parenting101

obviously the ideal to loving parents at home is best,
but i tend to think separation is better than fighting all the time.
now i'm a single parent and i try not to slag off the boys father. (i must admit i don't expect the same courtesy (though he hasn't as far as i know)

I can see how hearing about how half of you in bad would be damaging.but if the two parents are able to be civil, and even get along what's the problem? could it not even be superior because you get undivided parental attention?

I guess discuss.

So the boy(4) on what i think was last tuesday slipped as we where getting off the bus and his mouth was bleeding from somewhere. We showed the war wound to the childminder and i left. he's been complaining of a sore mouth for a few days. I looked last night and there is something there.it doesn't look super inflamed just like dead hanging on bit. i put tea tree obn it last night and will continue to do so as he allows. I guess I'll call the dentist on monday but is there something else I should be doing?

So, one of our neighbours -- I can't tell which one, thanks to a gated/fenced cul-de-sac behind which the dog (and presumably its owners) live -- has a dog that barks, loudly, every morning at about 6:30am, waking up our toddler every day without fail.

This infuriates me, because before this, he slept until about 8am every day. The dog barking started a couple months ago, before the DST switch. (I dunno if it's a newly acquired dog, or if they started a newspaper subscription, or what.) The barking's stayed consistent with the clock -- meaning, dog barked at 6:30 standard time, and still 6:30 daylight saving time. I assume it's not worth it to call the cops if I can't even tell them which neighbour it is. :\

What are some good ways to help our son sleep through the noise? This is seriously screwing with the entire family's sleep; my husband's and my circadian rhythms don't let us go to sleep early enough to get a full night's sleep in before 6:30 (even if we try to go to bed at, say, 10, we just can't fall asleep; it sucks!), and the toddler won't take more than one nap at best anyway.

We're already doing white noise (ocean waves and large box fan). Soundproofing the window better won't help, because soon it'll be summer and we'll have to have the windows open to cool the nursery; we, like the vast majority of houses in the region, don't have A/C (and installing it would run $4-5k! yikes!).

Sooo... what else can we do? Anything?

Thanks very much for any ideas!

My 11 month old (Born May 12) has a super sensitive gag reflex, she gags on her fingers, teethers, pretty much everything that goes into her mouth that isn't a sippy cup, boob, or medela calma bottle (she even gags on other bottles) so solids have been pretty challenging, she likes dry cereals and freeze-dried fruits anything that dissolves in her mouth is fine, and she like her pureed foods but I end up having to thin them out with either milk or water otherwise she gags on them. She really likes her solids and the gagging doesn't really seem to bother her but at least once a day it leads to her rather forcefully vomiting all over herself her high chair or myself/her father/her sisters/the babysitter.

She's still on about 80% breastmilk diet and I work 10 hour days 3 days a week, she wont take much milk from the sitter and prefers to tank up when I'm home which is fine really but originally I'd wanted to stop pumping at 12 months because dear god it's a pain, of course I'd also anticipated having an easier time getting her to eat food.

We do offer high calorie solids (she loves her yogurt) as well as a lot of pureed fruits and veggies and like I said she loves her dry cereal so I'm not worried about her nutritionally more just wondering if she's ever going to grow out of this hypersensitve gag reflex or if this is something I should bring up with the pediatrician at her 12 month visit.

Apart from cereal and crackers she's not eating any real "people" (non-pureed) food because she'll choke on them very violently, which is very different from my last kid who followed a more baby-lead approach to weaning and was eating table foods from the start.

Any advice is welcome. Thanks.

Breastfeeding has been very easy for me for the most part so why am I suddenly experiencing terrible nipple pain like I've never felt before??? My daughter is 18 months old and nurses 3-4 times a day. We have only been nursing from the right breast for about 3 months (that sounds weird, I know... She has always preferred it and her latch was always better and the right side has always been more productive) And I've never had any significant pain problems other than nipple confusion in the very beginning when she was newborn. I'm pretty sure I've ruled out the most likely suspects.

-she has no new teeth and has had all her current teeth for at least 8-10 months
-her latch is good- no teeth marks or creases.
-no apparent signs of thrush or other infection
-I'm 90% sure I'm not pregnant, though I suppose it's a possibility. But my nipples don't hurt otherwise.
-I did try getting her to latch onto the left side again but it just felt weird and she popped off after a minute because I don't think she was getting anything.
-The pain doesn't seem to be correlating with my period. It's been pretty constant for the last month.

I so did not want to do any mother-led weaning with her but I am not currently happy with breastfeeding. I get through nursing sessions by counting to distract from the pain and rewarding myself if I can make it to a certain number without unlatching her.

So. What do you say? Why am I suddenly having pain in my nipple while nursing? Has anyone else experienced this? I thought I was a pro but I was quite mistaken apparently. What can I do? I'm considering weaning right now but I really wanted to let her self-wean

hi, i have a 3.5 year old that i need to give some background on. he was born prematurely so every fall/winter, we were very careful that he not get sick since he had issues from the prematurity til about last winter. so from almost oct to march, we hardly went out. at all. it was just him and me at home. even this winter with his baby brother, we stayed home for awhile since this flu season was pretty bad and his brother was very young. he got RSV, bronchitis, and then it turned into pneumonia while his baby brother got RSV in november which was very severe, and i stopped going out pretty much after that. plus it's hard when the baby naps all the time to go out since baby does not sleep when we're out. they both needed nebulizers, steriods, etc.

around late feb., mason (my 3.5 old) started not wanting to go out or doing anything. he was fine with playing outside in the snow or playing at home but other than that, he didn't want to go out if i needed to go grocery shopping or target or whatever. lately, it's moved on to not wanting to play with other kids if we're at the playground. if other kids come onto the playset that he's on, he goes uh oh and runs away to me and doesn't want anything to do with that playset til there is no kid there. or we'll go to another playset where nobody is. he doesn't want people or kids to come over to our house to play for playdates. when we went to a playdate at someone else's house, he didn't play at all and stood next to me, telling me that he wanted to go home for the hour that we were there. constantly. i'm afraid to invite anyone over because he tells me that he'll run away or yell at them and i don't want to offend anyone or have them hate him!

my doctor has told me that i need to either take him out to more social outings with children like storytime at the library or the other option is to go to the child psychologist. i took him to storytime and he tells me he doesn't want to be there the whole time although he will listen to the stories. but he will not engage with the children there. the last time a child interacted with him, she looked at him and made a scary face at him and then stuck to me like glue after she did that. thanks little girl.

otherwise, he acts happy and fine with me and his brother. he has a grandma that he loves to hang out with but no close friends or cousins that he can play with on a regular basis.

so i guess my question is, did any of your kids do this? did they grow out of it? i'm going to try to find more child oriented activities for him to do but what else can i do?

oh, and we have him going to preschool in oct for 2 days a week, 3 hours each time but he's saying that he doesn't want to go and will run away from there. and he doesn't want to have fun there =T

not sure how to tag this!( brothers!Collapse )

I haven't posted on my LJ in a very long time but wanted to just get some personal stories from here about a recent concern. I have put a call in to our PCP but wanted to just ask Dr. LJ too. My 5 year old has been asking me for about 2 months now to go to the DR because he needs his eyes checked. When I ask him why he states he is seeing "colored spots and lines like a minus sign" when he opens his eyes after blinking. At first, I just brushed this off thinking he was looking at a bright light or the sun since we've been outside more lately and then seeing the residual spots after when he blinks. However, he keeps asking and this morning told me when he blinks and opens his eyes he sees different colored spots and even asked me why I couldn't see them. He then told me he also sees "little fuzzy things" flying in the air "all the time" and told me he thought everyone sees them. I'm not concern of this being any type of hallucination or concerns with his mental status. I'm more concerned about his vision or possible neurlogical issues? Also, I am aware that it could be nothing at all. I consulted with Google and read multiple posts in multiple forums for "eye and vision health" from other parents with the same concerns. Every child was around his age (5-6) and all were described as very active, very creative, imaginative, developing ahead of schedule. I was just curious if anyone else has experiences with this?!?! He doesn't complain of head aches and he can read words from a distance and close up with out squinting. Just not sure what is going on?

Thanks!

This might be a weird question, but I'm wondering what other people do.

We've been doing potty  training, which is going amazingly well thankfully, but I'm wondering what to do with the light in the bathroom.  Our bathroom doesn't get any natural light, and the lightswitch is high up on the wall.  I've been just leaving the light on all the time because my daughter doesn't want to go in if it's dark, but I don't think that's a good permanent solution...  I guess I could just try to find a bright nightlight to in there, but I was just wondering if there was some solution I wasn't thinking of.  I feel like there would be lots of people who would have bathrooms like that (and the bathroom is small, and the switch is right by the door, so there's no room to leave a stool so she could reach it because of where the vanity is).

Any advice, or should I just leave the lights on all the time (I don't really love that idea though)?

My daughter is 2.5 years old (30 months last week). She has been in underwear since the end of February and started daycare two weeks ago. All has been going well except she will not pee at daycare with her teachers. We arrive around 7:15am, I take her to pee before we go into her classroom, then she doesn't pee on the toilet again until I come to get her around 4:15pm. She is in training pants for nap and bedtime, so she holds it until nap and then pees once the trainer is on. Her teachers tell me every day that her trainer is soaked when she wakes up from nap. She had two accidents at daycare in the first couple of days she was there, but that was it. Otherwise, she is staying dry and only peeing at naptime.

I'm pretty sure she is concerned about the reaction from teachers if she pees. She absolutely, under no circumstances, likes the whole hoopla that goes along with potty training. She will tell us outright "don't cheer" when she goes on the toilet. She doesn't like making it into a big deal at all. So, I think she sees the teachers making a big deal out of the other children going on the toilet and is afraid they will do it with her too. I have told her that her teachers won't cheer if she doesn't want them to, but I think she's in a "see-it-to-believe-it" state and is just refusing to try.

I guess my question is - should I be concerned? Because, well, I'm not really. I think she will come around eventually and start peeing there. But should I be concerned about the fact that she is holding it for so long? I had a problem holding it when I was young and remember having so many bladder infections and ended up in the hospital a couple of times because of it. It's become the very first thing her teachers tell me at pick-up time ("She still hasn't peed for us!") which I think may also be a cause of the whole thing - now it's "an issue" and she hears us discussing it every day that she's there.

Would you be concerned? Alternately, any thoughts on how to try and get her to feel comfortable aside from just giving it time?

Thanks!

Thanks for indulging me.
Kiddo is almost 17 months, in an Evenflo Symphony 65 LX. It's okay, although one of the straps is twisted and we can't get it untwisted. She is at least 33" tall (measured at 15 months, possibly taller now) and weighs approximately 21.5 lbs. She has always been above the 97%ile for height and been skinny.
We are planning to fly to Florida and New York in late June and France in October.
Options:
1. renting car seats in both Florida (easy) and France (hard).

2. Renting in Florida and buying in France, since she will be a little bigger by October and maybe we could just get a 5-point booster for travel purposes then that would last us a while.
We will be staying with relatives in a small town in the south of France, but they're not close enough relatives that we would feel comfortable asking them to buy or borrow a carseat for us there--we would have to bring it ourselves. We know the carseat laws are different in France, but I'd rather break French law and have her in a US-certified seat than have to try and figure out what French carseat to buy that will then be totally useless back home.

3. Buying a seat that we take to both Florida and France. This is the most probable solution, but I'd love advice on what to buy. The cosco scenera is cheap, but with a rear facing heigh limit of 36" it doesn't seem worth it. We'd get through these two trips but that's about it (though our travel after this year will be more limited--we're trying to travel as much as possible before we have to pay for her ticket). Then I guess we would buy a 5-pt booster after she outgrew the scenera.
I've seen the True Fit and the Radian recommended for tall kids, but they are so pricy.
Thoughts? Should we just buy a cosco scenera and hope she stops growing so fast? Should we shell out for an expensive seat even though baggage handlers could destroy it at any time and we will only use it for a few weeks each year? Is there something else I'm missing?

EDIT: Also, another question about the cosco scenera... we have a Scenera in my wife's parents' car, and we hated installing it, but they don't have LATCH. Can a LATCH seat be used with the Euro standard? Or must we use the seat belt install (which for might rule out the Scenera just because it was SO awful to try to install using the seat belt and doing it after a long flight might kill us)?

Thanks all.

We're looking for an inexpensive five point harness booster to leave on the East Coast with our family there for when we visit rather then drag a seat back and forth from CA. Is the Graco Nautilus the one I should go with or is there something that's less expensive.
We did the same thing for car seats and we got the Cosco Scenera(on sale for $35!!!). I doubt we'd be that lucky again.

hi everyone,

i have a few issues such as depression, anxiety (severe) and panic disorder. lately i've been feeling detached from my 2 year old son.

some background: my son was born via c-section 2 months early due to complications from pre-eclampsia. from there he was whisked to the NICU where he spent 7 weeks. i felt detached from him then, also, because for so long he didn't feel like he was mine. i also had severe post partum depression. i got over the detachment but...

it seems to be back now that i'm going through med changes and having a hard time. i'm also a stay at home mom.

has anyone else experienced this, or is it at least a normal feeling? i feel terribly guilty and like an awful mother.

i appreciate all responses.

thoughts on vicodin in pregnancy?

My doctor gave me the OK (actually both my OB and my neurologist) for my devastating 2nd trimester migraineapoolza ... but I haven't taken any even when crying in pain. I'm too worried? or something. Does anyone have any experience?

Also, I have a 4 year old and I just want to make sure I'm still able to be a good mom to him. Me in so much pain, laying on the sofa while he watches too much TV, makes me feel so guilty. (when I feel okay we do lots of fun, interactive, education stuff but my migraines have been hitting 2-4x a week). but not sure if vicodin will just make me sleepy and I'd end up laying on the sofa anyway, though...

I feel like I'm being caught between being a good mother to my 4 year old and a good mother to my unborn baby and it sucks. :-/

Recently, my son informed me that he's been invited to a birthday party for one of the boys in his pre-school class. This is a kid who until very recently was not in his circle of friends, but is suddenly one of his BFFs (go figure). My son keeps mentioning that he's been invited to the party, which is on "May 1st at Chuck-E-Cheese". There are several problems with this:

1) May 1st is a Wednesday.
2)The party is at Chuck-E-Cheese
and most importantly,
3) *I* have not heard from this kid's mother, either verbally, in an evite, or a mailed invitation.

I keep telling him that he can't go to the party unless I hear from the other boy's mother, but he keeps insisting that he's invited, and he will go on May 1st. I'm pretty sure some signals got crossed on the playground. 'm not sure how to find out what the deal is: Is there actually a party? Is my kid invited? If he's not invited, is there some way I can get him on the list without being unspeakably rude?

ETA: This kid was not invited to my son's party, since they weren't friends at the time.

I just received a bill from my insurance company for the heel-stick tests that my midwife took after my daughter's birth. I'm really confused here because I was under the impression that a) this was free through the state of California, and b) the state took care of the actual testing, so why would my midwife be submitting the bill for testing it?

Does anyone have information about this that might shed some light for me?