Baby Handsome

On the post about our minivan, one of my readers, who lives in Finland, commented and said that she was happy to see that we still keep Little Buddy rear-facing in his car seat. She explained to me that in Sweden, parents typically keep their children rear-facing until age four, and sometimes longer.

From what I understand, there is no Swedish law preventing kids from being flipped around before age four. Swedes just know that rear-facing is safer.

In recent years, there has been a push in the United States to encourage parents to keep their kids rear-facing for as long as their car seats will allow. While some seats are only rated for rear-facing up to 35 or 40 pounds, others can go up to 50.

Little Buddy is still rear-facing, even thought he is two, and I like the idea of waiting until he hits the rear-facing weight limit on his seat before flipping him.

With all of this considered, I thought I would pose a discussion question: When did those of you who are parents or caregivers switch your children from rear to forward-facing?

One of my (Mr. Handsome’s) favorite childhood memories was making snow ice cream. Sledding, snow angels, and snow fights were all fun, but the real reward was the delicious dessert at the end. You can treat snow ice cream like regular ice cream and add any flavor (chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, or anything else that you heart desires). But to me there is nothing better than simple maple syrup. I think it’s because I can imagine myself gathering sap in the woods in the freezing cold, boiling it down, and throwing it on some snow.

This year I had the special opportunity of sharing snow ice cream with Little Buddy. Ellie has worked hard to limit his sugar, but he recently discovered ice cream and learned how delicious it is. So as soon as he heard Daddy mention snow ice cream, he became super excited and shouted, “Ice Caweeeem!!!”

He loved it. Of course it didn’t take long for him to realize that what made it so delicious was the maple syrup. He kept asking for “morie dat,” as he pointed to the syrup container. He also seemed to think that my spoon was the only one that made the snow ice cream taste good, and he insisted on using my spoon instead of his. Then after we switched spoons, he changed his mind and decided he wanted his old spoon back. So we continually switched back and forth.

Have you ever tried snow ice cream? What are your favorite toppings?

Listening to my husband explain the use of each of our three strollers makes me so proud. It took him several months to experience situations where each one is necessary, but now he understands why I need all three.

In all seriousness though, I tend to be more of a minimalist, and I have actually gone without some baby items that might be considered necessities. (For example, we never purchased an ExerSaucer (although I am seriously considering buying one for the next child…just don’t tell Mr. Handsome). Before I buy something, I always make sure to ask myself if I need it. And if the answer is yes, I ask myself if I really need it. Then I consider the price and whether we have a place to store it. I rarely purchase something for Little Buddy that is more than $30, and more often than not, the price is under $5.

Hear our thoughts on baby items in the video below, and then feel free to respond in the comments section.

This post was written by Mr. Handsome’s youngest sister, Lena.

I would like to file an official complaint about inconsiderate people with children. I recently went on a tour of a cave, and there was a couple with a
young child who completely ruined the experience for me.

The first sign that things would be a problem happened when they were in line to buy tickets. Their son looked to be about one year old and was the squirmiest little thing I had ever seen. He kept flailing about
and going crazy and wanting to be put down and then picked back up…over and over.

“Now be a good boy in the cave, Little Buddy” the mom told her son, as if he could understand. Something told me that Little Buddy had no intention of being a good little boy. And who calls their son Little Buddy, anyway?

The kid started warming up his vocal chords before we even made it inside the cave. He quickly realized that the enclosed space really amplified the volume and added a nice echo. Little Buddy promptly began an audio display of his entire vocabulary, which consisted of various howls and screeches. I was actually quite impressed with the piercing high notes he could hit.

The tour guide asked the couple if they wanted to turn around and leave the cave. The wife, who was apparently named Ellie, told the guide that Little Buddy was just working out some energy and would be fine once we got a bit further into the cave.

Not surprisingly, that didn’t happen. The child saved up his energy until we were in the deepest bowels of the cave–about thirty minutes into the tour–to really show us the power of his vocal tubes. At the climax of the tour, the guide had the bright idea (no pun intended) of turning off the lights to show us true and complete darkness.

As soon as the lights went out, the little guy started screaming at the top of his lungs. His mom quickly turned on her phone light to console him, which completely ruined the effect and did absolutely nothing–Little Buddy continued howling for the next fifteen minutes, long after the lights
had been restored.

I was elated when two security personnel finally escorted the young couple and their son out of the cave. We all cheered as they were hauled away and left the rest of the tour in peace. As they were leaving, the wife leaned over to her husband and said, “Mr. Handsome, I knew it wasn’t a good idea to take Little Buddy on a tour of a cave.” Who calls their husband Mr. Handsome, anyway?

Mr. Handsome smirked and replied, “Well at least we should get a good blog post out of the experience.”

I later learned that this troublesome couple was removed from the premises and not given a refund for their tickets. Thank goodness–that is exactly what inconsiderate people with misbehaved children deserve. I am certainly glad I have never met or have no relation to Mr. Handsome, Ellie, and Little Buddy.

Little Buddy is 8-and-a-half months old, and life with him is very busy. He loves to be active and move around, but he’s also very inquisitive and enjoys playing with his toys and other things that he finds around the house. Sometimes things like boxes and cabinet handles provide more excitement than baby toys, though.

For the past few months, he’s been mobile but has only been doing the army crawl. Just this week he has started trying to crawling on his knees. It’s fun to watch him master new skills.  He is becoming more and more stable on his feet when he pulls up on things. Unfortunately, he has also learned how to climb onto the hearth, so my project this week has been to find a screen to keep him out of the fireplace.

As far as food goes, Little Buddy still has no teeth, so we do mostly baby food, in addition to breast milk. For protein, I’ve started giving him tiny pieces of cheese or mixing moist scrambled eggs into baby purée. To help him learn how to chew, I give him gluten-free veggie baby puffs. He still loves avocado, and I’ve started feeding him small amounts of plain yogurt. 

I haven’t yet allowed Little Buddy to feed himself finger food because I think that would be confusing to him, to give him small pieces of food on his highchair and tell them to eat them but to tell him not to put choking hazards in his mouth that he finds on the floor. So to avoid that confusion, for now I just feed him everything with a spoon or my clean hands. He has good fine motor skills, so he’s not missing out on any development. 

We really can’t believe that the one-year mark is coming up in just over three months. Parenthood is challenging–I think it’s one of the greatest challenges a person can face in life. It requires so much mental and physical energy. But it’s also incredibly rewarding. Watching Little Buddy’s baby milestones has been incredible. I can’t even begin imagine what it will be like to watch him learn to read, write, and ride a bike. 

Our Little Buddy is almost eight months old, and we are getting so much joy out of watching him reach new milestones. It’s funny because he much prefers playing with toys on his stomach over playing in a seated position, and although he can get up on his hands and knees and even all fours, he prefers to army crawl. (He can move very quickly!)

Little Buddy still has a peculiar fascination with electrical cords, which we don’t allow him to touch, of course. But when we plug one in for even just a second, he can spy it from across the room and makes a beeline. Recently, our little mover has started grabbing onto chairs and other objects and using them to pull himself up to his knees and even into a standing position. And when he does, he’s so proud of himself! The challenge that comes along with that is that he is by no means stable yet, so we have to watch him very closely.

His most recent accomplishment was climbing an entire staircase, which he did yesterday for the first time. I had my hand on his back because he isn’t stable enough to do it by himself, but he did all the climbing. I was stunned.

On another note, his fussiness is slowly improving–emphasis on the slowly. We think he used to fuss because he wanted to be on the move and hadn’t learned to crawl. Now. we think he fusses because he wants to walk but can’t without assistance. Oh how difficult it is to be a baby! We were laughing last weekend because we had some friends in town and had four adults and three children staying with us. Our son was the youngest and the only one not walking, but he sure pulled his own weight.

If one of the kids was playing with a toy that he wanted, he would crawl right up to them or rush over in his walker, pull the toy out of their hand, and then be on his merry way. It was really hard not to laugh because I had never seen such a young baby do that, but we tried to hide our chuckles. And although he doesn’t have any concept of sharing at such a young age, we would gently return the toy to the other child and find something else for Little Buddy to play with. And sometimes that prompted quite the dramatic response from Little Buddy! It sure is rough to learn that you can’t always have your way, but it’s an essential life skill.

We have been doing a ton of baby proofing, and I plan to write an extensive post with photos because there are very few baby proofing guides out there. I’m signing off now, as it is 9:30pm, and I need a few minutes of relaxation before bed. Hope you enjoyed the update.