Geek in Heels - Page 51

Mar 7, 2012 • In Aerin, Baby, Personal

Aerin’s Eczema Treatments

Our younger daughter may be a happier and easier baby than Claire, but as with many things in life her merry temperament seems to have come with a tradeoff: her sensitive, eczema-prone skin.

No one else in J or my immediate families suffer from eczema so this is brand-new territory for us. (Our pediatrician told us that if neither parent has eczema, there is still a 20% chance of the child having it. If one parent has it? 60%. And if both parents have eczema? 80%.) And while Aerin’s eczema has improved significantly since I quit breastfeeding — before, she had pus oozing from sores all over her face and body — she still suffers from extremely dry, itchy skin with the occasional flares.

In Aerin’s case, the flares do not seem to bother her nearly as much as the general itchiness of her entire skin. Without any interventions, she will just scratch and scratch until she draws blood. One time, she was scratching behind one ear (and thus, pulling) so much that the top of her ear ever so slightly separated from her head!

We also know that the itchiness does not allow her to sleep as well as she could be. 🙁

Our little lady with folded hands during tummy time

Now, at 4 months of age, we finally seem to have gotten some sort of a routine down to help relieve our little girl, and I wanted to share them here just in case anyone is in the same boat as us.

Our first line of defense is 2.5% hydrocortisone cream, which our pediatrician prescribed (I believe that you can get 1% over the counter?). However, prolonged use of steroid creams can cause you to build immunity to them, so I do not like using it alone too much — only when the flares look especially red or painful. When her skin looks red but doesn’t look too bad, I mix one-part hydrocortisone cream with one-part petroleum jelly and apply it to the affected areas.

Every sufferer of eczema respond to baths differently, and through trial and error we have discovered that in Aerin’s case, giving her a bath every night is better than every other day or even once every two days. However, we will only use soap/shampoo every other day. (We have tried various brands and types and found Aveeno Baby Soothing Relief Creamy Wash to work the best because it is the most moisturizing.) And on the “off” days, we will give her an oatmeal bath using Aveeno Baby Soothing Bath Treatment.

I slather Aveeno Baby Soothing Relief Moisture Cream all over her body whenever it feels dry. For some reason, this one seems more moisturizing — and as a result, brings better relief — than the Eczema Therapy Moisturizing Cream. I also like that it is unscented, while the Eczema Therapy cream has a light flowery scent.

(If you can’t tell by now, I have become a huge fan of Aveeno’s Baby line of products for sensitive/eczema-prone skin. Other brands, like Burt’s Bees, California Baby, and Earth’s Best, turned me off with their strongly scented products.)

We have stopped dressing her in synthetic fabrics or anything remotely irritating and only use 100% cotton. (Luckily, most of Claire’s old stuff fits this criteria.) My parents had bought us a huge case of Dreft from Costco when Claire was still an infant — and it has lasted us practically an entire year! — but we stopped using that due to its fragrance and started using Tide Free & Gentle instead.

Finally, our pediatrician prescribed us a medication called EpiCeram® which has been working wonders. As the doctor explained it, eczema occurs when a protective barrier that is present in normal skin is missing, and EpiCeram helps form a synthetic barrier with lipids and fatty acids. We apply EpiCeram all over Aerin’s body twice a day, and Aerin’s itching went down remarkably after just one day of use. The medication is quite expensive (our insurance co-pay is $45! 😯 ) but completely worth the money in my book — and if you go to their website, they offer a 25% off coupon (for up to $25) for three prescriptions.

Our doctor tells us that some babies grow out of eczema by the age of 2, while others will live with it for the rest of their lives. We sincerely hope that Aerin will be one of the lucky 40% whose symptoms improve or even disappear. Because even with all these treatment methods, she still remains in some discomfort and as a result, we continue to have her wear protective mittens (Especially for Baby Newborn Scratch Free Mittens are the best ones) and keep her swaddled when she sleeps, despite the fact that she should have ideally grown out of these items at this age.

Do you or your baby have eczema? What are your favorite treatment options?

The Ultimate Iron Man Cosplay

Wait for it…

Via Fashionably Geek.

Cool Tool Tuesdays: Oscar Blandi Pronto Invisible Volumizing Dry Shampoo Spray

Welcome to today’s installment of Cool Tool Tuesdays, where I feature a favorite item from my life and spotlight it so that others who are not familiar with the product may also benefit from it. A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, hardware, material, or website that I have personally tried and love.

Do you have any questions about today’s cool tool? Would you like an item featured in the future? Please leave a comment to this post, or send me a message via my contact form. Enjoy!

I have always read that you should not shampoo your hair every day because daily washing strips your hair of beneficial oils and damages your locks. However, whenever I tried this trick, I ended up with greasy, lifeless hair that made me feel dirty and gross.

That’s when I heard about dry shampoo. And today, I will be highlighting my favorite dry shampoo: the Oscar Blandi Pronto Invisible Volumizing Dry Shampoo Spray.

Dry shampoo is exactly what it sounds like: a product that helps keep you hair clean (or at least feeling clean) without the use of water. Dry shampoo technically does not cleanse; it uses powders which help absorb the oils in your hair.

I have tried several brands of dry shampoo in my quest to go shampoo-free every other day. Okay, fine — the real reason I sought a good dry shampoo was my desire for lazy hair. 😛

The different types of dry shampoo I have tried over the years are:

Suave Professionals Dry Shampoo Spray
Bumble and Bumble Black Hair Powder
Ojon Full Detox Rub-Out Dry Cleansing Spray
Oscar Blandi Pronto Dry Shampoo
Oscar Blandi Pronto Invisible Dry Shampoo Spray

I hated the strong scent of the Suave. The Bumble and Bumble left black splotches on my scalp, as well as my clothes and floor. The Ojon weighed my hair down. And while I loved the Oscar Blandi Pronto Dry Shampoo for the way it soaked up oil, I hated its messy powder application.

The Oscar Blandi Pronto Dry Shampoo has a spray version available, but I caught myself reaching for the Pronto Invisible Dry Shampoo Spray instead — the difference between the two is that the Invisible Dry Shampoo Spray is invisible, not white, and it is designed to boost your hair’s volume.

The results? I now look forward to my in-between shampoo days because my hair looks, and performs better with the Oscar Blandi Pronto Invisible Dry Shampoo Spray. My hair has so much volume, and is much easier to style with the help of this dry shampoo…sometimes, I will even use it on clean hair when my hair is misbehaving because it helps texturize my hair just enough to help a style set!

The Oscar Blandi Pronto Invisible Dry Shampoo Spray is a bit on the expensive side at $23. But Sephora sells a travel-size version for $11, and you can always try it at a store before you choose to buy.

‘Star Wars’ Vehicles Art

I love the raw, urban look of these prints by Nicholas Hyde. Be sure to check out the rest of his Etsy shop for other geektastic posters, inclduing LOTR, Harry Potter, and X-Men!

Via Geek Tyrant.

Three Notes of Superficiality

One…

Last week, I got a haircut. I hadn’t gotten a cut in over six months, and with the post-partum hair loss I have been experiencing (it’s not as bad as last time, but it’s still pretty disgusting), my hair was in dire need of some servicing.

I was about to go make an appointment with my usual stylist but then I forced myself to reconsider. Do I really need to spend $100 on a haircut? The answer was no. So I decided to take a chance on a little, hole-in-the wall salon just 10 minutes away in Secaucus, NJ…

Dark hair is difficult to photograph when you’re looking to highlight its layers. (Also, webcam
pictures aren’t that great.) I tried to fluff my hair out a bit to make the layers stand out, but
it ended up looking messy instead. Oh, well.

My stylist was a soft-spoken Japanese immigrant who was absolutely meticulous with a pair of scissors. She really listened to what I requested (a rarity among Asian stylists), and did such a fantastic job with the blow-out that I actually considered going back to her in the future for blow-outs before special occasions, when I have never gone to a salon just for a blow-out before!

The price for the cut was $50 — pretty high in other parts of the country, I’m sure, but very reasonable in my neck of the woods. I will definitely be returning to this salon and stylist for my next cut!

Two…

I have never been the mom to carry around JUST a diaper bag when going out with my baby. I see diaper bags as just that: a bag to carry around essentials for the baby, not for myself. Besides, I never liked the idea of my stuff getting mixed up with the baby’s.

So I have always carried around a separate bag. I know, it’s very impractical. At first, I was able to get by with my usual medium-sized shoulder bags but they soon became too bulky and oftentimes heavy. (There must exist some law of physics that state that the larger a woman’s bag, the more stuff she feels she must carry with her at all times.) So I downsized to clutches/wristlets, but those became annoying because they usually require one hand devoted to them.

That is when I had my epiphany. The kind that only sleep-deprived parents get during a middle-of-the-night feeding, the type that makes you feel like you just discovered gravity, only to later realize that the rest of the population already knows about this and YOU’re the idiot for not having caught on earlier.

The cross-body clutch.

J was very gracious to insist on getting me something nice with his hard-earned bonus money. I chose the above bag, which can be used with gym clothes as well as a night on the town. Better yet, the color is a discontinued one so I got it for $100 off. Score!

Three…

Remember how I had lost all 50 lbs of my pregnancy weight with Claire within just three months of giving birth to her?

And remember how I had also gained 50 lbs with Aerin, but I wasn’t worried because I thought the weight would just melt off magically again?

Well, I was wrong.

After losing 30 lbs in the first month, my weight loss slowed considerably. As in, I have only lost an additional 5 lbs since then.

So now, at 4 months post-partum, I have only lost 35 lbs, and I still have a good 15 more to go. 🙁

It’s time to step up the weight-loss plan. Or, in my case, start a weight-loss plan because I didn’t actually have one before. It’s getting a bit depressing to look at a closet full of clothes, knowing that you can’t fit into 95% of your own inventory. It’s not only my vanity talking either — it’s economical as well, because buying a new wardrobe a size up can be expensive, y’all!

Reverent Sundays: Child-Like Innocence?

Welcome to today’s installment of Reverent Sundays, where I write about an aspect of my faith. This can deal with recent books I have read on Christianity, my thoughts on religion and current issues, as well as particular messages I find touching and/or powerful. I am aware that most of my readers are not religious, and that is fine — you are more than welcome to not read these posts if they make you uncomfortable, enrage you, or bore you to tears. I am open to debates and discussions in the comments section as long as everyone remains respectful. Enjoy!

I love my children. I am amazed whenever I gaze upon their faces. I take delight in their happiness. And as I have said in the past, becoming a mother is helping me be a better person — and bringing me closer to God.

But, as long-time readers of this blog may know, motherhood has not been easy for me. And never has the doctrine of inherent sin been more clear to me until I had babies and witnessed their little bodies and spirits already be tainted by sin.

But wait — doesn’t Jesus tell us that “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Luke 18:17)? Yes, and this is certainly one of the most-quoted verses of the Bible, and for good reason: we must all embrace Christ with a childlike faith. (See “Like a Child” for a succinct list of qualities of a childlike faith.) But this does not mean that all children are innocent!

We do not teach our children to throw tantrums. We do not teach our children to be selfish. We do not teach our children to hit others, throw objects, or lie (studies show that infants begin to lie as early as 6 months of age!). Yet they do these things without incitement, as if they were ingrained in them from the start.

Non-believers may call these survival instincts, or even just human nature. We call them the by-products of original sin — inherent sin. Because we ALL (even tiny babies!) are sinners and fall short the glory of God.

This may seem a bit harsh, and even discouraging. But I do not see it as so. Instead, I look at my girls — at their imperfections, their sins…and I realize the sheer amount of love that I, as a sinner, have for them and become simply OVERCOME. Because the amount of love that this sinner has for these sinners, knowing that it is IMPERFECT love, makes me grasp just how much more and how perfect God’s love must be for us.

Every day I remind myself what our pastor taught us at Claire’s baptism class: our #1 job as Christian parents should be to make sure that our children will never know a day when they did not feel loved by God. And I like to add my own reminder to this reminder, that I should strive my best to love our children the way that God loves us, and I pray that God will help me do so.

Ingenius ‘Back to the Future’ Trilogy Posters

Three things I love about these posters:

They can be displayed separately or together.
Each one has as its background pivotal locations from each movie.
The minimalistic yet still completely recognizable figures of Marty McFly at the bottom of each poster.

These screen-printed posters were printed on a limited edition run of 420 (haha) and sold out from Mondo within minutes. Did anyone else notice that the price was $88? 😉

Via trfling.

The Serious One vs The Happy One

At about this time last year, I would often wonder if I were doing something wrong with Claire. Yes, every new mother has her moments of doubt regarding childcare, but the type of worry that went through my mind was of a different sort — I was concerned because Claire was such a serious, intense baby.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a baby frown that much!” was a phrase I heard often.

Claire at four months old

Now that we have Aerin, whose personality has really started to surface in the past month or so, I know that I was foolish to have worried with Claire — it was just her personality! She is a pensive, serious type who only truly shines in environments and with people she loves the most, just like her mama.

In stark contrast to her older sister, Aerin is very much a happy and affectionate baby. She started to responsively smile and laugh out loud a lot faster than Claire did, and is already “talking” up a storm. And when strangers see her? “What a content little girl!” The difference between the two girls is so remarkable that even our pediatrician commented it on it.

Not only is Aerin a much happier baby than Claire was, she is an easier one too. Aerin began sleeping in 7-8 hour stretches through the night when she was just 8 weeks old. Claire didn’t get to that point until she was about 7 months old, even with sleep training! And while Claire would just sometimes cry and cry for hours at a time for seemingly no reason, J likes to say that Aerin “cries with a purpose” — meaning that she will only cry if something is wrong. (She does have her moments here and there. But I assume this is typical of all babies, no?)

And herein lies my observation as a mother to a difficult baby as well as an easy baby: a happy and easy baby is soooo much easier to bond with. This is not to say that parents of easy babies have lesser bonds with their children, but that they may have had an easier time bonding with them. After all, isn’t it generally easier to get along with, and more quickly befriend people who are friendly and sociable?

Sometimes, I can’t help but wonder how things might have been like if we had had Aerin first, or if Claire were an easier baby. Would I still have been accused of having post-partum depression? Would I still have shed that many tears? Would I have been shouting from the rooftops, “I love my baby! I love motherhood! I love my life!”?

J and I tell our friends that we feel as if we’ve paid our dues with Claire, and that it was only fair Aerin turned out to be such a happy and easy baby. And we are both grateful that we had the difficult one first, because going from hard to easy is always more preferable to the reverse. That, added to the fact that life with two kids just 13 months apart is hard enough as it is.

Does it seem like we love Claire any less, or that we are resentful of her? I hope not — that’s as far from the truth as it can get! Because while an easy baby may be easier to bond with, it seems that difficult babies force deeper bonds more quickly. 🙂

Bloggy Thursdays: Animated jQuery Drop-Down Menu

Welcome to this installment of Bloggy Thursdays, where I share with my fellow bloggers tips and tutorials to maximize and better your blog. While I do not consider myself an expert, I do like to think that after 10+ years of blogging — in addition to my technical knowledge — I know more than the average blogger when it comes to making your blog more appealing to readers.

Do you have any comments, questions, or topics you’d like to see covered here? Please send me a message via my contact form. Enjoy!

Do you use a drop-down menu structure on your blog or website? Would you like that menu to employ a fancy-schmancy sliding animation like I have on my blog? If so, this is the post for you!

The first thing you should know about practically all drop-down menus have as its backbone HTML lists, like so:

<ul>
  <li><a href="">Menu Item 1</a></li>
  <li><a href="">Menu Item 2</a>
    <ul>
      <li><a href="">Drop-Down Item 1</a></li>
      <li><a href="">Drop-Down Item 2</a></li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li><a href="">Menu Item 3</a></li>
</ul>

(If you are unfamiliar with HTML lists, go check out W3Schools’ article on them.)

In order to add the animation, you need to locate the menu portion of your site’s code. If you are using WordPress, it will most likely be in your header.php file.

Now that you’ve located your menu, look for the TOPMOST <ul> tag. What you want to do now is to add a CSS id selector to that tag. In this example, I will name this id “topNav” so this is what the updated code should look like:

<ul id="topNav">
  <li><a href="">Menu Item 1</a></li>
  <li><a href="">Menu Item 2</a>
    <ul>
      <li><a href="">Drop-Down Item 1</a></li>
      <li><a href="">Drop-Down Item 2</a></li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li><a href="">Menu Item 3</a></li>
</ul>

The last step is to add the jQuery that will animate your drop-down menu. First, download jQuery and upload it to your webserver if you do not already have it. (If you are using WordPress, don’t worry about this step — WordPress installs come packaged with jQuery.) Then, add the following to the head of your page, before the </body> tag, making sure that the path of the URL (in red below) points to where your jQuery package is located:

(The path above is where the jQuery file is usually located within WordPress installs.)

Now, for the actual jQuery code. You have two options here. The first is to add the following to your page (the easiest place to insert it would be in the head section, directly below where you placed the jQuery call above):

<script type="text/javascript">
  $(document).ready(function () { 
    $('#topNav li').hover(
      function () {
        //show the submenu
        $('ul', this).hide().slideDown();
      }, 
      function () {
        //hide the submenu
        $('ul', this).slideUp();         
      }
    );
  });
</script>

The second option is to add the above code to a separate JavaScript file and call to it in your page’s head section. But if you have no idea what I just said in the previous sentence, it’s probably not a good idea to attempt this. 😉

And that’s it! You can choose to change the speed of the sliding animation by adding values in the parentheses next to the slideDown and slideUp (see this article to see what options you have). But I personally think that the default speed is a good one for most people.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions by commenting below! Slide away!