First Gift Mom Time
Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:05:21 +0000
A Pak ‘n’ Play is a great idea! Make sure it’s one of the ones that can be folded up into a little duffel bag-like carrier.
Various sized diapers and wipes are great, but I honestly wouldn’t include any formula unless you know for sure that she isn’t even going to try breastfeeding. We barely ever used any powder, so if you get that, only get a really small bottle. And don’t go overboard on the shampoo. My son turned 2 in February, and we’ve STILL got bottles of lotion and shampoo from his baby showers. The tear-free shampoo/baby wash we used up, but we hardly ever used any lotion, and some people gave us ‘novelty’ soaps that looked like cartoon characters, but weren’t tear-free, so we haven’t used any of that, yet.
Make sure to get at least 2 sheets that are sized to fit the protable playpen (they’re a different size than other baby sheets!), and only get one blanket. New babies need lots of blankets, but EVERYONE will add a blanket to their gift, and she might like to have 10 or 12, but she won’t want to have to store 20 or 25.
A stroller would be great, if you can afford it. There are cheap ‘umbrella’ strollers, but those can only be used once the baby can sit up unassisted, because the strollers have no support.
If you get clothes, make sure they’re appropriate for the season the baby will be wearing them in. I can’t tell you how many heavy fleece outfits I had to return after my baby shower. He was due in February, so they all thought ‘winter’ clothes, but everyone got various sizes and forgot to consider that when he was in the 6 month size, it would be in the middle of summer!
One nice diaper bag with plenty of pockets would be great, as well as a smaller bag to hold only the absolute basics for when she’s running somewhere for just a short time.
I saw that other people had suggested diaper genies, but my SIL insisted she needed one of those, and it was a total waste of money. It was really difficult to use, and you had to buy the special bags that went inside of them, and those were expensive! We tie our stinky diapers up in plastic grocery bags (to cut down on odors) and toss them in with our regular garbage.
She’ll need desitin (the creamy kind), special q-tips made with a bulge on them so they can only go so far into the ear, a tiny baby comb, and one pack of cloth diapers, to use as burp clothes. Those cloth diapers are much more absorbent than the things marketed as actual burp clothes, and they can cover a larger area on your shoulder. They are also more stain resistant.
I had a boppy pillow, and found it to be pretty much useless. The mylicon infant gas drops were also worthless. We went through about 3 bottles of it before we gave it up with my colicky son. He grew out of it on his own at around 5 or 6 months.
Baby bathtubs, washclothes, and towels are the epitome of uselessness. It’s easier (and less expensive) to wash baby in the kitchen or bathroom sink until they’re old enoguh to be in the regular bathrub. Use your own washclothes and towels. THey’re more absorbant and baby will be warmer becaue they can cover him or her fully. When baby outgrows the sink, if he can’t sit on his own yet, we folded a regular towel in half, laid it down in the bathtub, and ran enough water so that the towel was soaked, but baby’s ears weren’t underwater. But their feet towards the tap (the deeper end of the tub) and baby will have a great time splashing water with their kicks.
Get her a nice 1-second thermometer. The hospital sends you home with one, but it’s not a very great quality. Buy her a nice one that goes in the ear and takes only 1 or 2 seconds to read.
And be sure to check out her registry, to see if there are any other odds and ends that she wants, that you can add in! Good luck! She’s really lucky to have a friend like you who is willing to do so much to help out!
Indulge me in a bit of reminiscing here. I know that everyone has great family stories to share and I'd love to hear them. I'll post them, too. Oh, hey! That would be fun. Send them to me!
But back to Mom.....
Mom is a petite 76 year old lady. It's hard to get a good look at her because she's one little blur of activity - always on the go, and always has a project. In spite of surviving breast cancer and a double mastectomy, a four-graft heart bypass surgery, and Parkinson's disease, this woman hits the ground running every morning. Literally.
Mom and Dad have a large dairy and beef farm. Dad, who is 85 and still manages the farm, is the perfect match for Mom, but that's a story for another day.
Mom isn't allowed to do what Dad describes as "man's work". She doesn't milk cows, or shovel manure, or work the fields. This rule was conceptualized in the first week of their marriage, 50 plus years ago. Dad was out in the hayfield baling hay, they were invited to go to their first party as a married couple, and Dad was running late. So eighteen year-old newlywed Mom in an effort to help Dad and to ensure that they arrived at the party on time, went out to the pasture, brought in the dairy cattle, put them into the barn, fed them, and milked them. She had also butchered, cleaned, and roasted one of the farm's chickens for a quick little supper which was waiting in the oven. Mom was just washing up the milking equipment when my Dad showed up in the milk house looking stunned.
These two overachievers had to come to a compromise: Dad's domain was the farm, animals, and crops. He wasn't about to let his pretty new wife spend her time in the barn, even though she was fully capable of handling any of the chores. Except for raising six kids, which was without doubt a joint venture, Mom's domain would have to encompass everything else, and all these years later it seems to be working out pretty well.
Mom keeps all the financial records and budgets for the farm business, which is a huge undertaking given the fact that Dad has three checkbooks and leaves them in various places and doesn't believe in debit cards or online banking accounts. She also likes to keep the buildings on the farm tidy: two large barns, two granaries, two calf barns, three large machine sheds, two houses and several other small outbuildings; so does a great amount of painting. With a big brush. On a ladder. And she's 76. She prefers white paint rather than the stereotypical barn red. With green trim.
Dad bought her a heavy duty riding lawn mower and Mom's a demon when she gets behind the wheel. Anything even remotely grassy is fair game to be mowed by Mom, and any little patch of soil has the potential to be a flower bed. She loves petunias. She also loves her garden rototiller which she calls Tilly. Tilly has her work cut out for her since Mom has a garden the length of her house and cans at least 50 quarts of tomatoes, 50 pints of home made spaghetti sauce, and 100 quarts of the best dill pickles in Dunn County every year. She thinks that store-bought onions are pathetic, so grows her own alongside green beans, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, dill, squash, and broccoli.
I solemnly swear - I am not exaggerating or fabricating these stories. I can provide documentation and references, if necessary.
But wait - It gets even better.
Mom considers her domain to include her neighborhood and her church parish. Her own mother died relatively young in life, so Mom has befriended several widowed elderly women over the years. Each became a grandmother to us, and Mom cared for each until they died as though they were her own mother, even to the extent that she would stay at their bedside and provide excellent care so that they could die in their own home. Mom would have made a superb nurse. Actually, in retrospect, she is a superb nurse.
In her spare time, har har *slapping knees here, I crack myself up*, Mom belongs to a bowling league in the wintertime and a golf league in the summer. She follows major league baseball on TV with great interest, since in her younger days, was a pitcher for a local women's softball team - think A League of Their Own era - and is proud of the fact that she once pitched a no-hitter. And although she will watch the Green Bay Packer football games occasionally, Mother thinks that Brett Favre really wasn't nice when he went to go play for those nasty Minnesota Vikings. Sniff. Such poor manners. Honestly.
My favorite Mom and her church domain story involves a covert activity that happens every Saturday. Mom and Dad have befriended one of their elderly priests. Father H. is nearing 90, and although he has a housekeeper, he refuses to let this nice lady clean out his refrigerator. He has lived an extremely frugal life, and is reluctant to let anything even remotely edible leave his house. So while Father says the Saturday evening Mass each week, Mom sneaks into the parsonage and cleans out the refrigerator. She's convinced that if she didn't he would die from food poisoning eventually. And each week, she leaves a freshly-baked pie as her calling card.
*eyes glazing over....* Mom's pies..........I need a minute to compose myself here. Breathe deeply, Julia. Mop up the drool. Step away from the recipe box, girl.
Sigh. OK. I'm back.
So my discussion with Mom yesterday, which inspired this post, revolved around her awesome mouthwatering melt in your mouth caramel rolls. One of my kids wanted Grandma's recipe, so I grabbed a pad of paper and a pen and called Mom.
There's a couple of things about this recipe which capture the essence of my mother. First, Mom has a name for each of the recipes which crowd all five of her recipe boxes. This one is entitled Gladys L.'s Caramel Rolls. Now, I'm sure at some point in time, Gladys did indeed share a caramel roll recipe with Mom, after which Mom immediately changed just about everything. But since Gladys gave her the original, this remains Gladys' recipe. We should always give credit where credit is due, after all.
Secondly, this recipe makes four, yes FOUR, 9"X13" pans of caramel rolls. Four dozen rolls. I asked her if the recipe could be halved, or quartered. Mom thought for a little while.
"Well, I honestly don't know. I suppose you could......but I've never made less than a whole batch."
She's never made a batch of caramel rolls that resulted in less than four dozen rolls. Yup, that says it all. That's my mom.
Here's her logic: My mother never arrives anywhere without bringing a gift of great food, so she has lots baked and ready to go. The caramel rolls are only one of a zillion other delectable treats that are Mom's specialty. Also, Mom and Dad have a never-ending parade of visitors coming into their home, since everyone in the tri-state area knows that a plate of scrumptious pastries and a freshly brewed pot of coffee will materialize as soon as anyone drops by.
So Mom divides up the rolls, packages them and throws them into her cavernous chest freezer. She can have a package in the microwave all warm and caramel-ly and on a plate before Aunt Betty and Uncle Eugene roll up the driveway and put their Buick in Park.
At the peril of making this probably my longest post ever, I'm including Mom's, er, Gladys L.'s recipe:
