This year though, we feasted on chicken pot pie

pizza pockets made with pie crust

and key lime pie!

My parents visited the Florida Keys and learned that *authentic* key lime pie is yellow, not green. They brought back some key lime juice. I think I put it to pretty good use.

Here’s a tip to save you from a rookie mistake. If you’re putting whipped cream on your pie before serving it to a group (or before taking a pretty picture for your blog) go ahead and make a decorative border. If you’ll be eating it over a few days, you might want to apply the whipped cream to one slice at a time.

Seconds?
No matter how resourceful you think you are, don’t tell your husband that you added apple and cherry baby food puree to the crockpot, even after he tells you how delicious your barbecue pulled chicken is. You may end up with more leftovers than you’d counted on.

Hypothetically Speaking…
IF your baby has one of those awesome rubbery bibs with a pocket to catch dropped morsels, and IF she’s repeatedly “asking” for refills of water in her plastic shotglass, and IF you’re too distracted emptying the dishwasher and making brownies vegetables to help each sip get to her lips…don’t be surprised when you take off the bib and it’s full to the brim with water she has carefully collected one half ounce at a time.

Excuse Me?
If you’re doing some early potty training, and love how cute your baby looks perched on the toilet with her special seat reading board books to herself, don’t be surprised if she starts clapping for anybody in the household who, um, passes gas.

Plump It Up
If your raisins have crystallized, you can plump them up in warm water (or microwave a bit) and keep them in the fridge. Easier for Baby to chew, probably better for her teeth than regular sticky raisins, and you don’t have to throw them away!

Act Your Age
When you find yourself sounding like a toddler, trying to pull your cell phone out of Baby’s hands to check the text that just came in, declaring, “It’s mine!” use the wording that worked so well in my preschool teacher days: Your turn. My turn. That tells them that even though they have it in this instant they don’t have it forever. Conversely, even though they DON’T have it this instant, it is not lost to them forever.

Eager Beaver

When I was browsing the various baby gizmos available for shower registries, I did not select a method for covering her crib’s railings from her gnawing teeth. Plastic and rubbery versions were available, but I didn’t want to permanently cover the pretty wood, and didn’t see any reviews about damage caused when removing the gizmos. I figured I would wait to see if Siena chewed on her crib, and if so, I figured I could teach her NOT to do so. (Sound like a first time pregnant mother to anybody else?) Not surprisingly, soon after Siena had teeth her crib started to look like it had been attacked by beavers while my angel slept. I noted a cloth covering in a friend’s blog, and tried using her old cradle bumpers (smaller than crib bumpers) tied around the railings to achieve a similar effect. It’s been a great solution so far!

Do you notice that my Toddler Edition is shorter than the Infant Edition? I’ll keep you posted as Siena teaches me more about parenting a toddler. In the meantime, I’d love to hear any tips YOU have to offer!Leave them in the comments section below.

Get Used To Used
Lots of baby items in very good shape end up in consignment shops, CraigsList, garage sales, even Freecycle. Before you buy yourself the swing, Jumparoo, or Bumbo seat you didn’t get at the baby shower, consider a used one for a fraction the price of new. (Just be very careful with used car seats and cribs.) I don’t think I’d ever set foot in a consignment shop before having Siena, but now I’m a regular. These are good resources for offloading your equipment when you’re done with it, too!

All You Need Is…Love?
Yes, it does help to gear up for Baby, but really all you need when you first come home from the hospital is a place for Baby to sleep. They most likely will send you home with diapers, wipes, a little shirt, a hat, baby shampoo, a pacifier if you want it, swaddling smarts, and either formula samples or a working grasp of breastfeeding! (Remind yourself of that if you start to have nightmares that Baby comes early and you don’t have bags packed or a perfect nursery!!)

Whistle While You Wipe
Whistling, making a funny noise, or narrating in a singsongy voice work wonders at making unpleasant experiences, such as wiping baby’s face, more fun. And if Baby’s having more fun, you are too!

Master The Middle
Dressing a wriggly, wailing newborn (or toddler…) can be tedious enough, but it’s even more frustrating when you have to unsnap and re-snap the onesie because you didn’t get them lined up right the first time. Once I started snapping the middle snap first, things got much faster because I did it correctly the first time!

Hierarchy of Fasteners
When choosing baby clothes: snaps beat buttons, zippers beat snaps!

Can You Hear Me Now?
We registered for a baby monitor, because we “knew” everybody needs a baby monitor. But we didn’t just get the cheapest baby monitor – HawkInWinter researched the kind 1) with the least static, 2) that operates on a special frequency so we wouldn’t pick up our neighbors’ baby monitors (and vice versa) and 3) that wouldn’t interfere with cordless phones or wireless internet.

And we never use our baby monitor.

We live in a one story house, and if she’s crying we can hear her. If she’s just making cooing noises at 3 am, we don’t particularly WANT to hear her. So that was sort of a waste.

What we LOVE though, is a handed down video monitor.

Apart from the adorable-ness factor of spying on her when she doesn’t know we’re watching, it’s been quite revealing about her sleep habits. I had THOUGHT she napped for about 40 minutes in the mornings. I discovered that once she quieted down from her disappointment over being left in her crib, she played silently for about 40 minutes (walking back and forth in her crib, lying down and waving at herself, paging through a board book…) then fussed when she was bored. Previously I was going in to get her after a minute or two of complaining, thinking she was done sleeping (when in reality she was done entertaining herself, but hadn’t slept). Now that I can see she hasn’t had a wink of sleep, sometimes I see she’s actually laying down and fussing, barely moving, close to falling asleep. Even if she hasn’t laid down yet, I’ve learned that if I wait her out, she will fall asleep for about an hour.

The same thing is true at the end of a nap. If she’s still laying down but complaining, there’s a chance she’ll go back to sleep another ten minutes or more before complaining again. If she’s standing up crying, I may as well go get her.

3 Strikes, You’re Out
I have learned not to follow the weight suggestions on packs of diapers.  If Baby’s diaper has had three blow-outs or leaks in a day, move to the next size up.  Siena is barely 21 pounds but is in size 5, which supposedly starts at 28 pounds.  I’m needing less stain remover since the switch.

Speaking of Stain Remover…

Not all onesies need to be saved. Chances are you have newborn and 3 month onesies coming out your ears. If you’re changing a particularly disgusting onesie and just can’t bring yourself to lift it over your newborn’s precious face (rolling first can help if it’s not too bad) don’t be afraid to declare it a disposable onesie. Simply – but carefully of course –  pull it away from Baby’s body, cut it off, and toss it in the diaper pail.

For those clothes you do want to salvage, I suggest collecting the pre-treated stained clothes in one of those zipping mesh laundry bags meant for washing pantyhose. Once I figured out this method, I simply checked the contents of the bag before choosing some to go in the dryer and others to spray and wash again. It was so frustrating to pull slightly-lighter-stained clothes out of the dryer, realizing I’d just set the stain. Baby clothes are so tiny that there can be a few dozen in each load. I didn’t always take the time to check each tiny item for stains between the washer and dryer, and you probably won’t either.

We All Need a Little Spooning

Every now and then, borrow Baby’s bowl and spoon and slowly feed yourself some ice cream nonfat organic yogurt. There’s just something very satisfying and comforting about that soft teensy spoon! Parents of infants can use all the indulgent little moments they can get, and for me that often included a tiny spoon.

Who else has some tips to share? Come back Friday for the Toddler Edition!