Home made toys: color in a bottle

Lucas has a fascination with water bottles. He is drawn to them because he sees us drinking and wants to put his mouth on them too. He also likes making the water swish back and forth inside.

We saved one of the thicker plastic ones, filled it up about half way and threw a few sequins of different colors inside.

Bottle and water and colors galore!

Keeping in touch like it's 2008

Friends and family who live far away want to see the baby. And I want to show off his new tooth, how he stands, the way he laughs. Thanks to Skype we have been able to talk and use video for free for some time now. Still, trying to talk the grandparents through installing it can take some time. Slate has an installation guide for Skype that the uninitiated can follow.

Gmail voice and video essentially works the same way. I prefer it since it seems like less of a commitment: no need to open up a different program to see who's online to have a quick little video conf. The installation process is pretty self explanatory - but I'm still waiting for my mother to catch on.

Feeding time at the zoo

Feeding the monkeys and pandas might be neater that what goes down at our house during meals.

We let Lucas feed himself. He loves it, and he gets about 85% of the food in his mouth. We move things along with a long handle spoon, getting a few mouthfuls in there. This also works well for us, giving us free hands to eat ourselves.

Lilsugar posted research that shows that letting babies feed themselves develops hand eye coordination and works towards a developing a healthy relationship with food.

Lunchtime becomes a happy event for everyone, albeit insanely messy. But that can be cleaned up... over time.

5 things worth a trip to Ikea

Once you step inside Ikea you buy more than you intended and spend a lot more time you thought you would. That's the magic these Swedes developed.



Here are five useful and inexpensive things:

1. Set of colorful bowls, ideal for your kiddy's first meals (unless you're off plastic).

2. Beautiful, fun, quilt covers (unless you don't do comforters. This is turning out to be a very controversial list).

3. Baby proofing. They have almost everything you need (I'm sure we're all into baby proofing).

4. Big plastic storage box for the toys astray your living room floor.

5. The Ikea body lotion, shampoo and toothpaste smell lovely and get the job done.

Good luck navigating the kitchen utensil section... that's how they always get you!

Guilty pleasure read

Stefanie Wilder-Taylor used to write for Whose Line is it Anyway; then she had a kid and wrote Sippy Cups are not for Chardonnay.

As far as parenting books go, this isn't one of the most informational. OK, it has no useful information. As a parent I disagree with most of the things she feels passionately about: I like my Bugaboo, I don't think nursing "hurts like a rhesus monkey biting your nipples" and I am looking forward to throwing my son a rocking first birthday party.

The book talks about motherhood with honesty and humor. Sadly, my husband has also had to come up with an answer to "Does it bother you that I haven't waxed in eighteen months?"

To Stefanie's credit, though, I didn't feel like she was admonishing or shaming me for how I raise my child, which automatically awards her the "Most Respectful Baby Book" award. Sippy Cups, with its simple and neat narrative style, is funny and embarrasingly relatable.

Happy weekend

Happy weekend everyone! (Meaning husband Wynn, only PanchuMom reader for now). Very much looking forward to quality time with my boys and an occasional me-time, ie, a shower longer than 3 minutes... I might even do a hair mask, and that takes about 10 minutes.

One hand recipes: Pasta with portobellos, ham and peas

One hand recipes are my attempt at cooking food that doesn't come frozen in a box while looking after a very mobile little attention hog. In an ideal world, they would be cooked with one hand, while the other dangles rattles, emails and has a relaxed conversation with my husband.

For now, I am content with ideas for meals that require the least amount of time and effort, and where some of the ingredients can be prepared (chopped, stir fried, etc) ahead of time, ie during baby naps.

Ingredients, serves two people:

Whole wheat pasta (bowties, ziti or the like)

1/3 cup ham, cut into small squares 

2/3 cup portobello mushrooms, chopped

1/3 cup frozen peas

1/3 cup heavy cream

1 tbsp olive oil

a handful of grated parmesan

a few twigs of fresh thyme (dry works as well) 

seasonings: salt, pepper, oregano, nutmeg 

Prepare pasta as per package instructions. While pasta cooks, add olive oil to a pan. When it's warm, add the mushrooms. Cook until they are tender. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg and thyme. Add the ham. Drain the pasta, reserving a tiny bit of the cooking liquid. Add pasta to the ingredients in the pan. Add the cream and the peas. Stir until everything is creamy. Add parmesan cheese and serve.

Homemade Toys: Crinkly Socks

My six month old critter is interested in everything. He wants to touch and suck on everything around him. Once he becomes familiar with an object, once he has learned about it and it no longer presents the most stimulation for his little developing mind, he is ready to move on.

It's very exciting to watch him as he goes around learning, but it makes the toy situation bizarre for us. Lucas will really be into something, then two days later, not have time in his schedule for it. Many overpriced toys later we are starting to invent everything and anything for him to play with. Our latest invention? A colorful sock with one of those really noise crinkly plastic bags inside. Another option would be putting cellophane inside the sock. Sow up the top, and voilà! A colorful, noisy, soft toy that will keep him happy for another few minutes while I finish this post.

Nursing pads

Nursing for many months is both wonderful (for those who like it) and riddled with varied little inconveniences. For instance, the need to constantly wear nursing pads: solution and new problem. Problem - the outer plastic layer of the disposable pads doesn't let nipples breath enough, which can lead to the dreaded cracked and sore nipples. Enter the solution - the washable nursing pads.

Medela makes lovely cotton pads. Cotton breathes. I've been using pads for several months and they work pretty well; they need to be changed as often as the disposable ones. The pads come with a useful little mesh bag for the washing machine. Plus, it's environmentally friendly I guess.

Little lamb had a garden

Mandana Sadat is an Iranian illustrator and writer. Her book The Garden of Babai has been published in Spanish, Italian and French editions, all of them with the text in Persian on the opposite page (unfortunately, it has not yet been published in English).

This book tells the story of Babaï, a lonely little lamb who decides to grow a garden, inviting all sorts of wildlife to his plot of land. This finally becomes the drawing of a beautiful tapestry.

The Babaï book is not a board book, so it has now graduated to the taller shelves, out of reach of Lucas's hands (and sucking). At around four months, before he was so dexterous with his chubby little fingers, we used to read it a lot. He loved it because the book is comprised of one plain page with only text on it, but upon turning it, the next is full of color and drawings. The pictures are in very rich earthy tones, with deep burgundy reds and clean lines, which really caught Lucas's attention. He would get very excited when we turned to the page and he saw the animals, in colors so intense they seem to have texture.

Madana Sadat has written and illustrated Mi León, edited in Spanish and the original French versions. She has also illustrated Jorge Elías's Winter Afternoon, which can be found in a bilingual English/Spanish edition.

Little feet

For our baby shower my mother in law gave us a pair of Robeez. At the time I said, "great, thanks", and threw them in the box of things that seemed so big my child wouldn't need them for a long time. Six months later, we are loving the Robeez and can't imagine life without them (as seems to be the case with every valuable baby product).

Lucas isn't walking yet, but he grabs on to things and pulls himself up. At first, brilliant as I am, I had him just in socks. Since he slipped I spent hours a day holding my arms like a net, just in cases (Love Actually fans?). Robeez were designed to let moms and dads relax their arms.

They are made of soft leather, which prevents slipping and makes them soft and comfortable enough for the little kids to feel like they're just wearing another type of sock instead of harder and uncomfortable shoes. The elastic around the ankle makes my life easier since they slip on nicely, and, unlike most socks, don't slip off the first time Lucas cricket-style rubs his legs.

There are warmer weather models and shoes for more seriously walking rugrats. Robeez are everywhere, they even have them at babyGap (for a few pennies more).

Hangover notes, ie, emotion coaching

My wild night yesterday was actually a lecture on emotion coaching for parents. Every time the professor addressed "parents" I wanted to raise my hand "me, me, me, I have a baby, I'm a parent!". The novelty has not yet worn off.

The lecturer began by delineating what "emotion" refers to. An emotion is basically something we feel as a product of our interpretation of reality. Emotions inform us of the world around us, they help us evaluate and understand it, and they prepare us for acting in the world.

As a parent, it is our role to help children learn how to understand, interpret and cope with their emotions. This is called emotion coaching in John Gottman's Raising and Emotional Intilligent Child. Gottman's book is a pleasurable and informative read. It has anecdotal examples that help clarify his outline for helping children develop their emotional individuality.

The four steps of emotion coaching are:
1. Become aware of the emotion.
2. Recognize the emotion, name it and recognize its intensity.
3. Investigate the origin of the emotion, why it's there, what caused it.
4. Brainstorm possible solutions/plans of action . Select best one.

The lecturer did a lovely job of explaining the parent's role in helping children through these stages. Gottman's book does a remarkable job as well.

Mom gone wild

I am going out tonight. Wynn is staying with Lucas. They will handle dinner, bath and sleeping all by themselves.

"Ooh, freedom! Thank you, sweetheart."

"Wait, are you sure, should we do this?"

I say both things at the same time.

Wynn is encouraging and insistent.

Can you relate?

Somewhere between the loss of personal space and ownership of your time you learn to laugh.

Diary of an unedited mum

Jools Oliver's book, Minus Nine to One: Diary of an Honest Mum, leaves a lot to be desired. Unless you love the Olivers, exclamation points and emails.

The book narrates Jools and Jamie's journey from trying to conceive their first child, getting pregnant with their second daughter and throughout the older kid's first year.

Jools could have used a more opinionated editor. The book reads like a (long) email. She has a fondness for exclamation points! When she can't conjure up the words to describe a situation she tries to resolve it by adding emphasis. This surely gets her point across better than words would!

As with everything Jamie Oliver, the book includes beautiful photographs, only here it's less about the food and more about their family. Although... there is a photo that bothered me. It is meant to be of Jools and Jamie having dinner on the night they inadvertedly conceived their second child. Why would they invite a photographer to dinner the night they had sex for the first time postpartum? Ours was a lot more casual, intimate and careful.

This book does not contain any useful information for pregnant moms looking to benefit from someone else's experience; nor is it a particularly enjoyable read. Then why did I read it start to finish in two days? I actually am obsessed with everything Jamie Oliver, and I am a sucker for nice pictures, especially when they offer an inside look into someone's family life. So while this book is not particularly informational or well written, it is sure to please the voyeur in all of us.