ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

my not-quite-7-month-old is pulling himself up to standing and crawling around like he's got somewhere else he'd rather be. My other not-quite-7-month-old is just starting to sit up by herself, but mostly is content to lie on her side and laugh at me. My just-about-3-and-a-half-year-old knows the words to Van Halen's "Jump". I'm so tired.

*tera, I still get jealous about my preschooler spending any time away from me. My sister took her to a museum a few weeks ago and I was all "But I wanted to take her there!" Though since the twins arrived, that's been easier to get over. In fact, my brother recently told me that he's happy we had twins because he never got a chance to hold our first kid when she was an infant. Not so much lately, but the first few months, anyone who came in the door was immediately handed a baby.

today was a nice day with August. she wasn't fussy and only cried when she was hungry or wanted to sleep on one of our chests. my sister came by and August woke up, she was happy and i let my niece hold her. she gazed at me a lot today and smiled.

and she has the same birthmark that both my sister and i were born with, a red spot on the back of her neck!

!!

wow thats so weird. i always thought birthmarks were the result of something happening in the birth canal but now that i type that out i see how ridiculous that idea is

beats was born with a 'strawberry' on her butt cheek. its still there. i thought it was very cute until my mom said 'oh the boys are going to like that!' WAHT MOM GOD

ew

jesus fuck.

Most disappear, don't they? I had a similar strawberry which is long gone. I guess not all do, since now that I think about it my husband has a large brown birthmark over the bit of skin between thumb and fingers.

yeah its def faded but still pretty clear. i imagine it will disappear altogether within the next 5 years

The big brown oval on my calf never went away. "You have poo on your leg!" The lads in the over-40s badminton club can be so cruel.

Strawberry birthmarks are great, they're my favorite cliche plot revelation (eg in Joseph Andrews).

I love my birthmark -- it's shaped like a fish, swimming up my leg.

My wife lets our daughter play games on her tablet. There are plenty of apps out there for toddlers - little puzzles and memory games and stuff - but she downloaded some games for older kids too. So as I understand it, my little girl just bought $50 worth of virtual fish for some game where you feed a penguin.

Does she know your passwords? iTunes prompts me for a password even to update an app. I did notice however you said tablet and not ipad so could be some other system..

Yeah, it's a Samsung. I don't know how the damn thing works : )

Damn! Me neither. I suggest you find out quickly! :S

so it has happened a few times now that august will be wet and so we will change her and as soon as we have her new diaper on, she has a blow out. so we started waiting a minute if she's only wet to change her. today we waited and then she had her blow out, so we were cleaning her, just about to put the new diaper on and all sudden the bed was covered!! we laughed so hard, she wasn't finished.

I don't miss that part.

think i've basically blocked all of that from my memory at this point.

Went through that with Hammer one late night/early morning. He cried. Fed him. He wouldn't lay down. Passed gas. Changed him. Did more than pass gas. Change him again. Change pajamas.

I just remember laying on my back next to him on a bare mattress, "big" light on in the spare bedroom, and he turns to look at me with these crinkled blue eyes and a wry smile, as if to say "having fun yet?"

He still gets that look too. Usually means something naughty/cool is about to happen.

had a total parent thing happen last night: my wife mentioned that evie's friend who's about the same age already knows her letters and was naming letters off of a sign. realistically i know that kids develop differently, that evie is pretty advanced in terms of her speaking ability, and that it's not even really time for her to know her letters yet, but i still got slightly panicky that we weren't doing enough to teach her stuff she needs to know. i guess it's hard not to worry that you're not doing a good enough job.

I felt a tinge of that recently when a co-worker brought by his son who's younger than Hammer by five months, and the kid already knew how to Call the Hogs.

For no reason that I really understand, my son taught his little sister to say "Yeeeeee-haw!"

lately evie's been into saying "razzle dazzle," i'm not sure why. i taught her to say "aw snap" and yesterday when she was playing with her friend she said "hi dudes" and "that's awesome." also she told us that the magnets she was playing with were receipts and she was going to do the budget.

You watch Yo Gabba Gabba at your house? I've heard all those on there. (hi friends instead of hi dudes, though.)

Or regular show?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dS5FjsC930&feature=related

being really assiduous with nappy changing is a huge waste of time imo - the baby doesn't care about it at all

obviously if they get nappy rash that's a different story.. but the idea that changing them is going to change their mood or is important to do in the middle of the night is a fallacy imo

What on earth are you talking about? Wet diaper = cranky baby, day or night in my continuing experience.

no ALL BABIES ARE LIKE MINE

i guess you can't generalize

but both of mine have happily sat around in their own filth for hours (not that i make that a goal, exactly...)

we do have a yo gabba house yes

lately evie's been into saying "razzle dazzle," i'm not sure why. i taught her to say "aw snap" and yesterday when she was playing with her friend she said "hi dudes" and "that's awesome." also she told us that the magnets she was playing with were receipts and she was going to do the budget.

― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, May 1, 2012 2:11 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hearing her say any of those would kill me tbh. Awww.

none my pediatric residents (all parents) had heard of yo gabba

whaaaaaaaaaat

The budget thing SLAYS me. I love Evie!

yeah N/A muno says 'razzle dazzle' a whole lot

so it has happened a few times now that august will be wet and so we will change her and as soon as we have her new diaper on, she has a blow out. so we started waiting a minute if she's only wet to change her. today we waited and then she had her blow out, so we were cleaning her, just about to put the new diaper on and all sudden the bed was covered!! we laughed so hard, she wasn't finished.

― JacobSanders, Tuesday, May 1, 2012 11:52 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when beatle was an infant she was not so much getting rashes but she was red down in the diaper area and it clearly hurt all the time and even more so when we changed and wiped her. we took her to her doc who is head of pediatrics at our hospital and his advice straight up was do not use wipes if the babby has only peed and only change diapers when they are real full or the kid has gone number two (in which case change and wipe immediately, of course).

pp and i looked at him skeptically so then he told us about a baby he had seen just that day. the baby had a rash and crazy eczema over his entire body, the only exception being the diaper area where the skin was perfectly clear and healthy because those parents only wiped for poop and never pee. he said he has seen this sort of thing many many times and the anti pee wipe method works every time. this convinced us and beeps has been fine ever since.

that was just a lil pro-tip

not a protip, henry is 2 and a half and STILL does this

the faux poop followed by the real thing AFTER being changed, i mean

side note: it pleases me so much that you a tera seem to be thoroughly enjoying August. makes me want my own new baby

faux poop!

K does her best pooping with the diaper off, no doubt.

well we all do

sleep still not going so well. I think at 3 mos we're going to try ferber. We can't co-sleep (in fact we had a bit of a scare with her falling asleep on mom the other night and a near-accident), and she's getting to bed very late and then is tired throughout the day, as is mom. Not good for anyone really.

the frustrating thing I'm finding the more I read is that people on every side of the sleep debate seem to make exaggerated claims based on a lot less "research" than they make it seem, and sometimes just based on hunches or stuff that sounds good. Our pediatrics practice is run by Michel Cohen, author of The New Basics, and advocate of cry-it-out sleep-training at two months. Based on what? Well it turns out he got "testimonials" from parents who tried it! But then a lot of the attachment parenting websites hysterically exaggerate "research" and make it sound like sleep-training a child is going to lead to brain damage, nervous disorders, wars, famines, plagues, etc. One commonly cited "Harvard study" is actually just an article by two Harvard psychologists that was not actually a study at all but based on the authors' feelings and a single experiment of sorts of letting Kenyan mothers watch and comment on videos of American mothers' responses to their babies (the Kenyan mothers disapproved, therefore the American mothers are bad).

My friend just gave me a book called "Go the F**k to Sleep" and I thought of you. It is all about a parent's frustration.

haha we have been doing the "only wipe for poo" method out of.... sheer laziness

Pee is actually sterile or something, isn't it? Like it actually cleans them.

If you're using a jellyfish as a diaper, then yes.

(you're right hurting. it doesn't hurt them as much as you'd think, but that doesn't mean you want to hire R. Kelly as your babysitter.)