I have another parenting book for this week's Reading Review! Here's "On Becoming Babywise: Giving Your Infant the Gift of Nighttime Sleep" by Gary Ezzo, M.A. and Robert Bucknam, M.D.
While I can't fully recommend it (yet), I can't WAIT to put the material presented in this book to use! The "parent directed feeding" (PDF) method seems to be a very logical 'best of both worlds' approach to feeding an infant that also has the benefit of getting the family on a schedule that allows plenty of sleep for all. You know Mr. Poe and I are all about our sleep.
The book is an easy read, full of tips, tricks, doable goals, and answers to questions and issues that frequently come up. As you can imagine, there is a LOT of material in this work; I would definitely recommend purchasing the book to keep as a reference (I found several copies at a local thrift store). A sample schedule outline and baby nourishment tracking charts are included.
I'm also looking forward to reading the second and third installments of the series, and I hope you are too!
For the next Reading Review, I present to you "Sign with Your Baby: How to Communicate with Infants Before They Can Speak" by Joseph Garcia:
This book is relatively short and easy to read. The text portion of the book discusses the immediate and potential future benefits of teaching babies to sign, as well as providing helpful information on timing and techniques of instructing babies. There's also a very large index of sign vocabulary.
I liked this book so much that I put it on our registry. While Mr. Poe and I are trying not to get too worked up about the future development benefits of teaching our Poe-tte to sign (we really just want to try to help her communicate her needs/wants earlier), it was very interesting to see all the ways in which this technique has helped children.
Mr. Garcia is obviously very passionate about the subject and has written this book in such a way that seems like teaching babies to sign is very doable, even for people unfamiliar with the language. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject, and I'll definitely be posting about our baby signing adventures during the next few years!
Since we painted virtually the entire house immediately after we bought it (and almost every room is a neutral color), we decided that we were tired of painting. Our new girl would have a tan room with a Noah's Ark theme because that would be easy, fun, and based on the Bible. To help decorate the walls, I asked my grandmother to paint some animals two-by-two for the room, and here's what she came up with:
camels, elephants, lions, zebras, giraffes, and doves (they're out of the picture). How fun! And they look so real! The room is slowly coming together...yesterday I even put on the lovely Noah's Ark sheets that the Barclays gave us.
This Foto Friday is not for the faint of heart. This is Layla's mess that I had to deal with right after breakfast:
This is by far the worst dog mess I've ever had to clean up, but today I was thinking that all these messes are just prepping us for having children. So, although I never imagined I'd say it, thanks for the messes, Layla and Sasch.
I've been holding this review back for a little while until the big reveal that we're pregnant, but now that you know, I can share "What to Eat When You're Expecting" by Eisenberg, Murkoff, and Hathaway:
Although it's been recently replaced by "What to Expect: Eating Well When You're Expecting," I couldn't turn down purchasing it when it showed up at my local thrift store, and after reading it, I was glad to own a copy.
This book includes information on what you should eat, what you shouldn't eat, as well as what eating/not eating these certain things will do for the health of your baby. There's even a section included for suggested diet and caloric variations while nursing AND 100 recipes that help you put the book's teachings into practice.
You may be asking, do I follow the best odds diet proposed in the book to the T...and I would have to answer no. But I do feel a lot more comfortable about making my food choices, knowing more about amounts of nutrients I should be eating, portion sizes, and such.
The only thing I really didn't like about the book was the introduction of the first chapter, which basically discounts any input God has on what issues a baby may or may not be born with, instead suggesting that eating well will guarantee you a healthy baby. Ironically, however, even the name of the diet ("Best odds") suggests that even the authors believe that statistically, even if you do everything right, you can't totally control the health of your baby.
All things considered, I would recommend this book to any woman expecting.
