Fun....
 

Thanks all for your sympathy. Not sure what I can do. My invoice simply has one number at the bottom: the total for a sofa, armchair and ottoman at the bottom of the page, so if I say the pricing included the sofa SLEEPER (it totally did - even Mom was there) he can place goosey goosey with the numbers of various items to "show" he was only charging me for the non-sleeper sofa. For now, I'm thinking I could have my Mom (who is irate as she was with me when we were sold the sofa) hound him on the phone from Florida preaching to him about morals and stuff. That would be funny. The guy is really busy and hates answering the phone. Maybe I could simply put out the word for everyone to call him once to say he is unfair. How he'd hate his phone ringing so much.

Vegas
 

Never taken a kid to Vegas. Took a dog, who slept in the car, but even Vegas probably isn't laissez faire enough for that to work, and the counselling in a few years would be expensive. I would stick to the cheap slots and the tiger show, and avoid Video Poker, the shows with nekkid chicks, and TNG weddings. NTTAWWT. The Grand Canyon is spectacular if you stand up on the edge by the parking lot with all the other people who get out of their cars to look down at it, much more so if you take the time to find a way to get away from the asphalt. Given that the trials can be steep, this may be tough with a 4 y.o., but you're not going to be in Northern Arizona all that often, so give it a try.

Fun....
 

Did you pay with a credit or debit card? You may have more luck challenging the charge through the bank that issued your card than you'll have with this turkey.

Vegas
 

Don't do it. We were there with kids a few years back when LV was pushing itself as a "for family" place. Our kids first learned about prostitution from the blanket of stripper/hooker ads that cover the strip sidewalks.

To do? Well every theme hotel has a ride/ theme attraction. That'll kill a few hours, but mostly Vegas is there for the gambling and the kids don't fit- we would walk around and occasionally see other families and the looks we shared were "You got fooled too, huh?"

MGM did have the best day care room our kids ever saw- but really Attiucs, unless you're there free for a few days, it might not be a good idea.

Vegas
 

Fucking litigators

Vegas
 

I was taken to Vegas as a kid. I think I was 6 or 7. It sucked. We stayed at Circus Circus and it still sucked. No matter how much (ostensible) kid-stuff there is, parents in Vegas will still want to go off and drink, gamble and take in a lewd show (in my parents' case, front row seats for Liberace) and generally don't want the kids wandering the hotels unattended, so either the kids are stuck in a room with pay per view and maybe a hotel sitter, or the parents end up doing boring kid stuff with the kids, in which case you might as well go to Chuck E Cheese.

This was back in the mid '70s, of course, when Vegas was still ... well, Vegas. I haven't been back in a while, so past performance does not ensure blah blah blah.

At least if you take them on a cruise you can actually abandon them to do their own thing secure in the knowledge that a pedophile kidnapper can't actually get them off the boat, and you can usually tag them with those nifty "house arrest" ankle bands that let you pinpoint your sprogs' location at all times. Parent's I've spoken to seem to LOOOVE kiddie cruises, and claim you can basically get on the boat, set them loose and pretend you don't have kids for a few days while you drink by the pool, secure in the knowledge that, somewhere out there, they are semi-supervised and have access to food and a bed but not alcohol, porn or your credit cards.

eta: We did do the grand canyon, as well. It was pretty cool, but would have been cooler had my parents let us take the mule ride down into the canyon. (I think their slogan, "we've never lost a mule yet," is no longer true, but at the time my parents took it to heart.) Still: it was cooler than Vegas. Even cooler was the final leg of that trip, however, which was to visit my mom's college friend in San Diego, which involved a trip to the zoo and to Tijuana. Tijuana was crowded, dirty, loud, smelly, and generally a BLAST.

Fun....
 

Don't cave! I like the cc idea Ty had.

No need to raise his defenses for him, in any case. Besides - I'd argue that he wrote the wrong thing down on purpose never intending to send the right sofa. Fraud, baby. Besides, if you send a letter, at the least you are costing him a fee to have his lawyer to look at it. Bwahahaha.

Vegas
 

Hey, I meant parenthood. If you can't stand the heat, stay out of LWK.

Vegas
 

Parenting is steep? "Steep" is not a word I think of as synonymous with "difficult."

Nice try. Well, not that nice. D for effort.

Vegas
 

I haven't done this yet, but once the Flintette and impending Flintessa are old enough to help me count cards, I'm buying them wigs, dresses and makeup and passing them off as midget relatives. Oh sorry, little people.

Wow, it's quiet around here.

The Lexling is definitely getting a brother - yay, hand-me-downs!

OK, so just to say something:

The Trepidation Kid has discovered the joys of blowing raspberries with a mouth full of mush. He comes somewhat late to this knowledge, but we've been trying to avoid encouraging excessive messiness. Unfortunately, now that he does it his father and I can't stop laughing. He is destroying my rugs. He is about to walk (he's taking his time, though: for 2 months he's cruised all over the place, pushed furniture around as makeshift walkers, and now he loves walking around while you hold his hands), and once he does he will be a mobile food-spitting machine and move on to destroy my curtains and beding as well. Oh, and everything inside any drawers he can find. Hurrah!

However, he has a new favorite toy: a green plastic plant hanger.

I also bought him a kilt! Yea! I just need to convince Trepidation Dad to wear his out at the same time, so no one will think he's a girl.

Question: at what point do you stop measuring a kid's height lying down and measure him standing up? He's still is a bit of a monster - we had brunch the other day next to a girl who was reportedly 2, and the Trepidation Kid looked like he could eat her for breakfast (if only he could figure out how the spoon goes in the mouth) - but I was trying to figure out how much of a monster. He weighs in at 25.5 pounds, but his standing height is 28 1/2, which is more than 40 percentiles away from his weight. He looks quite slim, so unless he's got a lead foot I'm pretty sure something's out of wack. (Besides, you try getting a not-quite-10-month-old to stand still with his feet together while mommy gets the tape measure.) Lying down he was 30 inches, which seemed to make more sense.

don't feed him outside his chair. strap him in and you can confine the damage. Get a plastic mat if necessary. Our girl likes to throw stuff. She also likes to say "I'm finished" by using a sweeping motion to clear off all the food from the high chair tray. Good times.

As for height, I think there's no point measuring standing up until they're walking and their posture is decent. The way I got a bead on our daughter's height was to measure her relative to our table. She goes about 2.5" above it, so I just added the height of the table. Came out about the same as teh doctor's office.

As for %-iles, ours is 30 points different (90h/60w). The spread was even bigger before that. Some kids are stocky/some are lanky. Such is life.

As I recall, they measure them lying down until at least age 2. We had shifts in Magnus's percentiles both at the switch from lying down to standing up, and at the switch (at the age 4 visit) from the toddler charts to the kid charts.

tm

He often eats more quickly and neatly if we let him run around the table and chase him with a spoon. Breeding bad habits, I know - he'll become one of those "eat on the run" kids with lousy table manners if we don't get some discipline. And we try, but he HATES being confined.

On that note, we recently got one of those baby-sling things. (I got sick of lugging the stroller around when we took him out, and he hates being latched into the thing.) He looooves it. And I can carry him a long time without killing my back, unlike the baby bjorn (I gave that up 4 months ago - he was outgrowing it anyway, but it was really bad on my back). I'd like to say I look like one of those cool, young, granola-crunchy-hippy moms, particularly given all the "wear your baby - it's natural!" literature that came with the thing, but I got the sling in basic black so I just look like a sort of urban mail carrier. However, Trepidation Dad now wants one, too - he was jealous of me running around wearing the Kid all weekend.

I have a Playtex Hip Hammock and really dig it, though I can't really use it now due to waistline expansion. I had a Bjorn - loved it, but yes, it killed my back after he got over about 15lb and I used it for more than about 30min. Would have been even better for a normal sized baby.

We have a Maya Wrap , which is awesome because it's adjustable and can be worn by both the SFC and me. We used it a lot starting at about 6 months, then occasionally well into toddlerhood when he was having a meltdown and just needed to be carried around to calm down (and, often, fall asleep). Now it's on loan to my sil, and she may end up having to get her own if she decides she'll still want to use it after my niece is about 15 mos. I'm looking forward to trying it with a newborn (we didn't have it when Magnus was that age).

tm

Cord Blood Banking
 

Anybody do it? If so, any advice or recs.?

I've found one independent website, and others for the private banks themselves. Our Doc is screamingly neutral about it. My read is that the practice is a little ahead of the technology; that they don't yet know alot of what to do with it once they have it banked. The science of it sounds oddly like freezing yourself before death so they can thaw you out if they find a cure for what's killing you; the payoff is very speculative. The sales pitch is an instant put-off as well ('insurance policy', 'isn't your child's life worth it?').

Two grand better spent in a college account? Or on a faster plane?

Thanks.

Cord Blood Banking
 

I think that if you have a family history of the type of conditions that could be potentially cured by banking, then it might be advisable. However, given the expense (initial costs plus annual storage fees), the strong possibility that the amount of blood retrieved would not be enough to help, the fact that they can't say how long the stuff is good frozen (though I have heard newly frozen will last longer due to better storage techniques), and the fact that we have no family history of anything that might be curable*, we decided pretty quickly it was a waste of money for us.

-TL

*Cord blood can't cure asthma, allergies, or "crazy" so our babies are destined to be itchy, wheezy, and nuts, with or without banking.

Vegas
 

Grand Canyon is defintely worth the trip. Stay on teh rim if you can. Getting off the asphalt probably too much to ask w a 4 YO.

I went to Vegas about 2 years ago and my kid had a blast at the MGM kid's club while my SO and I went out. There was plenty for him to do.

Nevertheless, in the past 2 years kid-friendly stuff has been noticeably scaled down.

Cord Blood Banking
 

Too late for me, as I assume Viet Mom's Biomom chucked her cord already. But I have to admit to thinking of these types of things, to the point of a quick google search (probably after a harrowing day of some toddler-near death-experience) whether human cloning is or isn't available. I admit that if it were possible and pretty guaranteed, I'd strongly think about cloning Viet Babe with her DNA if she (oh how awful to think) died at a young age, even though I know it sounds awful. If I carried her to term myself, I'd have a lot of explaining to do as I guess she wouldn't be adopted anymore. But....I quickly found that the cloning area is rife with religious whackos and dubious claims of some who say they've already cloned people. And also some press reports of a couple (a Senator and his wife I think) who got taken in by the cloning people after they lost their toddler son.

So....if it was safe and possible and you (God Forbid) lost your child at a young age, and all you had to do was provide some hair and other DNA stuff and it could be substituted into an ovum and implanted, would you do it? Would you produce the same child you lost? Heavy thoughts for the weekend!

(And yes I saw that movie with Deniro).

Wacko Jacko Cloning
 

Hell no. I'd consider creating a mini-me, but I wouldn't replicate one of my kids b/c that just seems wrong. Making a mini-me seems entirely appropriate because it is clearly the act of a wacko.

Cord Blood Banking
 

No. What a fucked up concept.

You owe it to your child to grieve for them. You can't substitute another child that's almost exactly like the first(!). That's taking the easy way out. Mourn your child. Remember who they were. Keep a space in your heart for that child always. Trying to fill that spot with a ready-made replacement strikes me as selfish and stupid.

And the fact is, that child is gone. You're not doing the dead child any favors by cloning them. It's not like you're bringing them back. You're not even giving them a chance at life. You're bringing a whole new child into the world, identical DNA or not. The new child with have different experiences, thoughts and connections to people. So, you might as well just have another child.

Thinking about your children as fungible loving units, that should be replaced with a new one if lost, seems sick to me. Interesting topic, but sick.

TM

Cord Blood Banking
 

Why would you want a living, breathing reminder of that sadness? Inevitably it would not be identical, but just too reminiscent. I'd want to move on as much as possible.

Cord Blood Banking
 

Interesting. I don't know if parents who think about cloning view the child as a fungible unit. I think it's more a desparate ray of hope in a heartbreaking time. For me, I did a quick search on Google, saw that the whole thing was being run by these religious crazies called Raelians (scientists and doctors!) who think the world was made by aliens or something. http://www.clonaid.com/ Between that, and realizing some weird snags (like with the first child being adopted) I was able to say "that's fucked up" in a few minutes. But, I've got a live child and I can see grieving parents going for it if we are able to clone humans. Doctors are saying parents of children who die young are asking about cloning in the droves! Maybe it's that we are increasingly refusing to accept fate. Either way, I would bet that the future brings what these Clonaid groups call "later born twins."

A quick note on ADD kids
 

If you've been working through attention problems with a kid - can't do homework for more than ten minutes, wild mood swings out of frustration, bad grades because he can't focus on a test or a paper, and all the other indicators - and you've resisted drugging your kid because . . . well . . . because it's DRUGGING YOUR KID -

move past that thought and seriously consider it. The new ones don't zombie them out.

Night and day. Happy teachers. Happy friends. Even happier kid.

("Geez, dad, why didn't you get me these a long time ago?")

A quick note on ADD kids
 

Of course, this is exactly what Less asked his parents when they gave him his first 'ludes, and now he works for carriers, so YMMV about the zombification issue.

A quick note on ADD kids
 

Out of curiousity, which drugs are the state of the art these days?

A quick note on ADD kids
 

Generally, the nonstimulants. Specifically the point of my post, Straterra.

Cord Blood Banking
 

That's about right - but I can totally see why people would be interested in it out of desperation, especially if the child was very young (it seems slightly less screwed up that way) or if a parent of the dead child were no longer available or now unable to have kids.

I know how many kids I(we) want and if we lose one (god that's a horrible thought) I still want X many kids, so having another (the old fashioned way) would not replace the first, so much as fill a void in the family.

Cord Blood Banking
 

I'm just going to be more preemptive and have all my kids cloned while they are still alive, and freeze most of them for later.

Doula question
 

Doula: worth it or not?

The prices I'm getting quoted are like $1000-1200. Seems a steep price to pay for assistance from someone who can't actually give me drugs or anything, but I've never done this before (childbirth, not posting) and the studies make hiring a doula seem like a good idea (fewer interventions, etc.).

Given that this board is filled with snarky, left-brained people like me, I'm hoping for more useful answers than are to be found on the standard pregnancy chat boards.

Thanks in advance.

Doula question
 

A sibling who is a midwife came to one of our births, and did this back rub stuff that my wife still claims was better than any drugs she has had during childbirth.

If the doula knows good backrub techniques, cost should not be an issue. I would ask all of them for backrubs in the interview.

Cord Blood Banking
 

In my hometown there was this strange family- the kids were older than me so I cannot vouch for this story- I just heard it:

The couple has several kids- let's say 3 named Bill, Will and Jill. Terrible fire kills all 3. The couple has 3 more kids and named them Bill, Will and Jill. As a kid we thought it pretty creepy, and I don't feel any better about it now.

Cord Blood Banking
 

You might want to invest in one of those vacuum-packing machines. They get all freezer-burned and aren't nearly as tender if you just use saran wrap or foil.

Cord Blood Banking
 

I have a friend who was conceived after her older sister died as a toddler. She was convinced that she existed only as a replacement for the beloved lost girl and wasn't valued in her own right. I'm sure this wasn't true, but she wasn't sure, and the extent to which this contributed to her hopeless neurosis and persistent depression can't be measured.

Doula question
 

My friend's wife had a doula and I have no idea what she did, but they both said that the doula was extremely helpful. fwiw.

oh. If you like I can find out what exactly she did that was helpful.

Doula question
 

The dads are supposed to learn how to do all of that stuff themselves in the classes, and it's supposed to be more meaningful, coming, you know, from the guy who got you into this mess in the first place. However, as we all learn, dads suck at the comforting thing during birth, being sort of distracted by the gore and the screaming. Having someone in who knows the stuff professionally is a great asset. The massage and other helpful techniques really do help the mom get through the birth, freeing dad up to do the important fainting and puking.

(Okay, sort of kidding, but yes, the doula is worthwhile. If nothing else, you get someone in there who knows the system, and who is talking to you and keeping you abreast of what's happening - something that doesn't always happen. Don't undervalue the comfort factor.)

Cord Blood Banking
 

The bible counsels us that, when considering these choices, many are culled, few are frozen.

Cord Blood Banking
 

BOTMillennium!