ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

It's the opposite of a butt plug.

That explanation does not un-weird me out.

butt-spout? yep still weird

I'm alarmed that the Fridet Momwasher is being sold to us by Frank Sidebottom.

Em put Nora in the cot and went for a shower and came back and Nora was standing up

Holy shit.

GAMECHANGER

I put mine in the cot and went away and when I came back he'd finally rolled back to front, for the first time. I was really confused to see him on his front. He's been trying for ages but his big head keeps getting in the way.

Maybe that's what all the crappy sleeping has been about?

Anybody have any first plane ride tips? One short leg from our regional, short layover, then a four hour Seattle to Chicago flight. Have a pretty regular daily schedule now so all this is new.

How old is he now?

Assuming toys, pacifiers or feeding on takeoff, hope for sleep, etc. Mostly worried how to handle things if he loses his shit in an enclosed metal tube.

He's 7.5 months now.

Good advice I got:

Pack an extra entire outfit for the kid and for you/the missus
Give him a bottle/pacifier on takeoff and landing to help with the pressure change
Bring a stroller and then gate check it
Quiet toys. Ivy loved these Indestructibles books so they were useful

What really worked for us, though, was sitting in front of a family with three rowdy toddlers/preschoolers so nobody even noticed when Ivy cried a little bit because the kids behind us where so raucous.

We're flying to Delaware in August and I'm a little anxious because Ivy is no longer the chill baby she was the first time she flew.

Also - Chicago? Playdate?

There's not much you can do if he loses his shit. Be prepared to walk the aisle with him if you can. Practice deep breathing/self-calming techniques so that even if he's losing his shit, you can hang on to yours. Remember that you and K are on the same team and try to have each other's back.

Carl we're there from the 18th to the 21st, staying with k8e and family but will certainly be amongst the other yoopers and consuming beer in public, so yes.

I also can look mean and intimidating while k looks sweet and innocent so we can good cop / bad cop as needed for people giving us evil stares.

I feel like with little babies, especially little babies as cute as Cecil is, people will be more understanding if he's fussy.

Talk to me in mid-August about how people react to toddlers who are adorable but also have recently started doing this HIGH PITCHED SQUEALING thing whenever they don't immediately get their often completely inscrutable way.

Here's Atti and Ivy in baby jail together:

http://www.ivyheath.com/Year-Two/Fifteen-to-Eighteen-Months/i-6s3fj49/0/M/IMG_9164-M.jpg

Burp well after the feeding on take-off and landing, otherwise there's likely to be puking (up to a couple of hours later).

When F was really tiny, there was a very well-heeled old couple at the next table during our first lunch out en famille. They were reminiscing about travelling the world when their kids were young so we asked if they had any advice for us, as we'd be flying the following weekend. The husband, in this plummy posh accent, said: "if you hear somebody behind you tutting, fuck'em!"

Anybody have any first plane ride tips? One short leg from our regional, short layover, then a four hour Seattle to Chicago flight. Have a pretty regular daily schedule now so all this is new.

― joygoat, Friday, 3 July 2015 18:32 (51 minutes ago) Permalink

See if you're able to reserve some type of baby bassinet/cot. We just did a flight from the US over to Europe and we booked our seats next to a wall that has hook-ons for this removable bassinet that they put on during the flight.

Checking for bassinets on our next flight. rn I just need an infant friendly edit of Treme that has all of the wonderful New Orleans brass band music silenced.

mute with closed captioning on?

I had never seen one of those before but there was a baby across the aisle sleeping in one on a flight to Tokyo last year and I was super jealous and wished they had adult sized ones.

How is there room for a baby bassinet in a coach airplane aisle? I can't even get my mind around it.

And is there a harness you can put over the seat in front of you to hang a toddler from?

nb: if it's not obvious, I'm a little anxious about this flight with Ivy since I'm flying with her alone.

It's usually around the bulkhead.

We were also in the bulkhead row, in the two-seat section by the window. It was a big-ass plane with a center section of seating and the bassinet was there.

Those of you with older kids - at what age did you teach them to ride a bike without training wheels? We're getting Evie a bike for her 5th birthday and I'm not sure if we should look for training wheels or just jump to teaching her to ride without them now.

If you use the balance bike things (like this: http://www.striderbikes.com/), then you don't have to do training wheels at all...

Obviously not a parent of an older kid, but I was about Evie's age when I got my first real bike and my dad was philosophically opposed to training wheels so I didn't get them and I really hated riding a bike as a result and didn't really ride one regularly until I was in college, at which point I more or less had to learn all over again. I think that's less a matter of training wheels being universally good and more a matter of my father putting adherence his child-rearing ideology above what would work for his actual child.

So I guess my half-assed advice is that if Evie is a generally physically cautious kid, go with training wheels but if she's more gung-ho and less likely to be swayed by falling off a bike, try it without.

Also, though, you can always take the training wheels off if it turns out she doesn't need them.

She's had a balance bike since she was three but she never got the hang of it and hates it. She loves her scooter, but has asked for a bike for this birthday. I think she wants training wheels so we'll probably start off with them I guess.

She can be really brave about some things and really cautious about other things. I really don't want to buy her a bike and then have her not use it because she's too scared to learn to ride without training wheels.

I think we took my big kid's training wheels off at 6. I had mine taken off at six, and after about 10 minutes had an accident that kept me afraid of bikes for a whole year.

We told her day care to stop making her sleep at nap time because there won't be naps when she starts kindergarten in September. So after several days of no naps, she got so overtired, especially in the afternoon. She threw a huge fit on Saturday because we were going to go to Dairy Queen and she wanted to try Dairy Queen but also wanted to get ice cream from the ice cream truck, and it didn't matter that the ice cream truck wouldn't be coming because it was a holiday, because we could go to the store where the ice cream truck gets its ice cream because she really wants to try the Sour Patch Kids ice cream that the ice cream truck has etc etc. She had another fit this morning about getting dressed so I had to eventually physically restrain her so I could dress her. Really hope she gets used to the lack of naps soon.

Seems cruel that there's no naps in kindergarten. Or high school. Or work.

I feel like if Evie wants training wheels, there's no harm in using them. Contrary to Papa Agatha's opinion, I don't think training wheels will make her inherently weak.

Fun fact: my dad actually did that thing where he threw me in the deep end of the pool because while I could hold my own in the shallow end, I was scared to go over my head. That one ended up okay. I swam back out and I still love the water to this day but I haven't spoke to my father in 15 years so.

V learned how to ride without training wheels at 6 1/2 iirc. getting her to even try it was a total nightmare but she got it within a day or two.

I learned to ride on training wheels but the famous story in my family is that a few years later my little sister decided she wanted to ride, so she just got on my bike, tried to ride, and kept trying & falling off in the front yard until she figured it out

which was rad!

but it had the added effect of bumping my sister up to John Wayne status and made me feel like a lame for learning on training wheels lol

I had your little sister's experience. I got a bike for xmas when I was 5 and spent the entire day banging myself up out in the street until I finally got it right. No John Wayne status though. That shit was just expected. Not the funnest way to spend xmas.

the same balance bike was used by boy 1 & boy 2 and they both graduated to a pedal bike at age 3

i am philosophically opposed to scooters which is kind of absurd

Haha I feel the same about scooters.

I'm def pro balance bike for under 5s

Haha I feel the same about scooters.

I'm def pro balance bike for under 5s

Aidan went the balance bike, riding pedal bike at 4, Molly totally prefers the scooter, goes painfully slow on the balance bike and is rapidly reaching the point where she's too big for it (she's 4) so I'm starting to wonder whether she'll want to go down the stabiliser route

my kiddo has had a pretty horrible day, 2-hour each way car journey that he was mostly awake for and fed up. Tetchy all day. Now keeps rolling back to front in bed! First time he's done it and a bit unsettling for me... been turning him back each time but it's weird how he's suddenly doing it.

is it time to start a new thread yet? this one's over 5000 posts...

in other news, as much as I love Kraftwerk, I am really sick of listening to Man-Machine twice a day, need to get my son obsessed w some other album

Has he gone through a Kings of the Wild Frontier phase yet?

ha I should try that. I seriously have no idea why he glommed onto Man-Machine, it feels totally random. He flails his little arms like he's doing the robot when he wants to listen to it.

I second the call for a new thread.