Real Mom Review of the Lotus Travel Crib, the lightweight pack and play that makes flying and airports so easy!  Great for toddlers and babies!  Trust me you need this!

The Best Pack and Play

When we were looking for a “pack and play”, I found that none of them were fitting our needs.  We wanted something light, easy to travel with, and honestly, I wanted something that matched our modern apartment aesthetic.  What’s a girl got to do to get a travel crib that doesn’t have hideous prints on it?

Then I found the Guava Family Lotus Travel Crib.   It was everything I wanted.

Best Travel Crib

Yes, let’s get my favorite feature out of the way.  If you’re going to travel with this, from airport to hotel, and everything in between, you can wear this in bookbag style.  I can easily wear this and get through airport security while carrying a toddler, so you can too. 

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Let’s make our parks safe for our kids!  Learn more about how you can receive a $5,000 donation to make your community playing field organic!  This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Stonyfield® FIELDS Initiative.

I’m back with more on StonyFIELD’s biggest mission! If you read my previous post, you’ll know Stonyfield wants to make every field in America organic by stopping the unsafe use of harmful pesticides on our kids playing fields and parks.  Don’t you feel great knowing that some companies really care about you?   That’s why we always buy Stonyfield yogurt!

We really do always buy Stonyfield yogurt, but that’s beside the point. The big point is that when I was made aware that playing fields and playgrounds were sprayed with pesticides I was pretty shocked.  So shocked that I contacted my city council people that day asking them about the play areas that Enceladus frequents. 

Thankfully, our usual playgrounds and parks in Brooklyn are safe, but unfortunately not everyone is so lucky.  That’s why I really wanted to share this with you, from one mom to another.

If you follow me on social media, then you know the park is our weekend spot.   Enceladus, literally drags us to the park, ready to play.

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I am OBSESSED with this Baby Sleeping Bag that goes from sleep to play!  It’s so smart and easy!  This is a must have for babies and toddlers! This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Ergobaby.

Hi! I’m back with another favorite baby product to share!  This is one of my favorite fall products that I’m going to continue to love through winter and I think you are going to love it too! 

Let me show you why this  Ergobaby On-The-Move Sleeping Bag is the best.   It can basically be summarized in 2 photos.

It goes from this:

To this:

GASP! I know, right?

Yes, that’s right! It goes from sleep to play, which means Enceladus can go from sleeping in her sleeping bag, to immediate playing when she wakes up! I love it!

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Let’s make our parks and playing fields organic!  Learn more to make change locally to protect our children from pesticides!  This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Stonyfield® FIELDS Initiative.

Rain or shine, we have a weekend event.  It involves 2 parents, 1 baby, a swing set and a box of chalk.  Do you know what time it is?  It’s playground time!

Since Enceladus took her first swing on a swing set (in January!) she’s fallen in love with the playground at our local park.  Now many months later, if we stroll by a playground, she immediately starts kicking her legs and pointing to it.  Looks like it’s time for a pit stop!

Living in NYC, you work with what you have in regards to play spaces outside.  We have beautiful parks (Fort Greene and Prospect Park are our favorites!), but we also have wonderful neighborhood playgrounds.   Not only is it a place for little ones to run around and be kids, but it’s also a great place to meet your neighbors!

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Support and laughter for parents who have babies and toddlers that only take short naps. This is a first hand experience on how I dealt with it.

Hello Sleeping Baby.

Or maybe I should say close to sleeping baby, because first you need your bottle of milk.  Milk always makes you tired.

Sometimes milk will make you fall asleep.  But usually, even though you’re exhausted,  you will fight me for every single nap.

Ok, now you’re asleep.  It’s time for Mom to work. I will do some house work. I will answer some work emails. I will treat myself to a hot lunch in the kitchen.

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Ergobaby 180 Reversible Stroller Review!  This is a great stroller for city parents, with a giant sun canopy and easy to fold with 1 hand!  This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Ergobaby but all opinions are 100% my own.

You know who are super warriors? City Moms!  Being a city mom is tough, especially with lugging your baby and life around with you, from subway to sidewalk to home and everything in between.  

That’s why I was so excited to host the Ergobaby Strollin In The Park Event in June to get to know other city moms and to support one of my favorite baby brands – Ergobaby! (You can watch the video here!)
(Don’t you love Enceladus giving the camera a point?)

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Hey everybody – Happy Valentine’s Day!

I have a really special Valentine this year.  In fact, it’s her first Valentine’s Day.  Her name is Enceladus…. and I’m kinda in love with her!

Matthew and I are generally excited about holidays, especially Christmas and Halloween, so I knew when we had a child I was going to go a little Mama crazy with activities and dressing up!  There’s just something in me that screams “I’M SO EXCITED TO DO ARTS & CRAFTS WITH MY BABY!”.

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Change your shirt, put towels on the floor, wear a poncho – things are about to get messy. Enceladus started eating solids! This post is in partnership with buybuy BABY.

At our 4 month pediatrician visit, we got the go ahead to start solids when we were feeling ready for it, so at 5 months we decided to give it a try.  After months of watching her Mom and Dad eat, Enceladus must have been practicing in her head, because on the first spoonful she reached out her hand, grabbed the spoon and shoved the pureed fruits into her mouth!  Success!

(We use the Fisher-Price Deluxe Booster Seat because it attaches to a chair and saves room in our apartment!)

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A complete schedule of a 3 month old baby, including sleeping and eating!  This also lists achievements and other things we saw her do for the first time!  This post is in partnership with buybuy BABY.

Hey everybody, I hope your week is off to a good start!
A few weeks ago, I thought I would document the day of our 3 month old.   Before I had a baby, I thought I would be able to work during the day, or at least wipe my mouth filled with chocolate when the UPS man knocked at my door.  How naive I was!   

While preparing for a baby, or even now, I enjoyed reading other parent schedules.  I don’t think we should ever compare our schedule to another family’s as everyone is different, but I always found it helpful and fun to prepare myself for the next few months!

(Enceladus, with her favorite toy (“Butter”) at 3 months old.)

Here is her 3 month schedule.  (This was when she was 3 months, 4 weeks).

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Review of the SNOO Bassinet from a mom who’s baby had colic for 12 weeks!  We love the Snoo and it helped her so much to sleep through the night! 

Have you heard of the SNOO bassinet?  I like to describe it as the most modern, beautiful, amazing, life changing baby bassinet ever.  If there’s one item we couldn’t live without (besides food and diapers) in Enceladus’s first 3 months it would be the SNOO.  SNOO, I love you.  I love you so much.

If you follow me me on social media or read back posts you will know that for the first 12 weeks Enceladus had a pretty severe case of colic.  To be blunt, it was terrible for everyone involved and we went through a dark emotional time.  At around the 12 week point we started to see the light and at 14 weeks I can safely say she conquered colic. WHEW! (For those parents dealing with colic, this article helped me SO much.  I would read it in bed at night after bad days and it made me feel commodity with the author.) 

During her 12 weeks with colic, we tried everything.  Not only was she crying 8 hours a day but she would not nap during the day, it was a nonstop day of baby tears and anger from wake up to bed time.  I googled everything to try to help her colic.  We bought every product marketed as colic relief.  You name a swaddle, gripe water, sleeper, rock and play, pacifier, bottle, formula, probiotics etc and I will tell you we tried it without much success.  We saw the pediatrician multiple times and tried acid reflux medicine.   

At around 9 weeks I was ready to cut off my pinky finger and give it up in a human sacrifice to solve her colic because it was heart breaking to witness. The one thing that kept us sane, and sleeping, during the 12 weeks of colic was the SNOO.  

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We took our 2 month old baby on a 11 hour road trip and survived! Here’s everything we brought with us and other tips to make it a success! This post is in partnership with buybuy BABY.

Next week Enceladus will turn 3 months old and she’s already a road trip expert!  We took a road trip to North Carolina when I was 35 weeks pregnant so it’s no surprise she’s comfortable with long drives already!  A few weeks ago we headed to Maine for a friend’s wedding and I fell in love… with Maine!  It was my first time visiting and it is BEAUTIFUL!  I’m not sure if we visited during peak season, but I couldn’t get over how beautiful the coast was.  I’m already considering that this might need be our yearly vacation spot! 

Seriously, isn’t it beautiful?  I feel like every spot we went to had postcard worthy views!

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Welcome to my new series “Motherhood Thoughts”.  If you follow me on Instagram you know I’m pretty revealing in my Stories about how hard Motherhood has been for me.  What I realized is that Brooklyn Farm Girl hasn’t dove into Motherhood as deep as I share on social media.  I had a hard time deciding how to transition the blog, if I should even write about the baby, or keep it garden and recipe focused, but then I realized that Brooklyn Farm Girl is now Brooklyn Farm Mama and being a Mother is a huge part of my life.  Traveling through the first 2 months of Motherhood has been a journey.  Every day, I experience something new. Heck, some hours I experience something new.  I’ve had such a outpouring of feedback on my Instagram Stories from other Mothers who have gone through it, I decided I’m going to share on the blog now too.   If you just come here for recipes and nothing more, you can skip these posts and that is totally ok.  But if you want to get to know me, Pamela, then go ahead and read on.    I plan on doing these posts bi-weekly as a diary to look back on.  The post will be scattered with non connected paragraphs of what I experienced that week.   Hope you like it.

Enceladus was asleep, it was the middle of the night, around 2AM and suddenly our cat Xanadu meowed.  Again and again and again.  Xanadu was in our bed in the middle of Matthew and I.  Enceladus was in her bassinet next to the bed.  Matthew and I turned to Xanadu, pleading with our eyes, whispering “Please stop meowing!”.  She continued. “Meow, Meow, Meow”.  Enceladus stirred in her bassinet.  Then I did the unthinkable, I scolded our cat.  Our cat was meowing because she was happy and I told her to stop meowing.  I still feel awful for this.

Enceladus has started to giggle.  I am officially the funniest person in the world to her and it makes me feel awesome.

Blank walls are also hilarious to her.

Cutting baby’s nails are terrifying.  The first time we cut her nails was when she was 2 days old and we cut her finger.  She screamed for a minute and then moved on with life, but it still haunts us.  When she came out of my belly, she had Edward Scissorhands esque nails and was constantly cutting her face.  Nowadays, we’re still terrified of using nail clippers so I bite her nails.  Yes, I cut her nails by putting her nails into my mouth and biting them like a Barbarian.  I googled it though and lots of other Moms do this so it’s totally ok to be a animal to my baby.  Now if only I could work on that sharp big toe nail of hers….

The microwave door closes so loudly!  It’s not until you have a sleeping baby in your house will you realize how loud some things are. I now fear the microwave while she sleeps.

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Join me and Enceladus for our morning tea time walk!  Mom finally gets to enjoy tea again! This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Straight Up™ Tea and Albertsons Companies. The opinions and text are all mine.

I love tea time. It doesn’t matter if it’s morning, afternoon or night… if you say, “Let’s do tea!” my response will always be “yes!” With the arrival of Enceladus, my daily routine has significantly changed, mostly because I have no routine any more… it’s whatever baby says, I do!  One thing we both agree on is that we start the day off better if we go for a morning walk after her first feeding.  After she’s done gulping her breakfast, I’ll throw on the carrier and we’ll head out for a 2-3 mile walk around the neighborhood.   During this time she usually naps and I get to see the outside world and enjoy some daily sunshine.

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Looking for the perfect NYC stroller?   Get the UPPAbaby Vista! You won’t regret it!  Read this post for a full review of why it’s the perfect city dweller stroller to grow with! This post is in partnership with buybuy BABY.

When we found out we were going to have a baby I began obsessively researching every type of baby gear that we needed.  One of the biggest decisions was what stroller we should get.  I knew luxury was going to come at a cost, but I also knew that I was going to be spending a lot of time with Enceladus in the stroller so I was ready to splurge on the perfect stroller.   After reading countless reviews and going back and forth on 2 specific strollers we purchased the UPPAbaby Vista and couldn’t be happier!

My wishlist for a stroller was:
It had to be a sidewalk warrior.  I wanted sidewalk cracks, bumpy roads and slower walkers (kidding..sorta) to fear me.
I wanted a smooth ride.  Due to the increase construction in our neighborhood I didn’t want Enceladus to wake up immediately after leaving the house.
I wanted lots of storage.   The more room to keep numerous bags and be able to grocery shop, the better.
I wanted ONE stroller, from newborn to a few years old.  
I wanted ONE stroller to grow with incase one baby becomes two babies one day (calm down!).
I wanted it to look really cool.  

Now let’s check each of those off…

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Enceladus isn’t a great sleeper during the day, she only takes 45 minute naps (at night is another story – more about that in a future post!).   The only way I can get any work done during the day is by wearing her or putting her down.  But I can’t put her down anywhere, she’s extremely picky about her sleeping arrangements and will let you know it!  Her favorite? The DockATot!  Does your baby love napping with DockATot too?

Doesn’t she look comfortable?

Since we were expecting Enceladus I had my eyes on the DockATot! So many parents gave rave reviews that this solved all their sleep issues so I had to get one!   What I was most excited about was that this could be traveled with.  Unlike so many other loungers,  this was light, didn’t need to be plugged in and can be carried with one arm (really important!).

 Enceladus took her first trip Upstate to the garden last weekend and I was so worried about what to bring for her to sleep in.  The DockATot lets me not go overboard with a bunch of different beds and chairs, all I need is one thing that I can throw in a bag and go!    We will be making a trip later this month to Maine and I’m thrilled to know that this is the only bed that I’ll have to bring for her!

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Time to go on our first family walk with Enceladus while wearing our lillebaby tokidoki Complete All Seasons carrier!  This post is in partnership with buybuy BABY.

This past weekend we decided to head out for our first family walk.  I’ve taken Enceladus on multiple walks by myself (I hope you’re watching my adventures on Instagram Stories by the way!) to the studio, grocery store and other random places when I feel like we need to get out!   She loves strolling around in her UPPAbaby Vista, and surprisingly handles bumps in the sidewalk like a pro without even opening her eyes!

I want to make it a mission to do one weekly thing as a family, so we headed out to show her how lucky she was to live in Brooklyn!  It just happened that it was also National Ice Cream Day, so we had to stop for ice cream too…..!  

Now only if she could remember her first walk with us, but she was passed out and snoring the entire time!

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