ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

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.

Ha I just wrote that August does this!! If she wants to get somewhere, she'll do this move where she spins around then sits up, then gets on all fours and spins around again and sit's up, she keep doing it until she is next to something she can pull herself up with to stand up. It's cute to watch, sometimes she doesn't make it and just keeps going in circles.

We've been dealing with this new thing August does when it's time for bed. She's not unhappy but, she's like a friend who you go to a party with that drinks too much, makes a fool of his self, and then refuses to leave when it's time. It's like she has no idea what she's doing, but keeps herself awake. She stumbles around, falls down, stands, grinds her face in the pillow and then does the whole route again. Finally she gives in to feeding and drifts off to sleep. What is she doing??

That's just kids! Kids don't want to go to sleep.

They get more and more like drunk friends as they get older.

Wait until you go get breakfast out somewhere and she spills her drink, tries to talk to the people in the next booth, cries spontaneously for no reason, passes out, pisses herself...

XD

lol

<3 that's the best

We've been dealing with this new thing August does when it's time for bed. She's not unhappy but, she's like a friend who you go to a party with that drinks too much, makes a fool of his self, and then refuses to leave when it's time. It's like she has no idea what she's doing, but keeps herself awake. She stumbles around, falls down, stands, grinds her face in the pillow and then does the whole route again. Finally she gives in to feeding and drifts off to sleep. What is she doing??

― JacobSanders, Saturday, October 27, 2012 1:19 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What time is she falling asleep? The books usually say that kids have a "window" in which they're tired but not overtired and that it's best to put them down during that time. Her behavior sounds maybe overtired. Also is she taking good naps during the day?

Oh, and btw, K crawled like a little navy seal Sunday morning. Hooray!

so she's ready for her first mission :)

which is to retrieve a squeaky wooden alligator, apparently :)

she just got a bunch of cheese (from a sargento cheddar slice) under her fingernails, then shoved her hand in my mouth.

K for some reason loves sticking her hand in my mouth and, in particular, grabbing my teeth. She only does this to me, not mom, almost as though she thinks of me as "the one with the teeth"

evie has her first piece of popular music she's into. she walks around singing "nu-nu-number...CRAAAAAAZY! nu-nu-number...CRAAAAAAZY!" ad infinitum. I guess they've been playing "call me maybe" at day care.

2 more months and we are in the club
homeboy is getting to be big! doc is predicting a 9 pounder

!!

Is it a boy?

yes! we are naming him Benjamin!

Benjamin is a nice name. August stood for more than 40 seconds!!!

that's like 30 better than my best hexagon score, kudos august

benjamin bison yay

he will be like reverse Benjamin button, bc he will age normally and become adult brad Pitt when he is an adult

hahah

After making mashed sweet potatoes and mashed avocados and August not really liking either, we tried store bought green peas and she loved it. How did you gets get your kids to like homemade baby food or did they just like it?

evie has her first piece of popular music she's into. she walks around singing "nu-nu-number...CRAAAAAAZY! nu-nu-number...CRAAAAAAZY!" ad infinitum. I guess they've been playing "call me maybe" at day care.

― congratulations (n/a), Saturday, November 3, 2012 8:11 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbf, this is what the inside of my head sounds like some days

xp: we had no luck in getting abby to eat veggie baby food at all, so we just stuck with fruits and yogurt for a long time. I'd occasionally get her to eat a bite of guacamole or refried beans or something. It was frustrating for a long time. Sometimes she'd refuse everything we tried to give her.

"How did you gets get your kids to like homemade baby food or did they just like it?"

We just quit and went with jar food. Nothing was more distressing than making it (which is fairly labor intensive) and having them refuse it or spit it out.

She seems to be all about the texture. Anything remotely lumpy she will spit out. That means any teenie, tiny lump. She likes soupysmooth jar food, peas even...and a banana that was beaten until it was no longer a banana.

maybe sieving/straining the homemade purees would help? potato ricer might help too maybe? idk. It's been years since I had to make babyfood, lol

her preferences may change as she gets more teeth - K had teeth early and is up to 8 of them already, and she really likes getting to pick up and gnaw on tiny squares of bread, pear slivers, etc., and doesn't mind soft foods that have texture.

Separation anxiety is kind of fascinating.

Twice a week my mother-in-law has been watching K for about 4-5 hours, while my wife is at class and I'm at work. K basically learned to handle this just fine and totally loves my mother-in-law. The other day, we had to have my father-in-law (who K also seems to love) watch her instead. She was apparently fine for the first few hours, but then something kicked in and she just kept crying. When I came home from work I heard her screaming from the bedroom, so I ran in, still in my coat and covered with snow. I picked her up from my perplexed father-in-law, (doing my best not to get snow on her), and she almost immediately calmed down. So then I went in the other room and put her down on her mat for a sec so I could take of my coat, and she INSTANTLY started SCREAMING again. So I took off my coat and picked her up again and just carried her around for like 5-10 minutes, and pretty soon she was completely happy, no problem at all.

It seems as though she has *figured out* that grandma being there with her = mommy and daddy are coming back, but she hadn't learned yet that grandpa being there = mommy and daddy are coming back, so when a few hours passed with grandpa, she started to lose faith, so much so that even when I was back, putting her down again made her think I was going to leave.

;_;

Yeah she looked so heartbroken when I put her down. It broke my heart too. But the good thing is that if my father-in-law does this a couple more times she will probably get used to the idea.

Awww being a baby is hard :(

and it's the kind of crying where you're like 'You're right! It is REALLY sad."

sometimes i think that being a child is a continuous process of growing further and further apart from your parents - you begin literally inside one of your parents, then you're in their bed, then you move to a crib, then your own room, you start noticing things by yourself, making your own judgements, going to school, becoming embarrassed by your parents, going to college and moving away. the process starts on day 1.

aw

sorry if that sounds depressing, i actually don't think it is at all! if you love something, take it to day-care, etc

There's this funny nebbishy partner at my work with college-aged kids who once said "You know that book The Giving Tree? That's what it's like. That's exactly what it's like."

lol "if you love something, take it to day-care, etc" should be the new board descrip
we're having issues w/ discipline/consequences/etc with out 3 year old. gotten into the habit of always saying "if you don't do this [usually tiny thing like washing her hands], you won't get this [something she wants to do/eat]", just this relationship of threat that seems like a bummer.

My nephew had mad separation anxiety when he first started kindergarten -- but the teacher kept making my sister STAY with him. Which just seemed crazy. In the end she just said to the teacher 'This is ridiculous, I have to leave'. After a couple of days he was fine. (Irony is that my sister had HYSTERICAL anxiety the first week she started school - used to chase Dad's car down the street after he dropped us off, and I'd have to run after and hold her back. :( )

Yeah, I think for some kids with some things, a painful break is the ONLY way. In fact, sometimes a painful break is anti-traumatic, because the kid goes through the experience and comes out on the other end ok, coming to the realization that s/he will survive, that mom and dad will still love him/her, etc.

sometimes i think that being a child is a continuous process of growing further and further apart from your parents - you begin literally inside one of your parents, then you're in their bed, then you move to a crib, then your own room, you start noticing things by yourself, making your own judgements, going to school, becoming embarrassed by your parents, going to college and moving away. the process starts on day 1.

Yeah, this is otm. My own formulation of it a few years ago is that the most important part of parenting is teaching your kids how not to need you. In that regard, as much as I love Sarah and am proud of her, I think my wife and I may have have failed as parents.

we're having issues w/ discipline/consequences/etc with out 3 year old. gotten into the habit of always saying "if you don't do this [usually tiny thing like washing her hands], you won't get this [something she wants to do/eat]", just this relationship of threat that seems like a bummer.

this is basically my entire parenting life right now, it is lame. constantly either threatening time outs or offering a bribe just to get the most basic stuff done. frustrating. we're trying to figure out what to do about it.

they key is to make the threat something you're actually willing to follow through with if you need to, nothing worse than being like "we're NOT going to the museum if you don't (x)!" and then they're like FINE and you're like oh fuck

but yeah agreed, i hate those little circles as well

sometimes i think you need to step back and be like wait a minute, is it really that important? sometimes i can get sucked into a battle of wills where his recalcitrance has provoked me to hugely magnify the gravity of whatever the issue is

and i try to go back to the mantras:

- say yes as much as possible
- don't ask, tell

i know, dude, i succccck at the whole "don't ask, tell" thing even though i know it's better.
& yeah when the whole day is built around an activity, we can't be like "we're not doing this" because that just means sitting around. and also, with halloween, it was easy to fall into the "you won't do this? OK NO CANDY" thing. which seems not great too. i don't know, seems weird to bring food into the equation. she does seem to be into just pushing our buttons these days, seeing what kind of reaction she'll get -- like it's entertaining for her to see us try to come up with threats. lame-o!

i'm really trying to get away from food-based rewards or punishments because i already worry that she eats too much and i don't want to give her weird food issues. she's right at the 50th percentile for weight so i'm not worried about that but it seems like she's always asking for food, even after she's just eaten a meal. it wasn't that big a deal when she was happy with healthy snacks but now she just demands candy or teddy grahams and then flips out when we won't give them to her.

time outs are the main punishment but i hate to use them because it just drags out the screaming and crying.

sometimes i think you need to step back and be like wait a minute, is it really that important?

my issue with this is that almost none of it seems that important, i'd rather her just be happy. my default would just be letting everything slide. but i have to enforce some discipline/rules some time.

i threaten timeouts on the reg and i don't mind following through - the crying and hostility usually gives way pretty quickly to "i'm sorry" or actually a nap - both necessary, depending - so i don't feel bad about handing them out, they're practical rather than solely a punishment