More Halloween ideas for baby

I think my first set of Halloween ideas is still the best, but I've had a few more ideas for a baby's first Halloween.  Some are more practical than others.  Our son's hair hasn't grown in yet, and this Halloween I want to capitalize on his lack of hair by doing a bald costume.  I've been saying that he could be Pinhead:

Pinhead

But it turns out it's easier to do this with a bald wig, not a bald person.  And I don't know anything about leather-working, so the rest of the costume would be difficult.  They do make it in adult and children's sizes at Spirit Halloween, Halloween Hellraiser Pinhead Adult Costume (Google Affiliate Ad).  They sell a Halloween Lifesize Hellraiser Pinhead Animatronic (Google Affiliate Ad) and a Halloween Pinhead Hellraiser Mask (Google Affiliate Ad) also.  It would be cute for our baby in a psychotic kind of way.

Dr. Evil would make a good costume, with Mini Me:

Replica of Dr. Evil's pinky ring

Dr. Evil and Mini Me

You will need Dr. Evil's pinky ring, and another for your Mini Me.  They sell a Dr. Evil accessory kit with a bald cap and ring that goes for around $20 most places.  I wouldn't give one to my child because of the choke hazard.  I would draw it on baby's finger somehow, that would be safer.


Pennywise the clown from Stephen King's IT would be scary, another inappropriate bald costume for a child:

Pennywise the Clown

I think everyone was scared of this evil magic psychotic clown.  Stephen King is a genius, and I wish I could say I've read more of his books.

How about Uncle Fester?  He's creepy and kooky but not that scary:

Christopher Lloyd as Uncle Fester

Jackie Coogan from the original TV show

Curly from the Three Stooges would be fun:

Curly

The Three Stooges would be a good group costume theme, and either siblings or adults could play Larry and Moe.  If it's just the baby dressed as Curly people might not recognize the costume, so I wouldn't do this unless we had a group.  It would also be hard for our baby to do Curly's facial expressions, which are fundamental to playing the character.  They sell Moe and Larry masks, but they're a little scary:

There were some other ideas I found like Voldemort or freakout Britney Spears, but Voldemort's nose is far too difficult and there really is no reason to do a bald freakout Britney Spears.

Bald freakout Britney Spears

No nose

I'm sticking with Captain Picard as his costume.  It's a simple, recognizable costume that would allow me to dress as Commander Riker.  It's going to require some sewing, because they don't make baby sized Starfleet uniforms, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Make it so

There's an audio clip from some radio show where the hosts ask Sir Patrick Stewart what he would say to a sewing machine repair person if he had a broken sewing machine, but it's not very satisfying.  I recently discovered that there is a Sesame Street starring Patrick Stewart.  This video is funny if not predictable, but I wonder how many children watching Sesame Street are as well versed in Star Trek as I:

I can't resist one more, Patrick Stewart doing "Soliloquy on B":

6-month doctor's appointment

Today baby had his 6-month checkup.  They measure the circumference of his head, measure his length, and weigh him.  In the past he's been well behaved at the doctor's but I think he's starting to make negative associations with the table you sit on.  He was fine while the nurse measured his length, which is probably the least accurate measurement they take.  The nurse draws a line on the medical paper at the top of his head then tries to hold him straight and measure at his feet.  The problem is, our baby likes to kick and squirm so much it can't be perfect.

To get his weight I strip him down to just his diaper and they take him to the comfort of a freezing cold, stainless steel (with a sheet of medical paper) balance scale.  He immediately starts screaming when he get put on the scale, probably because of the cold.  For the rest of the visit, any time he gets put down, he screams.  The balance requires a minute or two to find the weight, and his squirming and rolling around didn't make it any easier.  Every time he moves and puts force on the tray arm of the scale starts swinging again and the nurse has to adjust again.  If you're unfamiliar with a balance, remind me not to invite you when we need people in an emergency shelter after some apocalyptic cataclysm.  A balance is the most accurate type of scale; other scales rely on a tensioned spring or pneumatics or some other new-fangled method to measure weight, but a balance simply uses a lever to compare two items.  One side has the item to be weighed, and on the other you add weights until the two sides balance.  In the doctor's office the weights are built into the scale.  The fulcrum of the lever is very close to the little weights on the doctor's scale, so it doesn't have to have your exact weight to be in balance.  The little weights proportionally match your weight at whatever ratio the position of the fulcrum dictates.  I'm sure this is all very fascinating.

I didn't mean what I said earlier about the emergency shelter and the apocalypse.  I don't have an emergency shelter, and I'm not expecting the apocalypse.  If I did, I would indiscriminately let as many people in as supplies or the nature of the destruction permit.  Family members have dibs.

I knew at his 6-month appointment he would need some inoculations and of course would be getting a shot.  I didn't know he would need four shots and a vial of some sort.  They told me there is a shortage of the last shot he had, so they would have to give four separate shots instead.  I head from the nurse and the doctor that there was a shortage, then the nurse who gave the shot told me it was because of rationing.  My first thought was that he's not going to like getting four separate shots, and then I thought of the war in Iraq and wondered if the rationing is because of it.  It could just be because of a bad crop of vaccines this year, I have no idea.

He took them pretty well, in part because I think the nurse did a good job giving them.  She gave him two shots in each leg, and didn't give him a chance to squirm away or anything while she did it.  I got to hold him in my lab, which was good, but I had to hold his hands so he didn't hurt himself with them as he was getting the shots.  I didn't know exactly how he could hurt himself with them, maybe by poking himself in the eye or grabbing the needle somehow, but you do what the nurse tells you.

He cried really hard for a minute or two, and I comforted him by rocking and singing to him.  This helped a lot, but he was down to his diaper and falling asleep; it was almost nap time.  I still had to get him dressed and I didn't want to have to wake him up again, and when I put him down to get him dressed that started a whole new round of crying.  Lately he's been crying a little when I've been trying to get him dressed; I think he doesn't want to bother putting on pants and long-sleeve shirts.  He wants to be awake and start playing right away.

He stopped crying shortly after going in his carseat, then went to sleep almost immediately when we got in the car.  I think it's a good strategy to take baby to the doctor a little before nap time.  It might not seem like a good idea, because the baby might be cranky while getting the shots, but they're going to cry no matter what.  This way when the bad stuff goes down the baby is ready to sleep as soon as he is calm.  I'm going to try it again next time and see how it works.  He's got a flu shot next week and the appointment is at about the same time, hopefully it doesn't backfire somehow.

Arsenic in Infant Rice Cereal

On the news two days ago there was a story about elevated levels of arsenic in rice in the United States.      At first I only marginally paid attention to the story; I don't eat that much rice and when I do it's usually at a restaurant.  Also, I have a vague memory of arsenic naturally occurring in rice.  That's why cooked rice smells so bad when it's left unrefrigerated.

We've been feeding our son rice cereal mixed with formula for more than a month now, and he likes eating from a spoon.  It wasn't until the group discussion during today's Scooters Baby class at Isis that I made the connection between his rice cereal and the rice with elevated arsenic.  Actually, some other parents made the connection for me; the class had a brief discussion about the findings.

There was some confusion about which brands were effected and to what extent, and if organic versus non-organic made a difference.  I decided to do some research here on the trusty ol' internet to get to the bottom of things.  I'll provide all the links and sources I used so you can read further or want to check things for yourself.

On September 19th the FDA released a study entitled "Arsenic in Rice," looking at both organic and inorganic arsenic in rice.  Much more informative was another page on the FDA site, "Questions & Answers: FDA’s Analysis of Arsenic in Rice and Rice Products."  Inorganic arsenic is the type that can lead to increased risk of "skin, bladder, and lung cancers, as well as heart disease."  There are types of organic arsenic that can be toxic, but the inorganic types are typically the most toxic.  There is no real difference in arsenic levels between between organic and non-organic rice, according to the FDA.  Looking at the infant rice cereals in the Consumer Reports chart below, however, one can see that many of the organic infant rice cereals have less arsenic than the non-organic.  This International Agency for Research on Cancer monograph has a lot more information about arsenic and other carcinogens, for people who want to learn more and like to read very formal scientific studies.

Arsenic is absorbed into food from the soil and water, and according to the FDA rice absorbs arsenic at an increased rate.  According to Discovery News, "the way rice is cultivated in water-flooded conditions makes it more vulnerable to absorbing arsenic."  The way I understand it is that because rice has the opportunity to absorb arsenic from both the soil and the water, it does so at a higher rate than other grains.

I found the Consumer Reports article to be the most informative, and also the longest.  Consumer Reports provided some explanation as to how elevated levels of arsenic get into our food.  Much of it comes from industrial pollution, and arsenic remains in the environment longer than other substances.  States that used to produce cotton were found to have the most arsenic in the soil because arsenic was heavily used as a pesticide to fight the boll weavle beetle.  The use of arsenic insecticide was banned in the 1980's, but it is still used in animal feed and is present in agricultural soil to this day.  Part of the problem is that arsenic remains in the environment for a long time, even after its use has been discontinued.

Consumer Reports found a lot of variation even within the same brand of infant rice cereal.  We've been feeding our baby the Gerber brand rice cereal, both organic and non-organic.  Some of the samples studied had the lowest overall (organic and inorganic) levels of arsenic within the category, while others had the highest.  You could buy two boxes of the same cereal from the same shelf at the market and they could have very different levels of arsenic.

There is a difference between brown rice and white rice, and when it comes to arsenic white rice is the healthier of the two.  All rice has the husk removed, then white rice also has the outer layers (the bran and germ) removed.  This is what makes brown nice more nutritious because the bran and husk are protein and nutrient-rich.  They also absorb arsenic, so removing them from the rice leaves the rice with less arsenic overall.

The FDA does not recommend that we limit our rice consumption.  They give the standard advice that one shouldn't eat only rice but consume a variety of grains from many sources.  Consumer Reports gives different advice, however, which you can see in the graphic below:

Image from Consumer Reports' article

What can you do about arsenic in your food?  The Consumer Reports site provided a link to a Consumers Union website that allows you to send an e-mail to policymakers, urging them to set limits on arsenic levels in food and to ban the use of drugs containing arsenic in animals' feed.  Based on the logo of Consumers Union, I can safely say they're affiliated with Consumer Reports in some way.

We've switched baby to barley or oat cereal.  Rice contains more nutrients than these other grains, but we're trying to limit baby's exposure to chemicals and toxins as much as possible.  Given what I've learned about the increased absorption of arsenic by rice I think the negative effects outweigh the positive.  Arsenic may be present in barley and oats as well, but these grains should not contain as much as rice.  I have yet to find a study as extensive on the arsenic content of these other grains, but I'll keep looking.

Below find the Consumer Reports table detailing levels of arsenic found in different U.S. brands.  The FDA's tables only make reference to sample numbers and don't identify any brands in particular, probably to avoid any possible litigation that could result from singling anyone out.

Image from Consumer Reports

My late night bursts of energy

My wife and I have noticed that every night, once baby has gone to bed, we get this burst of energy and stay awake much later than we should.  Last night I didn't get into bed until almost 11:00, then I read in bed for at least another 20 minutes!  What was I thinking?  Clearly I was not thinking about getting up early to feed baby, then getting up for the day shortly after that.

Everyone knows having a baby messes up your sleep schedule, but exactly how it changes is something I was completely unprepared for.  I used to have a job where I'd get up for work at 3am one week, then work from 3pm until 1am but often 2 or 3am.  I've had crazy, inconsistent sleep schedules.  This is different.

We have a bedtime routine that begins somewhere around 6pm.  We feed baby "solid food," which at this point consists of rice cereal mixed with formula in one dish and mashed fruit in another.  We've done apple, avocado, pear, sweet potato, and nectarine, and it's lots of fun to watch baby's reactions to each.  We feed him and every second night bathe him, then read some books on our bed and feed him a bottle.

I've been having a hard time the last few nights staying awake past story time.  We take turns reading books then sing a little and feed baby a bottle, but two nights ago I fell asleep for about three hours myself.  I missed my dinner!  That of course messed with my ability to sleep that night, and I was up late again.

What I need to do is start taking a nap when baby goes down in the day.  He naps three times in the day, and usually I try to use that time to do things I can't do while he's awake.  I watch TV, clean the apartment, or work on one of my ongoing projects that litter our place and annoy my wife.  I have a lot of half finished things going on at any given moment, and I add about two projects for every one I finish or give up on.

The point is this: as tempting as it is to stay up and enjoy the freedom of a 6 month-old in bed for the night, go to sleep!  We only get up once each in the night to feed him, but once the sun is up he is ready for the day.  I need to either go to bed when he does or within an hour or two; these last morning have been really difficult and I don't want to be exhausted forever.

Scooters Family class at Isis

We enrolled baby in a class at a local store at which we'd previously taken classes for pregnant women and their significant others; the classes we took before baby was born were about what to expect and how to prepare, whereas this class is more about having fun and interacting with other babies.  The class is run at a store called Isis, which has four locations in the Boston area.  They sell high-end baby toys and supplies, run classes, and provide an environment where parents can change their babies, feed their babies, or anything else parents might need.  They allow parents to come in any time and use the facilities without spending any money, which could be helpful for a man trying to change a diaper.  Most women's bathrooms have a baby changing station, but I've run into times when I couldn't change baby because of the lack of a changing station in a men's room.  It usually works in my favor, because in the past my wife has been with me so she gets stuck changing the diaper.  If I were ever alone in Arlington, the Back Bay Boston, Hanover, or Needham and needed to change baby's diaper I would head to Isis.  We've been to all the locations but the Back Bay location and had nothing but good experiences there.

The Scooters Family class runs once a week for 10 weeks, and children start the class when they are between 5 and 8 months of age.  Baby went to the first class with his aunt (we were at a wedding), so this was our first time at the class.  It was lots of fun!  His mother and I were both exhausted from a busy week leading up to the class, and I wasn't sure I would be able to stay awake much less participate in the class.  The woman running the class was very engaging, there were lots of different activities, and watching our child and the other children was very entertaining.

Our baby was one of the only children unable to sit on his own, but the instructor told us that the children are all on different schedules and that no one should feel as if their child is behind.  She also told us that each child can participate in their own way; some children sleep, some cry, some laugh and play along, and all are welcome.  It was a very warm, supportive environment.

The class had lots of different activities.  There was a lot of singing, and each song had sign language to accompany the lyrics.  There was a ball pit that was not quite big enough for all the babies to go in at once, and I thought it important to teach our baby to allow the other children a turn, but we ended up with baby in the ball pit for almost the entire activity.  There was a parachute game, more singing, reading time, a discussion on the importance of routines, and the instructor blew bubbles while singing a bubble song.  There was a goodbye song with more sign language, and everyone leaves the class at their own pace.  Some of the children needed to be fed, some needed to be changed (there's a changing table right in the room), and the instructor came to see if we had any questions about the class we missed.

As I said, the class is 10 weeks long, which tethers us to the Boston area every weekend until November.  But it was fun, baby loved it, and I'm glad we signed up for it.

Gerber Generation Photo Search

The winners are in!  The grand prize winner is Mary Jane Montoya of Fresno California, pictured below.  I don't know if she's as cute as our baby, but she is pretty darn cute.  Here is the official Gerber site, although they make you go to facebook to see the picture.  

Mary Jane

The milestone winners are as follows:

• Birth+: Phoenix Molina, who loves to eat peaches, from Sacramento, Calif.
• Supported Sitter: Justin Ridzon, who loves to eat apples, from Lowell, Mass.
• Sitter: Jax Schuster, who loves to eat squash, from Lebanon, Ind.
• Crawler: Londyn Ridley, who loves to eat bananas, from Millsboro, Del.
• Toddler: Jaiden Davidson, who loves to eat bananas, from Petersburg, Va.
• Preschooler: Johnathon Cahill, who loves to eat apples, from Mastic Beach, N.Y.

• 
  Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/11/06/4964477/gerber-announces-2012-photo-search.html#storylink=cpy

The Gerber competition delayed announcement of the 2012 winners due to hurricane Sandy.  They will announce the winners on November 6th.  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you haven't been notified by now your child probably isn't a winner.  Although delaying the announcement could mean the decision isn't made yet, the rules specify a process of contacting the winners and choosing a new winner if they cannot be reached.  I've been answering all the suspected telemarketer calls since September 25th in the hopes that it'll be Gerber to no avail; I have little hope that our baby is a winner.  Below you can read some information about the contest (and scheming of mine) from a time when hope was still alive.

We've entered baby in the Gerber Generation Photo Search competition.  There's a $50,000 cash prize for one baby, determined by Gerber.  There's also a milestone prize, a $10,000 scholarship.  This part of the contest started September 4th, and you can vote every day until September 24th.  Six babies, one from each milestone category, will win a $10,000 Gerber life college scholarship based on people's votes on facebook.  This is a contest that Gerber runs every year, and I'm sure I remember seeing friends on facebook asking for votes in years past.  It's too late to enter this year, but if you have a child that will still fall under the milestone categories I would consider entering it for next year.  The milestone categories are: Birth+, Supported Sitter, Sitter, Crawler, Toddler, and Preschooler.  Our baby fits under the category of supported sitter.  Here's the Gerber press release about the competition.

It doesn't seem possible to see how many votes a child has in the contest.  Many people are asking, how can I see how many votes my baby has?  I haven't found a real answer to this, but I've looked in so many places and as the parent who entered my child in the contest I would think I would be the first one with access to that information.  We'll just have to trust in the system and when the contest is over find out if baby won or not.

According to Gerber's rules for the contest, "the potential Grand Award recipient will be notified via phone, mail, or email on or about September 25, 2012."  The facebook page now says to check back on November 1st to see "which ones you and the judges selected," presumably that's when the milestone and grand prize winners will be announced to the public.  I could only find the official rules in a mobile format.

If you'd like to see a picture of our baby and vote for him in the contest, please sign into facebook and visit https://apps.facebook.com/gerberps/detail.do?entry_id=412952.  We'll take as many votes as we can, I appreciate your help.  College is a scarily expensive proposition, and although $10,000 probably won't get very far in 18 years I'm willing to give it a try.  I'll make a deal with you: if your child is also in the Gerber contest (and not in the supported sitter category), post a link in the comment section below and I will vote for your child.  Please vote for our baby too!

There are some pitfalls to avoid when entering your child in a contest, especially online.  This is the first time I've done it, and Gerber is a well known company so the experience has been a good one.  The prizes are real and I haven't gotten outrageous spam, junk e-mails, or crazy stuff posted to my facebook wall since entering.  This is not the case, however, for a friend who signed up for another contest after missing the Gerber submission deadline.

When you search Google for the Gerber contest several other baby photo contests also come up, and many are tricked into entering them not realizing that they painting a huge telemarketer bull's-eye on themselves in the process.  I saw my friend's post, and wanted to vote for her child.  The site required that you register in order to vote, but I'm experienced with such matters.  I keep an extra e-mail address or two for entering contests or times when I think my information is going to be sold to mailing lists.  This was absolutely one of those times, so I filled out the registration information and clicked proceed, but then screen after screen of special offers and ads came up.  Each page had a "skip offer" option, and finally after skipping about 8 offers it allowed me to vote.  They wanted my phone number, and when I gave them my house phone instead of the cell an error message told me it HAD to be a cell phone.  Red flags and alarms were going off like crazy in my head at this point, so I closed the window and stopped wherever I was.  I'm pretty sure that I voted, but they made you jump through so many hoops that I really can't be 100% certain my vote registered.

The point is this: be careful what you sign up for.  There are a lot of internet scams out there, and my friend very innocently wanted to enter her child in what looked like a legitimate contest.  I'm sure someone does win the $2,500 cash prize her contest advertised, but the number of mailing lists she ended up on as a result is anyone's guess.  She sent me a message the next day apologizing if someone from "allaboutbaby" calls me, because so far that day she'd received three calls from them.

The Gerber contest is a legitimate contest run by a well-established company.  Say what you will about sugar content and giving your baby processed foods, but at least I know my name isn't on a thousand mailing lists for the rest of my life.  If you don't know the company running the contest or there are lots of special offers and ads to skip, it's probably best to skip that contest altogether.

Games for a 5 month old

Yesterday I did some searching online for some educational games to play with our 5 month old, because my wife has gone back to work and I'm alone with baby all day long.  She's a teacher and I work and go to school at night, and we don't want to put baby in daycare yet.  For one thing it's very expensive, and for another we don't want to pay someone else to raise our baby.  This is the first week of school, so it's the first week of baby and I spending our days together.  I thought I should see what would be developmentally beneficial for him rather than just doing whatever I felt like.  It turns out some of the games I was already playing with him are good for him, funny how that works sometimes.

I went to this babycenter.com website that gives some games to play with 4 to 6 month olds.  I've been to the Baby Center website a few times before and find it pretty useful and accurate compared to what the doctor tells us.  Sometimes the way it's narrated and organized bothers me, but it's the content and not the presentation that's most important, right?  I hope so, otherwise half of you probably just stopped reading this page.

We tried the spice rack game, and I wasn't sure if I was getting close enough with the spices but I didn't want him to accidentally inhale any of the spice.  I didn't want to use pepper, but I tried it with cinnamon, tarragon, garlic powder, curry powder, and a couple more I can't remember at the moment.  Some he didn't react to at all really, but the garlic and the curry he scrunched up his face a little for.  I did this in the high chair, and I managed to spill a little curry powder on the restraint strap, which put an end to the spice rack game.  It was fun though, but I'm not sure how you are supposed to cook while playing this game.  They also suggest smelling other things around the house like shaving cream, but I don't think we should encourage baby to get into these things.  The smells might be so interesting that he eventually will want to taste them as well.  Not a good thing.

We don't have any bubbles.  I know it's not hard to make them yourself with shoelaces and dish soap but it seems like it'll be messy, and we have enough of a mess in our apartment right now to not need to add to it.

The "I'm Gonna Get You" game is good, but we don't follow the narrative from the website exactly.  In fact, we don't follow it at all.  I'll talk about what body part I'm pretending to eat between making "OM NOM NOM" noises and kissing him, and he loves it.

One of the classics they mentioned is the "This Little Piggy" game.  This one I already play with baby, and he really enjoys it.  It's fun and it gets a smile from him, but I'm not sure how to use it to distract him while changing diapers.  When changing his diaper I use one hand to hold his legs and the other to wipe.  We've got cloth wipes that are reusable, so we wet them down, ring them out, and wipe.  Even if we had pre-moistened wipes I don't know how I would play "This Little Piggy" without his getting poop all over the place.

It might work well when I'm trying to put his pants on, because that can be very frustrating sometimes.  Our baby is a kicker; he loves to kick all the time, which is cute when he's swimming or playing but not so great when you're trying to get his pants on.  I have to remind myself that he's not doing it on purpose, but trying to get the second leg in is very difficult.  Getting one leg in is no problem, but while I'm trying to get the second he kicks out of the first.  Playing "This Little Piggy" might be the trick to keep his legs in place while I put his pants on.

We didn't have a hard time giving baby tummy time; he's been flipping himself over and flipping back for weeks now.  I tried it their way once, and felt stupid because he's already proven himself proficient at flipping over.

The "Fly, Baby Fly" game is fun, and similar to a few games that we play with baby already.  His mother does a game where she moves his feet like he's riding a bike while she sings "going on a bike ride" with a made up, nondescript tune.  Then she holds his hands and moves them like he's driving a car.  When she's doing that he tries to pull himself into the sitting position, and she'll help a little by pulling on his arms.  After he drives the car she'll pick him up and fly him around over her head singing the same tuneless song, but this time he goes "zoom zoom zoom."  He loves it, and it's probably the first ever game either one of us had played with him.

I'll play a game with him when he's laying down where I'll get right up close to his face.  He'll grab at my facial features and I'll narrate what he's grabbing as he does it.  "Now you're grabbing my nose, and with your left hand you're grabbing my cheek, and oh, now you've got my eyebrow, that kinda hurts," and so on.  Then sometimes he'll grab me by the hair and kick me in the face.  It used to be a lot of fun but now his kicks are getting strong enough that it's starting to hurt, so the hair pull/face kick game doesn't last very long any more.

It is a lot of fun to play with him, and when I find myself getting frustrated or he's getting cranky I try to play a game with him.  It usually gets him smiling and that's an instant cheer-up.  If it doesn't cheer him up he needs either some food or a nap, which are easy enough to fix.

Swimming in a salt water pool

Over Labor Day weekend we were fortunate to take baby swimming in our friend's salt water pool.  Our child is a pisces, and my wife and I both love swimming and water, so we've been pleased to find that so does baby.  Up until now he's only been swimming in a small pool that's meant to be a travel bath; it's about 2 feet by 3 feet and folds up into a handy size.  It's worked so far but it can be hard on the back to be hunched over holding him up as he kicks and splashes.  Swimming in a big pool was much more fun - and easier - for me.

Over the course of the summer we've done a lot of research about swimming in the ocean, swimming in chlorine or saltwater pools, and everything concerning a 4 - 5 month old baby swimming.  Babies shouldn't be in chlorine; it can lead to asthma and respiratory problems among other things.  The major problem with taking a baby into the ocean is the temperature.  A baby younger than 6 months is still learning to regulate their body temperature, and swimming in the ocean can cause baby's temperature to fluctuate dangerously.

The pool we swam in has a retractable cover that keeps the heat in overnight; all day the pool is heated by the sun and keeps most of the heat overnight.  This is the new trend in heating pools, with covers that can be manually spread or motorized ones like this.  It keeps the pool at a comfortable temperature without wasting gas or electricity to heat it.

We got some swim diapers, and the only ones available at Buy Buy Baby (Huggies or Pampers) didn't come in a size any smaller than 16 pounds.  They were for children from 16 to around 30 lbs., and baby just made the cut weighing in at a little more than 16 pounds.  Next year we'll buy some reusable ones, but this year we went with disposables since we only needed them for this weekend.  When he's not swimming in someone else's pool he goes "au natural," but next year he'll be able to swim in the ocean and a chlorinated pool so he'll have more opportunity to use them.  I'd like to delay his swimming in a chlorine pool as long as possible but it might be hard to disappoint him when faced with one.

Baby loved swimming, and it was fun to hold him and actually move him along as he kicked.  He got his face in the water a little by mistake, and was sticking his tongue out possibly to taste the water.  He didn't fuss at all, and after a while my wife had to tell me that he had probably been in long enough.  Just like his Dad, who is usually the last one out of the pool.

My wife's brother gave us a camera similar to the one above, a 14 megapixel Panasonic Lumix camera; the camera is waterproof to 10 ft and shockproof to 5 ft, perfect for taking pictures of children.  Perfect for having around children as well, since it would take a concerted effort to destroy this camera.  The doors where the battery and data card go have slide locks so they can't accidentally be opened and rubber gaskets that keep the water out, but of course they have to be kept clean to keep the water out.  As long as you keep them closed nothing really gets in.  Only once ever have I found water around the inside of the door, shortly after taking it underwater and discovering that I must have forgot to slide the lock closed.  I dried it out without turning the camera on and it was fine.

We got some great underwater pictures, but baby can't swim underwater yet so the coolest ones were taken of his face through the distortion of the surface of the water.  The camera is pretty cool, and now that I'm over the fear of a waterproofing malfunction I can't wait to use it when he can actually swim underwater.

Baby's first time eating avocado

Today we fed avocado to baby for the first time, and it was a success!  Being from the east coast, I didn't try and avocado until I was in my 20s probably.  Our baby is about 5 1/2 months old and he's already had it.  That might account for why I was so excited for him to try it, and also because I really love avocado.  In sushi, guacamole, sandwiches, anything.  I wonder if they make avocado ice cream.

We use the Beaba baby food cooker above, which is really just a food processor mixed with a steamer. We have a lot of kitchen gadgets, so we probably could have done without it, but it was a gift from family and it does work well.

My wife read somewhere that you could measure out servings of the food in ice cube trays once it's steamed and ready, that way you'll have little servings that can be taken out of the freezer any time they're needed.  It's easy enough to do and utilizes something we already own, so there's no added expense.  We take them out of the trays once they're frozen and put them into glass leftover containers because we're trying to limit his food's exposure to plastic.  Even if the trays are BPA free (which I'm not sure they are) they'll find something else in plastic that's bad, so I'm sticking with glass as much as I can.

We went on a little mini vacation to visit my parents on Cape Cod, and met some neighbors with a new baby about the same age.  Their child is a little older, and had already tried avocado.  He did not like it. I was worried, because I had built up avocado in my mind knowing that it's full of nutrients and good fats.  I found this California Avocado Nutrition Website with lots of information about the avocado; they really are amazing.

Before we left my wife prepared apples, sweet potatoes, pears, nectarines, and avocados in the Beaba, so when we returned we had our choice of what to give him.  We went with avocado and he seemed to love it.  There were a couple of times he made funny faces, like when he ate the applesauce for the first time, but only once or twice and not on his first bites.  The applesauce we had to mix with the rice cereal to get him to eat without making faces, but the avocado he ate all by itself with no problem.

He ate the entire ice cube of avocado, and almost all of his rice cereal immediately afterward.  We'll feed him avocado for three more days then try something else, probably the sweet potato.