ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

I'm happy to accept congratulations today – I showed my five-year-old a YouTube of the Slimer scene from Ghostbusters, and now he won't go to bed by himself.

I mean, he wasn't really going to bed by himself ibefore, but he'd at least go get his pajamas on by himself.

While Sunny was outside in the backyard on the phone with her mother on Saturday, Henry went up the stairs, thought he saw Slimer in his sister's room, and came outside shaking.

I've even played him the cartoon Real Ghostbusters since then. See? He's a friendly ghost, like Casper. Just completely disgusting.

Nothing.

Kid absorbs everything like a sponge. He's telling his sister "there's a picture of him where he's typing on the computer and moving his head up and down." No idea where he got that, until I realized he had seen this while I was looking for Real Ghostbuster gifs.

http://i.imgur.com/FiIcFMc.gif

We had already decided that both of them are still too young to see the whole thing, but I figured the Slimer scene would be a good starting point for when we eventually see the movie. Last night, I asked him what was so scary. He then told me in that little voice, "I want to be the man who sees the ghost and shoots him and says on the microphone he's coming for you. Not the guy who says Yes, he's right in front of me - and then I would say He's an ugly guy, right? Because then the other guy would say I think he can hear you - and then the ghost flys at him and goes through the wall and I run like this and say Are you OK?"

He watched the damn thing TWO TIMES. I saw the movie five times in the theater, and there's no way I could've recited all the dialogue like that.

Ha ha. Evie has been talking about The Beatles lately so I put on A Hard Day's Night the other day, forgetting that most of it is them making impenetrable references to arcane British comedy routines in thick Liverpudlian accents, so that lasted about five minutes.

I don't know what either of them would do if we tried to show them a black-and-white movie. Their cones probably can't recognize such images, like how we can't see the light at the end of the remote. They'd be all "Why did you turn the TV off and where are those funny sounds coming from?"

Cecil has been sleeping on his stomach for at least six weeks now; even if he's totally passed out and we set him on his back he instantly flips over. It freaked us out but our doctor was cool with it - said if it's what he's going to do and has the strength to roll over and back it's fine.

Our continuing hilarious / not hilarious thing is that when he wakes up screaming he won't calm down if my wife holds him but will almost instantly stop when I take over which of course makes her feel awful and really sucks for me as there is no longer any concept of taking shifts in the middle of the night as it's all up to me.

I'm much bigger than she so maybe it's how he fits in my arms, or how I'm able to sway him? She's also been out of town for work a couple times so I've been solo with him for a total of about 7 days in the last two months which also does nothing to alleviate her guilt about this.

I'm feeling like kind of a dick because Evie has expressed interest in taking karate, and I want to support her interests, but the only class we can find that runs on the weekend is like $300 for a three-month course and I'm doubtful of her commitment to something that lasts three months that she's literally never tried before. They let you take a single class for $25 so I guess we'll start with that while I investigate their refund policy.

Shout-out to all the places that only offer classes on weekday afternoons, because we all have nannies or stay-at-home parents who can shuttle our kids to classes during those times.

We went through a thing before Henry's Pre-K graduation where all of the moms on the list decided "Hey, let's take all the kids out to Chuck E. Cheese when they're done!" "Great idea! Little Morgan will love a pizza party!"

and Sunny and I were all Gee, must be swell to be able to take the whole day off to go to Chuck E. Cheese.

my wife just announced at work that she's leaving as of July to be a stay-at-home mom for a while, which is exciting and scary

she hasn't told our daycare yet, which should be an interesting conversation

There's got to be two families on the waiting list that will be going "Really? Oh God, reallY?"

yeah, the interesting part will be the "I still want them in daycare 1-2 days a week so I can actually do laundry and buy groceries" conversation

Ours has "You're Paying for Five Days A Week, Whether They're Here or Not" rule.

Even during snow days. I'd hate them if they weren't so awesome.

Ours has a similar rule for full-time kids but also supports part-time schedules, or at least we think they do; we'll find out when we tell them about our status change (and maybe my wife will be less "stay-at-home" and more "part-time schedule with a temp job")

We go to a local place that is drop-in. I believe it costs more per hour than full-week day care, but we only use it a handful of hours a week, due to my wife's weird schedule. Don't know if you could look around for someplace like that.

Ours is flexible and does part time schedules, as long as you give them plenty of notice of the change. Anywhere from 1 to 5 days a week are cool.

Like, we buy $500 worth of daycare at a time and use it up as we go. A few hours here a few hours there.

Isn't this what children's television programming is for?

A place just opened around the corner of us that is a pre-pay drop off type of place. I'm skeptical of it, because from the outside it just looks shitty, they don't even have proper signage. But it would be very convenient for times on the weekend when I just need a couple of hours to get some stuff done. Or if I wanted to go to a bar.

Well a good sign of a decent daycare is if it has some poorly painted caricatures of Bart Simpson, Teddy Ruxpin and some sort of duck – wait, I think that's Popeye – on the window.

Yesterday at the playground, August found two children that she really hit it off with. The three of them were like little butterflies dancing around buttercups. All laughs and smiles and it felt great to watch them. The only problem was, the two other kids were drinking water and when their parents showed up with a sippy cup they'd just drink. My kid did no such thing. Her face was red, it was 88 out, we were in the shade but ugh! I kept trying to get her to drink water or eat a peach or have the apple I brought. When the other kids had a water break I'd bring her sippy cup and encourage her to drink like her new friends and told her it was the thing to do in the heat and if she wanted to stay playing at the park she'd have to drink. Off she went.

Really soon after that the loopiness of a kid who has overexerted themselves started to show. At that point I referred to our deal earlier which was playground, then ice cream, then home for a nap. That went out the window. So...after some pleading and sweet reminders that we were going to leave soon if she didn't drink water etc... I finally just got her when she was on the monkey bars and carried her kicking and screaming off to the truck. Halfway there I put her down to walk but she only tried to run back to the playground. I picked her up again and she was hitting and kicking me. That's all new to me.

I told her I knew she had fun but she didn't drink the water and we had already been there a really long time. It's important to drink water. I told her we would return tomorrow, a promise I always keep. She was over tired and cried all the way home. I dropped by the store just a block away and got her coconut water, put that in her sippy cup and she drank the whole thing immediately. The other sippy cup had water that she drank up as well. I told her had she done that at the playground we could still be there. Anyway, I felt really bad just picking her off the monkey bars that way and wondering how that whole situation could have been handled better. In the past I have brought juice, water and coconut water and she wouldn't drink but it was so much cooler weather. She also has been agreeing to when we leave, but yesterday she was just having too much fun.

tbh I think you handled that perfectly

Yeah, me, too. And there's probably nothing you could have done to avoid the kicking/screaming part. If you let her keep playing without drinking, she would have gotten loopier and less rational (plus that is potentially dangerous!) so you needed to get her out of there, get her hydrated and rested. You did the right thing!

Agreed. My girl has reached a stage where I've had to give her a few talkings-to, or withhold fun activities. She used to be ridiculously well-behaved too. It's nothing big, just being a 4-year-old, ya know? But the other day I had to turn around and take her back to the house (while we were on our way to go get ice-cream, coincidentally!) because she was being rude to her brother. That was a real downer.

But yeah, especially with dehydration on the line there, you can't really screw around.

I can't even keep myself properly hydrated, not sure how I'm going to manage it with a child.

Stillsuit

http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/blog/15-3-30-dune.jpg

LOL

Thanks because I did feel I did something wrong and started re-reading Happiest Toddler on the Block...I panicked over no water but also thought just plucking her off the monkey bars was mean and spirit breaking. But we did have a serious talk about hydration and little bodies drying up in the sun, raisins vs grapes, health etc....how drinking water, coconut water, peaches all equal more time at the playground.

this is probably wrong of me but I am pretty much wholly on board with the "benevolent overlord" school of parenting, at least up until the age when they are capable of presenting arguments beyond "because I want to"

On some of the occasions where I've had to have disciplinary conversations with my daughter, she pretends to suddenly fall asleep. It's cute, but very frustrating. She'll start fluttering her little eyes just like at bedtime and then slump over. I actually got real worried once, because I thought maybe she was having seizures or something, but I was able to bring her around by asking if she wanted a chocolate milk.

my daughter's favorite tactic when attempting to avoid discipline is that telling her she needs to change her behavior "hurts her feelings"

somehow this ties into the Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism thread I'm sure...

Yeah Evs has started blaming her "imaginary friends" (who she never references in any other situation) when she gets in trouble for doing something she knows she's not supposed to do. Or she finds some excuse to get mad at us instead, like we try to talk to her about what she did wrong and she says "I ALREADY KNOW THAT!"

the urge to avoid guilt produces strange behavior

I so badly want to see a Huggies baby-sized stillsuit with like cartoon sandworms all over it.

We gave Cecil a sippy cup full of formula the other day for the first time and he never quite figured out how to drink out of it but soon realized it was the heaviest thing he has ever held and began just banging it on his high chair like it was mjolnir with the most determined look on his face.

ha ha ha

lol

All of the above has made me laugh today. Oh it's great when it's not your kid :) And yes pretending to fall asleep sounds extremely cute.
I am very familiar with hurt my feelings, that's what August does and it's delivered with award winning bottom lip quivering and chest heaving sighs and cries.

haha my son does that with his sippy cup! He nearly got the hang of it and grabbed it with both hands - but backwards so he couldn't get anything out of it.

http://www.munchkin.com/miracle-360-7oz-trainer-cup-white-24353.html

This is a good one (I don't know if it's available in the UK, though). Also only three parts so you're not washing and losing a bunch of fiddle little sippy cup components all the time.

Except that it spills more than other sippy cups when tossed on the floor.

True. We prefer it for water.

We definitely have munchkin stuff here - granny has one of their booster seats. Free-flowing sippy cups are a pita but much better for the teeth according to a leaflet the health visitor gave me.

On another note, how steadily to your kids grow? Between 12 and 16 months, F has grown a centimetre and put on no weight. Are we in for the mother of all growth spurts or have his two beanpole parents somehow produced a toddler? I'm taking him for an official weigh-in later this month but if the HV is going to give me a lecture on nutrition I'd like to prepare myself. Oh, and he eats like a horse. Three horses.

toddler tiddler DYAC

It took Ivy foreverrrrrr to go from 19 pounds to over 20 pounds, and she grew in height in the meantime. She finally hit 21, almost 22 pounds at her 18 month pediatrician visit and now she's 20th percentile for weight, and 50th for height. The doc asked some questions about what she ate - whole milk, lots of fruits and vegetables, does she eat meat (yes, we're in a mostly fruit phase but she eats a ton, and sometimes but she also likes tofu and black beans and peanut butter) - and satisfied that we weren't starving our child or putting her on a weird diet, she didn't really say much else about it.

But yeah I was getting anxious when she just wasn't gaining any weight, but that phase also happened when she was starting to really walk a lot so I think since her activity increased, she was just burning all of her calories instead of storing them.

D & J were RACING to 20 lbs; by the time they hit 12 months, D was pushing 21 lbs and J was just under 20, and then they got another respiratory illness and ended up back in the hospital and both lost 2.5 lbs of weight.

D is just now back at the weight he was 3 months ago and J is still a few ounces shy.

On the cup front, Ivy's really into straw cups now. We use these - http://thefirstyears.com/products/take-toss-10-oz-spill-proof-straw-cups-8-pack - and Ivy drinks more milk out of them than she does out of anything else.

(they are called "take and toss" but you can reuse them and they are dishwasher safe so I am not sure what is so "toss" about them.)

xp oh poor guys.

Toss on the ground?

I wouldn't recommend it. I think the philosophy behind the name is that they are durable enough to reuse but if you happen to leave one at a restaurant or in your car long enough for it to get disgusting, you can throw it out without feeling like you are literally burning money.

But yeah I was getting anxious when she just wasn't gaining any weight, but that phase also happened when she was starting to really walk a lot so I think since her activity increased, she was just burning all of her calories instead of storing them.

i've got the same thing going on with my daughter. she crawling and climbing like a manic now (taken a few steps too) and that has coincided with a plateauing of her weight. she's still growing and the doctor doesn't seem too concerned.

also, i think the "toss" part in the name of those cups, is that kids can literally toss them around and not make a mess.

Definitely not.

the free-flow sippy cup we use is basic and only has a cup with a lid (the spout folds down) and still I get more enraged at it than any other baby thing because it's a bastard to get the lid off.
The kid surprised us both by grabbing my tea mug and trying to sip from it - he must have seen us drink so many cups of tea! we've bought a doidy cup (slanted open cup thing) so going to try that.