It sounds like the Shared List may be released tonight.

Good luck to all hoping to be matched!

(I’m working on the forum – the database was broken, and it’s HUGE, it’s taking a lot to repair it.)

UPDATE: I think the forum is working again. If it’s not – let me know.

I didn’t write posts and schedule them ahead of time for last week, as I’m a little gun-shy about that now, and I figured I’d be able to post from the hotel, since I took my laptop. Didn’t quite work out the way I planned, unfortunately.

My car went ten days without being started. It started this morning just fine, made it about a mile from the house, and died. I had to have it towed to the mechanic, and rent a car to come to work. It’s got well over 100,000 miles on it, and it’s the first trouble I’ve had, so I shouldn’t complain too much, I suppose.

And then the blog broke this morning, too – something else to fix. I love my server hosting company, they’re the best — and we’re back up.

According to the latest When post, the soonest we’d expect to see referrals would be day after tomorrow, with the most likely date of arrival being next Friday (the 27th) or the following Monday (May 2).

I used the original Hip Hammock with GlitterGirl – the one made by a person (don’t remember her name off the top of my head), before Playtex bought the pattern and name from her.

I loved it. GG loved it. RK grudgingly admitted he was wrong to make fun of me for buying it.

With her on my left hip, supported and held, I could hold my left arm around her and give her even more contact, leaving my right arm free to shop or whatever. Yes, I was off balance and it wasn’t great for my back, but I don’t think wearing her on my front would have hurt any less, it just would have been a more balanced hurt. And, possibly, by having my hip support part of her weight, it may have hurt less in the Hip Hammock. It was fine for an hour or two, but for all day outings, there is nothing out there that will keep your back from hurting after carting around a squirming baby all day.

Once we were home I could put her in it when we visited my work, and my mom’s work, and my husband’s work — and no one tried to take her from me. Well, a few tried, but soon realized she was firmly secured to me. Some asked to hold her anyway and I just told them it was a lot of trouble to get her out, and she was pretty happy where she was at the moment. No need to go into a long diatribe about attachment.

TwinkleToes hated the carrier. Not because of attachment, she loved being carried and held  – she just detested being in the carrier past the first day or two. I don’t know why, and didn’t try to figure it out — RK and I just handed her back and forth to each other as we carried her around without a carrier. We bought  a stroller in GZ and she was happy in it with her sister walking beside her holding her hand.

There appear to be two hip carriers out there now:

• Playtex Hip Hammock – can handle children up to 35 pounds.
• Scootababy – good for children up to 37 pounds.

I’ve heard lots of opinions of the “best” carrier, and much of it seems to be based on things like long-waisted vs short-waisted, men vs women, broad shoulders vs slim shoulders, etc. Whether a hip carrier or a chest carrier is the best for you, only you can say. Here are the front carriers:

• The Maya Wrap has a lot of people raving about it, and can handle a child up to 35 pounds.
• The ERGObaby Performance seems to be in a close tie with the Maya Wrap, and can hold up to 90 pounds, which basically just means you can use it until you don’t need to anymore, because I can’t imagine anyone is still carrying their child in one of these by the time they are ninety pounds.
• The Infantino is only good up to 22 pounds, is very popular, and quite inexpensive. There is also a vented version.
• The BABYBJÖRN Synergy and BABYBJÖRN Comfort also get high marks, and can handle a child up to 26 pounds.
• The Baby K’tan also seems to be popular, and can handle a child up to 35 pounds.
• The Moby Wrap seems to be a love it or hate it carrier, and can handle a child up to 35 pounds. I think it’s similar to the Maya Wrap, but less expensive.

A few safety tips for any baby carrier:

• Don’t cook while wearing your baby – the risk of splatter, or of accidentally rubbing their arm or leg up against a hot surface is just too great. And for older babies, the risk they will try to touch something with a foot or hand, not knowing it’s hot… just don’t do it.
• Be extra careful, especially at first, with your balance. Let someone hold your hand and help you step off the bus, or maneuver over rocks on a path, or whatever.
• Occasionally reach down and feel of the child’s legs and arms – especially if they are asleep in the carrier. If they get at an angle that blocks off circulation you’ll be able to feel their limbs are chillier than they should be, so you’ll know to re-adjust them. For children you’ve just adopted, they may not let you know there’s a problem even if they are awake. So just feel of the skin three or four times an hour – it takes less than five seconds and is a good excuse for more skin-to-skin contact.

Did you use a baby carrier? What were the good and bad points of it? Did it work for both you and your spouse, or did you find one of you preferred one carrier while another preferred a different one? We have friends who are that way – she uses a Maya wrap and he uses the Ergobaby.

Other Baby Gear Posts:

• Baby Gear: Favorites and Items not used
• Baby Gear: High Chairs and Boosters
• Baby Gear: Baby Carriers
  

This is one of those things you can’t buy until you know how old the child you’ll be adopting will be when you bring them home.

GlitterGirl was about as young as a baby can be at referral, and we traveled within a few weeks to go get her. The highchair was one of the most important pieces we had, as it allowed me a place to put her while I cooked and showered, as well as a place for her to eat meals and snacks.

The master suite was on the main level of the house we lived in back then, so I could wheel it into the bathroom, give her some finger-foods, and shower. We had a clear shower curtain so she could see me, and I could see her. No trauma, no going without showers. (GG didn’t have the choking issues TT had, I wouldn’t have been able to do this with TT, because TT managed to get choked several times a meal for the first few months we were home with her). RK’s work schedule had him at work in the evenings a whole lot back then, and I take my showers before bed, not first thing in the morning.  As I said in last week’s post, this high chair is pretty close to what we had.

TwinkleToes was very close to two years old when we brought her home, so we skipped the high chair and went straight to the Fisher-Price Space Saver High Chair, which is really just a fancy booster seat. There appears to be a new version now, one they are actually calling a booster seat. These work with or without the tray, so as they get older you can push them up to the table, without the tray. TT needed the tray for a little while, but was soon ready for the table. I don’t remember time frames anymore, it’s been a while. My baby is seven now. Can you believe it?

I seriously lusted after the chairs like this and this, but our table wasn’t the right style for it – I didn’t trust the drop leafs to hold her weight on our old table, and our new one is glass so if we had another baby now the answer would still be no.

In deciding what you want in a high chair, think about your needs:

• Do you need to be able to adjust it from high to low? Or do you just need it low, or just need it high? We ate in the living room a lot when GG was a baby, so adjusting it low was crucial. By the time we brought TT home, all meals were eaten at the table, which is one of the reasons the booster worked best for her.
• Do you care what it looks like? There are furniture quality wooden highchairs, and art deco wooden highchairs, and retro old style wooden high chairs, and futuristic Jetson’s looking high chairs, and another futuristic looking one that’s also a sleeper (You’ve got to take a look at this one, I’m pretty sure they didn’t have these when we were looking. Too expensive, I think, but very cool.), and a high chair that looks like a barber’s chair. Are you going for function alone, or are you going for some combination of form and function? If you want to get a little more realistic, there’s a very practical looking high chair by Graco, and another by Graco that looks a whole lot like the one we used with GG.
• What is the layout of your kitchen? Are wheels important or will it be stationary? Can you live with a big one, or is it imperative your highchair have the smallest footprint possible?
• For an older child, do they have enough muscle tone for a basic booster, or do you need a booster with more support? You can choose several before you travel and then either buy it when you get home, or order it online from China so it arrives the day you arrive home, or have someone buy it for you so it’s waiting for you at home when you return home.

As you can see, it’s not as easy as saying “this is a good high chair”. Because while that may be true for one family, for another it might be a terribly inconvenient high chair for their needs.

For both strollers and high chairs, I think simple is better, as you don’t want a ton of crevices food can get into.

As for other practical matters, it’s important you can easily get the tray on and off, and can easily get the kid in and out. However, I’m not sure it’s terribly important the tray can go in the dishwasher — ours could on both models, but we just wiped them off after each use and rarely ran them through the dishwasher.

Here is a search page at Amazon for high chairs with four stars or higher, rated by popularity.

I’m going to let the comments start us off on this one with a few questions.

1. What piece of equipment did you buy that you loved the most?
2. What did you buy that you didn’t use at all?

Looking back, I think my favorite the second time around was the Stand and Ride Stroller. GG was much too big for a stroller, but needed to feel special and taken care of, too. She could get on and off the stroller, and on one particular trip to the zoo, could sit when she was exhausted and literally couldn’t walk any farther. RK and I were pretty tired, too, so it was good we didn’t have to carry her.

I’m not sure about my favorite from the first time around, but it may have been the high chair. That’s not the one we had, but it seems to be the closest. Ours had wheels so it was easy to drag around, was adjustable in a bunch of ways (especially height), and was very easy to clean. GG loved to eat, so I could put her in her high chair and adjust it high so she could watch me cook, with toys on her tray to play with. I could pull it into the bathroom and put finger foods on her tray so she could watch me shower through the clear shower curtain (taking a shower when you’re first home with a baby is a lot harder than you’d think). We could put it down low and put her in it in the family room for snacks, so she was at the same height as us when we were on the sofa.

What was a total waste? Changing table.

   
The first chart shows the size (in poll numbers) of the previous batches and this batch. Please remember each poll has to stand by itself, you can’t compare numbers from different polls. We can still get an idea of how the sizes of the batches have gone, but you can’t do a direct comparison.

This batch was about twice the size of the previous one, and more inline with the four before — though half of the size of September, and almost a quarter the size of last May’s numbers. It was pretty close to average.

Next, we’ll take a look at how reality has looked in hindsight with the projections. The graph below shows where past referral batches have fallen on my projections, the X shows where the actual referrals fell. In those cases where I’ve added a new column and things would have looked different had that column been in place at the time, I’ve used a ~ to show where they would have fallen had we had the new column.

And finally, here are my projections:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
You can always find your way back to the Projections and When posts by clicking on the Analysis category in the lower right hand column.

I’ll end this with my standard disclaimer: As always, projections are based on the CCCWA continuing to do what they have been doing. There is nothing to say they will follow their recent behavior. They could choose to do a lot less, or a lot more.

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