Organized New Mom Tip #35: Enter Pedi Visit Info Straight into the Baby Book

When you bring your baby home, you have the best of intentions to document every little milestone. The big problem with that logic is that you have just brought your baby home.  Newborns have a knack for sucking all of that lovely scrap booking energy right out of your body.

Some of the most important information I’m sure you’ll want to keep is your little one’s progress as documented from his/her pedi visits. That stuff is gold to new parents, right?

Don’t tell yourself you’ll do it later. You won’t. Don’t put it in a special pile in a special place and tell yourself you’ll just spend a weekend assembling it all at once. You won’t.

The only way you’re going to keepsake this whole mess of memories is to walk straight through the door, fresh home from the doctor’s office, straight to your baby book and enter Baby’s progress right then and there. It takes just a couple of minutes to do it, and over time you’ll have documented all the juicy medical stuff that your teenager will be embarrassed about when you show his prom date.

Organized New Mom Tip #34: If you have a dog, buy them a dog tag silencer

If you have a dog, I PROMISE you will experience this situation:

You FINALLY get the baby to sleep. You gingerly place him in the crib. You creep ever so quietly out the door. You silently close the nursery door. Then the dog, who is right outside the door because she follows you around like you’re a rock star ever since you brought your bundle of joy home from the hospital, decides this would be the perfect time to shake and scratch profusely, causing the tags on her collar to jingle like it’s the frickin’ North Pole at Santa’s workshop. After shushing the dog, you wring your hands and wait. You listen. Then you hear that dreaded cry on the other side of the door that says, “Congrats, Mom. You just earned yourself a repeat of the last 60 minutes.”

Some would say that this is not a problem. Some would say to just take off the collar and bypass the noise altogether.  These people do not have a border collie who on a whim decides to jump the fence to go exploring*. These people also must be perfect and always remember to put the dog collar back on the dog before letting the dog out. I am not one of these people, and was getting tired of picking up my loveable canine at the shelter (thank God she has a chip).

Get a dog tag silencer**, new Mommies. Get one now. You will thank me.   

*We have since fixed the fence so she can’t get out. Happy endings, yay!

**Our dog tag silencer is so very appropriately named “Peace Tags”, from a company called Paws and Tails. Here’s their website:  http://www.paws-and-tails.com/peacetags-tagsilencer.aspx  (This is so not a paid endorsement).

Our wonderful dog, Arwen, whom we love (much more now that we she wears a dog tag silencer)

 

Organized New Mom Tip #33: Don’t Overbuy Oversized Baby Items

Registering for your baby shower can be overwhelming when you consider all of the gizmos and gadgets on the baby market today. I’ll let you in on a little secret: you don’t need it all. This isn’t a blog entry listing the most important baby essentials. Heck, just go on Pinterest or Amazon and you can get that info within seconds. I’m just here to remind you to not blindly purchase every big baby item that looks cool.

For example, do you really need a pack n’ play…and a crib…and a co-sleeper? Do you really need a bouncer…and a baby swing…and a floor mat? The answer is probably not, and you’ll be grateful for the space you save by not having oversized baby stuff cluttering every inch of your house.

So how do you know what you’ll really need? Here’s what I did:

•  Ask other moms-They’re the best resource!

• Read product reviews-So many times a baby gadget looks so freakin’ awesome, but when you   read the reviews you really learn whether or not parents actually found it useful.

• Wait until Baby is born-Sometimes you need to find out your little one’s personality before learning what he or she will use. When it comes to big baby stuff, all you really need is a car seat and a place for Baby to sleep before the big birth day arrives. 

My son Will's favorite big baby toy by far was his floor activity gym