Ashley Barchas

We are getting to the time to start feeding solid food i think. Ashley is very interested in food when we eat, and she has a hard time keeping milk down anyway. So we are thinking that we are probably gonna start solid very soon. As a result, the high chair now comes into view of money drain. So, hell, why not just go for broke. We are looking at getting the Svan Wooden High Chair. It’s Scandinavian so that will not only make my mom happy, but also means it will probably work great, and not have any extra crap on it that will collect food grime.
Continue reading →

In case you have bookmarked this site with an iPhone and want to add a an icon to your homescreen, there is now a custom icon that I created. Its fantabulous… i would post the icon, but i cant figure out how to show it with the glassy overlay the phone adds.

She’s crazy. Babies aren’t supposed to like it. I didn’t like it when I tasted it. It has the taste of bitter mint, which though being tolerable, is not something I would look forward to taking. Ashley however now loves it… She thinks it’s a treat or something. When I bring the syringe close to her, she starts trying to grab it frantically, and pull it towards her wide open mouth. We can’t even get her excited about the bottle like that. She is acting like a drug addict scrambling for the next fix. Kinda funny, and very lucky on our part, but annoying because of the lack of bottle interest, and actually even bottle avoidance. I doubt she has made the connection that the zantac makes her feel better, since after all, she is still trying to figure out why she can’t remove her feet.

Ok, so I review stuff, or at least am trying to. So diapers have come up as an item to review. I gotta say, it is turning out to be kind of tough to review. I mean after all, they are diapers. Not exactly stimulating subject matter as compared to toys and gadgets. Funny, I didn’t really think anything of it until I started to do it. Either it does its job or doesn’t. So trying to find positive comments about a diaper is turning out to be an exercise in marketing goldmining.

why?!?!?! Why you no sleep through the night anymore? It was going so well until a few days ago. Now Ashley wakes ip at 1:30am every night and then is waking up constantly after that until morning. Ugh! This might be the end of breast feeding since it seems like the root cause may be that Ashley is not getting enough from the boob feedings. That seems to be the big problem with breast feeding in general, since you don’t know how much the baby actually gets. We have started rice cereal, once a day, and have added it to her last feeding of the night. It’s the only thing really that has changed, but should be adding more calories so she should sleep longer. I really think its the breast feeding is failing to provide enough, so she is short of nutrition at the end of the day. Also the fact that she really doesn’t seem to be gaining weight at the appropriate rate seems to support my theory.

Ashley rolled over for the first time yesterday on her own. From her stomach to her back, which now means no more tummy time probably since she hates it so much due to acid reflux. She will just roll over now if she wants. I will post the video in a few days. Next one is back to belly which I think is a way off.

Yesterday was the first time going on a long trip with Ashley inculding a flight. It went better than I expected. No crying really, except for some begining fussiness whining a few times. We even got some time for entertainment! Thankfully didn’t have to change Ashley in flight, but almost did. She pooped right as we began our decent. So mom was breastfeeding a poopy baby as we landed. But really, it was uneventful, thank god.

Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing found this ‘supposed’ baby bath on sale at John Lewis on London’s Oxford Street. It’s apparently a bucket which the instructions refer to as “womb-shaped” that you are supposed to wash your baby in. The unfortunate reality of this contraption is that it brings on a whole bunch of horrible, bad parent thoughts, like, Baby blender, Baby soup maker, Baby crock pot, and a general water torture device. In some respects this does actually look like a decent idea, sort of. But the “ways to kill my baby” imagery is a bit too much for me. Also I would think it gets harder to wash your baby as you move down the body?

I think an AWESOME addon/mod for this would be a whirlpool feature, so you can actually look like you are blending your baby. Add some red food coloring, or green if you want to pretend you have an alien child.

via Boing Boing
photo poached from

Are you an absentee parent? Do you want to fake your infant into a false sense of you actually being around? This product is for you then. It saves you from having to chop off your own hands by simulating your hands via big giant stuffed pillow hands that can hod your baby for you. Although these things probably work well, like any pillow would, there is something creepy about having a disembodied hand holding my baby. Aside from the fact that you are not supposed to leave an infant unattended with a smother device, LIKE A PILLOW… If your gonna leave your child alone, commit to it! Don’t do it half way by lying to them. You will do it enough when they are older…
via pregnancy store

BrainDonkey is begging for links, and is giving away a Zune30 to a lucky person who links to the site, and fills out a form. Go and see if you can contribute, and you might Win a Zune30.