Andrea’s Weblog

A recent study published in Pediatrics identifies a link between maternal responsiveness and cognitive development. Babies through the age of 10 showed higher intellectual development the more attentive the mom is (picking the baby up when he cries, interacting with him as you wear him in a sling, etc.) and the more positive the parenting [...]

Last night, Elizabeth attended her second baseball game. It was the annual Janus Research Group night at the Greenjackets game. (Her first game was at last years JRG night.) I was a bit worried about how long we would get to stay when Elizabeth barely sat still long enough to eat a few bites of [...]

We had our first McPherson camping expedition last weekend. Mistletoe State Park is less than a half hour away and seemed like a good place for our inaugural camping trip. Packing for the expedition was quite involved: tent, bike, food, swimming stuff, dog stuff, bug stuff, sun stuff . . . Much more than I’ve [...]

This week I finally got around to ordering new nursing bras. Nursing bras are particularly hard to come by, and the ones that you can find in big box stores are definitely not for long-term wear. I love walking into Victoria’s Secret and asking them if they carry nursing bras–partly because I like the look [...]

Frank and I went out on a date last Sunday. Our neighbor, Lisa, offered to watch Elizabeth, which was super-nice because that meant I didn’t have to tidy the house for a babysitter. We went to a nicer restaurant and weren’t sure how kid-friendly it would be. It turns out that we needn’t have worried. [...]

The other night at dinner, Elizabeth spilled water on herself. She immediately took off her shirt and diaper. I couldn’t blame her for taking off the wet shirt, but the diaper wasn’t strictly necessary. Since we didn’t feel like dealing with squirming toddler butts during dinner, we just ignored the fact that she was naked [...]

I left the travel system discussion out of my previous post, because I’m reevaluating how we used ours. A recent article in Mothering magazine titled “Car Seats are for Cars” states that “children who are consistently carried in car seats instead of held in arms suffer adverse physical and psychological effects.” (Mothering. May-June 2006. p32) [...]

Since we’re now parenting veterans, I figured I should try and share some of the things that worked for us in the early days. So, here’s a list of things that we used and a list of things that were basically a waste of money. The main thing I learned is not to buy anything [...]

We’ve been teaching Elizabeth numbers and counting. She likes to count her toes and the hippos on the pages of her book. When I ask her how many there are of something, she replies (in her counting voice) “du – du – tu.” It was a surprise to me when I said “Elizabeth, you can [...]