Screen-free ideas for at home activities with a 3 year old

I haven’t written a post in a really long time because I got a new part-time job and have been really busy. We are also expecting a new baby in a few weeks and I’ve been so tired and had a complicated pregnancy. I’ve been making a list of things to keep our son occupied while I’m breastfeeding the new baby, and here are some of my ideas (I’m sure they will each occupy him for about 10 minutes and then I’ll be back to square one in half a day!)

Using the hape lacing vehicles toy

Screen-free ideas for at home activities with a 3 year old:

• Make a necklace with the lacing vehicles toy (this is great for fine motor skills too, and has been a surprising hit for my son starting at age 2.5)
• Build a house with pillows on the bed
• Play with a sticker book (we got this train one since Jack is obsessed with trains)
• Use a coloring book
• Throw a birthday party for a stuffed animal (wrap presents in scrap paper, make a cake with wooden food)
• Paint with watercolors
• Cut scrap paper
• Play with playdough
• Sensory play with beans, ice cubes, nuts etc
• Write our own “book”
• Color with water (these water wow books have been a big hit for us)
• Play with stamps
• Do a montessori-inspired activity like transferring pom poms with tongs or play this cute apple game
• Play a cooperative board game like this one about chickens which Jack doesn’t really understand but likes to play with
• Play with a flashlight (shadow animals, or trying to catch the light)
• Set up an easy obstacle course and count how many times he can do it

I hope I have an easy recovery from childbirth because I’m worried about how I will get through the post-partum period with 2 kids. My husband will be home for about 2 weeks, but my son almost always would rather be with me, so I think it’s going to be a challenge.

Typical schedule at 20 months

I can’t believe Jack is already 20 months old! In my mind when I thought of him being two or almost two he would be saying sentences and sleeping all night… haha. It’s more like saying about 20 words half of which are not super useful (like bee) and still waking up every 2-3 hours. Oh well, this way if we have another baby sometime I won’t even miss the 8 hours of sleep! Jack also still breastfeeds a lot more than most kids his age, but I enjoy it- it’s one of the only times I get to lie down during the day and rest. In general even though some times are hard, I love being able to stay home with him most days and am so so thankful for the help I also get from his dad and my dad.

Here is what a recent day looked like for us:

7:30- J wakes up and wants to pee on the potty

-I get changed and change him

-I might have 5-10 minutes to work out while stopping to throw balls for the dog or help J with a toy

8-put breakfast in toaster oven to heat, put laundry in, get everyone ready for a walk

-walk the dog around the block with J

8:20- have breakfast and feed the dog

8:40 J wants to go to the bathroom again

8:45- I try to finish eating while J plays/makes a mess

8:50- breastfeed

9- get ready to go to the library storytime, put new load of laundry in

-clean up dishes, clean up toys, make a snack to bring

9:30- leave for library

11:15 get home and put stuff in dryer

-breastfeed

-try to nurse or wear J to sleep for an hour

12:45- I can finally sit down and relax and watch a TV show while J naps

2-J wakes up, I nurse him

2:20 make lunch and J eats lunch

2:40 clean up from lunch

-errands around the house

3:20 Brian watches J while I write up notes from work and clean up

5- my dad watches J for an hour which I really appreciate! I get to eat in peace and do some clean up

5:45- J is back and breastfeeds

6- play with J, make him a snack, read books

7- nurse

7-8 walk with Bear and wear J in the carrier to get him to sleep

Amazon store is open

I’ve been working on it for a little while, and I finally have my amazon store up and running!

It has links to my favorite baby clothes, gear, toys, and cloth diapers. It’s all the same price as normal amazon but I get a small percentage.

Amazon Store

Thanks for your support and let me know if there are any other categories you think I should add!

-Thais

Reaction to the Ohio breastfeeding study

The recent breastfeeding study comparing siblings within families is all over the news lately, and people are interpreting it as that there are no differences between breastfeeding and formula feeding babies. I know that some women can’t or don’t have the support to breastfeed, and everyone is entitled to their own decisions. However, while I’m not a medical doctor I have a doctoral research degree and just wanted to point out some issues with the study that are getting overlooked.

These are the variables they included:

Child’s Physical health:

• body mass index (BMI)
• obesity
• asthma

Behavior:

• hyperactivity
• parental attachment
• behavioral compliance

Academic achievement:

• reading comprehension
• vocabulary recognition
• math ability
• memory-based intelligence
• scholastic competence (academic performance)

There are several other important variables which have been linked to formula feeding which they did NOT include such as:

• Childhood leukemia
• Diabetes
• SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome)
• Maternal breast cancer
• Maternal ovarian cancer
• Maternal diabetes

I think it’s great that people are doing research on breastfeeding and formula, but I hope this one article doesn’t convince people not to try hard to breastfeed (since it can be difficult at first) or for employers not to support new mothers because while it would be good if formula didn’t lead to obesity, I think your child getting cancer or dying of SIDS, or a mother dying of cancer are very important variables to leave out.

In summary: formula may not lead to more obesity or some academic or behavioral problems, but there is previous research showing it is related to leukemia, SIDS, and maternal cancers. 

Moving to a new location!

Growing green is moving to a new home! Come find us at http://www.growing-green.org

I just posted an easy vegan white pizza recipe!

Halloween

We didn’t do a lot for Halloween this year because Jack is only 10 months old. I dressed him up as a bear with an organic Jacket I bought used on the natural toys B/S/T facebook group which I love. I also got some cheap white organic pants and made a little tail out of white fabric I already had. I was glad I could re-use all the parts of his costume and that they were all organic!

We ended up just going over to my dad’s house and not going to this street fair we planned on because everyone had things come up last minute, but hopefully next year will be more fun! I can’t believe Jack will be almost two then, and will be running around and have an opinion about his costume!

 

Transitioning back to part-time work

 

I have been working a little bit since having Jack, but mainly from home or days where I’m only apart from him for 4 hours or less at a time. In the last 3 weeks though, I finally started doing one or two days a week of longer days (anywhere from 4 to 10 hours away depending on how far I have to drive).

It’s been a challenge to pump because I don’t have much down time at work, and it really makes me impressed by all the moms who work full time and pump!

I only bought a manual pump after having Jack because I wasn’t sure if the expense of an electric one would be worth it since I work part-time, and so far I’ve found that I like hand expressing more than pumping. I REALLY like not having to wash off/clean any extra parts (I express right into a bottle), not having to worry about mold in the pump (that happened once!), and I don’t like the suction feel of pumping. I found that hand expressing is just as fast, and I can get about an ounce in 5 minutes if it’s been a few hours since Jack last ate.

Last week I only had time to pump for 10 minutes after 4 hours of work and I got a plugged duct, so I really need to make sure it spend more time doing it. It’s a challenge because I don’t get paid for breaks since I’m an independent contractor, so my preference is to work quickly so I can just go home and feed Jack, but I don’t want to end up with mastitis!

Jack has also never been a fan of drinking from a bottle, so we ordered some new nipples to see if that helps. He gets barely any calories from solids either. I keep reminding myself that some babies sleep 8 hours a night, so if he doesn’t eat for that long during the day he will be ok, but it still makes me nervous. Last week he ate 1/2 an ounce over 10 hours! My husband is staying with him today and trying some faster flow bottles to see if that works any better.

I feel lucky I was able to wait until Jack was 9 months old and eating some solids to leave him all day, but it’s still hard. I definitely understand why in some countries they have a year of maternity leave! It really doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that I have to pump in a bathroom stall during the day to avoid clogged ducts while my husband tries to get Jack to eat from a bottle unsuccessfully at home, when we would both be a lot happier just breastfeeding! But at least I only have to work 1-2 days a week thankfully, and I’m sure it will get easier as Jack eats more solid food eventually.

Our organic baby budget

I know that we could have save even more money (we made some mistakes as first-time parents), but looking back on how much we have spent over the past almost 9 months on Jack, I’m pretty proud of us resisting a lot of unnecessary baby items and spending more on non-toxic high quality organic things.

Here is our total expenditures on baby things for about the first 9 months. I forgot to add some things I’m sure, and didn’t have totals for other things like the small number of health supplies like baby Tylenol etc.

big items	734
clothes	219
diapers	277
eating	168
other	205
	1603

Specifics from each category:

Big items:
mattress	170
2 sheets	30
crib	200
changing pad	107
pad cover	27
high chair	200
	734
Clothes:
hat	7
swim diaper	14
green hat	8
long cat T	14
socks	9
bibs	14
sun hat	23
blue long T	14
blue pants	14
blanket	8
long T turtle	16
green pants	12
2 short T	31
long white T	11
green legwarmers	11
brown legwarmers	13
	219
Diapers:
prefolds	84
fleece	18
2 imse covers	32
2 thirsties covers	24
wool wash	5
blue newborn wool cover	39
wet bag	25
tree diaper cover	25
orange diaper cover	25
	277
Eating:
place mat	18
4 sm bottles	40
2 pumps	60
ice packs	20
large bottles, 2	30
	168
other
laundry detergent	15
toilet chair	13
beach tent	36
outlet plugs	4
baby scale	40
night light	7
potty	20
2 pack snappi	20
2 spare car seats	50
	205

We also got a lot of generous gifts from family. This included about half the clothes we used, all the toys, part of the money towards the extra car seats, and maybe 1/3rd the diaper covers. The big gifts were:

stroller	200
bouncer	167
car seat	400
moby	60
beco	130

Hopefully we can have another child, and since we already have so many one-time purchases like the cloth diapers and furniture, I bet if we had another kid or two we could only spend a couple hundred dollars on a few things like clothes and maybe another baby carrier or double stroller.

I’m sure we could have spent a lot less if we had known how everything would be beforehand. For example, we could have done with just a smaller umbrella stroller I think. We also didn’t need the changing pad, although I definitely do use it for large poopy messes sometimes. I also could have done without a pump (I find hand expressing more comfortable) and with a few fewer bottles. I also haven’t used the ice packs yet. Oh well, I feel good about how much we did save though! And we still have a happy baby who doesn’t care that he wears a lot of the same shirts all the time.

Nursing with teeth

Jack got his first tooth a few weeks ago (a front bottom one) and it’s been growing in really slowly. That’s fine with me since I’m so scared of getting bitten while breastfeeding! He clamped down several times before when he had no teeth and that already hurt, so I’m not looking forward to it happening with teeth.

The good thing about his bottom tooth coming in first is that while he nurses his tongue covers his bottom teeth, so I don’t feel anything sharp while he’s actively eating. He is growing in his top two teeth now (I can see them under the skin) and has bitten me a little three times in the last few days, and it’s scary to have a little pointy thing pressing onto your nipple! Luckily he didn’t bit down too hard, so I was able to do what the pediatrician said and stop feeding him and try to avoid eye contact or positive reinforcement for a little while so he learns nothing good happens from biting.

It’s sad because now I’m really nervous while he is breastfeeding during the day, and I watch his mouth like a hawk to try to tell is he’s going to stop eating and get bored and bite. At night it seems fine luckily. He also bit once when I offered him my breast but he wasn’t hungry, so I’m trying to be better about only offering if it’s been a while or he definitely seems hungry. I’m worried he won’t eat enough, but since he’s at the 50% percentile for weight I think he is getting enough food and hopefully can make up for it at the next feeding if I’m a little late in offering him my breast.

I’m not looking forward to feeling his little top teeth when those grow in though. Hopefully I won’t have the same experience as my friend who said her baby bit down and wouldn’t let go!

So to summarize what I do to avoid bites:

• Remove my breast when it seems like he’s done eating
• Don’t offer him my breast all the time
• Keep my finger near his mouth so I can unlatch him quickly if he bites
• If he bites, unlatch him and put him down and avoid any reinforcement (no eye contact, cuddles, talking) for a few minutes

10 ways attachment parenting helps you lose the baby weight

1. Walking around with your baby strapped on to you in a carrier for hours is good cardio! You wouldn’t just let your baby cry, and holding them and carrying them around is free exercise!
2. Breastfeeding burns 400-600 calories per day! (Doing cloth diaper laundry burns even more!)
3. If you try to eat meals with people, the baby cries if you sit down for longer than 10 minutes so you automatically can’t eat dessert.
4. Never using a stroller means you burn more calories babywearing. Squatting down to pick things up is even more exercise!
5. Breastfeeding not only burns calories but seems to mean that your baby decides he wants to eat as soon as you heat up your food. Therefore, you eat less because your food gets cold and unappetizing.
6. You don’t own a baby swing, bouncer, walker etc, so instead you get extra exercise by rocking your baby, bouncing them in your lap, and holding them.
7. If your baby cries a lot and therefore possibly has allergies, instead of trying hypoallergenic formula you go on an elimination diet. It’s basically impossible not to lose weight if you’re avoiding dairy, gluten, nuts, and soy. Soy is in almost any processed food, so you have to cook everything from scratch which is great for weight loss. Also, you can only eat salad with no dressing or cheese at restaurants!
8. The fact that you don’t nap train means baby naps at random times, so by the time you prepare your food he wakes up and you don’t have time to eat.
9. Trying to eat while wearing your sleeping baby in a carrier eliminates entire genres of food from your diet like soup which could too easily spill on your baby, hot liquids, and crumbly foods.
10. Not using a crib may mean you get stuck sitting right next to your baby in your bed while he naps, so you can’t eat any foods that make noise (bag of chips etc) while he naps. You also can’t get up for seconds without waking him, so automatic portion control!