Zayden has never been a big fan of personal grooming. You know the kid with the perpetually runny nose? The one with a little bit of his lunch still stuck to his face? The kid that you see and think, “Why can’t his parents just wipe his face?” That’s my kid. We try to keep his face clean; we really do, but it is hard because he hates having his face wiped. He screeches, cries, and violently slaps our hands away whenever he sees a cloth or tissue coming towards him. He also puts up a fight when it comes to brushing his teeth, changing his diaper and putting on his shoes and coat.
Apparently this is a common toddler issue as they begin to assert their independence and their new found love of the word no. But we have finally found something that gets us a little extra cooperation when it comes to cleaning his face and hands: The Alligator Song.
It is a song I made up on the fly one day while struggling to clean him up after a particularly messy lunch. Zayden loves music, so he responded well and we now sing it whenever we need to clean him up from a meal. He’s so familiar with it now that he will, on occasion, hold out his other hand to be cleaned at the appropriate point in the song. He still turns his face away when we clean his face, but at least he doesn’t cry anymore.
So if you’re like us and have tried everything to get your toddler to cooperate with basic personal grooming, here’s one more thing to try: The Alligator Song (to the tune of The Wheels On The Bus).
(While washing his hands)
The alligator goes chomp chomp chomp
Chomp chomp chomp
Chomp chomp chomp
The alligator goes chomp chomp chomp
And eats up all of the crumbs
(While washing his face)
The alligator goes lick lick lick
Lick lick lick
Lick lick lick
The alligator goes lick lick lick
And cleans up your dirty face
Here is Zayden with one of his Easter basket presents. It didn't even make it through the whole weekend.
To Whom It May Concern:
If you claim that part of your product can be removed for cleaning, it should not take a full-grown adult 45 minutes to dismantle it in order to do so. On a related note, babies are messy. Why would you make a baby product with a fabric seat, cover, etc. that cannot be removed for cleaning? Furthermore, why make a product with little nooks and crannies where drool, spit up and baby food can collect?
For those of you who make clothing for infants, please note that the average new parent does not employ an array of servants to do their laundry. We do not have time for baby clothes that need to be hand washed, hung to dry and/or ironed. Babies squirm a lot, making them hard to dress, so we would appreciate wider neck holes and generous waistbands that can be easily pulled up over a diaper. And we’d especially love it if you could come up with designs for socks and shoes that stay on baby’s feet for longer than 3 minutes.
Until they are much older, babies like to play with their toys by banging them on the ground, smashing them together and chewing on them. Please make toys that can stand up to this kind of abuse. And for those of you who make the toys with the music, sound effects and flashing lights that babies love so much, we’d appreciate a volume control option. And maybe you could coordinate your efforts so that your toys play more than the same 5 nursery songs (I have seriously had “Old Macdonald” stuck in my head for 6 months). We’d also like to see more bath toys without squirt holes so that we didn’t have to worry about mildew and bacteria growing inside.
Zayden chews on the straps of his highchair, which are almost impossible to remove for cleaning.
Also consider how fast babies grow and how we will use these products. When the average baby will weigh over 25lbs. by his or her first birthday and it is considered safest for children to be rear-facing up to 30 lbs., why make an infant car seat that only goes up to 22lbs.? Why make a convertible car seat that renders the front passenger seat essentially useless when it is installed in the rear-facing position (unless you own an H3 or a spacious minivan, you know what I’m talking about)?
I could go on. Don’t get me started on pricing or impossible to follow assembly instructions or the marketing of products that are essentially unnecessary as baby essentials. Just get real already.
This is a video circulating around the mommy-sphere right now. It’s a news story that Ianiv had already heard about and had already, thankfully, influenced our purchases.
The story is about bath toys and how infested they can become. The worst offenders are toys with holes since dirty bath water goes in and festers, never really drying out. Since most bath toys these days are squirt toys, you may actually have a hard time finding hole-less toys.
Aside from that, the news piece also recommends regularly cleaning your toys with alcohol or peroxide. We don’t do this, though we should.
I have a confession to make… I’m a sniffer. Of diapers. Yes, I admit it. It’s true.
Prior to becoming a mommy myself, I would scrunch up my nose in disgust and confusion when I saw a parent sniffing a baby bottom. ‘Why not just look?’, I would ask myself.
Now, as a parent, I get it. Sniffing is faster. 90% of the time you’ll know it’s a poop and not just a fart. Though most of the time they smell different (honestly), sometimes there are ones that are iffy. The sniff test can tell you if you’ve got yourself a poop instead of a fart before confirming this with a visual test (which can be more complicated depending on the outfit.)
Zayden has never been a big fan of personal grooming. You know the kid with the perpetually runny nose? The one with a little bit of his lunch still stuck to his face? The kid that you see and think, “Why can’t his parents just wipe his face?” That’s my kid. We try to keep his face clean; we really do, but it is hard because he hates having his face wiped. He screeches, cries, and violently slaps our hands away whenever he sees a cloth or tissue coming towards him. He also puts up a fight when it comes to brushing his teeth, changing his diaper and putting on his shoes and coat.
