Henry’s World

A weird combination, but both phenomenons that have taken the family by storm.
During Henry’s pregnancy, my allergies had been bothering but were still bearable till I delivered, and they went haywire!

I was put on Flonase which greatly offers relief. What I found interesting was that the state of Virginia (Central and Southern) are prone to higher levels of allergens, so guess my dismay when I found out that Greensboro ranked number two for cities with high allergen levels, ugh.

So now not only do I deal with that stuffy feeling, Henry and the princess may have seasonal allergies as well so its off to the doctor later this week for a diagnosis.

WebMD has a wonderful article on seasonal allergies;

Survive Spring Allergies - You Can Do It!
Spot Your Hidden Allergy Triggers

I actively practice Feng Shui and Reiki, and this week have started yoga as a family sport, and the kids love it! Of course we can’t strictly abide by the rules, but feel it is a great way to spend family time while working our minds and bodies.

Author: Amy Faddem
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?id=4117&ca=Parenting
Author’s Email Address: author@inspiringthings.com

A number of scientific studies have shown the way a baby uses her senses in the early months of life is crucial to future development. A baby, whose senses are stimulated develop a sharper memory, inquisitiveness and a better concentration. Besides, babies who are stimulated attain developmental milestones earlier have superior muscle coordination, and a safer and sounder personality.

Here a few effective tips that you will find particularly useful to stimulate your newborn’s senses and development, right from the beginning.

1. Make your baby touch fabrics of different textures, e.g., smooth, rough, cushiony. This would help develop her sense of touch.

2. Hold up bright colored blocks or other colorful objects 10 to 12 inches away from your baby’s eyes. When she focuses, try moving it left and right, up and down and then in circles. Doing so will improve her sight.

3. Provide your baby high-contrast toys such as mobiles with black-and-white or primary color patterns, or hang them in the crib. These would help stimulate the parts of the brain controlling vision.

4. Play “Pat-a-Cake” while you hold your baby and gently move her hands.

5. Sing to your baby. Change the pitch of your voice from high to low. Doing so will help hold her attention. Babies generally respond well to mom’s singing and will often help her to settle.

6. Talk to your baby whenever you are with her; describe her all that you are doing to her: bathing, changing, feeding. “Are you enjoying your bath? Do you like your new soap? Here comes a new diaper for you.” This type of descriptive talking will not only liked by your baby but is also the base of communication between the two of you. The more you talk to your baby the more she is able to learn.

7. Encourage your baby to imitate you. Try sticking out your tongue. Most of the babies, when they are a couple of weeks old, imitate sticking out the tongue after you did so 2-3 times before them.

8. Get a crib mobile and hang it on your baby’s crib. When your baby is quiet and awake, she will gaze at it. This will help arouse her interest in the world outside the crib.

9. Get a wind chime and hang it where your baby can gaze at it, move and hear the pleasant music it plays. Doing so will stimulate her sense of seeing and hearing and she will learn to correlate a pleasant sight with a pleasant sound.

10. Shake a rattle before your baby. Shake it first on left side then on right. Allow your baby time to recognize that the rattle is producing the sound. This activity will also help your baby correlate sound with sight.

There are many important milestones that must be achieved in the first month. Infants experience a wealth of developmental and cognitive achievements in their first month of life. Stimulate your newborn’s sense is also part of this important milestones.

About The Author: Amy Fadden, author of “Newborn Guide, Nursing A Baby in Its First Month.” She said, bringing a baby into the world should be one of the most exciting and rewarding times of your life.
Visit her Website NewbornSecrets.com at
http://www.newbornsecrets.com.

There are three skills that are very important for our little ones to learn early in their lives.

1) Children need to be able to fall asleep on their own.
Infants and toddlers who are always rocked to sleep, or breastfed or bottle fed to sleep, learn to depend upon others for falling asleep and do not develop their own falling asleep mechanism. This can cause much distress for parents who go through the nightly nightmare of trying to get their infant or toddler to sleep. Instead of always picking up and rocking a crying little one, which only reinforces the child’s dependency on you putting him or her to sleep, try patting the child and then leaving for a few minutes. If you keep coming in, patting your child and reassuring him or her that you are here, eventually your child will stop depending upon you to rock, hold or feed him or her to sleep.

2) Children need to learn very young to play by themselves and amuse themselves.
It is not healthy for children to be constantly dependent upon others, or upon the TV, to amuse them. I work with many adults who never learned to “play by themselves.” These adults feel lost when they are alone, having no idea what to do with themselves. Instead of turning to creative or learning opportunities, they may participate in addictions such as eating, drinking, drugs, TV, work, spending, and so on. When children learn to play by themselves at a young age, they tend to be more self-sufficient and creative as adult.

3) Children need to learn how to self-nurture.
This means that they need to learn how to take some responsibility for their own feelings. Infants often self-soothe with their blanket, thumb, or pacifier. But as they grow older, they need to learn other ways of self-nurturing because they will not be taking their blanket or pacifier to school.

Even children as young as 2 1/2 years old can learn to attend to their own feelings. You can help your young children start to take responsibility for their feelings by giving them a doll or stuffed animal that represents their emotions. You can tell them that the doll or stuffed animal is the baby inside them that has a lot of different emotions. When they are feeling sad or angry, they can learn to talk to the baby inside and find out what that baby needs from them or from you. As they get older, they can learn to connect their thoughts with their feelings. They can learn that if they judge themselves by telling themselves that they are bad or stupid or ugly, they will feel very badly.

It is vitally important for all of us to connect our thoughts with our feelings. Most of us grew up believing that others caused all our good and painful feelings. If someone yelled at us or told us we were bad or stupid or ugly, we certainly felt badly, and if someone approved of us, we felt good. So we learned to believe that all our feelings are being caused by others. It is important for children to learn that their feelings are also affected by what they tell themselves and how they treat themselves. For example, if an older brother tells his younger brother that he is stupid, the younger child might start to tell himself he is stupid, without realizing that he is causing himself to feel very badly. By talking with his “baby”, he might realize he is treating himself in a way that is hurting him. He also might also be able to understand that his brother is not telling him the truth. The way he can learn to realize this is by learning to access his “Source of Love and Truth.”

Small children can easily learn to open to a powerful Source of Love and Truth. You can ask them to imagine a wonderful friend, a guardian angel, or a fairy godmother. It is very easy for most children to imagine a wonderful being who is here to love them and guide them. They can be encouraged to ask questions of this loving being, such as “Is it true that I am stupid?” They can learn to bring through true and loving statements to themselves when they open to learning with their spiritual Guidance.

These skills, learned early in life, will do much to foster personal responsibility in our children.

About The Author:

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including
“Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?” and “Healing Your Aloneness.”
She is the co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding healing process. Learn Inner Bonding now! Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or
email her at margaret@innerbonding.com.
Phone Sessions Available.

I’m a member of Linkedin and here are some of the responses me and some of my friends have received;
though none of these requests asked for money, referral to “their” business associates or a kidney!

How can that it be that when a person with 3 connections shares 2 with the requestor his reply:
“I do not see the connection”

Does a connection automatically mean the requestor is looking for a referral?
“This only works when we include people we know. It is worthless when we bring in people we don’t since we can’t vouch for the person when recommending them?”

Goes along with this one: “I don’t consider LinkedIn to be another means of cold-calling prospective clients.” How does a request to connect equal a cold-call?” I’m blank on that opinion, besides do you really think your phone number is classified information?

Think this is an introvert within an introvert (I’m sure he’s never been to a McDonalds for fear of connecting with total strangers): “As suggested, I only except accept connections from people I actually know. Having connections to total strangers defeats the entire purpose.”

But the all time favorite has to be:

“I do not know you”.
Sure, and since when has it been crime to get to know someone?

Hope this gave you a laugh

This is especially true for exclusively breast-feeding moms, who have just in the past 9-month approxiamtely gained 25 - 35 lbs. Now they still must eat 500 extra calories to produce that needed milk for the young ones, and by the time they are done with mother, wife, or partner duties, they are too tired to work-out.

Here are some tips that have worked great for me; the key word is commitement

* Get a copy of Eileen Behan R.D., Eat Well, Lose Weight While Breastfeeding, a great resource touching all aspects of a successful weight loss regimen and not sacrificing the well-being of your baby.

*Make TIME! Today’s world is full of things to do, so add this to your schedule and stick it to it. I’ve found that once you start straying it is hard to get that motivation running. The only time my house is quiet is between 11 pm and 6 am, so I alternate my workouts between mornings and nights. On days that I run, I take the baby out in the jogger.