I am quite big on baby carrying. For babies of up to six months I really love my ring sling.

However, after the baby gets big and mobile ring sling is not as useful. For bigger kids I am really enjoying the Ergo carrier. I really wish I had discovered this carrier earlier, but even with just Markus I am using it daily and really getting my money’s worth.

I have never used the hiking backpack carrier for more than a few minutes, but Chris uses it whenever we go hiking with baby and is quite happy with it.

Circle of neglect devices

This is what my GP jokingly described things you can put the baby in so they can be happy and entertained while you go pee, or collapse in a heap of exhaustion. These include things like exersaucer, bumbo seats, swings, hammocks, playpens, etc.

Exersaucer

Because the kids (my kids anyway) get bored with these very quickly, to me these are a lot like engineering textbooks; they are really useful for about half an hour, and then maybe another five minutes and then never again. I found the Jolly jumper and the arc to be the best bang for the buck though it is always nice to have a couple of different things and keep them in rotation.

Arc (can also be seen in the background of the ring sling photo)

I have never been able to keep an awake baby in the playpen for more than a few moments, but I do find them a good substitute for crib when traveling.

That’s all folks

I am sure there are more things, but nothing comes to mind other than baby clothes and RESPs. You can raise a baby with much less than what I’ve listed or with much more. I tried to be streamlined and frugal while still having some fun and comfort. I found that sometimes moms get taken for a ride by baby equipment manufacturers. For example, I used to buy plastic and rubber spoons for my kids until I discovered that babies are not only able to eat with regular metal spoons our cutlery drawer was full of, but actually enjoy them. Markus’ favorite toy ever is a metal spoon! Now that know this I never worry about him being bored if I sit down for coffee, I get the macchiato and he gets the spoon.

I prefer feeding chairs that attach to regular chairs, they take up less real estate and can be easily transported.

Baby room furniture

We were lucky that we were able to borrow all baby room furniture from from my sister in law. This means that we got much nicer furniture than we would ever have bought. Yay for us! We used the height adjustment feature of the crib for the first two kids and we used the change table for the first kid only. I found the nursing chair difficult to get into with the nursing pillow so I rarely used it. For Owen I put an exercise mat with a comforter on top and found it useful for nursing but I did not reuse the setup for Markus. General conclusion – the more experience you get as a parent, the less stuff you need.

Nursing pillow

I love my nursing pillow.

Immersion blender

Making my own baby food is one of the few things I wish I did not wait for the last kid to start doing. Obtaining the immersion blender was not the only factor, but it certainly made making baby food so much easier and less messy. Little glass lock jars add to the fun and convenience.

Strollers

When Trev was born we inherited a standard travel system stroller with the car seat attachment. Ours was Evenflow but I don’t see too many differences between the other manufacturers. We used it quite a bit. One of the important features is that the handle on the car seat can be moved to the back with one hand and that the stroller can be folded and unfolded with one hand. Eventually, as Trev passed the four months milestone and did not need to lie down the whole day, it become too big for our purposes. After carrying the big stroller with Trev in it over twenty meters in knee deep snow, I splurged and got a good quality umbrella stroller. The travel system stroller fell apart half way through the third kid but it was not its fault. I was using it to carry two kids on it for over a year, something that it definitely was not designed to do though it handled it gracefully till the end. The umbrella stroller is still functional with no obvious damage other than being extremely dirty (like everything else I own).

The biggest challenge with the stroller was carrying two small kids. If I had to do it again, I would splurge in the beginning and get one of those yummy mummy strollers where one kid fits under the other. Since we’re done having kids the four figure price tag was not worth it for us at this point. I am a bit particular about the baby being able to lie down in the stroller and not be in the car seat for too long so we ended up getting a regular double stroller from kijiji. It works fine despite being rather humongous.

Bathtubs

At home have one of those blue plastic bathtubs with uneven baby/toddler shaped floor, green anti-slip foam and temperature sensing plug. I like it well enough though I wish that the legs could not get the water in them as it is a bit fussy to clean. After the kids were able to sit securely, I used regular bathtub, or if I had mor e than one kid in the bathtub or wanted to save water, I used those red Ikea storage bins inside the bathtub. We also bought a bath thermometer when Trev was born, but I found it was not useful.

Mostly rectangular fabrics

I was surprised at how often I used burp cloths, face cloths and baby blankets. I particularly loved all the handmade blankets I got. Once I get really good at knitting I might make some for other people. I opted for paper rather than cloth diapers though I could have gone for either. I used an old wrap around skirt as sun shade for the stroller.

It is always fun to visit places I have never been to before. This time I got to check out the Zagreb observatory. What views!

This week was the last of the winter spinning session at the Point. I was going to two classes per week since I got back from birth break. It was nice though I am glad to take the summer break and I will only be taking one class per week next year. I am hoping to bike outside through the fall.

I don’t know how much riding I will get to do this summer, but I went bike shopping with Luisa who plans to get back into it. She is looking for an entry level hybrid so we went to a couple Ottawa bike stores, three on Bank street and two in Kanata. I am not sure what she’ll end up getting, but bike shopping for someone other than me was tons of fun. The highlight was a bike very much like the one a few posts ago with standard dynamo hub and full set of grind guards at Foster’s. I hope to see more of these in the upcoming years.

By the time I am done enough to sit down and relax a bit, the kids are already in bed. To cheer myself up I made a new rule: Whoever cleans up the Lego gets to play with it.

It took me almost a week to put all the models together. I had been hiding the finished ones from Trevor because I wanted to complete all sets before he took them apart. He actually noticed one of the pieces in a box (I did not try very hard to hide them…) and concluded that the cleaning lady had made it. I suppose he is right, but he guessed the wrong cleaning lady.

This is what Kurt Cobaim must have felt like when the record company handed him the copy of Nevermind they were going to press.

One thing that was “easier” was social interaction. If someone punches you, you punch him back. Yet, it did not work out for the Balkans and somehow it does not sound like a mantra I should be teaching to a five year old.

I finally finished one of the colour work projects that has been dragging through the winter.

Yes, I run out of yarn. As this was stash-busting project, buying more yarn of the same colour was out of the question so I finished up with single colour thumbs. Once I run out of the yarn, I stopped caring so the thumbs are pretty ugly. I don’t care, so that’s ok!

I started my most ambitious project to date. A sweater! Crazy eh?

It is a very simple sweater, I hope it works out well.

I had a blast at the show, I even bought the album of one of the artists (Austra) that played. I am hoping to give it a good listen over the next couple of weeks and write a review (though saying that I will pretty much guarantees that I will not).

Now if I could only go to a live taping of Tempo or Shift…

I don’t remember ever being this excited about winter being over. I love winter but having three small kids makes it really hard to enjoy it. Skiing is out of the question and every time we go out we have to get three little people into their snowsuits. Everyone knows that snowsuits are kids’ most natural way of punishing parents. I think I am going to go and dump the lot of them into the laundry and then put them away for the season.

Then watch me wake up to another snowstorm….