I got notified at the beginning of the week that my 15-month old daughter’s picture was selected as a Weekly Reader’s Choice Finalist to be on the cover of Parent’s Magazine. I was really excited because it’s an adorable picture. I read in the rules that one of the criteria they are looking for is to see your child’s personality. Well, “the Diva” definitely has that! I submitted a picture of her in a sassy outfit with a hot pink, ruffled, bedazzled skirt and a ruffled black t-shirt that says “My mom rocks” in rhinestones. She’s sticking her tongue out and has a pink bow. Very cute. Well, it turns out that there are lots of weekly finalists, and to see who moves on to the Semi-Finals you have to get everyone you know to vote for your picture daily, for a week. I don’t know 100’s of people, and many of the people I know who WOULD vote are computer illiterate, so they wouldn’t know to enter in the security word that confirms your vote is entered. Therefore, she’s dropped from #37 at the beginning of the week to #222 today. I hate entering contests that become more of a popularity contest than quality (or that allow cheaters who use computer scripts that will vote repeatedly by deleting your computer cookies). Seriously, some of these kids currently in the top 20 have terrible pictures–and I’m not just being mean or jealous. I mean the actual pictures themselves are horrible quality, like they were taken with a grainy cell phone, or the child’s face is blurry, etc. I’ve decided I’m not entering any more contests if I know there is a public vote in the early stages. What a scam. Well, in case I suddenly get crazy amounts of readers, you can vote for my daughter here, and be sure to enter in the security phrase afterwards or the vote doesn’t count. Thank you!   http://photos.parents.com/category/vote/photo/282007

Around 4 1/2 months old, I really wanted to try to start my daughter on some sort of schedule. I mean she was already eating on a schedule because she wanted to nurse like every 2 hours, so I kept her on that, but she needed some sort of sleep/nap schedule. No one in the family got any sleep because she didn’t sleep. As with everything else, I turned to the Internet for some advice, or at least for some book recommendations. (I swear, what did new mothers do before the Internet?) There were a few books I was interested in, but my library only had one of them, so I got a copy of “The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems” by Tracy Hogg. One of my favorite sections of the book is the part about different temperaments/personalities that babies can have. THANK YOU. I felt reassured to know that I am NOT going crazy when I swear that my child is a Diva baby. My baby definitely is a mix between 2 of the personality types: spirited and grumpy. She is very excitable, but also has a strong temper. So you get strong emotions either way…no chilled out baby here. Her grumpy/spirited personality probably explains why she had colic issues to begin with since she’s very expressive and has something to say about every little issue that comes her way. Boy, you should have heard the screams she would do from having hiccups as a young infant. And even now, at 9 months old, if she misses a nap you better be close to home or she’ll make you regret going out in the first place. It seems my friends all have either Angel babies or Textbook ones, so that’s why they have no clue where I’m coming from when I try to explain a lot of the issues I have with my daughter. I liked reading the book because I felt I wasn’t alone in dealing with a difficult, fussy baby.

As for the schedule/routine-making part of the book, I took what I could from that section, but I didn’t agree with all of it. For instance she says that a young breastfed baby can nurse at almost the same frequency as a formula-fed baby. I disagree- I believe in nursing a young baby on demand, and that breast milk is no where near as filling as formula. Also, she explains how to get your baby to take longer naps and how each nap should be about 2 hours. Well, I tried and tried, but my daughter would only take 30 min naps. So her suggested schedules were hard for me to follow since my daughter’s nursing times and nap times were way off the author’s suggested ones. However, I still felt like I gained a lot from reading the book, and I did follow it loosely. Even though my daughter’s naps were really short, at least she was taking them at certain times of the day, and in her own crib. And the best tip I got from the book was about doing a night routine so your baby knows it’s time for bed. Every night my routine became giving her a bath, then nursing, then bed. Because she has eczema/cradle cap pretty bad I didn’t always use soap, but I went through the motions just so she could know what to expect. It really made a difference. She went down for bed soo much easier. This part of motherhood, the schedule-making, actually felt like real work. Like a project that I had to study for, plan, and then try to execute. I actually kept lists of times for each thing. I wish I could have just gone with the flow, but since my baby’s personality isn’t “laid back,” it wouldn’t work with her. That was another valuable tip from the book: try to work WITH your baby’s personality type and not around it because otherwise you’ll have total chaos and many meltdowns. Deal with the hand you’ve been given, so to speak.