ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

awww! im impressed by your attitude. I believe after my trip to australia and back with 2 year old Beatrice I was using the term 'Soul destroying' a whole lot more than 'Character building'

we are 30 weeks in O_O

xp tell me your war story! Anyway, she did well most of the trip. Except going to the emergency room with a 103 fever and then having diarrhea for the next three days, and refusing to eat any of the diarrhea foods or drink electrolyte solution.

you know what we found stops kids from pooping at all? Pediasure. its like baby super immodium.

30 weeks!! excitement! names?

i think i relayed at least some of our travel woes, including me making a total ass of myself, upthread.

the only excuses i can allow myself are that i was wrangling a two year old plus luggage alone, pp needed to stay home, and i was preggers too.

from upthread:

I took Beatrice to Australia - a total of 24 hours travel time each way - when she had just turned two. It was a freaking nightmare. Carrying all of our luggage and attempting to keep hold of her while running to gates/getting through customs/security was no easy task. Oh and FYI, people in airports are total dicks. They were literally pushing past us. Both Beeps and I were getting body slammed from all directions. And., of course, the whole time she was being a normal 2 year old. She wanted to run around, she wanted me to carry her everywhere, she wanted everything she saw in the gift shop windows, she was crying, she was screaming, she was laying on the floor refusing to get up etc etc Then on each plane she was hysterical while taking off and then bored and tantrumy until we landed. Trying to get a toddler to happily sit in a seat for 15 hours is completely impossible, obviously.

I had three of my worst parenting moments during that trip. At one point while carry all the bags and holding Beatle's hand, I was trying to make sure she got on the moving walkway safely when one of our bags slipped off my shoulder and crashed to the floor taking a bunch other stuff with it. Already on edge from the relentless body slamming I said way too loudly to the bag 'You motherfucker!!!!' Everyone around me slowed right down and gave me the filthiest looks. I guess they either thought I was talking to Beatrice or just horrified that I was using that language in front of my child. Super embarrassing.
After two harrowing flights we finally landed in San Francisco. We had some time to kill before getting on the flight to Sydney. I had brought a couple of those single dose Benadryl packets with me in case of emergency. After the last two flights, 15 hours on a plane seemed like a code red emergency to me so 15 minutes before we were due to board I took Beeps into a handicapped stall in the bathroom and said ‘Beatle, Mommy is going to give you some medicine, okay?’ Well that was not okay at all with her and we ended up wrestling in the stall, ending up on the filthy airport bathroom floor. At that point I realized what a freaking maniac I was being, ditched the Benadryl, grabbed Bee in a hug and apologized profusely.
On the flight home, when we got to San Francisco, we had to collect our bags to go through customs. We went to baggage claim and waited and waited and waited until there were no more bags on the carousel. I guess I'd reached my anxiety limit by that point. I picked up Beeps, took her with me to a corner of the room, sat down on the floor and just cried for about 10 minutes. When I got my shit together we found our bags sitting on the floor a ways away from the carousel.

― (from a bottle you dicks) (sunny successor), Thursday, May 2, 2013 11:01 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ah yes, sounds familiar. Although in my case I was more embarrassed by the way H and I started loudly bickering at the baggage carousel, but it was one of those purely out of exhaustion, forgotten later things. I also got really nasty with people who tried to cut the customs line and thought I was going to come to blows with one.

The good news is that United is very good about replacing broken strollers without giving you a hard time.

I would definitely NOT do this again for any reason other than family, that's for sure. I have a co-worker who has taken his 2 yr old to Ecuador and to the Balkans (staying in a different place each night for twelve days) and I just don't get why that's fun.

we have a name but i am holding back on publicly announcing it out of some sort of superstitious weirdness. its not bizarro fyi.

yeah don't tell ANYONE the name. someone will have a problem with it and pollute it for you.

uh oh, let the cat out of the bag, sorry Bizarro Superman Justen, best of luck to you

I forget if I mentioned this upthread, but we came close to choosing a name that would have made her initials ASS

My mother ditched a first name for my sister because the initials would have been HAG.

hee hee

so excited for the pending arrival of Bizarro Superman

Biz for short

sup soupy

Biz Soupie

hee hee

Man, so we are looking at apartments right now, and honestly a thing I find really hard about parenting is how many new considerations come into play besides what you would otherwise want for yourself. And it's hard to know where to draw the line, like, do you live in the cooler neighborhood with the ok school or the boring neighborhood with the best school. And do you prioritize the things that make your life more enjoyable in the old way or do you prioritize the conveniences that make your parenting life easier, e.g. parking, a dishwasher, more space, parks nearby, etc.

You were living without a dishwasher?

Anyone else disagree with their spouse on howoften to correct your child? Apparently I come off as too strict. My 9-year-old is in a bit of a phase where if he's not doing something dangerous, he's doing something annoying, and if he's not being annoying, he's being counterproductive. I guess I'm all too eager to tell him when his existence is bleeding over too much into mine or others. On three other hand, my wife will snap at him for stuff that I consider top be no big deal. Really wouldc likev to find a way to keep him under control without stifling him.

I think that is one of those unanswerables

I live with 2 kids and no dishwasher fwiw

Yeah, you're probably right about the unanswerable nature of that. It's just that I don't criticize him for the purpose of making him feel bad. I just want him to behave in a way that is beneficial to himself amd others. I've been pretty free-form with my parenting. This is once of those times when I wish I'd read some kind if book (and that my wife had read it too and that we agreed on its content).

do not get the "cooler" vs. "boring" neighborhood but would get "fun" vs. "boring" but imo "cool" is not necessarily fun

my pref is usually "make things better for me so that I will have the enthusiasm to help my kids have a good life" obv here I am supposing a privileged life already. bad schools do not make things better for me though

I don't know whether this should be in the "darndest things" thread, but is is related to discipline and how much is too much and why the hell don't they ever listen to me...

I was giving the girls a bath on Saturday morning. They were pretty out of control with the arguing and splashing and shrieking ("you deliberately put that flannel in my face", "get your foot out of my back", etc) - all the usual stuff that makes me think it's finally time to separate their bath-times. I was ineffectually snapping at them to cut it out but Pam wasn't having it and laid down the law. After she left and I'd got Lulu out, dry and dressed, I reinforced Pam's message of "bad behaviour = lost privileges" to Ava. Ava just stopped me dead - "this is NOT your conversation to have, Daddy."

In other words, I'm the goofy one who they jump all over, and Pam is the one who makes the rules.

lol, precocious kids seem to present their own discipline challenges

it's crazy when you try to teach them about something for a long time and they don't get it until suddenly it just clicks all at once. we've been working on letters to not much avail but this weekend all of a sudden she was naming letters off of signs. she gets confused on some (M/W, C/G, V/Y/W) but recognizes most of the rest. and while we were skyping with my parents she wrote a T, an E, and an O on her chalkboard. but i realized we never talk about small letters, only capital letters, so that will probably open up a whole new world of confusion.

Bossy little man and I read his alphabet book before bedtime. He'll point to an 'A' and instruct me to "saaay 'A'," which I do...

We'll get to 'L' and he's all "saayyy 'I'," and I'll say "*ahem*, 'L.'"

He'll pause for a second and go, "'L'. That's right! Great job, Daddy!"

Little shit.

hahaha

"That was a test!"

had our second birthing class of 4 last night and unlike the first one it was super stressful and weird (this was basically the nitty gritty natural birth vs 11 different drug aided birth options one) and afterwards thx to being stressed out k and i got into some bizzare parenting expectations debate that went way later than it should have and both felt like jerks. good times! 32 weeks fyi

its very hard to strike a balance between wanting to keep your kids media consumption under control and coming off as a well-digging barn-raising luddite, this is my experience.

this is v hard. we are two ppl who love the internet and ben likes any screen that he can get his eyes on and we're like NO BABY YOUR BRAIN CANT UNDERSTAND JUMP CUTS

also, what natural birthing class are you doing? we did bradley method and we hired our teacher as a doula, we loved her.

There's nothing wrong with a good barn-raising. Good food, good music, and a barn: what's not to like?

its not really a specific natural birthing class, i just think that nowadays all birthing classes sort of turn into that because everyone imagines that they will have a natural birth, or that they are supposed to do so.

also raising the barn sucks because it's outside of my wifi range so my spotify playlists dont work.

a funny tidbit though, we asked the nurse that runs it how often the natural birth plan people she has dealt with end up going in for the epidural, and she sorta paused and then mumbled "eh probably 70-80%"

yeah my anecdotal experience fits that -- I hear much more often "We wanted to do natural but wound up..." rather than "we did natural"

there were 4 couples in our class. two couples had natural births, 1 did not, other unknown but probably not bc they were pills. #anecdata

This nurses's anecdotal experience reflects that walking onto L&D with a 5-page birth plan, doula and yoga ball thingy is the most surefire way to guarantee a 72-hour labor that ends in a c-section.

or not doing those things and just making a normal attempt at having natural birth, which is what happened to us

or going to a separate natural birth center and winding up needing to go to the hospital anyway, which happened to two couples we know

birth, it is unpredictable

i.e. I don't think being a caricature/strawman is the primary cause of natural birth not working out

No, but I think unrealistic expectations of what you can reasonably plan for can certainly contribute.

I don't think so

one good point she also made is that if you hit the point where labor has taken long enough that you are too tired to walk around and squat and do tub sits and w/e and are just going to end up lying in the birthing bed anyway being miserable, there's really no reason not to do the epidural.

hmm dunno about that. but it's a complicated issue.