Paul & Jenn's Adventures

Photo by: healingdream When it was time for me to go back to work, Micah was 4 months old and I wanted him to be safe and well cared for. After all, daycare is comforting since they are usually licensed, and many eyes are watching. But I didn't like the 4-1 baby to caretaker ratio that applies for all babies under 18 months old. Since I was going to work part-time, we decided that hiring a nanny was the best option for us. But how to find someone we trust? Having someone work in home can be a bit intimidating to say the least. Will she be honest and trustworthy? Will she treat my child like her own? Will she be experienced enough to make the right judgement calls? Fortunately, we had fantastic experiences with the nannies we've worked with. Here are the steps we took to identify and build relationships with our awesome nannies: Use a site like Sittercity or Care.com to browse nanny profiles. Sign up and contact nannies you are interested in, about 1 month before you ne...

Winter is upon us and some nights are dipping below freezing. One task on my mind is to improve the insulation of our house for better energy efficiency and comfort. Currently, I am focused on the garage. Although the garage is usually considered an unheated space and not insulated, this is not completely true in our case. We have a raised ranch house with the bottom floor being the 2 car garage, laundry room, and family room. The 3 bedrooms we have are above the garage, and the rest of the upper floor is the living room, bathroom, and kitchen. The floor of our master bedroom is often cold, and I suspect that the insulation between the floor and the garage below is not very good. Heat also leaks from the family room and laundry room into the garage through a thin wall. To make matter worse, the north side of the garage exterior wall is currently not insulated. It is just 2x4 wood studs with exterior sheathing and wood siding, on top of 9" concrete block foundation. The insulation ...

Ever wish there were training classes on how to be parents? How about take classes, get a degree, and then getting to know everything there is to know on how to be perfect a parent? If only that were true... While no class can possibly prepare you for every situation, having some basic framework and skills sure help! Our good friends recommended some fantastic parenting material that's a joy to go through. We will share them here with you! Keep in mind, we are still working through these so we will be coming back with updates often. Also, we would be interested to hear about your reactions to the material and any recommendations you'd like to share. So please leave comments! The Village Church Parenting Class - The series is divided up to 6 one hour sections, and taught by Jeff and Jennifer Wilkin of The Village Church in Texas. The class is based on the Christian faith, but you don't have to be Christian to appreciate the learning points. Applicable to children ages 9...

Micah's First Month Book During Micah's first month, we took lots of pictures of him, sleeping, yawning, on his tummy... you name it. Soon we had more pictures than we knew what to do with. Then came the idea of making a book using these pictures that's similar to a story book! We thought it would be fun for us to keep and to show it to him when he gets older; it turned out that it's a hit with the grandparents too! Click here to preview the book! We had a good experience with using Blurb for our wedding guest book (filled with our engagement pictures), we also made a book of pictures from our wedding day . Now I need to disclose upfront that we are an Blurb affiliate, and that we did receive a free book as part of a promotion. But honestly, even there wasn't a free book offer, we would have used Blurb to create our book anyway. Keep reading to find out how you can win a FREE Blurb book ($75 value)!

We are all for using cloth diapers, economically and sustainability wise, it just works out. But there are times when disposables come in real handy. For long trips and overnight, we use disposable because it's easy and absorbent. I know some folks use cloth exclusively, but I just didn't feel like lugging around dirty cloth diapers! Cloth works really well for us at home, but when we are out for 3-4 hours at a time, it can be hard to find a place to change the baby. Since disposables are more absorbent, baby is ok not being changed for a bit longer than if he had cloth. Now we've tried lots of brands of disposable diapers including Pampers, Huggies, Seventh Generation, the best one we found and settled on is Nature Babycare by Naty. Micah has never had diaper rash in these diapers and rarely has blow-outs. Since Micah reached 4 months old, we started not changing him in the middle of the night. He now lasts from 11pm to 7am in one diaper without any problems. Yay for sl...

Today Micah and I went on a spontaneous trip to visit a friend from church at St. Mary's hospital. We also stopped by the Childbirth Center there to say hi to the nurses and deliver a birth announcement card. I guess the announcement part was totally unnecessary since they were the first ones to find out, but I think they appreciate getting the card anyway. The nurses who helped us give birth were not there when we visited, but the other folks were delighted to see the now grown up (5 months!) Micah and will pass the card on. The visit led me to remember our birth experience and how lucky we were to have found such supportive hospital staff who were sensitive to our needs.  Everyday, there are thousands of babies and moms who are not treated with evidence based care in this country. (Check out the movie section of this blog for a trailer of The Business of Being Born.) One way to make your wishes known is by writing a birth plan such as the one below. It's not so much a ...

Debra is a fantastic physical therapist specializing in pregnancy and postpartum fitness in the Capital Region. I had the pleasure of taking her prenatal exercise class when I was pregnant with Micah. Besides learning great exercises and feeling relaxed after each class, I also made great connections with other women in the class. I started to get sciatica in one hip starting at about 20 weeks pregnant, and after one private session with Debra, the pain nearly disappeared instantly. I've been recommending her class to all my pregnant friends ever since. In this interview Debra shares a bit about her own motherhood experience and offers practical tips for all expecting and postpartum moms. Enjoy! How did you get interested in physical therapy and decide to pursue it as a career? Growing up I was a dancer, so I was always interested in exercise and how the body worked.  Originally, when I went to PT school, my goal was to work with professional dancers.  After graduation, ...