Reasons the Ten Month Old Doesn't Want to Sleep

Over the years I've heard lots of people talk about those first newborn months as the hardest to survive when a new baby arrives.  With Sadie, our colicky high needs baby, this was absolutely the case (actually the whole first 18 months of not sleeping more than an hour or two at a time are a blur).

Our last three babies have been incredibly easy newborns, who spent most of their time swaddled or being worn, sleeping.  But there is an age that arrives where I've come to dread the nights (in a much smaller way than what moms with colicky newborn experience) and it usually arrive around ten months.  

At ten months old Patch, Maggie, and James all seemed to realize that the world continued after they went to bed and they absolutely did not want to miss a moment of it.  James has reached that stage this week.  And as I tried to convince him to go to sleep last night I began to write this post in my head, trying to store away all the reasons that he would not even try to close his sweet little eyes.  

I should probably add that when he first refuses to sleep I would try to bring him downstairs and play with him, and he would scream to be picked up.  He didn't want to sit on my lap.  He absolutely didn't want me to eat my own dinner (I'd fed the kids while Paul was getting out the door to work and had made the mistake of thinking I'd eat after they went to bed).  Or brush my teeth.  Or let me pick up a book while I've heard him and do the last night of prayers preparing for our upcoming consecration to Jesus through Mary.  He didn't want me to do anything.  He didn't want to do anything.  But most of all, he didn't want to sleep.

And now here is an abridged list of all the reasons that James does not want to go to sleep (with an attempt at remembering them in chronological order).  Beginning while I tried to convince him to go to sleep in my arms, after realizing that putting him down, and even laying next to him and playing with him on his blanket was just not happening.

He wants to see the cat first.

He wants to grab the cat.  

He wants to yank on the cat's tail.  

In case you're worried, Kittyfish is incredibly smart and doesn't come anywhere near our younger three while they are awake.  No cats were harmed in the writing of this post.

He wants to scream (happily) while he watched our cat watch the cat across the street from our front window.

He wants to pick up a spoon I was trying to eat dinner with, off of the table.

He wants to eat my dinner (after eating his own and Patch's.  Notably he does not want a snack when I offer it).  

He wants to bang the spoon against my bowl.  While I try to eat.

He wants to get down off of my lap.  

He wants me to pick him up.  

After going upstairs...

He wants to find the idiot cat who's followed us upstairs and is meowing in the room with us.

He wants to grab the cat.

He wants to eat my watch.

He wants me to take the watch off so he can find the two lights he knows that are on the back that measure my pulse.

He wants to eat my phone.

He wants to stick his fingers in the fan.

He wants to pull the fan out of the window.

He wants me to turn the fan back on.  

He doesn't want the blanket touching his legs.

He's cold because the fan is back on and the blanket isn't touching his legs.

He wants me to hold him up over my head while I lay on my back and tell him he's an airplane.

He wants me to hold him up over my head while I lay on my back and tell him he's an airplane.

He wants me to hold him up over my head while I lay on my back and tell him he's an airplane.

He needs to find where I plugged in my phone.  

He's trying to squeeze himself down between the wall and the bed.  

He wants to put his fingers into the fan (and while the fan is off we discover that that is actually impossible with this fan.  Thankfully.).

He wants to nurse.

He doesn't want to nurse.

He absolutely does not want to nurse.

He's thirsty and decides he needs to nurse.

He's not getting much milk because he spent the previous hour before he started fussing, nursing (and he had been burped, so it wasn't that).

He's changed his mind and wants to find the cat again.  

He needs to look out the two inches of window space between the fan and the curtain.  

He wants to know why I won't pick him up and pretend he's an airplane.  

He's too tired to sleep.  

Oh but he can sleep in the stroller.  While we walk past traffic and go over extremely rough sidewalks.

And finally after two hours of trying to get him to sleep he and I fell asleep, only to be woken when a certain two year old who's had a high fever for two days woke up and needed Mommy... approximately half an hour after getting James to sleep.  

Thankfully, I was able to get everyone to sleep again in less than ten minutes.  

Now if I could only remember how long this phase of not wanting to sleep lasts... It's a sweet time, but it sure is exhausting!  

7 Quick Takes Friday: With Signs, Smiles and a Baby that Just Won't Sleep!

-1-

I had big laundry folding plans for tonight but I'm afraid James might outlast them, because while all the big kids crashed early after getting up before the sun to get out the door before the sky had even started to lighten, followed by shuffling here and there and finally playing outside in the warmth, one little guy did not get the memo about going to sleep early.  And every single time I looked at him he would giggle and look at me like this.  

I've been trying to convince him that he's supposed to be tired because it's been a long, long day already he starts giggling again and then fussing because he can't have all the fun he thinks he should be having in his bassinet or playpen.  

Except that all it took was watching me type those last two paragraphs after hours of trying to convince him that if he was really as tired as he seemed to be he should actually try closing his eyes for him to be out cold.  

I should have tried sitting down to write this post hours ago.  

-2-

Yesterday when I posted this picture I thought that Maggie was pointing.  On two separate occasions she very clearly pointed and said "Look!  Look!" with her arm flung wide above our heads, and when I snapped this I thought it was more of the same and that I had captured her pointing.

But then, this morning I saw her making this motion over and over again.  And it was a very deliberate little movement, like when she signs "more" or "cracker."

She made it deliberately multiple times during OT and then again once we got home.  I mentioned it to a couple of her therapists, but no one knew what sign she was doing and so I posted the question on the blog Facebook page, along with a couple of groups that I'm in and the possibilities started rolling in.

The motion she's making seems to look a lot like "who," "bird" and "frog."  

You can see the frogs lined up
on the edge of the trampoline.  One good thing
about a 7am start time at therapy
is that she has the place to herself.

I don't think it's "who" simply because I don't think she has a reason to be using it, and she doesn't use question words often (okay, at all so far).

But "bird" and "frog" were both real possibilities.  I know that when she was pointing the first time there were a lot of birds in a little group fluttering above us.

However the more I think about it the more I think that it's probably frog.  She got out a huge tub of frogs at OT this morning and played with them and she was playing with tiny plastic frogs in putty and Paul told me that while Patch and I were gone frogs even came up in her therapy session at home.  Apparently frogs are a big topic of interest right now.

And I'm wondering if the flower shop we were walking by right around when I snapped this picture has some sort of frog in one of the spring time displays.  

I'll have to check it out next time we walk by and on Monday I'll definitely be asking her Monday-Tuesday therapist if she's taught her the sign because I know she sometimes googles signs on her phone and teaches them to Mae when Mae's really excited about something but struggling with saying a word.  

Then again the child absorbs and uses signs so much more easily than spoken language that I guess there's a possibility that she picked it up anywhere... with her memory she may even be remembering it from a Signing Time from months or years ago!

-3-

Oh look!  James is awake.  I'd like to thank Kitty Fish who just knocked over a pot in the kitchen and reminded James that he hates being asleep at the moment.  

Kitty Fish is not my BFF at the moment.  Anyways... back to the post.

This is Maggie hard at work.

Apparently when she first started being asked to complete patterns she wasn't a huge fan.

And then she changed her mind and she started talking about patterns.  She had two patterns"bird, hat, bird, hat" and "duck, ball, duck, ball" and suddenly she started making up her own (outside of therapy, with no cards around) and would tell me "bird, hat, duck, ball!" in an excited voice.

Today she grabbed the cards and set them out herself and then grabbed more cards and made her own pattern.  Everyone in the room was pretty excited.  She is definitely a fan of patterns now:

-4-

Today has been our first week of beautiful,wonderful weather and while the snow hasn't totally melted it has mostly melted in our backyard.  And so when I saw how high the temperature had climbed I decided it was time to head outside:

The kids were very, very excited.  I snapped these pictures before Mae decided that the only real way to play outside in the yard was barefoot... by "barefoot" I mean without shoes in tights and a sleeper... in mud and snow.

But after knowing this child for four and a half years I've learned to pick my battles and since buying new tights to feed her ever growing tight habit was near the top of my to-do list anyways I decided to not fight her on this one (it probably helped that there was no "winning" since her tights were soaked the second she kicked those shoes off).

She had a blast.  And I think it counted as a major sensory activity for the day.

-5-

Here's an untouched (minus the watermark) photo of the snuggle bug.  I think there's still a chance that there's a bit of red in that hair, although sometimes it just looks super blonde.

Also, he was a little pink after about 25 seconds outside (he spent the entire time once his little spot was set up in the shade).  So I think we can now safely say that he has his Daddy's skin.

-6-

Patch had his first Early On play group today.  And he thought he was a pretty big boy as we walked home.  He is the first child who I've had who I can walk with on a street like ours without holding tightly to his hand the entire time.  

It's kind of strange (for me):

-7-

I made her wear a sweatshirt when we went outside.  

It lasted for about one minute. And then it was on the table and she was in short sleeves playing in the snow.  

For more 7 Quick Takes head over to see Kelly and this weeks Link Up!

Six Weeks: On Siblings and Frowns

I have to admit, when I was pregnant with James, I was a little worried about Patch's reaction to his little brother's arrival.  With Sadie and Mae the adjustment to adding new babies had always gone smoothly and I knew that they would both be over the moon about a new baby, but Patch, I worried, might be a different story.

He was the most possessive of Mommy Time and Mommy Cuddles and while I was sure we would still have our special Patch and Mommy time together I wondered what his reaction would be to a tiny newborn who would spend much of the first months of his life in the wrap strapped to my chest.

Today James is six weeks old and it seems that I need not have worried.

When I bring James into the living room in the morning I feel like I'm introducing a pop star to his fan club.  There's scrambling for the best seat.  Patch usually gets there first, repeating "Buddy! Huggies!" while trying to lift James out of my arms and kiss his face.  While I remind him to be gentle he'll carefully examine James' tiny fingers, touch his cheeks, all the while repeating the nickname that he's come up with over and over again.  An excited chorus of "Buddy!  Buddy!  Buddy!" echoes through our days.

Once James' cheeks have been kissed a dozen or so times, Patch usually goes back to playing.  And then it's Mae's turn.  She'll quickly fill in the space left by her brother and stare at James' tiny face with a huge smile.  She'll touch his cheek and look at me, waiting for me to say cheek.  She'll point to his nose and do the same thing.  She loves for me to label whatever it is she's pointing to, whether it's a doll or her brother's tiny mouth, and we repeat the routine every morning and most afternoons.  She'll gaze at him and say "love, love, love" in a quiet voice.  And just like her brother she'll give him several kisses during each visit before going back to playing.

Yesterday as we were getting the kids out of the car after a trip to the grocery store James let out a scream.  Mae was about to get out of the other side of the van, but she stopped and raced over to look at his face and touch his cheek before reluctantly turning and going back over to where Paul was waiting for her.  He was fine.  She just needed to make sure.

As we expected, Sadie has done well too.  She's the only one big enough (and responsible enough) to hold him on her own and if she hasn't been given a chance in a few days to take advantage of this big sister right, she'll let me know.  And at night after we've cleaned up the house and when Patch and Mae are safely in their beds I'll put him on the floor for tummy time and she'll lay down next to him, with her face close to his for moral support.  He's not a huge fan of tummy time, but it's not so bad when his big sister does it with him.

While Patch calls him "Buddy" and Mae calls him "Ames!!!" in her sweet little sing song chirp, Sadie is trying out "Iggy," "Grumpasaurus" and "Grumpy Cat" on her youngest sibling, who occasionally graces us with a smile, but still seems to spend a good deal of time trying to figure out how he got to this loud, bright world and regarding everything around him with a fair measure of suspicion:

And of course a few of my favorite smiles... Daddy still gets the vast majority of the smiles but once in a while he'll throw on my way too!

Happy six week birthday James!  Time has flown since you joined us and I can't believe that you're outgrowing your three month sleepers already!

The Hardest Number...

The second most asked question that I found myself answering when I was pregnant this last time around was "does it get easier when you have more than one?" 

The most common question, which I still hear almost 100% of the time whenever I run into the store with James while Paul and the kids wait in the car, is "So, this is your first?" which is usually followed by a shocked look when I say "Oh no, he's our fourth!"  But that's not the subject of this post, so I'll focus back on the second most common question.  

It was posed to me in the back of a plane by a flight attendant and comes up in various forms while I'm waiting for Sadie at her various activities.  It comes up when people ask her about how she likes having a younger sibling and she launches into the entire history of our family and how old each person is and usually ends quite proudly by talking about how she is the biggest sister and the "babies" are four, almost-two and 'zero'.  

Of course (as always) I can only answer from my personal experience.  I've heard a lot of people say that three is the hardest number.  A few have told me that four is.  

My personal experience however, was that one was the hardest adjustment  for me to make, and was by far the hardest number to juggle.  Each time we welcome a new baby, and once in a while in between, Paul will look at me with a slightly haunted expression and say "do you remember that first week?  I think we slept like five hours altogether..." and I'll nod and remember how jealous I was when he went back to work that first month because he had overnight shifts where he was "only" carrying for a house full of court-ordered teenage boys and they at least slept a little more than our newborn.

Nothing has compared to those first... eighteen months.  She was our refluxy, colicky, ear-infection prone baby that once nursed for seven consecutive hours (shrieking when I tried to stop her), and who woke to eat every hour for the first eighteen months of her life.  In hindsight, and after watching Patch before we figured out his dairy allergy I would say that she likely already had her wheat allergy and that that was a big part of the problem.  

At the time though, I thought that she was just how babies were.  I'd never changed a diaper before she was born and for all the books I had read I had no practical knowledge of babies.  

Three babies later I can now say "not all babies are like that."  Mae was our easy baby.  I had to fight her to wake up to eat the first night after she was born, and quite a few nights after that.  Newborns can't sleep through the night, I tried to tell her, but she didn't listen.  Maybe it was her low registration of all things sensory already coming through even then (I did call the pediatrician in and tell him something was wrong, she slept too much, while he looked at me like I was insane), but she was the easiest of babies.  

When I was pregnant with Patch I worried quite a bit over "what kind of a baby he would be."  I'd grown to like my sleep.  Would he take after his biggest sister and stay up all night, screaming if he was put down for a moment?  

Instead he followed in Mae's footsteps. He became more fussy at two months, but this time I followed my instincts and insisted on tests until we discovered his allergy and he quickly went back to being the happy, relaxed baby he'd been when we came home from the hospital.  

Enter James.  He isn't our easiest baby.  He might be a little more fussy than Patch even.  I'm already beginning to suspect allergies and possibly reflux (although I imagine there's a good chance that will go away if an allergy is found and eliminated).  But he's still a hundred times easier than Sadie was at this point.  I'm not sure if that's because we're used to having babies and all that entails (I think that's a little piece of it) or if he's just easier in general, but either way, there it is.  I slept eight hours last night, which was more than I was sleeping before he was born, so I really can't complain.

Of course, I guess the question has less to do with individual babies and more to do with how it all fits together now that we have four.  Maybe the biggest part of it seeming easier is that all three kids get along and have built in playmates.  At least that's how it has worked out so far.  And you can already see them eyeing the latest as potential playmate #4 (Patch comes to the door of the kitchen and calls for "Buddy" to come and play... he'll be disappointed for a bit longer I'm afraid...).

When Sadie was tiny her go to playmate were the grown ups in the house and let's face it, it can be hard to keep up with the amount of energy most two year olds are blessed with.  These days their first choice of playmate is each other.  And they actually enjoy playing together.

Two days ago as I was putting James down in his bassinet I saw all three of them racing back and forth through the living room together at a full sprint.  Sometimes they dance or hold hands and spin. There's usually a lot of action and laughter and their volume can be a bit too loud, but it's also sort of wonderful.

 

Their main expectation for me these days, other than food and other basics, is no longer rough and tumble play, but snuggles.  While I'm nursing James it's not unusual for me to have two or three kids cuddled as close as they can be (and almost always at least one).  I'm just not as much fun as their brother and sisters, but I am a nice soft lap to snuggle up against.  They've got it figured out.  

And Sadie has become quite the little helper.  When the other three fall asleep she helps pick up toys and then cuddles with me on the couch where she has a treat and we watch a movie she's picked out.  Sometimes James is with us in his wrap and sometimes he's passed out in his bassinet.

I guess my answer to the question for our family is that it has gotten easier.  The hardest part, I found, were those first months where the shift in focus went from inward to outward (and from sleep to none at all).  When Sadie was tiny I couldn't have imagined four of her, even though we were hoping for a large family.  I wondered how moms with more than one did it... not realizing that my one was in many ways more work than the four I have now are, even with special needs thrown in.  

Two Weeks (and what color is his hair?!?!)

It's hard to believe that it's already been two weeks since James arrived.  The last fourteen days have flown by in a blur of cuddles and diaper changes.  Nani and Grumpa have returned home to California (their time here after the c-section definitely made the recovery much, much easier than last time) and I've started figuring out how to do things like put the kids to bed on nights when Paul works, with minimal lifting since I'm not supposed to lift anything more than 12 lbs until six weeks have passed.  It's pretty much an impossible request around here, but I try to follow it when I can.

Patch loves his little brother, who he's started calling "Buddy" and each morning he gives him about a half dozen kisses before climbing up on my lap next to the little guy to relax.

Maggie is fascinated with his tiny little fingers and toes and loves touching his tiny chubby cheeks while giggling.

And Sadie is the one who can almost always make him stop crying.  If he's crying in the car you'll hear her little voice start to sing a lullaby and suddenly the crying will stop as James listens to his sister's voice singing a made up song about loving him.  She relishes being the biggest and the one who is able to hold him on the couch when some toddler related disaster inevitably comes up throughout the day and I need two free hands to come to rescue whoever it is that has gotten themselves into trouble.

In other James news, we still can't decide what color hair he has.  Sometimes it almost looks light brown.  Other times it looks like a bright golden color.  And the pediatrician said "A red headed baby!" when she walked in the room, so sometimes his hair definitely looks red.  It almost always looks red in pictures, even without any editing or filters to adjust the lighting (which I almost always have to do since the lights in our house tend to be on the dim side).

Now to get a jump on our first day starting back on school again.  It's going to be interesting seeing how this goes... I think James is going to be spending a lot of time in the Moby wrap.

Our Rocky Paths through Introducing Solids and What I Think I've Learned

The fussiest.

With the arrival of the new baby around the corner I've had all things baby on my mind lately.  And one topic that's been on my mind in particularly is the experience that we've had with each of our babies when it came time to start introducing solids.

Our strategy for solids has slowly changed over time.  More than anything I'm curious at this point to see what will work for us this time around because so far each baby-starting-solids experience has been vastly different from the one before it.

I'll start at the beginning with Sadie.

Sadie was a baby with tummy troubles from the start.  With 20/20 hind site I'm fairly certain that she had food allergies from the very beginning... but I'd never had a baby before and had no idea that what she was experiencing might not be normal.  I mentioned to the doctor that she spit up dozens of times a day, that she was miserable if we put her down, that her skin was dry and itchy even if we put lotion on her over and over again throughout the day and he sort of waved it all off as typical baby stuff, because she was huge and her weight steadily kept her in the 95th percentile throughout her first two years.

Still, she acted like she was starving constantly.  Anything she spit up on was ruined forever and ever (something that hasn't happened with our two non-refluxy babies...).  She nursed 10 times more than her brother and sister would when they came along, but she was never full (probably because of all the spitting up).  When she was about four months old she started to try to grab food off the table and shove it into her mouth.  I could only assume that at over 20lbs she was starving and thought that my milk just wasn't enough.

I talked to the doctor and he suggested we start rice cereal at four months.  We did and then added in veggies, carefully adding in one a week to identify any allergies once she hit the six month mark.

The food didn't really change anything though.  She was still fussy with super dry skin and woke hourly (that isn't an exaggeration) to nurse for the first eighteen months of her life.

It was exhausting.  When people ask me if having three has been harder than one I always shake my head no.  Nothing has ever been harder than the first exhausting, sleep deprived year and a half of parenthood.

Then Maggie came along.  Sadie had just started mostly sleeping through the night.

Maggie was an entirely different baby.  In the hospital she slept four hour stretches from the day she was born.  I found myself fretting to the on call pediatrician that something was wrong because she slept so much and wasn't disturbed by anything.  I do wonder now if this had to do with her low sensory registration, but that's really a topic for another post.  

Maggie followed in her sister's footsteps in being in the 95th percentile from the start.  She didn't have reflux or any signs of allergies.  She slept and nursed like a champ.

When she was six months old she showed that she was interested in food and we started with rice cereal, quickly adding in pureed veggies and then fruit like we'd done with Sadie.  Everything went smoothly.  She loved food and could spend two hours slowly eating bowl after bowl of whatever we were having for dinner.

When Patch arrived I figured that we would just do what we had always done.  We'd try to make it to the six month mark before we started solids.

But early on Patch went from a quiet happy baby who slept well, to a screaming reflux-y baby with rashes over his face and body.  This time I didn't think "dry skin" and excuse the reflux as just being part of being a baby (especially now that I knew what reflux looked like and realized that was what Sadie very likely had).  Something was wrong. I just knew it.

At that point I had more experience as a mom and had learned to trust my gut.  And so I pushed and pushed and ignored the doctors who rolled their eyes at me and said "you're a first time mom, aren't you?" when I insisted that something was not right.  Finally I had a referral to an allergist who didn't think that I was insane and who very quickly announced that Patch was in fact allergic to all things dairy and who gave me a plan of attack for dealing with the allergy.

Within days we had our happy baby back.

Six months of age rolled around and Patch didn't want anything to do with baby food.  I tried to spoon it into his mouth but he was adamant that it was disgusting.  "Baby's gag" people told me.  "It's natural."  But it didn't feel natural spooning food into a mouth of a baby that clearly didn't want anything to do with it.

Around this time I began to learn about baby led weaning and since forcing Patch to eat food that he didn't want to eat as he attempted to throw things off the table and lock his little mouth shut to avoid the spoon didn't seem all that appealing to me, we decided to give it a try.

He'd sit at the table with us during meals, happily babbling away, and I would put little pieces of soft food (that came from whatever we were eating) on his tray, trying everything from avocado to sweet potatoes, and would watch eagerly to see if he would try them.  I wasn't worried about allergies at that point because he'd been extensively tested and we already knew what he was allergic to.

Without fail he would immediately throw every single scrap of food on the floor.

Time passed.  At around the twelve month mark I started to worry a little.  The PA at the clinic I go to shook her head and lectured me on having a kid that would "nurse til he was ten," but Patch's pediatrician didn't seem worried at all.

So we kept offering him food and he kept refusing and I began to wonder if he would ever eat solids. And then one day he did.  He was a tall, lanky thirteen months old, who had been exclusively nursed his entire life, when he suddenly decided that food was the best thing he'd ever tasted and began eating everything we put in front of him.  He was suddenly voracious.  He was always up for seconds.

And now as an almost two year old, he still eats just about whatever you put in front of him and let's us know when he wants more.

As we go into this the fourth time around I have a new strategy.  I'm going to watch this baby and see what works for him.  I don't plan on going the rice cereal/pureed route this time, but if baby #4 is interested in food when he's six months old I'll start offering little soft, mushy pieces of whatever we're having and see how he does.  And if this baby acts like he's starving at six months and is all about purees, we'll reevaluate.

And of course this time I'll be on the lookout for allergies from the start.  We're batting 0 in the allergy free department these days and when I asked Patch's allergist what the chances were that this baby wouldn't have allergies he laughed and pointed out how well we've managed the allergies that we have.  At least we already have an allergist's number programed into my phone (fun fact: the other day I counted the numbers in my phone and realized that of around 54 numbers, something like 27 belonged to doctors and therapists... which likely explains the hectic state of my schedule, which now involves a day where I say something to Paul each month like: "okay, it looks like we have 26 therapy sessions and 8 doctors appointments this month... just so you know going in..." with weekly updates each Sunday to let him know how many appointments have changed or been added in).

Overall, I think the main rule I've learned, as with co-sleeping and crib sleeping and so many other parenting topics that can be contentious, is to be flexible and open to rolling with the punches when this little guy arrives, because holding fast to a decision that I made before I meet the newest member of our little family face to face can at times do more harm than good!

My Top Baby Picks after Moving Many Times...

Over the years as we've moved across the country with our growing family I've given a lot of though to exactly what we "need" for a new baby.  I've also been giving it more thought because I'd been asked a few times to come up with a registry for anything we need with this baby (which isn't much) but which contains a few needs (our car seats are finally starting to expire) and a few dream items like the back carrier since our second hand one finally gave out (So for those who asked, here it is!).

When I was pregnant with Sadie I bought just about every baby thing that my eyes landed upon.  If there was a book/magazine telling me that I needed something for our rapidly growing little bunny, I was easily convinced.  

What that basically means is that if there's a baby product out there (or at least a type of baby product) I've likely debated whether or not it was necessary over the four moves we've made in the last four and a half years.  And, because the size of our various homes has varied over the years I've also found that not much has made the cut as we've gone from place to place.  

Even things that are useful have slowly been pruned back as I've realized that we don't actually really need a baby high chair all that much (we found a wooden restaurant style high chair that was perfect for that day when Patch finally decided he wanted to eat food at 13 months old...), and we've found that we haven't gotten much use out of gadgets designed to rock, swing or jiggle our babies. I've also found I don't use nursing pillows all that much, our bottles went unused, and so far our pump has mostly collected dust.  

So here is my list of what I've come to consider necessities with our babies.  I could survive without the list below, but they're my favorites for making life easier!

I'd also throw in a dozen baby sleepers because I've found that the most little babies with sensitive skin we have the more likely I am to keep them in sleepers to protect their delicate little baby skin (that's pretty specific though and can be filed under things having two babies with eczema has taught me).  

The Moby Wrap

(or carrier of your choice) 

Baby carriers are big around here.  Patch spent the majority of the first six months of his life living in the Moby Wrap.  It allowed me to have my hands free to do everything else that I needed to do and it kept him up high where certain toddlers who really, really wanted to carry him/ride him when he was in tummy time couldn't get a hold of him.  I have a feeling the new baby is likely to spend his first six months in the Moby Wrap too.

If there is one thing I've learned talking to other moms about baby carriers is that there's no one right answer for the "best" baby carrier.  Some people love the Moby, like I do.  Others absolutely hate it.  I've found the Moby and Ergo work great for us, but I've never had much success with slings (which other moms love!).  So if one carrier doesn't work for you don't beat yourself up and try something else!  There are a lot of great carriers out there and if you find the one that fits it can make your days much, much easier!

 The Car Seat 

I'll admit it.  I'm not all that big on car seat brand loyalty.  I think there are a lot of great car seats out there.  We loved our Britax, which finally hit it's six year old birthday last year.  We also love our Gracos.  The only draw back at the moment on the Gracos is their width and the fact that I'm finding that even in our giant mini van, three car seats won't fit across the back when two are Graco My Rides.  

These days as our van fills with booster seats and car seats I find myself thinking more and more about space.  And that's why I'm leaning more and more towards the recommendation I've heard so many of my friends give to try the Diono Radian.  It's a name that I've heard suggested over and over and I'm cautiously optimistic that it might actually fit across the back of our car.  

A Bassinet 

When I told Paul that I was including a bassinet he gave a number of suggestions of things he thought were more important (in case your interested his advice included an area rug).  I countered that in addition to the Moby our bassinet pretty much insured Patch's survival to toddlerhood.  

You see, we do tend to co-sleep (depending on the baby... our strategy is actually more of a "play it by ear" sleep plan since we've had kids that were up all night until we started cosleeping and we've had kids that just wouldn't sleep with anyone else in the bed {Mae} but slept like a champ from the night I put her in there her crib onward).  

As a result my bassinet suggestion tends to be for the days.  I actually kept my bassinet pushed out of the way in the kitchen and when I was cooking or sewing (mine has wheels so I would wheel it over into the room I was sewing in) I'd put the baby in the bassinet so they were nearby but out of the way of the cooking and potential spattering that could happen.  

Paul added the suggestion that a crib would work too, but I've actually found that all of our babies have slept more soundly in their bassinets when they're tiny (I've wondered if it's because the sides are closer in and they don't feel like they're in as wide open a space), which is why I'm a bassinet fan for naps when they're small... and also because it's easier to move a bassinet from room to room.  

Swaddles

If you ask Sadie what a baby "needs" she will give you two answers.  A Binkie and a Swaddle.  Which is kind of funny to me because out of all of our babies, Sadie was the only one who hated being swaddled.  But swaddling pretty much saved my sanity with Patch (he would only sleep when swaddled when he was put down) and so I'm a huge fan.  And she is too... since apparently she noticed that a swaddled Patch is a quiet Patch when he was tiny (although he never had the chance to have a Binkie since Mae swiped every Binkie that came close to his mouth).  

A Stroller 

As a one car family I'm a big fan of walking since usually I'm not the one with the car.  I'm also a big fan of the BOB stroller.  We've had two and while for the first time in six years we now have a BOB free garage (which is another great thing about BOBs... they have a great resale value... we bought one used in Florida and when we upgraded to a new stroller actually made money selling it for the same price similar strollers were selling in our area), they're still my favorite stroller.  We used ours on the beach when Sadie was one month old (and in the car seat attachment) and pushed her for miles and miles on dirt trails when we lived in California and I've yet to find a comparable stroller that is as easy to push or as long lasting.

Those (along with diapers, this time we're planning a cloth/disposable combo) are my favorite baby items that over the years have made the journey from place to place!  Do you have a favorite baby item that has felt like a lifesaver when you've had a new little one?