Hey there Asheville/surrounding area Mamas!!

We are finally making our move after Thanksgiving and will be staying in Black Mtn while we check out Asheville for a place to rent. Are there parks for the kids you recommend? Thanks so much!!

Mary

Not too bad! I wish the writer would have included more of our hour long interview (there's a one sentence quote from me!) but that's the way these things seem to go. Nice comments from Mothering blogger Jennifer Margulis! http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/...ory?id=9130439
Laura

I woke up about 5:30 am in a good amount of pain and of course having to pee. It took me a couple minutes to figure out how to get out of bed without causing too much pain - almost woke DH. Afterward I got back in bed - still in pain - and used my hypnobabies to get back to sleep (don't know why I didn't use it to get out of bed). When I woke up about 7:30 am babe had definitely moved down. I can now climb the stairs without needing 5 minutes to catch my breath, ate more at lunch time and so far my indigestion and nausea are gone too. DD didn't drop until 2 days before birth from foot first to frank breech. My guess date isn't until the end of Jan, although I'm hoping for around the 14th. Might be an interesting time between now and arrival.

But for now I'm going to enjoy feeling better.:D

For months my baby was ROA. The midwife showed me how to feel the baby and I could tell where baby was. Then baby moved and I've been so confused about position. I have read and reread the belly mapping page on spinningbabies but I seemed to feel bottoms in one place one minute and another place the next. I've had hiccups in my upper right segment and my lower left!

I thought I was growing an octopus!

Well, just had another midwife appointment and she says baby is head down (yay!) and right up the middle, basically OA, which is great.

I still can't quite reconcile all these movements, though, and I really want to. If a baby was pretty much straight up and down, could he being swinging his bottom from side to side so that sometimes I feel the bottom to the right of my button, sometimes to the left? And maybe punches and kicks could come on either side too?

This baby doesn't seem to kick so much as push with feet so that sometimes I think there are bottoms coming out my sides, so that doesn't help either! :lol

My DS loves being in the Moby wrap. He's now 6 weeks old. We have only done the newborn hug hold. When we are at home, it's great. And, if I plan ahead and put it before we leave the house, then we are all set.

But, I wanted to get something that didn't require so much advance planning. So, I got a Maya Wrap Ring Sling. I'm still trying to do the tummy hold, but every time I try it, DS starts crying and wants out. I've tried it a bunch of times...all while he was calm to begin with.

I would think that the positions are fairly similar. I'm bummed I spent so much money on something that doesn't seem to be working.

How do you deal with putting on the Moby when you are out and about? Or is there a different carrier that would be better for a 6 week old?

I've got potential polyps as seen on my HSG. My OB wants to do a D and C under general. Just wondering if anyone has had these and successfully got pregnant after removal.

Anyone know of alternative treatments?

Who knows when I can schedule surgery with my very in-demand OB, it may be a few months, so I thought I'd try anything else under the sun...

Practical Homeschooling, Homeschooling Today, Home Education Magazine, or This Old Schoolhouse?

My budget is becoming limited, so I can only pick one right now....

Thanks!

DD is 9.5 months old and has been BLW since her first solids at 6 months. Thing is, she's FOOD CRAZED. This kid drops our jaws, literally. She can put back entire meals' worth of food.

We BLW DS before we knew that it was even a movement. :p He enjoyed flavors and playing with food and trying anything offered. His palate now is very diverse and "adult." However, he didn't really eat any substantial amounts of food until well after his first birthday. He nursed his little heart out until he was 3.5 and my pregnancy with DD made me dry up and he lost interest. You could easily eat without offering him some. He just didn't care that much.

Anyway, DD is a completely different child. She was moderately tongue-tied but nursed well despite it. At 6 months, we had it clipped so that she wouldn't have oral/speech issues later. Following that, she nursed SO much better and we were awed at the difference it made for a babe who was "fine" beforehand.

She has never been a voracious nurser, nor has she nursed for pleasure/comfort/boredom, well, occasionally for booboos. As soon as she spies food or drink, she starts yelling for it. "Mom mom mom mom mom!!!!!!" She eats at every meal if she's not napping and eats until she's full if you let her. Since she's not gungho for the nursies, it's nearly impossible to get her to nurse a bunch before letting her within sight of the food. When she's around while cooking, she's yelling for food the entire time.

I have plenty of milk...PLENTY. LOL She could easily be 100% BF still. She has never had a bottle, a pacifier or anything. She's always with me.

Our meals are incredibly healthy at home. I do worry about what she's eating when we eat out, b/c even a "healthy" meal in a restaurant surely has corn syrup and MSG and other crud in the sauces, etc, and isn't organic or anything. Even at home though, a super healthy meal just isn't the correct replacement for a baby's nursies, IMO.

I'm looking for any suggestions on getting her to nurse more and eat less, while still respecting the BLW aspect and keeping my hot-headed little babe content.

So clueless here. I've never seen a baby eat like she does.

Oh, and she's just like DS was in looks. Long, lean, muscled. She's never been a chubby looking cuddlebug type babe. *shrug*

ANY THOUGHTS, Mamas?? :o

Anyone using Diaperkind CD service? Am planning to order from them since Queen Bee has gotten such bad reviews, but haven't been able to find any reviews about their service. Also does anyone have advice about what to order from them for a newborn? This is my first and I'm clueless!
Thanks.

ah, as all these ladies are beginning to post their birth stories I'm starting to feel so jealous.
I am due Dec 1st but I just don't feel its coming early and I am SOO ready!

Just wondering--I am cosleeping with my 18 mo old ds, have been for over a year, and he wakes so often and seems stimulated be me, and I just think of all those mainstream parents with babies in cribs that supposedly go down unassisted and sleep through the night and wonder if co-sleeping actually causes restless sleeping and extra waking? Especially since so many posts on here are about how badly our babies, esp. toddlers, are sleeping? I am not going to stop since I am afraid he would just cry and I don't want to CIO, but am curious what others think?

Obviously I know each child is different, etc., but I also know there are things that are true to each age-group. For example, growth spurts happen around 6 weeks and children are testing boundaries around age 2 and so on. I'm wondering what are some "characteristics" of a five year old girl.

My dd will be five in December and seems to have gotten progressively more "dramatic" and teary in the last month or so. She's always been very sweet and eloquent, albeit feisty at the same time. She is big on her independence but very attached to me (I know that sounds like an oxymoron but it's true). Lately though she tends to burst into tears at the slightest frustration and get very bossy and dramatic if games aren't played just how she wants them to be or if things don't go the way she wants.

She has recently gained a new baby sister (end of September) and has been AMAZING with her. She doesn't show any signs of jealousy and is really helpful, etc. I know it is a big change in our lives though.

She is still overall sweet and wonderful, but this latest drama makes me wonder if this is "normal" for a girl turning five.

Can anyone give me an idea of what their child was/is like at this age?

my son has always had issues with getting red blotches on his face if food gets stuck there too long and in the winter, it's ten times worse. to make matters worse, he licks the skin around his lips a lot and if his nose runs at all, it compounds the issues. i am looking for something i can use on his skin. would carmex do this? My mom says she would use the old style baby cream by johnson and johnson but they don't make it anymore. i think last year we just used chap stick. i'm curious what other moms are doing (or would do) with this.

I boiled a big pot of beef bone broth and cooled it, and got like a cup and a half of fat off the top! And the second batch is on the stove right now. What can I use this fat for besides greasing my cast iron frying pan? Is it good to eat? I really don't want to waste so much fat.

I'm sure this has been covered before, so maybe someone can point me in the right direction.

We have a few months to figure this out, but I'm starting to look into options for 4yo DS for next fall. I wish there was a Pre-K around here, but there is not. His birthday is October 29, and the cutoff is December 1st for K.

I don't know if DS would test officially as gifted, but I really think so. This is a super bright kid, with a huge vocabulary, interested in learning specific facts about biology and mechanics, starting to read a bit, can write his name and a few other short words, etc. Cognitively speaking, I know he will be ready for Kindergarten next year.

I worry that he will have trouble sitting still as long as he might be asked to. He's quite active, and though he follows directions very well at preschool, he isn't asked to do any specific task for more than a few minutes at a time. I also worry that it might be difficult to be the youngest kid in his class (seems like most parents here wait a year, especially with boys). He gets along smashingly with his current preschool class, where he is the youngest, but I wonder if the age gap will make more of a difference as he gets older (especially when I think of adolescence!).

The advice I keep hearing is that no one regrets giving the "gift of time," but I'm not so sure. Won't he be bored and get in trouble if school is way too easy when he's 5 going on 6 in Kindergarten?

What have other parents of active and gifted kids done, and how has it worked out?