Binkies in the Man Cave

Precious Little One has entered into the monkey-see-monkey-do phase of life.  This means she no longer wants the trappings of a baby, especially plastic cutlery and bowls.  Instead, she wants what we use.  Our flatware is just too big for her, not that she doesn't try.

On a recent trip to Ikea, we found the perfect solution--coffee spoons!  The Dragon coffee spoon is shaped like a traditional spoon, and fits perfectly in her hands.

When you're out at the mall or for dinner, you pack a diaper bag.  When you're our for a long day or travelling to a different city, your diaper bag transmorgifies into a Mobile Baby Command Center (MBCC).  The MBCC

1. Diapers (duh)
2. Baby wipes (you'll need enough for baby, and for your hands, just in case)
3. Cleaning wipes (for cart handles, restaurant tables, dirty changing tables, etc)
4. Shout wipes or Tide stick, for stain prevention on your clothes, as well as hers.
5. Disposable bibs, or "bib clips", which let you use any towel as a bib.
6. Place mats with sticky tape on the back to keep them in place
7. Snacks.  There is the possibility that your Precious Little One will be a little out of sorts, and either quietly lose her appetite or actively go on a hunger strike.  You need to have a selection of the "old faithful" snacks in the MBCC.  Don't forget yourself--throw in a small package of trail mix or a granola bar or something you like.
8. Real baby food.  Although she may like french fries and cheese puffs, you need something more substantial and familiar to keep her schedule.
9. Kleenex, for you and baby
10. Cash, above what's in your wallet.  $20 can go a long way in a pinch.
11. Several Ziploc bags in a couple of sizes.  For sorts of reasons.
12. Toys and books.  Pack a couple favorites, and for longer trips, a couple new ones in case she's suddenly bored with the old ones.
13. Spare change of clothes.
14. Headache remedy for yourself.  It's tough to be on your game when your head is pounding.
15. Towel.  Always carry your towel.

If you pack well, and favor travel sizes, you can get all of this into a decent sized bag.  Any must-haves for the MBCC I missed?  Leave them in the comments.

What a way to start the new blog!  Just released today is Sleepytime Tunes: Jimmy Buffett Lullaby.  It's available on CD from Amazon, MP3 download from Amazon, or download from iTunes.

Most albums don't translate well into lullaby tributes.  Buffett, however, seems to work well as lullabies.  The gentle Caribbean rhythms and steel drums easily convert to whatever they use to make a lullaby album (supposed to sound like xylaphone, guitar and accordian but really sounds like keyboards), and the result is something very recognizable and not too annoying.  This is probably the best lullaby tribute album out there, excellent if you're a Parrothead.

I'm not sure how thrilled I am with "Why don't we get drunk..." being on my daughter's lullaby album, but we have a few years before we have to explain it to her.

The Graco SweetPeace works when nothing else does.  When our girl has been her fussiest, our SweetPeace can get her to calm down and fall asleep.  It's during these extended fussy spells that you really, really need a good place to set the baby down so you can clear your head for a moment.  The SweetPeace goes even further by calming our baby down and getting her to sleep.  It's like magic--after only a few minutes of swinging, she settles calms down and starts to yawn.  Everyone's experiences will be different, but here are my experiences with the Graco SweetPeace.

Good Stuff

1. Unlike car seats, no strap needs to feed between the baby's legs.  This means you can have your baby swaddled or in a sleep sack (or similar) in the seat, so when she dozes off you can put her right into her crib.
2. It includes a swaddling blanket, with holes for the straps, so you can strap in and swing a swaddled baby as well.  At the time we registered for it, there was an offer from Babies-R-Us for an additional swaddling blanket, so you might want to search online for other offers.
3. Includes a variety of prerecorded sounds.  Our girl likes rain, so that's what we usually use, but I think ocean and heartbeat are the others.  There is a selection of several lullabies as well as the environmental sounds.  There's a volume control, so you can play the sounds loud over crying, or soft to soothe sleep.
4. MP3 connector.  Any device which has a standard headphone jack can be plugged in and played through the speaker.  This includes everything from a 20 year old Walkman to the newest iPods.  There is a small drawer where you can hide an iPod, Zune or similar sized player.
5. Comes with its own seat, or you can attach a Graco Snug Ride, too.  The included seat has a vibration control, and vibrates in addition to the swinging motion.
6. The swing motion varies, so it's not a consistent back and forth.  Some swings are a little longer than others, and some are barely noticeable.  This helps keep the baby from getting sick and adds an element of realism to the motion.

Not so good stuff

1. The straps naturally fall down into the seat.  When you have a fussbucket on your hands, it's tricky to keep the straps out of the way of the baby.
2. The head pad with bear ears also tends to flop down when you're putting a fussbucket into the seat.
3. Kind of bulky, and takes up a good chunk of floor space.  You'll want to dedicate a corner to this, because it's not something you can easily pick up and move around.

Bonus: You can leave the sounds on all night, so if your baby monitor is close to the SweetPeace (or if it's in your room), you can hear the sounds.  The rain sound is pretty relaxing...

We blew it.  $40 that is.  We saw a nice looking baby monitor at a discount store on clearance, and snapped it up--quite a deal we got.  Until we turned it on.  The monitor uses a 2.4 GHz frequency.  So does our Linksys wifi router, and all those around us.  When we turned the receiver on, all we heard was high-pitched static.  That's the sound of wifi.  I knew about interference with 900 MHz bands (cordless phones and such), but even though I knew wifi was 2.4 GHz, it didn't even cross my mind.

So, back to "the baby store", as Wifey calls it, to find a real baby monitor.  After looking at all the options, and there are many, I decided on the Safety 1st High Definition Digital Monitor.  Partly, I liked the design of the monitor (it doesn't look like an internal organ from a Telletubby), and on the package it mentioned DECT technology, which operates on a different frequency range than other devices

So far, we've been pleased.  Reception is clear, and no interference with wifi or cordless phones.  Bottom line is, if you live in an area with close neighbors, look for a DECT monitor, since there are probably a lot of cordless phones and wifi around you.

Everybody seems to like cute socks for a baby, and boy are they tiny!  It's not easy keeping them paired up--they'd barely cover my big toe, but their colors and patterns aren't mix and match (unlike my sock drawer, which is mainly black, tan and blue socks).

So here's what wifey figured out: go to Michael's (or another craft store), and get their crafting clothespins.  They're about 1 inch long, and are perfect for keeping baby socks together in a drawer.  When you take the socks out of the mesh bag from the dryer, pin them together and drop them in the drawer.

So we've had the baby shower, and we have an amazing selection of stuff we never knew existed.  We have binkies, bankies, babas, boppies and bumbos.  To which all I can say is boffo!

Another site I've recently discovered is Zwaggle.  There's a lot to learn about this site, but I like the idea behind it.  You give away old stuff and earn "Zoints", which you can redeem to get someone else's old stuff.  It's another great way to lower the startup costs of the next generation, and clean out some stuff from your place.

The blurb from their site:

Zwaggle is an online community for parents to share with other parents. Using our points based sharing system, parents spend less money, time and resources providing for their children.

Zwaggle provides members with a trusted place to:

• give away used goods that are no longer needed by your family
• receive value from their used goods via our proprietary points based system, called Zoints
• use those Zoints to obtain items you need for your family

Babies are expensive.  And mine isn't even here yet!  All this stuff you have to buy, and they'll only wear the clothes a couple of times.

We found a really cool way to ease the pain of a new baby, and a way to give back as your child outgrows whatever they have.  It's an organization called Freecyle, and there are over 4000 groups worldwide.  Groups "meet" through Yahoo! groups.  If you have something still useful, but you don't need it anymore, you post an "offer" to the group.  If you need something you don't have, you post a "wanted" to the group.  People who want what you have, or have what you need, and you coordinate via e-mail to meet and give or get the items.  The one restriction is, everything must be free (hence the name).

It's amazing how fast the responses can be.  We posted an entertainment center at kickoff of a football game, and it was gone before halftime!

You can search for the group nearest to you at http://www.freecycle.org/.  Definitely a worthwhile organization to be a part of.

(update 2007-12-30)

We feel so journalistic with this scoop!  In case you missed the AP story, here it is: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071229/ap_on_re_us/freecycle_flourishes_1;_ylt=AhLdqVtVxt0DiCqI3vV7kNwE1vAI