ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

Big fan of the "pick up/put down" method advocated by the ghastly-named Baby Whisperer over here

link?

there's this - http://www.babywhispererforums.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=45d29643a3a23789b9ff4af0767bd016&board=31.0

which looks.... insane, i have not read it. but i have read the book and don't have a use for large chunks of it, which has been my experience w/most baby books, but the pick up/put down thing has really worked with P (though he was never to fussy to begin with, which i'm sure helps)

in some ways it's the opposite of cry-it-out. in a nutshell you pick them up when they cry, murmur comforting things to them, and the minute they calm down and stop crying you put them back down in the bed. you don't rock back and forth, you don't pat them on the back, you just hold them gently until they settle down and put them down within a minute of them calming down. if they struggle against you, arching their back, it means they want to be put down and go to sleep! so put them down. see what happens. you might have to pick them back up again. it can take a little bit of time doing this to suss out what's working, what a good rhythm is, what they need. the key thing is that they're crying cause they're tired and want to sleep and they're frustrated that for whatever reason they're not sleeping. so your comforting voice and touch helps that. the goal is that after a couple of nights doing this you don't need to pick up any more, you can just put a hand on them - not patting, just there - and talk gently and that'll do the trick. and after a couple of nights of that, your voice alone will work. and after a couple of nights of that they learn to chill the fuck out. of course we all know things never work out that ideally in practice..

yeah I've become very aware of the "crying because she's trying to sleep and can't" thing -- in fact comforting methods that are too disruptive (talking, patting, singing) make the crying worse. In most cases it's either (1) leave her alone and she'll fall asleep after a few minutes tops (sometimes within seconds) or (2) crying gets louder and louder at which point the only thing that helps is taking her into the bed and/or giving her to mom.

Pick up/put down is an interesting idea. I think part of the difficulty of these "methods" is that there is so much variation among babies and even within an individual baby over time with change.

yeah imo WHICH method you use is much less important than HAVING one, even if it's one you made up. i really believe that kids can sense the lack of a plan.

"Dad, you just don't understand feelings."

my twelve year old is suddenly twelve!

awwww

relatedly, I am suddenly in constant danger of "embarrassing" or "humiliating" her in public (her words)

I'd be sad if I didn't remember those feelings myself

"I know you don't know this, but I do act more polite around other people." - the five-year-old.

haha

yeah, my younger kids are still happy with me being a boor in public

Omg Beeps

i also think sometimes w sleeping there is no "solution" and you just have to get through it, and whatever method you're using is more to convince yourself that something's "being done"

K got complimented on her rolling ability today by parents of an 8-month-old. I've always been proud of her rolling (it's very graceful and fluid, and she can easily go either direction, can do successive rolls, and uses her arms well), but I figured that was just me being a dad so it was nice to get objective confirmation.

Kids are 8 and 5 now. Heading to Disney World this weekend, as promised years ago. Everyone is psyched, but my kids are so not Disney indoctrinated, beyond the princesses, that I don't think they even know who all the major characters are, like Minnie, Goofy and Pluto.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/roiphe/2012/10/kids_and_porn_you_found_your_13_year_old_s_porn_stash_what_should_you_do_.html

In the end, kids probably learn most of what they know about everyday relationships by watching their parents. And in most cases, they do probably do catch on that adult life is not some triple-X fantasy of bubble-breasted girl-on-girl pornography. The intelligent 13-year-old is smarter than we think and maybe doesn’t need that note from his sweet father.

probably, in most cases, probably, maybe

She's a terrible writer.

She is! I was just thinking that the other day about some other article she wrote, like "why does this person even get to be a PROFESSIONAL WRITER whose name I know?"

(rhetorical question)

She's basically ridden the Morning After for like 20 years, right?

Yeah seems that way, and I also assume it's partly about having the right mom, going to all the right schools, etc.

I have no idea who her family is, but the Morning After (or it least my vague impression of it from twenty years ago) is complete nonsense.

hitting some serious terrible two action these days, had an epic battle about raisins this morning. there doesn't seem to be much to do once she gets into serious tantrum mode other than just ride it out, eventually she calms down but it was seriously like 45 minutes of just crying and screaming and laying on the floor this morning.

also it's crazy to see her vacillate between wanting to be a "big girl" and wanting to be babied, often from second to second. she'll demand to sit in a real chair at the table to eat instead of sitting in the high chair, then a minute later want to sit in my lap with me feeding her. it must be crazy to be two years old.

sylvie is way into acting like a baby. or at least she thinks she's acting like a baby -- it just sounds like insane dinosaur noises to me.

yeah she doesn't do it as much anymore but she went through a thing where every time she took a bath we had to wrap her up in the towel and then carry her around the house "like a baby"

Every now and again I think to myself - "This 3-year-old is being completely unreasonable!!!"

By the way the 1-year-old has started waking up screaming, inconsolable. Putting him to bed is as easy as just laying him down and leaving the room. Weird.

I mean putting him to bed the first time. He doesn't even flinch. Just boom, out goes the light. Several hours later it's like he's being jabbed with a sharp stick.

K is like that some nights. Sometimes I just remind myself that she has many, many years to learn to sleep properly, and that most people ultimately stop waking up screaming at some point before they reach adulthood.

we took the sharp sticks out of the crib at some point.

H will not hold your hand when you walk across the street, the lane, the parking lot. You pick him up to carry him and he throws the biggest fit because he "WANTS TO DO IT."

We've got these monster-sized recycling bins. Usually he gets the smaller garbage bin to wheel back up to the garage and I take the recycling, but last week, Beeps jumped in and took the little one.

He insisted on pushing the big one up our steep driveway. Little man couldn't even hold it upright. So I play the Wonder Pets card and say, "Okay! Let's do teamwork!" and try to help him push it. He throws a fit. I let him handle it, it falls backward and hits the concrete, he throws a fit. I pick him up to carry him, and he throws a fit. There was absolutely one way that he was going to get back in the house without crying and it was going to be after he pushes this huge bin up a driveway.

Needless to say, he was crying as we walked in the door.

Its my baby boy's last day of toddlerhood :(

Awwwww.

;_;

wau awww

K sits now and says some words in hebrew (mom's language) but not really much in english. But she does say Aba (Dad) :)

wait, when is the last day of toddlerhood?? i never knew there was a specific cutoff!

August is 6 months old today!!! We feed her baby rice meal with milk and she loved it!! Tomorrow we're going to try avocado!

happy birthday august! :D

i always figured toddlerhood was ages 1 and 2

August is 6 months old today!!! We feed her baby rice meal with milk and she loved it!! Tomorrow we're going to try avocado!

― JacobSanders, Thursday, October 25, 2012 8:30 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nice! This is such a fun part of babyhood, imo, watching the baby learn to eat, develop preferences, etc. At least so far. Lately K increasingly can feed herself appropriate-sized pieces of food (e.g. we cut strips of ripe pear for her).

I usually don't get to see K in the evening because of work, so I just hang with her in the morning. But once in a while, like last night, I come home early enough, and she gets genuinely excited and happy, and it's the best feeling in the world. Like last night I came in and she was in the bath, and she gives me this huge smile and starts frantically kicking her legs in the tub. So great.

yeah, leg-kicking with joy is an awesome baby thing!

Yeah 6 months is a great time! Henry is super sweet on me lately. Lots of gazing into my eyes while gently stroking my cheek kind of things going on. The other night i was in the kitchen when he ran up to me, grabbed on tight to my leg and said 'Mama! My Mama! MINE!!'

yeah, leg-kicking with joy is an awesome baby thing!

― tylerw, Friday, October 26, 2012 11:34 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sometimes she lies face up on her mat and just kicks her legs and shakes a rattle for like five minutes straight, looking completely enraptured

Yeah 6 months is a great time! Henry is super sweet on me lately. Lots of gazing into my eyes while gently stroking my cheek kind of things going on. The other night i was in the kitchen when he ran up to me, grabbed on tight to my leg and said 'Mama! My Mama! MINE!!'

― BLOCKY 4 LYFE (sunny successor), Friday, October 26, 2012 11:43 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cuet

August is just fun to be around. I walk in the room and she smiles, she's a very happy baby. She is trying to make different sounds now, but sometimes she just spits instead of sounds coming out. She loves standing and we're afraid she might skip crawling. She stands in her playpen, she crawls on me and pulls herself up on my shoulder, she even somehow can pull herself up along the wall. Isn't it bad to skip crawling?

eh, i don't know if it's bad...sylvie pretty much crawled for a week and then decided to start trying to walk.

yeah evie didn't crawl much either, don't see why it would matter

K only just started sitting at 8 months and does not yet crawl. But her rolling is so elaborate and advanced that my mother in law thinks she will just never feel the need to crawl. Seriously she does these elaborately triangulated rolls and gets all the way across the living room without me noticing.

My understanding is that it's bad to make your baby walk if they aren't ready for it. Like, my parents apparently held me up by my arms and "walked" me around to try and get me to walk early, which they later read somewhere could have had an effect on my muscle development and coordination or something.