Austlen Entourage Stroller Review

23rd Jun 2017

              The Austlen Entourage…where do I even begin?   The Back Story: A little over three years ago, while pregnant with my first child, I was looking into the perfect stroller for a growing family. I had been working in the baby industry for several years prior and had ample exposure to all types of strollers and was purely unimpressed. Price point was never an issue, but I did not want to overpay for a name brand that lacked functionality and longevity. I’m the kind of person who wants one really nice purse to last me years, not a different one for each season…same with strollers and other baby products. The best stroller I could find at the time was the Britax b-ready with the second seat and car seat adapter coupled with the Britax b-safe car seat. This set-up came to about $800 all-in-all.  My b-ready has been […]

Two Kids: An Update

14th Mar 2016

An 18 month old, a 6 week old, a husband, and two dogs under one roof… Sounds like the beginning of a joke! Well, it is my new reality, and one with which I am quite pleased. Sure there are some tantrums, many stinky diapers, vomiting fits, face reddening screams, and days that just don’t seem to go right no matter what I do. However, the majority of the time there are smiles, laughs, giggles, games, coos, new words, wonder, love, gratefulness, and so much more! SLEEPING: As of last week, we have a great routine down pat with Amelia (6 weeks) and Lili (18 months). Lili goes down like clockwork around 6pm (with the recent time change it bumped up from 5pm) and then Amelia cluster feeds, to go down in the pack n’ play in our room at 7pm. Lili sleeps until 730/800am and has been sleeping 12-14 […]

Quick Referenced Sleep Info

18th Jan 2016

    While experiencing third trimester insomnia, I did a review of the literature on infant sleep and found a few very easy to read, reputable articles that can help back up what I tell clients and friends about infant sleep. They are very simple concepts, and easy to implement. I like to be able to support everything I suggest, and just for personal education. I invite you to read the below articles and the related and references articles that accompany them. It’s great to be informed!         Topic: Just how important is sleep to infants? Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4321279/ Summary: Numerous studies have demonstrated the importance of sleep following learning something new in order to retain it for a long period of time. This is true across the board in any age group, yet often overlooked in infancy. Just because they cannot speak full sentences yet, does not mean […]

Why is Her Bed on the Floor?

15th Sep 2015

Do I think my daughter is an animal? Nope. Why is her bed on the floor? Short version: Maria Montessori was right. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I was homeschooled for a good bit of my childhood, and loved it. Before homeschooling “age”, my parents implemented Montessori methods such as big beds on the floor and more freedom and independent thinking at and earlier age. This mode of learning bode quite well for me and my siblings in terms of greater independence and love of learning later in life. My personal experience, combined with extensive research on numerous educational techniques formed my decision to implement Montessori methods. Since Lili is only 11 months old, (12 months by the time I post this!) there is not a lot of structure to her learning environment. From the time she was able to roll around, I let her explore the entire […]

The Best Age

25th Jun 2015

I’m going to be frank here, and this is not to say that infants are not amazing creatures all the time but…the “best time” in the life of an infant has to be 6-12 months…the most boring time is 2-5 months. When a baby is first born they are helpless and quite easy to take care of…other than the lack of sleep you will experience thus rendering you useless more often than not! For the most part though it goes: eat, diaper change, sleep, repeat. There is very little awake time for anything else. ‘lk90o-o ‘///////////////////0o7y‘.//.89 [Lili (at the fun age) wanted to take a stab at typing] The 2 – 5 month period is rather boring. They are still sleeping quite a lot, but have a bit more awake time…during which they can play on their back in n activity gym or scream during tummy time. You need to […]

A Day (and night) in the Life of a 2 Month Old

13th Nov 2014

I have been very torn about writing too prematurely thinking I may jinx Lili’s schedule, but she has been solid for a couple weeks now. I want to preface this by stating I did not really do any formal sleep training, as it was simply not needed. I did not do cry it out (she is too young anyway) or any other special techniques. Not to say Lili came out as an amazing sleeper, but I just gently instilled very good habits very early on and it is paying off. Please note, she will sleep about 2-3 hours for her main nap but does wake in between sleep cycles (about 45 mins into the nap) and fuss a low dull whine for about 2-3 minutes and then zonk back out without intervention. This is a normal waking pattern for infants…adults wake between cycles as well but often do not ever […]