PeteCarpenter.com

1/28/2008

• Doesn’t it seem like I’m complaining every week about how I’m sick or the Lovely Tess is sick or the Lovely Suse is sick? Well, I was sick again last week with a nasty stomach virus that knocked me on my ass for two days. Tons of fun. Before Tess came along, I would get exactly two colds a year. One at the start of winter and another at the start of spring. Obviously, the Lovely Tess is an oozing bucket of germs that she brings home from daycare, and the incredible goop that she’s constantly sneezing out is evidence of that. Luckily, she’s extremely cute, so I can forgive her for my sickness.
• I learned during my sick time in bed watching daytime TV that the Today show is on for approximately 13 hours a day, and each segment is about 45 seconds long. They’re constantly running short on time and have to cut guests off, but they have 13 frigging hours of showtime? Can’t they let the cooking guy finish up his dish for once?
• Nothing makes for a good party like Guitar Hero. Sure, it’s fun to stand around and have some food and drinks and talk to people for a while, but the real fun starts when people start rocking out. I would have been happy to play about 20 games in a row, but that would have been a little rude. What really surprised me was that some people didn’t want to or were embarrassed to play. They’d say things like “I need a few more drinks before I can play”, as if it was karaoke or something. All you do is stand there and press buttons, although I try to jump around and put on a good performance. I think I might need to own this.
• We finished up every episode of Weeds in record time. We would average about 2 episodes per night, with the occasional 4 episode night thrown in. And I want more. With the writer’s strike it might be a very long time before we see any new episodes, which I am not ok with.
• The Lovely Suse and I got into a discussion about our alarm clocks last night. We each have our own, and each has its own quirks. Mine is about 20 years old, and the radio reception isn’t the best. Many mornings, I wake up to complete static. But I like that it’s small and doesn’t take up a lot of room on my nightstand. The Lovely Suse has a curious habit of resetting her alarm when it goes off in the morning rather than hitting the snooze button. It sounds like Mission Control over there as she’s flipping switches and pressing buttons. She told me that she “doesn’t trust it.” For years, so was convinced that the time between snoozes changed a little bit every day, with it starting at ten minutes and over the span on months would stretch out to ten minutes. She finally realized that the snooze time was actually programmable and she unknowingly was changing the snooze time little by little every day. Last night she set it for 5 minutes, and of course, it actually went off after 7. I think it’s time for us both to get new alarm clocks.
• We’re hardly ones to eat the same thing week after week as we like to keep things interesting and have some variety in our meals. But we’ve eaten Whole Foods Roasted Tomato Basil soup for lunch three weekends in a row. Tomatoes, onions, leeks, basil, and some spices and that’s about that’s all that’s in it, and it’s just simple and tasty. Hell, I’d be happy eating that again today for lunch.
• My bro hooked my folks up with an HDMI cable for their HDTV and it was the first time that I’ve been just plain astounded at the quality of the HD picture. My dad was watching golf and you could see every blade of grass, every detail of the course, and every ripple and reflection of water. Until now, I’ve just never been that impressed with most HD pictures, so who knew what a difference a little cable made. Ok, this will be the year that we finally get one. Maybe.

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Unsolicited Baby Advice Part 1: Equipment

Everyone loves to give baby advice. Everyone is an expert. And course, everyone is batsh*t insane. Seriously, it’s impossible to wade through all of the advice that various online sources, family, and friends offer, and it’s enough to make a person feel completely overwhelmed. When it comes to baby equipment and supplies, this is no exception. I’ve had a bunch of emails from people recently asking me about various items, and with a bunch of our friends jumping on the baby train, we figured we might as well share some of our own experiences. Take these for what they are: our own experiences and situations. These won’t work for everyone, but they work for us. As a general rule, we tried to be pretty minimalistic with space-saving and eco-friendliness in mind. I’m no expert, so if I have some facts wrong, just ignore them. So without further ado…

Strollers: Obviously, there are tons of options to choose from. Many people feel inclined to get the biggest and baddest around for attacking the harsh city streets. Something to keep in mind, however, is that you actually have to carry the thing around. Up and down stairs, on to buses, etc. Before you buy anything, try picking it up and walking around with it. Strollers like the Bugaboos are also not the easiest to fold up, which is another consideration (not to mention the cost of add-ons and accessories. I got over my Bugaboo envy in a hurry). We personally went with the Peg Perego Aria, which weighs in at 9 pounds and can be folded up with one hand, and takes up almost no room in a closet at home. The next model up was 10 pounds heavier with not a whole lot of added features, as far as we could tell. Some of the expensive ones are well over 20 pounds and take up a lot of space at home. The “travel systems” combine the stroller and carseat into one package, but they’re more of a ploy to you to buy both from the same company. Many carseats are interchangeable with various strollers, but it all depends on the stroller. Most will only take a few different other brands. Much of the choice will come down to how you plan on using it and how much you plan on using it. We’ve ended up using ours very little as we mostly chose to use a sling when Tess was younger. If we were in a city where we were walking around outdoors all the time, we may have chosen a different one.

Carseats: Despite what some people think, infant carseats are actually used for the first year (or until 20 pounds, i think). No baby is outgrowing one in four months. At that point, you move up to the bigger, forward-facing carseats. They make some that are convertible that do both jobs, but then you lose out on the whole snap-into-the-stroller thing. Again, we have the Peg Perego, mainly because it snaps into our stroller. It weighs a ton, but for compatibility reasons, we had no choice. There are certainly lighter and smaller ones out there that most people use.

Carriers: Baby Bjorns and slings are a great thing to have, especially when moving in tight spots where you don’t want to use or lug the stroller. Plus, they’re good for that whole bonding thing. We got a hand-me-down Baby Bjorn from my brother and never used it. We could hardly figure out how to put it on, and it pretty much required two people to make it work. Other people love them. We both got Hotslings which are fantastic. They’re light, compact, and easy to throw in a bag, and they’re simple to put your baby in it, even by yourself. The great thing about them is that your baby is close to you, and they can either choose to face outward and see what’s going on or get snuggled in and go to sleep. There are many similar brands out there that all do pretty much the same thing. We’ve had great experiences with these though.

Diapers: If you’re planning on doing cloth diapers or something like the gDiapers, that’s great. Those weren’t really an option for us, but we quickly latched onto the Seventh Generation diapers. Non-chlorine, no nasty fake baby powder smell, great fit, no silly cartoon characters, and no real difference in price. Seriously, you can barely smell a poop through these things. While you won’t find giant boxes of them on sale, they’re consistently priced competitively at places like Babys R Us. While they might be $13.99 or more at Whole Foods, they’re $10.99 at BRU. I don’t know how your options are
limited in the city though.

Bottles: We started with the Dr. Brown’s bottles, but once the whole BPA stuff came out, we made the switch to Born Free bottles. They use the same Dr. Brown’s nipples, which is convenient.

Diaper Pail: You need a diaper pail. You really don’t want an open container of dirty diapers lying around. Those things stink. People tend to choose between the Diaper Champ and the Diaper Genie. We chose the champ based solely on the fact that it takes normal kitchen trash bags. The Genie requires that you buy special bags, which is just a pain. We love it.

Activity Mats/Saucers/Seats: We mainly used 3 or 4 devices to keep our hands free and the baby occupied. Some sort of musical bouncy seat was key. Volume controls are a must . We used it mainly in the kitchen so that we could make meals and eat together. We’d just pull the chair right next to the table so Tess could hang out with us while we ate. Along the same lines, a swing was a good thing to have. They’re great to putting fussy kids to sleep and keep them calm, if need be. As she got older, a Bumbo came in handy. Some people love the activity mats that have the stuff hanging overhead, but we didn’t use it a ton. We got one as a hand-me-down, and it did the trick every now and then. One final thing that we originally said that we didn’t want but quickly came to realize that it’s a life saver is an exersaucer. We figured that they give kids ADD, but they’re actually great for keeping kids entertained for a while, helps them work on their motor skills, and if you get one of the smaller ones, they don’t take up much space. For us, the fewer bells and whistles and blinking lights the better, and we’ve been happy with ours. A doorway jumper is also good, but it didn’t work with our house.

Cleaning Products: Method, Method, Method. I can’t say enough about how much I love all things Method. From our laundry detergent to our kitchen mop, I’ve totally drank the Method Kool-Aid. We’ve tried to remove all toxic cleaners and chemical from the house, and this was an easy and inexpensive way to do it. We’ve never used any baby-specific laundry detergent or cleaners. The Method stuff is non-toxic and works well and if your kid happens to be licking the floor where you just mopped, it’s ok. Remember that kids stick everything in their mouths and are on the floor all the time. Do you want stuff covered in chemicals?

Babys R Us Credit: Remember, just like when you got married and registered for stuff, everything can be returned for credit. And BRU will take back ANYTHING. Everyone will want to buy you gifts, so that more you register for, the better. Give everyone low-priced options and then you can return whatever duplicates you don’t need. Rather than relying on people to pony up the cash for expensive car seats and strollers and the like, know that the credit will quickly accumulate. We quickly got enough to buy our carseat and have enough leftover to buy the next sized up carseat and still have lots to spare. However, if family or friends offer to buy some of the big ticket items, even better!

For all of this stuff, we’ve tried to limit the amount of plastics/lights/annoying sounds as much as possible, but with some of this stuff, you don’t have a whole lot of choice. You’ll quickly realize what stuff is just crap and what is good. Use hand-me-downs whenever possible. Why spend more money and add more junk to the environment? I appologize if I’ve offended anyone’s personal choices or parenting style, but like I said, this is just what we’ve chosen to do. Take it all with a grain of salt. I’m barely scratching the surface when it comes to baby gear, but this is at least a start. Any questions? Ask away!

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