Friday, January 29, 2010

Things for you to do

post-it notes with pencilIsn't this sweet? I'm going to write you out a little reminder list.

What's sweeter is you don't have to do any of the items on here; they're more like an invitation.

Why am I writing a reminder list and not a Real Post, you ask? Because it is once again excise tax time, my friends. I have only a couple days left to navigate the horror that is the Washington state revenue code, that same code that got me audited the last time I attempted.

But let's think happy thoughts, shall we?

  1. Send in your submission for the February Carnival of Natural Parenting. This month, we're asking you to fill out this short web form as well as email your blog post to mail {at} HoboMama.com and CodeNameMama {at} gmail.com. Submissions are due Feb. 2, and we want to hear about your experiences, good or bad or in between, with a co-parent.
  2. Enter to win an inflatable potty seat from On-the-Go Inflatables. The giveaway ends Feb. 11. There are some amusing (to me) captures of Mikko over yonder, so enjoy. If you have any ideas for improving the potty seat, I'll be passing those along to Michael, the inventor behind the seat, so continue to leave those in the comments on the giveaway post or the Hobo Mama post.
  3. If you like entering carnivals, the fourth healthy birth carnival is accepting submissions over at Science & Sensibility until Feb. 1.
  4. Loving this post at PhD in Parenting: Covering up is a feminist issue. Why is this on a to-do list? I don't know, to remind you to read it, I guess. It has lots of pictures, so it's an easy task. Just as a side note (I'm good at side notes), I got the giggles the other day thinking about how so many people misspell "discreet" as "discrete." For non-word-nerds, the first means "modest," and the second means "separate." I was at REI, and the box (the actual, printed-by-a-company box) for a baby-carrier product (I'm reminding you here they paid money to have this printed) mentioned that it allowed for "discrete nursing." And I started down the giggle loop as I decided the manufacturers must mean you can't tandem nurse in it. If that's funny to no one else, I'll understand.
  5. Remember Haiti. If you haven't donated and can, a couple good organizations I like are the Red Cross and World Vision. They're both on the Emergency Nutrition Network supporters list pointed out to me by Breastfeeding 1-2-3, which means they support breastfeeding in emergencies. Formula feeding in places where clean, drinkable water is in short supply, as after a natural disaster, can lead to higher infant mortality. So, as Blacktating points out, don't send formula. There is some confusion about whether or not donations of expressed breastmilk are welcome in Haiti, but milk banks will still accept appropriate donations and can pass them on where needed, whether in Haiti or elsewhere.
  6. I can't donate breastmilk, because I breastfeed a toddler and not an infant. That's because breastfeeding is super cool since breastmilk changes in composition as babies age (that's my co-host's post at API, by the way). Because breastmilk donations are most needed for young infants, nursing mamas of toddlers need not apply. And how did this wind up on a reminder list? No real reason. I just wanted to thank you all for your outpouring of supportive responses to my post on whether I should continue to breastfeed my toddler in public. I'll make this a reminder for you thusly (I read the word "thusly" yesterday, and it's been stuck in my head ever since as irresistibly pretentious): Take your right hand and place it on your left shoulder. Now take your left hand and place it on your right shoulder. Now squeeze. There, you've given yourself a hug from me.
  7. Speaking of breastfeeding toddlers and all the variation therein, check out Cave Mother's guest post if you haven't already: "It's not about the milk." Don't get discouraged if people pooh-pooh (another irresistible term) toddler nursing by saying they can get their nutrition from "real food" now. It's not about calories; it's about connection.
  8. Speaking again of breastfeeding toddlers, join the discussion of terms in the comments here [ETA: fixed link!] on whether it should be called full-term breastfeeding, child-led breastfeeding, biologically determined breastfeeding, post-infancy breastfeeding, or something else entirely. Methinks (again with the goofy terms! the pretentiousness is nearing unbearable today!) there will be a blog post in there in the future.
All right, I'm remindered out. Let me know if I'm forgetting anything...

Off to business taxes.

Photo courtesy Zsuzsanna Kilian on stock.xchng

6 comments:

Dionna @ Code Name: Mama said...

I like to do lists like that! My current to do list starts off with "finish the flippin' felt mail that you started 2 months ago!" The felt mail is currently strewn about my dining room table. Think I can finish it before dinner?

~Dionna @ Code Name: Mama
http://codenamemama.com

Lauren Wayne said...

I have faith in you! Go, go, go! :)

And I want to see it when it's done.

Dr Sarah said...

Oh, I'd love to read your blog post on terminology for breastfeeding past a year! I'm thinking of writing one myself. But I think you might have put the wrong link there - the discussion was on the post you submitted to the carnival, but you've linked back to the one about breastfeeding toddlers in public (unless there was a discussion in those comments that I missed).

Oh, I knew there was something else I wanted to say: Have you double-checked with the milk banks about what milk they'll take? When I looked into donating the milk bank website said they couldn't take milk from mothers who started donating after their babies were six months old but, if a mother was already donating, they'd continue taking her milk after her baby passed that age. My baby was over six months at the time and I had a lot of spare milk as she wasn't drinking the stuff I pumped at work, so I got in touch anyway and they told me they could take it in spite of what the website said. So, worth checking directly with them if you haven't already done so! (By the way, I asked the woman in charge about this and she said that they couldn't give post-six-month breastmilk to a newborn as the entire diet, but they could use it for babies who only needed small quantities of milk. So I've probably fed dozens of babies with my milk. Is that cool or what?)

Darcel said...

I'm going back and forth "do I write a post for the birth carnival, or not"? I have one day to get it done!

Gonna go check out the other links you posted.

Melodie said...

Thanks for this. I had almost forgotten about the NP carnival. I guess because I just realized it was February today! These things sure do creep on on me sometimes!

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