What's worse than a baby screaming in your ear? Two babies screaming in my ear! Not that I don't deserve it. Both my babies should be quite upset with me. You see, I gave them their first ever cold. Babies up to 4 months old are strictly nose breathers. This allows them to successfully breast feed and continue breathing at the same time.
My girls have looked so sad the last few days; their big eyes staring at me, just begging me to make it all go away. It honestly makes me feel completely helpless, especially knowing that there is very little I can do to make them feel better...if only there was some way to just draw the mucus out of there sinus cavity, I'd gladly do it.
I read a statistic that stated babies will get, on average, 8 colds a year, probably from licking doorknobs (Note...do not google this because apparently it's a thing in Japan). Luckily there are a plethora of products out there to help a daddy out when the snot hits the fan.
First, if your baby is suffering from a stuffed up nose, loosening everything up for quick removal is the first course of action. You can either purchase, or DIY, a saline solution that will be dropped into each of your baby's nostrils. The purchased version, the brand we used anyway, is called hydraSense Easydose. It's basically a number of single application squeeze bottles filled with undiluted isotonic desalinated seawater. Trying to get the little tube in my child's nose without touching her brain was difficult enough, but add in having to squeeze a single drop of liquid from a fragile plastic tube and you've actually got an event where it's appropriate for your wife to yell "You're drowning her!". This stuff works pretty well, even at dosages much higher than a single drop...
Step two, is where the fun really starts. There are actually several products out there specifically designed to literally suck the snot out of your child's head. We have two versions, a bulb aspirator, as well as a Belvital Baby Nose Cleaner. We started with the bulb aspirator, but were not really confident in the results. Basically it's a little squeeze bulb with a tube sticking out of it. You squeeze the bulb then insert the tube into your baby's nostril. When you release the bulb, the vacuum created will draw the mucus through. After the first time I used this device, I excitedly looked inside the reservoir , but was disappointed not to find it filled to the brim with roiling green slime. In fact, there wasn't really anything in there at all. Was it even working? My baby still had her cold, so it wasn't the miracle cure I was hoping for.
On to product number two...the photo on the front of the Belvital Baby Nose Cleaner is awesome. There's this little kid, all smiles, with a clear plastic tube jammed up his nose. On the backside of the tube is a long clear plastic hose, and the other end of that long clear plastic hose, snakes it's way in to the mouth of smiling woman. Everyone is smiling, everyone is having a great time...It's important to actually read the directions for assembling this product. If I had, then I would have found out that you stuff a small amount of cotton, to act as a filter, at the joint between the hose and the tube. Reading the instructions wouldn't have prevented my wife from making gagging sounds when the snot bubbled and oozed it's way through the clear, so you can see it really works, tube, but it probably would have prevented me from being able to accurately describe the taste a baby boogers.
Monday, 19 November 2012
Friday, 9 November 2012
It's Poosasterous!
Shit storm
Poonami
Poopacalypse
The girls are going poozerk
Assalanche
It doesn't matter what you call it, it's going to happen. It's going to happen from day one and continue for years, so if you are squeamish about it, get over it now. The key to a well contained poosaster is the correct diaper. Make the wrong choice and find out how far out the neck hole of a sleeper a little girl can defecate.
This is strictly personal opinion, based on my personal experience of dealing with twin girls, so if you've got little boys, then you'll have to do your own experimenting.
The first thing you need to decide is earth vs. personal convenience, cloth vs. disposable. It's not that simple really. There are those that will argue both ways, and honestly, I'm not sure how true it is that cloth diapers are all that much more environmentally friendly when you take into account the delivery, cleaning, collection of waste, treatment of waste water (including facility maintenance, electricity, workers carbon footprint, etc...) and finally the transport of the cleansed water to the nearest lake. Disposable diapers, in my area at least, are composted and used as topsoil on farms and park land. The choice was pretty simple for us, with twins, the mountains of diapers that the girls would produce, we opted for disposable....f@ck this planet! (Just kidding, I love the earth).
First off, bring diapers with you to the hospital. The hospital, at least the hospitals in my area, don't supply diapers. We brought Huggies, newborns with us. We chose that particular brand because of the umbilical cutout. I had no idea how to strap a diaper, on a baby butt to begin with, so having to give consideration to irritating the stub of cord sticking out of my babies' bellies was just something else to worry about. Newborn diapers are good up to 8 pounds, so lots of couples will completely skip this size. I had no real complaints about the Huggies. As newborns the poops are small but frequent and the diapers held up well. Just so you are ready for it, the twins went through 44 diapers in one 24 hour period (that was a record for us).
We moved on to size 1 when the girls were right around 8 pounds. I'm usually pretty brand loyal...actually it has nothing to do with loyalty, I'm too lazy to look for or try anything new...if it had been left up to me I probably would never have tried a new brand, and I would have experienced more wrecked pants, soiled sleepwear and poo hairdos then I could have imagined. Luckily, loving relatives and friends often gifted us with diapers when they came to visit the girls (actually, when asked if there was anything that they, the visitors, could bring me, I always said a box of diapers). We ended up with several brands including: Huggies, Pampers, President's Choice Green Diapers, Shopper's Drug Mart Life Brand, Huggies Natural, Pampers Overnights and Pampers Sensitive. We tried them all, so below you'll find a review of what we discovered. Remember, this is a personal opinion, of our experience with two little girls. I've heard differing opinions when boy parts get involved.
Huggies/Huggies Sensitive: Once we were in size 1 we found these diapers just didn't hold up. Very often we would end with collateral damage, in the form of wrecked clothing, from the poosplosion. If the diapers were put on too loose, crap would blow out the leg holes. Cinching the diapers up a little tighter, closed up the leg holes, but created a perfect escape route for a poo stampede out the topside. Not many things worse than finding crap in your little girl's hair, except maybe the trail that leads back to the source. One box of Huggies Snugglers we had, contained several misshapen diapers. I contacted the Huggies corporation by email to complain. I included several photos of the malformed diapers, and they immediately sent me a coupon for a free large size box as well as a coupon for $8 off any second purchase. I was appreciative of the customer care, and it gave me the opportunity to test out the Huggies Sensitives as well as get more crap on my hands from overflowing diapers.
Shopper's Drug Mart Life Brand: The only crap collector worse than the Huggies was the Shopper's Drug Mart Life Brand. If you are looking for an excuse to bleach everything your children wear, then this is the diaper for you. Typically, when one of the girls would finish her latest masterpiece (my babies are amazing at everything they do) I'd find more crap outside the diaper than in.
President's Choice Green Brand: Are, as the name implies, meant to be marketed to those parents that want to be earth friendly, but are not willing to put up with the inconvenience of cloth (not to mention that bulky cloth diapers makes your baby's butt look fat in those $100 baby jeans that they will wear 1 time in their whole lives). These diapers are supposed to be eco-friendly according to the website. It doesn't say how, whether in the manufacturing, or in the materials used. But they are fragrance free, which is a big plus (one of my wife's passions is researching chemicals in everyday products) and they do have well designed securing strips. I found that this brand did a really good job of pulling moisture away from my girls' skin and was proficient in corralling solid matter as well. The only problem I had with this brand was that you could only buy it in small packages (66 or fewer).
Pampers Swaddlers/Sensitive/Overnights: Our brand of choice, for daily use, is the Pampers Sensitives. They feature a well designed securing strap and can hold a huge quantity of crap. They are excellent at moving moisture away from sensitive skin (which is extremely important, you'll find, when you battle a round of diaper rash). This brand is more expensive than the Swaddlers, but in my opinion, worth the money.
Now that the girls are sleeping for long periods of time (they will sleep 12 hours through the night if we let them) we've got them wearing Pampers Overnights to bed. These things work. By morning (we put them on at 9:30pm and take them off at 8:30am with a check during their dream feed at 5:00am), they are the size of a balloon and weigh as much as a bowling ball...but the girls are never in discomfort, nor have they experienced a re-occurrence of their diaper rash. Please note, to any terrible parents out there, this is not an opportunity to further neglect your children. These are meant for overnight use, not all day use. Change your babies whenever they are dirty...
So that's it. My recommendation is Pampers Sensitive for day use and Pampers Overnights when your kids are old enough. Take it for what it is, one guy's opinion. Feel free to experiment...just keep a steady supply of extra sleepers for those poosasterous situations.
Poonami
Poopacalypse
The girls are going poozerk
Assalanche
It doesn't matter what you call it, it's going to happen. It's going to happen from day one and continue for years, so if you are squeamish about it, get over it now. The key to a well contained poosaster is the correct diaper. Make the wrong choice and find out how far out the neck hole of a sleeper a little girl can defecate.
This is strictly personal opinion, based on my personal experience of dealing with twin girls, so if you've got little boys, then you'll have to do your own experimenting.
The first thing you need to decide is earth vs. personal convenience, cloth vs. disposable. It's not that simple really. There are those that will argue both ways, and honestly, I'm not sure how true it is that cloth diapers are all that much more environmentally friendly when you take into account the delivery, cleaning, collection of waste, treatment of waste water (including facility maintenance, electricity, workers carbon footprint, etc...) and finally the transport of the cleansed water to the nearest lake. Disposable diapers, in my area at least, are composted and used as topsoil on farms and park land. The choice was pretty simple for us, with twins, the mountains of diapers that the girls would produce, we opted for disposable....f@ck this planet! (Just kidding, I love the earth).
First off, bring diapers with you to the hospital. The hospital, at least the hospitals in my area, don't supply diapers. We brought Huggies, newborns with us. We chose that particular brand because of the umbilical cutout. I had no idea how to strap a diaper, on a baby butt to begin with, so having to give consideration to irritating the stub of cord sticking out of my babies' bellies was just something else to worry about. Newborn diapers are good up to 8 pounds, so lots of couples will completely skip this size. I had no real complaints about the Huggies. As newborns the poops are small but frequent and the diapers held up well. Just so you are ready for it, the twins went through 44 diapers in one 24 hour period (that was a record for us).
We moved on to size 1 when the girls were right around 8 pounds. I'm usually pretty brand loyal...actually it has nothing to do with loyalty, I'm too lazy to look for or try anything new...if it had been left up to me I probably would never have tried a new brand, and I would have experienced more wrecked pants, soiled sleepwear and poo hairdos then I could have imagined. Luckily, loving relatives and friends often gifted us with diapers when they came to visit the girls (actually, when asked if there was anything that they, the visitors, could bring me, I always said a box of diapers). We ended up with several brands including: Huggies, Pampers, President's Choice Green Diapers, Shopper's Drug Mart Life Brand, Huggies Natural, Pampers Overnights and Pampers Sensitive. We tried them all, so below you'll find a review of what we discovered. Remember, this is a personal opinion, of our experience with two little girls. I've heard differing opinions when boy parts get involved.
Huggies/Huggies Sensitive: Once we were in size 1 we found these diapers just didn't hold up. Very often we would end with collateral damage, in the form of wrecked clothing, from the poosplosion. If the diapers were put on too loose, crap would blow out the leg holes. Cinching the diapers up a little tighter, closed up the leg holes, but created a perfect escape route for a poo stampede out the topside. Not many things worse than finding crap in your little girl's hair, except maybe the trail that leads back to the source. One box of Huggies Snugglers we had, contained several misshapen diapers. I contacted the Huggies corporation by email to complain. I included several photos of the malformed diapers, and they immediately sent me a coupon for a free large size box as well as a coupon for $8 off any second purchase. I was appreciative of the customer care, and it gave me the opportunity to test out the Huggies Sensitives as well as get more crap on my hands from overflowing diapers.
Shopper's Drug Mart Life Brand: The only crap collector worse than the Huggies was the Shopper's Drug Mart Life Brand. If you are looking for an excuse to bleach everything your children wear, then this is the diaper for you. Typically, when one of the girls would finish her latest masterpiece (my babies are amazing at everything they do) I'd find more crap outside the diaper than in.
President's Choice Green Brand: Are, as the name implies, meant to be marketed to those parents that want to be earth friendly, but are not willing to put up with the inconvenience of cloth (not to mention that bulky cloth diapers makes your baby's butt look fat in those $100 baby jeans that they will wear 1 time in their whole lives). These diapers are supposed to be eco-friendly according to the website. It doesn't say how, whether in the manufacturing, or in the materials used. But they are fragrance free, which is a big plus (one of my wife's passions is researching chemicals in everyday products) and they do have well designed securing strips. I found that this brand did a really good job of pulling moisture away from my girls' skin and was proficient in corralling solid matter as well. The only problem I had with this brand was that you could only buy it in small packages (66 or fewer).
Pampers Swaddlers/Sensitive/Overnights: Our brand of choice, for daily use, is the Pampers Sensitives. They feature a well designed securing strap and can hold a huge quantity of crap. They are excellent at moving moisture away from sensitive skin (which is extremely important, you'll find, when you battle a round of diaper rash). This brand is more expensive than the Swaddlers, but in my opinion, worth the money.
Now that the girls are sleeping for long periods of time (they will sleep 12 hours through the night if we let them) we've got them wearing Pampers Overnights to bed. These things work. By morning (we put them on at 9:30pm and take them off at 8:30am with a check during their dream feed at 5:00am), they are the size of a balloon and weigh as much as a bowling ball...but the girls are never in discomfort, nor have they experienced a re-occurrence of their diaper rash. Please note, to any terrible parents out there, this is not an opportunity to further neglect your children. These are meant for overnight use, not all day use. Change your babies whenever they are dirty...
So that's it. My recommendation is Pampers Sensitive for day use and Pampers Overnights when your kids are old enough. Take it for what it is, one guy's opinion. Feel free to experiment...just keep a steady supply of extra sleepers for those poosasterous situations.
Thursday, 1 November 2012
When the Zombies Come
We faced a "scare" here in Toronto recently. The same problem that the entire East coast of North America faced...hurricane Sandy. The chances of the storm reaching this far inland with any strength, in my opinion, were pretty remote. Yes, there were some power outages, but it was not worth all the panic spread by the local news stations. There was a run on bottled water and other basic supplies at the stores. Basic supplies being things like beans and canned pig product. People were afraid that their power would go out and all the food in their fridge would spoil...it's 0 degrees outside...put your perishables outdoors for the few hours you don't have lights. While many others were standing in line at the grocers, I was filling various containers with fresh tap water, boiling the eggs we had in the house (yes, I guess I could have eaten them raw) and cooking up a big batch of rice. That simple prep would have taken my family through several days without electricity or at least long enough for us to drive far enough west to find a hotel with hot and cold running water. In fact, I took that opportunity to look through the cupboards of my kitchen to see exactly what I had available should the lights go out forever. There was easily enough food to last a couple of weeks, if one was willing to eat stale ice cream cones (without the ice cream). The whole Sandy hurricane scare got me thinking though, now that I have children, what will I do when a real threat looms, like a zombie apocalypse?
There are several stages to a man's life, and really, only the first is ideal when that meteor carrying zombie infection hits the earth. As a young man, single and childless, you are in good shape physically for survival. Maybe a little brazen, with extra machismo thrown in. Sure, that could be dangerous when fighting zombies. The smart guy will survive and prosper though. All a young man needs do is look out for himself...unless of course he meets that special lady, a sexy survivor perhaps? That throws him into the second stage of manhood. Now sure, he's got a reason to live, a beautiful woman, but still, if it comes down to it, the dude is going to sacrifice himself to make sure his lady friend can make it out alive. If, however, the couple live through at least one night (and then 9 months on the run) they are probably going to have sex in the safe room of an abandoned millionaire's mansion or a fortified church. The offspring, if not zombified in utero or immediately after birth, will bring on the third and final stage of manhood...that of being a father. As a father you are most certainly dead. If you've made it this far though, you can count on a few more good years. You'll need to train your offspring to forage for food and weapons as well as teach them to kill zombies. If you are lucky, then you still have your wife by your side to help with the training...but the chances are at least 50/50 that you had to kill her when she died in childbirth and came back as the living dead, so you might very well be doing all the schooling on your own. Not long after your children become teenagers, you'll be killed unexpectedly by a zombie, after an argument with your daughter ("you are not leaving this house with your pistol tucked in your thigh-highs like that missy!"), causes her to storm out of the stronghold, carelessly leaving the backdoor unbarred.
Unfortunately for me, I missed all the easy survival years and am now firmly set in stage 3. (Looks like learning to perform a c-section through that internet course was pointless) Twin girls will probably train faster too, competing against and learning from one another, so my time is pretty limited. I, like all of you, am expecting zombie destruction in December, 2012 as predicted by the Mayan calendar. That gives me a little bit of time to put together a good survival kit and breakout bag. The chances of my wife allowing me to construct or purchase a survival shotgun are slim...so I'll have to come up with something equally cool...I may take up archery...she probably won't complain about that. The age of the children in your party is something equally important to consider when putting together your survival gear. In a few months mine will still be helpless babies and completely useless in helping survive the walking dead. Besides additional food (breast milk supplies maybe low if my wife is on the run and suffering from a lower calorie diet), I have to try and find some type of soother or muffler that can convert my babies cries to nature based sounds, like running water or something...or possibly something that can convert baby screams into zombie moans...zombies are attracted to the sounds of a baby crying, to them it's an easy to grab snack, so some type of baby muffler is key to survival. Thanks to the still functioning internet and my forethought in looking into this before the zombies do start to crawl out of the earth, I was able to find this fully functional baby muffler as well as this patented crying baby muffler. Go eat some other baby's brains zombie!
So it looks like this stay-at-home dad is in pretty good shape to survive the upcoming apocalypse. Our girls are old enough now that my wife and I can get back to the gym once again. We'll be in good fighting and running shape in no time...so bring it on December, 2012!
There are several stages to a man's life, and really, only the first is ideal when that meteor carrying zombie infection hits the earth. As a young man, single and childless, you are in good shape physically for survival. Maybe a little brazen, with extra machismo thrown in. Sure, that could be dangerous when fighting zombies. The smart guy will survive and prosper though. All a young man needs do is look out for himself...unless of course he meets that special lady, a sexy survivor perhaps? That throws him into the second stage of manhood. Now sure, he's got a reason to live, a beautiful woman, but still, if it comes down to it, the dude is going to sacrifice himself to make sure his lady friend can make it out alive. If, however, the couple live through at least one night (and then 9 months on the run) they are probably going to have sex in the safe room of an abandoned millionaire's mansion or a fortified church. The offspring, if not zombified in utero or immediately after birth, will bring on the third and final stage of manhood...that of being a father. As a father you are most certainly dead. If you've made it this far though, you can count on a few more good years. You'll need to train your offspring to forage for food and weapons as well as teach them to kill zombies. If you are lucky, then you still have your wife by your side to help with the training...but the chances are at least 50/50 that you had to kill her when she died in childbirth and came back as the living dead, so you might very well be doing all the schooling on your own. Not long after your children become teenagers, you'll be killed unexpectedly by a zombie, after an argument with your daughter ("you are not leaving this house with your pistol tucked in your thigh-highs like that missy!"), causes her to storm out of the stronghold, carelessly leaving the backdoor unbarred.
Unfortunately for me, I missed all the easy survival years and am now firmly set in stage 3. (Looks like learning to perform a c-section through that internet course was pointless) Twin girls will probably train faster too, competing against and learning from one another, so my time is pretty limited. I, like all of you, am expecting zombie destruction in December, 2012 as predicted by the Mayan calendar. That gives me a little bit of time to put together a good survival kit and breakout bag. The chances of my wife allowing me to construct or purchase a survival shotgun are slim...so I'll have to come up with something equally cool...I may take up archery...she probably won't complain about that. The age of the children in your party is something equally important to consider when putting together your survival gear. In a few months mine will still be helpless babies and completely useless in helping survive the walking dead. Besides additional food (breast milk supplies maybe low if my wife is on the run and suffering from a lower calorie diet), I have to try and find some type of soother or muffler that can convert my babies cries to nature based sounds, like running water or something...or possibly something that can convert baby screams into zombie moans...zombies are attracted to the sounds of a baby crying, to them it's an easy to grab snack, so some type of baby muffler is key to survival. Thanks to the still functioning internet and my forethought in looking into this before the zombies do start to crawl out of the earth, I was able to find this fully functional baby muffler as well as this patented crying baby muffler. Go eat some other baby's brains zombie!
So it looks like this stay-at-home dad is in pretty good shape to survive the upcoming apocalypse. Our girls are old enough now that my wife and I can get back to the gym once again. We'll be in good fighting and running shape in no time...so bring it on December, 2012!
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