ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

My parents always seemed to think we would find things scary, like knowing the dog was sick, or seeing an ailing relative who was already jaundiced or dying or w/e. But it was never the things they expected that freaked us out? You just can't know, I guess. Still would take her?

also kinda wonder if I will be taking shit from my relatives for bringing a 4 yo, tbh. Like I might be okay with it, some of them might think I'm being a terrible parent. But whatever, that's a minor concern.

xp Agree I think it's hard to know what's going to freak out a child at four (or for that matter eight). I'm inclined to think it'd be okay either way, but I don't think you would be sheltering her terribly if you didn't take her. She'll get plenty of opportunity to learn about mortality ya know.

tbf I do have all those bodies stashed in the basement

there is that.

okay well looks like we're going over this afternoon if my wife can find a sub at the co-op

that went pretty well actually. Veronica was not weirded out or scared or anything. she wandered in and out of grandma's room, asked some questions, played with the relatives etc. later in the evening after we'd gotten home she recommended that the doctors give grandma "special medicine" because "we don't want her to die" at which point I had to inform her that grandma was not going to get better and was in all likelihood going to die and that that was okay, sometimes when you're that old people don't get better. this didn't seem to upset her at all (mostly cuz I don't think she really has a concept of what death is at this point).

and then my grandma died this morning around 6:30am. haven't talked to Veronica about it yet (since I'm at work) but I'm sure there will be more explaining ahead of and during the funeral.

condolences, shakey

yeah, what do you say when someone passes away at such an old age?

Except "maybe they had wanted to live to be 102?"

I'm really sorry, shakes. But at least V got to meet her and have that memory, something that make a connection in the web of family, a shared thing. I'm glad she took it in stride.

man, intense

If she lives until 2109, she'll be able to say that she once met a relative born almost 200 years ago.

Sorry, Shakey.

Except "maybe they had wanted to live to be 102?"

lol yeah. people go when they're ready to go, in my experience. My EMT cousin was there and was talking about how he picks up old people all the time who are like "I'm ready to die! let's go!"

but thx for the kind words everybody. it has not been that intense, really.

Ok so anyone have any thoughts on dealing with family wanting to visit all the time when the baby is new?

Basically the main problem is this: for months before the baby was born, my mother was going on and on about how she'd come stay nearby for a week to help my wife once I go back to work. So, that happened, only she really wasn't much help at all. She held the baby some, which I guess at least gave my wife a break, but otherwise she mostly just talked, or talked on the phone, or did stuff on her laptop. She didn't do any of the cleaning she said she'd do, she wound up needing a lot of my wife's help for cooking the two times during the week that she actually did cook, and she actually left messes that we had to clean up, like she literally never even cleared her dishes after eating/drinking (incidentally it was kind of revelatory to realize just how little my mother cleans up after herself - she has always been that way and I've only gradually become aware of it). Meanwhile my wife is kind of stuck hanging out with her all day, and while they get along well, it winds up being difficult for her after a while.

Now my mom wants to come "help" again. I feel like I can't shatter my mom's illusion of helpfulness by telling her that it's not actually helpful or suggesting she not come again so soon. I also can't make my wife entertain my mom while I'm at work. Sigh.

This happened to us & imo tell your mom to stay away, new fam prerogative trumps all & you can't handle company at this point

Tell your mom to stay away. If your choice is your wife entertaining someone over the age of 1 month old or your mom not feeling so "helpful" after already "giving so much for a whole week," you're going to have to pick the latter.

As it stands right now she is just going to come for two days and not even be there the whole time, so we decided we can live with it. But I am going to have to learn to be more confrontational about this in the future.

perfectly reasonable to send up a non-specific "we need our own space for awhile" signal

^^^

my wife's mom barely lasted an entire weekend. my mom was probably more helpful but left when the toilet broke lol.

it was really bizarre when she was here for a week, like "how can you keep insisting on how helpful you want to be and yet be so completely oblivious as to how unhelpful you are actually being?"

"AHM JUST FINISHIN' THIS MAGAZINE!!!"

(yeah, been there)

I could probably write a 10000 word diatribe about relatives who get in the way after a new birth. It was worse with the first one, but they didn't exactly learn any lessons by the time the second one came along.

eesh that sucks. we lucked out, my mom was amazing in those early months. i remember the panic I felt the day after we got home from the hospital with sylvie, and then my mom shows up, and everything is OK. awwww.

oddly, her mom, from whom we didn't expect anything, has been a total lifesaver. Comes when we actually need help, never overstays her welcome, makes good but unobtrusive company. Maybe it's because it's the emotionally cool, unneedy ones who are more capable of actually being there for you in a true sense instead of "helping" for some kind of self-affirmation.

UPDATE: the kid who I suspect has some kind of developmental disability/autism/Idunnowhat, his parents are now looking into getting him into yet another preschool (this would be his 4th in two years). The mother was expressing some surprise the other day when it was pointed out that said kid does not engage in any imaginative play - like, at all. which is unusual for a 4 yo.

*sigh*

parental denial with things like autism is huge - my wife deals with it all the time as a sped teacher, and it's not always the parents you'd expect. I mean you get poor immigrant parents who have no idea what autism even is, but you also get highly educated parents who actually honestly still believe that their five year old who does not speak a word will "catch up" by "learning from his peers."

BTW only half-illustrative of the same point, but Leonard Lopate I believe has a child with autism, and I once heard him argue with a medical expert about the link between vaccines and autism on air!

i have a cousin who's got twins. his brother works with autistic kids and he has thought for a long time they show a lot of the early signs of autism. they're about 7 now. i don't really know what specific things he's seeing, but it's true that they can't focus on anything, they're very asocial, etc.. but their mother absolutely REFUSES to consider it. the very few times anyone in the family has broached the subject she has frozen up, shut down the conversation. the kids go to some kind of experimental school where there aren't any lessons or rules and which doesn't believe in "pigeonholing" kids, even those with autism. there are no assessments like that. in their eyes, every kid is just unique and that's that. i have a lot of time for that point of view and i do think that people's minds are way overmedicalized these days but these kids' mother's total refusal to even have them assessed by a pro is incredibly frustrating because it's impossible to even have the conversation. and the concerned brother is frustrated too because he says the longer you wait to deal with autism the harder it gets. GAH.

We saw the midwife today and talked about our fantasy birth plans! Planning our birth dinner. I learned how to time contractions and got teary-eyed, We're at 36 weeks now!

Soon soon soon! So excited for you guys!

We installed the car seat today...took 40 minutes and it was work out in the hot, Texas sun. Felt uber rewarding to get it in. J. did the most of the labor, I just read instructions and looked at illustrations and tried to make sense of it all.

sending you all my very best wishes.

car seats still stress me out, 2 1/2 years later.

I don't know why installing the car seat was so stressful but it was! The instructions weren't exactly easy to understand, I would read each step then look at the car seat, then read it again out loud and think what are they talking about! There were so many straps that we didn't use which made me think I was doing something wrong. Then once we thought it was finished, there was still too much play in it's movability, but we figured it out. I feel a little more like a dad already.

Thank you!

Are you installing without inbuilt LATCH system?

I saw something about LATCH in the instruction book. What does that mean exactly? We used the shoulder and lap belt and anchored it to the floor of the Jeep, per instructions. It was very stable after that.

Weirdly, I now find the car seat pretty simple to install, especially just the seat without the base with a normal seatbelt. I think a lot of what confused me was that there were instructions on installing it like four different ways, both with and without the base, and then like 20 diagrams of kinds of seatbelts you should or shouldn't install it with. I think most of the "shouldn't" ones were kinds that are probably only installed in like 1980s Saabs, but when I was ready to bring my baby home for the first time that was hard for me to see.

tera the LATCH system is standard on most 20XX model cars. Its basically a metal bracket hidden under the backs of back passenger seats that the infant/child carseat clips right on to. Super easy to install and uninstall. But yeah the whole using the seatbelt bit was v confusing.

Ah! Yeah we looked for that but the Jeep is an older model.

BROKEN ARM.

more to come

When Beeps was born, neither of our cars had the LATCH system. For awhile, she actually rode in the front seat of my 1998 Sonoma pick-up. I had to use the seat belt and one of these oh-so-very safe things:

http://www.seatbeltking.com/images/Child_Restraint_gated_buckle_SBK_ebay.jpg

At least I could turn the airbag off.

Though it wasn't the safest, I enjoyed our rides together in the morning where we could look at each other. I'd sing her a little song to the tune of "Eleanor Rigby":

On the way to daycare
Is where we're going now
On the way to daycare
We both will stay so strong.

(Hope nothing was serious Tracer. We went to a birthday party this weekend where a kid had a broken arm and let me tell you something, he was THE BAD ASS of the PLAYGROUND.)

uh oh broken arm!

I'm in peds clinic all week. so many WCCs. lemme know if I can snag u some swag, TH

WCC?

he's wearing a sling for the next two days until our appointment at the fracture clinic. he's so stoic that the doctors didn't think his arm was actually broken until they grudgingly did an x-ray. clean break about two inches below the shoulder. !!!!! he's pretty much fine but sleeping is tough. we load him up with ibuprofen before bed but it's still hard.

Awww, lil guy :/

eep, that sucks, my nephew had a broken arm and it was no fun.

& xps, i think installing a car seat is stressful because on ours there are all these warnings that basically say "FAILURE TO INSTALL CORRECTLY WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE DEATH" or something.

WCC?

well child check