International Babywearing Week - Friday

Happy Friday everyone!! Today we are celebrating DAD's!  There is nothing more awwwww-inducing than a babywearing dad! Of course dad's can and do wear all types of carriers, just like moms.  However, soft structured carriers seem to be a popular choice, especially around our house.  Jay loves using our Boba.  Although he doesn't back carry by himself he loves to carry her with my help.  What do the dads in your life prefer?

Are you a new parent wanting to learn about babywearing?  Are you a veteran wearer wanting to meet others and learn more?  Join us for a sling party or other get together! The Charlotte Babywearers

International Babywearing Week - Thursday

Happy Thursday everyone!  The gateway to the weekend!  Today we are celebrating soft structured carriers.  Ah... Soft Structured Carriers... my favorite!  Our Boba gets used on an almost daily basis... weekly basis at the least.  The thing I love most about SSC's is their ease of use.  They have a very small learning curve which is why they are a big hit with dads.  The buckles are similar to a back pack, in fact if you can put on a back pack you can wear a SSC.  Although some can be used for squishies, they really excel for older, heaver babies.  This is the one you can put your toddler in and hike all day with.

Are you a new parent wanting to learn about babywearing?  Are you a veteran wearer wanting to meet others and learn more?  Join us for a sling party or other get together! The Charlotte Babywearers

International Babywearing Week - Wednesday

Happy Wednesday everyone!! Today we are talking about woven wraps. The major advantage of wovens is that they can go from the first day you want to babywear to the last. They are amazingly versatile and offer infinite options. The hard thing about wrapping is... well the wrapping. I have to admit, I never got the hang of it. But we have lots of people in the group who are awesome wrappers. If you want to see more wrap awesomeness then check out Greetings from Eisenbergia

 
Are you a new parent wanting to learn about babywearing?  Are you a veteran wearer wanting to meet others and learn more?  Join us for a sling party or other get together! The Charlotte Babywearers

International Babywearing Week - Tuesday

Happy Tuesday everyone!! To celebrate International Babywearing Week, today I'm featuring a pouch sling.  These are so nice and easy!  We used one especially between the time that Turtle decided she no longer wanted to be snuggled in the stretchy wrap (such a big girl even at 3 months old) and the time she was sitting up enough to do a back carry in a soft structured carrier.  I put her in a hip carry even before she was fully sitting up.  I would put my arm around her and support her.  Although not completely hands free, it helped us during a strange few months.   Of course the big limitation of this type of carrier is that it distributes the weight across one shoulder so it's not something we use often now that she's 19 months and 20-something lbs.  But it's a great carrier to keep in your diaper bag or the trunk for an emergency since it's is so compact.

Have you ever used a pouch or sized sling?  What were your thoughts?

Are you a new parent wanting to learn about babywearing?  Are you a veteran wearer wanting to meet others and learn more?  Join us for a sling party or other get together! The Charlotte Babywearers

International Babywearing Week - Monday

Happy Monday Everyone! And Happy International Babywearing Week! Anyone planning to celebrate?  The Charlotte Babywearers will be gathering out at McDowell Park for a BYO-Picnic on Saturday and you are welcome to join.  For my personal celebration, though I've decided to post a pic every day of us using a different wrap/carrier.  It's been fun going back through my pics and finding ones to fill out the week.  Today we start with my first wrap.

This is a stretchy wrap (similar to the Moby) and it saved our sanity!  Worse came to worse, I could pop her in this thing and walk around and she would calm down.  This pic was taken on the way to our first pediatrician's appointment so Turtle would have been just over a week old.  Wrapping can be intimidating!  But it can also be awesome!  I loved that I could put my wrap on before I left the house and pop her in and out at every stop without having to re-wrap.

Have you used a stretchy wrap?  What did you think?

Are you a new parent wanting to learn about babywearing?  Are you an veteran wearer wanting to meet others and learn more?  Join us for a sling party or other get together! The Charlotte Babywearers

Weekend Happenings

This weekend was a wonderful mix of work and play, toil and tumble.  We started out fairly bright and early at the Festival in the Park, an art/craft/music festival which is a staple in our town.  After skipping it for a few years due to the crowds and the heat we decided to try it early in the morning and that seemed to be the key.  We got there at 10am, right as the festival was opening.  It was cool, it wasn't too horribly crowded and we were able to find street parking not far from the park and avoid the highway robbery everyone was charging.

They had easels set up for the kids to color on, but no matter how I held the paper, she was way more interested in coloring on the easels themselves.  Yep, that's my kid!  The rest of Saturday was spent lounging around the house, catching up on TV shows and watching movies with Turtle.

Sunday morning Turtle and I made our weekly grocery store trip.  I love grocery shopping once I learned that there are very few people at the store at 9am on a Sunday morning.  I like to take Turtle with me so that Daddy has an hour or so to sleep or just hang out by himself.

When I got back, we put on a movie for Turtle and Daddy Turtle and I cleaned up the kitchen and cooked brunch.  Scrambled eggs with cheese, sausage links and french toasts.

After brunch (which was more like lunch), we put Turtle down for a nap and crossed our fingers.  I'm hosting a babywearing meet up at my house next Saturday.  Well, the carpet in our living room was in desperate need of being cleaned.  Our hope was to get it done while Turtle was sleeping but this was the first time we had every tried to coordinate something during her nap time.  (She is terrified of the vacuum cleaner so we knew we couldn't do it while she was awake.)

 We moved everything into the kitchen and amazingly got the entire floor vacuumed and steam cleaned before she woke  up.  We knew keeping an active toddler off the carpet would be too much to ask and given the gloriousness of the weather yesterday, I met Grandma at the park with Turtle and Daddy stayed home to monitor the carpet and move everything back.

Turtle discovered the swinging bridge and was in hog heaven.  It was hilarious to watch her treat it like a set of stairs, going down backwards, standing up to walk the middle and then getting down on her knees to crawl up the other side.  I stood there and watched her go back and forth for probably 15 minutes. Soon there after we got a text from Daddy saying we could come home.

But before we headed into the house for good we broke out the sidewalk chalk to see what Turtle thought.  As she is with everything Mama thinks is going to be awesome, Turtle was underwhelmed.  I did get this awesome shot right though before she bit it on the sidewalk and we had to go inside to attend to a very broken finger nail.  

I'm so thankful for the cooler weather.  I feel like we have been sequestered inside for months now.  I'm definitely ready to get back outside!

How was everyone's weekend?

Changes... They is Happening

Wow!  It's amazing to me that it's been almost a year since I blogged regularly... a year of challenges and learning to accept limitation.  In August of last year, Daddy Turtle started back to school.  So, not only did he work during the day, but he would then go straight to school.  Four nights a week it would be 11pm or later before he got home.  That was challenging.

I still wonder how we survived those early days.  Turtle was so small and often times didn't want to be put down, so I would wear her most evenings in order to even get our stuff carried in from the car.  I lost count of how many bowls of cereal I ate standing up and bouncing her. 

It seems like a million miles away.

Now, a year later we still have the same schedule, but life is so completely different.  For one, I've learned that I cannot do it all. 

It wasn't easy!

Mama Turtle is my name, over-achieving is my game!  And it almost killed me! 

But slowly and steadily Turtle became more independent, even sleeping in her own room!  The new-found space allowed me to think, and I had a revelation... a revelation of precisely how many hours we as a family have together in a week.  And that number was scary small!  So, I decided that I needed to focus on what made us all happy.  No more wasting time on obligatory non-sense.  No more worrying about the tidiness of a house we hardly spend any time in.  This is our family and our family time and I have a right to guard it! 

This doesn't mean that we don't spend time apart.  I just took over leadership of the local babywearing group and I'm becoming more involved in other groups and activities that make me happy and bring me joy.  Daddy Turtle loves his monthly Cars and Coffee car meets.  But I look at everything differently.  I evaluate my commitments differently.  Time is a finite resource in our family.  So, my questions are always, "Is this a good use of our time?  Do we have the time and energy to participate in this activity?  How will this activity impact each family member? Have we planned adequate time to rest and recharge?"  Doesn't mean we always get it right.  Some weeks we do better than others.  But the shift in perspective has helped me see that often times, when our family gets crabby and unhappy, it's because we are being haphazard with our time.

I won't say that I'm going to start updating this blog on any regular schedule (although I hope to), but I will say that it's good to be back. :-)

And because I hate wall 'o text, picture-less posts, here are some of my recent Instagram pics to hold you over.

Planning her escape from the park.

Brushing teeth with Daddy.

Fun in the French Broad River.

Snuggles at the pediatricians office.

Happy Friday everyone!