ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

K started walking today!

mazel tov!

Here's a parenting lesson of sorts -- we had known she had was on the verge for a couple of weeks (had been taking a few steps between furniture and the like). Today she kept taking a two or three steps on her own and then falling, and we would clap and say "good job" for encouragement. Well after a while she started to clap herself and say "good job" every time she fell, and then we realized she was falling on purpose -- she thought we were clapping for her falling. So we stopped doing that and instead started clapping WHILE she was taking steps. Within a few minutes, she was walking.

that's so cool

yay!

booyeah

and wai to go jjj et al!

Yay!

k is a corker imo.

She was probably strolling all over the apt while you slept, she just wanted you to keep being so impressed w her falling abilities.

i feel like i may have posted this story before but Ks deliberate falling reminded me of it.

my bff has an autistic son. one of the many tricky traits of autism is that all conversation is taken literally. like EVERYTHING. One day, when he was in kindergarten, they were attending a school picnic together. He wanted to play on the monkey bars so his teacher tells my friend, who is engaged in conversation elsewhere, that she'll take Louie to the monkey bars and watch over him. Louie climbs on the monkey bars for a while and then starts swinging from a high bar. Then two things happened: the teacher turned away to talk to someone and Louie slipped, falling down from the bar onto the hard ground, landing on his back. Much tears from Louie and much apologizing from the teacher follow. My friend, thinking that a get straight back on the bike attitude is needed, comforts louie until he is composed and then suggests he give it another go. Louie is hesitant so she pushes it until he agrees. He gives her a weary look while slowly walking to the monkey bars. Again he climbs up and swings from the bar and boom falls on his back again. Only then it clicks to my friend that to someone who take everything literally 'give it another go' means do everything you did before including the back breaking fall.

Gah what? Yikes.

Oh and also there was this:

Today we drove to Storm King Arts Center, only to see a chain over the gate

Me: "Argh, is it closed? Shit!"
K: (gleefully) "Fuck! Fuck!"

― #fomo that's the motto (Hurting 2), Monday, August 19, 2013 10:35 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

k is a corker imo.

― estela, Tuesday, August 20, 2013 11:42 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

:) this is especially high praise coming from you

i don't know about that but :) back, k is lucky to have you for a father.

this morning evie accidentally dumped a yogurt smoothie drink inside my leather boot, then five minutes later found a sample spray bottle of fancy perfume and totally doused herself in it

she redeemed herself though by telling me that we had a band called big rocket band. she even made me get her ukelele and my guitar so we could play our song "rockin' stars," but that didn't last long.

Sounds like a good smelling day for your family.

you should rename your band Yogurt Boot and The Perfumed Girl

Trying to work that into Cornflake Girl...

Yogurt!
You put it in my boot, girl.

PTA night at the Museum of Discovery. Holy fuck.

Kids had fun.

One way ticket to nightmarish fusstown the last few days. On the plus side tiny dude is getting rapidly less tiny. When he left the hospital he was 6 lbs 6oz, at his 2 week checkup he was 8 lbs 4 oz and 2 inches taller? Longer? Idk

sleep regression is the fucking worst imo

seriously though

story of my (parenting) life

I was driving around town at 4 a.m. and sitting in the driveway at quarter til five just trying to buy my poor dude an hour's rest and the tension of sleeplessness after two years isn't exactly easy on the ol' marriage

:(

Oh man. I'm sorry. Definitely know sleeplessness.

Thought that was all over for me but for a weird reason*, this summer everybody had to go back to sleeping in the same room again, which makes for a restless night as we all bump against each other and jostle for space. I'm a 6'3" 240 lb man sleeping balanced on my side at the very edge of a queen-sized mattress with my wife and little girl. My son sleeps on two child-sized mattresses pressed together at the foot of our bed. Sometimes I accidentally kick him in the head at night since my feet dangle off the edge. I regularly get pushed off the bed and have to bother my wife to let me back on at least once per night. The girl sleeps relatively well, at least, since she basically has half the bed. We're gonna look back on this and laugh some day.

*the window unit a/c in my son's room started beeping erratically and keeping him awake all night. We can't figure out how to make it stop so we just brought him into our room, where he's gonna be until the season changes.

I was driving around town at 4 a.m. and sitting in the driveway at quarter til five just trying to buy my poor dude an hour's rest and the tension of sleeplessness after two years isn't exactly easy on the ol' marriage

when this hit us we rolled with it as long as we could and eventually were like fuck it, you can do this, kid, and let him holler for what felt like hours. after two nights it was solved. i don't think it would have necessarily worked if we had tried it earlier though. the stars need to be aligned. by which i basically mean without that white hot rage i would not have had the incentive to endure a couple of hours of screaming from the room next door.

marriage ish is real though, not sure how we made it through those years now, except for lots and lots and lots of love that you've built up, and

I got so much trouble on my mind
refuse to lose

This kind of goes against the standard advice, but I really think there are times where you have to kind of temporarily shelve your expectation of getting anything out of the marriage when you have an infant. You just have to say fuck it and have faith that it will come back later.

As for sleep, we did wind up doing Ferber method. I feel like we did it "before she was ready", somewhere between five and six months iirc, and it seemed to take longer than it was supposed to, and I regret that. At the same time, she sleeps well now and isn't a particularly anxious child, so I don't think we did serious harm (although we'll never know for sure!)

yes this is a new yorker "shouts and murmurs" but i thought it was funny and other ilx parents might enjoy it: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2013/09/09/130909sh_shouts_frazier

Recently, it seems Montessori is everywhere. Is it? Why? New hip thing?

I taught Spanish and art at a Montessori school in the mid nineties for two years and was really into it. At the time it was difficult to find an enthusiastic group to discuss it. Not even the mothers were super excited about it, just appreciated it but that was it.

I keep bumping into blogs that are all about living with Montessori, bringing it into the home 24/7. Some of the blogs can be truly elitist and condescending, I feel. Just wondering where all this is stemming from? I use quite a bit of Montessori with August, probably 24/7 but not to the extent that these blog writers seem to be. I was really excited about finding them all at first but now that I have gone down these lil Montessori rabbit holes, I am left feeling under-Montessoried and inept. Some of it is sour grapes too. Love the tiny furniture and some households seem to have a lot of cute, tiny furnishings...all with a natural wood finish, of course.

Dear people on the subway,

I know that this morning, you were thinking "What kind of asshole brings a stroller on the subway at rush hour." Believe me, I am aware of the inconvenience, and I would not do it if I didn't have a good reason. If it's any consolation, it sucks about 10x harder for me than it does for you.

yeah any time I see parents struggling with crying kids or taking up a ton of space or whatever I just sympathize

young michael took his first bottle like a champ today which is a huge relief. we're still rolling with 99% breastfeeding for the next 8 weeks, but one less anxiety left to conquer

so my daughter's had a rough few weeks of kindergarten - teacher out sick, one day spent in a 1st grade class cuz they couldn't get a sub, only white girl in her class, etc. - but today she came home and told me that her and a friend were being harassed by these boys at lunch, one of them pulled out his dick in front of her a couple times, and then they were grabbing at her when she tried to go find a teacher (at least, this is what it sounds like happened from how she described it to me).

now, this is not a good thing, obviously, at the same time I'm not super-worried about it, this is standard "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" 5-6yo behavior, although the fact that it happened in the lunch room is a bit o_0. anyway, since she didn't find a teacher she just had to endure the incident which has led me to ponder a question my wife said I should ask ILX: should I teach my little girl to kick boys in the nuts. cuz that'll put a stop to it, that's for sure.

whoo boy

I think I'll let the panelist to my left answer that one

Prob don't teach kicking in school...

I would say kicking for actual self-defense. Or if an adult whipped it out, then yeah. But not a five year old in school.

heavens to betsy

I say YES but a) I am not a parent b) I mostly err on the side of physical violence in general anyway and c) I'm a child :)

Did she eventually find a teacher? Have you talked to the teacher? Has the behavior problem of her assailants been documented? I wouldn't go assuming it's just innocent playing doctor stuff. The other kids may have problems are home or whatever.

we have not talked to the teacher, I just heard this story when I got home a couple hours ago (my daughter did not tell her mom, not sure why). but yeah I assume it's fairly innocent and the other kid probably has issues etc. but I just want my daughter to feel safe, that's no. 1.

if it's not clear from that post yes obviously we are going to talk to the teacher or someone else in the administration. I tried writing this all down as soon as I could so that I wouldn't forget any pertinent details.

IANAP but i really don't see a problem in teaching your daughter to physically protect herself from a boy of any age grabbing her inappropriately. it's one thing for a little boy to be all 'whooohooo look at my weiner!' but if they were grabbing her/restraining her/possibly trying to get her to touch it... that's totally different. imo.

That doesn't sound at all good. Hope you can straighten it all out asap. Could be innocent but still confusing and scary to a kid.

A little girl flashed me in kinder and to this day the way she did it is still slightly horrifying. Then she bullied me and demanded I show her mine, that made the whole thing worse, for me. It was a scary and confusing experience for me at the time. The girl bullied me that whole year and then again in first grade. She was held back in first grade. This was at a Catholic school too, with nuns, in the 70's.

My dad did tell me and encourage me to fight back but that only landed me in trouble. I was always the one caught not playing well with others.

it's one thing for a little boy to be all 'whooohooo look at my weiner!'

this is what it sounded like from her description. she got defensive when I asked her if she told an adult - she said the boys "slapped her on the back" when she went looking for one but I don't really understand how that would stop her. it sounded to me like it made her confused and intimidated, but she didn't seem traumatized by it later (the fact that she went hours without saying a word about it to my wife, and only told me when we were goofing around before bedtime would seem to indicate she wasn't that concerned about it). we e-mailed the teacher we'll see what they say.