ILX Parenting 3: Back In (Potty) Training

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.

My suggestion sounds a bit arsey, but it isn't meant to. It's just that we sit and do colouring at a table in the library next to the shelf for parents and I am always amazed at the variety and thoroughness of the topics touched upon.

Potty training update: Two wee wees in the potty and several accidents. I keep my spirits up by imagining a John Coltrane album for children called "Potty Trane".

PS Michael, I think you are being a bit hard on yourself, we don't have much choice but to live where there are jobs and whatnot.

A video of Edith pretending to be a librarian (no sound):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spVKkSrAfQ0

Thanks guys. Yesterday Izzie asked when my mother was coming back from the doctors and my sister had to bite the bullet. It doesn't help with explaining death but Izzie does know about doctors and that they are supposed to make you better. She's been in a few times recently herself, with bad colds etc., and there's an episode of Charlie and Lola involving a doctor's kit... my sister just told her quite simply that my mother was too poorly for the doctors to make her better so she wouldn't be coming home. Izzie doesn't understand 'never', so we're going to have to keep telling her, but I'm glad she's going to be getting the same story every time.

Thank you all for the condolences.

PJM: you may be right but I did put off a long trip on public transport for ages with Ava, thinking neither of us would cope terribly well, but when I finally made the trip a month or so ago it was pretty easy. Five hours door-to-door and she was great. So I now regret not steeling myself for a Liverpool trip earlier in the year.

If it's any consolation on the potty training front, after nearly three months of near-flawless behaviour, Ava has totally regressed; I've just had to deal with the fourth accident in as many days (goodbye, Dora panties) - fairly traumatic for both of us. We may need to go back to first principles and just plonk her on the loo for long periods. She's also doing this thing of sucking/chewing her fingers ("I'm just thinking, Daddy"), giving herself a little drool-rash in the process. She seems a bit bothered/distracted. Bloody Xmas, innit?

Michael, it's perfectly understandable you were worried and suspected (wrongly) that it would be a "disaster." When I went to Japan, I also feared the worst. Projectile vomiting aside (mainly my fault), she was doing pretty well. But you always expect the worst, don't you?

Zora, my condolences. :-( Michael as well. :-(

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2149/2130106251_eb89e25562.jpg

Elisabeth in a sweater I knitted. :-) She has a fairly regular pattern now (10 pm, 2:30 and 7 am). Still I'll be VERY happy when she skips the 2:30 am session, even if it means I won't be able to Scrabble at night. ;-)

Does that football dummy refer to FC Bruges or something?

PS: I still get nervous about the fifteen minute train journey to Reading.

lolz my baby shares a birthday with Michael Moorcock.

had to tell somebody

Hah, no, PJ, it'd have to be in darker colours. It was just a freebie at the clinic. :-)

I really have to stop worrying. My mum's pretty sick. Probably a cold. But a friend's friend (yes, really) had a baby in a chemically induced coma because of whooping cough. So what did I google yesterday? I was just explaining to my mum about the immunisations she'll be having in January. I see whooping cough and check the symptoms. Of course my mum's symptoms match up. Urgh. I now have a blasing headache cause I want her to check if she has it and I feel guilty about thinking my mum would expose my babies to it and if she has it and they get it... Yes, I'm mental. :-(

My daughter shares a birthday with Jon Bon Jovi. It's okay. Maybe someday, someone will be able to brag that they share a b-day with The Beeps.

My daughter did a massive wee wee on the floor in Thornton's this morning. Ha ha ha Yay my family. Apart from that, she seems to be getting the hang of this potty business.

howdy everybody, hope you all had an excellent yule! here's one of the gals testing out their new wheels on christmas morning. I reckon with a seat adjustment and a growth spurt lulu may be able to reach those pedals by spring.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2150/2141850933_34d1239241.jpg

Here's a little video of Ben and Owen cracking each other up over lunch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVYh2FsJolA

So both the boys got the Croup this week. Man, that's some scary shit, considering how basically it's pretty harmless. The coughing and wheezing is gnarly, and it's so sad when they start sobbing after they cough. We thought maybe Ben avoided it, but sure enough (maybe it was the... EVERYTHING that they share), he got it yesterday.

I am so in love with Edith after watching that librarian video.

I think it's appropriate that there's no sound cos, like, it's supposed to be a library, yeah? I love the way she lingers over the last one - "now, am I really going to let you take this one out?"

are ben and owen still suffering? hope they're feeling better soon, a friend of lulu's got croup while on holiday and it sounded miserable for both babe and parents alike. ava and lulu are full of cold again, the old snot faucets are on full power at the moment!

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2174/2146255646_d34459f8f7.jpg

It took my mother to convince Ophelia that the step is actually a lot of fun.

The boys are still a bit sick, but they are on-the-mend. The bummer of it is that this may push back an MRI that was scheduled for Ben next week, which would mean a bunch of doctor meetings and possible surgeries could also get pushed back.

I haven't talked about it on here until now, but Ben is going to probably need brain surgery to remove the area of his brain that caused seizures about a year ago. He hasn't had any since then, thanks to the meds, but the MRIs have shown that the area MAY have changed in the last few months, which would suggest that the area is not a developmental anomaly, but possibly a benign tumor. This MRI should hopefully settle the issue, but either way, he should probably get it taken out. Luckily, it is in a very operable area of the brain (right temporal lobe), and taking it out should have little-to-no lasting effects. The temporal lobes (especially the right one) are almost 100% redundant with each other, and people have had huge portions of temporal lobes removed without any perceptible change in their cognitive abilities or personalities. Still, it's frickin' scary, and we're not looking forward to it.