Went to the New Mom Support Group today at Good Sam Hospital. It was really good, I am going to start going every week. They had a guest speaker come in and give a little workshop on teaching babies and toddlers about music and foreign languages together. We sang songs in different languages, used sticks and simple instruments to keep the beat, etc. I learned quite a bit of Spanish by listening to music, without even trying, so I think that is a great way to learn, and I was wondering how to introduce languages to Julian.

Dan is going away overnight. How am I going to take a shower? I have a shower sling, tried to use it the other day but gave up. I went about it all wrong. Got in the shower and THEN tried to put a fussy baby into it for the first time. Bad, bad, bad.

So I am trying to figure out a pattern or signal to Julian's poops so that I can start Infant Potty Training (aka Elimination Communication), but so far they are random. Sometimes he grunts or gets red in the face, other times nothing, he doesn't even blink. Peeing is even more random. It's still hot out, so today we are going to chill on the patio where he can go diaperless. It's good for his skin to air him out, anyways. Then when I think he might have to pee I take him over to the grass and make a "ssss" sound. It's just like dog training.

Comedy yesterday...Julian was sleeping in his bouncy seat al fresco and I had his diaper off. He was sitting on top of a cloth diaper to catch anything that might leak out, if you know what I mean. I was sitting next to him drinking a glass of water, taking a break from cleaning up the backyard, and I was playing with Bugs at the same time. All of a sudden the Baby Fountain turned on, and let loose a perfect arc of pee right onto Bugs' head. That was pretty funny already, but Bugs just stayed there, getting peed on. This is a dog that tiptoes through wet grass, mind you, so it was extra funny that he didn't care about the Baby Fountain piddling right on his head. I had to pull him away...oh man, it was comedy.

For those of you that get a kick out of poo/pee/fart jokes (i.e. so-called Low Humor ;-), you will like having a baby around because it's nonstop comedy of that sort. The most humongously fake-sounding farts come out of these sweet innocent babies. They're like those squeezed-armpit fake farts, or a really powerful whoopee cushion. And usually it happens while he is making some cherubic expression. It's ALWAYS funny. Dan and I never tire of laughing at baby farts. The Baby Fountain is always funny too, even when it's tinkling on you from the changing table. I've even witnessed the Baby Butt Explosion on the changing table. You are about to put a clean diaper on and PFFFFFTTTTTT, here comes POOP! It's funnier and not as gross as it sounds, because it's just this odorless liquid mustard, and not a ton of it either. OK, well it has an odor, but it's not bad. It's like curried yogurt, if anything. It doesn't smell like poo at all. Just another reason why breastmilk rocks.

And here's a good article from the Harvard University Gazette about how you shouldn't let your baby just cry it out by themselves, or sleep far away from your baby in a separate room, and you should touch them a lot and be very loving, as opposed to the "Babies need discipline!" school of thought.

<snip>Besides fears of dependence, the pair said other factors have helped form our childrearing practices, including fears that children would interfere with sex if they shared their parents' room and doctors' concerns that a baby would be injured by a parent rolling on it if the parent and baby shared the bed. Additionally, the nation's growing wealth has helped the trend toward separation by giving families the means to buy larger homes with separate rooms for children.

The result, Commons and Miller said, is a nation that doesn't like caring for its own children, a violent nation marked by loose, nonphysical relationships.

"I think there's a real resistance in this culture to caring for children," Commons said. But "punishment and abandonment has never been a good way to get warm, caring, independent people."</snip>

I am sleeping with Julian right now, he's not even getting a chance to cry, he just whimpers a little bit and I feed him and then we go back to sleep. If he gets to a full-blown cry it's not nearly as easy. Anyways, sleeping with your baby has a lot of advantages...with the hot weather lately a lot of moms in the Support Group this morning were wondering how to dress their babies. When you go to bed it's hot, but then in the middle of the night it gets cool and you need more covers. So if your baby is in a crib he/she is either going to start out hot or end up cold. What do you put on them?

For us, it's not an issue...he sleeps in a diaper and we have just the sheet over us. Then when it gets cooler in the middle of the night, I wake up and pull the blanket over us as well. I only pull it up to under his arms, so that he doesn't accidentally get it over his nose or mouth or anything. I don't move and neither does he, so it's not like he's going to crawl into a corner and suffocate himself with a pillow, and I'm not likely to roll over on him in my sleep.

Not like Julian never cries...I mean, all babies cry. But even if we can't make him stop, we are still there holding him or patting him and sympathizing with his tummyache or whatever. We can at least not let him cry by himself. That's my thinking.