I don’t do it all. I went back to work when Baby #1 was 10 weeks old. I expect to have to do the same this time around. Both times, I went (or am planning to go) back 3 days a week, which is almost more confusing than going back 5, since it leads to greater inconsistency.
The fact is, the level of cleanliness just isn’t where we hope it would be, but we’re pretty accepting of the limitations—my daughter can whip through a room and create a shambles in no time, and that’s perfectly age-appropriate. Clean but not necessarily neat is the best to hope for a lot of the time.
The part of being a WOHM that I find hardest is the guilt and sadness. I would much rather be at home with my kid(s) 90% of the time…there is that 10% where I am happy to be getting out and doing some adult stuff. But I know my work has suffered as a result, and mostly I don’t care, but it does create more stress. I know I can’t be a perfect wife or a perfect mom or a perfect employee—but I hate the days when it doesn’t feel like I am doing any of the 3 even passably well.
Fessie your twins are sooooo cute! I remember that we were both due in February - looks like we ended up being only 2.5 weeks apart.
JohnT, we do the same thing!
How are all of you doing the beginning-solid-food thing? I waited until my daughter was a week or so past five months before I started because she wasn’t showing all the signs until then. So, she’s only been on solids for about a month or so and is only having one solid meal per day at this point (3-5 tablespoons of cereal, thickened with breastmilk and about a jars’ worth of veggies - squash, carrots, sweet potatoes or peas). All the books talk a lot about the first meal and what foods to start with but they don’t talk much about when to increase to more than one meal. Some books seem to assume that by six months my baby is already eating all kinds of baby food (mixed meals, meat, etc.) and things like crackers and toast. I know I have to go somewhat slow in introducing new stuff so that I can check for allergies, but maybe I’m going too slow? What did the rest of you do?
I gave them random food when we would eat. A taste of this and that and if they liked it I gave them more. I followed their lead. Kids are pretty good at saying “I’m hungry” As time passed they just naturally ate more and drank less…
Yeah, I have long hair, pulled back in a pony tail. You can only see my back. That other long-haired woman is the SDMB’s own nyctea scandiaca, and don’t I wish I looked like that! 
fessie, from those pix of the twins, it’s hard to believe they’d give you even a minutes’ trouble! 
For one thing, my house is not always “company-ready”, for another thing, I don’t work outside the home, and for a third thing, I would direct you graciously, as I did fessie to flylady.net. Right now, my living room looks like a tornado hit it, but I know, thanks to my flylady routines, that in 15-minutes flat, I can have my living room and dining room both in good enough shape that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to have anyone knock on the door! I know I sound like a paid advertisement or something, but her system has truly done wonders for me.
I was at the thrift store with my twins the other day and this lady carrying her toddler asked how old they were. “Almost seven months”, I replied, “How old is your daughter?” “Fifteen months, but she’s been walking since 10”. Grrrr. Next time I’m ready: “Oh, my kids skipped walking entirely. They’re into levitating.”
Now, see, that’s my instinct. Only we eat too much crap, I’d have to make real dinner instead of relying on frozen pizza. But it makes a lot of sense to just do things that way. You mentioned movies - sounds like you don’t think all forms of entertainment are evil? I let mine watch a little PBS or Noggin here & there.
mcms_cricket - I’m enjoying the book LordVor recommended in an earlier thread - it just came today. Whole Foods for Babies and Toddlers by the le leche league (they didn’t capitalize it so I won’t either). Seems to be full of very explicit instructions that are easy to follow, plus plenty of opinions to add to my confusion. 
Maybe WE’LL end up eating like THEY should 
.
norinew I already bookmarked flylady, that looks like a hoot & also useful, thanks! Today I went to the Dr. to get some help for my PPD (which I mentioned in a thread last week). I’m glad to be addressing that problem!
lorene guilt & sadness are the problem with being a SAHM too! As adorable as their little faces are, I just can’t be with them every minute of the day & my energy never seems equal to their needs (if I even knew what every need was!). My daughter can’t be bothered to roll over, of course I’m not stressing about that at all. :rolleyes:
Oh yeah, and one more beef about WTEWYE - they keep talking about raisins. Your baby should be able to see a raisin, pick up a raisin — who’s giving babies raisins? I thought those were choking hazards! Get off the raisin already.
Yikes, how did I miss this thread for 3 whole days?
Twiddlette is just 2 and her baby brother or sister is coming in February. Seeing everyone’s comments on how to entertain 2 is helpful… and reassuring that we will make it through it. I feel terrible about the blow her little ego is going to take when the new baby is born.
What steams me about the What to expect series is how they are, lets face it, practically the bible of parenting books, and yet they’ve got terrible breastfeeding advice. You’d think any book that guilts you about eating one cookie a month would be all over the extended breastfeeding. I read the Toddler Years one every now and again, but I don’t find it resonates.
We did a combo of co-sleeping and CIO, and the CIO was hard but worth it. For anyone who is thinking about this route I recoomend Weisbluth’s Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child over Ferber. He’s where I learned to put the kiddo down for a nap about 45 min to 1.5 hours after she woke…someone else mentioned this up-thread and it really works.
norinew My dd has a speech delay too, she tests at about 6 months behind in her expressive language; her receptive and general development are fine though. Do you have any suggestions for dealing with her frustration? She just looses it sometimes when I don’t understand her and that drives me right to the edge with her. Lately I’ve been telling her frankly “I don’t understand you, can we vind another way?” and that seems to help a bit. Oh and I’m a half-hearted flybaby…I don’t live and die for my kitchen sink but I do find a routine is helpful for keeping the hous under control.
I wish I could share some pics with you all, but I just don’t feel comfortble doing it. However I’m really enjoying looking at everyone else’s darlings!
Twiddle
Eh, Sophie was a bit (maybe more than a bit) delayed in her speaking, but it was no big deal. We attributed it to a number of things:
- Daddy was speech delayed… quite a bit, actually. I didn’t start speaking until I was three, and when I did it was in some language that only my brother could understand. I got over it during my fourth year and haven’t looked back.
- Indulgent parents who understand what she’s trying to say even if we don’t understand what she’s exactly saying.
- Lack of peer pressure/examples. Since Sophie doesn’t go to any day-school, she doesn’t deal a lot with kids her own age and therefore hasn’t really had to improve her speaking ability.
- Sophie was never a “word” speaker… she always wanted to speak complete sentences or paragraphs. No “TV?” for her (with pointing fingers), it was always “mumble, mumble, mumble, TV?”
She also went through a stage where she wouldn’t say names, especially hers. Ask her what her name was and she’d thump her chest proudly and say “Baby!” Insist that her name was actually “Sophie” and she would get upset. She also wouldn’t say her animal names, rather referring to them by the sounds they make. She’s over that now, but I have to tell you - her asking if we were going to have chicken for dinner was the most precious thing: “We mumble, mumble, eat, mumble, mumble, the bawk-bawk-bawk?” Absolutely adorable.
Now, of course, it’s a different story. She still mumbles a bit, but her ability to make herself understood has grown tremendously in the past couple of months. We are now subjected to a bunch of “why not’s” as in
“Sophie, I don’t want you feeding the dogs!”
“Why not?”
Which isn’t as irritating as the following (new for August!):
“Sophie, why aren’t you eating your food?” (Or somesuch issue)
“I don’t like it, Dada.”
“Why don’t you like it?”
“Because I said so!”
My #1 rule of parenting: They’ll be just fine. And, surprisingly enough, that’s been the case.
And when she was frustrated about us not understanding her, we’d tell her:
“Honey, we just don’t understand you. Why don’t you try to speak a little slower, sort… of… like… this?”
(We never talked to her as a baby, which might not have helped this issue. FWIW.)
twiddle, how old is your girl? I got my youngest into speech therapy quickly, and they started teaching her rudimentary sign language. She picked right up on it, even to the point of making up her own signs for things she hadn’t learned yet! Now, she almost never uses her signs (although she’ll still occasionally sign “more” for some reason). I’m blessed in that, she’s the kind of thinker that when we can’t understand her, she’s very good at finding other ways of showing us. Other speech-delayed children (especially autistic children, but I don’t know why this wouldn’t work for any little kid) respond well to a picture-board; a laminated board with pictures of every-day objects they can point to.
I don’t live and die by mine, either; in fact, there are (gasp) dirty dishes in it right now! But the routines and especially the decluttering (and the idea that I’m never behind) have been a blessing to me!
JohnT’s story about Sophie and the chickens reminded me of an adorable experience with my little one a couple of weeks ago (we are allowed to relate too-cute-for-words stories here, aren’t we? :D). Because Mariah is speech-delayed, I often ask her direct questions to encourage her to talk to me. So, a couple of weeks ago, I said “Mommy has yummy chickens in the Crock Pot. What do chickens say?” Her: “Nothing” Me: “Yes, honey, chickens say ‘cluck-cluck-cluck’” Her: “Not the ones in the Crock Pot”. Cracked me right up!
Er, that should be “We never talked to her like a baby, which…” :o
To make it perfectly clear, lest our good name be dragged through the mud: we never used baby-talk.
I don’t. Not all of it. My Mom helps a LOT (I live with her) I don’t know what I’d do without her. Especially now as my school schedule (which is nigh impossible to change) has class starting at 8am and drop off for the Dayhome starts at 7:30. To be at school on time, I have to catch the bus at 7:15 at the latest heading for the campus and that’s without having any deviations (you can see the conflict here). We share the chores fairly evenly though.
Actually the time I’ve spent having to be up early with Caterpie… as soon as he went to sleep I dropped off again and I didn’t get moving until closer to 10, except when he got hungry or needed a change. I wake up to go to school about the time he wakes up for his morning milk, then drifts off for another hour or so. He doesn’t have breakfast until ~8am then plays a few hours before he naps again. He’s a pretty easy baby, but I just know he’s gonna be a little imp. Even now if he’s heading somewhere he’s not supposed to he stops, look back at you and gives you this grin that just says ‘I melt your heart and I know it, so I can get away with this.’ then continues on. Er the point of that rambling is that my internal clock will take a bit to set. I’ve had sleep problems since my tween years and though I can sometimes get a pretty decent pattern going often it only lasts so long before it resets itself again and I have to start all over.
As for food, he showed interest around 5 months so we started with rice cereal and added in veggies, then some fruits then did oatmeal and since I can’t find wheat cereal we’ve been giving him some of the Mixed (which is oats, rice and wheat). Raisins? Nope, we got some cheerios and crackers. He loves them and is getting quite adept at picking them up. Just follow their cues, mix up the meals a bit once you know what they aren’t allergic to and they’ll be fine.
I haven’t really bothered with reading books lately, though I do get a couple of Stage Development emails every month with tips on stuff from a couple parenting websites. He seems to be doing pretty good.
I just have to share! He started standing up the past couple of days! Holding on to the couch or his crib railings, but standing up. That and crawling properly, before today he’s just been doing the army crawl and he can still move faster that way than crawling but he seems to be getting the hang of it.
The whole raisin thing made for endless jokes in our house. The phrase they use is “pay attention to a raisin.” You better pay attention to your raisin, honey, he’s getting lonely over there. Ha!
Anyway, I guess I should join in this thread…I’ve been reading since day one, but don’t really have much to add. My son is 13 months old and I can’t seem to remember anything from the past year. It’s all a big blur. Luckily, sleeping wasn’t an issue for us - he’s been a huge fan of his crib from the beginning (well, from about 2 months). We take him in there, lay him down, hand him his blankie and he’s snoring (and yes, he snores…made for some very worrisome nights at the beginning).
The feeding thing I found very confusing, also. Nobody tells you what to do specifically. I couldn’t manage breastfeeding, so my baby was formula fed after a couple months. It’s very specific - bottles are measured out precisely and he ate in pretty regular intervals. When we got past introducing foods to him one at a time, I had no idea how to proceed. I just gave him his regular bottle, then a bit of whatever was on hand - baby food from a jar, soup, mushed up potatoes. Now he gets a sippy of milk, which he drinks along with his meal and then carries around with him afterward, and he eats pretty much whatever we’re having. Last night he had chicken and rice - our meal - plus cooked carrots. He usually has fruit for breakfast and some sort of pasta with vegetables for lunch.
The hardest thing I find at this point is figuring out green vegetables he can eat. Cooked spinach is fine, but things like broccoli seem too difficult for him.
C3, when my oldest was about 14 months old, we invested in a mini food processor. This allowed us to feed her whatever we were having for dinner. We would dump some meat, some veggies, some rice or potatoes, and process it all together. If it was too dry this way, we would add a little broth of some sort. We bought the processor at a flea market for $5.00, and, 16 years later, we’re still using it!
Yeah, I need to get one of those. We just (three months ago) sold everything we owned and moved to another country, so we’re slowly building our household again. I’ll need a food processor soon to make Christmas cookies, anyway so I should probably make the investment sooner rather than later.
I’m glad you clarified this; I was wondering how you managed and if you were mimes!
Can anyone tell me the difference in a girl’s size 4T and a regular 4?
Isn’t the T supposed to mean toddler?
ie 4 Toddler instad of 4 regular girl’s