I Don’t Warm My Baby’s Bottles

Why? Because its ridiculous. Hear me out, it’s not as bad as you think.

I did a Google search on why baby bottles need to be warm before given to a baby and I came up with a lot of ‘how’ results instead of ‘why’ results. I know how to warm up a bottle for my son, that’s not the problem. The problem is why does my grandmother and mother-in-law find warming up a bottle a key step for a baby? “You better warm up that bottle, he can’t drink milk cold!” Since when? What’s wrong with giving my baby a cold one? He seems absolutely fine. Anyway, I furthered my search and found (finally) an article that answered my question:

Many new parents believe the common misconception that a baby’s bottle should always be heated. In actuality, there is no medical reason to heat bottles before serving them. Some infants may prefer warm bottles, but most will happily accept a lukewarm or cold bottle. -Source

So there you have it, it’s simply based on preference. If your baby likes it cold, fine, if he likes warm, fine. The baby bottle temperature police will not come bashing through your doors and crashing through your windows if you give your son a cold bottle. I’m not sure about in-laws though.

I stopped warming my son’s bottles when he turned 6 months. I didn’t stop warming my baby’s bottles from sheer laziness, I simply didn’t see a reason why they needed to be warmed. When I found out that he didn’t care about the temperature of his bottle and showed no signs of “stomach issues” from drinking a cold one straight out of the fridge, I was relieved and so was he. He doesn’t care what temperature it is as long as it’s in his mouth and going down his adorable throat. The warming process always had my son watching me in disappointment: “What are you doing woman!? Just give me the milk! I’ll drink it out of your hand if I have to!” He would become so enraged and impatient and I would become frustrated and reluctant to stop this redundant ritual so my son could stop giving me the evil eye.

Warming a bottle won’t give you brownie points from the formula or breast milk fairy, your baby won’t turn into a gremlin if you give them a cold bottle — especially after midnight, your relatives might want to snatch your baby from you because of their ancient beliefs but, you can deal with that right?

The next step is getting him to drink water. He absolutely hates it. I’m not sure about adding Karo Syrup to the water to “give it color” but something has to give here. My little man refuses to drink water. After a few sips, he holds the bottle in the air, observers the bottle, puts the bottle back in his mouth, repeats step 1 and 2, looks at me like I’m crazy and starts to cry. Water is flavorless and he knows it. He wants flavor and who could blame him? When it’s nice and cold, he doesn’t realize he’s been bamboozled until 4 ounces later which I find to be hilarious.

My Son Was Left Alone…

When I came home, I was  expecting my son to be sitting in his chair looking at his dad. When I come home and enter through the door, I see my son on my bed crying his eyes out reaching out to me happy to see someone. That’s right, my soon to be ex-husband, left my son alone and for what? So he can go hang with someone in the building to play PS3, smoke and drink. How old is he you ask? He’ll be 26 this year. I can’t get that image of him crying alone for who knows how long out of my head. I sat there and timed how long it’s been since I found my son in that condition and how long it was gone before my husband came home. 15-20 minutes went by. I managed to make 3-4 phone calls in that time. So if I didn’t come home when I did, he would have still been crying. The door was unlocked, my son was alone and all I could do is hope this was just a cruel joke — that my husband is just hiding somewhere just to pop out and scare me. That wasn’t the case.

Anything could have happened…my worst fear was someone calling child protective services because they hear a baby crying and he’s been crying for a while and it sounds like no one is home. These apartment walls are made of tissue paper and the neighbors can hear any and everything. I’m just glad I came home when I did. Someone that reckless with an innocent life can’t be in my life. I love my son too much to put him in danger like that. All it takes is one time. I have to the best  interest of my child first before mine or anyone else. It’s too many careless parents out there as it is, I’m not about to be one of them.

I thought leaving my son with his father would be the logical choice but I guess not. Who knows how many times he’s done this when I went out to handle something. My heart hurts for my son. I had a crack-head prostitute for a mother and she did the same thing to me. It was 10x worse but neglect is neglect and I won’t tolerate it! My son is my world and I’m supposed to protect him and that’s what I’m going to do. No matter what.

Update: I confronted my sons dad. He said he was only gone for 10 minutes (which is a lie). There is nothing more important that he couldn’t wait til I got back. You’re not supposed to put nothing or no one over an innocent child. I don’t care if my son was 3 years old, he’s not supposed to be left unattended. There is no justification for leaving my son alone. He laughed and threw a few whatever’s around like I wasn’t supposed to be mad. I had every right to be mad. Well, he’s living with his mom now, I wonder if he finds that funny.

My Son is Either Going to Hate Video Games or Love Them

Ever since he’s been home from the hospital, my son has been fascinated by video game controllers. I’m not sure it’s how they light up or he wants to play along with dad and I. When we hand him a controller that’s not plugged in, he looks up at the screen as he’s pressing buttons, he immediately gets upset — for good reason. Babies are a lot smarter than we give them credit for and my son is proof of that. I’m just worried what all this will mean as he get older. Will he hate video games, or love them? Am I scarring my son by not allowing him to play along with dad and I? I mean he gets really mad when he realize he’s not playing. Remember my son just turned 8 months, he’s been into video games since the first time he saw me playing Left 4 Dead.

With his mom and dad being huge gamers, he may not be all into video gaming when he gets old enough to actually play. He may want to go outside where real people are and there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t want to give my son bad habits early or lead him to believe that this is what people do all day is sit in front of a television making imaginary characters move, jump and shoot all day. I don’t want my son growing up to hate video games because of his parents — that’ll be terrible.

Maybe I’m teaching my son the wrong habits a bit early. Don’t get me wrong, as soon as he can walk and enjoy other things besides his food, his bottle and video games, we’re going to go places, just him and me. Unlike my other half, I know when to turn video games off and go outside and take a walk. My son and I will be all over Cleveland, Ohio this summer: going to the new aquarium that just opened in the flats, the Metro Parks Zoo, playgrounds, the museums; I’ve wanted to go to the Museum of Natural History for some time.

It’s up to me to teach my son that there is more to life than virtual life. There’s life outside of video games.

“You gotta give your son a sibling…you just gotta!”

Says who? You? Society?

At first I was up to having another child but then I asked myself: do I really want to go back to changing diapers all over again? The answer is no.

I was told by a group of rather old women that I need to give him a sibling so he don’t be alone. Really? He’s going to be devastated that he doesn’t have a sibling? I wish I was the only child when I was growing up. My siblings drove me crazy and half of the time, I felt as if I was the only sane one out of the bunch. My mother had a brother but she wished she had a sister that she could relate to. It may seem selfish but I’m the one that have to carry that baby to term, get stitched up again, go without even less sleep at night. I don’t think I can handle another baby.

There will be times when my son will come to me asking for a sister or a brother, hopefully I will know what to tell him; hopefully he won’t hate me for it.

I was also told that I’m “mentally disfiguring him and setting him up to be a loner” by not having more than one child. The nerve right? Let me tell you, the person who told me that didn’t have a Ph.d in anything; not even sensitivity.

What’s it to anyone else what I do with my uterus? I believe in being financially stable, having more time to spend with the baby I have now, smaller homes and cars, less havoc getting him ready for school in the morning — the list goes on. It’s just so frustrating at times when people but in my life trying to tell me what I need to do to have a child grow up not resenting their parents. There will be other things my son will despise me for. Like, no dessert if he didn’t finish his vegetables, or no extra time playing his video games on the weekends; things like that.

The way my son is, he wouldn’t want another sibling anyway, he loves it when all eyes are on him. He may want another sibling when it’s time to do chores around the house though…we’ll see.

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What if My Son Grows Up to be Gay?

I’ve wondered about this since before I had children. If my son grows up to be gay all I can do is tell him I’m proud of him; let him know that he’ll always be my son no matter what. I would also commend him for being himself and not allowing society to mold him into something he didn’t want to be. I love my son and if Gay is his sexual orientation then who am I to say otherwise? I’m his mom, I have my life and he has his. I can’t dictate what he shouldn’t or shouldn’t be because of what society thinks. That’s the problem, too many people care too much about what other people think. It will not be the end of the world if my son turns out to be gay when he gets older. That’s his true self and I’m going to be behind that 100%. The only thing I must remind him is to be smart and to protect himself — always wear condoms. Other than that, I don’t see the problem.

The only things us as parents are supposed to do is give them a roof over their head, show them right from wrong, give them good moral standards, teach them how to be themselves, stand up for what they believe in, feed them, teach them, comfort them, support them and love them. Once they’re grown and out of the house, they’re no longer our responsibility. It’s time for them to live their lives. I want my son to be strong and independent. How can he be if I’m going down his throat about who he finds sexually attractive?

Even as a toddler and beyond; before he’s even old enough to know what gay is, if my son wants to play with dolls and wear pink clothes, I’m not going to stop him. All I can do is encourage him to be himself and if someone have anything to say about that then they can dress up their kids however they want to but they won’t change my mind at all. Let me just ask this: Is my son being gay making you lose your job? Did your car suddenly explode? Did someone’s puppy fall in a drain-pipe because he’s gay? Whose roof is he living under again? Did your world stop spinning because my son and I don’t care about what you think?

I love my son and I want him to love himself and if being gay, bi-sexual or whatever is what he wants to be then good for him and damn to whoever says otherwise.

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“Where did his binky go?”

Instead of Sir Adam the Great (don’t panic, it’s just a nickname I gave him. ), my son’s name should be Sir Adam the Magician. I think I say “where did his binky go” at least 12 times a day. My son cannot walk or crawl but  he can maneuver around in one spot but doesn’t go far.

When he's in his high-chair or in my lap and he drops his binky, you mind as well find another one. I never seen a binky bounce and travel so far from a child's mouth.

It’s a known fact that you don’t have to move to lose things. My son has made losing his binky into an art form. He loses it in the crib, in his lounger, in his car seat, in his high chair. When I find the binky, it’s either under him, next to him or on the other side of the room. My son gets a kick out of dumbfounding his mother. He laughs, kicks, and grins when I ask him what did he do with his binky; I’ve never seen a more diabolical binky.

My son’s binky is the equivalent of ‘Where’s Waldo?‘. He’s down to his last two binky’s; still haven’t found the other 3. I know they’re in the house some where — unless they’re in the land of missing left socks.

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“It’s only going to get worse”…

My son was fussy all day today and I couldn’t find the reason behind it. It didn’t look like his gums were bothering him, he didn’t have a fever, he wasn’t hungry, he didn’t want to be held so I figured he was just being fussy. Boy was I wrong…

The after effects of my son spitting out his food at 50mph...most of it didn't get past his double-chin.

Today Sir Adam the Great turned 8 months and you know what this little rascal gave me? A diaper that was so scary I had to call up my grandmother and ask her was it normal for my nose to run away from my face after smelling what just came out of my son. Well, she said yes and to add insult to injury she went on and said, “it’s only going to get worse”. Well, I don’t want it to get worse.

Well, let me just say how it all went down. My son is sitting in his lounger playing with his binky, his dad’s cell phone, and a wireless PlayStation 3 controller. All of a sudden he’s looking at me with the most serious look on his face and starts grunting. Mind you, he stopped doing all that grunting a couple of months ago and you pretty much had to pick him up to get a whiff of his diaper surprise he had brewing for you. Well, he’s sitting there focusing on taking a crap by burning a hole through the back of my head (I’ve turned back around and continued what I was doing until he was finished) while grasping the PS3 controller. When he was done I look down and I immediately wanted to call the CDC. The contents of his dirty diaper was alive and had made residence on the side of his lounger, on his dad’s phone and binky (he’ll never use that binky again). When I picked him up to lay him on the diaper changing mat he was dripping it all over the place.

He got it on the carpet, on him, on me, everywhere. To make matters worse, he kicks when he’s excited to see me. As you may know the mess he created was all over his onesie and he decided to kick himself in the genitals so now it’s all over his feet.  How he ended up getting it on his chest I’ll never — wait, I know how — never mind. He had the nerve to get mad at me because I was holding his ankles to do damage control.

The husband wasn’t here and when he returns he’s going to be upset about his phone, at this point I don’t care. I’m running around the house looking for medical gloves because no way was I touching that with my bare hands. I take drool in the mouth, spit up on my shoulder, food particles flying 40mph aimed directly at my face but not this. I finally found what I was looking for but I couldn’t bring myself to change him just yet. I cleaned up the mess he made on the carpet, I cleaned up everything else; I was looking for excuses to find something to clean up. 2 minutes have gone by and I finally muster up enough courage to get the deed done.

That diaper warranted a bath so I gave him one and let him marinate in his sleepy time lavender bath wash. He enjoyed bath time; smiling at me and splashing the water while looking up at me with those innocent eyes. All I could do was look at him and say “you could have told me that’s why you were fussy” and shook my head and watched him continue to splash water in his face. After the bath he was relaxed — in a daze of nirvana, so I put him in his swing and eventually fell asleep without incident.

After all of that, I would do it again. I love my son and he’s the best thing to ever happen to me.

Happy Valentines Day.

To Spank or Not to Spank…

Ah yes, one of the most controversial topics of parenthood: spanking. I firmly believe spanking doesn’t work. I was raised in a household were beatings (not spankings — I know the difference between spanking and beating) were upheld. Even though my guardians tried to strike fear in my heart, it didn’t stop me from doing what I wanted to do. In case you didn’t hear me the first time I’ll say it again, corporal punishment does not work!

It has been proven that spanking may work when they’re young but the results of those spankings can develop aggressive and anti-social behavior. A recent article I read stated that spanking can cause low-term developmental damage and low IQ’s.

The study, published this week in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, reached its conclusion after examining 20 years of published research on the issue. The authors say the medical finding have been largely overlooked and overshadowed by concerns that parents should have the right to determine how their children are disciplined. – Yahoo! Health

There’s nothing wrong with popping their little hands when they do something dangerous; like sticking a metal fork in an outlet for example, but getting out a belt or using excessive force on a child is a bit extreme in my eyes. I’m a new parent of course and I’m trying to be a better parent than my guardians were. Getting beat: all it did was make me resent them; hate them; boil with rage. I cannot count on my hands and feet the times I wanted to run away because of the abuse I went through as a kid.

I’m anti-spank and I stand behind my reason to not spank my child for drawing on the wall, pulling on the cat’s tail, wetting the bed; because he’s a child, they’re supposed to do things like that. A child cannot understand what they’ve done wrong most of the time otherwise they wouldn’t do it. How many times have you taken a marker from them after they drew on the wall and you spanked them and they went and found another marker and continued drawing on the wall after they finished crying? It’s ok, I’ll wait.

Hitting models hitting. When you’re spanking (if you lack self-control and have anger management issues — beating) your child all the time, as they get older and the spankings become more frequent they will find this behavior appropriate and begin beating their offspring when they have them. It’s a never-ending cycle. Spanking does not equate to obedience. Spanking leads to depression, low self-esteem and bad behavior.

I don’t want to lose the bond me and my son has for me by spanking him. I don’t want pent-up anger and him hating me to be apart of that reason either. I love my son and I refuse to hit my son or verbally abuse my son. There is no proper way to spank a child. No matter what anyone says.

I’m so tired of “oh when he starts walking and getting into stuff, you’re going to want to hit him”. No I’m not. He gets into stuff now and he’s not crawling yet and I’m not spanking him; he doesn’t know any better! He broke my phone but it still worked. You know what I did? I taped it up and kept using it. When there is proof that a toddler know right from wrong but doesn’t care about the consequences and that spanking the child has a positive outcome — you know what? I know that’ll never happen so I’m not going to even go there.

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Babble.com: No Black Bloggers

Babble is one of my favorite sites I like to frequent on. It dawned on me a couple of days ago that there aren’t any black bloggers on Babble.com. I wonder why that is? No way am I trying to conspire anything, I just found it weird that it’s not one black blogger on Babble.

Can it be a coincidence or could it be that there aren’t too many black bloggers interested blogging for Babble.com? I’m hoping it’s the latter.

Again, Babble.com is a great blog site, I just wish it was more — how can I say this without sounding like an ass…oh! I wish it was sprinkled with more races other than what’s on there. I’m not sure Cafemom.com have black bloggers either but I don’t visit that site any more. They’re really rude and snarky over there.

I’m hoping babble.com isn’t racially biased or complete bigots because that would be very depressing.

Please correct me if I’m wrong about anything about different races on Babble.com.

Parents Arrested for Children’s Tardiness. What?!

There’s this family in Ashbur VA,  that’s going to court over their 3 children being tardy to school — because of LCPS (Londoun County Public Schools). The children were tardy to class by 3 minutes or less. Now, I can understand 40 minutes, an hour but 3 minutes or less? What can a child miss in 3 minutes?

I know it can be tough getting children to school on time — especially if you have to be at work a certain hour. Sometimes children drag themselves out of bed and take longer than usual getting ready for school. That’s why it’s important to get them up early. But sentencing parents to jail for their children’s tardiness and stripping them of their licenses to practice law is a bit extreme. I can understand the children not going to school at all but they’re going, so what’s the problem? Maybe there is something missing from the story. Something is not being said — there has to be more to this story than what’s being said.

We as parents are responsible for our children. There are laws and rules — like it or not — that we must follow. We must be good role-models for our children; which means getting them to school on time.  What the parents are going through in the Loudoun County is a bit crazy. LCPS is putting parents out to burn on a sacrificial platter to set an example when there are much worse things to deal with.

According to the Student Rights and Responsibilities:

A student is truant any time he or she willfully absents himself or herself from school or from any assigned class or activity. Excessive unexcused tardiness may result in a truancy referral. Truancy is a serious offense that requires a stern correction action on the part of the school and the parents.

Let’s just say I’m glad I don’t live in that County/State.

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Mass Effect 3: It Better Be Epic!

I’ve been a huge fan of Bioware‘s franchise Mass Effect since the first one; they had me at hello. With this being the final chapter, all I’m saying is: it better be epic! The story-line has been great so far, I hope it keeps up the momentum and goes out with an epic finale.

With them finally adding native gamepad support I can finally sit back in my swivel chair and play instead hunched over playing with a mouse and keyboard.

Based on my choices I’ve made through the first two games which will alter the fate of Shepard in Mass Effect 3, I’m still hoping that the rumors about Shepard dying (once again) are as false as a 3 dollar bill. With having to deal with the Reapers as well as Cerberus (what?!), this should be very interesting. More in-depth customization of guns, and squad mates, with the option to have same-sex relationships makes me a happy camper. I always played as the original Shepard throughout the entire franchise but I may go back and play the games over as a female. This time I’ll leave Kaidan and save Ashley Williams just so I can see the reunion between her and Shepard.

Mass Effect 3 is what games need to be. I just hope the game is a bit longer than the second one. With the RPG style of the game, I was expecting 1, and 2 to be a pretty decent length — needless to say I was pretty disappointed in that area. In Mass Effect 3 you’ll have a choice in which mode you can play: Action Mode, Story Mode, and RPG Mode.

Mass Effect 3 better be epic or I will be thoroughly upset with Bioware. I will still play the game and I’ll enjoy myself but I’ll be upset. After a while, I’ll eventually get over; as all gamers should.

On a different note: I wonder what my son will think of me when I’m 43 still playing video games. Will he be embarrassed? Will he find it cool that his mom still plays video games at such an old age (those aren’t my words, I’m speaking for my son 17 years from now) and can still beat them on the highest difficulty when she wants to? I don’t know but either way I’m going to play my video games until arthritis cripples my hands.

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Their Ovaries Are 10x Their Size Over @ CafeMom.com

Let me just clear the airways here before someone try to tell me that I’m generalizing all the mothers over at Cafemom.com.

I have met at least 6 civilized, reasonable and kind mothers at Cafemom; I’m sure there’s more — well at least I hope there is. I recently stopped using Cafemom.com because of the blatant disrespect they have for other women that uses the site. I thought the accusations and stories I’ve read about them being bitchy, menstruating 24/7, mad-at-the-world irrational beings were just rumors, but I was proved wrong when I posted in one of the group pages I joined. That group page was Love & Marriage. I’m not going to get into what I posted but it was respectful and I wasn’t lashing at anyone on the site. I was ranting about my life. It didn’t get nasty until they got nasty with me.

The point is, most of those ladies (and I use that term loosely) were sticking it to me like I just insulted their offspring. I sat there trying to understand where all the hostility came from. I came to one conclusion: they’re trolls. I joined a group hoping to reach out to other women and I get verbally criticized. They came in droves like roaches to water. All I have to say to that is, they wouldn’t say anything of what they were saying to anyone in person; the taste would get knocked out of their mouth so fast…

Anyway, even though I came to my conclusion why they attacked me but what I’m not understanding is where did it come from? Who shat in their Cheerios that morning? Are their lives miserable at the same time of the month as well as their menstrual cycle? Out of all the responses I gotten from that forum I posted in that group, it was only one person who didn’t join in on trying to treat me like eCrap. It’s okay. I’m fine with leaving the site, I barely used it to begin with after I had my son.

I’m a reasonable person and I don’t go and pick efights with people because of the fact they’re miles away from me — or for the sheer fun of ruffling someone’s feathers. I believe the reasoning behind their blatant lack of online etiquette comes from not knowing the person they’re verbally abusing; nor do they care. Add that to kids running around, stress-levels on the high and a menstrual cycle and you have a mother with insufficient brainpower bashing someone over the internet.

From doing a little reasearch, I found out that there are other sites that are just like Cafemom if not worse than them when it comes to be complete nuisances.

1. CafeMom.com
2. Parenting.com
3. Momslikeme.com (shut down)

If you know of any more, please let me know.

I can understand being bored but why start up fake drama because of it? You have children that can use all that energy you got bashing people, so put it to good use.

I had to blog about this, regardless of whoever reads this thinks. Whether it’s because they in fact think they ruffled my feathers enough to blog about it or what they said got to me etc. The fact is, there are angry moms logging in to Cafemom.com just to troll and make someone’s visit on the site as miserable as they can. It’s quite disturbing. What they do not know is, there are certain people out there that know a few things and about computers and networks — they could have been easily hacked. I’ve grown out of that years ago but it’s the fact that people online think they’re invincible. Yea we’ll see how invincible they are when they have to take their computer to BestBuy‘s Geek Squad to get fixed.

All I know is I’d hate for women who come on there looking for advice and these same particular women come in the blog leaving their mark on the forum like how a dog leave their mark on a tree.

The Energizer Bunny That is My Son

Image via Wikipedia

For some reason today my son decided that he wanted to stay up until 12 o’clock. He would get tired and rub his eyes so I will pick him up and rock him. I didn’t realize until later that this dude was siphoning all of my energy. One minute he’s tired, the next, he isn’t. I think it also had something to do with him teething as well but at the moment, his gums didn’t look like they were bothering him: he didn’t start getting fussy until around 11:30. Well when he decided to get fussy, he was fighting his dad, he was fighting me of all people, he was fighting the Sandman — everything and everybody!  He didn’t want to be rocked, cuddled, held, sat up, laid down, put in the dark or in the light. Everything we did was making him upset. At this point I was fussy and ready to fight him. Then it hit me…his gums! I made him a bottle, gave him a dose of Children’s Tylenol and gave him his bottle. A few minutes after that he was knocked out. The energizer bunny that is my son finally put his drum away and went to sleep.

Soon after that, I went to sleep expecting him to wake up at the crack of dawn saying, “ma, ma, ma, ma” while kicking his feet in his crib. As much as I want to believe he’s already talking at 7 months, I don’t believe he understands what he’s saying. He’s only using words that don’t need teeth.