ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

if you do a lot of walking in a place with a lot of traffic, it just seems sensible to me.

Bingo.

I'm all for fostering independence but I'm talking about toddlers. And NA's daughter is 3* so wanting to watch her when she's playing in the yard, especially when she's playing with other kids, is not exactly being a hovering, overprotective parent, IMO.

*I feel she would be cross with me if I did not tell you that she is almost 4.

Oh and yes, we really call them leashes in the US.

yeah toddlers you gotta watch cuz otherwise they're going to be hitting each other over the head with shit, crying, running away etc. no argument there

exception being MAYBE if they were accompanied by a much older sibling

And even without older kids having some kind of nefarious motive, it's pretty easy for an excited six year old to push down a three year old in the heat of the moment so you want to be there to stop the madness/comfort the afflicted and it would be really useful in those situations if there was someone in a position of authority over the perpetrator to be like cut that shit out.

this weekend we were joking with some visitors that we planned to send the boys over to their house to help them landscape this summer; reading this current thread digression with the vestiges of the conversation in the back of my mind is generating images of us putting 4-month-old twins out on the sidewalk in front of our building with instructions to play responsibly

That's very Scandinavian of you.

clothed or unclothed

I will let them choose; far be it for me to oppress them with my ideas on nudity

right on

I pureed a sweet potato for Ivy's first foray into non-cereal food. I'm unreasonably excited about this. I hope she likes it better than she liked the cereal.

But even if she doesn't, I will get to enjoy seeing a baby with pureed sweet potato all over her face so it's pretty win win for me.

:D

My wife and I joke about "Richard Branson-ing" our daughter, ie leaving her in a field 5 miles from home and telling her to find her way back

xxp

Heh our Yooper friends whose son was born four days after Ivy similarly joked that they were going to drop him off in the woods with only a spoon so he could prove his UP bonafides.

Then I noticed we were in a den of the types I am not comfortable with. They were all sitting there, languidly under the tree and staring. August went up to their dog, tried to play with their much younger child and the whole time I am silently freaking out, perspiring and heart thumping. I want to just get out of there. They were not friendly, didn't look happy, seemed annoyed. UGHGRRRRR! All my sweetly delivered exit lines to August were really calm and controlled but behind them was a shit load of anger and anxiety. Once we got out of there, I had to just leave.

just circling back to this for a second. tera i basically hate other parents and don't even really have much time for most other kids so i completely - COMPLETELY - feel you in this situation. however it seems to me - from what you've written, at least - that you are inventing some pretty unhelpful stories in your head about what other people are thinking, and that these stories are making you tense and angry when you probably don't need to be. and i guarantee you that if you're tense and angry, august is going to sense that on some level, and potentially even adopt anger and anxiety as the default mode for people she doesn't know.

there are plenty of times when my sons wander into a group of people that i'd much rather not have to deal with, but i try to refocus my thoughts on my sons, and what they're getting out of it, and what THEIR story is right now, and try to be their "backup" amongst the strangers.

good advice

want:
http://gizmodo.com/a-car-seat-with-retractable-stroller-wheels-frees-up-tr-1582050397/+andrewliszewski

I've seen much uglier versions of that irl...

Good points.

Was watching an episode of Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated with Abby last night. At one point, Daphne tells Fred "no means no" which Abby got a big kick out of and repeated back. Sigh.

Ultimately that's a good thing for her to internalize.

Yeah, I'm with you there. I was glad to see it even brought up in a kids show. Still...

My son just made an abrupt shift from wanting to wear the expensive Assassin's Creed and Minecraft and Doctor Who shirts that we had been indulging him in. You know, so he could express his unique tastes or whatever. He now finds all such clothes completely unacceptable and only wants to wear solid colored shirts, of which he owns maybe 3 and they're all in the wash at present.

Dude's basically a teenager now, right?

normcore iirc

want:
http://gizmodo.com/a-car-seat-with-retractable-stroller-wheels-frees-up-tr-1582050397/+andrewliszewski

― Mordy, Wednesday, May 28, 2014 5:51 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is cool, but (1) the carseats with the separate base are easier to deal with because you just install the base and leave it there (the seat just pops out) (2) you only use this style car seat for a relatively short period of the baby's life, (3) a snap-and-go is like $50 and doesn't take THAT much room in a car, not to mention that many other strollers have car-seat adapters. $500 is a lot to pay for something that can't even serve as your primary stroller.

Oh can I recommend the wheels that you can get to fit the Chicco Keyfit 30? Those things are amazing.

We got a used Snap-and-Go for like $20 and probably used it way more than our big bulky Mamas and Papas stroller. Now we have a subway stroller and never use the M&P stroller.

Solid food scorecard so far:

Baby oatmeal - D
Sweet potatoes - B-
Bananas - G (for GAG)
Peaches - F

My son just made an abrupt shift from wanting to wear the expensive Assassin's Creed and Minecraft and Doctor Who shirts that we had been indulging him in. You know, so he could express his unique tastes or whatever. He now finds all such clothes completely unacceptable and only wants to wear solid colored shirts, of which he owns maybe 3 and they're all in the wash at present.

Dude's basically a teenager now, right?

― how's life, Thursday, May 29, 2014 12:00 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was thinking fondly of this post this weekend.

This weekend my wife was holding D while talking to her mother on speaker phone. My MIL kept saying "Hello, D! It's Granny! Hello! Hello!"

D very clearly said "Hello!" back. The child is not even three months old. What the everloving fuck.

that reminds me that my least favorite vice as a parent is that i can't help myself from comparing my kid's developmental milestones to their peers. i think my kids are super smart + wonderful in every way but whenever i'm around a friend's similarly-aged genius kid who is spelling in two languages or 3yo and already playing violin i start comparing in my head. it's def not a good or healthy thing to be doing + i feel bad about it. :(

I always remind myself that no adult gets a prize for having been a genius at 3. There's a quote maybe from Benjamin Kunkel or some other novelist along the lines of a character realizing he "could no longer be considered precocious at age 34"

or maybe it was "could no longer be considered a wunderkind" or something like that

Nothing quite like sharing something shockingly cool and unexpected that your kid did and being greeted with "that's okay, he's gonna grow up to be an unexceptional adult"

ILX is here for you.

Has D said it again? Or anything else? Does J show similar inclinations (they're identical twins, right?)?

They're fraternal. We couldn't get D to say it again but we were watching So You Think You Can Dance on demand and at one point, D responded to Mary Murphy's "WOW!" with a "WOW!" of his own. It was hilarious and terrifying.

J's grasp of verbal communication is currently centered on the realization that someone will pick him up if he screams, so he has started screaming what feels like 75% of the time.

That is amazing! (The talking that is. The screaming seems pretty standard.)

I'm considering it very good mimicry rather than actual speech, since we can't get him to repeat anything he's said, but it's shockingly clear, like he's bypassed most of the "I'm going to put syllables together to try to figure out this speech thing" to get straight to "words sounds work like this, dunno what they mean but this is what I heard".

Ivy just shrieks when trying to talk. I taught her that one.

We haven't really got beyond saying "wahoo", but boy are we talented at staying awake.

last night, I started getting annoyed that J wouldn't really wake up for his middle-of-the-night feeding

then I remembered the previous week when I was fervently praying that they both would just sleep through the night one time so I could get more than 90 minutes of sleep at a time

I've decided I'm a fickle dick

I'm considering it very good mimicry rather than actual speech, since we can't get him to repeat anything he's said, but it's shockingly clear, like he's bypassed most of the "I'm going to put syllables together to try to figure out this speech thing" to get straight to "words sounds work like this, dunno what they mean but this is what I heard".

― On-the-spot Dicespin (DJP), Monday, June 2, 2014 1:03 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

K is kind of at the stage of doing this with grammar, she comes up with the weirdest sentence constructions (probably also on account of her mom speaking another language to her), like "Bear and another bear miss you" or "What derrick throw?" or "What does letter elephant start?"

xpost it's like I always said, parents are jerks

If Ivy spoke comprehensible words when not quite three months I would have called a priest but that's because I've seen too many horror movies.

I've decided I'm a fickle dick

Babies aren't the only people who get accustomed to routine. Plus when something changed you've got to figure out is it a problem? The new normal? An outlier?

If Ivy spoke comprehensible words when not quite three months I would have called a priest but that's because I've seen too many horror movies.

that was, no joke, my first reaction

my second was "we have to stop swearing NOW"

oh yeah K learned how to swear by a year old. I think she's forgotten it now because we've been disciplined about it.

I expect Michael to be the youngest kid ever to get suspended from day care for saying "pigfucker"