A few months ago I had the opportunity to review the Adiri Natural Nurser, a bottle that is specifically designed for breast-fed babies. See review here. I know, it sounds like a paradox, a bottle for breast fed babies; but the Adiri Natural Nurser was created with the breast fed baby in mind. Many breast fed babies who have previously refused other bottles have accepted the Adriri Natural Nurser.

Adiri recently wrote to me and told me that they had made some improvements on the Natural Nurser. They offered to send me a sample bottle to use as a giveaway on my blog. I’m happy to report that it has arrived!

The bottle Adiri sent is the fastest flow: 6 month +. The improvements are as follows:

• Improved bottle design that eliminates leaks
• Free Warming Disc
• Beautiful new package with clear, helpful instructions

Giveaway Contest:

Email your funniest baby story to oldschoolnewschoolmom@gmail.com. The winner will receive the Adiri Natural Nurser!

Good luck!

August 2009, Brooklyn, NY. The weather outside is 90 degrees or more. When I walk outside it feels like I am walking into a pizza oven. The sidewalk is emanating heat.

Inside it is just as hot. Our air conditioner is on the fritz and everyone in the apartment notices the intense wave of pure unadulterated heat. Especially my son.

We had to strip this perpetually zooming toddler down to his diaper in order to combat the intense rays of pure hot that invaded our apartment. I was having fantasies of taking my son and a sleeping bag and camping out in a movie theater for the exclusive pleasure of capitalizing on its powerful air conditioning.

Last night, my son was not having the heat. Even his best friend, Egreck the cat could not make him smile by the end of the evening.

Though he gave it his best shot, not even Rupert the infamous platypus was successful at invoking a smile on this hot toddler’s face.

It was just too hot. In fact, it was so hot in my son’s room, even with the ceiling fan blasting and a fan directly pointing on him he was still unhappy. My boyfriend and I racked our brain for a solution. We took him into the living room with us where the air conditioner was limping along. I tried to have him sleep on my chest. He would fall asleep for a few moments and then wake up when one of the cats moved or jumped over the baby gate.

We opened up the pack and play and stuck it directly in front of the handicapped air conditioner.

I put my son in the pack and play and rubbed his head. After much head rubbing and praying to Hashem, he finally drifted off to sleep around 10pm.

For those of you out there with small children and a broken air conditioner, I feel your pain. For people out there with no air conditioner, I am truly sorry. The heat can make anyone lethargic and potentially grouchy.

On that note, I’m off to share a cold glass of water with my son.

The stroller was invented to make the lives of parents a little bit easier. Here’s how it all began:

England 1733: William Kent, a garden architect, was asked by the Duke of Devonshire to design a portable device to carry his children around in. Kent came up with a baby carriage.

England 1965: Owen Maclaren, an aeronautical engineer, inspired by frequent trips with his daughter from England to America, designs a portable light weight stroller which is ideal for traveling. This stroller is called the the “Maclaren Buggy,” or the ” B-01.” Though they have been modified over the years, Maclarens are still popular today.

Which leads me to today’s story. I am the proud owner of a Maclaren. My sister-in-law gave it to me when her daughter out grew it. Thank you, Rosa! Today, however, I made the mistake of leaving it at home.

I thought to myself, my son is finally walking (at 15 months), I’ll let him have a chance to practice his new found skill. I left the house around 9:30am. By 10:00am I was regretting my decision to go stroller-less.

9:30am: We leave the house and jump in the car sans stroller. We drive.

10:00am: Get to Josina’s house feed her cat (She and her brood are away on vacation)

11:00am: We leave Josina’s house and drive to the bank.

11:30am: After a half an hour of looking for parking, I illegally park at a parking meter and do not insert any money into it because I have no change. I take my son out of the car seat and head into the bank.

11:35am: While carrying my 22 lb baby into the bank, I spot a giant white and blue cake that reads “Chase Bank” and appears to have chocolate pudding the center. I steal a piece. I shovel the majority of the cake into my mouth at warp speed hoping that my child doesn’t ask for some. Sugar + toddler = hyper. He does. I give him a very small chunk at the end.

11:40am: While waiting in line to make a deposit, my son decides that he wants to visit each and every Chase worker in their cubicles. One of them takes pity on me and offers to take my cash and deposit it personally so I don’t have to wait on line. I sit in his cubicle (which conveniently has two chairs - one for me and one for my perpetually roaming toddler). Miraculously, my child sits in the second chair, while the banker tells me about his 10 month old girl named “Sage.”

11:55am: I carry my son out to the car and breathe a sigh of relief when I find I didn’t get a ticket. I can’t decide whether or not I should go to Barnes and Noble and buy books for my class or get them from the library. I drive around aimlessly while I am in the midst of vacillating between the two choices. In the mean time my son falls asleep.

12:15pm: I simultaneously find a parking spot and a library. I take my son out of his car seat, which wakes him up. I carry him into the library. While I ask the librarian if he has any of the books I need for my class, my son wiggles out of my arms, runs up to a stack of children’s books and begins throwing them one by one onto the floor. I am too tired to stop him.

12:30pm: The first library did not have any of the books I need. The librarian informed me that the Central library only carries one of the zillion books that I have to read. I drive to the Central library. I park in the parking lot at the Brooklyn Museum. I take my son out of his car seat. As soon as we exit the parking lot I put him down on the sidewalk so he can walk. He turns around and walks in the opposite direction of where we have to go. After several attempts to get him to walk in the right direction I give up and carry his 22 lb body to the library.

12:40pm: By the time we get to the library, both my child and I are drenched in sweat. As soon as he sees the shelves of books he runs up to them, and pulls a book onto the floor: Lewis Carroll’s Jacberwocky. I determine that this means he wants to borrow it. I oblige.

12:45pm: I approach the reference desk to ask for my book. As I am asking the kind and patient librarian for his help, my son (once again) wiggles out of my arms and runs out into the library lobby shouting “Da da da da!.”

Each time I almost tell the librarian the title of the book I am looking for, my son runs away and I have to run after him. This happens at least five or six times before I manage to blurt the title out successfully.

12:50pm: We get to the stairs that lead up to the second floor mezzanine where my book is waiting for me. My son climbs the stairs and as soon as he is done, he attempts to go right back down them. I turn him around in the correct direction and off he goes running. Library patrons are sitting at tables reading and furiously jotting notes down, all the while my child is screaming “Ba ba ba ba!” and searching for things to destroy.

1pm: I find the book and miraculously manage to check it out, but not without some dramatics. My son tries to cut at least five people in line.

1:05pm: We stop at the library cafe for some snacks (pretzels and goldfish), half of which my son eats and half of which he decorates the floor with.

1:10pm: We leave the library and make a sweaty trip back to the car. I alternate carrying him and letting him walk in the wrong direction. An unhelpful stranger points out “He’s very independent!” I want to kill her.

1:20pm: We arrive at the car and drive to the grocery store. We enter the grocery store, and all hell breaks loose. My child zooms down the bread and crackers aisle. He promptly throws five loaves of bread on the floor. I quickly pick put them back. He does the same with six boxes of Townhouse crackers, I put them back. He grabs a box of ice cream cones and runs throughout the store chanting “Aya ya ya ya ya!” I finally manage to distract him with the grocery cart which he insists on pushing.

We get the the dairy aisle. He grabs a container of light yogurt and chucks it on the floor with such force that it explodes. I apologize to the grocery store employee who is stocking the shelves and offer to pay for it. He says “It’s okay, happens all the time!”

1:25pm: We finally get to check out, thank goodness. We see my son’s girlfriend Cynthia. She loves him and always asks when he is going to take her out on date.

1:30pm: After stopping to share a banana with my son, I manage to carry both him and the groceries to the car. I don’t know how.

2pm: We arrive home and with the help of my dad, who graciously opens the door for us, we make it back to the apartment.

Folks, this hectic day was made even more hectic for one reason; I had no stroller with me. Everything I had to do took twice as long. Had I brought the stroller, the destructive incidents involving books, bread and yogurt could have been prevented.

A word to the wise: if you have a toddler and you are going on an outing, bring your stroller. William Kent didn’t invent it for nothing.

Preliminary information obtained from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kent
Further verified by the book: William Kent, Architect, Designer, Painter, Gardener By Michael I. Wilson.

Information obtained from http://www.maclarenbaby.com/gb/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=137&Itemid=479

Ah the single life! I remember those days well. When I could sleep in on Saturdays and stay in my pajamas all day long. Those days are gone. Today, sleeping in is an urban legend.

As far as staying in my pajamas all day, this is not a viable option. The main reason is that my son wants to go out. I’m not sure what happened, but he hit 15 months and all of a sudden he is obsessed with leaving the apartment. He finishes breakfast and as soon as he gets down from the high chair, he walks over to the front door of the apartment, points to it and babbles in his alien baby language. He wants out. I haven’t even had my coffee yet, I can’t even fathom leaving the apartment.

Usually, I’m pretty good about taking him where he wants to go; out. We leave the house when I am properly caffeinated, relatively clean and dressed. But the other day, I had a paper to write for my graduate level education class. My dad graciously offered to take my little man to the playground.

I accepted, but with one condition; he must take pictures. Here’s what he came back with:

It looked like my son had a great time. On the one hand I was glad he got to spend time with his grandpa. On the other hand, I felt guilty that I handed him off to my dad and that I wasn’t with him to experience to the playground myself. Instead I was stuck inside comparing and contrasting the educational philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W.E. Du Bois.

The next day, I faced my mom guilt and took him on a playground excursion of my own:

I have realized that my child is at a point where he needs to get out every day. It is non-negotiable. He can no longer sit with a bunch of toys and play in the house for long periods of time. He is ready to get outside and run around.

I must take his energetic nature into account when planning my day:

Coffee= Check!
Playground Time= Check!