baby's first tooth!

We've had a rough few nights in the sleep department. I had thought it was because we were no longer swaddling our baby girl. But now I think I know the real reason: her first tooth (at 5.5 mo) is just peeking out of her gums. Poor girl is in pain!

Time to break out the anbesol tooth chart to track her teething for her baby book, which I'll probably complete in say 5 years from now (if I'm lucky). *sigh*

I'll be interested to find out if the Hyland's Teething Tablets work this time around.  I've had many people recommend them to me but they never seemed to do much for my son.  We just stuck to occasional Tylenol for him.

It's also time to break out those teethers again!  But what about BPA in teethers?!  To be honest, I haven't taken all precautions I could when it comes to the plastics concern, partly because of the conflicting information out there regarding how big of a concern this topic really is.  I have not thrown out plastic kitchen items that I have not been able to determine the safety of and I am not planning to throw out all of our plastic toys.  However, when it comes to things children suck on like bottles, teethers, pacifiers, sippys and dinnerware, I'm not taking any chances.  For those items, I've ensured that we use only plastics having recycle codes that are considered "safe" and I try to use stainless steel sippys and water bottles, especially outside in the heat.  

I threw many of our teethers away because they were not found on any of the safe teether guides that I'm aware of (see links on the left side of my blog).  These lists are not necessarily all-inclusive, so it's possible some of the teethers I tossed are BPA-free; however, after a ton of use from our son (he loved 'em), they were getting old anyway.  So, I bought this BPA-free teething kit from The Soft Landing:

How freakin' cute is that giraffe? Unfortunately that dang giraffe is what drives up the price on this sampler.  But I'm a sucker and since I just got a job I went for it.

While I was shopping at The Soft Landing I also bought a few more Sassy teethers

and this cool Klean Kanteen tote by Built NY.  I love that it can insulate not only our Klean Kanteen sippys but bottles too, and it can attach to a stroller or diaper bag!

I'll leave you with a really cool blog I found recently.  It's called "Z Recommends".  Here is a link to a post in which BPA information is broken down by brand.

Z Recommends: The Z Report on BPA in Children's Feeding Products, Third Edition