You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Parenting' category.
Our daughter is a tester. She comes by it honestly, of course, but sometimes it’s a little more annoying than others. Like last night for example.
Hunter started giving her Papa grief before she even walked in the door and then continued to do so for the entire rest of the evening. It was like she just decided that she wasn’t going to do anything he told her to do. At all. Ever.
It’s becoming increasingly evident that she is trying to play the two of us off of each other, too.
And she’s so interesting… we try to give her as many either/or scenarios as we can, you know, to make her feel like she has some say in the matter. But if we present two unappealing options to her, she makes up her own! Then absolutely refuses to acknowledge any others.
I suppose she’s lucky she has not one, but two strong-willed parents. Otherwise, I think she might turn out to be a bit of a monster.
The other night at dinner, Hunter told me “No” every time I told her to do anything.
“Sit down in your chair.”
“No.”
“Use your fork.”
“No.”
“Eat your vegetables.”
“No.”
“Say ‘no’ one more time…”
Hunter clamps her lips closed and looks at me with a calculating stare. Then slowly, very slowly, she shakes her head back and forth.
I think the hardest thing about being a parent is “follow through”.
What do you do when your almost three -year-old won’t pick up her toys? When songs don’t work? When timers don’t work? When time-outs don’t work? When swats on the diapered bottom don’t work?
Stories. No books at bedtime if the toys are not picked up. Even though that’s the favorite part of your day.
Of course, after Hunter went to bed, Michael and I sorted through her downstairs stash of toys so that she would have fewer things to take out and pick up the next time.
We’ll see how well the toy picking up goes tonight…
That’s not really what it’s called, but I don’t feel like going upstairs to check the name. It’s similar to the renowned Tummy Tub , but I was able to get it at a trendy little baby shop downtown rather than shipped from Germany.
It’s a baby bath tub. The best idea for a baby bath tub that I have ever seen, and I wish I had found it sooner, since Magnus won’t fit for much longer.
He gets to sit up, all cozy and supported, and covered with water. It’s meant to simulate the womb and even the smallest babies are comfortable in it, instead of being freaked out by laying on their back, exposed in a traditional baby tub.
Magnus likes it because he doesn’t slip to the side or get cold because half his body is exposed to the draft. Momma likes it because Magnus doesn’t get upset the way he did in the other tub and I don’t have to hold on to him to keep him in place.
Every baby should have a tub like this…
On Saturday, I took Hunter to a birthday party for one of the little boys at her daycare. It was at this place called the Jump Zone, which is basically an industrial space filled with those inflatable climbing and sliding things. I had some reservations about the whole thing… in no particular order:
- Hunter is big, but she isn’t terribly coordinated, and, those jumping things can be dangerous when little kids are playing with big kids, or worse, adults.
- The disease factor.
- Making small-talk with other parents.
But, since it was the grandson of our daycare provider, I didn’t feel right about skipping it, and, I thought it might be something that Hunter would enjoy. So I took Hunter to the party while Michael stayed home with Magnus.
There I was, following my daughter at a safe distance, squashing the impulse to curb her activities because I was worried she would get hurt. I watched as she tried to keep up with kids that were older, faster, and more coordinated. And she did have fun, exhausting herself climbing up the ladders and fearlessly throwing herself down giant slides, the skirt of her dress blowing up over her face.
Every once in a while, another of the kids (mainly the boys…) would get tired of waiting for Hunter to climb a ladder and would drag her to the top. I also witnessed my daughter, who never cries when she falls, pull a little damsel in distress routine so that one of those same boys would help her up after he had just knocked her down. Interesting.
The other parents were just as uncomfortable as I was, and as I surveyed them, I noticed that I was probably the oldest, and definately the tallest one there. I was a little surprised by the fact that I might be the oldest, and while I was polite to the few people who addressed me, I didn’t exactly exert myself to forward conversation.
Some of them seemed similar to me… Once normal bodies gone slightly to seed, the same uniform of black top, khaki bottoms, and preppy shoes, following our children around, snapping pictures on our digital cameras, husbands not there. I didn’t really enjoy viewing myself through the prism of these other women.
Anyway. The highlight of the party for me was the flush of rage I felt when I heard another mother cough the same rattling cough that I had just developed that morning from a cold I had no doubt caught from her plague monkey son.
Long story short, I don’t think we’re going to any more birthday parties for a while…
Last night, Hunter achieved a new milestone… she has learned to throw up in a bucket. (If she wakes up in time and/or we arrive in time to help her out of bed…)
Why do stomach flus always strike children at night? And how many times are we going to be barfed on in the course of our parenting career?
The good news is, we don’t think it’s H1N1 Influenza A (a.k.a. Swine Flu, a.k.a. Mexican Flu, a.k.a., North American Flu, a.k.a. I forgot what the dumbass P.C. Euros are calling it…) as Hunter doesn’t have any other symptoms. Though there was that moment of, we did go to San Diego a couple of weeks ago, and this sort of thing would happen to us… And who knows, depending on how she does this morning, I may yet take her to the doctor.
I should also add that my husband and I are patriots. We did exactly what President Obama told us we should do… we washed our hands after every contact we had with our sick child. It’s a really good thing he suggested this because otherwise it might not have occurred to us to do so. Sadly, it seems we may be raising a bit of an insurrectionist… Hunter had to be reminded to cover her mouth when she coughed.
I think we may also consider following Vice President Biden’s sage advice and not go anywhere, ever. (?!)
Hunter sure is a trooper though… not once did she cry, and when I’d stand there and stroke her face, she’d stare up and me and smile, saying things like “I love you too” and “Sweet dreams.”
Oh, what will the rest of the day bring?
Several of my friends have babies that are about the same age as Magnus and lately we’ve been comparing notes about our experiences with starting solid foods. I suppose I made the assumption that everyone’s pediatrician was handing out the same good information that mine was, but that is so not the case. The truth is, many of these people have been told to start their babies on solids, but, no one has told them how.
Our pediatrician outlined what I think is a sensible approach, designed to be able to easily identify allergy symptoms and develop a varied pallet for new little eaters.
Start with one feeding of solid foods per day; that one feeding should be a fortified cereal made with breast milk. Our doctor recommended introducing a new food every five days. So, Magnus will eat rice cereal made with breast milk once a day for five days. Then he’ll get oat cereal made with breast milk for the next five days. And then wheat cereal for five days after that.
At the end of fifteen days, we’ll add another feeding. One feeding a day will still be one of the cereals (I’ll probably move that feeding to lunch) and the second feeding will be vegetables. We’ll go through five vegetables, trying each for five days in a row before moving on to the next one. I’ll probably start with green beans, then squash, then carrots, then peas, and finish up with sweet potatoes.
After twenty-five days of twice-a-day feedings, we’ll add a third feeding of fruit. We’ll work through five different fruits on the same schedule, one fruit for five days in a row before moving on to the next. And at the end of that time, we’ll start mixing foods a meal times. Cereal with fruits or veggies, etc. Will probably add some meat at this time too. Again, trying the same one for five days in case there’s an allergy.
This was the plan we followed for Hunter and it worked quite well, she eats like a champ. We’ll see how her brother does…
Last night Magnus tried his first “solid” food. Rice cereal. He only “ate” about four bites, and, I would have to say he wasn’t terribly impressed. He’d take a bite of cereal, hold it in his mouth for a little bit, and then let it dribble right back out. Finally becoming irritated with the whole process.
Of course, he may have been distracted by the melodrama playing out around him courtesy of his sister, who was hungry and wanted cereal too. She furthermore did not understand why she couldn’t have cereal too. We told her that the cereal didn’t taste good, but she only stopped “crying” (she’s been doing this more for effect lately… we suspect it works quite well at day care.) when she saw her brother spitting the cereal out.
All of this went down a little before six o’clock, and while Magnus doesn’t generally have his bedtime bottle until closer to seven, he started to wind himself up like he does when he’s ready to eat and go to sleep. We theorize that once he started to eat, he wanted to finish eating.
So the timing needs a little work. We were worried if we waited until too close to bedtime to try the cereal he might categorically refuse. Something that could be problematic because sometimes Magnus gets so angry that he isn’t being fed that he won’t eat, even though that is what he wants to do.
His sister wasn’t like that at all so it’s an entirely new adventure.
After much discussion about our options with respect to the double stroller, Michael and I decided that our best bet would be to get a bicycle trailer that could double as a stroller. The truth is, we don’t really need a double stroller for anything other than long walks with both children, and the occasional trip to places like the Wild Animal Park or Disneyland. Hunter is of an age where she would rather walk anyway, and, as soon as Magnus can sit up on his own, any of the strollers (yes, more than one) that we already have will work for him.
So last night Michael assembled our new bicycle trailer/double stroller. We haven’t actually put the children in it yet, but we’re fairly certain that Hunter is already too big to ride in the thing with the canopy attached. And of course Magnus will be unable to ride in it until he can sit up on his own, but that’s probably only a month or so away. It is likely that we will only use the bicycle trailer as a bicycle trailer on bicycle trails because we deem it too great a safety risk to ride with our children barely protected on the open road. All of which means we may not use it as such very often. Hmm.
Babies “need” so many things…
Hunter received a big book of nursery rhymes from my Auntie for Christmas. As you may well guess, this book has been a huge hit at bedtime. Hunter loves music and songs and singing and rhymes, apparently.
Often as we’ve been reading/singing through these nursery rhymes with her, we’ve wondered what the hell some of them are really about. Particularly with respect to Hunter’s current favorite: Yankee Doodle. We’ve theorized that Hunter loves Yankee Doodle so much because not only can she belt it out at the top of her lungs (sadly, our daughter cannot yet carry a tune…), but, the nursery rhyme itself sings about three of her favorite things: ponys, hats, and macaroni.
But while reading a biography of Georgiana Cavendish the Duchess of Devonshire I came across the origin of sticking feathers in one’s hat and the meaning, presumably, of the term macaroni within the context of Yankee Doodle. Apparently, the Duchess of Devonshire was the head of late 18th century fashionable (read: bordering on the immoral) society in London, close friends with Marie Antoinette, and very fond of elaborate costumes, wigs, and headdresses. I don’t remember if Georgiana was the first one to stick a feather in her hat and wander around town with it, but I do know that feathers, especially expensive ostrich feathers procured from the far corners of the empire, were commonly worn in the hats of wealthy women around this time.
On to Macaroni… apparently, the Macaronis were members of a failed gentlemen’s social club that was primarily interested in all things debauched. Drinking, gaming, dressing like dandies, and consuming Continental cuisine like macaroni. According to one thing I read on the internet (if that’s not a disclaimer, I don’t know what is…) they may have also been interested in each other, if you know what I mean.
Anyway. The Macaroni club wasn’t around long, but it was around long enough for someone to pen a song about a Yankee Doodle Dandy, probably one of the wealthy Americans who at this point in history were pretty much thumbing their noses at England.
And now, well over two hundred years later, my daughter enjoys singing a song that was originally about ridiculous wealthy people of questionable taste and moral values.
Hmm.
Recent Comments