How To Be a Toddler's Parent and Have a Stress- Free Holiday Season:

Last year I learned the true meaning of holiday stress. I thought I already knew how stressful that time between November and January could be, but I had never been the mother of a 1 1/2 year old before. In the midst of holiday mayhem:

-Not only did the little boy poop in the bathtub, I took him out to clean up the mess and with my back turned, he pooped on the floor, stepped in it, and walked all over the bathroom and the hallway

-One cat had a urinary infection in which we had to try to collect a urine sample before we could treat it.

-The other cat injured his claw and due to a snow storm, our vet was not in. So we had to take him to the emergency vet and find a way to get him pain meds 3 times a day while we were out of town

-The next bath, the little naked boy ran into his bedroom and peed on the floor.

-We ended up traveling and hosting! Hosting meant lots of laundry (sheets, towels, etc.), cleaning up before and after. Traveling meant packing with room for gifts. Lots of organization.

-Then we got the flu right after hosting. It was nice that it was after, but all the food in the fridge happened to be sweets. Nothing that we could eat. And the little boy wasn't sick, so we had a hell of a time keeping up with him!

-And broken diapers. Although I started off preferring velcro diapers to snaps, I now know that snaps are much better in the long run. Almost every single pair of velcro diapers stopped sticking (the velcro wore off). Luckily I had a mother willing to replace them!
We managed to get through the 2012 holiday, but it wasn't easy. I have to give a little credit to our 80 gallon fishtank. With both parents being sick, turning on the tv was really tempting, but we didn't want to do that until he was over 2 years old. So we sat him in front of the fishtank instead and he was entertained for quite awhile!

After all of that, I was ready to work toward a stress-less holiday season for 2013!

I thought I knew what to expect, and I remembered that you have to get gifts for everyone from you AND from the kid. And you want to get great gifts for the kid because he's awesome but you know the grandfolks are going to get him a million things to. What to do?!

I now realize that I would much rather host for the holidays than travel. The planning that goes into leaving for a few days is enough to deal with, but then you throw in holiday stress on top of that and THEN coordinating how to take all those gifts with everything else? It's a bit much. But I figured it all out.I got this! No stress this time!

I started going to yoga once a week. I have done this for seven straight weeks and it was a fantastic decision. I do it over my lunch hour and I feel great. On top of that, I had a massage scheduled for mid-December. And I was tackling holiday shopping on my lunch breaks. I was feeling pretty on top of it all!

Then my son got a fever. FOUR. TIMES. between Thanksgiving and the Solstice. It ended with a strep throat and an ear infection. I got behind in work from taking time off while the kid was home sick. I got behind in shopping since I couldn't take as many lunch breaks. And I had to cancel that massage appointment.

Also, somehow, the holidays creep up faster than any other time of the year! I'm not sure what happened, but the month of November came and went faster than any other month of the year. February included.

Even though the stress level of the holidays intensifies as the calendar gets closer to the solstice, the fact that my son is so excited about all of the holiday details makes it so doable.

Like the holiday lights. The Christmas trees. The snowman balloons. The bows! He makes me remember how incredibly exciting holiday season was when I was a kid. He makes me remember that kids experience the excitement, not the stress. I even attempted to make holiday cookies with him, which didn't quite turn out as expected. 

I'm motivated to continue working towards the goal of a stress-free exciting holiday season. Step one: by all means DO NOT travel AND host! Choose one or the other. Step two: don't get sick or let your kid get sick. And finally, try channeling the imagination and excitement of youth to remember the fun of it all. 

Book Review: Litle Moon Dog

I picked this up at a library book sale, it had been discarded from the library, so it isn't a brand new book by any means. I don't know why I got it, maybe the artwork looked interesting. It's about a man and his dog on the moon, after all. For some reason, my son got obsessed with it.

He doesn't let us read it, there are too many words for a 2 year old. But the gist of the story is that the man and his dog live quietly and peacefully on the moon. Once a year, the hippy fairies show up on their hippy bus and disrupt the quiet! The dog loves it. He loves them. Then he goes with them back to their planet and they aren't as nice to him there. He misses his man. So the man comes to get the dog and they live happily ever after.  The  moral of the story is: don't let fun get in the way of comfort. Or something like that. The lesson I learned is: for a two year old, artwork is more important than stories.

Beach!

This summer, I thought about enrolling my toddler in the rec center's toddler swim class. But when I found out that they do not offer classes during the month of August, that idea was out!
Instead, we decided to go to the beach by the Coralville Dam once a week, on the hottest weekday of the week. It's a lot of work to do for just 90 minutes of beach time, but, like camping, after you do it once or twice, it's not so bad.
We packed the big beach bag with towels, swim suits, life jacket. We put the little plastic shovels and toys into the beach pail and we had a bag of food. Sometimes I would make an easy meal to eat on the beach- salad, for example, or turkey sandwiches. Other times I would pick up a pizza on the way to the beach (I have an insulated bag that will keep the pizza warm for an hour). I would leave work at 4:30, pick up the boy from day care and drive to my husband's office where we would change into swim suits, fill our water bottles and then leave for the beach. We could usually get there before 6:00. It might sound like a lot of time but we were driving in opposite directions (to the east side of Iowa City then west to Coralville then north to the Dam)...and dealing with rush hour traffic.
But then we would arrive and swim and play in the sand for about 45 minutes and then sit on the towels to eat. The little boy was hungry enough to actually stop playing for a few minutes to eat dinner with us, he even happily ate a lot of the salad! Then he would play in the sand, we would swim and take him into the water and let him kick and splash. You know, "swimming lessons"!
In the end, I think he got a lot more out of the beach this summer than he would have with swim lessons at the rec center.
There are people out there who think lake water is gross and unsanitary, and I feel sorry for that misconception.  Kids just don't get the same experience of playing in the sand and waves when they're at the rec center pool. During those hot summer days, it's great to watch a kid explore a lake on a beach. Save the indoor pools for winter time.

How Much Junk (or Kid's Treasures) Should We Hold On To?

My 97 year old grama recently moved out of the house she had lived in for 60 years, so I got the chance to dig through the closets upstairs. She saved a LOT of stuff, which is both good and bad.
Bad because it's in no sort of organized order. I found some special photographs and documents in the middle of a pile of Christmas cards from her friends. And who has the time to leaf through every page of her stuff to find the treasures?
Good because I took a lot of hand-written journals, letters, etc. home to scan and share with the extended family. And some artwork from her 3 sons, maybe even her grandchildren.

Now that I have my own child and a house full of things I just can't throw away, I'm thinking about this- 60 years in the future, how much crap will I have accumulated? What precious treasures from my son should I hold on to and what should I throw away?
I like the idea of scanning, saving and backing up. We are already in the habit of doing this with our photos and video on the computer. I could scan the kid's artwork and save it along with the photos. But it's not the same as having the original.
Grama had a few photo albums and scrap books of photos that were really well labeled with who the photos are of and the dates and locations. But- the boxes of photos of random people in the 1940s- no one knows who the people are, even though they are cool photos to look at and you hate to throw those away!  It's just like how the photos on our computer are saved in chronological order but have no notes to say where we were and who were were with.
Maybe that's what Facebook is for? 
I would say these days most people are "archiving" their memories with Facebook- but I seriously doubt that in sixty years, we'll be able to access those tagged photos as easily as we can today. Genealogy data is important to save for future generations, and so are photos, video and even kid's artwork. But there are so many more photos and hours of video of today's kids vs. the kids of the 1940s-50s!
We just need to find the fine line between preserving the precious things and getting rid of the unnecessary crap.
But, when something has been held on to for 60, 80, even 100 years- who is the asshole in the family responsible for tossing it out?
It's a hard call to make.

Book Review: Clap Your Hands

This book sucks. Until you sing it. And clap and stomp along with the song. Then the book is awesome. Just ask my son.

In conclusion, you have to make yourself look like an idiot, and then this book will be worth it.

Packing to Travel Just Doesn't Get Easier!

At first, traveling was a lot of work- the amount of stuff you need to pack for an infant is incredible! And you have to take half of it "just in case".

Then there is a sweet spot from about 18-20 months where traveling is easy, just take some diapers and a sippy cup and you should be good.

Then the toddler gets old enough to "help" you pack. You get the small diaper bag with essentials- remember his blanket! Snacks! Toys! And he starts bringing you stuff, like his rain boots. 

"You already have shoes" you tell him. He insists those rain boots go in the bag. "It's not even raining" you tell him. Nope, those boots are GOING! 

And the book you packed? "No", he says and finds 5 other books to pack. And toys. The plane. The bus. The cars.

Now you are back to packing like you did for the infant- the small diaper bag, the bag of diapers, the bag of clothes, the bag of blankets, the bag of toys and books.

And oh crap! 

We forgot to pack anything for US! 

Papa asks why we are taking 100 bags and not a suitcase. Momma says it would be ridiculous to pack a suitcase for an overnight, 24 hour trip. 

A lot of eye-rolling happens.

In conclusion, enjoy that sweet 18-20 month brief moment of happy traveling while it lasts!

Book Review: Cars and Truck and Things that Go

This book was a gift for our boy when he was born. I thought he was too young for it, but apparently kids at a very young age appreciate gigantic books. This is one of the biggest we own, so ever since he's been old enough to grab books, this has been a favorite.

Now that he's two, he is even more into it. There is a story in there, if you want to actually read it, about a pig family going on a trip to the beach. They have quite an adventure on the road and they drive through construction, snow, car accidents, an army camp, and more- on the way. You can imagine they see quite a lot of crazy stuff! And the artist in my must note that the colors of all the vehicles was very well done- opposite colors contrasting each other makes it appealing to the eye.

But the real fun with this book is to point out the various vehicles on the road (construction trucks, trains, boats, buses, doughnut cars, pickle cars, bananamobiles and more). Each is labeled with it's name so you can answer the zillion "what's that?" questions the toddler might ask. And you can play the game of "find Goldbug" on each page. And you can watch the bad guy (a dingo) get chased by officer Flossy (a fox).

In conclusion, I can see this book entertaining a 6 month old and a 12 year old. One of the few books that will last several years. And decades. It was published almost 40 years ago!
And I'm not the only one. Find another book on Amazon with 350 reviews and 5 solid stars!! That's pretty rare. 

Baby Food Concoctions! (or, How To Be a Master Chef Momma)

When my toddler was 1 3/4, no, not 21 months.... You say "21 months" to people who don't have kids and they give a blank stare while they try to do the math in their heads. I know, because I used to be one of those people. 

So at 1 3/4, my son was just starting to become a little picky. And not picky like "I don't like green food" picky, picky like he will only eat bananas one day and then he won't touch a banana the next day, and then that night he'll eat a banana again.

So, this leads the child's personal in-house chefs (mom and dad) to come up with some pretty creative concoctions. I might try to continue these for years to come! 

One that I like a lot is carried over from the days of making baby food from scratch. One of the foods I made was kale- cooked down with some water, pureed in the food processor, and put into ice cube trays to freeze for later. Now, when we need to make a fast meal for him, we'll either heat up a little rice or pasta and add 2 cubes of kale and some butter and he loves it!

He also loves green beans and cheese, so we have done the "layering" method of serving food. For example, we'll take chopped chicken and rice, heat it up and serve it to him. He takes a bite and doesn't want any more. So we'll add a little green beans. He'll pick out the green beans and not eat anymore. So we'll shred some cheese on top. If that doesn't work,  maybe  a little pear sauce. Peanut butter. More green beans. Eventually, it either gets eaten or it ends up on the floor for the dog to enjoy. Then we'll try a bite and go "hey, this isn't bad!"

Cold pork chops! I never would have guessed these would be tasty, but we usually make 3 Iowa Chops and then have leftovers to serve the little boy. While waiting for me to heat up some rice and chopped chops, I started slicing them really thin and letting him eat the cold slices. He loved it. I tried it. Yum! Maybe it was the way we seasoned it, but it was good enough to eat cold, both in thin slices and cubed up and in salad.  

We always have yogurt in the fridge too. Adding yogurt to just about anything helps him eat it. And this is the good stuff: Vanilla whole milk organic yogurt. I think it tastes like frosting. 

Another fast stand-by for a starving child (if he isn't in his high chair eating at 5:30 sharp, watch out!) is a can of green beans, cold. Yup, he'll eat that by the handful. The down side with the canned stuff is the extra sodium, but it's better than snacking on salty junk food packaged for kids. 

He does plenty of that, too- his favorite right now is the Annies' whole wheat bunnies, which don't mention anything about having cheese in them, but they taste like goldfish, which makes you look at the label and see that they have cheddar cheese. I'm not complaining, but why wouldn't they be called cheesey whole grain crackers?! Anyway, the organic-aisle-at-Hy Vee shopper in me feels they are a better option that Goldfish. Plus, I like them and I don't like Goldfish. But that's not the reason I buy them. I'm trying to get healthy food in my boy!

Until he realizes that I think I've figured out what he likes. Then he quickly changes his mind. 

Maybe the secret is to pretend like you don't know he likes it. 

That Evil Quiet Sound

Tonight I left my toddler in the middle of tossing books off the living room table so that I could start dinner. Then it got quiet.
It stayed quiet.
Uh-oh.
I snuck around the corner to find this:

 

I'm not sure how he did it, but he sure was content! See what happens when you turn your back for a minute? They grow up. 

When it Rains

Once again, I learned a lesson today: If it has rained in the past THREE DAYS bring towels and a change of clothes- and no matter the weather- let your kid wear rain boots!
We biked to the park (me and my toddler, age 1 3/4) where the ground was squishy. After a few fun trips down the slide, he discovered the puddle under the play equipment. Before I could do or say anything, he was jumping up and down in the puddle. It was a nice warm day, so I figured I'd let him have fun. But then he became obsessed with the puddles and they were WAY more fun than the swings and slides! He found every puddle in the playground and splashed and ran through them. Then he found a section of the sidewalk under water and ran through that, with water almost up to his knees! The best part? A group of 6 or 7 year-old girls saw him and decided to try it, much to their parents' dismay. Ha! My 1 year old, the trend-setter!
I figured he was learning a lot about water and mud while he had a blast, so I didn't want to deter that. And it was warm enough that we just stripped off the shoes and socks and pants and put them in the wet bag. If you don't use cloth diapers, you might not know about wet bags. But you should. They are useful for so much more than dirty diapers. We use them for swimsuits, wet clothes, and of course dirty, muddy clothes and shoes! I can't believe I lived so much of my life with out wet bags!
Anyway, we rode home with him in a t-shirt and diapers. Next time, though- I'll try to bring a towel for him. And spare pants.

The Ball Down the Stairs

Our basement stairs with no door has a baby gate at the top. Our son has discovered the thrill of throwing balls over the gate and down the stairs, watching them bounce and land. He does this with every ball in the house. We let him do it because he enjoys it so much, and there is the added bonus of having no balls to trip over upstairs.
One day, he threw a toy- a pretty big one with batteries- down the stairs. I put my foot down then and there and said "no more throwing shit down the stairs!" That lasted about a day. It was the last time he threw a toy down the stairs, though. So far, anyway.
Tonight I went downstairs and stepped around the usual pile of balls at the bottom of the stairs and noticed a small orange ball. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was actually an orange! I took it upstairs and papa said that was the orange he was going to take to work this morning, but turned around to find it being tossed down the stairs with all the other round orbs of the house!
Papa doesn't get a nutritious snack for lunch, but baby learns about shapes and motor skills and gravity!

Temporary Problem Solver for Drawers (Not Yet Patented)

Kid opening your drawers and pulling the towels/sponges/garbage sacks/tupperware/homebrew supplies out? Stick a long "stick": yardstick, bamboo, random pvc pipe from the garage like the one pictured below- through the handles to deter the youngin from getting those drawers open. This will do two things:

1. Keep him from getting into your drawers for a few more weeks.
2. Increase his intellegence by enhancing his fine motor/sensory skills as he figures out how to open the damn drawers anyway.

Win-win!

Toddlers and Chairs

Want your toddler to climb up on your dining room chairs and dangerously wheel himself around the kitchen? It's easy! Just make sure your chairs have handles to grasp and up he goes!

Weening. Nice and Slow.

I wanted to breastfeed for at least 18 months. We ended up lasting over 19 months, on a very slow ween. Which was really pretty nice. At 12 months, he was feeding about 5 times a day. We went down one feeding per month, so that around 16 months he was feeding once a day, mornings only. He kept that until 18 months, and then we went to every day sometimes, every other day sometimes, every third day sometimes. I began realizing if I caught him at just the right level of waking up, still sleepy and not fully awake yet, he would nurse pretty well. I knew we could stop at any time. But why would we want to do that?
When it was over, it wasn't a big deal for either of us. Slow is the way to go in my opinion. But I hear it isn't always up to the mother, the baby decides when to stop. I got lucky.

Disposable Diapers. You Heard Me. Diaper Rash Info Too.

I've talked a lot about diapers in this blog, because we got away with almost never having to buy any. Until we went to California and bought inserts for Grovia. We still have some left over.
Then our little boy got a nasty rash this winter. The kind of nasty that you go to the doctor for. The doctor prescribed over the counter jock itch cream and a zinc cream. We had a tube of Butt Paste and bought the jock itch cream and used both. It didn't go away, so we went back to the doctor who sent us to the pediatric dermatologist. Sometimes I wonder if its totally an Iowa City thing that we get to go see specialists like "pediatric dermatologists".
The doc had us use the same things but in an opposite combination, and that seemed to help. And she recommended 12 hour disposable diapers for overnight.
I wasn't happy. She said just try it. Two things happened.
1. The rash went away and hasn't come back, at least not very much.
2. His overnight sleeping improved.
A third thing also happened. I became introduced into the world of buying diapers. These cost about $9 for 24! We are lucky enough to only have to buy them every 24 days, but yeesh, other people spend that kind of money every couple of days?! Seriously?!
Also, our baby has a habit of pooping early in the morning. Into the disposable. Bonus.
So, while I'm a strong supporter of cloth diapers for many, many reasons, I have learned that disposable overnighters are okay too.
As for the diaper rash? Whenever we see the little red spots, we use the jock itch cream and it clears right up.
When he doesn't have a rash, we use a homemade beeswax/olive oil/calendula salve that I made three jars of before he was born.  But we don't use that at all if a rash shows up.

Sinks and Wind, a Crazy Week

This all happened in one week:
My 1 1/2 year old discovered he could throw things in the kitchen sink by standing on his tippy toes and stretching his arm up and throwing the item over the counter. Then he started throwing everything he carried into the sink. We instantly recognized this as a bad thing and tried to get him to stop. He wouldn't have any of that.
Then I was washing dishes in a sink full of hot soapy water and he ran up and I saw something go "plop" into the water. I thought "hmmm, what was that?" So I reached down to find my cell phone in there. The brand new one. I grabbed a bag of rice (brown, which was all we had) and took the battery out and let it sit overnight. The end result was that the phone part still works but none of the side buttons do. No texting, no photos. I'm in the market for a new stupid phone.
Having a clean kitchen and being a little overwhelmed, later in the week I stopped at Papa Murphy's to get a pizza. I knew it was illegal to leave your child in the car in the parking lot even when you are just running in to pick up your order, so I took him, got the gigantic pizza, and carried it out to the car. I put the pizza on the hood of the car while I buckled him back into the car seat, then I went to get the pizza right as a wind gust came across and lifted the pizza up and flipped it upside down onto the parking lot! I stared at it for a moment, then flipped it back over to see the damage. They wrap those things in so much saran wrap, that it was mostly okay, there was just a small heap of zucchini and cheese on the parking lot. A nice man from the pizza place (they do have those big windows, you know) came and offered to make me a new one. We examined it and I thought it would be okay, but I agreed to let him take it in and "fix it up". He rearranged the ingredients and added more cheese and zucchini to it, which was awesome. The end result was a decent pizza with no complaints of gravel in any of the slices!

Discovering New "Foods"

Tonight, I found my son holding the cat food bowl. The new one. Two days ago he had the cat food bowl and when we tried to get it, he threw it and it broke. So tonight I asked him to give me the bowl, and he dumped the food out on the floor. I voiced my unhappy opinion to him. Then I started picking up the pieces of food and putting them back in the bowl, and he helped me. Sweet. Then he found a dried pile of cat puke and tried adding that to the bowl too. I don't blame him, cat puke does really resemble cat food. Anyway, I said yucky and we went and washed our hands. While I was washing my hands, he went back to the kitchen floor and found some more cat food to put in the bowl. Then he put some in his mouth. I went over to stop him and realized all the cat food he was putting in was on the mushy side, and in fact looked to be a lot more like more cat puke than more cat food. Again with the hand washing and cleaning up and lots of "yucky's".

Another thing for the list of firsts for the little boy!

Re-Name That Activity!

Others might call it:
My toddler tried to help me unpack the groceries causing the bag of steel cut oats to split open and oats spilled out all over the floor, then we tried to sweep it up and he "helped" which scattered oats even more all over the floor!

I call it:
Sensory activity opportunity!

That's how to be an optimistic parent.

Book Repair!

One of the many lessons I've learned as a new parent is how to repair children's books. In fact, I'm becoming so good at it, I'm starting to think I might have missed my calling as a book repairer at the library. If you are a librarian, you should read this. If only because I would feel like a prude coming into the Iowa City Public Library and telling the staff how to do their jobs. But I can do it on my blog, at least, so here goes:
1. Use packing tape
That's it. Any of those flip the flap books (like the Karen Katz books) will start to fall apart when your curious toddler becomes interactive with the book. I don't just speak from my own experience, I have checked these books out at the library and they had all been repaired.... with SCOTCH tape! That doesn't work. Packing tape does. I am now convinced that any fragile looking book should be secured before giving the baby the chance to rip it. This will both keep the book sturdy and not teach the kid that they can rip pages out of books! Fun!
I also repaired the whale's tail in The Grouchy Ladybug and it has never whipped better. In fact, I feel kind of bad for that poor ladybug.

Book Review: The Grouchy Ladybug

This 1977 book by Eric Carle is good for infants, better for toddlers, and probably even better for older kids too. My son was impartial until I read it one day and whipped the whale's tail back and forth with sound effects. Uh-oh, I hope I didn't ruin the ending....
Wikipedia will give you a summary of the story, but it ends with the grouchy ladybug being defeated by the whale's tail. My son loved that part so much, he started carrying the (gigantic) book to me and crawling into my lap so I would read it. (Awwww.) But I couldn't read it. He would skip to the tail and want me to whip it (with sound effects). Then he wanted to whip it. Then it got torn. Then it needed to be repaired.
In conclusion, this is a must read for kids of all ages! But first! Make that tail very sturdy. See my book repair blog on how to do that.

Toddler Mittens and Gloves? What are those?

At 1 1/2, my son loves to explore and has a lot of energy. And he gets sick of playing with the same old toys. So when it's not extremely cold, we take him outside as much as possible! Lately, it has been snowing on a regular basis. We tried sledding on the slight slope in our backyard. Turns out, a slight slope is perfect for a toddler! And he loves playing in the snow! What a great way to get him outdoors and burn off some energy. However, it seems we always return to the indoors because his hands are too cold.
Dealing with cold baby hands has been a problem for over a year now. (See a previous blog on the subject of buying mittens for infants)
We now have:
1. infant mittens that are insulated but too small and don't stay on
2. columbia mittens that are a little bigger but not well insulated
3. gloves for older kids that are way too big and also not insulated
4. socks, which stay on great but still get the hands wet
The current solution, if we want to stay outside longer than 15 minutes, is to take several pairs of socks, and maybe some mittens too, and every time they fall off or get wet, swap them out for a new pair. This means more laundry, because now you're out of socks for the poor kid.
So, here's a million dollar idea: INVENT GLOVES FOR TODDLERS THAT STAY ON AND DON'T GET WET. It really can't be that hard. I'd do it myself, but I'm busy working, being a mom and blogging.
On a side note, my 1 1/2 year old is big for his age. In addition to that, his hands are enormous for his age. So a pair of gloves that fit a 3 year old would probably fit him. Which means these gloves don't exist for 3 year olds either. And 3 year old should definately be out playing in the snow!

Changing Diapers Just Became Difficult

The older our kid gets, the more difficult it becomes to change his diaper.

He giggles, he cries, he rotates 180 degrees clockwise. He fusses, he complains, he kicks his legs. He's distracted for two seconds by a toy! He's back to kicking and wiggling and peeking at me upside down.
I think I'm looking forward to potty training. It can't be as difficult as changing a diaper, right?!

Sunscreen for toddlers?

So maybe talking about sunscreen in January is odd, but babies do still need to be protected from the sunny Iowa winter days. Not that I hardly ever actually remember to apply sunscreen to my boy when we go out, but in my defense- we usually go for walks after 4 pm.
Anyway, he is starting at a new day care and we need to bring a bottle of sunscreen for him. The brand we have used so far has been Badger. But at over $15 for a 2.9 oz bottle at New Pi, I thought that maybe since he's no longer an infant, we might not need to shell out that kind of mula for sun protection anymore. Especially when we need a bottle for home and a bottle for day care!
I looked online and couldn't seem to find any age in which babies need "baby" sunscreen. Can toddlers use the same sunscreen as the stuff we use? Or do they need something else for sensitive skin and/or because they put their fingers/hands in their mouths constantly?
Searching Google only gives me all sorts of reports about how much sunscreen to apply to a kid (1/2 oz) and what ingredients to look for in the label (zinc oxide). I don't want to read labels. I want the damn bottle to say something like "good for 6-18 month olds" or "for 2+ year old kids". Or how about naming the product "Natural unscented sunscreen for kids". I would buy that. Unless it was $15/bottle. I mean, a little 2.9 oz sized bottle.
I searched on Amazon which gave me some good choices. I'm thinking that "kids" sunscreen is oil, frangrance and dye free. And sometimes "tear" free. With ultra gentle zinc oxide. (What does "ultra gentle" mean?
After comparing Coppertone's Kids and Water Babies sunscreens, I'm totally unclear as to what the difference is.