Rob and I took Kaylee to Kiddie Kandids on Sunday to have a few photos taken, because we haven’t had that done since she was about four months old. And also because the gift certificate that Rob’s mom gave us last year was about to expire.

Kaylee is a happy, smiley kid in general, but she can sometimes have minor emotional explosions when expected to do stuff she doesn’t want to do. Like, you know, hold still and smile.

So I had my doubts that this photography experience would go well. But we charged ahead, hoping for the best.

Kaylee was a little unsure of what was going on. She used to being on a metaphorical pedestal, but not so much a real one. So she had a skeptical expression on her face during a lot of the photo shoot, and she clearly thought the photographer was crazy, what with all the whooping noises she used to get Kaylee to smile.

Although my child had obvious doubts about the photographer’s sanity, I thought she was pretty awesome. She somehow got six shots of Kaylee with real smiles on her face, and we ended up with photos that look like my kid sat and posed willingly and with a practiced smile. In reality, those smiles were fleeting, and the photographer was just experienced enough to know exactly when to hit that button.

But she really won me over when she got Kaylee to pose lying on her stomach. I seriously doubted that was going to happen without some screaming, but it ended up being the best photo.

I was planning to post some of the photos here, but the CD they gave me has copyright warnings all over the place. I’ve asked for permission, and I’ll post the photos when/if I get it.

A few weeks ago, Kaylee figured out that water splashes, and now she thinks baths are AWESOME. Unfortunately, she thinks that everyone and everything around her should experience the awesomeness of her bath, so she tries to pull surrounding objects into the water with her. I’ve been bathing her in the kitchen sink, so surrounding objects could include dish soap, sink stoppers, dish towels or a block of steak knives.

Obviously, it was time for a change. Over the weekend, I went shopping for a bath seat that would allow her to sit up, splash and play in the bathtub, while providing enough support to keep her head above water. There were surprisingly few options. Most bath seats I found require the baby to lie back, which would just be unacceptable to Kaylee. (”Lie back? How could I possibly lie back when there are rubber duckies to throw and a Mommy to splash? If you must force me to lie back during this bath, I’m afraid I’ll have to scream for 20 minutes and squirm until I flop out of the seat and into the water, where I can splash to my heart’s content.”)

I ended up buying the Tubside Bath Seat from Safety 1st for $24.99 from Babies R Us. To be honest, it was the only option at the time, since I didn’t want to drive all over town to find another one. This seat attaches to the tub via an arm that extends from the bottom of the seat up over the side of the tub. The adjustable arm probably fits most tubs, and the padded surface provides an elbow rest for the parent. The seat itself can swivel back and forth to help you reach all the baby parts for proper cleaning, while a switch on the back of the seat lets you stop the seat from swiveling if needed. When you place the baby in the seat, her weight causes the leg openings to close slightly to help hold her in place.

Before I bought the seat, I hadn’t cared one way or the other about having an elbow rest on the side of the tub. But now that I’ve given Kaylee a couple of baths in the tub, I’m really glad I have a comfortable place to rest my arms. The seat holds Kaylee in a sitting position reasonably well, although the seat is a little big for her. She can fit both legs into one leg opening — even after it’s adjusted to her weight — and there’s enough room around her that she’d easily be able to squirm her way out of the seat and launch herself face-first into the water if it ever occurred to her to try.

In order for Kaylee to reach over the side of the seat and splash her hands in the water, I have to fill up the bathtub a little more than I’d like. (Because somehow, in my paranoid first-time mom brain, filling the tub almost half full equates to instant baby drowning death.) And once I’ve drained the tub, the hollow plastic seat retains water that inevitably won’t agree to drain out of the seat until I’ve taken it out of the tub and placed in on my carpet. (What if it grows mold? Won’t that kill my baby too??? … Sorry, I can’t help it.) Online user reviews that I’ve found suggest turning the seat upside down to allow the water to drain, so I’ll have to give that a try.

It’s also hard to clean the baby’s bottom in this bath seat, but that’s kind of the nature of any seat that allows the baby to sit on her butt while you’re bathing her.

Overall, the seat does serve its purpose. Kaylee gets to splash around well away from the steak knives, and I can take my hands off of her long enough to pick up the baby shampoo. I just wish the seat didn’t retain so much water and that it would hold her a little more snugly. It’s also a bit bigger than I was hoping for in a bath seat, making it hard to find a place to store it.

I give the Safety 1st Tubside Bath Seat three splashin’ babies out of five.

I have a confession: I’m am very, very out of shape. I didn’t have much trouble losing the baby weight while on maternity leave, but that’s mostly because Kaylee kept me too busy to keep up with such silly things as eating and brushing my hair. When I wasn’t feeding her, changing her diaper or rocking her to sleep, I was passed out, catching up on the sleep she’d kept from me the night before. So no, exercise wasn’t very high on my priority list.

Now, though, I’m starting to feel a little guilty about that. How am I supposed to raise a healthy, active daughter if I can’t be bothered to get off the couch to pick up the remote control that Kaylee just hurled across the room? (”Aw, but I wanted to watch ‘The Office.’ Fine, I guess I’ll just leave it on ‘Cops.’”)

But how’s a busy mom supposed to find time to exercise? That’s where the “Parents Mom & Baby Fitness” DVD comes into play. The exercise program incorporates your baby into yoga and pilates moves, allowing you to get back into shape without having to get someone else to hold the baby. The exercises are led by physical therapist and mom Jillian Moriarty and her infant son, Max.

The DVD features several sections, including an introduction, a 50-minute full workout, mini workouts and hints for how to make the exercises most effective. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I didn’t try the 50-minute full workout. I sort of checked out on that one as soon as I heard how long it was. I imagine that most moms who work full-time and only get an hour or two of awake time with their babies on weekdays might have the same are-you-kidding-me reaction to the full workout, unless they’re planning to do that part on weekends. But the mini workouts, which are just a few minutes each, seem much more doable for everyday exercise. The exercises are sometimes strenuous, but manageable enough that I think I can get used to them with practice.

For many of the exercises, the baby is expected to lie at the end of the yoga mat and hang out, watching Mommy move around above her. Max - the baby in the video - is excellent and well-behaved, and seems to enjoy watching his mom perform the “shooting star” and “downward dog” moves. Kaylee, on the other hand, can take it for about a minute and a half, at which point she starts whining and trying to get away. She did, however, thoroughly enjoy any exercises that involved her directly. One arm-strengthening exercise, in which she provided the weight for bicep curls, she found particularly hilarious.

There’s also a section on the DVD called “especially for baby,” where Moriarty guides you through a few exercises for your baby. Most involve stretching out her little arms and legs, and Kaylee loved them all. I haven’t seen her laugh so hard at a Mommy antic since we discovered how funny it is when I eat her tummy.

She was less enthused about the baby massage part, though. As soon as I tried to get a hold of a foot to rub her arches, she rolled over and tried desperately to learn to crawl. It’s possible she was just too worked up from the fun we’d just finished having, and I’d get better results if I tried the massages just before bedtime.

Overall, I’d call the video a useful tool for moms who are trying to get back in shape after the baby is born. I’d just suggest making sure that wiggly babies have some toys to keep them entertained during exercise moves that don’t directly involve them.

I give the “Parents Mom & Baby Fitness” DVD four and a half exercising mommies out of five. The DVD is available at Target and Target.com.

I’m failing my baby in so many ways it’s not even funny. I don’t read to her every day — only once or twice a week, and only until she starts crying and tries to squirm off my lap — we haven’t put her on a “schedule,” and I haven’t started teaching her sign language yet. Plus, she’s the stinky kid.

It’s time to remedy at least one of those situations. I’ve been reading “Baby Sing & Sign” by Anne Meeker Miller, Ph.D., which comes with a CD that you play while singing along to your baby and signing key words in the song. The introductory chapters focus on all the reasons you should consider teaching a child sign language, plus commonly asked questions and a few “secrets of success.” Then it covers each of the 13 songs on the accompanying CD, providing the lyrics, sheet music and signs for each. The lyrics are very simple and easy to learn so parents can sing the songs to children even when they don’t have the CD handy.

That’s an important point, because I would like to break my copy of the CD in half, or toss it into the road and let a semi truck destroy it with a satisfying crunch.

The songs on the Baby Sing & Sign CD are done in a folksy style, which in and of itself isn’t terribly offensive. It’s the singer herself that makes me feel destructive. Here’s the best way I can think to describe her: You know how, when someone at work has a birthday and you all gather around to sing to him, there’s always that one person who was in the high school choir who always feels it’s necessary to show off her vocal range and pitch-perfect singing ability? And you’re like, “Dude, relax. It’s ‘Happy Birthday,’ not ‘Phantom of the Opera.’” That’s what I feel like saying to the woman who performs most of these songs: You’re singing children’s music — be a little silly, lady.

But alas, the book does remind us that these songs were written to appeal to children, and that our own musical sensibilities aren’t as important as our charming offspring’s enjoyment of the songs. Ok, fine. You win, book. I decided to see how Kaylee would react.

I had the CD in the car, so I played it on the way home from daycare yesterday. She started crying almost immediately.

Well, ok, that’s not exactly scientific evidence that the CD is bad. The ride home from daycare can be volatile, with Kaylee sometimes laughing at her clothes and sometimes screaming at a toy for some unforgivable offense.

So I gave it another try this morning. There were instant tears. I soothed her by singing a favorite song of ours, stolen from “My Friends Tigger and Pooh” on the Disney Channel. I guess I’ll have to learn the Baby Sing & Sign songs myself and sing them to her without professional musical accompaniment.

As for the book, it does have some useful tips for teaching each of the signs, along with games that should help keep the learning fun for the baby. There are also suggestions for homemade toys to go along with each of the songs, but as I never have scraps of felt or a hot glue gun lying around, those parts aren’t especially useful to me. Craftier moms might be more inspired.

Each chapter also includes “A Sign of Success” that gives parents tips on signing, keeping your goals in perspective and personal anecdotes from parents who have taught their children sign language. The writing is encouraging and often funny, and the author often reminds parents to go with the flow. She even suggests that parents aren’t actually failures even if our babies never show any interest in sign language. What a relief.

I give this book/CD combo four brainy babies out of five.

I have one last product to add to my list of things I’m glad I own. I only bought it last night, but it’s already brought me peace of mind.

I’ll start with some back story. When I picked Kaylee up from day care yesterday, her daily sheet said she’d had a temperature of 99.1 during the afternoon. Her head felt warm to me, so I decided to take her temperature when I got home. I’d never done it before, because she’s never seemed hot before, so it never crossed my mind that the digital thermometer I’d received as part of a baby-care kit would be so, so frustrating.

I held the thermometer in her armpit and pinned her arm to her side for a good ten minutes before I realized the thermometer had turned itself off without ever beeping to indicate it was finished. The last time I’d looked at it, it read 99.1.

Because the internet knows everything, I decided to consult it regarding baby temperatures, and of course learned that underarm temperatures are the least accurate way of checking for a fever – and that it could give a reading that’s one to three degrees too low. That led to a new-mom panic, where I worried that her temperature could be as high as 102.1, which would mean she was officially sick. Or it could be 99.1, like the thermometer said, and there was no real reason to worry. So then I spent a good 20 minutes worrying about whether or not I should be worried.

The internet also taught me that taking a baby’s temperature rectally is the most accurate method. In the same paragraph, I read that you have to be super careful, because otherwise you could accidentally perforate the baby’s rectum. Um… That pretty much ensures that I will NEVER take her temperature that way. (And this paragraph pretty much ensures that Kaylee will hate me when she’s a teenager. “MOM! I can’t believe you talked about my rectum on your blog!”)

When Rob got home, he talked me down from my little panic and suggested we look into a good ear thermometer. I’d heard those could be pretty hit and miss, so I checked into product ratings and settled on this one – the only digital ear thermometer I found with consistently high ratings from people who own it. We promptly went to the store and bought it, and discovered the joy of taking a temperature in less than five seconds. Yeah, it’s an expensive thermometer, but if it’ll keep me from freaking out every time Kaylee’s head gets warm, it’s worth $50 to me. That I can answer the “to worry or not to worry” question within a few seconds is an added bonus.

Oh, and by the time we’d assembled the SUV stroller, made our way to the store, bought the thermometer and returned home, Kaylee was perfectly fine. No fever, and therefore no more mommy panic.

Leading up to Kaylee’s birth, I did my best to anticipate the things I’d need around the house to keep her alive and entertained. I figured out the obvious things on my own – bottles, diapers, etc. – but there were a few must-haves that I didn’t know about at first. And if I had known how helpful they’d be, I’d have bought them the day I found out I was pregnant.

One: Boppy pillow

I inherited this magical pillow from my sister-in-law, who taught us its charms about a week after Kaylee was born. It saved our lives – or at least our sanity.

Fresh out of the womb, Kaylee couldn’t stand to be set down anywhere. If she wasn’t tightly swaddled, her arms and legs would shoot straight out and she’d cry like she thought she was flying apart. I wasn’t a talented baby-swaddler, so even when I did wrap her up in a blanket, she’d kick it off within a few minutes.

Until the Boppy pillow came along. Placing Kaylee in the pillow seemed to make her feel secure and cradled – and unable to kick away the blanket she was wrapped in. The pillow allowed us, finally, to set her down for a while.

Two: Bottle warmer

Rob and I tried to save a little money at first by buying a cheap bottle warmer that used hot, running water to get formula to the right temperature. We figured out our mistake the first time we used it, when Kaylee was belting out her “Feed me!!!!” cry while we struggled to find the correct water temperature – even luke warm registered as too hot – and maintain our composure at the same time. We bought a different one the next day.

Our new bottle warmer, which uses a small amount of water heated into steam, allows us to keep prepared bottles in the fridge at all times, heating them up in about three minutes when Kaylee gets hungry. No messing with mixing formula in the middle of the night, which is helpful when you’re holding a crying baby.

This is the one we bought, but I’m sure there are other good ones out there. The one down side: We now know exactly how funky our tap water is, because it leaves behind a gross brown residue in the bottom of the warmer.

Three: Infant swing

Rob’s mom bought Kaylee a swing/glider when Kaylee was two weeks old. It continues to be a wonderful fixture in our living room. It comes in most handy when Kaylee has reached her whiny, I’m-not-going-to-sleep-no-matter-what-even-though- I-can-hardly-keep-my-eyes-open stage of the day. Because no matter how hard she fights sleep, the gentle rocking of her swing can usually knock her out inside of five minutes.

Tip: Buy one that runs on batteries and plugs into the wall. That narrows your options by a lot, but at least you’ll never run out of power mid-swing.

Four: 3-in-1 travel system

We just broke down and bought one of these yesterday. It’s a car seat/carrier/stroller combo that allows you to carry the baby around in her car seat, and snap the seat into a stroller when you want to wander around Best Buy for a few minutes – or several hours, if you’re married to Rob.

I didn’t originally want a “travel system,” because I figured I could just carry the seat or put Kaylee in a smaller stroller when necessary. I also have several friends who derisively refer to these big contraptions as “SUV strollers” and complain about parents blocking store aisles with them.

But about the third time I tried to transfer a sleeping baby from a car seat into a stroller without waking her up, I realized that my friends (who don’t have children) don’t know what they’re talking about. I found myself staring with not-at-all-concealed envy at parents who were pushing their sleeping babies around the store, still snug in their car seats, while mine whined because I’d nudged her out of a nap to get her onto wheels.

But no more. As of yesterday, I can get Kaylee from the car to the video-game aisle with her dad without waking her up. And I’m more than willing to endure the sneers of the cynical to do it. They’re much easier to take than the wail of an unhappy baby.