first cold...

I thought babies who were breast feeding were not likely to get sick...not true.  Maggie was hit with her first cold.  Yuck!  It wasn't a really bad one, so there wasn't any coughing (thank goodness), but her nose was running like crazy.  She would sneeze a ton and her nose constantly ran.  I had to use the nose suction thing 5 or 6 times a day.  Poor thing...I'm sure she is going to have nightmares about nose suctions and then flash backs when she sees a turkey baster. :)  My sister did tell me about a product called Little Noses.  It is a simple saline solution that you add to their nose to help loosen everything up (Target also sells a generic brand).  It also makes it easier to suction everything out.  I actually use the saline every night (even when she is not sick) after her bath.  That way her nose is nice and clear while sleeping and a sneeze won't wake her in the middle of the night.  Maybe Maggie's cold would have been worse if I wasn't nursing, but it still did last about 6 days.  It also screwed up her sleeping schedule and she went from sleeping through the night to waking up at 3 in the morning.  It took almost 3 weeks to get back on track.  Who knew it would be this hard...only every other mother out there! :)

Your Baby Can Read - Month 2

Maggie is on month two of Your Baby Can Read.Not much difference since last month.  She still likes the videos and does some overall good squealing, but she is not reading any Dickens yet.  The videos are actually pretty amateur/dated, so they get old (for me) very fast.  We had a friend give us some Baby Einstein videos and they are done much better.  There is a whole series of Baby Einstein:  Monet, Da Vinci, Galileo, etc.  I enjoy them much more, although I don't think Maggie cares that much.  She just likes the pictures, colors and songs.  Your Baby Can Read does focus much more on the words and does show them on the screen and repeats them twice.  It then shows a picture of whatever the word is.  It is everything from animals to motions.  It does say to show the video twice a day and that never happens.  I don't even show it everyday.  I think at 5 months, there isn't too much to worry about and I think that if I followed what the instructions say it would be a bit much.  There are also flash cards that have words on them too.  You are supposed to show the flash card and repeat the word.  We are not very diligent about that, but at 5 months it feels a bit like overkill.  I will continue to use it and we'll see how it goes.  I do have to say that she loves books.  She loves to hold them and she will look at the pictures as I turn the pages.  It's amazing that at 5 months it seems as if she is listening to me read the story.  It really shows how important it is to read to your child!  So, no Oliver Twist, but she loves Belly Button Book! by Sandra Boynton.  Happy Reading!

Smoke Detectors!!

I found out that my baby can sleep...through just about anything!  In our house the smoke detectors are all hard wired and have batteries as back up in case the power were to go out.  I don't know what went wrong, but the other night every single smoke detector in the house went off at once.  We were all asleep and we were jolted up (it was only 11pm...definitely considered the middle of the night in our house now) by the screeching sound of smoke alarms.  There was no fire, but there must have been a short in the wires or something.  Anyways, Kaleb had to throw on clothes and run outside to flip the breaker in the electrical box to turn them off.  After I figured out what was going on I ran into Maggie's room to make sure she was ok and she was sound asleep.  She was on her back with her arms up over her head sleeping like, well, a baby. There is even a smoke detector in her room...holy cow.  Now I'm thinking I don't need to whisper every time she goes down for a nap!