ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

and yeah my daughter will NOT share a bed with any of us - instant pushing/shoving/headkicking ensues

xp

which is fine with me! that's why we bought you your own bed sweetie

on top of this we now have a cat that thinks the height of late night fun is to walk back and forth on top of our heads for a good 15-20 minutes at a time

oh and if I didn't mention it before shakey and m bison yr babies are truely beautiful

http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/good-night-and-tough-luck/

Sideways child and child on top of blanket drawings are dead on.

A little "you have no clue" parenting annecdote --

Our upstairs neighbor has a penchant for rolling a large ball to her dog in her living room and bedroom until pretty late in the evening, and it makes a lot of noise. At some point we realized that this was waking K up, so I went upstairs, and very timidly (I really hate these kinds of confrontations) pointed out the issue and that we have a baby who is trying to sleep.

The woman, who it turned out was pregnant, launched into this tirade about how she works long hours and its her only time to play with the dog and by the way, she KNOWS we have a baby, because she hears it crying in the middle of the night. And I'm like "Oh, um, well, yes, uh, that's true"

But then she says "So I guess you guys are SLEEP TRAINING HER huh" in this moralizing tone -- now, we did "sleep train" K, but that was several months ago. I realized that this person who is about to have a baby literally has no idea that babies STILL WAKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND CRY SOMETIMES NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO OR DON'T DO. It's like the woman who told me, when K was crying in the stroller in the post office "why don't you pick her up?" apparently not realizing that I had just been holding her for the last few minutes and she was crying the whole time anyway. But I guess I was equally ignorant back then.

Like, sometimes they need their nap and you are not in their napping place. Sometimes they have teeth come in. Sometimes they just freak out because of a noise. I think we all fall victim to the idea, before becoming parents, that if we parent right, kids will not cry, and that crying means we've done something wrong.

unsolicited parental advice is so awesome

"thank you for informing that my baby appears to be unhappy" etc

she likes to jam her head right against mine or sarah's and then yell "move over! i need SPACE!"

Same here, except it's me saying this.

It's great though. We've got this deal where if Beeps is in her own bed in the morning, I go in and softly say, "beeps.... beeps. It's morning time." And then I leave the room and let her sleep in another 15 mins.

But when she's in my bed in the morning, it's no holds barred. Tickling, jabbing, clapping my hands so the sound echoes off the walls, mimicking spiders crawling across her as I yell WAKE UP.

She's been staying in her bed much more lately.

irl lols

Today K stuck her thumb in my eye. I was able to close it in time, but it was apparently just a ploy to distract me so she could rip out a small piece of the inside of my nose. I bled and she thought it was hilarious. Babies are fucked up.

That reminds me of the time I woke up next to my baby and her finger was up my nose.

yeah she almost clawed my eye out once in the dark too but that was when she was younger and more spazzy

pp you are WILY. I'm a little afraid tbh.

August has wrecked my face before with her razor sharp baby nails. I have trimmed them, even filed them until smooth but they sharpen up within hours. My chest is covered with tiny, little weird scars all the time. They heal but she makes new ones. I look like I have been clawed by rats.

parents who are trolls

Ugh, first ear infection. This is tough. It's a bad one apparently, and she has a cold and a tooth coming in as well. She started antibiotics and took some tyleol, but she wakes up like every 20 mins, and then you sit there knowing she's in pain and there's not much you can do other than maybe distract her for a bit.

that sux
we somehow managed to avoid ear infections

LOLz @ http://thehonesttoddler.com/

Been reading about sun exposure and children. Not crazy about slathering chemicals on August when she isn't being exposed to the sun for a long period of time. But reading anything on sun exposure and infants makes it sound like any amount of time is bad.

Woke up at 6am for no other reason than to worry, in retrospect, that maybe August had too much sun when we were walking and watching children play yesterday. I realized that when I manage not to worry about August, I feel I am doing something wrong. Must change that..

She didn't get burned, no tan, no redness... I don't think we were out long but lost track of time. The walk was all of 8 -10 minutes tops in sun and shade. Then we went into the house to have a snack then back out for unknown span of time, not an hour though. This was between 2pm and 4pm.

isn't a little bit of sunlight good for synthesizing vitamin d?

My thinking....

You need so very little sun exposure to synthesize vitamin D. Like, 10 minutes a WEEK.

it varies depending on time of year and skin type, or course.

p whitey centric numbers there, yeah?

damn I love our little dude

Man, childproofing hell. I am so bad at this kind of stuff, and so hard pressed to give up certain things like having a ton of books on shelves. I feel like we're supposed to just live in a padded empty room for the next few years.

p whitey centric numbers there, yeah?

― pull up to the shrink with my feelings missing (m bison), Sunday, February 3, 2013 9:15 PM

it varies depending on time of year and skin type, or course.

― kate78, Sunday, February 3, 2013 6:37 PM

re: childproofing - I was suprised at how little a problem this was for us the first time around. it seemed like the key thing was to have things at kid-height that were exclusively hers. made her less interested in other stuff. like, if you have shelves, make the bottom shelf all kid stuff. .

I find wires to be a big problem, since modern life seems to involve a lot of plugging and unplugging of devices (laptops, chargers, iphone speakers, etc.).

yeah you can do kidproofing in phases and adjust based on what you learn about their personalities/how responsive they are

after 10 months or so they start to learn what the look of horror when they pick up your original press band of gypsies means, ime

lol my records are jammed too closely together on the record shelf for little hands to pry them out

K happens to really like pulling books off shelves, tearing and eating paper, pulling cords, eating plants, etc.

my little brother use to eat the hell out of one of Mum's pot plants, a great big rubber-tree palm. she ended up throwing it away because it was too big to put up high and he would NOT stop eating it

v weird

lol we can't keep any plants alive inside so no problem there. eating paper now, that would be a problem...

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4128/5004122808_06a994ea57_z.jpg

looks delicious

nomnomnom

jimi looking a little scared there

Relax, it's a CD-R...

http://farm1.staticflickr.com/58/164424008_c3f325686e.jpg

aww, cool eyes ^

My son with pink eye and an ear infection at the doc
http://i47.tinypic.com/eq6lc2.jpg

oh jeez sad face ahoy

;_;

my friend's toddler discovered he could put a cd on each foot and skate around the hardwood floors on them.
it was potluck when you opened a cd case whether or not it would be playable -- always an exciting surprise

aw, cute kids y'all, and I love the photo of lil tracer with the record

(Photo from Ava is from June 2006 - aged 16 months

p whitey centric numbers there, yeah?

― pull up to the shrink with my feelings missing (m bison), Sunday, February 3, 2013 9:15 PM

it varies depending on time of year and skin type, or course.

― kate78, Sunday, February 3, 2013 6:37 PM

― kate78, Monday, February 4, 2013 11:25 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

belated doh

Ben is asleep on my shoulder after a pretty extended motorboat mouth noise jam on my part, my lil gummy bear

srsly what was I doing with my life before him??