Today’s Tip - Cool down the car and cover the car seat on hot, sunny days

I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but we’re mired in the heat wave rolling across the US right now. It feels like 110 outside…and its not a dry heat either. It’s a wet heat. And my car is slightly hotter than the surface of the sun when I get into it after work.

Not a good situation when you need to put baby in the car for a trip. Here are some ideas for beating the heat and the sun when baby’s in the car.

Cool it down first
Turn on the A/C in your car about four or five minutes before you get in the car. It’ll make it a lot less blistering, and it’ll help cool down any metal or plastic surfaces that your baby might touch in the car.

Cover the car seat
The seat belt and the buckles are going to be hot enough to burn if their in direct sunlight, or even if your car has been baking in the sun. When you take baby out of the car, throw a receiving blanket over the car seat. This will keep the belt and buckles from having direct contact from the sunlight, and will make them safer to the touch.

Cover the window
I talked about this briefly before, but keeping your baby’s eyes and skin shaded during the drive is the most important. One bad burn can increase the chance of skin cancer, and direct sunlight can damage your baby’s eyes. You can buy shades at the store, or you can improvise a more effective shade by taking for suction cup hooks, and poking holes for the hooks in the corners of a receiving blanket. Stretch it out over a side window or try hanging it over the car seat. Just make sure you don’t block your view of the road, and make sure the blanket will actually block the sun by thinking about what direction the sun will shine in the most.

Parenting, Sun, Protection, UV, Rays, Car

Today’s First Time Parenting Tip - Move schedule times by 10 minute increments for success

The time might come when you have to move your baby’s bedtime or feeding time for whatever reason. Either you’re going back to work, have a change in your daily routine, or you realize that putting him to bed at 7:00 is just to early for you.

Rather than trying to force the issue cold turkey and cause yourself and your kid a bunch of stress, try moving the schedule times in 10 minute increments. For instance, if you want him up later and going to bed later, move all his feedings and routines up 10 minutes. Repeat until you’re on the schedule you want. It’s pretty simple. You can also spread out feedings or move naps using the same tactic.

Parenting, Schedule, Routine, Change, Time, Feed, Bed

Today’s First Time Parenting Tip - Get help from a friend or hold your baby’s head between your knees (gently) to give eye medicine.

Unless you’re extremely lucky and have a well natured baby that lets you do all the poking proddding and preening you need to without a fuss, you probably struggle with doing anything to your baby’s face - like wiping or giving eye drops. If you have to do it by yourself, it can be quite a daunting task…between holding their head still, holding the eye dropper, holding their eyes open and solving a calculus equation all while juggling fire is next to impossible.

If you’re with another person, its nice to have the extra set of hands hold the body still while you focus on getting the drops in their eye. Gently slide your finger on the skin just above their eyelid to open it up if they’re squinting shut.

If you’re by yourself, you’re going to have to get on the ground. Put their head in between your knees, with their arms underneath your legs. Make sure all of your weight is on the floor, and not on them. Gently place your legs on either side of their head. You don’t have to squeeze at all, but they also shouldn’t be able to move their head from side to side. This leaves your hands free to open their eyes and squeeze in the drops.

Parenting, Eyedrops, Give, Eye, Medicine

Today’s First Time Parenting Tip - Use a clean, damp, wet washcloth to clean your baby’s eyes from gunk.

Babies often get crust in the corners of their eyes, and it can get pretty bad if they’ve got a clogged tear duct like our son does. And sometimes, the gunk is dried on there, so a kleenex or cloth diaper isn’t going to get it off. Plus you’ll probably irritate the skin around his eye. As if the crust wasn’t enough!

A good way to clear out dry and wet crust from your baby’s eyes is to take a clean washcloth and run it under warm water. Use cloth from the middle of the washcloth (not the corners) and gently hold it over the crusty area. Let it soak a little, and then wipe away from the eye gently with the washcloth. Use a different section of the cloth for the other eye, so you don’t transfer any infections.

Parenting, Crust, Irritated, Eye, Infection, Red. Clean

Today’s First Time Parenting Tip - Keep an eye on your babies eyes if they start to get “gunky”

My son has had a clogged tear duct since he was born…so his eye has always had a little goop in it that we constantly had to clear out, use eye drops and do a little duct massage to help it along. Recently though, there’s been quite a bit. He wakes up with his eye glued shut, or there’s tons of crust all around his eye. My wife took him into the pediatrician and lo! he has conjunctivitis due to the clogged tear duct. Hooray! To fix it, the doctor prescribed some ointment for his eyes. That should be an adventure and a half to put in. Some other symptoms of conjunctivitis are:

• Eye redness
• Swollen, red eyelids
• More tearing than usual
• Feeling as if something is in the eye
• An itching or burning feeling
• Mild sensitivity to light
• Drainage from the eye

Most cases of pinkeye are caused by:

• Infections caused by viruses or bacteria
• Dry eyes from lack of tears or exposure to wind and sun
• Chemicals, fumes, or smoke (chemical conjunctivitis)
• Allergies

Viral conjunctivitis is spreadable, and the only real fix for it is prevention. Things like washing hands and making sure objects aren’t shared between lots of kids are orders of the day. The bacterial version is treated by antibiotic, and is less contagious.

Parenting, Conjunctivitis, Pinkeye, Eye, Infection, Red. Treat

Today’s Tip - Let your baby play on his own to encourage learning

Many parents love playing with their babies. And that’s not a bad thing at all. But if there’s no chance for a baby to play on his own, how is he going to learn to entertain himself? If you’re doing everything for him, there’s not a whole lot of learning going on.

Solitary play increases self-esteem, and helps prevent the “I’m bored” syndrome later on. And it’s easy too. Just give your baby a child-proofed area to explore and let him go nuts. If he can’t roll, put him on a mat with an overhead toy bar he can grab for. If he can flip and push himself up, give him some toys on a blanket so that he can practice crawling. If he can support some weight, an exer-saucer or a Johnny Jump Up are excellent bets.

At first these play times will be pretty short, but gradually you can work them up to a longer session where they’re exercising their creativity and having lots of fun while learning.

Parenting, Play, Development, Alone, Creativity

Today’s First Time Parenting Tip - Gently divert your baby’s “bad” behavior

My son has a new favorite playtoy. His mom’s hair. He also enjoys slapping and grabbing onto faces. And when he shakes a maraca, sometimes he gets so into it that he smacks himself in the face, starting the waterworks. Should he be disciplined?

Absolutely not. At this age, babies are too young to understand right and wrong, and nothing they do is out of malice or hurtfulness. So when your son is yanking on your hair, it’s not going to help him or you any if you lose your temper or tell him no.

If you baby is engaging in some dangerous behavior, simply divert him to something more productive. If he’s trying to climb up the coffee table, give him some pillows to crawl around on instead. If he’s pulling your hair and it hurts too much, give him a stuffed animal with fur or something fuzzy he can wrap his fingers around.

Besides keeping your hair, this has an added benefit of teaching them to express themselves and explore in different ways, which is all he was trying to do in the first place.

Parenting, Discipline, Behavior, Bad, Spoil

Today’s First Time Parenting Poll: Should you put your baby down for a nap in his crib or somewhere else.

Today, we’ll do things a little bit differently. My wife and I disagree on where to put the baby to sleep. I say put him down in the crib. He’ll associate it with sleep, and he takes better naps.

She takes the opposing stance, making the case for putting him down in the same room as us. That way, he learns that his crib isn’t just for hour cat naps, it’s for bedtime. Plus we have easier access to him if he wakes up and needs something.

So I thought I’d ask other parents what they thought of this. Just make a comment and sound off.

Parenting, Sleep, Nap, Crib, Habit

Today’s Tip - Get tinted glass or baby shades to protect your baby in the car

On long car rides, it’s important to protect your baby from the sun. Since you’re probably headed in one direction for a long time the sun will shine on the same spot on your car for a long time as well. And if that’s on your baby, you need to take steps to protect him.

Tinting the glass in your car is an expensive, but is your best bet. It’ll cover all the angles of the sun and significantly reduce the brightness of the light streaming in. Make sure that the tinting you get will block UV rays as well. Otherwise it’s kind of useless.

You can also buy car shades that’ll hang in your windows and block the sun. Unfortunately, I’ve found these obstruct my view of traffic, and they don’t really cover that much of an area on the window.

And there are shades that either come on the car seat or will attach to it. These offer the most coverage, and they won’t block your view of the road. Plus they’re nowhere near as expensive as the tinting. But there are still some angles that won’t be covered by the shade.

Parenting, Sun, Protection, UV, Rays, Car

Today’s tip - Regular baby food is just as good as organic baby food

Lately organic baby food seems to be all the rage, but at nearly twice the price, is it worth it?

The answer seems to be no, according to this and several other articles. Turns out that unless your baby has allergies or an aversion to the taste of regular baby food, they’re receiving the same safe nutrition as organic.

Most baby food farms aren’t sprayed with the same harmful chemicals as the produce you eat, so harmful pesticides and herbicides aren’t an issue. And the nutrients in the regular baby foods are controlled and optimized…something that doesn’t happen in nature. I’ll leave it up to you to assess whether or not that’s better. Personally, I don’t think you can go wrong with either.

And I tried some organic food - it seemed to taste and have a little bit better texture than the regular stuff. So if you want to give your baby a tasty feast, organic would be a good way to go. But if you’re wondering if the extra scratch is worth it for organic baby food…it’s not.

Parenting, Baby, Food, Regular, VS, Organic