ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

So this is kind of crazy of us but we moved into a one-bedroom from a two-bedroom to save money and be in a better neighborhood for kids. Albeit a one bedroom that is probably bigger in square footage than our old two bedroom, with a much bigger bedroom? Anyone have tips? We may wind up partitioning the bedroom.

I used a big bookcase to separate a room when I lived like that.. worked pretty well!

kid #2 has apparently forgotten how to fall asleep :(

it is much harder to "cry it out" when you have a brother whose bed is five feet from yours getting up out of it and complaining about you loudly to the whole house

i was really worried about Henry waking Beatrice up because she was until recently so incredibly difficult to get to sleep. It would literally take hours. But as it turned out Henry falls asleep real quick and honestly once those two are asleep you could prob hold an all night rave in their bedrooms and they wouldnt wake up.

also a bit of a relief.

because you won't have to go to the wedding?

― how's life, Wednesday, August 1, 2012 9:50 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Because we won't have to plan a three-year-old's birthday party.

― pplains, Wednesday, August 1, 2012 9:57 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i like to think of it as an elaborate birthday party someone else is organizing for Henry where a couple of people will just happen to get married.

so K is pushing 6 months and I want to start childproofing and also making the apt a little more friendly to crawling around.

I also need a way to set up a space for her to crawl/roll with some kind of boundary around it so she can't get out if I need to put her down. Anyone have any thoughts on this stuff?

Maybe use these?

http://www.amazon.com/GMI-Keepsafe-Expansion-84-Inches/dp/B0001J05GY/ref=pd_cp_ba_0

They come in a variety of different sizes. I don't know how big your place is, but in some of my rooms, they can go wall-to-wall. They're relatively cheap and an easy installation.

that's not a bad idea. We actually have a really nice setup for the use of gates, because our living room has these sort of half-walls on one side with an entryway, and then on the other side there's an elevated dining area (the other two sides are walls). So we'd only need to gate a relatively small area, and then I was thinking maybe some foam floor tiling in the living room area.

re foam floor tiles, we had some that fit together like a puzzle. They worked really well for a while until she realized she could take them apart. After that, the first thing she did every time we put her in her room was to take apart the tiles and throw them all over the place.

Ours was akin to this one, with lots of little pieces.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51QbKCeh6QL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Which seems cool, because it's all honing their motor skills and puzzle solving abilities. But we found that we most needed padded flooring at an age before she was really into solving puzzles as much as just taking shit apart. She does puzzles now, but we just use an ordinary rug for the floor at this point.

Yeah. I was thinking about maybe getting some more toned-down (aesthetically) pads and running them around a larger area, like her play area but also around the couch. They make some in some nice colors, and they even make a woodgrain one which I can't decide if it would look nice or just tacky in the same way most plastic stuff that looks like wood does. H and I have this thing about wanting to balance between making things kid friendly and not letting kid stuff entirely take over our apartment and create visual chaos.

I want to find some kind of bumpers or pillows or something so she doesn't slam herself into the wall/bookshelves when she's rolling around. She's quite a roller.

The only thing we really did was progressively move things up higher and higher off the floor until eventually our place was actually sort of tidy - I realized this is the secret reason behind the seemingly inbuilt tidiness abilities of parents

we have a lot of stairs in our place and we didn't use any gates, but we did put some foam tiles at the bottom of each set of stairs... to cushion the landings

(i'm making our place sound grand, but we have so many stairs because our place is effectively squeezed up vertically into a narrow tube of rooms)

"daddy, that van sells bread"

i look up and see a van with pictures of baguettes on it

"yep, or maybe it just carries bread"

"why?"

i consider murdering my own son, again. instead i say

"hey, how do you know it has bread in it?"

"it's got pictures of bread"

"but maybe there's something else inside! maybe there's..... alligators in there!"

"daddy! alligators don't exist!"

"yes they do! alligators totally exist!"

"but not in LONDON."

checkmate

You could confuse him more by showing him these pics.

http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/c0.0.403.403/p403x403/181380_391421997579323_1612323365_n.jpg

Those are hotel shuttle vans. From what I gather, you can't get cookies from them.

they carry you to, or away from, cookies though, as i understand it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJlV49RDlLE

well yes exactly, though frankly the putative kid in louis' deathless bit asks "why" in a relatively sensible way

my child says things like "daddy, that car is green" "yep, it's a green car" "why?"

sounds like something that should be encouraged imo

the amount of encouragement he needs to ask unanswerable questions = minus 10000000000000

My kids and I are the opposite.

ME: "See that train? It's pulling a whole line of boxcars filled with coal. Why do they call them boxcars? Hmm? Because they're shaped like boxes! Now the round ones, the ones that look like … a shampoo bottle, those are likely carrying a liquid like fuel. Look at the graffiti on some of those cars, you could draw something like that!"

BEEPS: "I'm done with my gummies now."

ha ha

exactly

i mean Henry currently spends around 60% of his weekend worrying whether the ceiling fans should be on or not.
"Fan on? Fan off?"
"Don't worry about the fan. Its okay."
"Fan On?" etc etc

hahaha awwwww

just found out the genitals of the little baby-to-be
it's a penis!

well, I just found out that my kid is afraid to talk to me about his newly-emerged boner abilities, but he's been asking my wife all kinds of questions that she doesn't know the answers to. so good luck with your penis-child. : )

Haha poor mom's of boys.

Congrats on the boy M Bi. :D

Anyone have any tips on dealing with a baby being way more used to one of you than the other you wrt stuff like eating and bedtime? I'm working and my wife is home, and probably 9/10 days I don't get home til after bedtime, so the most I'm able to do outside of weekends is morning diaper changes/playtime and maybe some solid foods or a bottle.

This morning I woke up early and told my stir crazy wife to just go for a swim and I'd take care of K (now 6 months old) something that frankly I should have done a lot more often by now. We had fun for a while but then when she got fussy I tried feeding her and she wouldn't eat, then I tried putting her down and she screamed her head off, and not in the typical "I don't want to go to bed" way but in the "ok, cut this shit out, where the FUCK is mommy" way. When H finally came home, K was clearly tired and hungry, but I was unable to make her sleep or eat. K hasn't had problems with me feeding her or putting her down when mom was there, but this was different.

To be clear, this is not the first time I've ever watched K for a few hours while H had a break, it's just that K changes all the time and it's the first time I've done it in a while, and K seems much more aware now than the last time I did it.

i think at that age the mommy is seen as the protector and comforter. I know Beatrice did that until maybe 4 y/o and Henry still does it. Boo-hoo time means mom time. On the other hand, when they want to go crazy and play like wild things they go to daddy and its like i don't even exist.

Beatrice actually went through a stage of wanting to be with one of us while completely freezing the other one out and this would go on for days at a time. When the periods of this lessened to a 12 hour period PP and I realized that she would like the person she saw first after waking in the morning and freeze out the other. As soon as we heard a peep from her we'd be racing up the stairs pulling each other back or pushing the other out of the way so we could be the favored parent for the day.

So I guess what i'm saying is, even though it sucks you don't get to see K during the week, this sort of stuff, as painful as it feels, changes so rapidly so I wouldn't stress too much.

"We had fun for a while but then when she got fussy I tried feeding her and she wouldn't eat, then I tried putting her down and she screamed her head off, and not in the typical "I don't want to go to bed" way but in the "ok, cut this shit out, where the FUCK is mommy" way."

Unfortunately my only advice is keep going at it and eventually it gets better (esp. the eating once she's able to feed herself). Your wife'll probably be #1 for a good long time, but eventually you'll be seen as an acceptable alternative. :)

first day of preschool today! it went pretty well, she seemed fine when we dropped her off. but when my wife went to pick her up, sylvie burst into tears. not because she desperately wanted to stay at preschool, I think because she was just sort of overwhelmed.
hilarious that we think this is like THE BIGGEST DEAL EVER when it is 2 1/2 hours twice a week, but oh well

Oh man, Hurting 2. My wife works weekends, but typically on the night-shift. This weekend she had to pick up some morning shifts. When our daughter woke up without mommy there, she was out-of-sorts all day. She doesn't talk yet, but she nods, and I asked her "do you want kisses?" she shook her head no. then I asked her "do you want mommy kisses" and she paused, looked at me, then shook her head yes. broke my heart.

at this point i'm very used to be a distant second in the affection sweepstakes. not necessarily something i'm freaking out about, but sometimes it can be tough. actually she's fine when mom's not around, but if mom IS there, there's no contest.

we sort of have the opposite problem, L decided about 10 months ago that i'm his favorite and he has variously said he wants to go away with me to live in another house, that he want my wife and his little brother to "die", and that he "only likes boys" (which doesn't exactly square with saying he wants to abandon his bro but.... w/e) - most of these things come out when he's upset about something and trying to push my wife's buttons though

I accepted very early on that my lack of sustenance producing boobies and full time job was going to force me into a second place in the favorite parent sweepstakes.

That said when he was picked up from his first day of daycare, he saw my wife and said "dad dad dad" over and over.

Smells described to me by Beeps in the past week:

Her new scented stuffed puppy doll = her grandmother's sister's house in the tony section of a Little Rock suburb. We go over there in the summertime to swim when the sister and her family are out of town.

Her Kroger brand gummies = the scary ride at the fair.

Argh, baby safety scares. Anyone have opinions on crib bumpers? We bought a carter one recently with cute animals on it, because (1) she constantly wedges her arms and legs into the bars and then complains/cries (2) she rolls a lot and tends to bang herself and (3) we were hoping having cute animals to look at would help her like going to sleep better.

But now I'm reading all this stuff about suffocation risk. Although it's hard for me to imagine K suffocating herself against this thing, because she's so physically able that she'd probably just push herself off. But then there's also this stale air/decreased airflow thing. Gah.

We didn't use 'em mostly because of the scare stuff, but isn't your daughter past the crib-death nexus or whatever?

I think so. It looks like there are about a HANDFUL of reported crib-bumper-related deaths of infants over a few months of age from the past TWO DECADES, so it may not be a meaningful risk. The whole slightly decreased airflow thing made me uncomfortable, but otoh it only blocks like 6-8 inches of the bars. Anyway it's nice-looking and makes her like being in the crib more (pics of animals) and keeps her from constantly getting her hands/feet stuck in the bars. Supposedly once she stands up easily we might need to remove it as she can use it as a climbing aid. I hate this about baby products - so many things you wind up using for only a few months and then discarding.

our daughter used to sleep right up against the side of the crib and stick her arms and legs through and we got a bumper that wasn't all that padded and was like a mesh so there was no suffocation threat. no pics of anything on it though; it's just white.

Hurting, i got the same crying jag from my girl when my wife went back to work (and worked late one night a week so i was the only one home with her). she'd just cry uncontrollably when i tried to put her to bed for the night and absolutely nothing helped. she got over it after a few weeks/months, but those tuesday nights felt like the worst nights of my life. only advice i have is to explain what you're doing and where mom is/why she's not there and be as comforting as possible.

Man, babies are basically sociopathic monsters. Every time K is on her math and she sees me, she gives me this big wide-eyed grin and waves her little arms and legs for me to come down and *play* with her. Then when I get close she tries to claw my eyes out and rip my mouth off. I'm all scratched up all the time.

Breathable crib bumper:

http://www.onestepahead.com/catalog/product.jsp?productId=534464&cmSource=Search

hey this kid is three now!
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/426756_4504776497997_1773463446_n.jpg
crazy. preschool is going ok so far, she is generally pretty excited about it.

The backpack looks anxious, tho'.

I can't believe she's so big. Man, if I think your kids are all growing up fast it must be nuts for you guys.

it feels much, much slower

lol