Baby Clothes (and Laundry)

I spend the majority of my time clothes shopping, buying baby clothes. In fact I can hardly remember the last time I bought myself something nice to wear. I've already told you how much I love Carter's but I have a few other favorites too. I really like to shop at Gymboree and Baby Gap. It's pretty easy since in our mall they are directly across from each other. I don't have to walk very far and I get a lot accomplished. I'm also a sale-rack shopper and coupon user. At Gymboree, for example, I only buy from their sale stuff (which is practically everything in the store) and I always have a coupon like 20% off entire purchase, or GymBucks which are $25 off for every $50 you spend. I rarely buy anything full price because it will eventually go on sale and honestly, do my kids really need it right now?

I also take really good care of our clothes. I enjoy doing laundry - it relaxes me. I usually spend an entire day doing ours rather than a little each day. However, this week it took me 3 days (even with my little helper).




I'm a little obsessive compulsive but this is how I do it. First, I sort everything. All the baby clothes get washed separate from mine and my husband's. We have several loads including baby whites, baby lights, only burp cloths, baby towels and washcloths, adult towels, darks, blacks, reds & pinks, scrubs, and sheets. After I sort, I inspect everything for stains and use stain remover or soak if necessary. With the baby stuff I usually do an extra rinse cycle. It might be a waste of water but it's worth it to me. After it's washed and dried, I LOVE to fold it all. I dump it on the couch and go to town. I make perfect little creases and pretty much fold it like the store clerk has to.

Now that I have 2 kids it seems like the laundry has tripled. I prefer to do the laundry myself but am getting much better accepting help. You see, I fold shirts in thirds and then in half, whereas he folds them in half and then in half again, leaving a crease down the center. The end result is the same - the shirt gets folded.

As for ironing - I hate it! I only iron when I have to. I'm so lucky that my husband wears scrubs because I don't have to iron dress shirts and slacks each week. Although I'm sure there are some people out there who iron scrubs.

So back to the baby clothes. After the kids grow out of a particular size I put them away nicely in a bin for storage. With Sophia's clothes, I saved them until I found out I was having a boy. Then I offered them to a friend who had a baby girl recently. She looked through them and kept one bin's worth and returned two full bins. So now I'm stuck with two full bins of baby girl clothes. I debated long (very long) whether to donate them, sell them on eBay or Craigslist, or take them to the children's consignment store. I finally broke down yesterday and took them to Children's Orchard here in Valencia. After looking through them, she bought one bin's worth for $83 store credit or $65 cash. I took the cash. I do shop there occasionally but rarely spend more than $20 at a time. When I got home I started to feel like I made a mistake. I basically just sold at least $250 worth of clothes, if not way more, for only $65. I could probably have sold them on Craigslist or eBay individually for a better profit. Oh well, live and learn.

Friday Playgroup

Today we hosted MOMS Club playgroup at our house. It happens every Friday but rotates homes each week. It usually lasts an hour and a half. Today there were five moms, five toddlers and four infants. For us that's a larger than usual crowd. I think we were all happy to finally have healthy kids and nice weather. It has been raining a lot in SoCal and there have been so many viruses going around that we haven't had a chance to get together.

As you can imagine it's really loud and hectic with lots of little kids running around your house. But it's fun to watch them play. Luckily, the weather was beautiful and they played outside on the jungle gym and slide we got for Christmas. Inside, they shared the toys nicely while the moms talked about adult things like dinner dates, vacation plans, and of course...our kids. All in all it was a typical Friday morning - the kind we look forward to each week.

The Missing Kidney

How much can one mom handle? In the past few years I've had my fair share of burdens and it seems like they keep popping up one after the other. Supposedly God only gives you what you can handle, but does he know I'm not a superhero? Does he know that one more thing might push me over the edge? I mean, does he really want to meet me that soon? Lately, I'm not sure but for some reason I'm being tested in a big way.

You can only imagine my complete state of shock when the pediatrician told me that Sophia may have been born with only one kidney. Her left kidney could not be found on the ultrasound from the previous week. I took the sheet from her hands and sorta chuckled. Yes, I chuckled. I mean one kidney? C'mon, she already has a weak heart. The doctor suggested a CAT scan and that was that. I didn't ask questions. I didn't worry like a frantic parent. I was actually pretty calm. For those of you who know me...I didn't even cry! I left the office, paper in hand, and kept looking at it over and over. It read, "The left kidney was not seen, possible congenitally absent left kidney." Hmmm...now I know that you can live with only one kidney. People do it all the time. Some people even generously donate one kidney so a loved one can continue to live. But being born with only one kidney - that sounded silly, medically probable, but silly.

After the initial shock wore off, I suddenly remembered that Sophia had an ultrasound at another office when she was three months old. They never mentioned a missing kidney. I rushed over to that office and requested the medical records. There it was - "the left kidney measured 5.4 cm." What a relief, right? Well, not yet. Maybe the left kidney never grew? I asked my husband if this was a possibility. He too thought the whole thing sounded silly but wasn't sure what to make of it. He called to schedule another ultrasound.

So this morning my starving daughter (she had to fast) and her daddy went to get another ultrasound. And I'm happy to say that Sophia has two perfectly normal healthy kidneys. Thank You God, I really wasn't ready to meet you either!

Nothing Compares

All kids are different. You always hear people saying this and finally I've witnessed it firsthand. It's so funny how you could be telling the pediatrician your baby never sleeps or that he sleeps all the time and the doctor will say "That's normal." How can opposite behaviors both be normal? Lately I've found myself comparing my own two children with each other. And now I get it. They are completely different, yet both normal.

Sophia was the perfect baby in every way. She would just sit in her bouncer chair for hours, quiet, content, eyes wide open, staring the world in the face. She hardly ever cried. Thomas is very different. Of course he's also a perfect baby. But whenever he's awake, he's anything but quiet. It also seems like his eyes are always closed unless he's in his swing or being rocked.

So just for fun let's compare. Feel free to pull out your baby books and add your 2 month checkup results in the comments.

Sophia at 2 month checkup
10 pounds, 9 ounces (50th percentile) and 21.75 inches (25th percentile)

Thomas at 2 month checkup
12 pounds, 11 ounces (70th percentile) and 23.5 inches (67th percentile)

A Day in the Life

Apparently there are people out there who still don't know exactly what the stay-at-home mom (SAHM) does all day. I mean when I "applied" for this position I had NO IDEA HOW HARD IT WOULD BE but I had a vague idea of what I'd be doing all day. I'm dead serious. It is so much harder than sitting in a square cubicle crunching numbers in Excel, cataloging frozen blood, analyzing monkey pee, manufacturing life-improving cancer drugs, and even bartending in a crowded bar on my feet all night.

Today a friend of mine forwarded an article from the Washington Post where a lady (without kids) wrote in questioning the typical mommy day even going so far as to say that stay-at-home moms probably have kids as an excuse to stay home, relax and enjoy. Relax? Are you serious? I can't tell you the last time I relaxed. I know it's important but there's just not enough time. Enjoy? Yes I am enjoying the time I'm spending nurturing and teaching my children. But it's no day in the park (no pun intended).

In response to the article and for those reading my blog, wondering what I do all day, here's a quick list off the top of my head.

* Prepare three meals a day (includes meal planning, recipe scouring, grocery shopping, cooking or acquiring takeout, and storing leftovers)

* Feed baby every 4-6 hours (that's about six times per day...and night)

* Laundry for four people including clothes, sheets, and towels (sort, wash, dry, fold, put away)

* Dishes for three meals and four people

* Get kids dressed in the morning (pick out clothes, wrestle and wrangle to get pants on after shirt before she runs off pantless)

* Change many diapers

* Pick up toys ALL day long in various locations throughout the house and return to playroom

* Rock, cuddle, swaddle and try to calm baby down multiple times a day

* Play with kids (i.e. educational hour)...includes learning numbers, ABCs, animals and their sounds, colors, sign language, words, sentences, climbing, singing, dancing, jumping, etc. I am their primary teacher and they have A LOT to learn.

* Sometimes we go to the park or for a walk or to a playdate at a friend's house

* Go to Target for necessities like paper towels, diapers, and lotion forgetting to buy medicine for the fourth time this month

* Wait patiently for daddy to get home from work so we can ask him to help with bathtime and bedtime because by the end of the day I'M EXHAUSTED.

So for anyone who thinks being a mom is an excuse to relax and enjoy the day...please don't have children or you will be very surprised. It's a hard job whether you stay home or go to work. I can only imagine what it's like to be a working mom because I'll probably never wear those shoes. But the shoes I do wear are those of the job, Mom. Being a mom is hard no matter which path you take but can be very rewarding. I wouldn't trade it for any other job out there!

Phone vs. Email

When I was a teenager I would talk on the phone all night. I remember using the time-lady and call-waiting to my advantage. My friends and I would plan our late-night calls ahead of time. We would both call the time-lady at the designated time and then one of us would hang up and call the other person at exactly the right time and the phone would never ring, waking up the parents, because the call would come in as call-waiting. Genius. Maybe.

The funny thing is that now that I'm a mom I can't stand talking on the phone. I just don't have the patience to carry on a conversation while wiping spit-up off my free shoulder, protecting my phone from toddler theft, and straining to hear (or talk) over the background noise of two kids. So often times I find myself emailing friends and family for quick questions that could be answered in a quick two-minute phone call.

Today I realized I might have a communication problem when I started to email my husband about this upcoming Friday. I mean he did just work seven fourteen hour shifts in a row but it's not like he's out of town or even reads email at work. He's probably going to read my email in the kitchen on the same Dell laptop I'm using right now. So why do I have to email him? Why can't I just ask him when he gets home? Well I'm a mom. By the time he gets home I'll forget to ask. And I don't like to call him at work especially because I know he'll want to talk about it when he gets home. Instead I emailed him as a reminder to discuss it later this evening. It felt silly nonetheless.

In the wonderful world of all things technological it's amazing how we are able to reconnect with long-lost classmates and coworkers on sites like Facebook and MySpace. Teenagers don't have to rely on the time-lady and call-waiting. They have vibrate mode, text and instant messaging, as well as email at thier fingertips. Somehow we are closer than ever to those far away, yet distant to those closest to us. I'm just wondering if and when email will completely replace phonecalls? I know for me, sadly, I'm almost there.

Children's Hospital

Whenever I think of Children's Hospital my heart skips a beat. And sometimes even tears fill my eyes. You can only imagine how I get when those free address labels come in the mail. I have to send in a donation, even if it's only twenty bucks. And when my MOPS group asked for fuzzy slippers as a donation, I went a little crazy and bought 8 pairs of the cutest ones I could find. Because for those of you who have never been there (it's worth a visit) it's a special place that makes you realize exactly how lucky you are to be alive and healthy. And more importantly they sort of saved my daughter.

When my first baby was born in July 2007, I never imagined there would be something wrong with him or her. Ten fingers, ten toes, right? Right. But unfortunately Sophia was born with a congenital heart defect - pulmonary stenosis - and we were completely surprised. She was rushed by helicopter to CHLA where she stayed in the NICU for the first 9 days of her brand new life.

Now 19 months later, she seems perfectly healthy in every way. She's super rambunctious, full of energy, eats well and is starting to speak in sentences. After three balloon valvuloplastys, countless echocardiograms and tons of medical bills...I'm hoping that we are finally in the clear. We don't go back until May but it's never too early to starting hoping for the best and preparing for the worse. Because every time I enter those glass doors I am all too aware of the possibilities and very thankful for the doctors and nurses on staff.

Then (hours after birth) and...

Now (19 months later)

The Weekmiddle

In the wonderful world of medicine there are no holidays, no three-day weekends, and generally no weekends at all. Accidents happen. Sickness never sleeps. And the emergency room goes on. Surprisingly, Saturdays are meaningless to me. Today is just another stay-at-home-mom day.

Remember when weekend meant fun? It was a two-day break from the monotony of the everyday routine. No work and no school for two whole days! Well here in our household everyday is exactly that - EVERY day. As a stay-at-home mom I never really get a break - let alone two whole days! My darling husband works in the medical field and often works entire weekends, most holidays, some nights and yes even the beloved Saturday. This makes our Saturday quite depressing because in reality there are no play dates on Saturday. Most of our friends seem too busy with family to get together and the usual hangouts are too crowded with families. All of this makes Saturday kinda boring...it's just another day of the week.

Now on the bright side...my husband doesn't work seven days a week (that would drive me insane). Usually he gets Wednesdays off (my favorite day of the week) and this week Thursday and Friday too. So for all of you waiting in line to see the baby gorilla at the zoo this weekend, we'll be there on a weekday without you...enjoying our three-day weekmiddle. I guess I consider us lucky to be bored today.

Brand Loyalty

As a stay-at-home mom I am usually conflicted on whether to save money OR remain loyal to the brands we love? For years I have been using the same products day in and day out. Although I could probably save money using other products or generic brands - but I'm not and probably never will.

Here's a list of the brands we love:

Diapers: Pampers for Girls and Huggies for Boys
When Sophia was born I started using Pampers Swaddlers because I received a huge box at my baby shower. Then when she got bigger we switched to Pampers Cruisers. With Pampers we rarely ever had a leaky diaper except the rare times when she would have a "blowout" (in which case no diaper would have worked). So Pampers work well and we love them.

However, when Thomas was born...we started using Swaddlers (brand loyalty) and found that the free Huggies from the hospital were better! Yes, I denied it at first and kept trying to use the Pampers. But when you have a newborn (remember when you first brought them home how scary and fragile they seemed) the umbilical cord cutout was a lifesaver plus they just seemed to fit better and were more stretchy. So Thomas wears Huggies Supreme and we love those. Now to be fair, we have never tried Huggies for Sophia in the bigger sizes.

Baby Wipes
For wipes we use Pampers Sensitive wipes. I'm not a big fan of fragrances and these are very mild and since my husband has sensitive skin...I just assumed my kids would too.

Baby Lotion and Bath Wash
A friend of mine suggested we use AVEENO Baby Products when my daughter was born. She even sent me a gift basket with all their products. Now I grew up with Johnson & Johnson baby products but read something online about their products containing possible carcinogens! The thought of using products on my children that could potentially cause cancer was unthinkable. So we stuck with AVEENO - more specifically the Calming Comfort baby wash and lotion. We also use AVEENO sunblock for baby (and adults).

The funny thing about parenting is that once you find something that works - you don't dare change in fear that your child will change too. The "Calming" lotion did exactly what it was supposed to do - calm baby - so we've been using it every night before bed for 19 months, 1 week and 3 days. I don't know what would happen if we skipped a night but I'm not about to find out!

Baby Medicine
As a former employee of a major pharmaceutical company I find it very hard to use generic drugs even though as a scientist I know the active ingredients are the same. So for medicine we use the major brands like Children's and Infants' Tylenol, Children's Motrin, Infants' Mylicon, Little Noses Saline Spray/Drops and Little Tummies Gripe Water. We actually never used the Gripe Water until Thomas was born. It has been a lifesaver when nothing else worked to calm him.

Formula and Bottles
Both of my children are exclusively breastfed. Well obviously Thomas is still nursing but I am planning on nursing him for a year (or at least six months). Sophia was switched to formula right before her 1st birthday. We used Enfamil NextStep because we received a free sample in the mail. It worked so like all my products - we stuck with it. She is still getting one 4 oz bottle before bed but we are trying to wean her in the next few days or weeks completely.

We did use bottles occasionally with both children. When you're nursing, it does get kinda tricky when you first introduce the bottle. Some "experts" refer to it as nipple confusion. I think it's probably "flow" confusion. Afterall, I'm a mom therefore expert, right? So we tried five different brands of baby bottles - Gerber Nuk, The First Years Soothie, Philips Avent, Adiri and Dr. Brown's. Luckily Dr. Brown's worked!!! I can't tell you how excited I was to be able to finally pump some milk and leave the house knowing the baby would take the bottle. As for the pump - I have Medela's Swing breast pump.

Pacifiers and Sippy Cups
Sophia got her first Soothie pacifier in the NICU when she was extubated and she liked it. Otherwise I'm not sure I would have been a "paci" mom. Once she outgrew the Soothie pacifier we switched to Gerber Nuk pacifiers. They are the #1 selling pacifier brand in the USA and have been around for ages. However, with Thomas we tried to use the Gerber NUK ones but he actually prefers the Soothie ones. Eventually he'll graduate to the Gerber ones.

We use Playtex sippy cups - the Sipster and the Insulator. We tried other brands but these are by far the best and truly leak-proof. There was another brand that we tried and Sophia quickly learned how to take the lid off!

Baby Food
We used both Earth's Best Organic baby food and Gerber baby food. Sophia also loves to eat Gerber Graduates Veggie Puffs and Yogurt Melts.

Mom Food
Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke - thought I'd throw that in

Onesies
We absolutely love Carter's onesies! Well we love Carter's period. Pajamas. Pants. Socks. Bibs. Towels. It's actually a good thing for us that the closest Carter's store is 17 miles away!

Laundry
Oh my gosh laundry, where do I start? In the beginning like all new moms I used Dreft. I really didn't love it and I didn't hate it either. But once I switched from Cheer to Cheer Free & Gentle for Dan and I, it didn't make sense to buy Dreft anymore. So I use Cheer Free & Gentle on all our clothes and Bounce Free dryer sheets. I still haven't found a stain remover that I love so please send your success stories to me.

That's it for now. If have a product that you think I would love - send me an email. I'll try anything once unless it interferes with our sleep routine!

Blog-o-block

So I'm suffereing from blog-o-block. I haven't quite decided where I going with this blog yet. Part of me wants to write about the past and part of me wants to write about the present. I'm torn...I'll let you know when I've figured it out.

Welcome!!!

WELCOME! Thanks for visiting my site. I've decided to start writing about my daily adventures in motherhood so that I can help others in the same boat, share some of my experiences and even learn from my own mistakes.

I am a stay-at-home mom and wife to 2 beautiful children and an amazing, hard-working husband. My husband works a little over 45 hours per week at a nearby hospital in the emergency department. We have been married for almost 3 years. Our oldest daughter was born in July 2007 with a heart defect (more on that later). We also have a son who was born in December 2008. I always knew I wanted to stay at home when I had children but I never knew it would be SO hard. Now I know and soon you will too!