ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

One thing that is amazing about very small kids is the eye contact you can have with them. I feel like I so rarely have simple, unself-conscious eye contact with ANYONE. Yet you can look right into your 14-month-old's eyes, and she'll just look right back and smile and not feel awkward or uncomfortable or anything, and maybe she'll reach out and grab your nose or something, but it's such a nice pure feeling.

Today I also taught K what a "hug" was. I don't think she exactly gets it, but she kept saying "hug" and every time I hugged her she would say "od" (hebrew for "again") -- probably more for the novelty of this is a new thing than actually enjoying a hug, but still.

That was a pocket repost! Well it is right and awesome

lol whoa

i love this thread, you all have got darling children and you all are very great parents.

H also taught her this thing that they call "metzach metzach dutz" (something like "forehead forehead touch") as pictured here (some random dude with his son, not anyone i know):

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/CT06Wfd0GJHGXLQ78md1ONMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0

She is now known to yell out "dutz!" and bump foreheads with elmo, people in books, etc.

on the flipside of all the cute stuff, K (again, now 14 months) has also gotten very demanding and sometimes even seems downright angry if we don't immediately give her what she wants. Do other folks find this to be a typical experience? I try to set limits without being overly domineering about it (not letting her have one more cracker ad infinitum, etc.). I find it hard to deal with though, because one part of your brain is like "this is a baby," while another part is like "this person is being a real jerk!"

"seems downright angry if we don't immediately give her what she wants"

this is what we call "normal" around here

yeah, I figure it's toddlerhood, but still, it's hard to deal with the way she'll just fucking instantly scream in your face because you didn't give her her breakfast two seconds ago

this is why we call petulant people "babies" isn't it?

i'm not sure why i popped in here -- sorry for the intrusion! not a parent, don't even have any siblings, know nothing about parenting. i just made that comment because i thought it was funny that you were noticing that your baby was acting...babyish.

yeah, I guess I am just taken aback by the particular abrasiveness of k's demands

like there's this other thing she does that means you're supposed to sing for her, only there's like one song out of 20 that you know that she probably wants to hear and you have to guess which it is, and if you start singing the wrong one she immediately screams at you.

my understanding as a non-parent is that babies are cute, awesome AND can be total jerks.

Sounds like time for time out!

yeah she's too young to get timeout still. Although I did learn the other day that she is old enough to fake cry, or as H calls it, to "squeeze a tear."

K: "Cheese!"
Me: "You didn't eat your egg"
K: "Cheese!"
Me: "I already gave you more cheese three times."
K:" CHEESE!"
Me: "No."
K: "WAHHHHHHH...[stops to see if I am reacting. I am not reacting]...AAAAHHHHH!"

tonight K soothed herself to sleep by sticking her butt all the way in the air a la downward facing dog and saying the hebrew word for cake over and over again

ooga?

yes

it's in a book she likes, bereleh the snail. she also calls all snails "bereh"

do u guys get PJ Library?

I don't know what it is. We have some israeli books either from my wife's and her siblings' childhood or that we've had her family bring.

http://pjlibrary.org <- it's free. some of the books are kinda rubbish but some are great

recs please, she gets bored with books quickly

this was one of the pj library books (a friend gave it to us - it predates our 'membership') but it's great and d loves it: http://www.amazon.com/Something-Nothing-Phoebe-Gilman/dp/0590472801

do they have any hebrew language books? K already knows more hebrew than english

she loves this too: http://www.amazon.com/Sunrise-Sunset-Sheldon-Harnick/dp/B005Q6G32W/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366424859&sr=1-1&keywords=sunrise+sunset

but it's just the sunrise sunset lyrics w/ some pretty illustrations.

and she likes the 'what do you see books,' http://www.amazon.com/What-Do-You-See-Shabbos/dp/1607630052/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366424904&sr=1-1&keywords=what+do+you+see+shabbos - but they're pretty frummy and i hate reading them bc there's no narrative

xp no, they're all in english. let me think of some good hebrew kids books - when i was a kid they were all like translated versions of popular english books. like hebrew cat in the hat.

recommend me some good hebrew language books plz - it sounds like u know better than i do and i'd love to get some good ones

she has and likes bereleh, lailah tov yareach, shmuli kippod, pinochi, a bunch of others I can't think of. As a rule, I read the ones in english, H reads the ones in hebrew. So if she asks me to read her one of the hebrew ones I just make up stupid english text based on the pictures (she'd never have patience for my slow hebrew reading anyway)

oh there's one with beautiful illustrations about a kid using his potty -- naftali?

oh, it's apparently Once Upon A Potty, but the original is in fact in Hebrew:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Potty

On the book, after the child uses the potty for the first time, he or she says “bye-bye wee-wee, bye-bye woo-woo.” However, in the Hebrew version this sentence also contains the provocative phrase “see you on the seashore”.[1]

i think i had that book as a toddler

my wife explained that to me as a literal reference to the fact that tel aviv once had pretty poor sanitation/sewage and that waste was dumped in the ocean

August has thrown several bad tantrums since turning a year old only a few days ago. Today we were getting her photo taken ( boy were we getting taken! Never again, investing in a good, fast camera) and she threw several.

She gets pissed then squirmy and throws her head back and starts with the whiny noise. That is another brand new thing, the whiny noise. Then there is the fake cry and whiny noise. I was getting a bit stressed because she showed little signs of a really bad temper while we were there. Such a sweetie but she has this edge to her... Then a much older little girl and her brother came along and were being mean to August at the Lego table and well, just wanted to tell them to fuck off. But they were like six and seven year olds... still grrrr. Then I began to think way into the future, my child and mean people...her temper, got seriously overwhelmed for a second.

K has good days and bad days with temper. It's definitely fun and difficult at the same time once they learn "no", but K at least only seems to say "no" when she genuinely means it, and doesn't try to be difficult on purpose (I guess that comes later). But it's very cute the way K sort of frankly and firmly waves off foods/songs/books she doesn't want.

I have generally come around to a parenting philosophy built around a kind of hierarchy of needs: (1) Is she hungry? (2) Is she sleeping/napping enough? (3) Is she too cold or hot? (4) Is her diaper full of something? (5) is she sick?

I find that these things account for like 90% of bad moods and tantrums, if not more, and if you address them promptly you make your life a lot easier and your baby a lot happier. This is actually a way in which I feel slightly misled by "attachment parenting" readings, which I think overemphasize copious amounts of physical contact. Physical contact is important but I'd probably put physical contact and attention after the five things on my list in terms of priority. In other words, it makes much more difference to K's mood and happiness whether she has her meals on time than whether I take her to the park in a carrier vs a stroller.

August has learned no and shakes her head no-no-no during these tantrums. The hungry part is tricky, still working on solids. Not enough sleep is a problem that goes hand and hand with nursing, no nursing, no napping. Teething. I am catching on to the fact that she really doesn't like change. I thought she would love riding facing forward in her car seat but she wants it rear facing. I still remember upsets I had as a toddler with change. And once again, ILX helps me sort things out :)

Hurting: K always sounds so adorable :)

I would add does her teeth/mouth hurt to Hurting list. Probably in between 3-5 depending on the age. Sometimes I feel like tooth pain is the biggest driver of all behavior actually since it can often affect 1 and 2 as well...

oh yeah teething too, true. That's the hardest one to alleviate though -- sometimes a teether helps but sometimes she's just not interested.

occasionally we do children's advil for that, try not to over-rely on it

We've given our soon so much Advil/Tylenol he now asks for "pain meds" and specifically the "red kind".

children's advil scares the shit out of me for reasons i can't explain. no problem whatsoever with calpol (i.e. paracetemol, i.e. acetominophen, i.e. tylenol)

really? isn't tylenol the more dangerous one, in general?

like i said, for reasons i can't explain.

http://www.photo-dictionary.com/photofiles/list/6974/12340anvil.jpg

tip -- childrens' advil and infant advil are the exact same thing in different concentrations. Counterintuitively, the infant one is actually more concentrated, but it's also 4x more expensive per miligram of ibuprofen. If you can do the math and figure out the right dosage, you can just give your infant childrens' advil in a dropper.

Yes! My wife works in a medical field and she gave me that exact same tip (I do all the grocery shopping). At first I was all like "Nuh-uh, because blah-blah infant and blah-blah they wouldn't put a picture of a baby on the bottle if it wasn't supposed to be special for babies..." and she had to be all "No, listen to me, you asshole." : D

Yeah they get you by putting "ask a doctor" for children under 2 on the children's bottle and it's like "oh, that sounds serious, I guess I can only give this to a baby in special situations." Nope, it's the same active ingredient in different amounts.

I think they also put some nonsense like "specially formulated" on the infant one. My pharmacist confirmed that this is meaningless.

And this really comes in handy, because not only is the infant one 4x more expensive, but the bottle is REALLY small, so you always run out when you need it.