The Search For An Infant Car Seat

I'm in the market for getting a new infant car seat.  These seats are also known as "infant capsules," "bucket seats," and stage 1 car seats.

It feels a bit daunting to shop for a seat at first glance.  There are so many things to consider which include:
- budget
- safety

The other factors for me are:
- sold in Canada in order to meet Canadian Safety requirements
- can I get it easily (shipping costs, available at a retail store)
- available in 2015

any other factors:
- weight of car seat
- suitability to my vehicle
- comfort

Any other things to consider?
I will be looking at reviews of course, and will be trying to come up with a table with all my pros and cons and deciding factors in the weeks to come!

So you're moving to Guelph, Ontario

We had a couple of months to move to Guelph.  It's a huge pain-in-the-you-know-what to look for a place to live in a city you barely know.  I only knew a few vague things about Guelph:

- There is a university there, The University of Guelph
- it's about an hour to an hour and a half west of Toronto
- it's about 30 minutes away from Kitchener-Waterloo
- people say it's a nice place to live

But big question marks in my head remained:

- What neighbourhood should we live in?
- Should we rent or buy a place?
- Will I find a job?
- Will I find child care?
- Is Guelph a good city to live in?

In the end, the neighbourhood we decided upon was based on the rentals available.  Since Guelph is a university town, many of the rentals were geared towards students.  We are a young family.  Sharing rooms with students was not in the cards for us.

My two main sources of rental property searches were:
1) MLS (realtor.ca)
2) Kijiji (kijiji.ca, a classified site)

I also tried Craigslist, but I found that not that many rentals were listed there...not that there were many to begin with!

BUT I WANT TO BUY A HOUSE IN GUELPH!

You want to buy a property right away?  Okay, that works too.  It didn't for us, just because of the short time line.  It was better not to rush into such a big purchase.

If you are looking to buy, it is probably best to get yourself lined up with a realtor.  I don't have any personal recommendations, but if you google "Guelph Realtor" you will find plenty of choices.  I would recommend contacting them by email and phone.  Get a feel for them, see if you click, and see how responsive they are to your requests and needs.

A realtor will help because they often see the listings first before they go onto MLS (realtor.ca).  You can always look at these listings too, but the realtors often have tools where they can enter filters based on your criteria.  These tailored filters result in daily emails to you with listings that may better fit your needs.

You can also try looking at propertyguys.com

That's it for this post for now.  Next post, I hope to get into some of the deciding factors for where exactly in Guelph you might want to choose to live.

Heeding the Lyme Disease Alerts

Is it me, or does it seem like Lyme disease has become quite the hot topic?

Here is Health Canada's public health reminder:

http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/phn-asp/2015/lyme-eng.php

I think the first time I paid attention to Lyme disease was when a story came out about Avril Lavigne.   She was diagnosed with Lyme disease, and she had said she was bedridden for 5 months.  Sadly, it took a celebrity story to highlight to me how serious this disease could be.  What is scary is the number of cases where the disease remained undiagnosed for months.  Doctors had told her she was dehydrated and exhausted.

Lately, I have seen posts in some local mom forums about some bite marks that their kids are getting.  Some of these moms believe the marks to be mosquito bites, but when pictures of the bites are posted other moms let them know that they look like tick bites!

What does a tick bite look like?

The classic tell tale sign is that of a "bulls eye" rash as shown in the picture above.

So now whenever we're out for walks I'll check my child to see if I notice any rashes or any bugs.  I try to keep her in long sleeves, and long pants.  Not all tick bites will result in Lyme disease, but it is good to get familiar with preventative measures as well as symptoms because you just never know!

First Post!

As a mom that is relatively new to the city of Guelph in the province of Ontario (in Canada), I found there were things I had to learn about the city that were probably straightforward or well known to 'the locals.'  I hope to share with you some of my findings that were relevant to me!

Were there things you wish you had known or could find out easily when you moved to Guelph?