I’m not much of a gadget person.  In fact, I try to steer clear of as much baby gear as possible.  However, I have one that I LOVE.  It’s the kidco food grinder.

  It is so great for easily making baby food for your baby!  If you have a banana or peach around, just throw it in, twirl the handle and VOILA – babyfood!  If you also don’t mind taking the time to boil a carrot, sweet potato, apple, etc. you can just instantly mash the soft veggie or fruit.  Plus, when they get a little older you can just put whatever you are having for dinner in and it will mash it up. 

It’s a great way to supplement jar food.  And get rid of all the soft fruit you have laying around.

What’s your favorite baby gadget?

So we were good little go-greeners and changed all the lightbulbs in our house to the new CFL lightbulbs.  And now, I want to change them all back.

Yesterday, I went upstairs to change the baby’s diaper and heard a big crash.  No one cried, so I didn’t think much of it (my kids are pretty rough).  However, I came downstairs to see that they had knocked over a lamp and the CFL lightbulb had smashed all over our wool rug. 

A quick google search assured me that all I had to do to clean up was:  get everyone out of the room, open the windows for 15 minutes, put the broken glass in a glass container with a lid, vacuum and then throw the vacuum bag away.  For real?  This is what we have to do now everytime we break a lightbulb?

With three kids under the age of 5, mecury filled glass lightbulbs are just not something we are ready to use.

Do you?

The other day I was sitting in the waiting room at the pediatrician’s office so that baby #3 could get his ears checked for infection.  I sat there with Joel in his little infant car seat, reading Higlights magazine to my 3 year old.  I started watching all the parents coming in with their pre-teen kids and wondering what my life would be like when I got to that point.  WEIRD!

Then, I noticed a woman sitting next to me and she brought me back to “the beginning”.  She had a baby in a car seat and was glancing around the waiting room nervously bouncing her leg.  I started chatting with her and learned that she was there for the baby’s first round of shots.  I started laughing remembering my oldest daughter’s (now almost 5 years old) first pediatrician’s appointment.  It took three adults two hours to get her ready!  We gave her a bath and then she had a big blowout as soon as we got the towel wrapped around her, so she had to go back in the tub.  Then, of course, she has to be dressed in the fanciest 5 layer outfit that you have and you are still new at figuring out the carseat and you are also trying to remember to bring the three pages of questions for the doctor.  Then you sit in the waiting room with your stomach in knots because you know some nurse is about to poke your innocent little bundle with a bunch of needles.

Anyway, this other woman in the waiting room looked at me pleadingly and said, “Please tell me it’s going to be ok.  I’m doing the right thing, right?  I mean, she’s so little and I just worry about all that stuff they are pumping into her.”

I remember that fear, I had it too.  The media has caused such an uproar over vaccinations that you feel like you are putting your baby at risk.   So I did a bunch of research and came to my own conclusions.

“You ARE doing the right thing,” I told her.  “Just think of how lucky you are that you have this chance to save her from all these awful diseases.  You’re just doing your job as a mother.”

That’s how I feel.  There’s no proof of a link between vaccinations and autism, and side effects from the vaccines are extremely rare.  For decades, doctors and scientists have worked so hard to eradicate these horrible childhood diseases.  I feel lucky to be able to do this for my kids.

How do you feel?

So in addition to having a house set up where all 3 kids sleep near each other, I have insomnia.  In other words, I don’t get much sleep.  If I’m not awake on my own, then one of the kids is bound to be waking me up for one reason or another. 

This morning, the baby woke up at 2am and after nursing him I COULD NOT fall back asleep.  I lay there doing Sudoku for two hours (I’m in need of a good book – any suggestions?).  Finally, at 4am I just gave up and came downstairs.  That’s when I realized that insomnia is a mother of three’s secret weapon! 

Here’s what I accomplished before 7am today:

• emptied dishwasher
• folded a basket of laundry
• washed 2 more loads of laundry
• ate breakfast
• drank 2 cups of coffee and actually read the paper!
• tidied up the living room
• matched a bunch of random socks that have been strewn all over the house for some reason
• packed away the last remnants of Christmas decorations
• paid bills

This is truly amazing!  I accomplished more today by 7:00 am than I usually do in a week!  Thank you insomnia!

Does anyone else ever do this?

I know it’s normal to lose a lot of hair after you have a baby.  I certainly did after Baby #1 and Baby #2.  However, the hair loss I’m experiencing now that Baby #3 has been born is above and beyond anything I experienced before.  After every shower, I clean out the little drainy thing and it’s so much hair that I look like I have a mouse in my hand or something.  It’s crazy!

In fact, the other day, my husband kind of looked at me quizzically.  “WHAT!!?” I said.  He said, “I don’t know, you look different.  Did you get your haircut?”  I was crushed.  I had NOT gotten a haircut.  “No,” I moaned, “I’m just going bald.”  I’ve literally lost so much hair that it looks different.

Now that winter is here, when I go outside I notice my thinner hair when the wind blows. Our couch, my pillow, the headrest in my car are all covered in my hair.  When will this ever stop?  If it doesn’t stop soon, I’m going to have to get a wig or something.

Has anyone else noticed an increase in hair loss with each pregnancy?

I feel like climbing to the top of a mountain, swinging my arms and twirling around while I announce to the world that I JUST FIT INTO MY PRE-PREGNANCY REGULAR JEANS! 

Not my pre-pregnancy “fat pants”…oh no.  My real honest-to-goodness jeans.  You know, the kind with a zipper and a button?  Yes, those!!  And, I didn’t just fit into them for a few minutes while I sucked in my gut in front of the mirror – I WORE THEM ALL DAY!

Ahh, it’s a beautiful thing.  I have my body back (well, kind of).

So that made me think of all the things I love about being recently un-pregnant.  Here they are, in no particular order.

A Few of My Favorite (Post-Pregnancy) Things:

1.  Wearing jeans

2.  Sleeping on my stomach

3.  Getting in and out of my car without using the “oh shit” handle and getting out of breath

4.  Hugging people without having to turn sideways

5.  Wearing my rings

What would you add to the list?

My scariest nightmare was a recurring nightmare that I had as a kid.  In it, my mom and I were being chased all through our house by a mad man in a trenchcoat with wild crazy hair and a rifle.  He didn’t look like my dad, but yet, in my dream he WAS my dad - you know how that happens?  Anyway, this crazy mad man Dad was chasing us at gunpoint and when he finally had cornered us in my bedroom, my mom and I were huddled in a corner hugging each other.  I was closing my eyes just waiting for the sound of the gun.  Then, all of a sudden, I open my eyes because the guy was laughing a crazy, maniacal laugh and shooting us – but it turns out to be a water gun. 

It was SO scary.  Especially since I had the dream a few times throughout my childhood.  Most especially, because my dad was a great dad!

   

I just blogged about my scariest nightmare to enter The Uninvited Scariest Nightmare Contest for 1,000 credits. You can earn free credits too! Brought to you by The Uninvited – In Theaters January 30th.

Just had a brilliant idea!  For the past few weeks, I’ve been suffering at dinnertime.  With a newborn, a 4 1/2  year old and an almost 3 year old, it is an understatment to say that 5:00 is a CRAZY time in our house.  We are all tired, hungry and running extremely low on patience. There is always a lot of crying, screaming and time outs. All things that make it very hard to whip up a healthy dinner that my kids will actually eat.

Then, all of a sudden, I just realized the answer.  I’m going to start cooking a warm, nutritious lunch and then will feed my kids PB&J for dinner.

Problem solved!  Anyone else have any dinnertime suggestions?

We had a beautiful baby boy at 8:58 am on July 26th!  He weighed 9 lbs and measured 19 3/4 inches long.  I have no idea how he fit inside me!

It was a very exciting birth – mostly because I was scheduled for a c-section a full week later on August 1st.  However, I woke up at 3am on 7/26 with contractions.  I just lay in bed half asleep in denial for almost three hours.  I was convinced it was false labor since my due date was not until 8/6.  However, around 5:30 am a couple other things happened (I’ll spare you the gross details) that made me realize it was real labor.  I called the doctor who said to drink 4 glasses of water and then come to the hospital to get checked.  Then I woke up my poor husband who almost had a heart attack when I said, “Get. Up. I. Am. In. Labor.”  He looked at me like he didn’t know what the word “labor” meant.

By 6:30am, we were at the Birth Center and my mom was home with our other 2 kids.  The nurse was slowly hooking me up to monitors and chatting away between my contractions.  On a happy note, we went to high school together and I vaguely remember as a fellow band geek – so it was a lot of fun when she had to give me an internal exam.  Especially when her eyes shot open wide and she said “Oh YEAH – you’re having this baby today!”  I was already at 5 centimeters.

This was right about the time I started to pretend I was on an episode of ER.  Nurses and doctors were rushing in talking about “calling in another team” and “postponing another surgery” and “this is her 3rd c-section, we’ve got to roll”.  It was a Saturday morning, so apparently there wasn’t enough surgical staff at the hospital so they paged a whole team.  They gave me a shot of muscle relaxers to stop the contractions because they said it would take a while to get the OR ready.  Then 10 minutes later, the doctor comes back in and says “No, we are doing this now.  We can’t risk her getting to 10 cm.”  They ended up making the poor guy who needed an appendectomy wait. 

I was vacillating between total excitement and immense fear.  We had no name!  We didn’t know where our infant car seat was!  Who will take care of our kids for the next 4 days!??  We had no name!  My fellow band geek is helping me strip down and get into a Johnny!  We had no name!  I AM NOT READY FOR THIS!!!!

To make a long story short, the c-section was kind of grueling because I had built up so much scar tissue from my previous 2 c-sections.  I could hear the doctor doing a lot of grunting and groaning as she tried to pull the baby out.  It took a long time. Oh, and did I mention that Band Geek Nurse accompanied us to the OR as did my neighbor who happens to be a midwife?  It was surreal.  Anyway, they had to make some extra cuts in my uterus to get the baby out because he was so big and there was so much scar tissue.  The good news is that he was born safely and is perfectly healthy.  The bad news is that I can’t have any more kids because of it. 

They finally pulled the baby out and somebody yelled, “IT’S A BOY!”  This was another total shock to me.  I was convinced I had a girl in there.  When they wrapped him up and my husband brought him around the curtain for me to see, I just stared at him.  Here was a boy…a week early.  It really threw me for a loop.  I was expecting a girl on August 1st. 

But who cares!???!!  He’s beautiful and perfect and very healthy.

In postpartum news:  a Juicy Juice commercial just made me cry!

Well, it happened today!  One of the major milestones of pregnancy that I think I invented:  The Day You See Milk That Will Expire After Your Baby is Born.

I don’t know why, but I always get a little freaked out/excited in the dairy aisle whenever I go to pull a gallon of milk of the shelf and notice that the milk’s expiration date is AFTER my due date.   For me, it’s the one thing that makes the impending delivery seem real.

So…..now I guess we have to get serious about picking some names.  Any suggestions?  We truly don’t have any ideas and we need one for a boy or a girl since we don’t know what we are having.