I want to know how fat Gina is.

One is pretty standard, but I don't think I'd get worried until much later than that.

Another observation: girls do most things earlier than boys, especially talking. Even at 5/6 the girls are much more mature and communicative than boys. Anybody who believes there aren't intrinsic differences between the sexes should spend some time around preschool age kids. Boy wants to hurt another boy, he kicks him. Girl wants to hurt another girl, she says "You're not my friend anymore." It's crazy how quickly the girls start to clique up.

I've seen a huge range on it. That's getting closer to the upper end, but nothing I'd be worried about yet, especially if he can stand. Does he make any attempt to move once he is standing? Does he cruise at all?

RE: Walking

I would run (apparently) when I was 6 months old, until about 7 months. Then I fell down and crawled until I was about 18 months; I suppose I was afraid to walk again after the fall.

Tell her the truth about how you feel - that her daughter was rude in telling you to shut up and that since she didn't say anything then you did.

I got in a war once with a sister in law when I told her kid not to do something and she thought it was inappropriate. Time heals those kind of wounds, and today we are back to friendly, but I would do the same thing again.

This thread is surprisingly not terrible. Good job, dudes.

Obviously I can't say for sure how things are going to go for me, since I'm in the idealistic barely pregnant phase, but I guess I lean to the hippie parenting side of things.

First, we're planning to have a natural, no-drugs, low intervention birth in a birth center with a midwife. My dad thinks I'm out of my mind, but whatever. Planning to breast feed for at least a year, and play it by ear from there. (P.S. breastfeeding benefits are important up to that year mark, because that is when a baby's immune system is really developed enough not to need antibodies from mom, but any breastfeeding is better than none.) I want to cloth diaper, but I think we're going to get a diaper service because I hate laundry, so it doesn't seem very "hippie" to me.

I want to co-sleep, but probably with some sort of bedside attachment, because hubby is a heavy sleeper and I worry about baby-crushing, but I'd prefer the convenience of not actually having to get out of bed at night for on-demand breastfeeding.

As far as other parenting stuff goes, I'm not there yet, but I really like Ask Moxie. She definitely tends toward the granola (and there is a lot more emphasis on organic and avoiding high fructose corn syrup and the like that I find a little obnoxious), but she takes the stand that kids are different, and different parenting philosophies are going to work differently for different kids. She likes to ask for "data points" from her readers, so you get a wide range of answers and experience. On the Ferberizing thing, for example, she is of the mind that some kids release tension by crying, and others gain it, and whether or not sleep training or crying-it-out will work or make everyone miserable will depend heavily on that. But she may be too touchy-feely for y'all.

I feel really TOUGH when I tell off a 12 year old!

That's a long gap, but it's pretty common. Both my kids learned to walk, stopped for a while, and then started again. Most kids don't want to do it unless they're totally confident.

Amber -

You said: "Jess, do you really think its okay for you to tell us to shut up?"

You went direct to preacher mode and were questioning her values and morals. Not your place to do. You can set boundaries about how people talk in your car. That doesn't mean turn in to super nanny/catholic school nun. Something along the lines of "my car my rules" would have been just fine. As it is, you were pretty directly questioning the parenting skill of the mom and challenging a hormonal pre-teen girl. While you are free to have these judgments in private, you will get absolutely no cooperation or apology from a parent, regardless of how correct you feel you are, by being confrontational like this. The way you handled it you let the girl manipulate you in to ending your conversation and then descend in to a lengthy email exchange where I'm sure you can't feel proud of your behavior. just my opinion. Of course the mom is also to blame here but I feel like you let yourself get dragged in to the muck with her.

her parenting skills should be questioned. the girl told her moms friend(who was doing them a favor) to shut up and the mom didnt do anything.

He bounces a lot and will move around the table but he doesn't let go. He's really cautious when he sits down after standing. It's pretty cute actually, but I'm starting to feel like he took a header one day and is being a bit too cautious.

13 months for my son.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...528698754.html

article on "Chinese mothers"

wow, i got my own kids and could never adhere to these principles. way to strict imo.

'I know the 100% objectively correct things for my children to value and the ways they should spend their time, and I could never be wrong'

Oh the irony.

I will say about the cloth diapers, the laundry load is constant, but it's a lot less work and less annoying than doing regular laundry. I despise doing regular laundry, but cloth diapers is cake for laundry. We got some all-in-one diapers that have an absorbency layer that comes out for a good deal that are really simple. But throw the diapers in and let them soak. Run again. Then switch to dryer. No need to really fold them when done, just keep the basket near where it's needed.

Also, be careful with the birthing centers. Some of them are very good and when there is actual danger will get you to the proper level of attention. Most of the time, everything goes smoothly and you are fine. Low risk pregnancies this is usually fine, as long as you have a backup if there is a problem and your midwives are prepared and trained. It's that rare case there is a problem. A lot of people are really hard-headed about this and I've seen a lot of people lose babies due to being stupid about this kind of stuff (no treatment, home births with no help, etc...). Another option is to see if there are any OB/GYNs in your area that specialize in natural births and low intervention. There is such a push for C-sections and intervention that this is rare to find. However, you live in a fairly "hippie" area of the country, there might be something good. We found a great practice that has an extremely low c-section rate that has midwives (and got them allowed into the hospital for delivery). I'm really glad we found this place, since we had a few complications. My wife's birthplan became scrap paper very quickly, and a natural birth would have likely ended with 2 deaths.

The best advice from this stage is to not be stubborn and to try to be as flexible as possible. Things change quickly, and you may need to adapt how things are done for the best advice. You need the best professionals possible so that you can trust their opinions. While our Dr. let us attempt a natural birth, when she finally said we needed a C-section, it was extremely easy to trust her that we had no other options left.

If you do get the co-sleeper companion bed, ONLY use it for sleeping.

I was interested in thoughts or experiences about different types of daycare.

I have a 16 month old boy. Both my wife and I work full time and have decided to continue our careers. I work an irregular schedule and we usually are both working for approx 10 days per month. We had initially signed up for daycare to start at 4 months. But when the time came I felt that our son was too fragile to be in a daycare, so we hired a nanny. We continued the nanny until 15 months. We have now switched him into a very small daycare that is just a mother and daughter who care for up to 3 kids each day. Some days he is by himself, some days there are 1 or 2 other kids.

Pretty soon we will get a spot in another daycare that is a more traditional daycare with 8 infants, 12 kids ages 1-2, and a bunch of older kids (not sure how many). My wife and I have been discussing whether to keep our current daycare or move him into the bigger one.

One thing I like about the current daycare is that the mother and daughter are from some african country and they are black and their house smells like some kind of wierd african spices. Living in Portland OR, diversity is hard to come by so I like the idea of him being exposed to people that look different from what he is used to.

Any thoughts about the traditional large daycare compared to a small mother/daughter home daycare?

I can just see it now in five years:

I feel differently than you do, which is fine. I felt my response to Jess was perfectly fine, and non confrontational. A non spoiled child would most likely have replied "sorry" and that would have ended it. A mother who had a clue most likely would have realized that her child was badly behaved.

I am fine with my behavior. How would you have handled it if you were the parent here? If your child told your friend to shut up? Very curious about what your response would be?

Midwifes/Birthcenters: Do your homework We had our 1st at the hospital. Induced labor, 17 hour labor. Not a good experience really. For our 2nd my wife wanted to do a midwife/birthcenter. I was pretty skeptical so I asked tons of questions. Emergency plans, what do you do if this, if that... infinity. Look them up, get feedback etc. We were much happier with the birthing center, but we also had a pretty cut and dry birth. No problems and we went home 4 hours later. It can be a really great experience, but you need to have 100% confidence in the people you entrust here. Do your homework now and if you're not comfortable, keep looking util you are. Also, TomCollins is right. Have a birthplan, but be prepared to do what needs to be done.

the year before preschool, my son went to a traditional daycare (10-12 kids per age group) 3 days a week and a private sitter (2-4 kids) the other two. The private sitter was much better, to the point where he cut back and stopped going to the daycare. My duaghter goes to a private sitter with 4 other kids (different one) and we absolutely love it.

Obv a ton depends on your kids and the sitter/daycare, but we found that a person who likes kids enough to set up their own business doing it was more attentive to the kids than someone working at a daycare making $7/hour. Plus the smaller amount of kids at the sitters is a plus, imo.

We also find the sitters being more flexible. A lot of the problems at the daycare came from them being a little too rigid, imo.

I think it is acceptable for an adult to tell a child not to do something as you did, as long as it is done in a reasonable way. I especially think it is okay to correct a child if he/she is in your house or car and is acting up and the parents are doing nothing about it.

I think sometimes with some people common sense flies out the window. If a kid is running through a grocery store filled with stacked cans and skids and people pushing carts, and someone says "stop running" it is pretty lol when the parent says "don't tell my kid what to do".

For some reason the bolded part made me laugh. So when he stopped going to daycare, what did you do? I can just seen your son saying, " sorry dad, you can't go to work today. I've stopped doing daycare."

I agree that the smaller daycare is much more flexible. My wife was working on new years day and I had some stuff I wanted to do. I emailed them 2 days before and they were happy to watch him. No way a regular daycare could do that.

For parents of infants and young children sleeping in cribs, there's one recommendation I'd like to share. Not as many people know about it, and it might entirely prevent SIDS. I know a couple that lost their baby due to SIDS, so I thought this was important.

BabeSafe mattress covers

The rationale behind using the cover is that mattresses emit toxic gases, and that some babies' respiratory systems cannot handle these gases, which is what they theorize causes SIDS. All US mattresses contain chemicals which are supposed to make them flame ******ant, but they are not required to list the chemicals, even though they include things like arsenic and phosphorus. They generally do not test them on babies' health and safety, only adults'. The theory makes sense to me, and seems to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.

More detailed info is at many sites; here's one good one:
http://www.prevent-sids.org/

If anyone wanted to purchase one, the mattress covers can be ordered at many sites (only $35, shouldn't be more); here's one example:
http://www.eves-best.com/babesafe-mattress-covers.htm

wow, have you been lurking for over 5 years hoping this discussion would come up?

I lol'ed very, very hard.