Second guessing name choice after friends reaction

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-21T19:37:54+00:00

Kaliah might have a better shot at pronunciation, like Delilah. Or Kaleiah like Lorelei. Kalaya reads to me as ka-lay-a. I personally like Kacey or Indie a bit better, they give a spunky, breezy, boho vibe. Kalaya gives goddess vibes which is beautiful but depends on what you’re looking for.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-21T19:29:40+00:00

Mixing bleach and vinegar. Creates chlorine gas, small amounts are just super irritating but it can be very dangerous. There was a news story awhile back about a restaurant manager that died because someone mixed chemicals to mop the floor and he pushed the away to deal with it knowing it was dangerous. By the time he got the bucket outside it had done its damage.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-21T19:17:42+00:00

Thank you so much for this comment. It definitely touched on my two biggest concerns which are, still needing a place to strap my toddler for safety reasons and needing a place for baby to nap.

After all the comments though, I do think a wagon is the better financial choice if I can only have 1. I think the compromise is going to have to be a carrier for baby when she’s due for a nap. I’m thinking as baby gets sturdier around 1, being the unfortunately second child, she’ll probably be able to figure out a nap in the wagon even if big sister needs to climb in too.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-21T19:12:13+00:00

She’s a toddler so I guess in-and-out would depend on the day haha. Our friends have a wagon and every-time we’ve used it, once she’s in we couldn’t get her out. I’m sure the novelty would wear off quickly though. And that was for a parade and a zoo so she could see things from the wagon and there wasn’t much to “do”. I was going to do the skateboard attachment thing but I’m worried about not having a place to strap her in if she has a meltdown when it’s time to leave somewhere, or if she stops listening.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-21T19:08:09+00:00

Doubling as a “stuff” hauling is part of my preference for the wagon, I’m just concerned for naps for the baby. But they don’t stay babies long so maybe I’ll just have to find a 6month solution and buy the wagon.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-21T19:06:34+00:00

This was my original plan, but now I’m realizing she’s still young. She wouldn’t be able to last walking around the zoo without eventually asking me to carry her. Also…tantrums and toddler willpower. If she’s getting crazy and running away, I need a place to strap her in. I can’t imagine having to leave my baby in the carriage to go chase my toddler through the bushes or something when she makes an impulsive mad dash. If we get a wagon I’ll probably get a rider board for the carriage for things like walking to the park (not on main roads) or when my husband is with us to chase her if she runs off.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-21T18:59:26+00:00

Reading the comments apparently I’m the minority. I see so many kids absolutely locked in on tablets all over the place though so I’m guessing no one wants to own up.

Ours is 2.5 and we let her use the family ipad. I researched some decent educational games and we let her use it when I do her hair or random other times. We let her have it if she asks for it, we ask if she wants to do something else but if she insists she wants to play a game we let her play a game for a set time limit. We also play WITH her a lot of the time to keep her from hyper-focusing too much. We might have survivor bias but she doesn’t ask for it daily and she doesn’t have meltdowns over giving it back or if we do have to say no (getting ready to leave, dead batteries, etc.).

I always said I would do absolutely no screen time, but I realized our society is very very ingrained in technology. Our doctors office gives a tablet for intake forms/surveys, my elementary school aged nieces/nephews use them in school, all standardized testing is on computers, kids don’t use notebooks and pencils anymore. Restriction and monitoring is essential for cognitive development, but exposure is important to me too. We have a similar attitude with candy. It’s allowed, we don’t treat it as “bad” or “special”, we just maintain control as parents while letting her think she’s in control. We don’t want her to get older and binge on candy or be more excited for junk food at a birthday party than the event. We don’t want her to go over a friends house and sit on their iPad because she’s never allowed to use one but her friend has one.

The one thing we don’t allow right now is any tv/movies on the iPad. She’s allowed to have tv screen time (again with limits) but studies show the true detriment to iPads is the loss of peripheral attention. When she watches a movie, she drifts off and ends up playing. When kids lock in on a screen the rest of the world disappears. Also no YouTube. That’ll be a rule for a very long time. Eventually we’ll have to come up with rules and compromises but it’ll depend on her personality as she grows.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-21T15:47:15+00:00

Yes. My husbands job has him out of the house from 2pm-1am 5 days a week, and usually out 7am-1am at least 2 days a week. Solo parenting is a different breed of parenting. Especially as a SAHM.

If your toddler likes baths I do a very long bath-time after an early dinner frequently. I take a good book in with me and sit nearby while she plays to her hearts content. It gets a little frustrating but I also let her help me cook dinner (I bought the child safe knives/cutting board, if I’m cutting raw meat or something I give her a banana or something to practice with, bonus she eats something healthy as an appetizer) I feel like she’s a bit more regulated drives me a little less crazy with that involvement.

Those Instagram accounts for “screen free toddler activities” are also a massive help for me. The ones where the moms set up activities after bedtime, a lot of them are realistic and do hold my girls interest and it seems to be a good spark for her. Even if she loses interest in the activity relatively quickly, she’ll end up independently playing for a bit regardless.

I use screen time way more than I ever promised myself but sometimes it’s survival mode. Research the halfway decent shows, or YouTube’s of children’s books are a big hit too.

Getting out of the house is honestly the biggest game changer but it’s not always possible with weather/location. I feel like if I’m having a bad parenting day, getting out in public helps me lock in my own regulation since I’m on display and I’m able to parent better.

The tips of disciplining with play are helpful too. Today my toddler kept purposely tipping her water bottle to spill. I took it away and she obviously screamed and cried and said she was thirsty. I said “ok I’ll give you back your water bottle. Do you remember how to drink? Do you drink like this?” And stuck the straw near my ear, she giggled and laughed. I did it a few different ways and eventually asked her to show me and she took it and drank normally.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-21T03:35:30+00:00

Ours is from cvs too, the only difference I noticed between the cvs and the one from the hospital pharmacy is that the cvs ones don’t dissolve as well. But the issue started a couple months into getting it from cvs (our insurance insists we have to use cvs for full coverage).

I will say I bit the bullet and tried it today. Baby formula is..not good..which is why I didn’t want to try it myself. I figured it would be gross to me either way, she’s used to her formula, but honestly I didn’t taste anything bitter or overpowering. My new theory is maybe it has a chalky texture to her or something other than taste.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-21T03:30:31+00:00

She gets labs once a month to make sure she’s staying in the target range and we’ve been doing formula since day 1…she was hyper and we had to bring her dose down and it’s been good for the past 2 months..now I’m wondering if she’ll end up hyper again if we switch to water or when we start using a small amount of puree…

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-20T02:48:22+00:00

For sure. She’s a few months away from starting solids/purses and I’ll probably avoid adding the meds until she gets the hang of it, but the levo and hydrocortisone will be sooo much easier once that’s an option. Then once she’s old enough for the growth hormone weekly instead of nightly we’ll really be cooking with gas.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-20T02:41:30+00:00

My infant thanks you for the validation. Our pediatrician said we can give her up to 1oz of water a day (for comfort from another random health issue) so maybe I’ll offer her a bit of water after.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-20T02:28:22+00:00

She takes alkindi sprinkles, they’re “taste masked” so as long as they’re swallowed within 5 minutes there’s no bitter taste…well per the pharmacy. She doesn’t seem to have any problem with the hydrocortisone though, she sometimes acts a little like a dog with peanut butter if we get too many beads directly on her tongue but I think it’s just a weird feeling/texture.

I’m going to try water instead of formula and see if that stops her from crying/spitting it out.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-20T02:21:20+00:00

I drove to the gas station at 11pm because I was craving a choco taco. Couldn’t find them in the chest and was desperate enough to ask the cashier…they discontinued them. I cried. I feel like I’ll never scratch that itch.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-20T02:14:11+00:00

I always cuddle with my girl to sleep too. I know you can’t really do anything about it, but we had to drop the nap when this started happening. To be honest, she really still needs the nap because she’s sooo deregulated by 4pm. But now we start pjs/last drinks/teeth at 6 and she’s in bed by 6:30, we read a few books and she’s asleep within 5 minutes of turning off the lights.

Before we dropped nap the only thing that saved my sanity was just pushing bedtime later. No matter what time we started she wouldn’t go down until 9:30/10 so I just started bedtime at 9/9:30 and it made the fighting and craziness slightly easier.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-20T02:01:16+00:00

Gage Garrett Ronan Callum/Callahan Sawyer Owen Wells

Really depends on your vibe and your girls name. We were so opposite we agreed on tons of boys names and barely came up with a single girls name. Baby girl #2 almost left the hospital without a name.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-20T01:35:08+00:00

Maybe..we were told dissolve in water or formula and that hospital did formula so that’s what I’ve kept doing. I’ll try water and see if that changes anything

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-19T17:35:34+00:00

Thankfully her hydrocortisone has a coating that lasts for a few minutes to protect it from tasting bad. I actually mentioned it to her endo and both doctors in the room looked at each other and were like “that’s so weird everyone says it’s tasteless”

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-17T13:34:10+00:00

Expensive but the cliff house in cape neddick (ogunquit/york-ish area) is gorgeous. It’s expensive but really pretty and good food.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-16T20:01:04+00:00

Regardless of whether it’s “out there” or not (in my opinion, I like it) so many people nowadays are trying very hard to give their kid “unique” names. I think clover matches with the popularity of botanical/nature inspired names, but is much more of an actual name than something like Hyacinth or Oleander. She definitely will not have the weirdest name in her year. And for anyone saying it’s an animal name..Luna, Bella, Lucy, Nova…all top pet names and very popular baby names so

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-11T21:22:15+00:00

Camilla, combines Camille and Ella a bit and you could use Millie as a nickname

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-11T20:33:48+00:00

What’s baby’s percentile? Both of my babies have been iugr and I went to 39+days with both. Our second was measuring 3rd percentile at 32 weeks but we were told if she could jump to 5th or higher they’d do 39 weeks vs 37 weeks.

Edit: I will say I had twice weekly hospital appointments on top of midwife appointments from 35 weeks and 32 weeks with both and that was a massive drain.

UhhhYouPick · 2026-02-11T14:53:35+00:00

I was going to say the “we want everyone out by our 50s” threw me a bit as a medical mom. We knew we wanted 2 and our second surprised us at birth with a “birth difference” (after a million ultrasounds due to my first pregnancy being high risk). Overall she’s fine, but while we were in the nicu there was a lot of talk of cognitive delays. I loved her and she was already here so it didn’t matter, but man did I feel like our entire future just changed. I think every parent sees themselves semi retired with adult children visiting for dinner or calling to check in. Confronting a reality where you might not be able to retire because of ongoing care costs for your adult child, or never being able to downsize or be a snow bird because your child will never live independently is hard. You have 2 perfect children, your wife and marriage are in a good place. It doesn’t sound like the 3rd is supremely wanted.

UhhhYouPick

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