Yes. I’m a Michigan State fan. Go Green!

Someone is always snubbed
Parenting is all about compromises. You want to read a book, your baby wants to play. One set of grandparents wants to see him this weekend, but you’re spending the day at the beach. Learn how to strike a fair balance in your family life, and you’ll be in for exciting times.

In the beginning, it’s all about survival
Chances are, you had expectations about how things would go initially. Boy, were you wrong! Raising a child is full of surprises and upsets. Just roll with the punches and learn from what happens for next year.

No matter what, there’s always a storyline
Even though things may seem random and unconnected, they also have a habit of coming together in ways that make it much more dramatic. A daily struggle with getting your baby to try solid foods becomes the triumph of all triumphs when they finally take their first gulp.

There’s always a buzzer beater
Whether it’s you just catching your baby before he falls or barely making it to the doctor on time because you had so much to pack, your life will be full of rushed excitement.

Leave it all on the floor
Parenting is tough work, day in and day out. You’ve got to give it your all, because that’s what your baby deserves. This also applies to the amount of food, milk and toys that’ll be all over your house on a regular basis.

Things never end up the way you planned
You’ll have tons of wins where you didn’t expect it, and maybe some disappointments along the way too. But at the end of the day, it’s all one big, exciting journey. After it all, you’ve got that happy feeling in the center of your stomach and you can’t wait for it to happen all over again.

I don’t usually post about products on this blog. In general, I also tend to ignore the dearth of USB-related products out there (USB Beer Cooler, USB Light Saber, etc.)

But this Amber Alert Child ID Kit from Kingston caught my eye. You’ll probably never have to use it. But if your child gets kidnapped and it helps your find them, it’s well worth the $29.95.

Here’s how it works. You plug the password protected, encrypted 512MB USB Flash drive into your computer. (You set up all the security, but it sounds more intimidating than it is.)

The drive has a wizard that makes it all easy to set up:

You fill it our for your kid and after fifteen, twenty minutes you’ve got all the important information in one spot. Pretty useful in it’s own right if they stopped there.

But they also integrated it with the Amber Alert system, which is a network that springs into action when a child is reported missing.

You could definitely put together your own DIY Child ID kit with a USB drive and an excel spreadsheet. (If you don’t spring for this, you should probably do that anyway).

Props to Engadget for finding this one

My son is starting to discover different parts of his body - whenever he’s shirtless he’ll pat his stomach whenever we say “Where’s your belly?.”

I’m starting to notice he’s learning about faces too. He knows eyes, nose, mouth, ears, etc. But we’re running into a slight problem. Instead of just pointing to the body part, he’ll jam his finger right into eye sockets, nostrils and mouth.

So how do you fix it?

Here’s an idea. When you’re showing your baby body parts, always lay your hand over the body part. Rather than teach them to point, teach them to cover up their eyes, nose or mouths.

Then, when they go show off to other babies, you or your pets, hopefully they’ll just cover up stuff on the face. They won’t be hurting anyone and you’re teaching them to be sensitive in certain situations.

How do you deal with a baby that always pokes and prods at sensitive body parts?

Our son couldn’t keep any kind of solid food down and had diarrhea. We had no idea what to do, so we called the doctor.

The diagnosis was a stomach virus. According to the pediatrician, it has to run its course naturally while feeding our son a special diet over 72 hours. We were a bit skeptical, since he wasn’t keeping anything down.

But the menu she gave us has worked pretty well and our son was feeling great today.

Here’s a suggested diet for a infant with a stomach virus - assuming they’ve been fully introduced to solid foods and are off breastmilk and formula and on to whole milk.

If your baby is still vomiting in the 24 - 48 hour stage, call your pediatrician and get some more advice.

0 - 24 hours - Pedialyte or Gatorade, exclusively. They’re geared specifically to replace fluids lost from vomiting or diarrhea, and your baby will probably be able to keep them down better.

24 - 48 hours - A diet of bananas, rice, applesauce and wheat toast or bread. These bland foods will sit better in your baby’s stomach.

48 - 72 hours - Back to the normal diet, but no dairy just yet. What you can give them that’s dairy is Activia yogurt by Danon because of its bifidobacteria. The active culture bacteria is meant to augment the body’s natural mechanisms for regulating the digestive system.

At this stage, our son was feeling a lot better and he was ready to chow down. We gave him green beans, which he usually picks at. Instead, he wolfed them down. Then he ate a whole container of the Activia yogurt with a gusto. He was probably just glad to get some real food in his belly.

72 hours + - Introduce dairy back into their diet. The diarrhea can take up to two weeks to finally go away, so keep lots of spare clothes on hand.

When you wean your baby off the bottle and onto cups, they might stop drinking their milk. If your baby is going through a stage where he doesn’t want to drink the white stuff, how do you make sure he’s getting the calcium he needs?

There are plenty of other sources of calcium, some you might not expect. If you do prepare special foods loaded with calcium, don’t make a big deal out of your toddler eating them. The more pressure they feel from you trying to get them to eat and drink, the less likely they are to do it.

Without further adieu, here are the greatest sources of calcium money can buy:

• Milk
• Yogurt
• Cheese
• Beans
• Tofu
• Orange Juice (you can buy this calcium fortified)
• Beans
• Bok Choy
• Broccoli
• Carrots
• Sweet Potatoes
• TurnipGreens
• Tortillas

Use these foods in your prepared meals and you’re on your way to success. Some ideas for meals and snacks loaded with calcium are:

• Fruit smoothies made with milk
• Use milk instead of water in cooked cereal, soups and gravy
• Powdered milk has more calcium than regular milk
  • Use two tablespoons or every cup of flour when you bake to calcium fortify your own cooking.
  • Use 1/2 cup and water in every pound of ground beef
  • Use two tablespoons in a cup of casserole
  • Make a cream sauce for vegetables
  • Add 1/3 cup to 2 cups of regular milk to increase calcium by 50%
• Add cheese to everything
  • Mac and cheese
  • Lasagna
  • Tacos
  • Grilled Cheese
  • Vegetables
  • Burgers
• Use leafy green vegetables like spinach in salad, soup and casserole

Make your family’s diet calcium heavy if your baby won’t drink milk. He’ll need every mg he can get.

What secret calcium rich recipes do you make for your family?

Source:  American Academy of Pediatrics

If you use these brands of bottles - Dr. Brown’s, Evenflo, Gerber, Playtex - you may want to read this article on CNN.

The baby bottle industry is saying that the chemicals found by independent experts convened by the National Institutes of Health are harmless. The experts say otherwise.

I’m glad that we use Avent Bottles right now. It may be a case of he said, she said, but when it comes to things like this I think you should err on the side of caution.

Update - Looks like Avent bottles are in there too, just not listed in the subhead of the article.

Whenever we take our son out to a restaurant or to see family and friends, we’ve got trouble getting him to eat. There’s always something else going on he’d rather be doing, some toy on the floor he’d rather be playing with. It doesn’t matter if there’s carrots or cake on his plate, he wants out of that high chair.

It doesn’t make matters any easier when people who aren’t my wife and I play with his feet, show him toys, make silly faces or loud noises at him. Yeah, I know I’m no fun, but a kid’s gotta eat!

So what are some keys to keeping your kid focused on his food and letting him be social at the same time?

• Remove all unnecessary distractions like T.V., radio and toys
• Eat with your child. If you’re doing something else, he’ll want to as well
• Encourage other people to save the play for another time and aid his eating by saying things like “Yum! That looks good!” or by playfully feeding him or having him feed them
• If your baby refuses to eat and wants down, let him. Continue your meal. Chances are he’ll notice everyone else is eating and will want back in on the action
• Let him eat like a big boy. Set him on your lap or next to you if he can

Your baby is probably just getting to the stage where he “gets stuff.” You show him how to throw a ball, and he throws it. You show him how to play peek-a-boo, and he laughs and hides. Someone shows him how to scream at the top of his lungs, and unfortunately, he follows suit.

Now is the perfect time to start teaching him how to recognize family members. It’s very easy to do, and you don’t need the family member to do it. So you can teach your little one his wily tricks in secret, and then bust them out at the next get-together and steal the show.

What You Need

A picture of the person and some patience. When you’ve got your baby settled down or you’re reading him a story, pull out a picture frame or two. Point at the person and say who they are. Grandma, grandpa, etc. Even if they don’t get it exactly right, say “good job” and pronounce it right for them. They won’t get confused because you’re reinforcing the association, not the pronounciation. That’ll come with practice. For instance, my son says something that sounds like “Kaka” for grandpa, but he says it everytime he sees him.

At my son’s first birthday party, my Mom had lots of pictures of our family out. Since my son loves people, he made beelines for the pictures and pointed at people saying “dada” and “grandpa.” It’s a real crowd-pleaser and it’s good for their visual memory too.

A full year is over and we’re all grown up! Not really, actually, toddler years are staring us right in the face.

This blog has outgrown it’s space on Blogger, and it’s moving to a new domain. So update your feed readers, your rss subscriptions and bookmarks.

You can now find us here!

Update your subscription using any feed reader.

And be sure to update all your bookmarks using the button below.

Today’s first time parenting tip - Remember where you came from to get where you’re going

Day 1 - Today’s Tip - Have an OB that you like, trust and knows your wishes.

Even though its common sense to trust your doctor, its even more important to like them and to know without a doubt that they’re looking out for your best interests. My wife and I chose an OB/GYN with 5 doctors, and for pregnancies they all rotated both office visits and hospital coverage. Of course, we had two favorites, one we disliked, and two we didn’t know that well.

When the time came to suggest a C-section to my wife after 13 hours of fruitless labor, we were both relieved that our favorite doctor was on to talk us through it. Had it been one we didn’t like or didn’t know that well, we probably would have fought the C-section. But we trusted him, and even though we didn’t like it, we knew he would only suggest it in our best interests. Turns out it was the right call, our baby was very big, 10lbs, 23.5″, he was sideways in my normally 114 pound wife and he had the cord wrapped around his neck.

That was the first post I made a year ago today when my son was first born. Looking back over the posts I’ve made has taken me back and made me realize how far my wife and I have come as parents.

In the beginning, as you can see from the post above, my tips were general and short. We were happy just to be surviving. As time wore on we felt like maybe, in some strange universe, our son might be lucky enough to survive our bumbling attempts at parenting for another month or so. Then we got in a groove, and most things because natural.

The posts at the end of the year were more specific. Less about making it through the day, and more about making it better.

And when I look back at videos and pictures of my son over the year, I can see how much he’s changed too. I remember how fragile and completely dependent he seemed when he was first born, wailing his head off and clutching my hand because he had no idea what was going on. Now he’s walking all over the place, figuring things out for himself and still clutching to his mom or his dad when he feels scared.

It’s been a year unlike any other, and I hope I’ve helped some other parents out there. The great thing about the age we live in is that it’s so easy to share information, and you never have to feel alone.

If you’re a first time parent and are scared, don’t be. Everyone has been along the path you are about to journey down. There are lots of other people out there with experiences similar to yours.

Enjoy the ride.