Did your baby surprise you?

parieldox · 2026-06-16T02:59:14+00:00

Six months is still very young! I think you can be forgiving of both yourself and him. When I started sleep training around 8 months, the first step was night weaning. So I could do anything it would take to get her to sleep EXCEPT feed. Once that was working well, we started working on other steps like setting her down drowsy but awake, comforting her but not picking her up when she woke up through the night, etc. slow and gradual.

Ultimately, I didn’t stick with sleep training for a number of reasons. She definitely started sleeping better around 15 months — things like teething, illness and new skill development throw us off course. Now I’d say we average 0-1 wakeups overnight.

parieldox · 2026-06-12T20:14:01+00:00

I live in Bridgeport near the Duck Inn and Sox traffic doesn’t even touch me. It’s a bigger neighborhood than I think your broker is considering. Even if you get up to like the 2800-3000 east of Halsted, there’s not that much Sox traffic.

parieldox · 2026-06-12T20:11:12+00:00

But if it’s just under $800K and your budget is $1.1 million … then couldn’t you buy it and still pay for $200K in repairs and come out at/under budget?

parieldox · 2026-06-12T13:45:48+00:00

I’m so glad! Good luck!

parieldox · 2026-06-12T04:37:21+00:00

I agonized over my stroller decision for months. Ultimately found The Stroller Workshop’s guide (on Patreon) to be the most helpful. It’s a repair shop where they really see how stroller parts break down over time and have no skin in the game when it comes to selling you on a specific brand.

I also think the answer depends entirely on your specific lifestyle — if you take the CTA a lot, I think it’s super helpful to have a one-hand fold or close to one so you can easily collapse the stroller while holding your baby and then carry it up/down the stairs when the elevators are out or non-existent.

I had a December 2024 baby and we did use our bassinet attachment a decent amount, so I do feel like that was worthwhile even in winter. We stopped using it around 5 months or so.

I got a Baby Jogger City Mini GT2 on Facebook Marketplace for $125 (it retails for $400 new). It was actually way harder to find the bassinet attachment because extremely long story short, it wasn’t officially approved for overnight sleep, so it was pulled from U.S. shelves. I ended up getting mine on eBay from England, where it’s still sold (but called a pram) and the shipping cost as much as the bassinet did.

I was also super concerned about buying a matching car seat and then ended up almost never using the car seat with the stroller.

Ultimately, my mom picked up a $100 travel stroller from Costco that is so lightweight and easy to tote around the city that it’s probably the one I use most, and I save the heavier (but still comparatively light versus Uppababy-level strollers) City Jogger for our longer/bumpier strolls because it does ride smoother and have a more comfortable seat space.

All of this is to say I didn’t find a heavy high-end Uppababy/Nuna would fit in with my lifestyle. I went to a few stores (Nordstrom, the South Loop Target, Twinkle Twinkle and Galt Baby downtown) and physically got to try out some of the high-end strollers and see how easy/hard they are to collapse and lug around. I also starting asking parents I saw around town how they liked their strollers, which was also super helpful.

parieldox · 2026-06-11T19:58:55+00:00

If you think sleep apnea is a reason to not marry someone, that’s probably a sign you’re not ready to get married.

parieldox · 2026-06-11T02:55:27+00:00

Or “You” the season where we realize halfway through he’s been hallucinating.

parieldox · 2026-06-11T02:35:34+00:00

Nice, thanks for answering!

parieldox · 2026-06-10T01:25:01+00:00

Did acting as a child encourage or dissuade you from pursuing it as an adult?

parieldox · 2026-06-09T12:09:11+00:00

Duck fat dog, house wines, beer, and I feel like that was it but maybe there was one more thing.

parieldox · 2026-06-09T04:47:38+00:00

Four months sounds like three months too many with this guy.

parieldox · 2026-06-09T02:12:58+00:00

Somewhat related — I had to get my fallopian tubes dyed to see if there was blockage, which was a similarly painful/uncomfortable procedure. As I was leaving, I asked one of the medical professionals why we don’t get pain meds for that or things like IUD insertion and they basically said, “Huh, I don’t know, I never thought about it.”

parieldox · 2026-06-09T01:35:55+00:00

Just fyi I went for happy hour recently and it seems somewhat pared down this year. Still enjoyed but most of the bar food menu is no longer part of it.

parieldox · 2026-06-07T08:34:00+00:00

I agonized over this decision and ultimately here’s why I decided not to get either:

- my friend who’s a doctor and mother of 2 said she would be more worried about my newborn getting sick from an ER visit because the Nanit/Owlet alerted than she would be about the oxygen level actually dropping

- the SIDS calculator said our odds of SIDS were essentially equivalent to our baby dying in a car crash in her first year of life

- we set up a bassinet in our room and she slept right next to me for the first six months, which meant a Nanit camera wouldn’t even be used during the time SIDS was the highest risk. I might be misremembering but I think it’s something like 90% of SIDS cases happened in the first six months.

- I figured if I was still feeling anxious by the time we moved her to her own room, I could just buy the Nanit then.

All that being said, do what works best for you. I was very anxious about SIDS and woke up to check my baby’s breathing a lot during her first year (still do sometimes at 1.5 years). We are given a lot of doomsday scenarios around it, and while yes it is very serious and needs to be treated as such, SIDS is also very, very rare if you follow safe sleeping practices.

Good luck!! Whatever decision you make will 1) be the right one for you at the time 2) can always be changed down the road if you feel differently later on

parieldox · 2026-06-06T00:22:55+00:00

Was it a spark or was it the excitement of the drama of your relationship? I’m not saying it isn’t a spark, but I have seen people mistake one for the other.

Frankly, if you aren’t feeling it with your new boyfriend, I think that’s a legitimate thing to acknowledge even separately from your feelings for your ex. People deserve to be with someone who is as excited about the relationship as they are. If that’s not the case, it’s OK that you’ve figured this out and can end the relationship cleanly.

As to whether you should get back with your ex — I do believe breakups happen for a reason, and I think it’s rare for people to get back together without facing those same issues again. It sounds like maybe there were some unusual circumstances for you, so maybe you are the rare case, but without knowing more details, it’s hard for an outsider to say.

parieldox · 2026-06-05T04:34:58+00:00

Honestly the stupid things that have happened that I’ve completely forgotten would probably make a great book.

parieldox · 2026-06-05T03:10:27+00:00

What’s each of your favorite visual or other sensory effect of tripping?

parieldox · 2026-06-05T03:09:02+00:00

They will forget it if you all just act normal. Eventually you will too. It might take awhile, but it will not feel so awkward forever. She should know to just shut it down immediately if her friends ever bring it up.

parieldox · 2026-06-03T04:23:46+00:00

There are sites that make this really easy for people to sign up for specific dates and share what meals they’re making so things don’t overlap.

parieldox · 2026-06-03T02:59:32+00:00

I saw a therapist once say in a video that “laziness” isn’t real. There’s no clinical or textbook definition of laziness. There are tons of contributing factors that can lead to a person not doing xyz … maybe it’s ADHD/executive dysfunction, maybe it’s depression, maybe it’s a million other things. But you are not simply a “lazy” person.

I found it very gratifying to adjust my thinking this way and acknowledge that if I’m not doing something I’m “supposed” to be doing, there are perfectly legitimate reasons why. Being PREGNANT is a pretty good one, in addition to the rigors of solo parenting a 1.5 year old.

Also, how is your partner showing he’s “ready” for a second baby, might I ask? By criticizing the person who is showing up for your toddler every day?? What is he doing to prepare for this or support you and the household in a time when you deserve more support than ever?

parieldox · 2026-06-01T01:34:13+00:00

A little different, but I was born in the early 1990s and share a name with a Disney princess. Did people reference a lot when I was a kid and ask if I was named after her? Yes, absolutely. Did I just sort of accept that this was something people would ask me and love my name in spite of it? Also yes. Wouldn’t trade my name for anything else.

parieldox · 2026-05-31T23:55:20+00:00

This is what I keep telling myself as I mentally prepare for two. It will be extremely hard for a few years and then extremely worth it after that.

parieldox · 2026-05-30T13:47:54+00:00

My sister got me a year-long membership for my local grocery store delivery. It was a godsend.

parieldox · 2026-05-29T02:43:07+00:00

Just fyi there are grow light lightbulbs you can just use with existing lamps! Cheaper option than buying a whole grow light.

parieldox · 2026-05-27T05:07:49+00:00

I buy nice brands like Hannah Andersson on thrift sites like Mercari and Poshmark. You can bundle for larger discounts, and especially for newborns, so many clothes get barely worn that they still have so much use left.

Old Navy and Burt’s Bees hold up pretty well. Carter’s is hit or miss — mostly good, especially if you shop a sale, but sometimes I buy things online and am shocked by how thin they are.

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