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

back carry?

^^^see Nick Cave thread currently, for example

― as verbose and purple as a Peter Ustinov made of plums (James Morrison), Tuesday, 21 July 2015 07:26 (6 hours ago) Permalink

perfect example of a story that came up in my feed and I did not read

J recently became able to sleep for longer times in his cot, it's a total gamechanger now that I don't HAVE to push him around in the buggy come rain or shine.

I cannot deal with any bad sad stories about kids - my brain goes no no no no no no no and I cry a bit or a lot. Bad news about moms gets me too. A mom of two very young kids here was recently killed and I had to stop listening to the radio in the morning yet fb told me more anyway. My heart.

my heart feels like it's expanding and enveloping those kids and moms while exploding and seizing at the same time

Awww. Yeah, that sounds about right. <3

Woke at 1am and 4am last night, and then for the morning at 6:45. I'll take that.

And yes, sad stories about parents or kids are pretty much unbearable to me now.

snap Scik! I fed him at 1am but he seems to only need settling (ie giving him his dummy) regularly at 4am ish and 6am ish.
Really wish it was practical to have him sleep next to me again so I could just do it semi-asleep.

Four days of travel to a timezone 3 hours earlier where the sun sets at 10pm and an onslaught of grandparents, great grandparents, cousins, second cousins, and great aunts and uncles really messes with an 8 month old's bedtime.

Shitty thing is that the fuckery of all that tends to last after the trip ime

2am and 4am last night. That first stretch is stretching nicely by an hour each night.... will it last????

So the trick to getting Ivy ready without screaming seems to be:

1. Let her brush her own teeth. (aka eat toothpaste. Her baby teeth are going to rot out of her head by the time she's 2.5.) (jk I get in there and brush 'em good once she's done.)
2. Let her take off her diaper.
3. Let her try to put on a new diaper then run around naked (risky business) carrying the new diaper until she acquiesces to being laid on the floor so I can strap the thing on her.
4. Let her pick out her own shirt which requires me holding up all of her shirts for either a "Nonononono" or a "Yeah."
5. Let her try to put her shirt on until she acquiesces to my help.
6. Same with pants.
7. Let her comb my hair so I can comb her hair.
8. Count all of her toes.
9. Let her try to put one sock on while I sneak in and put one on her other foot. Switch for shoes.

It takes approximately 1.5 hours and we have to get up at 3 am now.

All this to look forward to.

Not to get all Facebook sappy or anything but she also is learning her ABCs and can count to five in Spanish (not English, though) and is able to communicate now so this whole exercising autonomy when getting dressed thing is just a (frustrating) part of of something that is truly amazing to witness and be a part of. So while I'm tired and using all of my remaining energy to be patient with her while she's running around naked, carrying a diaper and grinning like a fool, the larger part of me is in utter awe of her.

Cool.

Sorry if that came across lecturing or condescending. I'm just having a lot of

http://38.media.tumblr.com/a54dbf9cc90e5066d506318f117e3606/tumblr_nliz88lOLn1rvzbdgo1_500.gif

moments these days.

Also I don't want to be like this woman I used to work with who was always like "You think it's bad now, you just wait, your life is ruined, having children the hardest thing ever done, you'll cry yourself to sleep every night and wake up depressed, children are a blessing from god."

So you know just trying to balancing out the challenges by pointing out the parts that are amazing.

lol I think about that Holly Hunter bit quite often

Things Tilda says:
dadadadadadada - this is her default speech so I try not to think of it as her talking about me but who knows
eh-VA! eh-VA! - this could be her talking about Evie but who knows
tatatatata - she just whispers this to herself, who knows?
bluh bluh bluh bluh - talking while rolling her fist around in her mouth
mama - she FINALLY said mama the other day, Sarah is relieved

I bet she is talking about Evie!

I was very relieved when Ivy first said "mama," too, although now she only says "mama" when she wants a drink of whatever I'm drinking. So her name for Jeff is "dad!" her name for me is "*high pitched shriek*" and "mama" is her name for cans of Lacroix.

Judah's finally expanding his vocabulary, his pronunciation is predictably shit but he is repeating words and coming out w new ones all the time so that's gratifying (he's 2 1/2). My wife tried to make me promise not to teach him to say "poop on balls" but I was like, "what, he poops on his balls all the time, I can't help it"

loool

Things Tilda says:
dadadadadadada - this is her default speech so I try not to think of it as her talking about me but who knows
eh-VA! eh-VA! - this could be her talking about Evie but who knows
tatatatata - she just whispers this to herself, who knows?
bluh bluh bluh bluh - talking while rolling her fist around in her mouth
mama - she FINALLY said mama the other day, Sarah is relieved

― Immediate Follower (NA), Thursday, July 23, 2015 4:10 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Aw weird this is similar to us (7.5 months) - everything is dadada or perhaps gagaga (I think he's tonguing where his top teeth are coming in - not the middle ones but the ones either side)
brrrbbluubbrruuubbuu is also a new one
He did puh! puh! puh! for a while
Still waitin' on mama

cmoooon mama

Nora just grunts like the girl from the exorcist.

She said Angela Merkel once at about three months. Training her to say Corbyn now.

Apparently she is waving at EVERYTHING today, which is super awesome.

Tale of two kids, or more likely, to ways of approaching injections. I was late getting both Aidan and Molly their pre-school boosters (MMR and Tetanus) With Aidan I decided to prep him, so he'd know what to expect. we watched youtube videos and talked about it. getting him to the surgery was a bloody nightmare and he was cowering under the chair in the nurses room, howling, and I had to manhandle him so she could do them. He was so upset that he wouldn't even eat his chocolate afterwards. Fast forward four years, phone up to make an appointment yesterday for Molly's and was offered that afternoon. Decided to go for it, just told her she was going to the nurse for some medicine to stop her getting sick. She was all excited, no problem going in, sat there as the nurse prepped the needles etc. was a little bit nervous looking, but sat on my lap and didn't move at all, sat still and quiet as the first went in, and helpfully shuffled round to get the other one in the other arm. No tears, no howling, no nothing, just a 'my arms hurt a bit mummy' as we scooted away.

I'm still a bit dumbstruck, and feel bad for how I handled it for Aidan, poor boy.

At my four-year-old's last well-visit, she was due for a round of four shots. The nurse and I quietly colluded to just spring them on her. Got her to lay down on the table, pulled down her shorts and I gently held her down while she was injected in her thighs. This was much more preferable to the way it had gone down when my older kid was her age, which was a typical squirming screaming kid on your lap scenario. She definitely felt betrayed about it though.

We've been going a little more disciplinarian lately because she's 3.5 and is so defiant at times that it's impossible to do anything, and all of the soft approach "reason with them" "get down to their level" stuff just doesn't work with her -- I think she actually sees through it. Last night after, among other things, throwing her food, insisting her dinner was yucky (although she ate the same thing last night), and deliberately banging, stomping, kicking and hitting just because she knows it annoys us, and screaming next to the baby, we did a kind of extreme time-out therapy where she had to stay on the bed until she could be quiet and stop tantruming for 15 seconds and then promise that when she came back to the table she'd eat her dinner and not throw a tantrum. And if she started to act up again after leaving the room (and "promising" to cooperate) we'd go back and do it over again. It probably took twenty minutes of repeatedly taking her back to her room and doing time-outs on the bed, but eventually she agreed to behave, came back to the table and ate her chicken. Of course I feel sort of bad every time I do something like this, but I hope it was effective.

feeling that post

f'real. Having a long conversation with a toddler = attention = what they want more than anything.

I saw my friend's 8-week-old today and had genuinely forgotten how tiny and squirmy little creatures they are!

It's so weird because I think partly because of her personality and intelligence and partly because of our largely liberal parenting style (although we do use the occasional time-out/punishment), authority is just so like ALIEN to her sometimes that she looks at us in complete disbelief when we try to give her consequences. And she totally imitates us too, like she'll tell us that our PUNISHMENT is "not nice" and that what WE are doing is "against the rules," because in her mind it's almost like we're equals. And I have to sort of admire this radically democratic, anti-tyrannical tendency in her mind, even as I hope to mercilessly squash it until she's older.

Oh I get that all the time. "You are NOT BEING NICE" when I make the asshole move of washing her hair or making her get dressed.

Actually most common these days is "THIS IS THE WORST"

lol

My coworker's youngest always tells her that she's hurting his feelings when he tries to make him brush his teeth or not punch his brother or whatever.

This is making me feel so much saner, I thought I had somehow managed to raise a committed 3-year-old anarchist

My coworker's youngest always tells her that she's hurting his feelings when he tries to make him brush his teeth or not punch his brother or whatever.

haha yeah we get this all the time too. "Eat your salad!" "You're hurting my feelings!"

lol

We get a lot of "No! Don't do that!" "You don't talk like that!" etc

yeah I get this too, even with my not-so-youngest : I discipline, she cries and tries to make me apologize

Only after she had pulled my pancake from my plate, taken a bite, and then dropped it on the floor, did she decide to put her pancake in her mouth.

But I am a GROWN MAN and I can OUTWIT a DAMN BABY so I will make you another pancake and put it on MY plate and then you will take it and eat it.

Judging by the EAT SHIT, DAD, I GOT YOUR PANCAKE look on her face, she thinks she is the victor here. LITTLE DOES SHE KNOW.

Eight months old.

Now she's waving it in front of me like a taunt. I'm gonna get summoned to the headmasters office often.

Much truth is found here - http://www.thehonesttoddler.com/2015/06/how-toddlers-see-their-food-vs-your-food.htm

Much truth is found here - http://www.thehonesttoddler.com/2015/06/how-toddlers-see-their-food-vs-your-food.htm