Category Archives: Developmental Milestones

Traveling with your Sprout: Pointers from a Wanderlust Parent

After our son was born my wife and I welcomed him into the world and into our hectic lives. In the past year, from June 2014 to June 2015, my son has been on 7 road trips, 4 flights (2 of which were cross-country), and a half-dozen or so day-trips. He has literally traveled every month of his life, and because of this he’s been to 12 states and the District of Columbia. And he’ll add another two states this summer (Washington and Oregon). Most of this travel has been to see family and the rest is for my wife’s work (which is necessary due to my hectic life as a grad student and lack of nearby family).

Traveling with an infant—especially the first time—strikes fear in the heart of most parents. You have no control over your surroundings; comforting routines are strained or broken; you’re dealing with multiple (probably complex) logistics; and you probably forgot something essential for yourself or your child at home. People without kids will probably give you wide-eyed stares and offer you luck like you’re going to face some gauntlet involving minotaurs and mazes. Luckily it’s not that bad, especially if you plan accordingly and are in the right frame of mind. Continue reading “Traveling with your Sprout: Pointers from a Wanderlust Parent” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Summer Lovin’

Wow, two weeks went by without a WSDW post! It was kind of nice to take a little bit of a break from the blog, but it’s really crazy how fast the days go by even without “working”! With my days completely off, I was still pretty tired running errands, filling my little toddler’s days jam-packed with fun summer activities, sending out my resume and taking calls to get feelers out there for prospective jobs. It’s really surprising how even without my deadlines for blog writing, I was still very busy. Being a stay at home mom is really tiring! It’s one of those things where you can appreciate the exhaustion the other type of mom goes through – either Mom A works all day and is tired from work, cooks dinner, puts baby down to bed, packs up baby bag and meals for day care/babysitter, then passes out. On the other hand, Mom B at home gets up when baby wakes up (or earlier) and from start to finish it’s: meals, cleaning the kitchen/house, picking up after toddler, running errands to the grocery store and Target of course, meal planning, activities, driving in traffic, bedtime routine, laundry. Both are a lot of work and mom doesn’t get much time to herself. Yeesh, that was tiring just thinking about it.

With my little break from blogging and after I wrote last Saturday’s post about high-risk pregnancies, I realized how much I missed having a “purpose” after Jia went to bed. I guess it made me appreciate the work I put into my own posts. I feel like I’m doing something good, aside from raising my little girl. Doing the research and writing up informative posts is kinda energizing – as long as I’m not entirely pooped, that is.

Anyway, continuing on… Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: Summer Lovin’” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Arf Arf!

I’m trying to be better at remembering all the things she’s been doing but it’s hard. Nowadays it’s because I would usually write it down in my “reminders” app in my phone, but now since she insists on listening or watching Little Baby Bum on my phone, I often forget before I have the chance to jot it down. So this is what I can remember for this week: Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: Arf Arf!” »

Weaning from Breastfeeding

So, I was going to delay this topic for an unknown length of time because I wanted to write about other things – like, the nutritional changes breastmilk goes through after your baby is 12 months old, the physiological changes that toddlers undergo to indicate readiness to start potty training, etc. because I planned on nursing Jia until she was 18 months old.

But, since I’m getting a bit anxious to get my body back to myself I figured – hey – as long as I was reading up on it, may as well write about it! (And besides, we clocked in an entire 14.5 months of 4 nursing sessions a day.)

First Things First – What’s Recommended? Continue reading “Weaning from Breastfeeding” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: My Nature-Loving Girlie Girl

Jia’s happenings as of late: Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: My Nature-Loving Girlie Girl” »

Age-Appropriate Toys for Your Infant Sprout

This topic is a highly requested one among my readers, and for one reason or another, I’ve always put it off. I think it’s because I’ve either been inspired by a more pressing health topic or because part of me wanted to write a post – something along the lines of – My Must/Wish/Ditch List – A post that featured things I couldn’t survive without, toys or gadgets I didn’t know existed until it was a little too late (but want to make sure to order for baby #2), and things that ended up being over-marketed, overrated, and/or a waste of money that could’ve been much better spent on a better, cooler item (like, why didn’t we get a stroller that could CONVERT to a double stroller? Hindsight is 20/20). Kinda like a Baby Buyer’s Guide, helpful for grandparents, mamas prepping to register for gifts, baby shower guests, etc.

So maybe that’ll come in the next few weeks. For now, I’ll stick to what my readers have requested – toys that correspond to your baby’s developmental age.

Onto the TOYS! … Continue reading “Age-Appropriate Toys for Your Infant Sprout” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Bubble Baby!

This week has been a fun one, here’s a little recap:

Bubble Baby: After going to her first kiddie birthday party with a little container of bubbles in her goodie bag, she’s been so entranced when I blow them for her, but she either wanted to blow them herself (which she wouldn’t, she would just put the wand in her mouth after dipping it into the solution) or she wanted to play with more pretty bubbles. So we got a bubble fan machine for her and she is so happy and entertained!
Camera-Ready! This was by far the most entertaining discovery this week! We were at the playground at the outlet shopping center near our house and wanted to take pictures of Jia and Jeff since they were wearing matching Orioles gear. Jeff was holding Jia and I held up my phone, counting “1…2…3!” and she knows to plaster this huge excited enthusiastic smile, it’s the cutest thing ever! Such a huge smile that you can count all 10 of her teeth! haha… I love this!
She loves walking – Never really crawls unless she’s climbing on the playground equipment. She squeals with excitement as she runs and is being chased by us or she goes back and forth from Jeff and me, showing us twigs, flowers, leaves, anything she finds that interests her. She’s just such a happy baby! We’re so lucky 🙂
My little eater is getting a bit better! Peanut butter & jelly sandwiches on whole wheat, even scrambled eggs with smoked salmon are going well so far. Her favorite cheese so far is goat cheese (takes after her mama), she’ll eat chunks and chunks of it by itself. She likes hummus with little pieces of pita bread. Loves Boston Market’s meatloaf (doesn’t like my homemade meatloaf… sigh) and their lemony garlicky spinach. Still into homemade sweet potatoes, which I prefer her to eat since they’re purely seasoned with unsalted butter and cinnamon. I also mashed cooked cheesy cauliflower for scrambled eggs and she did well with those, too.
Naps are still 1 hour 15 minutes to 2 hours and 30 minutes. It changes day to day, with no predicting which it’ll be. Jia still goes to bed at about 7:30/7:45 PM, we are now waking up at 6:45-7:15 AM (boy do I miss the days she slept in until 8 AM or even 8:30 AM!) and takes one nap at 11:30 AM until about 12:45/1 PM.
Stridin’ Rite! We got her first pair of rubber soled shoes! She’d been wearing a pair of Robeez that her Gran got for her for Easter and put some good yardage in with them. Then we’ve noticed she is getting much better at walking, so we took our trip to Stride Rite and got her some pink sparkly Mary Jane sneaker-shoes on sale for $29.99. Those suckers cost around $40-42 a pair at Stride Rite! Anyway I love them, she loves to wear them and walk around everywhere now!
Got her first boo-boo. We were walking outside before her nap and she took a little stumble to her hands and knees but since she was on the slight downslope on the driveway, she tipped head-first when she propped herself on her hands to get up. She was tough and cried for about 10 seconds but didn’t like when I cleaned up her scrape and put cold triple antibiotic ointment on. She forgot about it pretty fast.
She is getting very mom-attached. She used to let Jeff play with her in the morning after waking up. But, now she makes a bee-line to our bedroom door to find me and is an unhappy camper if he doesn’t let her into the room. No more sleeping in an extra 45 minutes while Jeff plays with her, it’s go-time right from the start!
Where’s the Milk?? She’s starting to tug at my shirt and play with the clips of my nursing tops before feedings. Uh oh… Hahaha…

Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: Bubble Baby!” »