Stung by a WASP!

Stirling and I had just gotten back from a much need and very enjoyable walk around the neighborhood. After walks Stirling is in a wonderful mood. The two of us were just in the living room(Stirling playing with his toys and I was on the computer) when all of a sudden Stirling lets out a very loud and very upsetting scream. I was startled as to why he was suddenly devastated and quickly tried to figure out what had gone wrong. I look to my left and see a wasp just walking on the carpet. All I could think about was that Michael was gone teaching his class and what to do  if Stirling were to be allergic! I proceeded to figure out where he could have been stung while trying to kill the wasp about 5 times and then I just covered it with Stirling's frooggy potty... to have Michael deal with the wasp when he got home. I finally found the spot where the wasp had stung my sweet baby boy, his inner thigh. Thank the Lord he got stung on a fatty part of his body, and it turned out Stirling was just wanting his bottle and to be held. I am so glad he was not allergic to the wasp!!

It Has Been A VERY LONG WEEK

We have had such a long week with Stirling teething, Michael being sick and having two exams to study for myself. I want to thank echinacea and vitamin D for helping Stirling and I stay well during this past week. I usually give Stirling his vitamin D daily to help his immune system while at daycare. Since teething, Stirling has become VERY attached to his mommy, which has made it almost impossible for me to get anything done around the house one handed; therefore, I decided it was time to buy another baby carrier for Stirling. I decided that he must be able to be carried on my back, which led me to looking into purchasing a BabyHawk. I had looked at the mei tai before, but was hesitant, so this time I decided to contact the company to see if I was not too small for the babyhawk. I was informed that the Oh Snap! would possibly be too big, but the mei tai was right up my alley. Michael agreed that we could buy it and my mom helped me pick the exact colors with the help of Michael's opinion. I went with Pumpkin straps and two super cute designs(the babyhawk I purchased is reversible). After a very long week, the babyhawk has arrive and Stirling is the happiest he has been in a very long time! I am so pleased that Stirling is sooo happy while in the back carry! Perfect end to a difficult week!

Our Daycare is supportive of the ULTIMATE recycling when it comes to diapers!!

Today was Michael's first official day of graduate school as a teaching assistant and was Stirling's first day of daycare!

After finding out that Michael will not be home until 9pm (starting today) at least three days a week, and I will be working 20 hours as well as taking two graduate courses, we came to the conclusion that day care was a must at this point in our lives. In other words.... I have been stressing for about a week now about a daycare that we feel Stirling would be well taken care of during the day. Well, after countless hours on the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services website, we decided to enroll Stirling in Hilltop Montessori School.

Before making the decision, one of our friends child attends the school and we know they love it, we also looked on the CPS website and made a visit ourselves. We asked a variety of questions, such as how often do they clean and what products are used, how are children released as they are picked up, etc. A major question was about cloth diapering since I have been cloth diapering for a few months part-time. The director was very accepting of cloth diapering Stirling, and I just had to simply show her how his diapers worked, which took about 2 minutes. I am overjoyed that the daycare is accepting and supportive of my choice to have him in cloth throughout the day!

Michael and I went to pick Stirling up from his first day, and we even got a compliment on how the Bum Genius 4.0 diapers make cloth diapering easy. I am even more thrilled that they find the system simple and Stirling can climb, crawl and walk around in his cloth diapers during his time at Hilltop Montessori!

BUSY DAY

Today was a very busy day in the Shephard household. Since the both of us will be going to graduate school this semester and working, we have TONS to do around the house before Monday. Today we decided to FINALLY tackle the piles of clean laundry. After about an hour of hanging and ironing clothes, almost all of the clean laundry is put away, but we still have about three loads of laundry to clean (I HATE LAUNDRY, which doesn't help that we have twice as much with a baby).

We also decided to clean, rearrange Stirling's room and closet. Let me tell you, that child has more clothes than me! His room looks amazing and is more open with how we rearranged the furniture. I am super excited about the change.

Not only did we do laundry and rearrange the baby's room, I decided that I was going to make and store some baby food today while Stirling took an unexpected three hour nap. I made some banana with a hint of ginger, carrots and applesauce to freeze. I am just preparing for when school starts back up and we have less time to prepare food for the baby. I mixed all of his food with some breast milk instead of water to help preserve the food! Since I made some food today, I did put a bit in the fridge, so for dinner we decided to give Stirling his own bowl with some banana and see what he did. HE HAD A BLAST... a very messy one at that. But it was so cute to see his feel the texture and slowly eat the banana on his own. This is going to be what we do for dinner from now on, I think because it gave us some time to eat and kept Stirling occupied and involved at the dinner table. Yes, this is messy, but I think it will end up being worth while, especially so he can learn and explore about new foods and textures.

Oh BOY!

So today I embarked on the adventure of watching our friend's baby Si while also being in charge of Stirling for the morning. LET ME TELL YOU the boys are amazing babies, but it was such tough work watching the two of them together for four hours. Strategically having to plan everything was quite the task. When one cried, the other would cry louder or when I would hold Si then Stirling would want to be held. I had a blast, but I was exhausted! I am so thankful that the boys are awesome babies and cannot wait for them to grow-up together. I did realize from this morning that Stirling needs to be more exposed to other children; he is not quite use to the sharing of his toys concept. On the same note, it was interesting to see that Stirling knows which toys are his and which ones were Simons and to see his reaction to when Si took his toy (Stirling would immediately grab the toy from Si to play with it) vs. when Si was playing with a toy they had brought from home (Stirling would not mind one bit and carry on with his toys).

On another note, I am so proud of Stirling, BUT grossed myself out in the process. Today marks the FIRST day Stirling has gone poo in his big boy potty!!! I am so excited, but I think next time he is going to have to go in the big potty, because I nearly could not hold in my breakfast afterwords. I dread having to clean a poo poo potty again.

Milestone, Milestone, Milestone!

Apparently six months is a big month for Stirling when it comes to milestones. In the past two weeks he has begun to crawl, although he is using mostly his upper strength rather than also using his legs. Not only has Stirling begun to crawl, but he has learned to pull himself up to stand. We met with the doctor today, and even he was impressed with how well Stirling was sitting up on his own and even more impressed when we told him he could pull himself up on his own.

We have been practicing diaper- free for the past few weeks, and I am proud to say that Stirling LOVES his froggy potty and has gone to the bathroom on his potty every morning after he wakes up and randomly after naps. It is so fun to see him smiling when I make the potty sign in sign language while he is on his potty. I cannot wait until he correlates the two and begins to sign potty back!

Diaper-Free day 1

I have been interested in the different ways in which parents educate and teach their children about the potty and have the time to finally implement my preferred way to teach Stirling about the potty! I have been ultimately inspired by a book called Diaper Free... I know for most this sounds absolutely crazy, but it is such an amazing book about Elimination Communication.

After becoming completely inspired by this book, I too have faith that together Shep and I can choose a more natural approach to "potty training"(I HATE the word train, because we train our animals and teach our children, but that is an entirely different post) It is amazing that without even knowing much about EC, I already practice some of the tools mentioned by Ingrid Bauer. It is amazing how just a simple instinct is part of educating your child about elimination communication.

So, today I had the energy and the extra oomph to begin the elimination communication process. I decided to slowly being this process and Stirling was diaper- free crawling around our living room for about 20 minutes. We had his froggy potty in the room, immediately Stirling was VERY curious about the potty. We embraced this curiosity and put him on the potty and talked to him about the potty, but no elimination occurred. But I still got a feeling of success, because he was happy to be sitting on the potty and continued to show interest in the potty. For the next few weeks, I am slowly going to let him go for longer periods of diaper-freeness and better learn his signals, body language and timing! I cannot wait for this insane adventure we are about to embrace. I am sure there will be some hilarious stories to come.

Thank you all for your support, I am sure this is not something many of you understand or even really knew was possible! I am determined to have our baby be toilet independent before 2!