When I was studying music therapy, we did a course on listening. It was fascinating to discuss a skill you should be doing all the time, but rarely do well.

I remember an exercise where we had to listen to a classmate without thinking of what we were going to say next. No advice. No comments. No jokes. It made me realize I didn’t truly listen to people…. and if you don’t listen, you can’t be there for others.

Since that course, I’ve tried to listen better and let people to come to their own conclusions — that’s often more helpful than blabbing whatever advice was at the top of your head. When was the last time you tried listening?

I always hated pacifiers and judged parents if they used them. I told my husband I never wanted a pacifier near our kid’s mouth.

Then I gave birth. Two days later our little angel (and everyone else!!) wanted to sleep. I couldn’t feed him to sleep because my breasts were sore, so we broke down and got a pacifier. (Thankfully, our kid was very good at breastfeeding, so we weren’t worried about this interfering with his meals).

This whole incident made me think about judging others: it’s never helpful. Everyone has their reasons for doing what they’re doing, and unless you understand all of them, you’re simply not seeing the whole picture. My sister used to say she stopped looking down on parents whose kids were throwing a wobbly in the supermarket after she had to deal with her kids melting down — I get that now.

Baby clothes are expensive!  To add insult to injury, they never even wear some clothes because they grow so quickly.  If you don’t have hand-me-downs or a network of moms willing to pass on stuff, we have had great success at op shops (or thrift stores as you call them in America).

Most baby clothes aren’t worn very much, so they’re in much better shape than adult clothes… and the shops near us have enough of a variety that it’s pretty easy to find something that fits.  A quick wash when I get home and they’re as good as new.

I know that you aren’t able to get the latest styles, but your kids can still look really cute… and it doesn’t hurt to teach them from a young age that material things aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be.

Courtesy of gDiapers.com

When you have a baby, you are suddenly prevented with a lot of choices you need to make.  Where do you send them to school?  Do you buy them trendy clothes?  What do you feed them?  What sort of toys and entertainment do you allow?

We found ourselves struggling a lot over our diaper decision.  Since babies can wear 10 diapers a day easily, we’ll probably have to buy (and dispose of 5,000+ diapers) before we start potty-training.

We actually live in a great time for diapers.  In addition to cloth and disposable diapers, they are also starting to manufacture flushable diapers, such as gDiapers.  There are so many choices that would make any cave-woman jealous.

We really wanted a diaper that wouldn’t sit in the landfill (5,000 times), but my husband wasn’t keen on the “yuckiness” of cloth.  So we gave flushables a price, despite the extra price.

So far, we’ve been very happy.  They are actually more absorbent than the disposable diapers we tried, which means his onesies and sheets last longer.

Being a parent has made us confront a lot of questions that are usually easy to side-skirt.  (How important is the environment — compared to cheaper diapers) and it’s really made us ask who we want to me.  We’ve learned a lot about ourselves by the choices we make for our son.

This blog is out… the baby is crying :)