ILX Parenting 3: Back In (Potty) Training

Edith is looking like a little girl and not a baby any more, yikes. Still adorable of course :)

Alice turns one on friday. I can't believe it!

I have to go and look at nurseries. I don't know what to say or ask or anything.

-- PJ Miller, Monday, 10 December 2007 11:07 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

Really difficult but I would say look at the other kids first off, if they are happy then that's a good start. The nursery leader will probably give you a load of guff about learning and goals and so on. But ask yourself what you want your child to get out of it. If it's what we wanted, i.e. that they get to socialise, play, and be safe then the best thing you can do is check out the state of the toys and washrooms (but you know, don't expect everything to be super clean and new (in fact if it is that's slightly suspicious, like they only get the toys out when parents visit).

I have to state an interest here. I am a treasurer for a playgroup and we get some parents who think that playgroups should be hothouses for little geniuses (which, you will not be surprised to hear, their kids usually are). Well, it's pretty easy to tell those parents what they want to hear. It's much more difficult to make the kids look happy!

Oh and surprise visits are best.

Having a second kid does this:

http://www.democracycellproject.net/blog/archives/050315_scream_vmed12p.widec.jpg

Wait till they're older! It's more like this...
http://oyvindsolstad.com/wp-content/uploads/the_scream.jpghttp://oyvindsolstad.com/wp-content/uploads/the_scream.jpghttp://oyvindsolstad.com/wp-content/uploads/the_scream.jpg

At least it was yesterday. Child 2 came home having been told off by the head teacher (for something he didn't do - of course!) and proceeded to stomp upstairs with his muddy boots on and then stood on a sofa in them and then - when I proceeded to tell him this was not good behaviour - ran out of the house shouting "I'm never coming back!". Thus setting child 2 off crying and shouting "Daddy, you're so mean! We want mummy...".

Oh joy...

Anyway, sorry Nathelie, getting carried away with my woes - what's up?

Oh god, I was exaggerating a bit. But headaches are no fun and sleep deprivation neither. But apart from that, kids are the bestest thing in the world. :-)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2127/2097740845_ff9857c4ae.jpg

Ophelia displayed mild displeasure at the relax chair. Very strange: before that she never did/said anything negative about Liesje. But the relax chair? She didn't like it.

ugh!

Aww Alex!

Thank you for the advice.

Yes, she is quite grown up, Archel. Today she has been pretending to be a dog. And well done on almost getting through your first year.

Ben and Owen have started to "play" the recorder and the harmonica this week, despite crippling and parent-maddening colds. It's pretty cute. Owen even got the whole "blow in for one note, blow out for another" concept on the harmonica.

My wife is sure they are musical prodigies now. ;)

And sorry Alex - that sounds like a really shitty experience, and like something I could easily imagine myself doing.

For those of you keeping score, an update.

Wow look at O standing there looking like a little girl. It seems like just yesterday she was the size of Liesje.

Here is Beeps being Beeps:

http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/3520/cutielq8.jpg

and Beeps being Maximum Beeps:

http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/8973/jumpinob7.jpg

Hey before you know it, Beeps will be grabbing EVERYTHING in sight, jumping from chairs, screaming, crying one minute, laughing the next,... Yes, Ophelia has officially entered manic two year old phaaazzze. I find it quite funny to be honest, but it can do your head in if you are tired and/or have a headache. :-)

The doctor at the check-up (for Liesje) said Ophelia was GREBT in the language department. Apparently at her age it's not that uncommon for kids to only speak a few words. Ophelia? Hell no, she's a motormouth. :-)

The only minor problem: food. She's totally using it as a control thing. But I don't let it bother me too much. She'll eat veggies eventually. :-)

Liesje now only wakes up (for a feeding) once a night. With Ophelia I was so quick to shove my nipple in her mouth, but with Liesje I am more relaxed and will just wait a bit longer, I guess. Result? She wakes up around 12 am but falls back asleep. So yes, wakes up about once, around 3-ish, for a feeding. Hurray. :-)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2397/2098520190_401e75e4e0_m.jpg

"omg it's my birthday!"
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2017/2120653348_b566abd12f.jpg?v=1197989150

"and i have CAKE!"
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2234/2119875759_3ee93a9ae4.jpg?v=0

Yay! Happy Birthday, Alice!

Nath, O's top is great! Where did you get it?

Jumping the gun a bit, cos this isn't really viewable on Flickr yet, but here's our 13-month-old, MMR-jabbed, Tot of the Antarctic...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2315/2119510892_d68f5f76d0.jpg

She's started the slapping and pulling of Daddy's face that made that 12-18 month period with Ava such a joy. Except Tallulah is stronger than Ava ever was.

It's been too long since I've visited here, lots of amazing pictures of everybody's beauteous youngsters! congrats to rachel on the first year, and good to see alice has conquered that love-of-cake milestone. alex, it appears that your trike-busting moment has made everybody a winner, that new one is the bomb!

peter, I have also been looking at nurseries, plenty of them. today is the deadline in our borough for ava's september admission next year, which doesn't really suit my last-minute-for-everything mentality, but I've put in applications for a few and we'll see who's a taker. I've been reading ofsteds, hanging out next to the parents on the tours who actually bring notepads and ask all the questions I never thought of, worrying way too much. one nursery I like has the kids tending allotments and then cooking everything at the end of term, cool! there are loads of schools around us and they're all oversubscribed, except for the one that's spitting distance from our house that has a rep for being terribly mismanaged and chocka with bullies. I know the kids can't read it but the cover letter of the booklet inviting us to let them start teaching our kids great english skills was heaving with misspellings and typos! one of my best friends taught there for years and actually pulled her kids out of there while she was working there.

I am trying not to lose sleep over ava's future by just chilling out already through the medium of christmas crafting!

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2305/2118643135_b04db7caa5.jpg

We're going to enroll Ophelia in a nearby kindergarten. It's a catholic school. Later on, if she stays, she'll have to wear a uniform, or rather wear blues/browns/blacks and or greys. Suits me fine. Actually I wish there was a strict uniform, but somewhere between my graduation and 2007, they changed the rules: there's no strict uniform in any school in Bruges. Bummah. But I suspect my daughters won't have the same idea as I have when it comes to uniforms. Even when I attended high school, I was very much in favour of uniforms. Yes, I'm a complete mentalist. :-)

Nath, O's top is great! Where did you get it?

From the Gap (Japan). My parents have EXCELLENT taste in clothes and are so nice to send/give me lots of kiddie clothes. :-)

Hopefully Shakey Mo doesn't mind that I post that Veronica Rose was born yesterday!

oooo! congrats! beautiful name too!!

I am not aware of any deadline for enrolling here, just waiting lists.

Sorry, that is about all I can manage at this time of day, which is the only time of day I can fit in quality typing time.

Yay everybody, etc.

Baby born! Little Veronica Rose Babcock arrived yesterday, 7lbs 12 oz, 19" long - no pictures yet, don't have 'em uploaded anywhere. I'm home briefly dealing with some computer bullshit and then its back to the hospital to help mom and baby recuperate....

Hurrah for new baby with my birthday! Also, lovely name.

Rah new baby!

photos asap pls!

woo new baby, what a great holiday present!

Awesome, congratulations - and I love the name!

^^^Agreed, awesome name! Congratulations!

Yay! Congrats!

Nice work, people. Molly says hello, I hope this picture isn't too big:
http://i15.tinypic.com/6t24aab.jpg

She turned one last week.

happy birthday, molly. she sure is beautiful.

Oh, like YOU should talk, what with your Beeps lighting up the world and whatnot!

awww! so sweet!

Happy birthday Alice and Molly, and happy birth-day Veronica Rose (what a beautiful name).

Nath, I too am in favour of uniforms -- they prevent kids from getting beaten up for wearing the wrong trainers/trousers/whatever.

Howie can pull himself to standing now <proud>

The other day, Ben and Owen were standing up next to each other, holding on to a chair. After some coaxing, Ben walked across the room to us, and we clapped for him. Then, Owen let go of the chair tentatively, and then burst into tears because he was too afraid to try to walk. :(

Hopefully he'll get it soon. He's way ahead of Ben in the talking department (by the way, nothing's better than arriving home to the sounds of "daddy, daddy!"), but behind in walking.

Aw, Owen!

they prevent kids from getting beaten up for wearing the wrong trainers/trousers/whatever.

True, but there are also different kinds of uniform and this (in my experience, poor Madchen) does lead to bullying. Seriously stupid stuff like silver vs. plastic buttons on a blazer. If they want to pick on you they'll find something.

Some pictures of Edith, one dressed as Edward the Confessor:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2092/2124763937_fb576731ab.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2350/2124756639_abbe8e091d.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2284/2124765305_cd97f710e5.jpg

PS: Your actual potty training is scheduled to start tomorrow.

nothing prevents kids from picking on other kids, gimme a break

Hello parenting thread peoples. I have a question to ask, on behalf of my sister really. Our mother died unexpectedly yesterday, and we have so far bottled out of trying to explain this to my neice, who is two and a half. We have no idea how to approach this. My sister is not religious in any way and we don't want to lie to my neice or say anything that might confuse her, such as that my mother is 'sleeping' or has simply gone away. On the other hand she has no previous experience to draw on, there's no book she has that we can point to and say 'it's like that'. Does anyone have any useful experience they can pass on? It's getting harder to pretend everything is OK.

I have no useful advice, but would like to offer my condolences.

Thank you ailsa.

Zora, Im not sure I can offer any practical advice for your situation but I can tell you that, in my experience, young children take this sort news a lot better than adults do.

Zora, so sorry to hear about your mother. Honestly, I would just gently explain that her grandmother died. We aren't religious - and when we had a death in my family, we told my (then 4 year old son) that his great-grandfather had died and that that meant that he had, "left his body and he couldn't ever come back." Alex took this seriously, but well. Admittedly, he was older than 2 1/2.

I think there are children's books available that address death; I used to work in a Barnes and Noble and we had a "special situations" section in the children's section of the store.

Also, I think Sunny is absolutely right about kids taking this sort of news in stride. If you present it as something sad, but natural, I think you'll be doing okay.

My dad died three months ago; Ava was his pride and joy (it depresses the hell out of me that he only got to meet her half a dozen times [and her sister just twice] - work pressures and our house refurb and my inability to drive and a host of other, similarly intractable-at-the-time trivial-in-retrospect things) and she was great with him.

He used to sing Hey Jude to her, which she found hilarious, and on one occasion she sang Hey Jude back down the phone to him, which just about made his year. So, with his passing, Pam & I went with the line "Grandad is in the sky, singing Hey Jude to everyone". Ava seemed quite happy with this as an explanation of why he wasn't around when we stayed up there for a week around the time of the funeral, she's occasionally mentioned it unprompted since (when seeing pictures of him on the computer) but otherwise hasn't asked about him.

We didn't give it a great deal of thought, and for a more inquisitive child it might not do at all, but it seems to have satisfied her curiosity in the short term. I'm not sure I want to introduce concepts of finality and death just yet. I think if she'd been perhaps a year older it would've been much trickier.

My condolences to Zora - I don't know if the above helps in any way. Ava is roughly the same age as your niece.

Condolences.

The library will have books about this (and every other problem you can think of ever having to explain to as child).

Oh, Mike, again I'm so sorry to hear about your dad.

Zora, I was only a little 'un (about eighteen months old) when my gran died, and my mum didn't explain it at all to me, and I still have this kind of nagging feeling of a lack of resolution to why my granny had just stopped being around. I was a little older, around six or seven, when my grandad died and I don't remember being properly told about that in a "he's died" kind of way, though around that time I remember we were out riding our bikes round the garden and saw a shooting star and my mum told me that it was my grandad up in the sky looking out for us. That sort of thing, an abstract concept, is good. Point being, I don't remember what I was told even when I was probably old enough to understand, but I know, even at a year old, I could have done with some sort of explanation as to why things were different. The suggestions upthread are good ones.