ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

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.

It's very cheerful and clean and they will do 3 or 4 days/week, which we might be able to swing depending on how impossible easy it is to work from home with a baby in the house. What really won me over was watching the teachers in the young toddler's class, who all exuded good natured patience and kindness with these crazy ass toddlers.

Another place we looked at, by contrast, I actually saw the teachers speak sharply to two or three different kids during a 30 minute visit. Also they had a list of religious aphorisms posted on the back of the bathroom door (pro tip: be pregnant and ask to pee when you are touring daycares to get a behind the scenes look at how clean the places actually are), the first of which was something like "Fear of God is the foundation for all learning." Which, my own rampant atheism aside, I don't think fear should be the foundation of any learning.

Anyway, some of the expensive daycare centers touted Spanish classes for babies, so I feel like we're getting an extra good deal sending the kid to a daycare where the owners and staff all speak Spanish anyway.

Yeesh, the one you decided against sounds awful. Good move.

creepy or cute?
http://www.boredpanda.org/wengenn-in-wonderland-sioin-queenie-liao/

do they knock that kid out with nyquil or what

also seems like this woman did it first
https://www.google.com/search?q=mila%27s+daydreams&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=q6pqUo5wpNLYBdXygIgC&sqi=2&ved=0CDQQsAQ&biw=1333&bih=608

If you've ever been asked this question, you'll appreciate it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE

Oh screaming baby none of us are having any fun if that helps

Xp: we researched that question earlier in the summer. I'm a little pissed at myself for not finding a way to monetize it, I guess. 3 year old loves it.

My daughter's favorite animal is the fox. She always giggles when she sees the fox picture and says "cute!"

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/10/25/information_test_written_to_assess_children_in_1930.html

Is the Atlantic Ocean fire, land, paper or water?

I put this song up against anything on pop radio right now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxMrtK-kYnE

Plus K will ONLY let us brush her teeth while watching it.

Making birthday cakes is fucking hard.

Oh god I totally failed at icing Evie's cake this year and ended up tossing it in the dumpster and buying one at the bakery literally an hour before her party. Big globs of gross melting pink icing everywhere.

Cake actually ended up tasting great (Smitten Kitchen recipe) but it was a stupid amount of work and icing is a bitch.

Smitten Kitchen resides are often delicious and a huge PIA.

To be honest I was reasonably okay with the whole thing until I had to sift 3 3/4 cups powdered sugar to make the buttercream icing. That was the point where I was like okay this is bullshit I have better things to do with my time. Adding the tinting, icing and lettering and I'm like I am never doing this again.

There's a lot of stuff in baking and cooking that seems to me like it can only be accomplished in the allotted time once you've done it like 50 times before.

only learnt this after years of frustration but i found it's a lot easier to prep the items before you start (if you can), sift flours, melt butter, etc, that way the time you take is mostly mixing + cooking. less stressful that way.

Ugh. I need a personal chef.

yeah it aint for everybody :)

I'm like the worst prepper ever. Pretty much just add 50-100% to the time a recipe lists when I cook it because of how long my prep takes.

Yeah I prepped the cake and while that was cooling I did the icing prep, but it didn't matter the order because sifting that much powder sugar was an insane pain no matter what order I did it in.

Babies first day of daycare tomorrow. House full of bummed out.

;_;