Aiden has learned to talk by mimicking us, so perhaps it’s inevitable that we begin to mimic him. Some of Aiden’s words are so endearing, that I’ve begun to use them myself. Yep, I’m talking like a toddler.
Just the other night, I texted the following to Ianiv:
“Feel free to let him play in his ‘bool’ and don’t forget the ‘gicken’.”
That’s me, taking a break, and trying to give Ianiv ideas for how to entertain our teething toddler and for what to give him for dinner. Saying pool and chicken just wasn’t as fun.
Sometimes, the words are so cute that I don’t even want to correct Aiden’s pronunciation. There’s something endearing about Aiden saying “gock” instead of “rock”, but I try to use the proper pronunciation myself, in reply… at least most of the time.
From time to time, I will find myself telling Aiden “There is no ‘Boo Whoa’” instead of
“There is no other one”, because he’s been saying Boo Whoa for so long that it’s almost a part of our shared vocabulary.
Do you find yourself talking like a toddler too?
I am now in organizational bliss. The perpetual state of toy chaos in our living room (aka the play room) was driving me mad. After we got rid of the play mats, which went from ok-looking to destroyed by the cat, and are maybe toxic anyway, and got a cheap carpet, my toy-overload-stress diminished. But not enough. Though we have bins, it was too chaotic for my liking. I could never find the toys I wanted – nor could Aiden.
So, I went on the hunt for an organization system. One that would fit our allotted space, have bins Aiden could easily remove, and actually look nice. None of that white particle board or rainbow bin crap they most typically sell for kids toy storage.
I first looked at the children’s stores and came up with no luck. I next checked Ikea, and the closest I came was the Expedit bookcase, though with the $20 clear bins it was going to be pricey and either too small (4 cubbies) or too large (8 cubbies). All the kids storage came in barf-tastic color options. By chance, I happened across the Martha Stewart shelving collection at Home Depot. Bingo! A 6 cube organizer in a tolerable color with $9 bins. I chose to leave 2 shelves open for books and larger toys.
And now… bliss! I can sort to my heart’s content. We have one drawer for music toys, one for cars, one for electronic toys and one for miscellaneous. Add to that the 3 drawers in our tv unit for food toys & blocks, and 2 bins for megablocks and soft toys, and it’s perfect. Not everything goes *away* at the end of the day, but most of it can. And Aiden knows exactly where to find what he wants to play with – it’s neat to see!
(And yes, I know I’m crazy)
The soon-to-be dad installs the first few boards.
Long before we learned we were pregnant, we had plans to get rid of the grungy carpet in our condo and replace it with hardwood floors, but we kept putting it off. Once the test was positive, we knew we couldn’t stall any longer. New floors would be almost impossible to install once we had a baby in the house. Besides, carpet and baby aren’t exactly a practical combination.
Our dreams of hardwood were squashed when we learned that our concrete subfloor made them much more difficult (and expensive) to install. Our only choice was to use laminate flooring, which we lamented because we thought laminate floors were of lower quality than hardwood floors, but as we researched and prepared for our DIY flooring project, we soon learned that laminate floors vary greatly in quality and that good quality laminate floors were a better match with small children (and pets, if you have them) than hardwood.
Yes, the 99¢/sq. ft. flooring that you can find on sale at places like Home Depot is low quality and it looks fake. Part of the reason it looks fake is because it usually has the same woodgrain image on the front of every board. Higher quality laminate will have multiple images within the same pack, resulting in greater woodgrain variation that better mimics the look of hardwood.
Laminate is also manufactured to “click” into place without the use of nails or glue making it faster and easier to install–something that is very important if you plan to do the job yourself in the course of a weekend. We enlisted the help of two friends who had both the tools and the prior experience to help us get the job done without completely destroying our home. Installing floors is definitely not a task to be undertaken by a lone weekend warrior. We appreciated the tips and tricks they’d learned from experience–and the table saw came in handy too.
Every pregnant mama needs a nail gun.
With their help, we installed about 800 sq. ft. of flooring in just 48 hours. And since the baby was born, it’s been a god send. Why is laminate so compatible with kids? Probably because it’s indestructible. I can’t tell you how many objects have been dropped on it from high chair height or scraped across it during play sessions. It’s also much, much easier to clean than carpet–something we really appreciate after a big spit up, messy self-feeding session and/or explosive diaper. Most recently, the smoothness of the floors have allowed Z to use a dining chair as a walker while taking his first few assisted steps, something he could never have done on carpet.
So if you plan to install new floors in the near future and can’t decide between hardwood and laminate, I would encourage you to go with laminate. It’s usually cheaper; it’s easier and faster to install; and it’s virtually indestructible, making it the perfect choice for high traffic areas in your home.
We purchased our flooring materials at Just Flooring in Vancouver and highly recommend them for their great selection and wonderful customer service.
When we first bought our condo, we loved the open concept floor plan. Now that we have a mobile baby, we’re starting to see the flaws in the design. Small, open spaces are especially difficult to baby-proof. A small space means every area in our house is in regular use; we don’t have an extra room or closet where we can stick things that are off-limits to Z. The openness means that he can easily gain access to most things in our house–we have great sight-lines to watch him getting in to everything, but there’s little we can do to stop him other than constantly pulling him away from the same object over and over again, repeatedly uttering, “Not a toy.”
When Z was brand new, we didn’t worry about baby-proofing; he would stay wherever we left him when we had to put him down. But thanks to some visits from friends with toddlers, we quickly realized those easy days weren’t going to last long. As soon as he started rolling over, we started to baby-proof. We did all the standard things first: outlet covers, corner guards, play mat, cord shorteners for our blinds, latches on cabinet doors, etc. But as he learned to crawl and started to explore every nook and cranny of our apartment, we have discovered that a small space presents safety issues that can’t be solved with basic baby-proofing.
We don’t have an office where we can safely stow away the computer and all its wires and cords. It’s in the living room along with our bookshelves, our electronics and just about everything else we own. We managed to block off the entire kitchen by putting an extra wide baby gate between the counter and the wall, but everything else in our primary living area is still open territory for our curious little boy. Our wine rack is now in our bedroom next to the night table because it’s the only room in the house that we can close the door on besides the bathroom. My husband is working on rigging up a hook system on the back of our desk so that the majority of the computer wires are tucked out of Z’s reach, and he’s bought a special power bar for our TV console so that the PVR can stay on all the time, but we can turn all the other electronics off when they’re not in use to minimize potential damage during those times when Z wants to spend a whole afternoon pressing random buttons. But it’s impossible for us to put every potentially breakable or dangerous item out of reach. We have to watch him pretty carefully most of the time because if we turn or backs for even a few seconds we’re liable to find him tearing into one of the books from a low bookshelf or licking the wheels of his stroller. We don’t have room for a play pen, but we do have an exersaucer that we can put him in when we need to buy ourselves a few hands free minutes. 
There is still one major issue for which we’ve yet to come up with a solution: the fireplace. It’s a gas fireplace with a pane of glass that heats up very quickly when in use; it’s also the only source of heat for the main living area of our home in the winter. We’ve looked into getting a baby gate to go around the fireplace, but at 2′ x 6′, it would take up too much of our limited floor space. A fireplace screen is another option, but most of the ones we’ve looked at are decorative and impractical. They also aren’t secure and could topple easily if our little guy decides to pull himself up using the screen.
We know that the need for supervision and the challenge of baby-proofing aren’t unique to our baby or our home. Do you have any creative solutions to common problems or baby-proofing tips you’d like to share?
Although we’ve always been on the fence about using disposable diapers, we know we’re simply not organized enough to get on the cloth diaper bandwagon. To go along with our disposable diapering system, we chose the Dékor Diaper Pail.
We chose this over comparable brands because it seemed like an easy system to use – just step on the pedal and toss in the diaper – and it uses biodegradable diaper bags. The bag system is a tubular bag system that you tie off at each end, so it’s pretty easy to use.
Like advertised, the diaper bin does a great job keeping odors down… until you have to toss in another diaper. Since each diaper is not individually wrapped, which seemed wasteful to us, you can catch a whiff of the lovely warm mess inside.
As for the bin, it’s otherwise quite great. We change the bag about every 7-10 days, though not all our diapers go in that bin (we change diapers downstairs too) and Aiden doesn’t go through a huge number of diapers per day. I have never counted how many diapers fit in the pail, but it’s probably upwards of 40 diapers. You can really stuff them in there, though that’s just usually us being lazy about changing the bag.
The one downside I see to the product is that the latch to open the front to change the bag is not as child-proof as it could be. I can foresee Aiden figuring out how to undo the latch, which could expose the in-built bag cutting edge inside. This is a hypothetical though, but it’s something I’ve considered.
Purchased from Jack & Lola
