decisions

Inspired by a blogger friend at Our Growing Family, I've put together a list of some of our parenting decisions. I might make this a semi-regular series, as I know there are so many more decisions to come.

1. Our kids are belly sleepers and have been since about 3 months. Sleep is important, especially for parents, and getting 3 hrs of sleep in a row was really important by then.

2. Neither girl takes a pacifier. They haven't since about 6 weeks.

3. We don't use a monitor at night, much less a movement monitor.

4. My amazing wife provides the majority of their food. Breastfeeding didn't click, but pumping did, and I'm so proud she was able to provide for them 100% for 8 months, and still is giving them 80% breastmilk. We buy generic, cheap as I can find, formula for the rest.

5. We vaccinate as the doctor tells us to.

6. We didn't have a full sized swing, and our babies never slept in them at night.

7. Despite having multiples, we are not, by any stretch of the imagination, on a strict feeding or nap schedule.

8. We go out in public ALL the time. We sit in high chairs. We eat off tables. We sit in carts. We don't own a cover for any of these things.

9. The girls have been at a daycare center since 5.5 months. I couldn't be happier with their care and am somewhat more comfortable leaving them there while we work than with their grandmas all day.

10. We make a lot of their baby food, and give them a lot of table food, but we also feed commercial purees when we're out and for meat.

11. We've done Cry It Out. We don't rock to sleep. We do let them fall asleep on the bottle.

12. We medicate babies who wake in the middle of the night these days, under the assumption it is teething pain or illness.

13. We use carriers. And strollers.

14. I have zero guilt about working and putting them in daycare.

15. We don't sanitize, well, anything.

16. We cloth diaper 99% of the time.

17. We don't own an infant tub.