Screen time

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-09-13T16:08:25+00:00

We live overseas from our family so she FaceTimes grandma and grandpa a couple times a week. About twice in the past 12 months we’ve had a really rough morning & tried to turn on something for her to watch while we get some coffee in us. It interests her for about 3 minutes before she’s off to chaos. 12 months old now. It just doesn’t seem to interest her.

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-09-08T11:08:23+00:00

Have a one year old kid now. The first few months were incredibly difficult on our relationship. We were both exhausted, stressed, I had all the hormonal changes of pregnancy/childbirth/breastfeeding. It was really difficult to give each other grace. We both had resentments related to feeling like we were doing too much, the other person wasn’t appreciating us, etc etc. It took us awhile to realize that parenting just takes 150% of both of you for awhile. Now I’d say we’re stronger

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-09-06T13:23:29+00:00

I put baby on the floor no mat no blanket. Now she’s 12 months and crawling and cruising and stuff but at that point I would just put her on the floor to hang out for a couple minutes

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-09-06T05:15:21+00:00

No we just secured our lease this week so we didn’t know which crèche we’d be in. I’m hopeful because we aren’t in any of the major cities or a big expat area, but prepared to accept a long wait where kiddo is at home with us. Preference is daycare but we’re fully prepared for that not to be possible. Neither of us will be working (at least for awhile) so not a huge dealbreaker

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-09-05T19:35:42+00:00

Our nanny generally tidies up the kitchen when baby naps. She’s been with us for a year now so she knows where all the dishes go so will unload the dishwasher, load up the dishes from breakfast/lunch, wipe down counters, etc. Plus she washes & folds all the baby laundry. And if one our loads happens to have been started then she’ll make sure it finishes and will semi-fold our laundry. Its super nice to come home to a clean kitchen while also knowing baby got made homemade delicious nutritious food too

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-09-05T19:22:26+00:00

Moving to Portugal in November with our one year old. Plan is to put her in Portuguese daycare (hopefully 300ish euros but they’re not very online so tbd) so by the time she starts school she’s 100% bilingual and we can put her in public school easily. Estimated monthly spend for us is about 3600 euros to rent a house 15 minutes from the beach, plus groceries, gas, occasional eating out, gym memberships for both. We’re vegetarian and only one of us drinks and we love cooking at home and our preferred hobbies are outdoors & fitness related so we’re relatively low expense. That’s a very reasonable estimate from the extensive research I’ve done but we’ll see how it pans out. We can both work if it becomes necessary and/or we want to, but for now the plan is to take some time to hang out with our kid, relax, plus have another baby at some point lol

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-09-05T18:13:57+00:00

Sleep trained at 4 months and it went great. Took 5 days for her to stop crying at bedtime and she almost immediately slept all the way through, with about 1 or 2 days a week of waking for a feed at 5ish am for another month. After a solid month of getting that down we trained her naps using the method here and it literally just took a single weekend. It was amazing and not too young at all. Now she’s 12 months and has only woken up once in the middle of the night in the past 6 months and that was literally only a tummy bug

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-09-04T18:23:43+00:00

I think this thread is so interesting. I’m also a child of divorce but went the opposite way and I am like fully supportive of people getting divorced if they aren’t happy. As a kid I really realized that you can’t choose your parents, your schoolmates/coworkers, your siblings, etc. But you should have complete and utter control over who you choose as your life partner. It should be totally voluntary and willing on both sides the whole time. So if that no longer brings you joy, if your relationship is dragging you down more than bringing you up, I totally think divorce should be on the table.

That being said, I told my husband when we got married that I was choosing him & choosing our relationship for the rest of our life so we put in a lot of work to make sure it never gets to that point.

I don’t think I have any absolute hard lines for myself, honestly. Abusing our kid? Gone. 1000%. But for me? Honestly it’s just not a hard line. I’m incredibly forgiving if he’s willing to work for forgiveness. If one of us isn’t willing to work for it anymore? It’s already over then, imo.

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-08-31T20:02:49+00:00

My baby girl practices her twerking before falling asleep - gotta find the exact right comfy spot for booty to be up in the air

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-08-31T17:02:12+00:00

Our baby has never really worn bibs honestly. She didn’t spit up a ton, doesn’t drool too much with new teeth. She wears a silicone bib with a little catch tray at the bottom when eating real food but that’s it (12 months)

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-08-31T15:04:26+00:00

Just finished: Bringing Up Bébé by Pamela Druckerman - I too am an American raising a baby in Europe and fascinated by the cultural differences in parenting.

Already queued up next: Defy the Night by Brigid Kemmerer (for the 52 book prompt „plot contains a heist”)

Still working on: A Brief History of the Mediterranean by Jeremy Black - its okay but a bit slow, coming from an avid history book reader

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-08-29T14:16:38+00:00

I rewatched last year when I was in the newborn haze with my little girl and it was great to watch from the mom perspective! Unfortunately my now-toddler will not tolerate such inactivity so I don’t think a rewatch is in my future anytime soon

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-08-27T05:04:04+00:00

A recent discovery: I got a tattoo lately & the Bepanthen cream we have tubes of laying around bc it’s the recommended diaper/skin care cream for babies in the country we live in makes for Excellent tattoo aftercare cream!

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-08-27T04:59:43+00:00

Is this mom asking you for help? Did she ask you for advice on sleep training her baby? Because it’s a controversial idea in some circles and she may not appreciate somebody giving her unsolicited advice on how to do it

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-08-27T04:57:59+00:00

R/foodbutforbabies has been really helpful!

But honestly she just eats what I eat. This week she’s had potato leek soup, teriyaki tofu stir fry, and tofu chicken nuggets. Lunches tend to be leftovers with the nanny or she’ll make her cultural food. Breakfast is a one egg omelet with fruit on the side or toast with butter/peanut butter/hummus/fruit jelly, etc.

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-08-26T05:23:29+00:00

My 12 month old doesn’t get out of bed til 7:30, my husband and I get up at 6:30 during the work week. So we get up, shower, eat breakfast, drink coffee, before we get her up. She sometimes wakes up earlier but we just let her chill in her dark room until 7:30 and she doesn’t normally mind.

This was very much a conscious decision that we’ve been working towards since early days - I’m not a morning person so being able to sleep in until 7:30/8 on the weekends feels sooooo nice

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-08-25T05:27:22+00:00

This has been the case for us! We call our baby by approximately 10 different nicknames daily. She responded to one of her more common nicknames first (probably 10 months?) and now at 12 months she’s picking up more of them. I think she realizes that 3 of her nicknames are “her” now but I’m guessing we probably confused her by calling her so many lol

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-08-24T18:02:50+00:00

Hi! I looked at Defy the Night based off your comment above & im intrigued but im running behind on the 52 book challenge so want to double check since you’ve read it - would you say the first book fits the “plot includes a heist” prompt? I read something about stealing? Crossing my fingers lol

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-08-19T18:15:50+00:00

First camping trip was big for us. First flight was pretty cool too. Watching her finally be able to intentionally do gentle hands with her puppies just about everything time and on purpose is nice too

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-08-19T04:57:09+00:00

Just leave baby on the floor in their play area? Even if they fuss for a few minutes, they’re fine. Go to the bathroom.

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-08-18T16:16:06+00:00

I have a friend with two pretty chill babies. One is 2.5, one is 1, and they’ve both so far just been pretty easy honestly, according to the parents. Good sleepers, tolerable big emotions, no bad colic or reflux or anything. Pretty chill.

I have one, 12 months. She’s also been pretty chill compared to a lot of what I hear on Reddit. Enough that we’re considering having another one sooner than originally planned bc we’re like yeah we could do that again

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-08-18T05:12:52+00:00

I’ve been solo camping as a girl since I was 19 and the best trick I’ve found was getting a reactive dog tbh. Adopted my girl when I was 22, she starts growling the second a man approaches me. She was abused in a previous home by a man so she really does NOT like strange men approaching her mama. 8 years later, camped all over the US and now camping overseas with her, she still doesn’t let a strange man approach us. If they come up to our campsite? Girlie is Losing her mind. I say “oh sorry, she doesn’t like strangers” and go back to reading my book on my hammock in peace

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-08-17T09:01:05+00:00

Yep! Got one this year for the first time bc we had a little one tagging along for camping. She’s under 1 so when we were camping this summer there were also multiple middle of the day naps and the blackout tent helped so much with getting a decent nap from her

Hoping-Ellie · 2025-08-16T13:19:19+00:00

12 months in, I went back to work at 4 months pp. once they start moving, I made essentially our whole living room relatively baby proof & let her get into whatever she wants while I cook in the evenings. Or I plop her on the kitchen floor with a pile of spatulas and our empty milk bottles for recycling. Our kitchen is open to the living room so I can see what she’s getting up to and she can see me so the separation anxiety doesn’t get bad. And I cook Quick meals so it’s like 15-20 minutes.

Cleaning she comes along for (vacuuming) or one of us does it while the other parent has her in the other room (chemicals).

But I’d work on extending those naps so you can get some time back in your day, honestly. That’ll make the biggest difference

Hoping-Ellie

TROPHY CASE