catiebug

My kids are close in age and birthdays are a couple weeks apart. We always combine their birthday party. One big party, more fun and less trouble for us than two smaller parties when a lot of their friends outside of school (church, neighbors, etc) are shared anyway. They are now getting into school age though.

For school classmates, what do you think would be better? Invite that just says the classmate's birthday? Or mention it's the sibling's party too? I see pros and cons to both.

Putting just the classmate's name on the invite is less confusing and people won't feel like they have to bring a gift for a sibling they don't even know. But if someone shows up and the party is two or thre

Turns out it's the best night for all of us to get there during Christmas season. But I hear there can be quite a wait time for Sweet Lights on busy nights. Does the night before Thanksgiving tend to be one of those busy times or can we expect a pretty light crowd like any other Wednesday? Not so much worried about crowds inside the park, our kids only ride kiddie rides.

Slowly descending back into short nap hell. Until we got serious about nap training and dramatically lengthened her wake windows, she would nap 40 - 45 minutes max. After our tweaks and assistance, she was successfully taking 2 naps a day, 65 - 85 minutes each. Not the full 90 minutes most schedules seem to indicate, but it was working well for us. We were in a really good groove from 7-9 months. Awake around 6:30, nap at 9:30, nap at 2:00, asleep for the night by 7:00pm.

But over the last month, the naps have slipped back to short and unpredictable. There was some teething in there and separation anxiety. But even on a good day, it's still not like it was. Afternoon nap hasn't been long

I speak from the other side, with no debt (aside from mortgage), and plenty of savings. I log into my accounts weekly, but really don't do much other than nod and mentally check off that the bills due this week auto-paid correctly.

It was not always like this though. I did what you're doing right now plenty of times. Not checking my balance because I didn't want to see the bad news. Not making a plan because it felt hopeless. It gets better only when you participate.

I know this isn't strictly a women's issue, but every few weeks I hear some slightly different but horrifying stat related to women's lack of involvement or education in finances. Single, married, or otherwise, don't let your

Edit: Just in case anyone is worried, I posted this in lighthearted fun. I'm not that worried about damaging my 6 month old's psyche. 😂 I figured it was probably a relatable feeling though!

There is no Planned Parenthood in our area. So I can see this being a legitimate organization that sprung up in their absence. They reference abortion on their site and encourage a counseling appointment where they may offer a "optional" ultrasound. They also offer services and support for disadvantaged pregnant women, obviously.

I feel like I really have no way of knowing if they truly offer abortion support and counseling in good faith, or if this is one of those nefarious groups that appear to be acting responsibly but bully women out of their choice behind-the-scenes. Is there any real way to find out?

It's challenging because it's a small town and I'm new to the area. It's a highly c

Frustrated beyond belief. My husband would be thrilled to do feedings. Milk pours out of my boobs like a Wisconsin dairy with minimal pumping (I've already given away literal gallons of milk because we don't have space). I can't tote her with me everywhere like I did with my son at this age (who, of course, took a bottle like a champ anyway), because of COVID. And the solution I would employ to straighten her out (sending her to drop-in daycare as often as possible to let the experts work their magic) is also not available, due to COVID.

So rant aside, we're looking at trying a sippy cup soon. She'll be 6 months here in a hot minute. Maybe she'd take enough to at least get through one wake

We just transitioned our daughter from naps in the swing to naps in the crib. Even in the swing, she only ever took 40-45 minutes, aside from the longer first nap (maybe 90 minutes on a good day). We used it because the chaos of our life deemed it necessary that she fall sleep fast. Now that we've transitioned to the crib, naps have gotten even shorter (which I expected). Maybe 50 minutes for the first one, but 25-35 minutes for the rest. We are getting to try crib hour for the first time though. She's 5.5 months. She's gone from crying the whole remainder of the hour to laying quietly and occasionally fussing. So some progress.

Just curious how long it took for anyone to truly see longer

Not talking about the powdery ingredients, but liquid ingredients. Do recipes bear in mind that even after using the spatula to scrape as much as I can, there is still some amount of honey or milk or whatever that isn't getting into the batter? When three of the fourty-eight pages of a baking blog post are dedicated to a 12 step method to measure flour as precisely as possible, it gives me pause for thought that the cream or maple syrup I'm dumping in there next won't really be one full cup.

"Make lots of noise and don't turn out the lights when baby is napping. It'll teach them to sleep through anything!"

OH, IS THAT ALL?

Super well-meaning, but it's nothing but a crock of shit deeply marinated in confirmation bias.

Yes, very, very new babies should be exposed to light and sound and fresh air during their daytime sleep to help them define circadian rhythm. However, continuing this approach past the newborn stage does not magically teach any baby to be a deep sleeper.

Some kids are just light sleepers and they were always going to be light sleepers. Go get the blackout curtains and white noise machine and stop thinking you failed at your first parenting challenge. The

I'm pretty convinced that our baby (couple weeks shy of a year old) is not a 12-hour sleeper. Not even an 11 hour sleeper. 9 or 10 at best. We've had a problem with early wakeups forever. If he wakes up after 4am, it is Go Time^TM. There is no getting him back to sleep. We've tried feeding, moving bedtime earlier, good sleep environment, shortening naps, everything. I think he's just not inclined to sleep for more than 9 or 10 hours overnight.

He is sleep-trained. He puts himself to sleep each night, and we see/hear him do it on his own again later sometimes. But if it's anywhere past 4am, the day is starting. And he will not go down for a nap until 10am or so, regardless of when he woke up

Thought I'd share because I see a lot of other moms comment about rolling during diaper changes and doing standing diaper changes.

My little guy is off the charts active. You think your baby moves and goes a lot? Mine is a machine. Also, crazy strong. Nothing but muscle. Unparalleled strength and energy. This isn't coming from me, lol, but from a number of different friends who have dedicated their life too early childhood development. He's the baby equivalent of a Labrador Retriever that never got fat.

So when he started to roll during diaper changes, I just went with it. Standing diaper changes, let him be in charge, whatever. But I got tired of it. Decided to approach this like we did s

My 8 month old has always been a terrible napper. He is very high energy and not easily-soothed. So really crying it out (with check-ins) has been the only thing that's ever been effective. And he can cry. He is the baby that Ferber says "only a very small percentage of babies will cry for hours". Overnight training is a minimum of three to four hours of crying for the first few nights. The first few days of nap training are one hour straight of crying til we're supposed to stop, then rinse and repeat.

He goes to sleep at night fine. Once in a great while, he fusses and cries a bit, but generally I lay him down at the end of the routine and he's sleep within 3 - 5 minutes, no more than 15.