Organizing Thursday: Mosslanda Picture Ledge
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I used these picture ledges for decorating my son’s room, and it’s one of my favorite parts of the space. We bought three and hung them staggered on the wall above his changing table, and I’ve seen photos on Pinterest of people using them to create multiple shelves up and down a space that normally could not be used for anything else. The covers of children’s books are so fun and beautiful that it really is such a great addition to his room — I love that the books are not hidden away on a shelf and are displayed like art. There are more expensive versions of these shelves from other places, but when IKEA makes them, why buy anything else? The 21.75″ shelf is $9.99, and the 45.25″ shelf is $12.99. Mosslanda Picture Ledge
Guys, my DH’s depression is back. A few years ago, his depression hit a point where he required inpatient hospitalization. I’ve noticed a change in his behavior (increased irritability, negative viewpoint/comments, etc.) over the last few weeks. I do not think he is in crisis, it just feels like a blow for him (and us) to have been fighting hard and making progress to be back to a point where we both see the effects of depression. I sobbed yesterday in therapy – his depression (snapping at the kids and me), feeling like I’m parenting alone, rough time of year for me (anniversary of a parent’s death). I need to believe that the return of his depression is just a bump in the road, and that we have the supports in place this time around.
My niece and goddaughter is turning 1. The role of godmother isn’t huge as the christening was a bit more of a formality, but I like the title and feel we have a little tighter bond than most for a variety of reasons beyond the title, including physical proximity.
We have a huge family, and niece will be getting lots of ‘stuff’ which my sister don’t really want, but expects. A request for ‘no gifts’ would not have been respected.
I’ve had ideas from the practical (only thing sister said she needs is clothes in the next side, and this gift is self-serving because my 4 month old daughter is getting all of her clothes) to stashing $50 somewhere, and adding to that fund each year for her birthday so when she’s 18 she has a nice little pot of cash from me. No 529 account that I’m aware of, and that sounds just not as fun as getting cold hard cash right before college.
Thoughts? Any ‘special’ but not over the top gifts you give/receive?
I need help framing a conversation with my husband. I was traveling on business and generally like to facetime with my infant daughter once a day while gone. To me, this doesn’t violate the no screen-time rule because well, it is my face! My husband is ok with this but last night after asking I wanted to VC he closed his laptop before I could respond (literally 8 minutes later) because my daughter was “too into the computer”. Like, she was looking at the lit up screen too much and crawling toward it. My husband could have just moved it out of range of her and kept an eye on it but didn’t and I missed seeing her yesterday. (He also doesn’t keep his phone ringer on so I couldn’t reach him that way either.) I don’t like to criticize when he’s parenting solo because it is super hard to take care of an infant on your own and he really stepped up. But to me, he is being so crazy for thinking that anytime a screen is lit up, it is “screen time”. How can I (very nicely) help him understand that I need to see my daughter while I’m away and that is ok if she sees a lit-up screen from time to time???
Few things, which are repeated ad nauseum with baby sleep issues:
1) Seperate nursing and bedtime by atleast 30 minutes, so nursing, bath, then bed
2) Falling asleep completely independently – no rocking, soothing, nursing etc. to bed
3) CIO in the middle of the night – so CIO / no nursing before midnight, then just 1 feeding at 3 am and CIO again until 5:30 or later
I always found point 3 extremely difficult and it didn’t work for us. We would do it and it would work and then she would regress every 10 days.
However, I did points 1 and 2 religiously though and each night varied from 0-3 wakeups, with 2x being the most standard. At about 12 months, the baby started to naturally do 0-1 wakeups and at about 15-18 months, mostly slept through the night.
Hang in there, it’s so tough.
Kiddo is 7.5 months old and is still waking up 2+ times per night to nurse. Kiddo is down by 7 pm and wakes up around 10 pm, 1 am, and 4 am (+/-an hour or two) and I am done with it. How do you drop down to one night feeding? I have no idea what happened with my first kiddo, seems like I blocked it from memory. There have been some nights where he sleeps for 5.5 hours on his own (midnight to 5:30 am) so I know he can do it, but that’s probably 5-10x in his lifetime.
I’ve tried starting solids, which hasn’t really had an effect. I’ve tried going in just to soothe him, that didn’t work. I did get him to nurse for only a few minutes the other night and return to sleep, which I considered a mini-win…. but what’s the real solution?
Thanks.
PSA: I just bought this BR dress. It’s friendly to my twin tummy and looks polished and a little different from the standard sheath or fit-and-flare work dress options I have. The length is pretty good–the measurements listed show that it fits longer than it looks like it would on the model–so I feel fine wearing it to my pretty conservative office. Maybe other moms out there can use something like this!
https://bananarepublic.gap.com/browse/product.do?cid=1005911&pcid=69883&vid=1&pid=363259012
Interior design for novices.
Y’all we are finally moving out of a series of rented places and into a forever (?!) home! We’ve always furnished our places with hand-me-down pieces, mostly from my MIL who has great style, but rather different from our own– eclectic antiques, which are lovely but a little fussy for my taste, especially with two small children. Honestly I don’t know what my interior design taste really is because I’ve had so many hand-me-down pieces and what little we have bought has been with a pretty strict budget– and with the sense that it will be temporary.
Well, that dream day of no longer being temporary has arrived and I want to buy some furniture! I have started to follow some interior designers on Instagram and am getting a sense of the style I want to emulate. I also started watching The Great Interior Design Challenge on Netflix, which is fun, but not exactly instructive. Are there good resources for design novices that I should check out? In terms of style but mostly focused on form– how to pull a room together. Ideas?
Should I be worried that my 6 month old still wants to eat every 2 hours? I don’t really mind feeding her that often but I’ve heard most other babies her age have stretched out their feeds. I’m fairly sure it’s actually hunger and not just wanting to comfort nurse. She is and always has been a great sleeper, and now sleeps 12 hours at night so even eating every 2 hours during the day only works out to 6-7 feeds/day which seems more reasonable. She’s eating some solids but not enough to affect her milk intake I don’t think.
House hunters and fans of the house hunters tv show alike! Have you faced an issue where you and your spouse/partner can’t seem to agree on which house to buy (or even, which type of house to buy…like whether to buy an apartment or hold out for a real house)? In my circumstance my SO wants to stretch, financially, to buy a bigger space that we could then “fix up” over time (we do not have the budget to do a full renovation now)…whereas I’d rather buy something more comfortably within reach where we could afford to make some cosmetic changes. Part of me wants to just give in, he’s much smarter with finances and investing than me, but on the other hand I’m worried that I will be stuck as the overseer of all future “renovation” projects / dealing with a crappy kitchen since I’m the only one who cooks etc. How do you reach agreement?
Wise hive: has anyone ever successfully called a truce to the birthday gift bag arms race? Kiddo came home from preschool yesterday with not one but two birthday gift bags containing a variety of plastic gewgaws – fairy wand, slap bracelet, whistle, etc etc. (Even if there is no birthday party/ daycare class is not invited, all ~15-20 kids in the class seem to get a gift bag, and two classmates apparently had birthdays this week. For kiddo’s birthday in May, we just brought in a big fruit platter, which the kids had along with their afternoon snack.)
I appreciate the thought and understand that some people just like giving tangible gifts, but 1) I hope other parents aren’t feeling pressured to do gift bags, 2) all the Stuff cannot possibly be good for the environment, and 3) (somewhat selfishly, I admit) it is piling up in our small apartment. What is your best advice for dealing with the knickknack escalation at school? –GCA
The thread about healthy eating is really interesting and timely for me. I try to explain “healthy” food to my almost 3 year old. She definitely understands what a “treat” is. But I don’t think I’m explaining the underlying concept right so that she’ll understand what healthy actually means and don’t really know how. Does anyone have any age appropriate book or show episode recommendations that I could use? Or a language suggestion?
I’m 20 weeks pregnant with #2. My BP is sky high and my OB has warned that I may have to stop work at some point in this pregnancy or at the very least work from home so I can limit commuting. My OB is willing to write me whatever medical note I need. My family can’t afford for me to stop work much earlier (I was planning to stop work at 38 weeks and will push that forward to 36 weeks), so I need to explore work from home. I have remote access and already work from home on evenings, weekends and sick days, so there isn’t any technical set up required. My major concern is that my boss requires a lot of face time and discussions with him are hugely more effective in person than over email/phone, and that alone will have a significant, negative effect on my practice if I’m out of the office for 20 weeks. I’m a litigator, so will need to work offsite when I have attendances regardless of whether I work in the office or from home the rest of the time. I have cleared my trial schedule for the fall.
How do I go about this? Have a conversation now warning that I might need to WFH at some point but keep a full time in-office schedule for as long as I can? Ask to WFH 1-2 days a week now to prevent my medical condition from worsening and hope that I never have to WFH full time? Any other thoughts?
I asked this earlier in the week on main board but realized I should have asked here – favorite toddler luggage? My daughter ( 3 and a half) currently insists on pushing around a giant rolling bag so we thought she should have her own to make our lives easier! And because she’ll be excited. Thanks all!
Anyone’s TMJ get worse when pregnant due to the changed sleep positions? I am headed in to see if my guard needs to be adjusted however any other tips? Enough other stuff is impacting my sleep that haha I didn’t want this added on!
Yesterday’s question about parenting styles got me thinking about this vis a vis food. My 2.5 y.o. has pretty good eating habits largely from the fact that she’s still at home and we cook for her 90 percent of the time. But as she’s getting older, it’s getting harder to avoid the pull of junk food or certain other foods that we’d just rather she not have. For example, we make pancakes but don’t put butter and syrup on them because she likes them as is so why introduce something unhealthy at this point? But, then, at a family member’s house they made pancakes and then told her about how you have to eat them with syrup and that’s what she wants now. Another example is birthday parties. We made it this far without drinking any juice, but now all the kids drink juice boxes at parties and she wants one too. Even our pediatrician doesn’t help – we went in for an appointment and they offered her a lollipop – which up to now she didn’t know existed! I know this is a losing battle and eventually she will find out about all these things. I guess my question is how do you navigate this space? Should we just accept that she’ll be exposed to this stuff and just try to limit it to parties and special occasions? How do you tell your kid that they can’t have something without sounding judgmental about it? Like, I can say “no, you can’t try beer because it’s just for grownups” but is there a version of that for other kids that would be appropriate?