Good Things: teething chart

Lincoln is teething like a pro these days--drool? check. fussy? check. putting everything in sight in his mouth? check. waking during the night at all hours? double check. Today I can actually feel a huge bump on his bottom gum, so maybe we will have a break soon if it pushes through! At any rate...

I was looking up teething online (because that is what I do when there is a pain or illness in our house--take to the internet for a cure. I admit, this leads to some serious hypochondria sometimes...Lucas tries to convince me not to self diagnose, but it sure is easy; just not always accurate!) and came across this cool little teething chart so you can keep a record of when your baby's teeth came in. I don't know exactly why you would need to know what order the teeth came in, but it is a fun idea and I just printed mine out and will keep it in Lincoln's much neglected baby book, where hopefully I will remember to update it =]




The image above is just a thumbnail. If you want a printable copy, you can find the full size at The Bump.

Good Things: free printables

Staying home with Lincoln can sometimes be an exercise in creativity.  How to entertain a 3.5 month old who is sleeping less and less during the day?  A typical morning:

"Good morning, baby!  What would you like to do today?"

"ee-eerr" (means diaper change and get some new clothes on).

"Great!  Now what should we do?"

"oooo-eeer"

"Good idea.  Let's hit the gym--the floor gym, that is."

-20 minutes pass-

"waaaaa"

"I can see that you are getting tired of the gym.  Let's try out that bouncy chair of yours!"

(I find if I say things in an exciting voice, I can pass them off as novel activities instead of the same thing we do everyday at 9:15...)

"aaa--owww"

"Sure, let's get that rattle!  Good grip, buddy!"

"aaahhh"

"Um, diaper, check.  Floor gym, check.  Bouncy chair, check.  Rattle, check...I am running out of ideas here..."

Surely, he would eat a snack at any time, but at those rare instances when he isn't hungry but merely bored, I was running out of ideas.  And who wants to spend tons of money on toys that he may not even like?  Not me.  When I say I want new ideas, I mean I want new free ideas.  And so, I began looking online for free entertainment for babies.  Hulu came to mind, as I am sure there are some TV shows I am behind on, but we are doing our best not to let Lincoln watch TV (that's right, no Baby Einstein for Lincoln.  Sorry, buddy!).   

I remembered that babies like to look at high contrast images as their vision develops--things with thick black and white lines, and sometimes red contrast.  We didn't have any of these for Lincoln to feast his eyes upon, and I am not the artist, so a quick internet search produced some great "infant stimulation pictures" that I was able to print out, thus arming me with another good 30 minutes of entertainment for Lincoln.

If you would like to get some of these pictures for yourself (or your baby, whichever), you can find some at the following websites:

1.  Oh Baby! offers a set of abstract graphics that can be downloaded in .pdf format and printed off to mesmerize your little one.

2.  At Right Brain Kids, you can choose from black and white stimulation cards, math dots, musical notes on the C-scale, and colors.  These again can be downloaded as .pdf and printed.  

3.  Babystrology offers a .pdf of 6 smaller, abstract images.  Lincoln really likes this one because of the variety on the page.  It is fun to watch his gaze move from image to image.

4.  Fun Baby Games Online This website offers bigger pictures of actual objects/animals along with abstract art.  You do need to enter your e-mail address to receive a password to get to the pictures, however.  Also, at least on our computer, the pictures show up as question marks until you click on them.  AND, the entire first row of pictures takes you to an error page when you click them.  All the rest work, though, if you can ignore those few annoyances.  Lincoln really loves the dragonfly and bee from this website.  They are great pictures if you don't mind sharing your e-mail!

Hope you (and your baby) enjoy these pictures!  We do, especially since they are free =]

Good Things: Music

My apologies for the lack of baby posting lately--we got a new computer (a Macbook, for those who care about those sorts of things), and the photo editing software had a bit of a learning curve for me. Especially since I watched 30 minutes worth of tutorials for the wrong version. We have iLife 08. I watched the videos for iLife 09. Sigh. At least I'll know how to use it when we get the updated version later this month.

Next up (pause to admire how the computer keyboard just lit up--it seems to do that around 5:20 each night--probably programmed to, but I'm going to pretend it just knew it was getting dim in here...) on the baby good things list: more music! I figured I would keep going with the music theme for a bit...

Because we knew we would most likely be listening to the same songs over and over for a good 3-5 years, we decided to search out some "non-annoying" children's music for Lincoln. Behold our finds:

We'll start the reviews starting at the top left and progress in a clockwise manner:

1. Snacktime by The Barenaked Ladies: At the moment, I am currently only able to review up through song 7 of this CD. I can, however, tell you that we love love love this CD up to that point! We use this CD during each and every diaper change--in particular, we use song #3--Pollywog in a Bog. Lincoln can be crying and upon hearing the beginning "bum bum, bum bum bum...", calms down, and sometimes even smiles. Which is a shame, because that means we have to miss out on song number 2--the Ninja song. This song is hilarious, at least for adults. I suppose some children might find "The ninjas are deadly and silent. They're also unspeakably violent" cause for a night or two of nightmares. But if they get past that line, they'll discover that the ninjas also, "speak Japanese and do whatever they please, and sometimes they vacation in Ireland." See, not so scary! They're hanging out with the leprechauns! Going back to the Pollywog song...this song has been stuck in my head for about a week now--replacing the Lollipop song from last week. When you hear it, oh 10-12 times a day, it is bound to. We especially love the pollywog rap in the middle "Ribbet Ribbet, a tadpole exhibit, it's a transformation no one can inhibit..". Highly highly recommend this CD. So much better than Raffi.

2. & 3. These 2 are part of the Rock-a-Bye baby series that takes popular albums and remakes them as wordless lullabies with soothing instruments like the glockenspiel, xylophone, and mellotron. Aunt Lindsay bought these for Lincoln before he was born and he has become a big fan of them. We have the Beatles and U2 albums. We may look into adding some more of these to our collection--they have quite a variety on the website that look interesting!

4. Here Come the One, Two, Threes--They Might Be Giants. Unfortunately, I can't review this one just yet. I'll have to come back to this if Lincoln ever tires of the Pollywog song. Can't see that happening anytime soon, though, so maybe I'll stick this one in the car...

"Its a pollywog in a bog, swimming on a soggy log, one day he'll be a frog, a pollywog in a bog..."
(Lucas is currently changing the baby, so a brief snippet of pollywog for you. Wouldn't want you to be left out.)

I think we made a good choice going with these CDs versus day after day of Baby Beluga. If you are looking to do the same, you won't be sorry!

Good Things: MIKA

I spend a lot of time online reading reviews of baby products/ideas/techniques on blogs, review boards, forums, message boards, etc. I thought since pretty much everything we try with Lincoln is a new experience, I might as well document what we like and don't like--maybe the information could help another new mom or dad, or at the very least, we'll have a record of what worked and what didn't!

First up: MIKA's youtube video for the song Lollipop.

This song has the amazing ability to calm Lincoln down--we just crank up the volume on the computer and dance away! I heard about the magical properties of this song from our photographer who did Lincoln's newborn pictures. I bet we currently put in a good 3-4 listens a day to that song, and have come up with some pretty awesome dance moves as well. Which reminds me that we have an upcoming music video of our own coming out, as soon as we get a computer that will let us edit video...but you all will be the first to see its debut, I can promise you that.

I'm not sure if this will be a daily thing/weekly thing/biweekly thing...probably just a "when I have time and feel like it" thing. But, I hope to post somewhat regularly!