Total Baby app review

I've been meaning to do this post for awhile because I have many friends having their second round of babies. If you truly know my personality, you will not be surprised by my love of this app. I am a type A personality, slightly OCD, and love "data". That's the one thing I loved about the business world... Using Excel and making spreadsheets. I know, dorky! Oh, well. Anyway, when I had Caiden I used this Itzbeen timer to track feedings, diapers, sleep, and even baths. But now, with the iPad, I found this great app that I can track everything and it generates cool charts and summaries.

The app is called Total Baby, and it's $5 from iTunes. I'm not sure if its available as an Android app. I actually started with a different app, but later found this one and like it better. At first I used it even more, than I do now. It tracks the basics of diapers, feedings, and sleep. But some of the extras I love are the growth tracker which plots it on the growth charts, the vaccine record, the diary feature and the milestone record. I love the fact that if Caleb does something even moderately new or interesting, I can enter it into the app with a few taps and then go back and record it in the baby book later! You can even keep pictures with the milestone and diary entries.

One of the main reasons that I switched over to this app was the reporting and charting features. (See above, I'm a dork). It shows you a summary at a glance for that day or week, and gives you a timeline so you can start to see trends. I know, why do you need to see this. Truth is, you don't. But I felt like with Caleb being the second child, I struggled keeping tried of when he ate last or if he was due for a nap. It helped me to see when he was starting to form a pattern, so I could respect that.
Here's a few pictures of the charts that I saved awhile back.

A diaper pie chart :) not really useful but somewhat interesting.

Weight percentile chart

 This is the "timeline" for some reason it didn't include the legend. Basically blue is sleep and purple is nursing. You can also select what it shows and include diapers, baths etc, but I excluded those to simplify the picture a bit.

Here is the Total Sleep chart. You can see the different amount of daytime sleep versus nighttime, and the total for the 24 hour period.

There are other charts that are useful, but I didn't want to overwhelm you :)

Another feature that I love and use for both boys is the option to enter temperatures and medicine doses. It's really helped me to know how long they've had a fever or when I gave them Tylenol last!

A really useful aspect is that you can set alarms. So if your baby eats every 3 hours, you can set that as an alarm to remind you that it's time.

Also, a really cool thing to note- after I first started using it, I contacted the developer and asked them if there was a way to differentiate daytime sleep from nighttime sleep. I feel this was important, but again that's my type A shining through. Anyway, the developer actually responded and at the time it wasn't a feature, but they developed it and added it in the next update!

Anyway, that was lots of rambling, but if you are a mom with infants and like to overanalyze stuff like I do, you might want to check it out!

Mommas gettin' crafty

For the last few months, with Plum Moms' Club, I've been hosting a craft activity for my friends. I have so much fun doing it and the finished products all turn out great.

In January, we made dry-erase boards with fabric flower embellishments. I forgot to take pictures of them finished, but here's one:

In February, we painted ceramic mugs. Some used a stencil I made of the Stroller Strides logo and some artsy ladies did their own designs. Sorry for the cruddy pictures on this one too!

 

 

And this month, we made Easter/spring tulle wreaths.

 

I just love being crafty with my friends!



Verse of the Week

I realize it's basically the end of the week, but I like this verse so I didn't want it to slip away!


source

Caleb- 9 months

-Weight: 16 lbs, 8oz (5th percentile)

 

-Length: 27.5" (about 25th percentile)

-Diapers: size 2

-Clothes: (same as last month)mainly 6-9 month clothes although the pants are too long. I've tried some of the 6-12 month size from GAP and Old Navy but they are super big!

- Sleeping:

Daytime: same as last month, morning naps are pretty irregular. If we are home, he will nap an hour to hour and a half. If we go out in the morning to Stroller Strides or to take Caiden to school, he will usually fall asleep in the car and take a shorter nap. He will usually take a decent nap in the afternoon, but I have yet to get him and Caiden on the same schedule :( Caleb is usually waking up just after Caiden goes down.

Nighttime sleep is still the same 6:30pm- 6am. He usually nurses once a night, but have had some rough nights lately.

-Eating: He's eating cereal with a fruit for breakfast, a fruit or vegetable for lunch and cereal with a vegetable and now a protein for dinner. New foods this month were yogurt, beets, cantaloupe, raspberry, lentils and wheat cereal. He is still nursing about 6 times a day as well.

New milestones:

• Two teeth!
• Crawling on hands and knees, usually carrying a toy
• Can pull up on something with a toy in his hand
• Can bend down to pick up the toy if he drops it
• Says da-da (not necessarily for Eric)
• First ear infection. Didn't know he had one, just found out at his 9 month check up today :(

Other notes:

 

• Always wants to stand
• Is not really showing stranger anxiety yet, but he is very stingy with his smiles for other people.
• he wants to be so independent! And is already very determined. He'll just crawl into Caiden's room, pull up on his table or workbench and start banging away.

As he's growing:

Big bro vs little bro:

 

 

Throughout the month

 

Insta Friday

This is the first time I'm doing Insta Friday. It's something Jeannett does, so I'm trying it out. My purpose is to share my Instagram photos with people that don't see it on Instagram. I don't take a ton of pics with my iPad, because the quality pretty much stinks and I don't have one of those fancy schmancy phones, so mainly they are random pics from home. But, here you go:

 

Little guy fell asleep in the car with his hat twisted sideways. Guess the string didn't bother him!

 

Ronald McDonald in training

Caiden enjoyed playing with some new play-doh toys from a birthday party goody bag! he loved the little scissors!



 sneaking in to brother's room to play on the workbench.

 

 Trying to sneak a cereal snack. What am I gonna do with this guy?

 

My roses from Valentine's Day kicked the bucket except these three white ones. They decided to hang around awhile longer!

 

BTW if you do have Instagram and want to follow me, I'm ebmonaghan.