Being Sara » baby books

And the love of books begins again

Sara — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:53:40 +0000

Parker's current favorite: Cornelius P. Mud, Are You Ready For Bed?

Parker is in love with books. He show little interest in other toys at the moment and instead prefers to carry around a book – mostly any book will do. If he happens to see you wander by while he’s carrying a book, he beelines to you and holds up the book with this pleading look in his eye and only someone with superhuman strength can say “no, I can’t ready you that book right now” which means that we have been reading lots and lots of board books in our house lately. It’s adorably cute. We were thrilled when Xander reached this phase – for a long time the only “toys” we had in our living room was just a bookcase overflowing with all of his favorites. It’s great to get back here and have lots of cuddling and reading time with the little guy

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Xander Week 10 – Is it possible to over-document?

Sara — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:10:51 +0000

I have been pondering this question for a while now. Zach and I have always planned to have more than one child. Of course with the first, everything is new and exciting, and perhaps we go a little bit overboard when it comes to recording the first months/years of Xander’s life. My concern is that I don’t want the second child to feel like we didn’t document as much, but will I have the time/energy/interest in maintaining everything for baby #2? First and foremost, I’ve got this blog, which I think is an excellent way to store thoughts and feelings about the entire process, from conception through graduation. I’ve also got a baby book, a scrapbook, a hallmark calendar to mark all of Xander’s “firsts” (first smile, first trip, first tooth, etc.), a plaster mold of Xander’s hands and feet, and over 100 digital pictures of him in our Flickr account.

Lately I’ve been so busy with holiday preparation, family time, housework, etc., that I haven’t picked up the scrapbook or baby book in over a month. Not to mention that the calendar has been sorely neglected. And do we have too many pictures of the little guy? Will he grow up and be irritated that there are dozens of pictures from almost every week of his life? Will he wish that we hadn’t let all of our friends and family see all of the silly things we did, from the baby mowhawk to sitting him in a pumpkin… In this digital era, I don’t think we have any printed photographs of our son, aside from the professional ones taken at the hospital. How many pictures are too many? How many scrapbooks or baby books are too many? Will I have the energy to maintain an equal amount of documentation for future children? With everything there is to worry about with my current child, why am I wasting worry energy on potential children? Wow, it’s pretty easy to spend a lot of a day worrying!

baby, babies, infant, infants, baby pictures, scrapbook, baby books, baby documentation

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Xander Week 5 – Are Parenting Books Useful?

Sara — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 19:23:19 +0000

In typical Sara fashion, I have been doing as much research as possible on parenting. Now I’m not sure if the information was helpful or just stressed me out. You see, when I read through the books I find that I’m not doing half of what they suggest. Then I worry that I’m not stimulating my baby’s development enough, or that I’m fostering bad habits in my kid.

This week I attempted to follow a suggestion in my Baby Whisperer book. The author, Tracy Hogg suggested that at about 6 weeks you can “cluster feed” your baby to encourage the baby to sleep through the night. To cluster feed, you feed your baby every two hours at night – for example, at 6 pm then 8 pm the 10:30 or 11 pm. This last feeding is referred to as the dreamy feeding, as the baby should be sleeping by the end of it. Then, without burping or anything you can put your baby to sleep and in theory he or she should sleep through the night.

So, this week I tried to cluster feed Xander. Instead of being sleeping at the 10:30 pm feeding, he was wide awake and stayed that way until 2:30 am. At 3 am I gave in and fed him again. He slept from 3 am to 6 am, and that was the only sleep we got that night. Granted, Xander is only 5 weeks old, but since I have seen him sleep 6 hours at a stretch, I didn’t think this would be too much for him. Maybe cluster feeding works for some kids, and maybe it will work for Xander eventually, but at the moment, it was the longest night we’ve had so far, and I was definitely questioning the wisdom of this particular baby book by 3 am. The theory seems logical, but in practice it was quite miserable.

So, if anyone has any suggestions for great parenting books (I already have What to Expect In the First Year of course) and/or any suggestions on how to encourage babies to sleep through the night, I’d love to hear about them!

Ps. I think I should get a special pat on the back for writing this post while nursing Xander

baby, baby books, infant, parenting, parenting advice, parenting books, sleep, sleeping baby

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Week 14 – Still Expanding!

Sara — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 03:53:10 +0000

I’m feeling pretty good this week. My morning sickness is pretty much gone, except sometimes when I brush my teeth (I know, it’s kind of weird – sensitive gag reflex…). My stomach continues to grow, which I’m still not ready for. Many of my clothes are too tight for me now. I’m going shopping for maternity clothes this weekend. I’ve picked up a few things here and there, but this is my first shopping excursion. It should be fun (I hope). I’ve been using two pregnancy websites, BabyCenter and PregnancyWeekly. I actually did quite a bit of surfing before I settled on these two. I like PregnancyWeekly because they have an online calendar where I can add journal entry type things to keep track milestones during the pregnancy (which my blog is also doing…). BabyCenter has a good weekly newsletter that I’ve been enjoying. Zach has been entirely patient with me, which has been great. At night when I’m settled in with Oscar (the cat) on my lap, he patiently gets me whatever food I happen to desire (as long as it’s in the house and not entirely complicated). It’s nice having people bring you things – I’m definitely enjoying that part of pregnancy! I’ve also been reading two books, What to Expect When You’re Expecting (of course), which my sister Cait bought for me and The New Pregnancy week-by-week, which my friend Jenny bought for me. The books and websites tell me that the baby is approximately 4-4 1/2 inches long now. He/she has translusent skin and we’re working on growing bone marrow this week. So things seem to be moving along well, and so far the books/websites are right – the second trimester has been much better than the first!

baby, pregnancy, babies, trimester, fetus, baby books, baby websites, baby reading, morning sickness, second trimester

Being Sara » baby books

And the love of books begins again

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