Chick Flicks, George Clooney, ....and Optimus Prime?

I live in a great neighborhood for being a new mom. I can walk into town, where there's a maternity center with new mom classes and breastfeeding supplies and clothing, and I can take an even longer walk to get to the local movie house where they have a "parent movie" every Monday afternoon. I'm subscribed to the email where I can vote on what the next week's movie will be, and I had a bit of a laugh when i saw the options for next week. To give some perspective, the last 5 weeks, the movies have been: Evening, Ocean's Thirteen (twice), and Waitress (twice).
Here's the latest selection:
Once, Rescue Dawn, Shrek the 3rd, Surf's Up, Transformers.
It's great that they give us a full selection of what they can offer, but I think it's probably unnecessary to include Transformers, no?
Well, having said that, I'm sure I'll be proven wrong and it will end up being this Monday's movie. If that happens, I'll post an update, and we'll all have a good laugh.

8/19 UPDATE:
"Once" beat out Shrek at 36% to 34%. Transformers did come in third at 15%.

More Plastic Paranoia

So, the plastic in baby bottles leaches chemicals, and the plastic in sippy cups is not suggested either. But I haven't seen many articles address the plastic ingestion that must happen with teething toys. Then I saw this post on GoodyBlog, which points out that silver rattles, which most of us think of as ornamental keepsakes, are terrific for teething because the silver is nice and cold, and the handle is small for easy gripping. When I was at my parents' this weekend, I asked my mom if she had any silver rattles from when I was little or from when she was little. She did indeed have the very rattle - a barbell-shaped little thing that has a musical clang to its rattling that my sister and I both used to grow in our teeth. The balls on the ends of the rattle have little dents from the workout we gave it.

I'm really excited about having my daughter teethe on the same rattle that I used. I will probably have to introduce some plastics at some point, but I may call the company to find out what kind of plastic it is before I let Belle stick anything in her mouth.

Don't dip your chips in that.

D, Belle and I went on a long-weekend's journey to visit our parents this past weekend. It was the first time for traveling with Belle out-of-state, and she did a great job. She slept a lot in the car, and when she wasn't sleeping, she was contentedly watching the world go by. Each set of parents had their friends over while we visited, and Belle was a charming hostess at both soirees. She smiled, she looked people in the eye, she even fell asleep in a few people's arms.
Unfortunately, I had some kind of stomach bug during the trip, which made an already tiring excursion even more draining. Worse, Belle seemed to pick it up from me yesterday, and in the evening she had what D called a "guacamole poop".
We are both doing much better today, and I have to get cracking on yet another batch of thank-you notes for all the lovely gifts we received. I have discovered that the only way to not feel like I'm always writing thank-you notes is to write them as soon as possible, so there's no time for them to prey on my mind.

Mixed Feelings

I'm torn between wishing this page had an RSS feed I could subscribe to,
and a sense of relief that it doesn't.
It's a list of all the non-toy children's products that are being recalled, including furniture and clothing. It's funny that the clothing people keep forgetting that drawstrings are always a strangulation hazard. I suppose it's sad that parents keep forgetting, too.
Caveat emptor, dumbasses, it's clothing with a built-in rope.

Anyway, the list can be kind of upsetting, especially if you have a Baby Bjorn Active or a Fisher-Price Rainforest Swing.

I'll call her Belle

The name "Baby" has an expiration date on it, so I'm going to call her Belle.

I still don't know what her different cries are, but I think the reason for that is partly because I so rarely hear her cry when she's hungry. I feed her every 3-4 hours during the day, and it's only about once a week that she realizes she's hungry before I feed her. When she wakes up hungry at night, I'm just not that with-it to notice the nature of her cry. After all, I know exactly what she wants.

In addition to not getting particularly hungry during the day, Belle has taken to getting a good chunk of sleep at night, falling asleep by 8:30 at the latest and waking at 2am at the earliest. This leaves me with a dilemma many new moms face: do I try to get a full 6+ hours of uninterrupted sleep by going to bed at 7:30pm, or do I enjoy a quiet evening and continue getting 4ish hours at a time? So far, it's been the latter, and I'm trying to be in bed by 10:15, which mostly translates to "before 11". I usually get another 2-3 hours after that feeding before the next.

The only frustration we have with Belle's latest schedule and otherwise-delightful personality is that she has to have a good cry before sleeping most of the time. When she gets tired in the afternoon, she gets so sad and cranky. And in the evening when we're getting her ready for bed, there's always crying. Sometimes her evening crankytime lasts only 15 minutes, but sometimes it can go for 90 before she tuckers herself out. It's so very sad when she cries, and I feel so sad to not be able to help her.
I think that's one of the most important lessons of parenthood - that sometimes, we just can't help our children, we can only be there to hold them and love them. I've seen my mother go through the same thing when I've had hard times, so I might as well just learn how to deal with it now.

Media Blackout

I'm initiating a total media blackout starting tonight and continuing until I finish reading the new Harry Potter. I'm not surfing the internet, listening to the radio, and I might not even answer my phone. Honestly, I don't even trust my Mom not to start a conversation with something awful like "So, were you sad when Hermione died?"

This media blackout will take a while, because D's reading the book first. We're taking turns, because SOMEbody has to watch the baby.

I think I'll even refrain from tv that broadcasts after midnight tonight. But it seems like Scrubs reruns are probably safe.

My Plastic Paranoia

For years now, friends and co-workers have rolled their eyes at my paranoia over plastic. Particularly, over heating things in plastic. I often bring a Lean Cuisine to work for my lunch, but I always bring china from home to use in the microwave: I refuse to microwave any plastic. Also, I won't boil plastic; that's dangerous too. Also-also, no nonstick pans above medium heat. OK, medium-high.

My plastic paranoia naturally extended to baby products once I became pregnant. There is a chemical called BPA which has been proven to leach out of some types of plastic and into whatever is contained in the plastic. It is absolutely shocking to me that so many BABY BOTTLES are made with this plastic.

The baby-industrial-complex doesn't really want word of this to get out, and I haven't seen any major media coverage about the dangers and ubiquity of BPA, but there are plenty of studies available online. I forget where I found this, but this pdf from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy is a good summary of what's going on with plastics.
Some of the baby blogs I read have done some research, particularly:
Baby Toolkit
Daddy Types
Z Recommends

I'm guessing that posting this won't make a difference to my readers, especially because I sound like the kind of crappy alarmist email forward your aunt keeps sending everyone, but to twist a phrase,
Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't putting dangerous chemicals in baby bottle plastics.