First Halloween

I went to Metrotown to try to get a last minute costume for him but the clerk at Old Navy said they didn't even carry costumes this year. There were none in Gymboree either. We needed to go grocery shopping and it was 8pm so I didn't want to wander for a costume. We just picked up a cute hat from Old Navy.

I breastfed on the benches outside Superstore. A mom with her kid in a carrier literally walked past me then backtracked and said "Good on you for feeding your kid in public! Not a lot of moms do this." I smiled and said thanks. It wasn't a big deal to me. How can a mom not feed their hungry child? When I thought about it I don't really remember the last time I saw any public breastfeeding. I made a mental note to make sure I say some encouraging words next time I see a breastfeeding mom. It turned out Olly was not in the mood for food and had a fit of giggles instead. Under the Udder Cover he just kept on laughing with my nipple in his mouth. His laugh made me laugh and I guess my laughing made him laugh more. It was the first time he laughed like that.

For his first Halloween Olly was a painter. I used the hat and pulled out a suit he had which I didn't expect to fit him yet. It was almost too small! We entered into David's work Halloween contest. Here we are as "Painting a Pompous Person":

4 Month Shots

Four month shots were just like the two month ones. Two days of fever followed by a week and a half of diarrhea. I watched him pass diarrhea on the change table. It looks like green foam coming out of his butt. Poor baby butt. This time David held Olly and I was less emotional inside. It helps that he only cried when he gets the shots and not in between.

I don't know how single moms do it

On Friday David stayed until 10pm at work. Mind you it was optional and I was a bit miffed he didn't even bother to ask me. Not that I would have said no but it would have been nice if my opinion mattered. Anyway it was the first time I had to take care of the baby by myself for a whole day. Around 7.30pm I put him down for the night and around 7:45pm I started making dinner for myself. Usually he would be good for at least 3 hours but of course at 8pm he woke up while I was in the middle of cooking. I turned off the two burners and went to console him. Once he was picked up he stopped crying but then I couldn't put him down without tons of tears. I tried the swing, the armchair, the playmat, the carpet, and nothing but my arms would satisfy. He would sense if I was sitting down so I had to stand and rock. After half an hour I was starving and my arms were dying. I was SO hungry. It was impossible to cook and hold him since he is 20lbs. I decided to put him down and suffer through the crying. I started the burners again under the cold half cooked meal and sure enough he started wailing. I started resenting my dear husband for forcing me to make a choice between neglecting my child or starving myself. I couldn't take the crying so I held him and started feeling sorry for myself. People who know me know how little I swear but I let out a loud, long F*** which alarmed the baby. I held him tightly and cried myself. It sucked. Immediately I told myself to snap out of it. My life is so freaking easy compared to the rest of the world. Eventually he fell asleep. I promised him I will never swear like that again.

Deer Lake Park

Seeing as we are in Autumn now and the weather is getting cooler and rainier, I like to head outside any time there is the smallest ray of sunshine.

A friend and I decided to meet up at Deer Lake Park.

Parking

The best free parking is on the east side of the lake. It is at the end of Sperling Avenue right beside the boat rentals and swings. It's a huge lot and there are benches with a wide view of the lake for you to enjoy while you wait. It is also the start of the trail around the lake.

First time seeing ducks.

The trail is quite narrow and will not fit two strollers across so you will have to stagger them. There is a nice playground when you get to the north end of the lake which is great for older children. We ended up spending most of our time there instead of walking around the lake. 

View going back to the parking lot

Getting chilly

Rating 

It is a nice stroll for you and your baby. The trail veers off to the street sometimes so you are not always around the lake. Not good for two strollers if you want to walk and talk. Nice views of Burnaby.

Month 3

This month is my favourite baby month so far because he has finally started laughing and if you are really funny you might get some adorable chuckles.

His mouth is pretty much open all the time but the big smiles come when:

• I pat his palms
• I stroke his face with my hair
• I dangle a blanket above him
• I make loud hiccup noises

He started drooling and it's like stringy cheese on pizza. It just keeps on stretching! I also finally realized what those baby bibs are for.

On the playmat he likes to grab onto the dog and tries to put the feet into his mouth. He's just a few centimeters too far so it's hilarious to watch him with his mouth open expecting to feel something. The mirror also gets stuck on his face and that is pretty exciting for him too.

As part of his newly developed grabbing skills he will grab the closest thing to him which is usually your neck fat. 

Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina

Relationships

Brain cares about survival before learning, they need to feel safe in order to learn.

Hostility between parents can harm newborn's developing brain and nervous system. Empathy reduces hostility. Make empathy a reflex:
1. Describe the emotional changes you think you see
2. Make a guess as to where those emotional changes came from

Most common sources of marital turbulence: sleep loss, social isolation, unequal distribution of household workload, and depression. Be aware, respond with empathy.

Smart Baby

1. Breastfeeding is brain boosting
2. Talk to baby - variety matters. Parentese helps: high pitched tone, sing song voice and stretched vowels
3. Guided play everyday which focuses on impulse control and self regulation. Tools of the Mind classroom: preschoolers fill in a play plan of what they will be doing during the play "I'm going to make a Lego castle and pretend I'm a knight", kids receive direct, open ended mechanics of pretending "I'm pretending my baby is crying. Is yours? What should we say?" At the end of the week they list what they experienced and what they learnt.

Praise effort not intelligence. "I'm so proud of you. You must have really studied hard"

Each additional hour of TV watched by a child under 3 increases likelihood of attentional problem by age 7 by 10%. No TV before 2 (even second hand TV distracts kids from their play). After age 5 TV can improve learning like Dora the Explorer. Watch the show with your kid, interacting with the media, helping them to analyze and think critically about what they just experienced.

Video games are played sitting down. Important to do aerobic exercise (increases executive brain function from 50% to 100%). Even better to exercise with children.

Happy Baby

Your infant needs you to watch, listen, and respond. Do not smother as they need to learn how to regulate their own emotions (through you labelling the emotion) and for independent play.

Labeling emotions is neurologically calming. Empathy makes good friends (relationships is number one predictor of happiness in people)

Parents who raise happy kids have four attitudes towards emotions:
They do not judge emotions - no emotion is good or bad
They acknowledge the reflexive nature of emotions - don't deny the existence of your child's emotions
They know that behaviour is a choice, even though an emotion is not
They see a crisis as a teachable moment - you never want a serious crisis to go to waste, potential catastrophe becomes potential lesson

Two tons of empathy:
To defuse a meltdown you acknowledge the child's feelings and empathize. Emotions are contagious, empathy calms the nerves.

If 30% of your interactions with your child are empathetic, you will raise a happy kid.

Moral Baby

Goal of moral development: willingness to make the right choices and to withstand pressure to make the wrong ones, even in the absence of a credible threat or the presence of reward.

Loss of emotion = loss of decision making. Proven by loss/damage to ventromedial and polar prefrontal cortices.

Need all 3:
Clear, consistent rules and rewards - visible chart for rules can help, must be warm when administering rules, every time your child follows the rules you offer praise, praising the absence of bad behaviour is just as important as praising the good.

Discipline: negative reinforcement and punishment

Punishment - must be swift (child learns faster), aversive, consistent (between all care-givers), emotionally safe (kid should feel oh they actually care about me). Punishment suppresses behaviour but not the knowledge of how to misbehave so need to teach what the proper behaviour should be. You risk counterproductivity if punish incorrectly.

Explaining the rules - important to explain the rationale of rule and its consequences, might offer how it effects others, what principles are good etc (inductive parenting)

Adapt discipline strategy to child's temperament

Spanking - 3 yr olds spanked more than twice in a month were 50% more likely to be aggressive by age 5. Spanking is more likely to trigger deferred imitation instincts than moral internalization. Inductive parenting takes effort, spanking does not. Spanking is lazy parenting?

Elimination Communication

Elimination communication (also referred to as the diaper free baby movement) is really common in China. It's what my mom did for my sister and I and it's what her mom did for her and her 3 siblings. The idea is that you take your kid to pee over the toilet or the potty at a very early age and associate the action with a sound like shhhh or pee-pee. You consistently do this so that sooner or later you can cue the sound and your baby will understand you want them to pee. As an added bonus you use less diapers as most of the business is done on the toilet and they will likely be potty trained around a year and a half as opposed to two or three.

1 month

I tried to do EC with Olly around 1 month and held him in a cradle hold over the sink. I did manage to catch some pee but the sink was a bit too high for me to secure the hold for very long. At this age it was really hard to decipher his noises to know when he needs to go, and with the added disadvantage of no head control I decided it was too early for EC.

2 months

At 2 months old he can hold his head up pretty well and would often pee while I was changing him after he wakes up. So instead of cleaning up after the spray of pee on the table and on his clothes and on his face we thought "let's just take him to the toilet!".  David and I started to sit him on the toilet seat facing the back of the toilet and sing "pee pee pee pee peeeeeeee". If he poops I say "poo poo poo poo poooo". After catching some pee and poo in the morning I was addicted!

From then on I watched him carefully and started to take note of when his diaper pee indicator turned blue. It was usually after breastfeeding and about 30 mins after that. He often cried or scrunched up his face or made some kind of sound before he needed to go. So I just started taking him whenever he made those cues. Sometimes you guess right and sometimes you guess wrong but catching a poop is sometimes the highlight of my day!

On a good day we might only use one diaper all morning but more often than not there would be a tiny poop squirt. So even if the diaper had no pee I would need to throw it away.

3 months

After a month of EC, I noticed a few times where he would pee right after I pulled the diaper off and his butt touched the seat. Is the baby making an effort to hold his pee until he's on the toilet? It could be a coincidence but I'd like to believe he's learning! I hoped he wasn't holding his pee too much because I can't take him all the time.

At 3 months old he started being a lot more vocal in general and especially on the toilet. Sometimes he would cry when we take him and push off with his legs. At first I thought he didn't want to be there so I would take him off, but sometimes he would pee or poo right after. It really made it difficult to decide whether to keep him on for just a little more while he's crying his head off. Anyway that has made a damper on the EC experience but to balance it out when I think he needs to go I say "pee pee?" and he will smile as if to say "you understand me mamma!"

4 months

Everyday after he wakes up he will have his morning pee and usually 3 squirts of poop. There is a lot of time between the poop squirts so I might be kneeling there for 10-15 mins. I got a plush bath mat from Costco to make it nicer on the knees.

He is definitely communicating to me when he needs to go. I've had several times where he would stop breastfeeding, look straight at me and try to say something. I slowly mouth the words pee-pee and he tries to make the same shape with his mouth. I say "pee pee?" again and he would smile. Twice I took him when he didn't smile back and he didn't have any pee! I think poo-poo is probably easier to say so I will try to do that.

Month 2

6 weeks
Olly has more expressive coos and louder cries. He only talks in the morning after his fart session around 5am everyday.

7 weeks
Followed my face for the first time as I switched sides breastfeeding. He also loves to stand and sit so much so that I started to use it as an anti-fussing mechanism. Apparently you shouldn't put their weight on their legs yet since their hip joints are still developing so I support most of his weight while he "stands".

8 weeks
Usually when he lies on the play mat he is just looking at things. Now he has discovered his arms and legs and will move them up and down with much excitement and vigor. While he is doing this he is hitting the dangly toys but I don't think it is intentional. It does encourage him to do it more though.

In the morning he is very enamored by the light rays on the ceiling. Sometimes he is so happy about it you start to think is he being entertained by angels? He is still waking up at 5am to fart.

Staring at the ceiling.