Upgraded baby storage

I'm always looking for a good place to store the baby. Remember a couple months ago when I told you about that drawer in the kitchen where we keep her? She's gotten bigger, so we've had to upgrade. The cabinet in the entry seems to work out nicely.

About the time I almost started a business ... but didn't

Ah! Babywearing. What does that mean, exactly? Well, it is pretty much what it sounds like: rather than pushing your baby around in a stroller, you wear her in a carrier. The types of carrier are numerous: stretchy wrap, woven wrap, soft structured carrier, mei tai, ring sling, pouch. There are more, but those are the most common. The brands are even more numerous than that. I feel a baby carrier is an indispensable parenting tool. Really, an absolute must, particularly if your babe is a bit high maintenance like ours is. Not having a baby carrier is like not having diapers. Sure, you can manage without, but it wouldn't be pretty. I honestly don't know how I would survive without a carrier (or ... um ... 17?)

Side note: This week is International Babywearing Week!

Sometimes I feel like I'm in some sort of secret club because of how great babywearing is and how few people I actually see doing it. Sure, we have a stroller. It's a jogging stroller and it rocks and I use it for ... jogging. We have travelled several times with Sierra in her 15 months of life and never once have we had to haul a stroller through an airport or in an out of a vehicle. I want to go up to every parent I see and tell them the secret. To let them know just how much easier a good baby carrier would make their life. ... but that would make me seem crazy. So I don't do it. And I'm not talking about the baby bjorn-type "crotch dangler" carriers. They only work well until your baby is ... oh, about 10 pounds or so and then they start to be uncomfortable for the user. Since you can't even begin to use them until baby is 8 pounds, well, that's just not very useful at all. Plus, dangling by the crotch is not a great position for the baby to be in, developmentally speaking, and I can't imagine it's very comfortable either. And I'm not talking about those bag slings. (Please, please, don't put your baby in a bag sling, it reduces the amount of oxygen that gets to them!) I am talking about a good, well-made baby carrier that is comfortable for both baby and wearer and that is actually useful when your baby gets heavier!

I was fortunate enough to start my venture into parenting with a ring sling. A friend had kindly informed me that it was something that I needed to have. She was right. It took me a bit to figure it out, but once I did, wow! the liberation I experienced when I finally figured out how to nurse in a sling!

Somehow, I discovered The Babywearer (a website) and read about mei tais (say MAY tie). I ordered a gently used one and it was almost instant love. I also came across the DIY forum on that site, and oh! what a glorious find that was! You mean ... I can make these myself?! I started out with a ring sling, then delved into making mei tais. I had the one I bought, and I looked a few online tutorials, and from there, I just took off. I tweaked a little here, changed the dimensions there, added a pockets, changed the strap angle until I had a mei tai that was ... perfect!

Now, I mentioned that there are a lot of brands of baby carriers, but most of them are small business, and many of those are work-at-home-mamas. I felt that my product was on par with something you could buy in a store and that there was certainly room in the market for one more brand of mei tai. My plan was to start a very small business so that I could share the babywearing love. I applied for my Federal Employer Identification Number, I secured the paperwork to set myself up as an LLC, I had an appointment with the small business development center, I wrote my business plan, I researched my competition, researched options for online sales, talked to a friend about setting up a website, purchased two domain names, completed a detailed supply-cost break down, called the county business offices, found fabric wholesales and was sent samples and price sheets, developed a logo ... then I tried to get product liability insurance and my business endeavor came to a screeching halt.

I spoke to 15 different insurance agents. Fifteen! Most of them told me they couldn't help me. Three said they might be able to help. One gave me a quote of $15,000/year. The lowest quote was nearly $5400/year. My business plan was to make fewer than 10 carriers per month. With those numbers, there is no way I can justify the cost of insurance. My choices were:
a) Change my business plan and go big, making carriers full-time, 40+ hours a week, put additional money into advertising so I can make that many sales. With a large sales volume, I could justify the insurance cost.
b) Operate at the small scale I intended without liability insurance. Sure, I could do that, and the likelihood that someone would sue me is probably very low, and other mei tai makers DO operate without insurance. But my personal feeling is that is an extremely irresponsible business decision.

Even if I AM an LLC and I have every customer sign a waiver, that doesn't prevent someone from suing me if they drop their baby while using a carrier made by me. Even if they can't prove negligence on my part (of course they couldn't!), and I win a law suit case, I'm still out the legal fees of around $300/hour. Yikes! Mei tais were introduced into the US around 2003. In the 6+ years they have been used by US parents, there have been precisely zero lawsuits involving these carriers. But I don't want to be the first one. We live in a litigious society.

So that leaves me with: c) Sadly, give up the idea of going into business.

But here are some pretty carriers that I have made!





More of my carriers can be found here.

Monkey!

So, I'm working again. Occassional weeks. About four hours a week. Anyway, my first day was today, and when I got home, the first thing Jason said was, "Oh. My. God. She climbs everything!"

Um ... I know! Apparently, I had forgotten to mention just how much of a monkey Sierra has become in just the last couple days! Yikes! This morning, she pulled out this stool we have in the kitchen and used it to climb up on the table and play in the cats' water bowl. Which is on top of the table because we moved it there when she was playing in it on the floor! So, I moved the stool into the dining room. It must have been 15 minutes later that she climbed the stool and got stuck because she couldn't get back down from out of the windowsill! Yesterday, she pulled the chair out from my desk, climbed on top of the desk and threw an entire pencil holder full of writing utensils on the floor. The day before that, she climbed up into the chair of the desk where our desktop computer sits. The chair has wheels and when she tried to reach out for the computer keyboard, the chair rolled backwards, so she was suspended, dangling in layout position with her hands on the desk and her feet on the chair! Yikes! My main job at this point is "spotter" ... or maybe "preventor of emergency room visits." Sheesh!

"She looks great!"

Sierra had her 15 month check-up yesterday and her NP (nurse practitioner) said "she looks great." She's 21.2 pounds (just above 25th percentile) and 30-1/2 inches tall (50th percentile). Our little peanut!

When asked how she was sleeping, I just kind of like ... "ummm ... better than she was 6 months ago." Then our NP suggested "There is a book by a man named Richard Ferber ..." I stopped her right there telling her, yes, I have heard of Richard Ferber, and no, I would not be following his advice as I am completely against his methodology. Luckily, she didn't pursue the issue further. I think if asked about Sierra's sleep again, I will just say "Fine." Because, at this point, it's sometimes still rough, but we have found something that works for us. We're all rested and happy, and frankly, I just don't see why "sleep through the night" has to be some goal for your baby as quickly as possible. We will continue encouraging good sleep habits and Sierra will get there when she gets there.

By the way, the "Ferber Method" as I understand it, is essentially sleep training. The idea is to allow your baby to cry longer and longer each night before going to comfort her. By doing this, the baby is suppose to learn to "self-soothe." I personally feel that that's a load of crap. I've likely mentioned this before, but she's not learning to "self-soothe", she's learning that when she cries, we won't come to comfort her, so what the point of crying. Besides that, this method won't work with our child anyway. I know from experience that in order for her to fall back asleep on most (though no longer all) occassions on her own, I would have to let her cry for longer than I'm comfortable with. She will cry long enough that leaving her is just plain mean, and in my opinion, irresponsible. I do understand that some children really are able to put themselves back to sleep at a fairly early age. And I say, absolutely your child can cry for a few minutes to resettle. If I just leave my baby in her crib crying and she falls asleep, she has not "self-soothed" she has cried herself to sleep.

Hmm ... and here I am on this sleep topic again. I must be feeling defensive.

Phoenix, here we come!

Well, I registered for the Phoenix 1/2 marathon last night. Race is January 17th, and January seems like the ideal time to visit Phoenix. Especially since Monica tells me that by April it is 117 degrees there. All the time. Okay, not quite, but I don't want to go in the summer; I just wouldn't be able to enjoy myself. January, though, should be lovely.

I was shocked after my most recent half, in May when I ran my fastest time ever! By seven minutes! On two running days per week! Granted, I was swimming and biking once a week and lifting three times a week ... but still!! I was so close to breaking 90 minutes that I would love to try for that in Phoenix. If my calculations are correct, I'll have to drop an average of 10 sec/mile or so. Which seems insane since I was going pretty quick already. We'll just see how it goes! My plan is to run 3-4 days a week and add some speedwork. I'll have to research some workouts.

Today, I got myself out on the track in the hot hot heat and ran 3x(4x400m), 1 min recovery between reps, 6 min recovery between sets. I was running pretty consistently 1:26. Not as fast as I could once upon a time, but I'm really happy with it.

On parenting a high needs child

Our baby book of choice deems babies like Sierra "high needs". I call her high maintenance. What I mean by that is she requires a higher level of parental attention than many babies (at least from what I've gathered by informally talking to [many] friends with wee ones). When a friend with a 12 week old (or 12 month old!) comments that "my baby sleeps 9/10/11/12 hours at a time" or "falls asleep in their crib at 7pm" or "naps for 3 hours" I usually just want to plug my ears and go "la-la-la-la-la-la-la ... I can't heee-ar you." Admittedly, I'm a little jealous. There. I said it. You, person whose baby sleeps sooooo well: I. am. jealous. of. you!

At first, and for a long time, I thought I was doing something wrong, that we were doing something wrong. There must be some parenting secret that we somehow missed, that page got torn out of the manual that came with the baby, or we missed that extra workshop on troubleshooting. But no, it seems, that's actually not the case. I've read a lot, I've had extensive discussions on some parenting forums, I've tried everything* to coax some extended sleeping out of my beautiful little girl. It's getting better. I remember at Christmas commenting how we had had one miraculous night of five straight hours of sleep. Now, we've had two miraculous nights of seven straight hours of sleep (and a few more fives ... and a couple sixes).

And it's not just the distance, it the take-off as well. It is very, very difficult to get Sierra down to sleep in the first place. When she was tiny, we very quickly realized that no one would be getting any sleep at all unless Sierra was sleeping touching me. Though we never intened to co-sleep, we fell into it because it was the only thing that worked. And it works! Even though we have several wake-ups per night, it's typically pretty easy to get the baby back to sleep. And now that I just wrote that, I realized that recently, once she comes to bed with us, I don't usually hear from her until after 5am, sometimes later.

So our routine is this: bath time (often bath by daddy), story (also often by daddy), rocking/singing/nurse to sleep. Sometimes I'll nurse her first and then Jason will do the rocking/sing to sleep. Then we put her down in her crib. Sometimes that lasts until her head hits the matress, sometimes it lasts 20 minutes, or an hour, sometimes it lasts 4 hours. When she wakes up, Jason or I will get her, and if Jason has already gone to sleep (I'm the night owl around here), I'll rock her back to sleep. When she wakes up after I've gone to bed, I'll go get her and bring her to bed (or I'll ask Jason and he'll go get her and bring her to bed). Sometimes this goes smoothly and she goes right back to sleep, sometimes she has to be angry and scream about it first.

It's frustrating sometimes. Sometimes, it's really, really, really frustrating. (you know, why, oh, why won't this child just sleep on her own ... clearly God is punishing me for something ... I must have residual bad karma from another life ... or something!) Last night was one of the nights. Jason was on duty, so it was me and baby. She had a bath and I put her to bed. An hour later, she was up. I got her back to sleep and an hour later, she was up again. We've been having a spell of nights like that and I just couldn't take it anymore. So I let her cry. And cry. And cry. For 30 minutes (maybe a little more). She wasn't screaming, I refuse to let her scream because it's obviously not healthy, but she was clearly expressing that she needed me. And I ignored her. Why? There certainly wasn't anything more important than my daughter that I had to attend to. I had just reached the end of my rope. Then I went and picked her up out of her crib. And she immediately stopped crying. And nestled up to me. And sobbed. Oh, what a sad sound. I just rocked her and said I was sorry and snuggled her.

There is no possible way for someone who doesn't have an infant like this to understand what it's like. You just can't. I have received some advice from well-meaning folks, and well, it just doesn't work. I just try and reflect on how much better sleep is than it was a year ago, I realize that the longer stretches are getting more frequent, and I try and enjoy the beauty of my child sound asleep snuggled into my side. She won't be there forever. But it's what she needs now.

*not everything. I refuse to try the most extreme measures because, bottom line, they are cruel and neglectful and no child deserves that treatment.

P.S. My friend Monica inspired this post. Her little girl Abbie fights sleep like Sierra does, and I understand what she's going through like so many others can't. Monica's most recent post expressed the same frustration that I've felt many times and I just needed to say this.

Escape artist

A couple of weeks ago, I went downstairs to get the laundry from the dryer and left Sierra in the kitchen with Jason.

...

Our laundry room is in the "basement". I use the term basement loosely because it's really more of a cement cubicle beneath the kitchen. In order to get to the laundry, you have to walk outside, across the deck, down the steps, and go in a door on the side of the house. It's kinda scary down there. It's not particularly weather proof, so it's always sort of damp down there despite the dehumidifier and there is just a single light bulb.

...

Where was I? Oh, right. Sierra is in the kitchen with Jason while I walk out the back door. Thirty seconds later (or maybe a minute an thirty seconds, but not long. As long as it takes to walk down, get the laundry, and walk back up and into the house), I reappeared in the kitchen.

"Where's the baby?" I said.

"I thought she was with you," Jason answered.

(Um ... no! Why on earth would I carry the baby downstairs to get the laundry?!)

I didn't hear her or immediately see her, so I walked through into the dining room. Then I glanced out the front door ... and there she was on the porch! Just getting ready to head down the stairs. Sheesh! Apparently, the screen door had not latched all the way and she just pushed it open and walked outside.

Today, I found out, it wasn't *entirely* Jason's fault. Sierra is tricky! I was putting the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and Sierra was in the very next room, an enclosed back porch with a sliding door that opens on to the deck. I had the glass door open, the screen firmly closed and Sierra was looking out the window at the birds/squirrels/trees (she likes outside). I suddenly realized I could no longer hear her babbling or messing with dog toys or banging on the door frame. The clever little girl had managed to wiggle her fingers into the crack next to the screen door and get it open just enough to slip out (no easy feat, as the door is pretty old and you really have to shove it to get it open!). By the time I caught her, she has already crossed the deck, gone down the stair and was in the little drive next to the house playing in the gravel. Wow!

No!

Oh, YES, my (not quite) 15-month has said the word "NO." It actually sounds really cute coming out in her darling little voice. That being said, I'm fairly certain that she doesn't actually grasp the full meaning of "no" just yet. I'm sure when she figures it out, it will be much less cute. Let's hope that's still a few more months away.

So, a communication update. In addition to "no," Sierra also says these words:
Dada
Mama
puppy (well, "buh-bee", but we get the idea)
uh-oh
ball (baw)
bath (baa)
Milo (Maa-oh. Milo is the 6-year-old that lives down the road. He is her hero.)
hi
bye bye
night-night (nigh-nigh)

She learned "Nana" and "Paw-paw" when we were in St. Louis visiting Jason's parents, but hasn't had reason to say those words since.

She also does animal sounds for kitty (a perfect "meow", this was the first animal sound and we didn't teach it to her. She copied the cat. True story), dog, tiger (she growls. it's awesome), cow (maaaow), chicken, duck (dat-dat-dat, apparently "quack" is hard to say!), elephant.

In addition, she has learned several more signs since I last posted about that at the end of June. Back then, she knew 6 signs ("more", "milk", "o's" (cheerios), "all done", "water" and "strawberry").

She has since added "up", "down", "cheese", "ice cream", "eat", and "please".

Some big shoes to fill

Oops!She tried to walk in Daddy's shoes!

Mary's Rock

A trip to Shenandoah yesterday. A girls' trip to Shenandoah (plus Casey the hound!). Sierra and I headed out with our friend Shari and the two pups to hike up to Mary's Rock. We were on the road (don't faint, now) before 8:30am! I know! I can hardly believe it myself! That meant it was still pretty early when we hit the trail and since it is September and it was Thursday, our hike to the top was completely serene. We didn't pass one other person until we were on our way back down.

This trail was really lovely, even though the entire way to the top (almost 2 miles) was completely uphill. With no breaks of flat area. Phew! There were actually several places where the trail was on the edge of the bluff and we could see over the trees and take in some of the mountain views.

We had a little rest at the top, and took in some amazing views. Sierra found a "baby cave," which was just a little place where the branches of the shrubs had grown over in an arch and had a grand time playing with the rocks. (Don't threaten her with "Santa will bring you a box of rocks." She'd be thrilled.)



The hike down was just as nice as the hike up (and much less strenuous, as we were going down!). We passed a few hikers going up, the weather couldn't have been more perfect, and sumac was in fruit and added splashed of color to the woods.


At the bottom, we spread our blanket out under a tree and enjoyed a picnic in the grass overlooking a meadow.

And we were home in time for Shari to meet the bus!

I don't know!

I don't know!
I dunno!
I...don't...know...
Dunno!!

Happy Birthday, Harper

There are a lot of little ones at Woodberry. Really. I've lost count. I think there are 10 or so within a year either direction of Sierra. Closest in age is Harper, who turned one August 25th. Last Saturday, we were invited to celebrate the Big 0-1 with Harper and her family and it was such a fun time! There were half a dozen or so 1-year-olds there

plus another 10 or so kiddos of other ages.




There was a pinata for the big kids


but the little ones got to play too (they were just much less effective at actually hitting the pinata!).



Happy Birthday, Harper!