When I had to return to the office part time my son, then 7 months, decided he did not want anything to do with a bottle.  We bought a ton of sippy cups to see what he would use.  We had tried several without success before I tried to drink from them.  I can drink a thick milkshake through a straw, but I could not get any water from a sippy cup with its valve in.  Once we removed the valves from the cups, he happily drank from all of them.  We modified the Take n’ Toss cups by drilling holes in the lids.

Finding flexible shoes that allow little feet to move is a challenge.  Walmart, Fred Meyer, & Burlington Coat Factory have moccasin like training shoes with rubber grip on the bottom designed by Trimfoot Co.  After touching a lot of baby shoes my favorite are See Kai Run shoes.  They are leather and have very flexible soles.  If you search online I’m sure you’ll find some on sale like I did.

We work ASL into our vocabulary when speaking with our son.  I learned a few signs from the ASL Browser; more, food, drink.  We started using those when he began to eat solids.  In January I discovered our local library has a collection of Signing Time videos.  Our son enjoys watching the videos.  His favorites are Leah’s Farm and Zoo Train; the ones with animals.  A new sign language video dictionary, Signing Savvy, came online in January.  It has a larger sign collection and videos which can be played in slow motion.  You can pay for access to larger videos and more features but the free & registered access is sufficient for us.

Eric Meyer has written several posts on how he taught his child sign language when she was a baby.  His post, Signing Up, covers resources he used in his endeavor.

We’re going to try teaching our baby signs. I took a look at the ASL Browser to start learning some simple signs. When baby boy gets older, we will have to check out the Baby Signing Time & Baby Signs dvds.

Registering has been an iterative process. We’ve got a little bit registered all over the place.

• Target (Jungle Babies)
• Burlington Coat Factory (Two by Two)
• Babies R Us

There will be more updates as we get closer to the big day. November 15 will be here before we know it.

We finally picked out a crib! It’s a convertible crib that can upgrade to a toddler bed, and then can be used as a double bed frame.

Now we have to pick out a mattress and bedding.

I’ve narrowed the bedding down to:

• Jungle Babies
• Two by Two

We like Jungle Babies the best. It has lots of texture in the fabrics of the bumper and comforter and the animals are too cute. But, the Two by Two goes with the room. It’s hard to pick, so we’ve registered for both!