ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

Tonight she asked to go to sleep an hour early, which is really weird for her, and she kept saying "goodnight" like she wanted me to go away, and I started to feel all guilty, like maybe she's sad because we haven't seen as much of her now that we're both working so much. But then we realized she was running a 102 fever.

oof. I'm sorry hurting.

Yeah, 103 this morning. She's with grandma now. Seems like just a virus that will pass though - once she had some advil she seemed like her old self.

The guilt thing is another thing. I already feel like she's developing this very independent personality from going between parents/grandma/nanny so much, but maybe it's not a bad thing. Or maybe it's just how toddlers are. She's EXTREMELY demanding, in the sense of deciding she wants something and immediately screaming for it, but again, maybe that's how toddlers are.

delayed gratification not a big thing for kids afaict

Oh noooooo....hope she feels better soon.

That is how August is. She still nurses though and that keeps her coming back. She still nurses because denying her causes all sorts of drama. UGH! Got a La Leche League book all about this and working on it.

Sometimes she goes in her bed and just says "goodnight" in this kind of dismissive way, and it sort of gets me, like she's saying "Bye now, don't really need you here."

On Saturday, we told our kid that we were leaving to visit some family friends in an hour and she spent much of that hour standing by the door crying because she wanted to go see them NOW.

You are giving her a safe environment where she can feel independent. I have met clingy toddlers and the two I met did not have a great home life. A parent was missing. So I think it's more like, goodnight, I know you will be here tomorrow.

So I think it's more like, goodnight, I know you will be here tomorrow. otm

aw :)

Its good for kids not to need you! Best piece of parenting advice my dad ever gave me was that being a parent is all about letting them go.

Yeah, my mantra has always been that I wanted to teach my kid how not to need me. I haven't been entirely successful.

really want to know what this says, but not a subscriber
http://chronicle.com/article/Researchers-Question-Agenda-in/141567/

sort of hoping it backs up my theory that the videos are actually not so bad, but can't tell

So according to other blogs linking it, the answer is yes. Anecdotally, I have seen K pick up quite a few words from the video, so the idea that they somehow "hurt" language learning always struck me as bizarre. Perhaps she would pick up words even faster if we spent that additional 30 minutes a day doing EVEN MORE talking and singing and reading with her instead of putting the video on, but frankly I can't keep up sometimes with her Johnny 5-like need for input. The other day I did a 20-minute rendition of Old McDonald with pretty much every person, animal and inanimate object I could think of on the farm. And she was still asking for more.

Ha!

August has picked up melodies since we started letting her watch the morning shows on the baby channel. I have been singing to her since she was born. Last year around this time I was spending close to an hour singing her different songs. We also play a lot of music for her, again, since she was born, but it's the shows that have had her humming and singing. She still doesn't hum the melody to I'm a Little Teapot, Row Row Row Your Boat or Los Pollitos Dicen Pio Pio Pio, but she does act out the songs really well. After a week of Mio Mao on that baby channel, she hums that almost on the nose.

wow--what you guys were saying about sleep regression earlier--holy shit, no kiddin!. Ella's 8.5 months and suddenly WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Hank Sr. delivers roundhouse punch to the side of my neck. No big deal, he punches like a 3-year-old.

I grab him though and say, Ok buster. My turn to hit.

Little man raises his jaw up, points to the side of his face and says Ok, right here.

Not only does he knock my bluff off, he's calling me on it too.

"Cut me, Mick"

When Michael is inconsolable and can't be cured by feeding/changing/his rotating animal mobile friends/nook/getting run around the house in my arms, the only thing that will calm him down is music. Of any kind. I have both perfected and ruined my child I think.

He just turned 2 months old btw. He is a champ.

Awwwww so adorable, only two months.

Also his nickname from the first night in the hospital has been smudge (no idea why, these things happen) so the new fridgidaire ad campaign based on smudge-free appliances has been a big hit in our house.

Wait, smudge-proof. So there have been a lot of "You can't even use that refrigerator!!!" couch moments. He doesn't get the joke. Because he is a tiny baby.

lol <3

HA!

<3 little babies are such duffers.

When I was pregnant I ate a lot of Indian food, lots of spicy foods. Anyway, trying to get August interested in consuming more solids, more frequently and regularly. It seems that she prefers Indian food, spicy foods even. She definitely likes complex flavors. We are looking at Indian recipes and probably going to eat more Indian dishes at home. Have to go to Houston to find an Indian restaurant. I will stop stressing once she starts eating more substantial portions.

"smudge" is a great nickname. We have had some ridiculous ones for K, they change over time. Around 6 months when she was in this adorable, neckless sumo-wrestler phase (she has since grown out of that) we called her fatsolina. We also called her "kay-kay" for a while, it just stuck after my mom's weird insistence that K was saying "kay-kay" as a version of her own name in a video, even though it was clear that she wasn't. There was also "putski" aka "putski-poo." No idea where that came from. And "buba" which means "doll."

xp to tera. my wife did the same, J pretty much prefers strong, savory, and salty flavors to sweet foods. i don't know if that will change though. part of me feels like maybe babies don't have fully developed taste buds and are thus okay with spicy and flavorful foods, but that feeling is not based on any real evidence. i've just seen some other babies who love really spicy foods but eventually just evolve to have normal kids comfort food tastes.

haha also we all know those stupid buzzfeed lists like "you know you grew up in the 90s if....." right?

i found a similar one for my baby J: http://www.markrichardson.org/post/50477298578/10-signs-you-were-born-in-the-2010s

1. You are 3 years old or younger.
2. You are an infant or toddler.
3. You are in the very early developmental stages of human life.
4. You never experienced September 11, and you don’t know what it is because you can barely grasp basic tasks like walking and using a toilet.
5. You were born on or after January 1, 2010.
6. You were born three years, five months and seven days ago or more recently.
7. You cannot read this list because your brain is not developed enough for literacy of the English language.
8. You’ve never been on MySpace and you don’t know what that is. You cannot type or competently use a computer.
9. You don’t know who Michael Jordan is. You don’t know who most celebrities are because you’re in such an early stage of life that you can barely recognize and remember the people in your immediate and extended family.
10. You never knew Pluto as a planet. You don’t know what planets are or anything about the cosmos because you are a young child who has no concept of abstract ideas whatsoever.

i'm feeling like the parody isn't coming off as clearly as it did the first time i read it. it's a parody, hope u can tell.

Bummed out today. Yesterday when I got home from work, both of my kids were playing football in the neighborhood field. That is, my 9-year-old was playing with some other elementary school kids and my 3-year-old was just being cute and doing a pretty good job of staying onsides and running around yelling "HIKE!" And the big kids did a great job of not running over her. It was pretty special.

Anyway, the game sort of broke up so some kids could have snacks and some kids could talk to their friends or whatever, but my little one still wanted to play. She went up to the kid who had the football (a second-grader, I think) and tried to grab the ball. So he pushed her down. I was the only person who saw it and I immediately ran up to them. She was on the ground with just these tears in her eyes. He hadn't hurt her, but she had been in the middle of something so joyful, playing with the big kids...and she just couldn't believe the way he'd rejected her.

I didn't holler at him (like I'm known for). I just made him apologize to her. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to say some more words to him about hitting other people and especially people who are much smaller than him.

I know she'll get her feelings hurt again and someone will probably hit her again, but it was such a bummer of an ending to a beautiful fall evening.

yea that's sad, the poor girl

On a positive note, in response to an unfavorable mid-term note from my 9-year-old's teacher, I've been spending time with the kid, helping him correct his math homework and making him practice his violin. My wife just let me know that when he went upstairs for bed last night, he was smiling and said he had been "hanging out with daddy."

Marcos: LOL and thanks for the confirmation

Awww life, that is heartbreaking, poor things. I always get bad butterflies when older kids come around August. She isn't even 18 months old just yet but she loves children and goes right up and says hi and smiles and does some show-n-tell. She gets ignored a lot and just that has been a bit tough. Ugh...parenting is hard.

"hanging out with daddy."- AWESOME!

Yesterday morning August was playing around the room, watching her shows and decided to pick up her tiny tee shirt, balled it up then placed it in J. coffee. Made my week, she was so joyful!

pushing a kid down is totally unacceptable and pushing a much smaller kid down is definitely cause for a thorough telling-off with extreme prejudice but at the same time grabbing a stranger's ball is also not cool so, i dunno, live and learn?

I mean, he's not a stranger. They're both at the park every day. She just wanted to show him that she still wanted to play with him, even though the other kids didn't.

The core group of football players in the neighborhood (I call them the second-grade football mafia) are some intense kids from unusual home situations. Not abusive home situations, I don't think, but non-traditional scenarios like adoption and multi-family households. They take football WAY seriously and actually ostracized my older kid over a perceived slight a few weeks back as well! They actually had a ref out there yesterday (someone's grandma, I think), who was keeping them in line to their dismay, but she wasn't around at the time of the pushing incident.

xps My three-year-old is all planets, all of the time, but the other 9 otm

xpost yeah how's life. i dunno. i have become almost... resigned to other kids being assholes. i basically hate other kids anyway though. there are some that just stare at you gormlessly without smiling, creeps me out.

physical abuse of younger children is always an interven-able offense imho

I pretty much hate all kids except my own.

that kid is a jerk and I want to push him down

aw, thanks guys!

Yeah, about other people's kids, I have very similar thoughts about my 9-year-old's friends. All like, "jeez, you're hanging out with this kid?" But I know my parents had similar thoughts about my little gang, even though they didn't let me know it too much at the time.

(and she is in much better spirits tonight, by the way)

haha also we all know those stupid buzzfeed lists like "you know you grew up in the 90s if....." right?

i found a similar one for my baby J: http://www.markrichardson.org/post/50477298578/10-signs-you-were-born-in-the-2010s
9. You don’t know who Michael Jordan is. You don’t know who most celebrities are because you’re in such an early stage of life that you can barely recognize and remember the people in your immediate and extended family.

I just registered our unborn child for daycare. Sigh.

Good move

Soul destroying but good

you weren't gonna need that soul anyway were ya?

The whole process ended up being easier than I thought it would be. All the places with the super long wait lists were really way out of our price range. We just went to the closest, cheap neighborhood and found a place there. Actually, the first we looked at.