Sensory Processing Disorder

My oldest grandson, O, has been diagnosed with Sensory Processing  Disorder. I had never even heard of it.  If caught young, they can deal with it.  Basically, he doesn’t sense things the way we do.  I have put a link on the left if you are interested.  It explains a lot of his little quirks and his behavior.  For instance, he isn’t being stubborn when he doesn’t respond to your efforts at trying to get his attention.  He is being bombarded with too much “noise” and can’t distinguish your voice from the rest of it.  By getting louder and louder we were actually making it worse.  By talking quieter he “hears” us.

It’s really a strange disorder, but it can be dealt with and the child will grow up to be just like everyone else.

Aside from that, I have been searching for some material to make D’s Baptism outfit.  I didn’t realize how hard it was to find cotton sateen in white.  But I did find it yesterday and feel quite relieved.

I have planned to hang out with E and his mom at their place tomorrow.  It may not happen though as we are supposed to get snow.  We’ll see.  The last snow prediction was a bust.

Busy Busy

I wanted to buy my latest grandson the chef outfit from my store, but though he’s only 3 months, he’s already outgrown 6 month size clothes.  And the  baby clothes in my store only come in 0 – 6 month sizes.  I wish I could get the clothes up to size 1, but they only come in the one size.  His big brother would probably have been jealous as he loves to pretend to cook. 

I’ve really neglected my blog lately.  I spent 3 days in a row last week babysitting each grandson, 1 at a time.  So I spent the weekend catching up on the housework.  Then the beginning of this week my husband had cataract surgery.  I’m caught up now and can get back to work.

The newsman said it was going to snow the end of this week.  We’ll see.

It isn’t supposed to stick, so shouldn’t cause too much trouble.  As for me, I like snow.

I made a pillow case for O with pirates all over it.  He loves pirates.  When he was about 2 ½ I bought the old Fisher Price pirate ship on Ebay.  It’s been up in the closet ever since.  I brought it down last week when I was babysitting him.  Wow, was he excited.  That kept him busy for quite awhile.  I think I should check out Ebay again to see what other retro toys I can find.

Now, if I could only find fabric with cars and trucks all over it for a pillow case for E.  And fabric with rocket ships and robots for D’s pillow case.

The Fabulous Onesie

While changing little D today I got to thinking about how great onesies are.

So I decided to see how they got started.  It was invented by Walter Artzt.  He has been describe as a Renaissance man and had quite a sense of humor.

When I investigated the onesie, I learned about other inventions by Mr. Artzt that were responsible for a lot of the baby clothing styles we have today.

In 1963 he invented a method of manufacturing hooded garments.  Some of the cutest baby apparel today are the ones with hoods. 

In 1967 he invented an “infant’s garment of the wrap-around type”.  This wrap around type must be something different than the undershirts my sister put on her babies starting in 1960.  The front sections overlapped each other and were secured with ties.

Mr. Artzt also invented, what I call, the sleeper.  The one piece apparel with feet was patented in 1960.  No more lost booties or socks.

I’d hate to see our new moms of today having to dress their babies as my mother did.  I don’t know much about what my sister wore in 1935, but I have come across a few items that my brother and I wore.  My brother was born in 1948 and I was born in 1950.   I don’t know how my mom kept our little tummies covered when our shirts rode up as we squirmed about.  Or  how she kept our feet warm at night.  Booties and socks never seem to stay on.  Plus everything had to be ironed.  Who has time for that now days?

Moms are lucky today.  They have one less thing to worry about with the implementation of Mr. Artzt’s inventions and the new easy care cotton fabrics free them from the time consuming job of ironing.

Well that’s all I have to say right now.

Grandsons

I guess it would be easier if I gave my grandson's initials instead of how old they are each time I write about them.  So here goes.  One daughter has O who is 3 1/2 (actually 3 3/4) and D who is 2 months old.  And the other daughter has E who just turned 3 and will be having #4 grandchild in September.   I will be babysitting E today while his mom goes in for her check up.  And tomorrow I'll be babysitting D while his mom takes O to a birthday party.  It will be nice for her to have some activity with just O.  And I will get to feed D for the first time.
While decluttering I came across decorations I had saved from my baby shower thirty years ago.  We didn't know back then the gender of the coming little bundle.  Sonograms were new back then and  not used unless a problem was suspected.  I did have one, since I was so big they suspected twins, but the baby wasn't positioned right to tell the gender.  So most showers were just general baby decorations in pastels.  I was thinking back on that shower and what we played then.  I know we played  the old standard clothespin game.  That's where you clip a clothespin to you skirt or pants hem.  You are not to cross your legs.  When someone does cross their legs, the first one to point it out gets that clothespin.  At the end of the shower, the person with the most clothespins wins.  I never even get close to winning because I usually cross my legs right off and then don't pay attention to who else crosses their legs.  But it's fun.
E is on his way over, so I best stop for now.

Play day

I got a phone call from my youngest daughter yesterday morning.  She said my 3 ½ year old grandson wanted to know if grandma could come over and play.  Well, of course I could.  It would be much more fun than working on decluttering this house.  A very daunting job.

We played a couple of hours with his dinosaurs and his Egyption pyramid.  I was afraid he would cry when I left, but it was okay.  Hugs and kisses and back to playing.

Baby brother slept and nursed.  He is sooo chubby.  He looks like a sausage stuffed in his jammies.  He’s only 2 months old and is already outgrowing his 6 month clothes.

So today it’s back to decluttering.

Baby shower games

I’m trying to think of what games to play at the shower.  The shower for my first grandson was hosted by his father’s sister.  She introduced a couple of games I hadn’t seen before.  One was to pass a ball of string around and each guest cut off a length that they thought would be the measurement of the mom-to-be’s tummy.  We had some wildly different lengths and we cracked up at the really short ones and really long ones.  The other new game was to take diapers and put a melted or crushed snack size candy bar in each one.  The guests had to determine each candy bar with no tasting allowed.  I can’t even imagine anyone wanting to taste them.  They were pretty realistic looking.  I thought that was so much fun that I introduced it at the next grandson’s shower.  My sister lives out of state, but was able to make it to that shower.  When I explained the game and handed her a diaper she started laughing and couldn’t stop.  And if you knew her laugh……

There is an old standard that was played back in the day that I hated.  The  idea of the game was fun and everyone else always liked it.  First I’ll tell you  what put me off of the game, then I’ll tell you the game.  My sister’s first son loved worms.  He would put them next to him on the swing and was always carrying them around.  He also put them in his pocket.  My sister would find them when she checked his pockets before washing them.  To this day I don’t check pockets.  If you leave it in your pocket, it gets washed.  So you can see, I don’t like to put my hands in places that I can’t see in.  The game was to put baby related items in a box and seal it shut.  Then cut a fist size hole in the side.  Everyone put their hand in for a set amount of time and then wrote down as many items as they knew.  Of course, I always played, but it did send shivers down my spine.

A fourth grandchild on the way

Great News.  I just found out I’m going to be a Grandma for the fourth time.  We have three boys already, so everyone is kind of leaning towards a girl. 

I’m already thinking about the baby shower.  It seems today that a lot of the baby showers are for couples.  I’m not sure if the new mom will want a traditional, all ladies shower, or an updated couples shower.  Either way, we will have fun.

I think I will wait to see what the gender is before I decide on a theme.  I make a quilt for each grandchild.  The theme of the quilt isn’t necessarily the theme of the shower, but it could be.  I had a different theme for each grandson’s shower.  The first was elephants, then trains, and the last one was robots.  Just don’t get your heart set on a theme, have some alternatives in mind.  I really had a hard time with the elephants.  All of the elephant decorations I found were for “pink elephants”.  You know the kind that look all tipsy.  I was just about to give up and go with one of my alternate ideas of either sailboats or robots when I finally found some cute, sober elephant decorations.  If this next one is a girl I could go with dolls, ballet, dollhouses, fairies, or unicorns.  Those should be easy to find. Of course, just having a color theme of pink or blue is an easy way to go.

Speaking of ease, don’t stress over every little aspect of the shower.  I know there are hundreds of options out there, but you should not agonize over every decision.  No one, especially the mom-to-be, wants to cause you any stress over the planning.  Just remember, a baby shower is for fun and it should be fun to plan it.