As my son’s second birthday gets closer, I realize that so does the second birthday of the Baby Talker’s blog. It was born just a couple of weeks before Jax. The very first post on the Baby Talker’s blog was written by my husband on June 11, 2oo5. I thought I would take a little trip down memory lane by looking back in the archives.

I remember having so many questions about everything! One of my major concerns was what the “must-have” items were. To make it easier for other moms-to-be, I made a New Parents’ Checklist of Baby Essentials. Of course not every item is a necessity, but it will give you a good start and might remind you of some things you have forgotten.

At 37 weeks pregnant, I packed my hospital bag. At 38 weeks, I had my membranes stripped. A week later at 39 weeks, 1 day I was induced and our son was born on June 29, 2005.

I took a bit of a hiatus from posting and came back in September with a few posts about sleep deprivation, clogged milk ducts, and first smiles. By the next month, I was ready to participate in the losing pregnancy weight forum (which we just recently added), although it wasn’t even pregnancy weight. I gained a whopping 17 or 18 lbs with my pregnancy, lost it all immediately, and then gained extra weight from not sleeping and from eating everything in sight.

In November, I talked about if an infant car seat is even necessary. My son outgrew the infant seat at 2.5 months. Granted it was very convenient in the beginning, if you don’t have all the money in the world to spare on extra baby gear, it’s not the most needed item. We also went on our first vacation with Jax. He was 5 months old and we went to Europe.

On February 20th, 2006 the new Baby Talkers Forums were born! I neglected the blog for a few months a part from posting about a few interesting products, some coupon codes, and celebrity baby gossip while I was trying to get the forums going. My husband started to compile a list of books for our baby with some help from the community!

I wondered about Playgroups and my son’s socialization because it seemed that we were always getting sick thus missing classes and we were also traveling a lot. In May of 2006, we went to Japan for 3 weeks. Strangely (and sadly) no blog posts about that other than on the Japanese baby food, which was not good, by the way! We were away for my very first Mother’s Day, which was fabulous. My mom was with us, but we sent a wonderful gift to my mother-in-law.

In June, our son started to walk. My husband wrote a funny article about training your baby to walk as if they were in the Olympics. About a month after my son turned one, I finally realized the importance of a schedule, albeit a flexible one.

In August, a crazy thing happened to me. I research and talked about turning my son’s car seat to forward facing a few times, but decided not to. Well, that month we got into a head-on collision with a drunk driver and thankfully my son was completely untouched. Apparently he was very secure and safe in his rear facing car seat.

In September, Jax outgrew his first pair of shoes and we got him his first pair of sneakers! I don’t know if it’s just him or if it’s all kids, but the rate he goes through shoes is insane!

Speaking of insane, we packed up and went to Thailand & Singapore in October. It was a wonderful trip. Lots of excitement.

I also started doing my weekly Friday Fifteen, which led me to eventually open up a whole new website dedicated to it.

I think in December is when I really started getting into the whole blogging thing. I started reading lots of other mom blogs, networking, and posting more.

Welcome to 2007, where I have lots and lots and lots of posts. Feel free to go back in the January and February archives to browse around. You will find some pictures of Jax (there is even one of me in there!), a trip report from Disney, expired coupon codes, product reviews, random thoughts, and some more random thoughts. I realized at this point that I should probably start doing a monthly recap, so in case you missed it, here’s the one from March.

The big news from April is that we opened up a Children’s Fashion Forum to talk about kiddy couture. Show off your precious little one’s clothing. You know you want to!! And you know we totally want to see it.

……….and that’s a wrap! Stay tuned for April’s monthly recap and other random thoughts.

Until next time,
Csara