Search Results for: blog leaving my baby with a sitter

Leaving my Baby with a Sitter

I left my daughter with a sitter for nearly 8 hours last week. In a row. For some of you, that’s a piece of cake. For those who know me well, it may as well have been a miracle. My husband and I were getting together with friends, and we decided our 10-month-old probably would much rather be at home playing with toys. We called up Grandma and Grandpa, who were more than willing to help us out in our time of need. When it was time to go, I kissed my baby goodbye without feeling any stress. I had … Continue reading →

Ask a Baby Blogger: Our Whole Family Isn’t Invited to the Wedding

Question: A cousin of mine is getting married in a few months and on the invitation she invited myself and my husband but not the baby. My baby will only be 4 months old when she gets married. Isn’t it rude of her not to invite the whole family? So what should I do? Do I tell her that we won’t come unless she invites the baby? (I’m not comfortable leaving the baby as I am nursing.) Or do I go anyways despite her being selective? Since this isn’t the marriage blog I won’t spend a lot of time on … Continue reading →

When Kids are With the Other Parent, it isn’t Babysitting

While we may get used to solo parenting and think of ourselves as our child’s primary parent—at least many of us single parents do—if there is another parent involved in co-parenting our children, it can be easy to think of them as a “substitute” or a babysitter. For our children, however, it is better if we acknowledge the other parent as an equal and do not treat him or her like a secondary figure. I confess that in my mind, I think of my children as “living” with me and “visiting” their dad’s house. I know my kids do not … Continue reading →

The Baby Week in Review October 21-27

Welcome to this week’s Baby Week in Review as we go over all the stories that were covered in the Baby Blog for the week of October 21 through the 27th. There was a lot of ground covered this week and we’re heading into the end of October and beginning of November. Next month marks my baby’s 6th birthday and I keep wondering how we got so far, so fast. Still, I get to relive some of the great moments and share my memories here in the baby blog. So without further ado, here is our Baby blog week in … Continue reading →

The First Parting – Prepare Yourself and Your Baby

Parents can experience separation anxiety. It can really worry you to take time away from your baby and to leave them in the care of others. For some parents, this is mitigated by the fact that they have family close by and their family is a stable and comfortable source for care giving. But sometimes family cannot provide the care giving or you don’t live close enough to them for it to be an option. This is when you invest in a baby sitter and caregiver. There is a lot to do when picking out a babysitter, but I’m not … Continue reading →

My Baby is Afraid of Day Care

Even the most social and outgoing of babies can get frightened or suffer from separation anxiety when their mother or father drops them off at the day care or even with the sitter. Don’t be surprised if your baby resists being left with the sitter (even one that is a relative) and that you and they know very well. It’s very normal and their fears are very real. There are lots of things you can do to help cope with this separation anxiety. You should start practicing these techniques while they are very young because they will serve you well … Continue reading →

Anniversaries and Date Nights

My husband and I recently celebrated six years of marriage. Before we had children, my husband and I would celebrate our anniversary by spending the entire day together focusing on each other, but our time together has drastically changed after we had children. Celebrating our anniversary is about all we do. It is rare for us to get a babysitter so that the two of us can have a date night. For the first five years of our marriage we were in the throngs of a very intense graduate program which demanded more time and money than one could imagine. … Continue reading →

Taking Time for Yourself

From the time my son was born I always felt guilty to take any time for myself. I had brought this little baby into the world and I had to focus all of my attention on him all day every day. Anytime I went out with my girlfriends Logan was always with me. Leaving him with a babysitter just wasn’t an option in my mind. He was my baby, I was going to take care of him. As I started school again and was forced to leave him from time to time I was overcome with guilt. I didn’t want … Continue reading →

Distance Teaching

This semester has me occasionally visiting a class (in the role of graduate researcher). I’ve been testing out some exercises I’ve designed on some willing (and some less willing) students in class. This has been a valuable experience for me and very much enjoyed. The occasional time I need to go in for any length of time I have a babysitter. One day recently the babysitter was unable to make it in due to some pressing matters. This was fine. I knew enough in advance that I made certain to prepare my lesson in a way that the students could … Continue reading →

Bad Dad While Learning

If you’ve been following the blogs I write here at families.com (Fatherhood and Education) for any length of time you’ve no doubt noticed the almost singular anxiety and focus I’ve had since the beginning of summer. I’m currently working towards a doctorate in fine arts and it turns out that after you’ve passed all of your classes you still need to pass a particularly nasty sequence of tests to additionally prove that they should allow you to write that big paper (dissertation) and maybe (just maybe) award you a degree. So for the entire summer my wife would take our … Continue reading →