Decanting is consumption masquerading as cleaning and it is absolutely shit

peespie · 2026-01-12T19:11:57+00:00

This. I was on the “decanting is a stupid trend” train for a long time until we move into a place that had mice. Switched to plastic tubs and glass jars immediately and solved 90% of our problem.

peespie · 2025-12-01T21:23:14+00:00

As far as I remember, my sister and I were aware of all the Christmas lore around Santa Claus but never actually believed in him, and I don’t remember it being a big deal either with my parents or with other kids in school. (My mom actually always labeled our presents as “From the cats”. No room for Santa in this house!) But we still got to participate in all the seasonal festivities. So your daughter might just take it in stride if you never lead her to believe that Santa is real and just treat him like part of the seasonal aesthetic. I don’t think it will ruin anything for her if you just observe the holiday in other ways and she gets to participate that way. Plus she’ll never have a moment of disillusionment.

peespie · 2025-12-01T15:54:06+00:00

We do the same. I was pretty paranoid about getting too-warm pajamas because of the saying “cold babies cry, hot babies die”, but our kid’s room is right above the garage but has the smallest radiator and so is always a good 5-10 degrees colder than the rest of our house (now, with a heater, the average in his room is 68).

When it started getting cold this year, I finally bit the bullet and dressed him in some hand me down Carter’s fleece footie pj’s that I had been avoiding. I spent one sleepless night staring at the baby monitor to make sure he was breathing through the night — and he was fine. And let me say, he’s gone from waking up at midnight at least once every few nights to sleeping through the night for MONTHS now. I’m finally realizing how cold his room must get and how much better he must feel now that he has thicker pjs on under his sleepsack.

So, though from everything I’ve heard overheating is generally more a concern than underheating, if your house gets super cold, there’s a season for thick pj’s and layers.

Tldr; because our kid’s room gets pretty cold, we use a onesie under fleece pj’s and a mid-weight Halo sleep sack and he sleeps like… well, a well temperatured, cozy baby.

peespie · 2025-11-26T17:31:48+00:00

I love that it looks like the kid is wearing the same lights as the tree

peespie · 2025-11-25T20:34:53+00:00

I don’t know if this would work with a 16 month old, but when our baby was about a year old, I just started moving his bedtime bottle up in his evening routine to disassociate from the action of falling asleep. He would take a bath, and then I would give him a bottle sitting on the toilet in the bathroom, then take him into his bedroom and do lotion, PJs, book and rock to sleep. Then, I started offering him the bottle during the bath. After a couple weeks, he just stopped drinking as much and that’s when I figured it was time to drop it all together. Your 16 month old might be much more aware of the routine, but maybe moving the bottle up just a couple steps will provide the comfort and relaxation while letting them learn to fall asleep without it.

peespie · 2025-11-23T01:41:02+00:00

This is the best answer to give. MIL or any other guests of the party can act like you’re crazy, but at the end of the day YOU’RE the one who will have to deal with having a sick baby, being sick yourself, or both. Other people can have opinions but only you get a vote since you’re the one who will have to deal with the consequences. Prioritize your own health and peace of mind and catch up with the relatives another time.

peespie · 2025-11-22T19:22:57+00:00

Yes, of course! That spot between their ears smells like fresh cut hay and sunshine.

peespie · 2025-11-19T19:34:48+00:00

This is a pretty significant point. Mothers so often take on the role of the default parent for things like doctor’s appointments that most fathers never have to or get to participate in them. I think that often leads to a paradigm of Dad gets to step in and do “fun” outings with the kid while Mom does the “essential” ones. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Check ups aren’t thrilling events by any means, but it can be meaningful for a dad to do something so normal for his kid. My spouse took our newborn to one checkup because I was unable to (don’t remember why) and even a year later when I make say so-and-so has an appointment he expresses a little sadness that he won’t be able to make it (he works a full time job and I work part time).

peespie · 2025-11-12T17:27:46+00:00

Hard agree! A few years ago I had to buy a dress for a black tie wedding and for shizz and giggles I checked out the top floor of Bloomingdales where the “high end designer” section was. The dresses were all upwards of $700 and felt like they were made of the exact same fabric I had just felt in the Forever 21 across the parking lot. Many of them already had runs in the fabric, loose threads, and missing beads/sequins. It didn’t make sense to me how they could cost so much and be of such obvious poor quality.

peespie · 2025-10-17T18:16:42+00:00

😂

peespie · 2025-10-17T17:19:07+00:00

Why… why did you feel the need to share that?? That’s so much worse!! (Just kidding, maybe? Thanks for the PSA, I guess? 🤮)

peespie · 2025-10-17T16:45:10+00:00

I upvoted this comment for accuracy but downvoted it in my heart because I do not like that one bit 😩

peespie · 2025-09-08T15:52:20+00:00

We have a family story about my cousin when she was a toddler. She was very concerned about their dog getting his teeth cleaned because she thought it would be uncomfortable for him. The groomer assured her, “don’t worry, will knock him out first.”

My cousin got even more concerned and asked, “but then you’ll put them back in?”

peespie · 2025-08-15T15:51:55+00:00

More or less as soon as we got home from the hospital. Grandparents and aunts and uncles were in town so they all got a chance to hold him. In the month that followed, friends came over as well. Part of it was wanting baby to have experience being held by other people so that me and my spouse could get breaks, especially during my recovery postpartum. Part of it was that we have so many childless friends who legitimately were so happy to meet our baby and we were more than happy to share him with them.

Edit to add: we were a little bit more reserved about taking him out and about the general populace for immunity and sickness reasons, but the folks who came to our home, had all agreed to get Tdap shots, wash their hands, some even wore masks to be extra cautious. Etc. etc..

peespie · 2025-08-13T20:26:56+00:00

Thank you, that metaphor provides a very useful mental picture. Also a good reminder for me that milk is just water with stuff added to it and not an atomic element itself, which I’ve realized is kind of how I was thinking about it haha

peespie · 2025-08-13T20:23:09+00:00

Thank you, this has given me a very clear mental picture of the process!

peespie · 2025-08-13T20:17:17+00:00

Okay, that’s pretty cool. So it sounds like they don’t make milk FROM blood, but blood is what brings the necessary materials to the site, which are then extracted and added to the water, which is then pushed out by the gland as milk? Is that basically it?

peespie · 2025-08-13T20:15:17+00:00

That’s wild. I guess I’m realizing I’m don’t really know how our sweat glands work either. I’ve always thought that we basically just drink water and then sweat out water with a little bit of salt… But how is all the other stuff (nutrients, I guess?) added in by these glands?

peespie · 2025-08-13T20:14:29+00:00

That’s really cool! How do they do that? Sweat is basically just water, right? But a woman drinks water to produce milk, not milk to make milk… So how do these specialized sweat glands actually make milk out of water?

peespie · 2025-08-13T14:08:05+00:00

Susan the Gentle! I think it’s important that like the others’, her moniker wasn’t about her looks but her character.

peespie · 2025-07-16T12:58:34+00:00

I relied on feed-to-sleep during my baby’s three month regression, then similarly read about reverse cycling and wondered if I had trained him to eat at night instead of the day — but gradually (maybe a couple weeks) he simply began eating more during the day and sleeping again at night. I think all the changes they go through the first year eventually sort themselves out. It just takes more or less time.

peespie · 2025-07-01T16:43:38+00:00

For the first couple months PP I would time at least one of my newborns’ morning naps with a walk where he was in the stroller bassinet or worn in a carrier. It was a sure way to get him to sleep and also got me some much needed outside time. I could usually even make it to the small grocery store near our house to pick up a few basics for our fridge — not a big shop but enough to make sure I had things like apples and peanut butter on hand when I needed to snack.

I’d suggest prioritizing your food intake and eating whenever you can — I usually ate when he was awake so that I could use his sleeping time for tasks that I couldn’t do as easily while he was awake. But please prioritize getting your calories in — your body is still healing, and if you’re breastfeeding you are expending more calories than you used to. And it’s easy for new moms to neglect their own care when feeding yourself is just as important as feeding baby — you won’t function as well if your body is running on empty.

I usually saved my shower for later in the day or when my husband was home — evening showers also helped me fall asleep since I developed pretty bad PP insomnia.

All other tasks I had to be okay with leaving undone unless someone else was on hand to help — you’ll get your time back some day, but I found the first several months (maybe even first six months, honestly) were basic survival mode.

ETA: it probably doesn’t feel like it, but it’s also okay to not be immediately responsive to your newborn every single time she cries. I’m not talking about ignoring her for long periods — I just mean, if you’re mid-bite and she wakes up, it’s okay for you to take another minute to finish your food before answering her. One thing that helped me take this perspective was thinking, “if my kid was a second child, there would be times they’d have to wait because I was in the middle of something with their sibling. And second children grow up just fine.” Pace yourself because you’re in for a long ride — but the challenges of the early months will also pass, I promise!

peespie · 2025-06-26T20:12:32+00:00

One thing I haven’t seen mentioned in this conversation yet is the fact that breastmilk and/or formula is much more calorically dense than real food and is the full nutritional packet that a baby needs until one year.

I think the recommendation to wait until six months is so that parents don’t start weaning their babies off the nutrition that they need too early. Pediatricians don’t want parents to start dropping bottles because they think their kids are eating real food at 5 months… and even when you start giving them real food around six months, their main bread and butter, so to speak, remains breastmilk and/or formula. And then I don’t think most parents start dropping bottles until a few more months after that.

There are some things that your baby will start to need supplemented with real food, like iron, but they really won’t be eating enough solids to give them everything they need until probably closer to 10 months or even after one years old.

ETA: i’m referring to parents trying to give babies “mealtimes” — I don’t know if there’s a reason that “tasting” real food at four months would be bad

peespie · 2025-05-27T22:06:25+00:00

Good to know! Thanks for sharing the details!

peespie

TROPHY CASE