Saturday, October 31, 2009

Accidental Parenting?

There are so many different styles of parenting - especially when it comes to babies. I am not a "baby wearer" and we don't practice the "family bed" and we aren't fans of "demand feeding" and we do not believe in letting babies "cry it out". (I'm not going to get into all that.) I LOVE the Baby Whisperer. She has such a balanced approach.

One things I firmly believe in is putting newborns on a schedule. In the NICU they had Zane on a schedule where he ate every 3 hours - this was awesome because they did all the groundwork of establishing his schedule for me. Zane had pumped breastmilk from a bottle when the nurses fed him and I breastfed every other feeding. I remember when I first had Levi and a friend was telling me about things she learned with her firstborn. One of the things she said was "really, what it all comes down to is how disciplined you are as a parent". I immediately disagreed with her in my mind.

About a month ago Zane started to have tummy issues - he was spitting up a lot and had lots of gas. Normally at night when I feed Zane I get up and sit in the rocking chair and feed him. Well, I had gotten lazy recently and would put him in bed with me and breastfeed. We would both fall asleep and he would wake up an hour or so later to eat more. This led to a bad habit of him waking up to eat every hour during the night. I was SO tired. I decided I had to make myself get up, out of bed, and resume feeding and burping him without our naps in between. Once I broke that bad habit Zane was having less gas problems. I realized that because we fell asleep after he ate - I wasn't burping him at night and it was making his tummy problems worse!! So, my friend was right. Sometimes parenting comes down to how disciplined WE are. Making ourselves follow through and be consistent is so important. Tracy Hogg, aka The Baby Whisperer, would call this "accidental parenting". So often we teach our kids bad habits because we aren't parenting on purpose. I don't want my kids to be a product of "accidental parenting" when it comes to discipline. It takes longer to correct behavior than it does to do stick to your guns and be consistent in the first place!!



Levi Asher

One of my mom's favorite things is going to the Kids Consignement Stores when they are in Scottsdale, AZ. Since Scottsdale has a lot of wealthy people there - these consignment stores have amazing clothes, in great shape, for amazing prices. My mom brought back a huge box of clothes for the boys and this is Levi digging in the box and throwing every piece of clothing out over his shoulder. I wish I'd gotten a video of it!!

Levi loves to throw things - much to my dismay

Do you see the pile of clothing next to the box? He was having great fun.

Levi loves to roll balls back and forth on the ping pong table. He loves to make people laugh and is quite the ham.


Levi does not like it when something is dirty. He points at any specks until you clean it up. Here he is telling us to clean the step.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Yummy!!

Zane is so sweet and cute. Last week we visited Brenda, Rachel and Seriah. Seriah and Levi played so well together. And I got my first good picture of Zane smiling while Seriah was holding him! Then tonight John got an amazing smile out of him!! He is just so yummy!!

Pumpkin Patch

We went to the Happy Apple Farms Pumpkin Patch on Sunday. Levi enjoyed running around and squatting down to look at the pumpkins. He isn't much for getting dirty and didn't really get the concept of picking one out to take home. I was hoping to get some cute pictures but it was windy and dusty out - so we gave up pretty quickly!!

Sunday, October 18, 2009

DSC03450.JPG

DSC03501.JPG

Sweet Brother

I'm so thankful because going from one to two has been such an easy transition. I had braced myself and freaked myself out that it was so going to be awful at first. My theory is that my pregnancies are so difficult that once the baby comes...that's the easy part. It does help the Zane is a great baby. Levi did make me a little crazy at first when he acted out his jealousy - but that passed quickly.

>

Sunday, October 11, 2009

I'm a little behind...these are from a couple weeks ago. Levi weaned himself off his pacifier! Praise God! Once Zane was born and had a pacifier Levi wanted his all the time. He actually made it easy on us by doing it himself!


Sunday, October 4, 2009