So Our Parenting Style Has a Name. Who Knew?

As I was reading through BabyTalk Magazine the other day, I flipped through a section that mentioned that the parenting style that we’ve been using is called Attachment Parenting.  According to the Wikipedia definition, Attachment Parenting was a phrase coined by a pediatrician named William Sears.

William Sears

As you read through the entry, you learn that there are 8 principles to Attachment Parenting:

1. Preparation for Pregnancy, Birth and Parenting
2. Feed with Love and Respect
3. Respond with Sensitivity
4. Use Nurturing Touch
5. Ensure Safe Sleep, Physically and Emotionally
6. Provide Consistent Loving Care
7. Practice Positive Discipline
8. Strive for Balance in Personal and Family Life

Well, I guess this really is the type of parenting that I’m hoping to employ.  If you read even further, you get to the concept of Natural Family Living (NFL).  And NFL is most definitely something in which John and I believe in many of the tenants (the one major difference being the idea of anti-circumcision.  We are very much pro-circumcision).

Here are some of the ideas of NFL, as listed by Wikipedia:

natural childbirth, home birth, stay-at-home parenting, cosleeping, breastfeeding, babywearing, homeschooling, unschooling, the anti-circumcision movement, natural health, cooperative movements,naturism and support of organic and local foods

 

Several of these ideas, and the way we are incorporating them into our home, are ones that I hope to blog about soon.

Wow, we managed to subscribe to a philosophy without even realizing it existed.  That’s a new one for both of us.  Since I now know that this exists, I plan to, in the near future, see if there are any NFL or Attachment Parenting moms’ groups in our area.  It’d be nice to be able to see how others are dealing with the same ideas.

Borrowed from TheParentingPit.com

 

 

Food Poisoning?

I took the long weekend off of blogging to work on the bathroom.  It’s still not quite done, but it will be soon!  I’ll probably finish it tomorrow.

Yesterday though, yesterday was quite possibly one of the worst days of my life.  Even more miserable than the 40 hours of labor I experienced in December.  I’m not sure if I had a 24 hour bug or if I had food poisoning, but it was definitely one of the two.

On Monday, we went out to eat with John’s family at the Cheesecake Factory.  Not my favorite restaurant as I think the food is just so-so and I also think they are really overpriced.  But, c’est la vie, we didn’t pick the restaurant, we just showed up.  I ended up ordering a Cobb Salad, one of my favorite things in the world to eat.

Cobb Salad

If you’ve never had a Cobb Salad, there’s a whole history behind it from its first appearance at the famous Hollywood Brown Derby.  It usually consists of lettuce, tomato, turkey, blue cheese, bacon, egg, and avocado.  I always order it without avocado since I’m not a fan.  But do you see that little 3-letter word in there, that’s the one that I think did me under.

When the salad came out, I mentioned to John that there was an awful lot of egg in the salad.  We’re talking about tons of egg.  A little strange, but whatever.  The salad was good at lunch, but I made the mistake of taking it home, forgetting about the amount of egg that was present.  Right after lunch we stopped at B&N to pick up a few things (a new Golden Book for Charlie – Where do Kisses Come From – so darn cute!) and ended up wandering around in there for about an hour.  We got home and I put the leftovers in the fridge.

That evening I was hungry, so I ate the rest of my salad, never thinking about what could be lurking in those eggs.

10 hours later, I was sick as a dog.  I needed Preston and Steve’s Velocicraptor (I’m not going to set up a link to that.  If you want to see it, you can search their website at prestonandsteve.com – they are a morning radio show here in Philly).  By midmorning, I was so sick that I had John ask his mother to come over and watch the baby.  It was awful.

By late last night, I was feeling so much better.  But, I was pretty darn weak.  I feel fine today, but still weak.  All I’ve eaten in two days is a bowl of chicken noodle soup and 2 quarts of Gatorade.  I’m not really hungry, but we’ll see how that goes as the day progresses.  So, was it food poisoning or a 24 hour bug (I was running a nice fever most of yesterday)?  The world may never know.

On a better note, we’re getting Charlie’s 2 month pictures done today.  I can’t believe she’s 2 months old already!  Once we get them back, I’ll be sure to post some.

Wacky Weather

It’s beautiful out today.  The sign at the end of our street says that it’s 74 degrees F out.  That’s amazing because it’s February and we live in New Jersey.  This is not normal.  But, it sure is welcome :)!  I got to walk around doing errands today in flip flops.  Which reminds me that I need to get a new pair before spring gets here as I wore this pair out when my feet were all swollen last summer and fall.

Less than a month ago, on January 27th, we had 18 inches of snow on the ground and it looked like this outside:

Charlie got to go outside in the snow for the first time in her Winnie-the-Pooh snowsuit.  I took her out to visit John as he was shoveling the snow (also known as hanging out with our neighbors).

On that day, we also ended up with an injured red-tail hawk on our street.  We think it may have fallen from one of the trees.  Because none of the county offices were open, John and our neighbors got “Hank the Hawk” into a cat cage (left over from when we first brought Sophie home in 2006) and our neighbor with a four wheel drive SUV drove the hawk to a wildlife rescue that’s about 15 miles from our street.

Hank the Hawk

Today though, you’d never believe that the last of that snow just finally melted away this past weekend.  It’s like spring has arrived.  Charlie and I went out to Lowe’s to pick up the new paint, and she was dressed like this:

No coat, no hat, and just a light blanket covering her.  Makes her so much happier in her car seat since she can actually move around a bit (waving her arms, kicking her feet, etc).

When we returned home, I opened up all of the downstairs windows and even opened the screen in our screendoor so that we could get some fresh air into the house.  I put Charlie’s swing in front of the screendoor and she was loving it.

While she was enjoying the weather, I was busy putting the first coat of the new paint on the bathroom walls.  I went with Olympic Paint’s Ashen Color.  I can’t find a good swatch of it online, but I’ll scan in the one I have when I show you the final bathroom pictures.  

Edited: I found a swatch online.

Olympic's Ashen

For today, here’s a picture of what it looked like as I was painting.  The color on the left is the newly painted Ashen, the color on the right was the Desert Camel that I hated.

I know it’s not the best picture ever, but at least you can get the general idea.  I should have the bathroom done tomorrow, so hopefully by Sunday I’ll have pictures of a complete bathroom up.

Procrastination

Let’s face it, John and I have always been procrastinators. We’ve lived in our house for almost 5 years and have been moaning about the downstairs bathroom the entire time. What did we do about it? Well, we took up most of the tile about 6 months after we moved in, painted the bathroom a very light yellow color, then proceeded to let the bathroom sit untouched.

And there it sat, complete with unfinished floor, an awful toilet and pedestal sink, and a light fixture that made the room look even more yellow and furthermore had one bulb burned out (the bulb has been burned out for 4 years now!)

Well, with the baptism coming up and with us deciding to hold the luncheon at our home, we finally had a deadline that forced us to make some decisions on the bathroom. We’re quickly trying to finish off the bathroom in splendid fashion since it is the one that most of our guests will use (Let’s not even discuss the upstairs bathroom right now.  It hasn’t been touched at all.  Peeling linoleum, rocking toilet, and tub that’s got cracks in the fiberglass.  I think it may end up being our summer project). 

I already discussed the sink and the toilet that we bought.  I also picked up a new, inexpensive mirror at Target to replace the old medicine cabinet (it was the type that was supposed to be inset into the wall, yet the previous owner – a contractor, mind you – had just hung it from the wall.  It looked dumb).  The mirror matches the woodwork on the sink cabinet really well.  I also bought a new light fixture at Home Depot.  Went with the cheapest brushed nickel fixture I could find.

Do you spot the trend I have going here?  Inexpensive, cheapest, etc…

And then the time came to paint the walls.  I hate yellow walls, especially where they really look yellow.  We originally had this color on the bathroom walls, from Lowe’s: 

Valspar Light Khaki

And this looked like a nice, pale, daffodil yellow.  Not brown and spa like at all.

So, we decided to try Behr paint since it was inexpensive and this is a small bathroom and yada, yada, yada (you guys know that I like Sherwin Williams Paint, right!!)

Behr Desert Camel

And what did we get?  A darker shade of yellow.  Almost a golden mustard that you use at Citizen’s Bank Park on your hot dog kind of yellow. 

Am I happy?  In short, no.  So now I have to spend another 20 bucks or so on another gallon of paint (And to answer the question I’m sure will come up, yes, we looked at the swatch on the wall in the room).  Hmmm, there seems to be a coupon available for Valspar and I think I have a Lowe’s gift card.  Guess I’m heading there instead of Home Depot.  Not a big deal as they sit in strip malls that are next to each other.

I think this time I’m going to go with a brown that is on the grey spectrum.  At least it won’t show up as yellow, and that, my friends, will be a big improvement in and of itself.

I’m Back!!

So, I’m finally back and posting again.  What have I been doing in the almost two months since I last really posted?  Here, I’ll let you take a look.

Hello from the Hospital

First Christmas (In the Hospital)

All decked out for Christmas Eve.

Daddy with his new little girl

 

Home from the hospital

Making sure that daddy is wrapped around her little finger

Being stalked by her shadow for the first time

Charlie and Grandma Til

I’ve been pretty busy taking care of our new little one, Charlotte.  She was born on December 23rd, by C-section, so we were in the hospital over Christmas.  We finally came home on December 26th, racing home to beat an incoming snow storm! 

But, I’m back now and ready to blog most days.  I have so much stuff to talk about: cloth diapering, breastfeeding, vaccinations, Disney junior, going back to work in the evenings (ack!! I did this at 3 weeks!!), and just getting used to having a new baby around. 

Life’s a little busy right now.  We have two major parties coming up in the next few months.  First we have Charlie’s Baptism at the beginning of March, then we have my parents’ 40th Anniversary party in May.  Since I’m running point for both parties, my days are a bit hectic.  But, I wouldn’t have it any other way (can you say “Shannon is a major control freak?”)

Why did we switch to a new address?  Simple, I wanted a plain .com without wordpress in the address and I liked this name.  So, here’s a question for you.  Why did I pick the name “Shaky Octopus?”  Was it Reason 1 or Reason 2?

Reason 1: I have so many things going on in my life it’s like being an octopus, needing 8 arms to get anything done, but all the time being afraid of failing at any of them.  Hence the shaky octopus.

OR

Reason 2: Charlie’s favorite toy on her floor gym is an octopus rattle.