Yesterday our guest blogger Christina Childress explained why she’s adamant on exposing her triplet babies to quality music (in the hopes of side-stepping the typical Kidz Bop phase) and offered suggestions for peaceful tunes beyond Rock-a-Bye Baby.
Today Christina continues with her picks for (better) dance music that’ll get the kids moving right along with you:
I’m giving away Skip Hop’s newest Limited Edition diaper bag over at Babble’s Family Style. If you need a diaper bag (now or in the future), go enter. You’ll love it.
Today’s guest post comes from Christina Childress, the young mom of triplets who was featured here last week.
As a new mom, one thing that makes me cringe about having little ones is the bore-you-to-tears “soothing lullabies” made for babies and the impending doom of Hannah Montana, The Jonas Brothers and any other god-forsaken programming on the Disney Channel. I’m not going to deprive my kids of something they love, but I AM going to try and at least introduce them to good quality music first and hope it sticks. One opportunity we have as young moms is to try and make sure our kids aren’t dorks, right? Take advantage of your age and your still thriving connection to youth culture by introducing your kiddos to quality music instead of the Disney-bop crap that all their friends with 40-year-old parents will be listening to. They’ll thank you for it in high school when their friends finally discover Sufjan Stevens and they can be all, “I totally listened to him since preschool. Oh, and its pronounced Soof-yan.” And, if they still can’t resist the ever-so-tempting siren songs from the likes of Miley Cyrus, you can always invest in a pair of these.
Here are Christina’s favorite peaceful music picks that encourage good taste in music:
Ok, so I made that statistic up. But it sounds about right.
I don’t know about you, but I rarely carry a camera around with me. (I have my sister for that.) Because a regular camera can’t snap an extra-cute moment and text/email/Facebook it instantly. A camera isn’t by my side at all times. I don’t have a mini panic attack when I can’t find my camera. (You get the idea.)
When Noah was first born I often joked that this would be the first generation of baby books filled with grainy cell phone shots, which seemed a bit sad until iPhone’s Instagram came about. And now my husband’s iPhone pictures look cooler than anything my point-and-shoot can do. Luckily those Instagrams aren’t just for the virtual world anymore:
Sometimes someone unexpectedly comes into your life (like, through a blog, let’s say) and brings such an inspiring energy and fresh perspective that you want to share it with as many people as possible. And for me that person is Christina (from the blog Three Legged Race) who became a young mother to three adorable infants (Quinn, Zoey and Oliver) a few months ago. She’s basically living out that unimaginable scenario that passes through our minds when we see a positive pregnancy test. And she’s doing so with a wonderfully supportive husband and an infectious positive attitude. Read her story and be amazed:
When Babble asked for my thoughts on being a tattooed mom, I honestly felt conflicted. On the one hand, as a young, just-starting-out woman, it was important for me to retain my sense of style and individuality — having lost much of my identity (from my body to my last name) in one year. I like the idea of (creatively) personalizing my body. But do I like the idea of Noah having a tattoo? Am I setting the right example?
My sister has been taking photos of Noah since the day he was born, and after countless requests, encouragements and nagging, she’s decided to publicly offer her photography services. She’s still putting together her portfolio and designing the Web site, but here’s a little sample a la Noah’s many changing faces:
Uh oh.
Ewwww.
Airplane?
WOAH! Big Airplane!
But I wanna go ON the airplane.
(Pout.)
(Poop.)
Beyond having a long-ticking biological clock that keeps the pressure off, we also have more reproductive years ahead of us — meaning we’re able to build that big family we’ve always wanted. Of course how many children each family wants is completely different from person to person (which we covered a few weeks back), but this is one of the biggest perks for those who want that big, cozy, wonderfully chaotic Cheaper-By-A-Dozen/18-and-Counting life.
This actually might be the most popular response I’ve gotten from all of you, since we have the option to have as little or as many children as we want (biologically speaking, not factoring in health issues or unexpected circumstances). And that option is truly invaluable. We have the time to create the exact family we want — whether that’s having four children in a row, 12 children in a row, or a decade of spacing between children. More time = more babies = more love. And what more could you want from life?
Note: I’ve been collecting all of our reasons that we love being “Early Mamas” in this weekly feature. Do you have a reason? Email me at michelle@earlymama.com.
