ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

ding!

Ooh good tip! I have a friend who could use that idea. Ours likes a cool cot - we *think* the trick to sleeping through is to maintain a room temperature of 18-19C. It certainly worked again last night, but that's only the 10th time in his life.

FYI you can make a pretty decent emergency bib from half a plastic bag plus a muslin. Ahem.

The cycle of illness since Friday before last has gone:

1. Ivy got pink eye.
2. I got pink eye and a rotten cold.
3. I got ear infections.
4. Jeff got food poisoning or whatever the fuck it was.
5. I got food poisoning (I'm still taking meds for the pink eye and ear infections).
6. Ivy has pink eye again.

I want my mom. :(

Last Presidents' Day weekend we were all laid low with a case of norovirus. The toddler got it first, from about Friday through Sunday. Late Sunday night my wife and I both woke up with it, claiming separate bathrooms as our own territory. We were absolutely useless on Monday. I went to bed on the couch at like 10 o'clock on Monday morning and woke up late in the afternoon, with the sunlight shining in on a completely different part of the room. Basically, our ten year old was left to look after the now-recovered toddler and respond to me and my wife's feeble requests for water/more toilet paper/etc. He essentially sequestered himself in his bedroom and would only come out with a tshirt wrapped around his face. Poor guy didn't get it until that Thursday.

I would just like to say that parenting an 11 month old while both parents have food poisoning is very difficult.

― Jeff, Monday, October 20, 2014 5:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Carl and Jeff, I know 11 months is def harder than 2 years but PP and I feel you SO much on this. We both got food poisoning (McDonalds LOL) when Beatrice was 2 and I was 5-6 months pregnant with Henry. Not pretty.

My wife is a genius. Baby hates cold crib and will only sleep in your bed? Throw a heating pad on low in there ten minutes before bedtime for a toasty sheet and the kiddo(s) will think they're still sleeping with you.

― 💪😈⚠️ (DJP), Monday, October 20, 2014 9:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is def genius

I don't know if 11 months would be harder than two years.

In my most Pinterest mothering moment to date, I made a bag out of leftover crib skirt fabric (I know right?) and filled it with rice. Four minutes in the microwave and it will warm the crib up while we get Ivy ready for bed. I still think that was pretty clever but now I'm like oh duh right heating pad.

Don't worry, when the apocalypse comes and there's no electricity you can still wrap your rice baby in a damp towel and set it on a wood stove or next to some hot coals and it will still work.

Whereas Dan's heating pad will just melt.

The cycle of illness since Friday before last has gone:

1. Ivy got pink eye.
2. I got pink eye and a rotten cold.
3. I got ear infections.
4. Jeff got food poisoning or whatever the fuck it was.
5. I got food poisoning (I'm still taking meds for the pink eye and ear infections).
6. Ivy has pink eye again.

I want my mom. :(

― carl agatha, Tuesday, October 21, 2014 12:10 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

7. Ivy's original pink eye never resolved, and she was diagnosed with pink eye, ear infections, and sinusitis that she's "had for a long time." (Oh my god the guilt..._
8. Jeff was diagnosed with a middle and an outer ear infection yesterday.

I'm thinking we need to pull a Velveteen Rabbit and burn everything and move, possibly to a new planet.

Daycare called me to tell me that K is "not herself," although not running a fever or throwing up or anything, so can I pick her up? I thought that was kind of weird, like am I supposed to pick her up whenever she has a bad day? Anyway my MIL can pick her up, luckily.

My girl has had a very minor cold for about a week. Like, sneezes maybe once every couple hours. Blows her nose about the same. Only problem is that in the middle of the night her post-nasal drip gets real bad and she starts coughing and gags on it and pukes. Nothing we can go to the doctor for and any over-the-counter stuff that we feel comfortable giving her doesn't have much of an effect. We layered towels over her pillows and sheets so if she does puke, it doesn't mean a midnight laundry crisis for us. Again.

How about sleeping sitting up?

We prop her up. She rolls down to a more comfortable position while we're sleeping though.

Yeah. That sucks. I'm actually having the same problem, minus the barfing, myself these days. It's gross. Poor kid.

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/turn-your-princess-obsessed-toddler-into-a-feminist-in-eight-easy-steps/?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone

BTW, K actually turned out to be sick, the daycare lady is on point. She also called us later that evening to see how she was doing.

Aw. Is she okay?

4 days of antibiotics and 6 days of fever later, yes

Oof.

Blimey. Are you OK?

I have erected an elaborate cage through my living room made out of various dog kennel barriers to keep my sanity while michael explores the exciting world of "electrical cords and things that can murder him"

It looks like I am either raising chickens or keeping prisoners in here.

Blimey. Are you OK?

― Madchen, Tuesday, October 28, 2014 10:57 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm on kind of a sleep-deprived buzz the last day or two

have erected an elaborate cage through my living room made out of various dog kennel barriers to keep my sanity while michael explores the exciting world of "electrical cords and things that can murder him"

Sometimes I like to think about who probably has/had to say "don't touch that" more often -- parent living in the rainforest or parent in modern apartment

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/41/e3/89/41e3897f537d054a43d527473905b0a2.jpg

Bottom half of this is very much otm

it's all otm imo!

Really happy to be out of that phase. Will this child survive if I leave her in the room watching Fresh Beat Band for 3 minutes so I can take the trash out?

I let K watch sesame street alone for 10+ minutes at a time while I shower, shave and dress. Don't tell child protective services.

J has basically no screen time but we are wondering if showing him a video will allow us to cut his hair, it's super long everywhere (which is fine, he looks good with long hair!) but his bangs are covering up his eyes and he won't let us cut them.

Here's my advice: it's a slippery slope. It lets you do a lot of things, but it's a slippery slope. I was a no screen time parent once too, and now I'd say she averages 1-1.5 hrs per day.

hey y'all do any of you have links or info about the inadvisability of TV exposure for very young children (our grandchild is almost 3 months and is spending what might be considered as too much time in front of a big TV)? I feel like I've seen articles and such advising that TV be introduced later on.

never too early to tell the parents they're doing something wrong ;) but really, my wife just wants to send the mom a link or something.

The American Academy of Pediatrics advises no screen time under age 2. I'm sure if you google that you can find it, as well as a host of other reasons not to put your baby in front of a screen at all. Some of these I find questionable, but if you want support you can find it. My guess is that the AAP errs on the side of caution, knowing that it's a slippery slope as I mentioned above, even though probably 20-30 minutes a day of videos does no harm. Although we failed to make it to age 2 before the first vid, we still have pushed our own parents not to use the screen as a crutch, particularly my MIL who just doesn't understand saying "no" and thus sometimes lets her watch hours of videos. At least now K is in full-time preschool with lots of stimulation and zero screen.

I will also say that I have noticed a big difference based on the KIND of screen time -- for example, disney movies seem to result in extremely shitty moods and bad behavior, but sesame street does not. Also using ipad apps for too long gets her very worked up, but a baby einstein video on youtube tends to soothe her.

thx Hurting

Generally I find stuff that is very even in tone and mood and free of quick cuts or exciting scenes is preferable. Toddlers can barely regulate their emotions as it is and can't really handle intense movies imo. Although I remember my little brother wanted to watch Dumbo every day at age 2 even though the mom in jail scared the crap out of him.

So Ivy started physical therapy yesterday. She army crawls and will stand holding on to something, but doesn't hands and knees crawl with any consistency and hasn't pulled herself into sitting or standing yet. The therapist said she has low muscle tone, so if our insurance will cover it, Ivy will have weekly sessions. She's also going to get some kind of neoprene/lycra support vest that the therapist said will help her crawl on her hands and knees.

The therapist will go to Ivy's daycare so it's convenient and I don't have to be there every time, and from what her teacher said yesterday, Ivy enjoys it so I'm pretty psyched about it. It's kind of astounding to think that she will be standing on her own and maybe even walking in a few months.

I'm largely indifferent to the amount of screen time. We don't have the TV on a lot anyway, any free time we have before her bed time is spent doing chores/stuff around the house. Even when the TV is on, she doesn't seem that captivated by it and barely watches anything. Maybe she just hates House Hunters.

How old is Ivy again? As noted above, K has/had pretty similar issues and also got physical therapy.

xps A co-author of the AAP statement tries to present a balanced view: http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1840251

There's also the question of actual learning from media (though the 'babysitting' side is totally valid and reasonable in moderation too!) If you Google 'vide0 deficit childr3n' you'll get summaries of a lot of research showing that young children find it difficult to learn from video. Here's the abstract of a paper on trying to get kids to learn more from video by introducing dialogic features, either via the parents or an on-screen actress: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23544859 - this person's work is all about trying to make e-books, apps and video more supportive of learning. And here's a paper on whether babies learn from specially targeted baby media: http://www.centenary.edu/attachments/psychology/journal/archive/feb2011journalclub.pdf

xps: oh man, my son just started a Love It or List It phase this weekend.

11 months. She'll be ONE YEAR OLD on November 18!

How did K do with the PT? xp

fwiw one of the things that changed my mind was that K actually DID seem to learn things from the videos she watched, so that made me think she was "ready" for it. Like she was constantly picking up words, shapes, colors, etc. She repeats stuff from Sesame Street all the time, and we talk about what happened in the episodes.

CA: the physical therapy was free through the city so we've stuck with it. Honestly I really don't like the physical therapist and neither does K afaict. She seems like a bitter woman. But she has given us some exercises to do with K that seem to help, and it's also just a good weekly reminder that we need to do a little extra with K, like take the stairs instead of the elevator as much as possible, games involving pushing and pulling, tell her to fix her legs when she sits, etc. I mean, K is progressing physically, I don't know if it's the therapy or not. She didn't walk until 18 months, was delayed in jumping, climbing, p much everything physical. Still falls a lot more than other kids. But she seems to LIKE running around and jumping and climbing now, and that makes me happy. I feel like as long as she finds it enjoyable rather than painful or embarrassing, she will keep trying to do it and keep progressing nicely. A couple weeks ago I saw her hang from a bar for the first time, which was really cool, and she looked so proud of herself too.

I had a lot of similar problems as a kid and my parents were more of the pretend it's not a problem school. And I think at least back then it was much worse for a boy to have these problems than a girl, maybe still is. So I'm trying to not put my head in the sand about it, especially since, hey, free services so why the hell not.

Aww, good for her!

This PT is through a state program but we don't qualify for the free services so it's billed to our insurance. I haven't met the therapist (there was some confusion about when the sessions would start so I wasn't there for the first one) but she's very sweet on the phone and Ivy (and my and Jeff's) favorite daycare teacher really liked her so that's good enough for me for now. I'm looking forward to participating in the next session so I can see how we should be playing with Ivy to help increase her strength.

I hear you about not wanting to put your head in the sand or revisit your difficulties on K. Ivy's always been at the low end of normal for physical development so we've advocated a wait and see approach, but the hands and knees crawling and the lack of pulling herself up is the first thing that she's been truly behind on, so we figure it can't hurt.

I have always been a physically timid, bookish, uncoordinated person, although my mom says that I walked at ten months. So who knows whether it was low tone or not. From all accounts, Jeff was a ball of non-stop energy who was always climbing things and falling out of trees and making crazy jumps and landing directly on his knees. Maybe it's a function of Ivy being a preemie? Not that it really matters, I guess. Just interesting to consider.

My wife was reportedly the fastest girl in her class and a valued member of the swim team.

Yeah, Jeff was a tennis star in high school and I quit trying out for sports and joined the drama club after being one of like two people cut from the field hockey team two years in a row.

I will have you all know that I lettered in band and drama, however.

Commando crawling is really common in households with slippery flooring apparently. A whole generation of UK kids is late to the hands-and-knees action, or skips it altogether, I've read. THANKS IKEA. We're about to move from a house with floorboards to a fully carpeted flat, so it'll be interesting to see if that affects F, who at 8.5 months is giving hints he might soon move on from the Roll Onto Tummy Then Struggle phase.

(irrelevant side question for hurting 2 - Is there like a general lawyers talking about being lawyers thread?)

we've erred on the side of caution re: screen time - basically none until almost age 2, with the intermittent emergency exposure to smartphone/tv programming while travelling or out in public (restaurant/theater performance etc.) My youngest has just in the last few weeks been exposed to TV programming (primarily Pee-Wee's Playhouse lol) he seems moderately into it and will wander up close to the screen for a bit and then go do something else. He will be 2 in January. Veronica didn't watch any TV at all except for one brief episode where she was up inexplicably puking in the middle of the night at about 1 1/2 so we let her watch TRON with us. When she was almost 2 we let her start watching Yo Gabba Gabba. These days her TV viewing is restricted to the weekends, between 2-4 hours spread over Friday night to Sunday night. And she gets to play video games on her nintendo or pad while on long car trips.