So much about being a parent of a new baby is about confidence. If it’s your first child, this confidence can take a while to develop. What is your parenting path? How do you best respond to the needs of your child? How do you negotiate the well-intentioned advice of everyone in sight? When I had my daughter, my only plan was to respond to her needs. In our family, this led to nursing on demand and bed sharing. It also led to gentle discipline methods – that is, when I am disciplined enough myself to follow through on my … Continue reading →

Do you need to get out of the house? Need more ways to entertain you and your baby this fall? Make a cool or rainy fall walk into a fun walk – it doesn’t take much! 1. Go outside in the rain or just after a rain. Where I live, it rains a lot in the fall and winter. In fact, the year that my daughter was born, we broke the winter rain record and had rain for more than 30 days in a row. Needless to say, we went outside in the rain. Invest in a good pair of … Continue reading →

A sense of dread pounded in my chest as I rubbed my eyes and searched for the blurry green lit numbers on the alarm clock. It was nearly six in the morning. I realized my son had not woken up and part of me panicked. For the past four months he has gone from waking up 4 times per night to one; could this be the first time he slept all the way through, or was there something wrong? Just then I heard a little grunt and a sigh over the monitor. I breathed a sigh of relief and slumped … Continue reading →

The grazing tray or nibble tray is a great way to get your picky eater to try new foods and eat at his or her own pace. If you are worried about your toddler getting enough food, try this trick. A grazing tray, filled with lots of nutritious choices makes it easy for your toddler to graze his, getting in more of the stuff he needs without you having to beg, beg, beg or spend the entire day at the table. It avoids putting unhealthy emphasis on food and engaging toddler battles of will. Basically, you provide a variety of … Continue reading →

I happen to be typing this today while dealing with a fever, chills, a headache, a stuffy and runny nose and a heavy cough. This is after spending some time in the bathroom with my youngest child, whose croupy cough had be a bit concerned before the steam eased it back to a less severe form. We all have to recover by tomorrow, since we are being treated, the entire family, to a visit to the circus, something that the kids have been pining for for years, although the event was never in the budget. So, needless to say, I … Continue reading →