ILX Parenting 6: "Put Some Goddamn Pants On Before You Go Outside!" is a thing I say now

Ivy's only 19 months so some of those don't apply but we're already well on our way with "Careful," "You're fine," and "Don't eat that."

yeah I dunno with #3, #1 was already 6 years old, so didn't need the kind of management that newborns do, and got along well with #2 so our lives were fine. plus we knew what we were doing by that point, at least as well as we ever were going to. but when #2 was born...I don't know how we survived tbh

Oh god, "careful!" is getting a lot of use now, as well as the related "gentle hands!" F's top three words are "no", "nono" and "nonononononono".

"Did you take another bite of your dinner yet?"

Ivy's daycare teachers use the Spanish "linda" to mean "nicely," which Ivy picked up on early so we say that instead of "gentle hands." And we say that a lot... Also my mom's old favorite: People are not for hitting. People are for loving. Usually said through gritted teeth after Ivy smacks my glasses off my face.

our perfect granddaughter, who always slept through the night even from birth and has never been the slightest bit difficult during year one, has FINALLY has her first tantrum, tried to scratch her mom with her little fingernails. we breathed a sigh of relief tbh, thank god she's not some pod person experiment and is actually human.

I have a couple of new Isolde pics as well, will post later

Damn straight.

"gentle hands" wtf does that mean, like what is the situation

pets?

ime it is another way of saying "don't scratch my fucking face, boy"

Yeah like "don't hit scratch slap pinch me/your dad/this other child/the cat."

"What did I just say?" is another thing I say a lot.

I've been trying to get a little more real about "rules" lately, especially with eating, e.g. I keep repeating "we don't get something else until we finish what we have," because she has a really annoying habit of asking for something, taking a few bites and then asking for another thing. Also trying to stop snacks in the stroller and carseat so she'll actually eat her goddamn meals instead of snacking all the time, but that one is challenging (because on the morning where she DOESN'T eat her goddamn breakfast, you feel guilty sending her to school hungry).

Also we have a grandparent who sees her every week and undermines all this

gah, that thing when your newborn is finally asleep and completely quiet and then you keep checking every twenty minutes to make sure they're alive.

:)

double congratulations, man alive!

small man still alive

So I may have missed something, but I think Nora only woke at midnight and 3am last night. It's 7am now and she's still asleep. And it's Em's birthday.

Ha, I slept straight through a 5am waking..,

Happy birthday Em. I was just thinking I hadn't seen her over at the other place for a while. If it's any consolation, our sleep has gone back into a bad pattern after having a really good thing going for a couple of months. Hoping we find that groove again.

We are in a good patch - a whole fortnight of sleeping right through. Oh please, please, please let that be it.

One day Molly will start sleeping through. Maybe when she starts school in September, maybe that will tire her out so much that if she stirs she'll just drop off again, rather than padding through to our room.

My sister-in-law is in the hospital giving birth to twins right now, and my sister's water just broke. I could have three nieces/nephews born on the same day.

Woah!!! That's so awesome, NA

Big birthday parties in your future

Babbies everywhere!

Yay babies!!!

So our least favorite daycare teacher let Ivy play outside in the hot hot heat while wearing a dirty dirty diaper (Ivy, not the teacher) and then let her hang out in her hot dirty diaper for who knows how long because her "coworker forgot to remind her to change diapers," which you know what, fuck you, lady, (we're changing daycare in August so I opted not to make a big deal just in case this asshole decided to make Ivy's last weeks difficult) but point being Ivy has some wiiiiicked diaper rash rn.

The best cure for diaper rash being to air out the booty, she was spending some time going commando around the living room. I was keeping an eye on her because the last time we indulged in post-bath naked baby time she peed on the floor a little yet I somehow missed the immanent Number Two until I spied an actual turd creeping out from between her cheeks (I yelled "Oh shit! Literally!" of which I am inordinately proud). Luckily I was folding laundry at the time and had the presence of mind to grab a pair of underpants to catch the turd before it fell onto the white chair Ivy was standing on so it could have been worse.

Anyway toddler parenting achievement unlocked: I caught a fresh turd.

Congratulations?

lol thank you

I remember pulling out a fresh hot turd from the ass of one of our kids when s/he was constipated

Hehe, giggling aloud, thanks Ivy.

now there's a girl scout badge

Huzzah!

my baby poops yellow dippin' dots. i gather this is normal and good.

time to rent a mall kiosk, i guess

New baby poop is a wonderland of weirdness.

Also congratulations!

When we started trying solid food we had a couple episodes where Cecil wouldn't poop for three days then produce what looked like solid perfectly round golf ball made of feces and lawn clippings. One of these rolled out of the diaper and onto the changing table which was gross but fascinating.

haha

cornstarch is amaaaazing for nappy rash

tonight we hung out with other parents of young kids and ate dinner and drank awesome beer and wine and that is like the best fucking thing in the universe, thank fucking god for other parents, just felt like I needed that so badly. they were so chill, we ate back porch and everything was a fucking mess and there was food everywhere but nobody gave a shit. after they left I got to wash the dishes drunk and feeling great and very satisfied with the state of things. thank you to all ILPM folks you all rule and i would get drunk and cook food with all your families anytime

There seems to be this incredible effect where four drunk parents are better at making sure two kids don't kill themselves than two drunk parents (who are married to each other) are at watching one child.

And yeah, those friends are essential. We have a semi-regular friday night thing with a neighbor family where we basically just eat takeout and drink and bitch, it's very cathartic.

We're staying with some friends who we haven't seen in two years and we both had babies since we last hung out and it's pretty great. A bunch of other friends we haven't seen in an equally long time came over last night and we ate a shitload of tacos and drank beers and talked about ridiculous things like we always did but now there are an 8 month old and a 20 month old around and it felt totally normal despite being unprecedented.

aw that sounds great. I'm getting a bit pissed off with my group of mums (in the UK there are a bunch of pre-natal courses you can pay to go on that lots of people do just to meet other couples having their first babies at the same time). Since the babies hit 6 months we're all a bit more lax about meeting up but we have a WhatsApp group which I never seem to get a response on. I get that ppl are busy/on holiday but I want to know about specific things that they're usually really helpful about but they all seem a bit flaky atm.

also Scik Mouthy, I think we are hitting something similar to you guys. It's not as bad as that but I'm still struggling to get more than 3 hours of sleep in a row. His daytime naps are fine and he doesn't have a problem going to sleep (if anything he's overtired when he finally goes down, which I'm going to try and address). He just wakes up a ton in the night - I'm guessing a mixture of teething, starting to roll over and doing that a lot in his sleep, being in his own room, getting over a cold. I thought it was temporary but if anything he's getting worse, actually waking and staying awake for an hour at night. Apparently there is a 'late sleep regression' around 8-10 months but this has been since at least 7mo.

The good thing is he's fairly chill about it and I'm doing my best to get as many chunks of sleep as possible but we had a REALLY good thing going not long ago.

Kinder, we found the same with our NCT group and it's really been falling apart since the mums went back to work. A quarterly pubnic is the best we can do, usually somewhere convenient for the four families who live near each other (which doesn't include us). Fortunately the other family near us are lovely - though our parenting styles are completely different we get on pretty well.

Did you know NCT also run 'tea groups'? I've heard they're good for meeting people if you're not getting on so well with the people from your class. Keep meaning to check the website for our nearest one.

even when I take out the garbage at night after he's gone to bed I come back and hear "Daddy is that you? Ok just wanted to make sure it wasn't a bad guy"

Oh geez :(

Ha got my first ever puking toddler problem to manage today!

Somehow I have avoided the other times

I myself have not puked since 1994 so it’s a wild journey! Maybe this is the week!!

I am going for the “it’s impossible to be careful with a sick toddler so I’m just not bothering to be careful“ approach

Why are there so many sequential parenting threads

I got to spend some quality time with my 14 yo today and it was so great. I talked my face off about college years and the Godfather movies

My boys are away at camp for 2 weeks and it’s been 14 years since the house has been this quiet. Slowly slowly slowly getting used to the absence of responsibility

had this experience two years ago, absolutely wild

Yeah, I'm almost a week into the same, and it's even weirder because H is teaching at their camp, so I'm completely alone in the house (other than two guinea pigs), a condition under which I've literally never lived (always had roommates before I lived with H).

I feel like it's good for me psychologically. I've def had my lonely/sad moments, but I met my wife early and probably didn't get a ton of time to develop certain types of independence.

I find it especially hard to be away from my younger one, who's still young enough that she's very attached to me. The older one is basically a teen now. I sent them both care packages and emails (they can check email like once a week). I get to video chat with H every night, which I do find makes a big difference.

This weekend my wife and kids are going away for two nights and it will be the first time I've been totally alone in the house, all day, for a loooong time. I'm pretty excited. I feel like I should prepare to PARTY but I quit drinking two years ago. I'll probably work on art a lot.

lol I've had that experience, I work from home and it's so weird that the clock just hits 4:30 and you're like "well I guess I can do whatever I want now"

my first time sending multiple kids off to sleepaway camp and i got that dreaded phone call from one of the staffers late at night that our kids had lice. they were treated but i know my oldest was feeling the stigma of undeserved "the other campers know it was me" shame.

ugh. Well unless he brought it with him to camp, he must have gotten it from someone else there. Of course, if he did bring it with him, here's a Scarlet L, go sit in the corner.

Light in daughter’s bedroom went out. While replacing bulb, we lost one of the 3 bolts that held the fixture’s glass cover in place. having no idea where the fixture came from, we decided to order a new one, with a built in fan and remote control.

I spend a chunk of Sunday removing the old fixture and putting in the new fan + light. Upon completion, daughter is invited back into her room (she prefers to play fortnite with her friends without disturbances).

“UUUUUUUUGGGHH!!!! I’m LITERALLY NEVER SETTING FOOT IN THIS ROOM AGAIN!!!”

tl,dr: teenagers rule

Is it just me or are everyone’s kids just not getting sick this school year? it’s late October and I keep waiting for the shoe to drop but neither of my kids have even had a sniffle yet. I feel like they’d both had at least two colds by this time last year.

It’s just you

kids do age out of the merciless frequency of illnesses that afflict them when tiny, it could be that?

So....how do you get a 7 and a half year old to eat food?

Already had five days off sick from school this term and he has another bad cough now.

14 yo off sick all last week, still coughing

Took jr to Suitsupply and got a custom order vest.

merry christmas to everyone EXCEPT the person who designed knockoff tamagotchis and put the "reset" button right next to the rest of the buttons you constantly use to play it