My friend KD is a genius!!!!!!!!!

So it was my friend, KD, who bucked current baby-raising wisdom and decided to put the bumpers back in the crib. She reasoned that her baby, TRex, is past the age where he might stop breathing, so the risk of SIDS is minimal. And poor TRex kept waking up in the middle of the night after he'd hit his head on the crib.

Since I too had been seeing red spots on Little M's forehead (ouch!) when I went in to get him in the middle of the night, I thought I might try putting back in the cute Winnie the Pooh bumpers that came with the bed set and see how we got on. Of course I was still planning on using the motion detector monitor JUST IN CASE Little M had issues.

I heard maybe 10 seconds of baby crying noises the ENTIRE night, the motion detector never went off, and Little M slept for 12 (Yes, that's TWELVE) hours!!!!!!!!!!!

So thanks to the brilliant KD, I am now a bumper convert! Well, after the baby is 4 months old and the risk of SIDS has passed, that is. I'm not a complete lunatic...

My Child Lost in the Great Skin Lotto

Poor Little M. He has me for a mom, with my blue eyes, and pale, freckled, never tans, only burns kind of skin. Then he has Big M for a dad, who is blue-eyed and 75% Irish, so no hope there.

So for the first almost 6 months we were having to try to put him in the sun for 30 minutes a day (without sunscreen!) to make sure he got enough Vitamin D since I was breastfeeding exclusively.

Now that he's eating solids (and getting his Vitamin D in the baby cereals) I am going to have to slather on the sunscreen and keep a hat and sunglasses (he's stuck with the blue eyes too, which are super sensitive to the light) on him for the rest of his natural life so he won't burn that precious baby skin!

At least the pool is indoors for swim class!

Seriously, though, skin cancer runs in my family, so I want to give Little M the best chance I can to get through childhood without any serious sunburns and if that means he wears enough sunscreen that I have to trowel it on, then so be it. I want him soft and pale as long as possible!