ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

Squirrel brains, however, are fucking delicious

Our son spoke his first word today: BUM.

YAY

I guess I haven't liveblogged K for a while, but K started preschool this week which is pretty crazy. We actually switched her school at the last minute because we found out the preschool we were putting her in had no dedicated teacher (the main one was going on maternity leave and they didn't have a sub), that they were going to shuffle the kids around between other classes, and also that they were still renovating heavily and it wasn't clear they were going to be done.

Our second choice, which was a little more expensive and a little further away, had awesome teachers, a smaller class, and a great director, so we last-minute switched her and are super happy. The second day, our friend who stayed in the other school told us that when she picked up her daughter they had forgotten to put a diaper on her.

gettin kinda concerned about my 22-mo old son is not really talking - he has a couple of syllables that he'll fixate on (one of which is "dada" hooray for me, the other is "uh oh") but other than that it's a lot of consonant-less grunting and babbling. he does a couple sign language things (for "more", "boo-boo", etc.) I dunno how much we should be worried about this - he seems perfectly normal in all other respects, he clearly understands what we say to him, he follows directions, insists we read to him etc.

otoh doctor says by 18 months kids usually have between 5 and 50 word vocabularies. this he does not have.

I would trust the doctor first in re what to be concerned about.

5 to 50 is a big range for what kids "usually" have. I think a lot about this - what's pathology and what's the "normal" range of developmental diversity. And by normal I mean non-pathological, not necessarily what is charted as normal. I also think that developmental charts provide an accurate picture of trends, but don't do very well at charting where an individual kid should be. I don't have answers/suggestions, but I'm not sure I would worry if there doesn't seem to be anything actually wrong.

I would assume that it's more important that he's able to communicate/be understood than it is that he meet a specific vocabulary word count.

Having said that, I will probably enroll my kids in a special class if they don't have 100 word vocabularies by 18 months because I am crazy.

Dude, your kid was performing Shakespeare soliloquies at three months.

I'm assuming the other was a later bloomer and didn't start until five months.

http://itsliketheyknowus.tumblr.com/

My wife and MIL took them out shopping yesterday and apparently J was flirting with the ladies hardcore; like, looking around for them, smiling and baby-talking them when they noticed him, turning the cute factor up to a billion, etc. My wife was amused and slightly concerned.

gettin kinda concerned about my 22-mo old son is not really talking - he has a couple of syllables that he'll fixate on (one of which is "dada" hooray for me, the other is "uh oh") but other than that it's a lot of consonant-less grunting and babbling. he does a couple sign language things (for "more", "boo-boo", etc.) I dunno how much we should be worried about this - he seems perfectly normal in all other respects, he clearly understands what we say to him, he follows directions, insists we read to him etc.

this is pretty similar to my son, who will be 2 in a couple weeks. he's probably got 20-40 "words" but his pronunciation of them was a little alarming to our doctor, who recommended we see a speech pathologist. turns out that he does in fact have a significant speech delay which has manifested not in the number of words but in how he says them. we got him evaluated and are now getting free assistance from the state, including a woman who comes to our house and works with him once a week, plus play/learning sessions twice a week somewhere else. it may not end up being much of a problem at all but i am grateful to live in a state (MA) that has free programming like this

Οὖτις it might be worth it to get him evaluated. it might not be anything at all but there are folks who are experts. with my son i just wanted to say "he'll grow out of it" but in fact it could be a problem that worsens if it's not addressed, so i am happy now that we are dressing just in case even it amounts to nothing

http://itsliketheyknowus.tumblr.com/

― carl agatha, Monday, September 15, 2014 11:20 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha Sarah just sent this to me.

Me, too!

My daughter has a bunch of physical delays, and I've always been the more resistant parent to doing anything about it, but the city literally provides free physical therapy, so I gave into it. It's often better (and easier) to deal with anything you might find early, so evaluation isn't a bad idea, and it really can't hurt the ego of a 22-month-old. My daughter may even wear some brace-like orthotics for a while to help her stop walking on her toes -- as long as they go under her pants I'm cool with it.

thx marcos yeah I figure the earlier any issue is addressed the better

sorry to butt in
have you guys read "far from the tree" by andrew solomon?
ianap but the parental angle made me feel for a lot of my parent friends whose children have been born with xyz difficulty
would really recommend it to anyone with the ability to read, it's an amazing book about people

Reading it right now and completely agree.

I liked Noonday Demon a lot. I put this on my list!

Warning--some of the chapters are pretty horrific, though you can guess those by the chapter titles (the children of rape chapter, etc)

lol week 2 of preschool, brought my daughter in this morning, stuck around for a few minutes bc my daughter was clingy. Asked the teacher "Do you think I'm staying too long in the morning?" And she goes "Yeahhhh."

"Do you think I like feeling needed by my daughter a little too much, at the expense of her adjustment to preschool?"
"Yeahhhh."

Awww.

oh man that's rough

Fed our daughter her first bite of fish last night. She had been highly resistant to the idea ever since we stayed adding fish back into our diet earlier this year. We had tried all kinds of persuasion "Pingu eats fish, you'll be just like Pingu!" No luck. I guess she was out walking around with her mom a few days ago and remarked about how much she wanted to eat a squirrel. So we told her that I had caught and killed and cooked a squirrel. And she ate it.

― how's life, Friday, September 12, 2014 5:49 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Where's the tail? Where is the HEAD?"

*BUSTED*

We're visiting my family in Delaware and Ivy has tried scrapple, which she accepted and DUMPLINGS! (as in Sussex County, Delaware style chicken and slick DUMPLINGS!) which she would probably still be eating if I hadn't gotten tired of putting countless tiny pieces in her mouth.

Took K to Sesame Place which I guess earns us some parent points or something. She was very excited to "meet" elmo and abby in advance but seemed kind of scared of them when actually confronted with them. One thing that occurred to me is that those walking elmos are much bigger proportionally than the "real" elmo. It's too bad they can't have normal-sized puppet elmos for the kids to meet instead of just oversized walking elmos.

One other gripe about Sesame Place: it's expensive as fuck, and yet they try to get you to pay extra for photos with the characters, which is 90% of the reason you have dragged your 2-year-old there in the first place. They basically try to limit your ability to take your own photos -- some of the people were nice and let us get around it, but others were strict. All-in, I think our day at SP ran almost $200 (including 3 "discount" tickets, parking, lunch and a $13 honker doll).

in PA? i used to go a lot as a child. i'm gonna wait for d + s to be a little older before bringing them. i remember they do have some really little kiddie stuff, but most of it seems better for kids in the... 5-7 range? did you ride the grover coaster?

I have never loved my daughter so much as I did yesterday when we took her to a neighborhood festival that had "Anna" and "Elsa" from Frozen and she said she didn't want to stand in the line to have her picture taken with them. This was the line:
https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/s720x720/10603249_10204778977858770_7028641137928552622_n.jpg?oh=ea752452528bc39b027c360da3ca6ce1&oe=54898F71&__gda__=1421083751_fafa5f0bc804d2d94fb76438609b5e0f

oh damn.

your daughter OTM

smart girl

haha

btw everybody we are welcoming baby #2 in april!

wooooot! congrats!

That's so awesome.

April babies rule! Congratulations!!!!!

Waiting for an appointment with a speech therapist to see if August has a stutter. She will be 2.5 next month so it may be too soon to tell. Still, would like to start exercises.

thanks everybody. we are super excited. i am mostly thinking it will be easier this time around since we've had one already, but i also realize there will be a lot of difficulties that my selective memory has chosen to omit. i've gotten so used to an easier routine with a two year-old, who falls asleep on his own in like 5 minutes, mostly sleeps through the night, predictably poops twice and day, can indicate what is hurting him and making him cry, etc. my wife reminded me that we once had to change like 12 diapers a day for the first month.

like it was so far out of my head that this baby won't even eat solid foods for the first 6 months.

the good: michael really has enjoyed and has gotten good at helping put his clothes on and take them off
the bad: he has applied this same skill set to his diapers

yeah my theory is that around 2 years old is when you start to forget how hard it was in the beginning and think it's somehow a good idea to have another one

Man this outsourced pregnancy thing is really weird. Went to a doctor visit with the birth mom a couple weeks ago, which was kind of hilarious - birth mom and I are both pretty heavily tattooed, she's a pretty scrappy butchy lesbian who used to love getting into fights, my wife and I are liberal academic heathens, all hanging out in the maternity ward of a Catholic hospital named after a combo doctor / priest. Afterwards we bought her and her girlfriend dinner at Qdoba because they are young and only eat fried shit, pizza, and burritos. We're going to another tomorrow for an ultrasound because her amniotic fluid level was kind of low and they want to see if it's leaking or problematic in any way.

We text with her a lot when she freaks out about stretch marks or had to go to the hospital for kidney stones, so I don't have an emotional spouse to deal with but this remote presence instead. Her mom and grandmother have come around to her giving up the kid which is good - they were both like 17 or 18 when they had kids so being 20 seems super mature to them, so why NOT have a baby you aren't ready for? I also realized recently that I am actually older than birth mom's mom.

She's due in 5 weeks now and in theory all is going well and will work out. Birth dad signed the papers giving up his rights which is good. We've started to tell people about it a bit which is really weird because nobody has any context for this. I got the "so, do you have kids...?" thing at a party the other day and sort of explained this all to a couple people who had no idea that open adoption was even a thing or how it worked. It's going to be weird go to to our usual stores and restaurants and suddenly have an infant without my wife ever having looked pregnant, and I'm getting ready for all the "oh, he has your eyes" comments that people will inevitably make.

Again sorry for dumping all this here but we're keeping it off facebook until it happens so I have no where else I really feel I can dump random outbursts about this.

^^^ all of this is why I basically said nothing on social media anywhere until after the kids were born and we were in control of their medical decisions

So how long was it after the birth and you legally getting custody? From my understand and in our state, birth mom has 48 hours afterwards to make her decision, and at that point the baby becomes a ward of the agency though we get to take him home. There is a second hearing that grants us full custody a month or two later but it's basically a formality after the mom relinquishes her rights in that 48 hour window.

We've had to start telling some people - coworkers, my wife's grad students, people who will have to deal with us when we have to take off for a couple of days during the birth - but are strictly keeping it offline otherwise. It feels like a pretty sure thing, birth mom is very adamant about it being our baby, uses language carefully to that effect, how she's not at all ready to be a parent yet, how she wants to have fun in her 20s, how she's going to deal with it emotionally, but it's still so hard to think that she might back out and want to keep it.