The AAPHI Blog

To learn more, you are advised to check out our terrific reliable source for buying top rated car seats suggestions!

Safety rules are clearly the most important consideration when buying a seat for your son, but the variations in style aren’t just cosmetic, and it’s important to be aware of exactly what ramifications your choice will have before you make it rather than have regrets at some later point.

12 months old, 20 pounds - this is a standard upper limit for the majority of high quality chairs on the market from the best known brands. A few of these seats have the capacity to face forward, though the majority are entirely designed to be used facing the rear - something to remember when buying. Every parent knows that getting your baby from your car back to your home while they’re sleeping leads almost inevitably to their being woken up - but with a number of these seats doubling up as baby carriers, the chance of avoiding this improves.

Useful throughout the time during which your child needs these chairs, the more expensive price tag is due to their being useful as long as required. If you like the sound of a convertible seat but you also need a baby carrier, you’ve often got a decision to make. That being said, you can’t treat any type of seats as being equal. Safety chair comparisons are the best way to gain a comprehension of exactly what every model offers as well as what aspects will be most helpful. Also reviews like these are independent and have no bias involved. Made with continuing growth in mind, booster seats take over the task of supporting your babies at around thirty pounds and will support them up to about eighty pounds. It’ll be either the five-point harness, or the employment of the car’s safety belt - booster seats secure in one of two ways and either may be more comfortable for your little one, from which follows that the sensible thing to do is to actively find out how each feels before buying. Many booster chairs provide what may appear to be trivial features like integrated toys, but upon seeing how much of your child’s attention is occupied with them you’ll soon realize just what an advantage they offer you.

It would be hard to deny you’re faced with a difficult decision, as it’s so important to find a product that suits your family, and your finances are hardly minor concerns. You’ll find your perfect solution by starting with third party ratings and reviews.

If he kid is not going to sleep on her own, then they may require your assistance to help them get to sleepy time. The first thing that you should know is that the babies like to stick to a schedule. Everything revolves around the schedule and repetitions of actions. That is the only thing that they know in the world. What you need to get is, set up, on your clock, right now, right after being born This is the exact opposite of yours. Sticking to a schedule is just doing the same series of events and the same time every night. And remember to do whatever puts them out, last.

Rocking the baby and holding them close reminds them of being back in the womb

Singing and rocking will caringly, most every time put the baby right out.

Watch for the sleepy signs. My daughter actually will rub her eyes when she is starting to get tired. I think that its just the cutest thing in the world. Its like her eyes are closing and she is trying to wake them up.

Pat on their back or butt to simulate a heartbeat.

Give them a nice warm bath, and then play with them, then feed them. But feed them milk, until they are passing out from so much food. Topping off the baby will usually put them right to sleep.

It was a big night when our 20 year old brought her first official boyfriend around for dinner. He was rather tasty, apart from the chewy bits. No, just joking.

He seemed a very nice young man. If he has any tattoos, drug addictions or psychotic tendencies he kept them well under wraps. The only complication was his vegetarianism.

People who won’t eat meat are always nerve wracking to cook for. An evening meal doesn’t seem properly filling and flavoursome without meat of some sort. It’s just an old fashioned, immoral, possibly health threatening hang up on my part.

Nearly all our daughter’s university friends are vegetarian, vegan or in the throes of some kind of eating disorder. While I genuinely respect their idealism, it’s good for young people to be jolted out of their comfort zone now and then.

Because the poor things were exposed to dysfunctional families and X-rated videos since birth practically, it’s impossible to startle them with stories of sex, drugs and rock n roll.

If I really want to shock these admirable young greenies all I have to do is fondly recall the days when people thought they were hard done by if they didn’t devour meat three times a day.

I decided to experiment with chicken risotto, using pumpkin and sweet potato instead of chicken. To keep things cheerful, I added rather a lot of white wine (not forgetting to swill a glass or two to test for traces of meat or any other poisons).

The wine had the added bonus or loosening my nerves, enabling me to crack some hilarious jokes at which he dutifully laughed. In fact, my stories were so witty and entertaining I inadvertently added a cup of chicken stock to the risotto. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to notice. He even took a second helping.

After dinner he asked to see our daughter’s baby photos, proving his devotion beyond doubt. We couldn’t seem to find them, but she managed to dredge up an album of photos from her teenage years.

He’d also made a point of reading my recent books, which was embarrassing because nobody in the family reads them, mainly because they present a warped unreliable perspective of our lives. Nevertheless, he seemed to have devoured every word.

Part of the purpose of the evening was for him to show us slide photos he took when he and our daughter travelled Asia together last year before they started “going out” (another fascinating facet of today’s youth is they can trudge through the world’s most foreign and dangerous places together without technically “going out”).

When I asked if anyone had seen my spectacles, the young man wanted to know why I favoured such an archaic word. He’d noticed I also used it in my books. Almost speechless for once, I said wasn’t it because glasses are supposed to be filled with wine?

We didn’t have a screen, so my husband removed a picture from the living room wall. Sprawled over the sofas we were transported to the temples and markets of Laos with a picture hook in the top right hand corner.

The nice young man said his sister was about to get married. It would be the first wedding he’d been to. Our daughter replied she hadn’t been to many weddings either, apart from her mother and father’s second weddings - which didn’t qualify as proper weddings, not the sort of wedding he was talking about anyway.

I’d been worried how my husband would react to his step daughter’s first official boyfriend, but he was completely relaxed. So relaxed he slept through most of the slide show, which the young man politely ignored.

Nevertheless, he offered to drive them back to the young man’s place. In the dark it was difficult to tell if his flat is on the right or wrong side of the railway tracks. Our daughter’s boyfriend appeared to be living under them.

Driving home, there was silent agreement not to delve too deeply at this stage. My husband said he was surprised how much he liked our daughter’s suitor, partner or whatever the title is.

His previous anxieties about young men in her life must have been based in protectiveness rather then sexual jealousy.

The trick now is not to let our daughter know how much we approve of her young man. If she thinks we like him that much she’s bound to reject him as swiftly as she would a plate-sized T-bone steak.

When my brother was young, he had a fear of monsters hiding in the dark at night. To combat his fear, he would check that all windows and doors in the house were locked, turn on the lights in every room and check under the beds and in the wardrobes for ghouls and monsters, switch off his light and launch himself onto his bed from the doorway. It sounds funny now when I look back at it, but at the time, this process was deadly serious. Many children believed there were things under the bed that would snatch at our little legs and pull us into darkness before we could scream for help.

As a child, my personal fear was of witches coming into my room to grab me with their long, scratchy nails and bite me with their teeth. I often dreamed that they would catch me, cut me up and use me in one of their nasty potions. (I can only assume that an overdose of “The Brothers Grimm” may have contributed substantially to my frightening fantasies). I would often wake up and still see the silhouettes of the witches in the dark after my dream. It was not until I was eight years old that I was able to confront my fears. After telling myself that what I was seeing was purely shadow and that a shadow was no threat to me, I recall taking a deep breath, swinging my legs off my bed, and purposely walking through the shadows that I saw before me. This simple action gave me the strength and clarity to be able to differentiate between what was real and what wasn’t. This was a truth that no adult could teach me, but one that I learned for myself.

Recently, my little daughter began coming through to my bedroom at night and asking to be tucked back into bed. I did not understand at the time, (probably in the haze of lost sleep), that something was amiss. After she awoke me a few times, I realised that there may be a problem. Being a reticent child, I needed to find some way to make her relaxed and confident enough that she could open up about what was troubling her. One foot soak and massage session later, she told me that she had been having dreams of a robber trying to break into her room at night. It frightened her to the point that she would hear a noise and run for cover. She talked about how she felt and we explored how this fear might have originated. When it came time to develop a strategy to keep her safe, we looked at the options available to us. By tackling the issue together, she felt secure and in control of the situation. I’m happy to report that she is now a lot more confident in her ability to tackle her fear.

There are many strategies that can be adopted by children and parents to deal with the plethora of “night time monsters”. Using a substitute such as a teddy bear or favourite doll can help to ease the anxiety that a child feels when their parent is not around. Likewise, special bedtime routines like checking that the windows are locked or the gate is secure can help the child to feel safe. And having a parent, older sibling or a pet that sleeps close by, or a parent to check on them before they go to bed, might be all that they need to feel safe.

The society we see on TV on the six o’clock news is one that frightens most adults. When children see or hear of other children being taken from their beds or away from their families, and other terrible events, it has a profound effect on the child’s developing psyche. As caring parents, we must ensure that we provide not only a physically safe environment for children, but also one that protects their mental state as well. Fear manifests itself in our dreams, and the dreams children have are often vivid and know no logical boundaries.

Most children fear something that may appear to adults to be irrational, yet it is important for us not to dismiss these fears. The experience of fear itself is real, whether or not the “monster under the bed” or the witches in the room actually exist. As parents, we need to have an open ear when our children want to talk about their fear.

Helping our children to develop the virtue of courage is an imperative in the world of today and may be responsible for their survival in the world of tomorrow. We need to work with our children to help them to discover their own solutions to their fears, whether it be a process of checking the house at night, or whether it takes the form of a big, protective, cuddly knight in brown fur.

Lina-Marie Catto is a writer from Australia who lives with her husband and two daughters (aged 2 and 10) in Canberra. She recently retired from the Australian Public Service after 23 years to concentrate on writing children’s fiction. Lina has many, varied interests and writes to fulfil her long term dream of entertaining through the written word. She can be contacted by writing to PO Box 1413, Tuggeranong, A.C.T. 2901, Australia.

Diaper Bag, Do you think you can ONLY cloth diaper at home? Well, think again . . . it is just as easy to carry cloth diapers in your diaper bag as it is to carry disposables; maybe easier! You will not need a life-size duffle bag to manage it either.

Before anyone begins to think about “how they could possibly cloth diaper away from home” lets first deside what is a must in any diaper bag, no matter what kind of diapers you choose. So go grab your bag - what’s in there? Do you really NEED everything in there? I doubt it. So lets make a list, what are the things you NEED??

When Packing your diaper bag you need:

* Diapers

* Diaper covers (if you’re not using AIO’s, AI2’s, Pockets or disposables)

* Wipes (with a wipe mix in a squirt bottle if your wipes are not prewetted)

* Changing Pad

* Burp Rags

* Pins or a Snappi (if you’re using prefolds)

* A wetbag (or somewhere to store the dirty cloth diapers)

We as parents have a horrible tendency to throw everything into our diaper bags because as mothers, we all suffer from the worrisome “what if’s” (i.e., what if your baby gets a fever, what if your baby poops more than 8 times in one hour, etc.) But can’t we all honestly admit that we need a lot less than we think. With decreasing our diaper bag’s contents we can not only cut down on the size of diaper bag we might need, but also the weight on our shoulders.

Accessories Needed

Along with the list above , it is true that we all will often “accessorize” with a few additional items like:

* a change of clothes for baby (6 months or younger usually)

* possibly a drool bib or a regular size bib (for a toddler)

* a cup or a bottle (for toddlers or babies not breastfeeding)

* Ointment or powder (if your dealing with a rash, or a kid who loves powder)

* If you’re like me and refuse to carry 2 bags, you will need a few “mommy” items as well - like your wallet, pen, lip balm, and keys.

OK so, are you ready to dump your current bag and take a look at what’s really IN there? If your like me, your diaper bag needs a GOOD cleaning at least once every week. I am always finding those ear rings I lost, the nursing necklase I swore I took off in the bathroom, bubble gum or candy put in there by my older (very well meaning) daughter and trash, there’s always trash! Now, why its all cleaned out, why not give it a good wipe down or a throw in the wash machine?!

So next step is beginning again…are you ready?!

First step is - DIAPERS (that’s what a diaper bags all about right?!) So lets ask ourselves these 3 important questions:

* How many diapers/covers do we REALLY need? See what word is most prominate in this question? Yep you guessed it, its that word REALLY. When you first begin with cloth, you might think you really DO need, TONS of cloth diapers (or any diaper for that matter). Which frankly, you just don’t. When you have a good quality cloth diaper you really CAN get away with 3-4 cloth diapers and 1 cover per 4-6 hour trip. One single trip to the grocery store does not warrant 3 cloth diapers!

Bottom line . . . what is the worst that can happen? You have to come home earlier? That isn’t always a bad thing for mommas like me that feel an urgency to FINISH the “To Do” list all in one outing in spite of screaming children, runny noses, headaches and red lights that take FOREVER to change while your 2 year old grunts at every little thing. Give everyone a break..

* What KIND of cloth diapers do I need/want? Well, obviously you’ll use the KIND of diapers that are in your diaper “stash”, but many of us have several different kinds our “stash’s”, so this can actually be the question to answer. Where are you going? Where will you be changing your little one? On your lap? On a diaper changing table? At your friend’s home? On the floorboard in the back of the mini-van? See what I’m saying? The WHERE makes a difference. Be easy on yourself - this isn’t your organized, home based changing system - it could very well be the lap you’ve created while perching on a toilet in a very nasty public restroom (in which case the floorboard of a car is actually much better - if not in motion and parked securely in a parking lot). Bottom line…Depending on where your going to be, AIO’s for a wiggling toddler, might be a good choice. A prefold already folded, or a pocket diaper already stuffed, can be your best friend in these situations!

* Who will I see there? Okay, this is for those like me, that are interested in scoring converts and just talking about cloth. We all have our favorites, our cutest, our easiest, etc. . . if you know you are going to be around a momma that is considering cloth diapering or MIGHT consider it, don’t take your rattiest, most worn dipes - or at least, not in the top of the bag. I totally do this, I always save my “cuttest” diapers for those trips to the doctor or the mall, and always make sure to change in a populated area!

Next step: - wipes and waterproof bags:

There are basically two styles of baby wipes from which to choose. You can go with your commercial (throw-away) baby wipes or your can choose to use cloth baby wipes that can fold into the same plastic container (or put in a waterproof wipe bag). The way I look at it is if I am washing cloth diapers away, why not use a cloth wipe? Why do I feel this way? Well, outside of the environmental issue, commercial wipes are not recycled they are basically wet paper. As much as they try to “texture” them to help grab at those sticky poopies; they are basically still wet paper. Whereas cloth wipes have true texture - my favorite are soft baby flannel on one side and baby terry on the other. The terry grabs up anything within its loops and the flannel side does the best clean up job. Not to mention your cutting out a whole step, no need to find a trash can to place your wipes in BEFORE you put the rest of the diaper in your waterproof bag. Cloth wipes are just as easy to use and are literally the ‘work-horses’ at cleaning a babe’s bum.

As you see, I did mention that you should place your cloth diapers in a small waterproof bag. (Depending on how many children you have.) A tote that measures about 9 x 12″ is a great daily outing bag that can easily hold 3 diapers of any size until you get home to either wash them or place in your pail till wash day. Most waterproof bags can be tossed into the washer too - leaving you a completely washable system. Remember that bringing home soiled diapers doesn’t take up any more space than taking fresh diapers and an empty waterproof tote. Still the same amount in the bag, just ‘used’ as opposed to ‘fresh and ready” for baby’s bum.

Last Step - changing pad and burp rags. These are two things you never need unless you don’t have them. So go ahead and pack them already! Changing pads do not have to be the huge to work. For the most part it is their bottom that needs the most protection from exposure to public changing tables and the like. Though if your like me, you want there head to be on it as well. In some situations, your also being kind to other parents as well as a clean gesture to protect the changing tables from YOUR child’s unanticipated blow-outs. Which other mommas WILL love you for, as they don’t find that so enchanting when you are long gone and they discover your child’s creation. However, there are substitutes to the standard foam covered changing pad or the rough/pilly changing squares sold in your local baby sections. We make awesome changing pads, you can also use a clean prefold or baby blanket will work!

Simple Tips for downsizing your diaper bag while still remaining prepared:

1. Buy a smaller bag. It’s just that simple if you have a smaller bag, you CAN’T end up with an overstuffed bag, because the space won’t allow for it.

2. Hook your diaper pins together and attach them to the top of the top diaper in your bag. This ensures that they remain together and where you can see them (so you don’t have to fish them out one by one in the bottom of the bag).

3. Recycle - use your peri-bottle from the hospital to hold your baby wipe mixture to wet your cloth baby wipes (if you choose to use cloth wipes). Not only will the top pop down secure, but they are taller and trimmer than most squirt bottles.

4. Look for a diaper bag that has a smaller, separate pocket for your personal items (either inside the bag or outside, make sure this pocket has a way to close) so you don’t have to dig around at the bottom of the bag for keys, your lip balm/lipstick, wallet, pen, sunglasses..

5. When carrying an extra change of clothes - consider carrying a simple onesie that will pack down easily - or something that would interchange with what the baby/child is wearing without completely redressing him/her. You could also consider leaving a change in the car on a regular basis, then it’s there if you need it but not making the diaper bag more bulky.

6. Limit the number of diaper covers you need by taking diapers that fit snug (not tight) in the waist and thighs. If using prefolds, secure with diaper pins or a snappi to contain any blow-outs. This will keep your cover cleaner for longer.

7. Finally, don’t even consider a diaper bag that requires you to unsnap, untoggle and then unzip to get to the main portion. Your diaper NEEDS to be as easy access as possible! I frankly like a diaper bag that has NO closure’s except for one at the top of the pocket for “my stuff.” I HATE having the baby in one arm dirty and have to “un-do” everything to GET to what I need!

Jennifer Sprague, co-owner of High Top Baby Designs. She has several years of teaching experience, working with infants through adults and has a passion for helping children live happy, healthy and secure lives. Jennifer has been a nanny, daycare provider, teacher, and is currently studying to become a Doula and a Lactation Consultant. She enjoys spending time with her two wonderful children, Aubrey and Zachary. Jennifer is also an advocate for peaceful parenting everywhere she goes.© 2005 High Top Baby Designs. All rights reserved