn about telescopes and infrared light waves, she got to learn about stars, the complexities of trying to plan for life on the moon,and have a lot of fun.

Have you been anywhere tremendously fun lately?

For more Pink Saturday, head on over to How Sweet the Sound.

Her favorite thin

Dear Baby in my Arms,

Dear Baby in my arms,
Yes, sweet you, nestled against my chest, nursing with drooping eyes and tired blinks. Sweet you who rests your hand on my cheek, dear baby:
Someday, not too long from now, you'll not only be crawling, but walking and running, jumping and dancing, playing and not so often sleeping in my arms. Someday, not too long from now, you'll be finished with nursing and will prefer your milkies in a cup.
Know that this very second, I want to capture this feeling of you breathing against my skin. The perfect symbiosis that has defined our relationship since first you started growing in my womb.
Dear baby in my arms, I cherish you. I am grateful for you each and every day, and when you are older I will still cherish you, and I will still be grateful each and every day. Even if someday I whisper to another baby in my arms that I love her or him, you are always going to be my only you.
I love you.
Love,
Mommy

You're eating what?

This morning I awoke to a rant.

@Sheepmama, a delightful woman whom I happily follow on twitter made the mistake of shopping casually and not reading the full ingredient list on a breakfast cereal purporting to be healthy. Consequently, when she noticed the list of ingredients she couldn't pronounce, along with the dreaded "High Fructose Corn Syrup," she got a little irritated, and I can't blame her.

Food marketers get away with far too many misleading statements.

She made a few great points about claiming that things are "all natural" and the notion that just because it's natural, it's good.

I have to agree with her. Everything was made from something found in nature. But there comes a point in the chemical processing when one has to step back and say "it ain't natural no more." Because it isn't. Saying "But we used corn to make it," does not mean that it is any less processed or unnatural than plastics, bleaches, solvents, or dioxins. It just means that the base material is one with which people are generally familiar.

Furthermore, corn isn't precisely the most natural thing out there. When one takes into consideration the pesticides frequently used in it's growth as well as the genetic engineering of the plant, it is very hard to argue that corn is itself a natural commodity these days.

In closing, she left us with this delicious sounding recipe for a crock pot cereal. Yum.

3 cups water, 2 1/2 cups quality apple juice, 1/2 cup barley, 1/2 cup steel cut oats, 1/2 cup dried cranberries, 1/2 cup dried apricots,chop (here)

1/4 cup quinoa, 1/4 cup wheat berries, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 cup honey (here)

Put everything except the honey in the rockppt overnight. If desired ad l&d the honey in the morning. Top w toasted sliced almonds. Enjoy! (here)

Somehow I like an ingredient list I can understand.

Do you have any simple alternatives for a healthy/ier breakfast?

Wordless Wednesday: Someone Needs a Haircut

For more Wordless Wednesday, check out http://wordlesswednesday.com





Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Blankie

When I was a kidlet, I had a blankie. It was a yellow thermal waffle knit blankie (the kind Gerber made back in the day which has square corners instead of rounded ones like they do now) with a thin silky yellow binding which my mom had sewn down with baby pink and kelly green thread. It had two rows of zig zag all the way around, and the corners were satin stitched. In one corner, she'd even satin stitched my initials.
It was love.
I took my blankie everywhere. I never slept without it. There are pictures of me hugging my blankie at Great America at 3 and at Disney when I was 4. I took it to overnights at friends' houses. I took it for show and tell in kindergarten where I proudly told the class. "This is my blankie. I like to hug it and I rub the binding between my fingers like this because it's smooth."
I liked the coolness of the binding and the way that the waffle knit left an imprint on my skin so that I could smile and remember cuddling my blankie.
I took my blankie to Girl Scout camp when I was seven. At eight my family had to drive over an hour out of our way on a long car trip because I had forgotten it at my aunt's house. My daddy made a U turn in front of the State Troopers' building, without complaint, the moment we realized it'd been lost, because my parents knew that I NEEDED my blankie. IIn fifth grade my mother replaced the binding, again with green and pink thread.
I took it to a camp focusing on organization and global thinking skills when I was 11. I took blankie to a different camp at 12 and 13, and to St. Louis on our 8th grade trip. I took my blankie on our big trip to England, and in high school I still slept, every night, blankie wrapped around my neck, or rolled beneath it.and with the ends shawl-like over my shoulders. I cried into my blankie when my friends were mean to me, I hugged it when excited. I'd drape it over my eyes when I had a headache, and the surest way to trick me into cleaning my room was to hide it, because no lurking corner was safe if I didn't know where blankie was.
Blankie and I were inseparable.
Since then I have found it strange that my daughter is a blankie-less child. Sure, she has blankets. She even has ones with soft and silky binding carefully sewn by her mother. She has small quilts I've made her, and blankets from her grandmother, crocheted blankets, woven blankets, blankets galore, but nonetheless, she never had a blankie.
Now, my son, some (almost) 11 months old, seems to be showing no amount of interest in a blankie. Most nights he doesn't even sleep with one.
I feel like she missed something. I feel like he's missing something.
It isn't that I want to encourage dependence on a blankie or an unhealthy attachment to a single object, but I can't imagine not having that one constant special something, the presence of which is so soothing.
His first birthday is coming up soon, so I bet you can guess what I'm planning to give him, right?

Misguided Assumptions

Last week we went on a Road Trip.

We traveled three hours east, spent three hours there, then traveled 6 hours south west of there, hung out in the van for another 3 hours, and then finally checked into the motel. The trip back mirrored the trip there, and all of this I knew ahead of time. I knew these would be 12 hours of in the van days. I knew this was going to be the case, and so I planned accordingly, or so I thought.

It turns out I made some misguided assumptions in packing.

I assumed that the prolonged stretches in the car would probably lead to more "fluffy fail" than we run into at home. Knowing I wouldn't have easy access to a washer, as I mentioned before, I decided to bring 3 GroBaby shells and some biosoakers. Have I mentioned the biosoakers work pretty well, but like disposables, when they fail, they fail big? Quick rundown- with cloth diapers, when they fail, it's a slow creeping fail of moisture wicking out, due to oversaturation and then slowly transferring to the clothes, and such fluffy fail is often discovered by picking a baby up and thinking, "hm, you feel ever so slightly moister than I expected." With disposables and hybrid systems, failure is sudden and complete. When absorbing powers run out, so does the pee.

So, knowing there might be unusually long stretches between diaper changes, and knowing how utterly and completely biosoakers fail when they do fail (I'm not saying they're prone to failure, they actually hold quite a bit,) I decided that we'd likely be going through at least two outfits a day, and pjs at night.

Calculating at a rate of 2 day outfits and one sleeper, leaving Monday morning at 5am and returning late Friday night, this would work out to 13 total changes of clothing.

What I neglected to mention is I'm one of those practical and lazy moms. If Snapdragon is dry and clean at bedtime, has a fresh fluffy on, and is comfortable, I am not going to make him change into a sleeper. He can sleep in his overalls if he's dry and happy. It doesn't bother me.

So we drive all day Monday without fluffy incident, and he sleeps in that outfit. In the morning, he strips off his diaper and whizzes on the floor. Well, he also whizzed on that outfit, so he got to change. The outfit into which he changed stayed dry until what turned out to be an over vigorous sippy cup shaking incident, and I only ended up changing his pantalones, because we were in a hurry to get to somewhere.

The next day there are no incidents and he goes all day, and all of the following night in the same outfit. Did I say all day and night? Yeah. Most of the next morning too, at which point he was playing in the bathroom while I took a bath (okay, we were playing "splashy splashy" and peekaboo...) and he got wet, so it was time to change again. By this point it is Thursday, and we're on outfit 3.5 since leaving the house on Monday morning, and it occurs to me, I way overpacked.

The rest of the trip progressed with the same pattern, and I now have a weeks worth of outfits put together and ready to go in his little backpack. I suppose I can save myself the trouble of going to the dresser for a while.

Do you overpack, or is it just me?

Pink Saturday: UFO

I love to quilt. my love of quilting is deep, wide, and abiding. This is one corner of a quilt I had begun to put together for my daughter about a year and a half ago. I was trying to decide which prints belonged together in each block, and how those blocks would relate to the rest of the colors.

I would lay the would be blocks out on my bed and spend hours arranging and rearranging them. My goal was to finish before the baby was born because I knew I wouldn't have much time to quilt with a new baby. Of course, when I'm pregnant I'm scatter brained and easily tired, so the quilt never got much farther than this before Snapdragon was born.

Well, it turns out I was right. I had no time to quilt with a new baby.

The problem is the ironing. I could, for a while, put Snapdragon in his sling and spend some quality time with my sewing machine. I could even get some cutting in, but alas, an iron is just too dangerous to be using while babywearing, and if you've ever pieced a quilt block, you know that they're pretty high-maintenance in terms of ironing.

Alas, this UFO is languishing between the pages of an old IKEA catalog (see, thy are good for something) and mocking me ever so quietly whenever I walk past.

Do you have any UFOs taunting you? Better still, any advice on how to create the time to get this project done?

Dangerous Smiles

The danger of smiles is that they're contageous. Especially those sweet slobbery baby smiles, complete with giggles.
Baby giggles have a nearly 100% infection rate. Exposure means certain contraction.

It seems there shoyldnt be a problem, rught?
But sometimes you need to not smile.
Sometimes that sweet drooling baby has just decided he's not all that thirsty anymore, but nonetheless grabs mama's nipple and instead of latching on, very deliberately bites, then looks up, smiles. And giggles.
This is when I try to make a sad face, say no, and remove baby from the breast.
But that smile, it's so contageous... And those giggles- they're so infectous...
How do I avoid sending the wrong message?

Dealing with babies who bite when breastfeeding is hard.



Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Singularly Uncomfortable

It finally happened. I had a genuinely "uncomfortable nursing my baby in public moment."

It was bound to happen, so I'm not too terribly surprised, although I was starting to think that I was immune to such feelings, being all super-human and all that.

I was sitting in a fast food restaurant while Spouse was in a meeting. I wasn't really hungry but I needed somewhere to be, so I went in and ordered a drink and found a spot in the corner to nurse Snapdragon, since he hadn't nursed in nearly five hours and the engorgement was really getting to me. However, finding the quiet corner meant walking through the whole entire restaurant, whereupon I noticed that I was the only female in the building.

I don't know why that should matter, but for some reason, I felt awkward. I'm sure part of my awkwardness was that I was already off balance with the whole having to find somewhere to be thing. When my purpose isn't to be at place X, but rather to not be at place Y, I always feel awkward at place X, like they know I am only there because I have nowhere else to be. Weird? Yes. But I never claimed to be normal.

I know that was a contributing factor, but I'm also certain that had there been women, or people with children in the restaurant, I would have felt more comfortable. Of course, it was an industrial area, which rather limited the liklihood of running into other moms out with their kidlets.

All this said, no one looked at me funny. There was no oogling, no snickering, nothing that *should* have made me feel uncomfortable, but being so very in the minority that i was a singularity made me uncomfortable.

Have you ever had moments of trepidation?

Thou Shalt Not Covet...

Covety covet covet covet covet.

That's how I'm feeling. Right this second. I'm feeling COVETY.

What do I covet? A Brooke Van Gory diaper bag.

Have you even seen a Virgin Mary Diaper bag before?

I've had the covety bug for her work for a while now, but in late February Snapdragon and I were invited to her son's first birthday party, where they played and I got to meet Brooke IRL, who is, by the way, a billion times cooler in person, which kinda floored me, because she's awfully awesome online.

Anyhow, while I was there, I was N-O-S-Y, and being such, I had to check out her work first hand because I had already long coveted it. (Seriously, what's not to covet? She customizes everything, goes out of her way to source her materials from US manufacturers, not just US suppliers, and is to the point that only one little piece comes from elsewhere, and it's Brazil, if I remember correctly.)

Now, fully expecting to be a little disappointed, I started examining things like seams and tiny details. Much to my dismay, I wasn't disappointed. I was impressed. Particularly by the sturdiness and attention to detail. Brooke's work is fabulous, and I'm a bit of a workmanship snob.

I'd also read that she made the best diaper bag for cloth diapers, and after seeing them, and handling them, in person, I can definitely see that. They're sized just right for your cloth diapers without being overwhelmingly bulky or cumbersome, and she has the most ingenious wet bag design ever. I do believe they're the best diaper bag for cloth diapers. Which brings me back to COVET!

So now I'm all covety. More covety.

I spend a ridiculous amount of time looking at fabric trying to decide what I'd want on the front panel if I can ever buy one. I pester Brooke with my silly ideas "wouldn't this be an interesting combination of fabrics?" She's probably sick of me! But how awesome is it that you can get a diaper bag that is EXACTLY what you want instead of the one that is the least not you, or the most you-ish of the currently popular designs?

Even Rocky the Zombie bags! How freaking awesome is that!?

COVET!

Anyhow, why am I telling you I feel so covety? Because misery loves company.

Go. Look. Covet.

Better yet, don't covet, buy one, then send me pictures of it so I can oogle at them.

But seriously, I'm saying this because I normally get over my coveting pretty easily when I see something else that's nifty, but I haven't come across anything nearly this nifty in terms of diaper bags, not even the one with the drawer thing. So I sit and covet, and covet... and covet.

Disclaimer- I was not at all compensated for telling you how covety I'm feeling. If I was, I wouldn't be feeling so damn covety, now would I?

Too Much Time Tweeting

Hello, my name is @fentonslee, and I have a problem.
That's the first step, right? Admitting you have a problem?

Let me explain.
This week, Spouse, Snapdragon, and I are on a business trip which involves a few days in St. Louis. Well, it occurred to me that I have a RL friend who lives in the area, and one good "tweep" in the area too. So what do I do?. I start the FB and Twitter hounding so they'll entertain me while I'm here.

It gets worse.

First, I go to my RL friend's house. We're having a lovely time, a lovely TALKING TO ADULTS TIME, which is priceless, but in the back of my head I'm thinking "why did I leave my phone in my diaper bag? I can't tweet without my phone." I know, you're shaking your head in disdain, but it's not just me. At some point she picks up her laptop and quickly updates her Facebook status and then says something about Twitter. Apparently she's addicted too, so I grab my phone and now I'm following her.

Then I was meeting one of my tweeps, @HeathensHearth, for the first time in real life. You might know her from her Etsy shop.

First, let me say, she's awesome. But that's not the point.

We sit down to eat, and Snapdragon is wearing @crossbones_inc handmedowns, and then I mention how the day before he was wearing @crossbones_inc handmedowns that were actually @RockerByeBaby's kids' before that.

Then she notices my diaper bag. "Is that a @HautTotes bag? I like the bandanna fabric." "Yes, it is, but I'm hoping to soon be able to get a @brookevangory bag, because they have pockets and zip closed and have longer straps."

So then I pull some felt food out of said bag for Snapdragon, "this is @MomaLoveBug bacon."

And so it went. The @HygeiaKate expressed milk bottle holding his cheerios... the @GroBaby diapers.

It's like when things grew a ".com" only now everything has an @.

Yes, my name is @fentonslee, and I have a problem...

not that I'm looking to solve it.

Do you have a problem?

Warning Update

So it seems that despite my loudest warnings, my own son is deciding not to heed them, and is eating off the motel floor.

Wordless Wednesday: Music Tames the Savage Baby

Wordless Wednesday

Solutions

So, with respect to Natural Consequences, what do you think, good solution?
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Hotel Warning

Do not-

DO NOT EAT OFF THE FLOOR OF A HOTEL

I suppose this is technically a motel, but that just doesn't roll off the fingers quite so nicely.

Why, you might wonder?

Well aside from the obvious fact that they clean the carpets with noxious smelling grossness and gods alone know what was on the shoes of the last occupant... you don't know what happened on this floor.

For instance, this morning.

Snapdragon woke up all cute and cuddly, nursed and made happy faces at spouse and I.

Spouse was checking his email and I set Snapdragon down on the floor so I could go to the bathroom and then get dressed.

So what does Snapdragon do? He pulls off his diaper in one swift movement, crawls to the middle of the room, and proceeds to pee, and then crawl on.

Normally, he wakes up in a es baby snapping fitted with a nifty nappy snapping cover, but for this trip I decided to see how 3 GroBaby Shells and a set of biosoakers would do, and I haven't converted my shells to snap YET.

On the plus side, his diaper was still dry and I could put it back on him.

On the minus side- Snapdragon is apparently auditioning for a role as an unhousebroken puppy.

Do your wee ones wee on the floor?

I considered adding a picture, but wasn't sure which to add, the naked escape artist baby bottom, the wet spot on the carpet, or the diaper from which he escaped...

Natural Consequences

As any parent veteran parent will tell you, you can't protect your children from every possible danger, and though you try to redirect, minimize risks, and babyproof, not everything can be made 100% safe.

Even in an empty room with no electric outlets, there will still be the floor for baby to hit her head on when she falls, or perhaps some texture on the walls to scratch himself on when he tries to explore them.

In the end, babies are a curious lot, and that is as it should be.

They put things in their mouths. The touch things. They grab things, they pull things. They crawl out the door while you're turned away, and they open cupboard doors and get into drawers.

One of the advantages of traveling and staying in hotels is that they have very minimal clutter. This is a great relief to me, because it makes it easy to nearly childproof the room upon arrival.

I can walk into the room, put the garbage cans up on the counters and dressers, and barring a cord-tastrophe, the room is pretty much fine for an infant. (I'm not going to talk about the overpowering and disgusting cleaning chemicals, because that's an entirely different subject for a different morning.)

HOWEVER, I can't make any environment 100% baby proof, and my curious little boy is learning how to. How to open doors, how to crawl fast. How to take his diaper off. How to find mama. How to UN-baby-proof. How to open drawers.

This particular hotel room has long modern metal bar pulls on the drawers. They are particularly easy and tempting for a baby of a full 11 months. Upon realizing all he had to do was grab and apply the slightest pulling pressure and the drawer would open, he decided he'd found his favorite new toy. He smiled and laughed and clapped as he pushed the drawer closed and opened it again, learning all he could about the mechanics of drawers.

Seeing the logical outcome, I picked him up, moved him across the room and tried to distract him, and for a moment, he was distracted, but soon I heard the tell tale sound of the drawer opening again and a squeal of delight. So I picked him up and put him by different toys, but even faster he found his way back to that drawer. I tried propping a suitcase in front of it, but alas, he still managed to open it, and it was hard to walk through the room, having to step over he suitcase.

Well, as I'm sure you saw coming, he decided that the pll wasn't as much fun as playing with the drawer itself, and when he leaned in to close it, fingers still wrapped over the top edge, he learned that some toys bite, perfecting How-to make mom freak out. In my head, not out loud.

Opening the drawer and picking up my screaming baby, checking to see if his fingers were broken (only one bleeding) I was secretly grateful that he had figured out that was dangerous, that it hurt, and that he hadn't been hurt worse.

This morning, when setting him down again, I placed the larger suitcase in front of the drawer.

Well, he managed to displace it too, and again was at it with the drawer, very carefully opening and closing it with the pull. I thought, "huh, it seems he can learn a lesson the hard way." I thought too soon, as moments later he had shut a lonely finger in the drawer again, and was screaming for me to help him get loose from the mean biting drawer.

Eventually, he will learn to be more careful with drawers, but I'm afraid it's going to be a hard learning process, for him, and for me.

Have your children been learning anything the hard way lately? Please tell me I'm not the only one.

11 Months

I'm thankful that early on I learned that it is okay to breastfeed in public. In the last eleven months, we've nursed a lot of places.
In a church
At a museum
At the park
At the library
In a school
At our insurance agent's office
In parkinglots
At the archery club
In the grocery store
At the gym
At the clinic
At the shoe store
At a wedding
At a funeral
In a Planetarium
In a movie theatre
In a coffee house
At the fireworks
At a Girl Scout Meeting
At the mini-golf course
In the arcade
At the mall
At Ikea
At town halln city hall, and villaige hall
In the cemetery
In the hotel lobby
At the pool
At the zoo

If we've been there, we've likely nursed there.
Who knows where we'll nurse next?
Maybe one of these days I'll write the nursing in public A to Z book. What do you think? Nurse anywhere interesting lately?
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Felt Eggs Revisited.

My mother liked the idea of felt eggs so much, she did me one better. She decided to blow up the pattern, well, have me blow up the pattern, and then she cut them out with pinking shears so the seams could stay out and still be cute, thus avoiding the connundrum of how to close the seams. Then she took the scraps of felt and decorated them. I admit, I'm a little jealous of how fun hers turned out.
In way of felt Easter egg tutorial, she used a zig zag or straight stitch in contrasting thread colors to secure the decoration scraps to the felt egg shape before stitching the two egg cutouts together, leaving a small opening for stuffing which was then closed with her machine.
My mom is brilliant.
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Pink Saturday: Easter Eggs

This year, since Snapdragon is tiny, we I decided to make felt easter eggs, so I fouind this great felt eggs tutorial and made a handfull. My mom had me blow up the pattern for her & she made a few big ones which she decorated too. I think it's going to be a lovely firs easter egg hint for Snapdragon. Now to go find some punk goodies for my tween!

Check out Beverly's Pink Saturday for more pink and Eastery goodness.

Crawltastrophe

Well, we're not to full out crawltastrophe just yet.... but we're getting there.

Today Snapdragon has gotten into and "played with" the following:

The diaper pail - lid and dirty diaper

The garbage can - used tissues and a cloth diapers instruction sheet

My shirt - he now seems to think he can crawl over to me when I'm down low and "open the fridge door."

My loom - the shuttle and wool yarn

Mongoosine's odds and ends box - an ATC and a magnifying glass

My mother in law's jewelry box - a button, three pair of earrings and a pin, all heart shaped (I hope that was all)

Diaper bag - my day planner

Bathroom organizer - multiple entire drawers and all of their contents. Yes, the drawers were on the floor- i think it was mostly sample sized creams. I had thought they were empty.

Laundry - Reds and Whites. This is why my whites might look a bit pink.

Laundry room - clothespin & a bottle of bleach. Why do we even HAVE a bottle of bleach?! No, he didn't get it open, but nonetheless, eek!

So, why didn't you tell me that boys get into everything?

Perhaps it's just decade induced forgetfulness, but I feel like Mongoosine didn't get into nearly so much at this age.

What did your kids get into today?

Blog Events!

There have been a good many blog events and memes which have gotten me excited and continue to get me excited.  These are some of them.

 

Hungry Hungry Hippos

No mushes for Snapdragon. No mushes, he says. 10 month old babies don't eat mushes, silly mommy, and certainly not 10.75 month old babies.

He likes carrots, and green beans, Cheerios and cheese. He likes spears of zucchini and bits of banana, but what else should he be eating?

He's my hungry hungry hippo, but he needs some variety in his diet! What finger foods are you giving your kidlets?