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Posts Tagged ‘parenting’

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“Good morning, Sweetheart!”

It’s 5:30, maybe 6 if I’m lucky.

“Uh-oh!”

His beloved Ned hits the floor. He’s been standing and dangling that poor little bear over the crib rail, waiting for the necessary audience for his daily performance. (I know this thanks to the video monitor, that double-edged sword of a device that sometimes entertains as well as reassures parents.)

“Uh-oh! Uh-oh! Uh-oh! Uh-oh! Uh-oh!”

That’s the soundtrack as he works his blanket over the rail with both chubby hands because it’s too big to fling over in one go.

“Uh-oh!”

The elephant-head blankey lands on top of the small mountain of fluffy baby things. Ned is typically at the bottom unless Baboo performed with particular flair and flung him to one side.

“Ney-ney!”

“Yes, I’ll get Ned.”

I retrieve the toy and bend to pick the baby up, moving in ways that protect my mid-40s back. We sit down with Ned. I reach for the bottle I set down as I watched the show. He holds his bear and drinks while I rock us and nuzzle his noggin.

Another day has begun.

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I am lucky enough to belong to the kind of book club that is more concerned with food and wine and friendship than books and the intense discussion thereof. We’ve been meeting for long enough that we’ve developed our own traditions, one of which is the baby book shower.

When it was my turn, I was delighted to receive a small library’s worth of road-tested baby and children’s books. Many of them have become favorites (of both Baboo and mine), and Blue Hat, Green Hat by Sandra Boynton is currently in heavy rotation at nap times.

The concept is simple:

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The theme continues apace on the next spread:

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It goes on from there, the turkey reliably providing comic relief to the earnestness of the elephant, moose and bear. In the middle, the rhythm is broken so that the parent doing the reading doesn’t fall asleep. Conveniently, this switch-up also keeps the baby engaged. “What will come next?” the baby thinks. “Will we return to the 1-2-3 oops form, or move on to something even more exciting?”

Both, little reader. Both. After a spread discussing the various colors of shoes favored by plump animals, we get the big payoff:

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Baboo likes to hear about the bathing costumes of the animals watching from the side of the pool, so we discuss that before noting how silly that turkey is. And that’s what I really love about this book: Despite the simplicity of the idea, there’s quite a bit to discuss beyond colors and items of clothing. Also, it’s just funny — a definite parental bonus when you’re reading to an overtired toddler.

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You are 18 months old.

You can operate these toys all by yourself:

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You still insist upon inspecting Mama’s shoe after she farts. When you don’t find anything other than a shoe, you shrug.

You can locate your chin, cheeks, forehead and bottom.

You sometimes play with your blocks all by yourself.

You have mastered the art of climbing onto the couch and chairs.

Your morning nap is slowly evaporating and being absorbed by your afternoon nap. This makes you a little cranky, but the change makes Mama happy.

You decided to conquer the shape sorter last week — and you did.

You love to “walk” up the stairs as we hold your hands.

You know what “boo-boo” and “kiss it better” mean, and you bestow kisses on Mama’s boo-boos as well as your own. You have also begun to make contact with your kisses.

You know how to turn on the dishwasher. And now we know how to lock it.

You are almost able to thread shoelaces. Real ones, not baby practice ones. Well, they belong to the learn-to-dress monkey, but still, they’re tiny.

You know that if you’re happy and you know it, the only thing to do is clap your hands. Failing that, you can also pat your head or stomp your feet.

You are so obsessed with trash cans that Mama brought a little one into the kitchen for you. There’s a separate blog post coming about this because there’s just too much to tell for this format.

You went to the zoo for the first time with Grammie and Mama. You seemed to like the elephants quite a bit. You were also delighted to find they have trash cans there.

You know how to answer and end a Skype call on an iPad.

You regularly deploy the word “uh-oh” in the correct context. You are also an expert shrugger.

Your feet are five inches long.

You abruptly ended your long and ardent love affair with baby yogurt. Mama is fine with this because of the high sugar content, and trusts that you will eat enough of other stuff that you keep growing.

You are 18 months old, and we can’t quite believe it.

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Over the weekend I stopped at the door to my little boy’s room. I have no idea why, and I can no longer recall if it was Saturday or Sunday. What I do recall is being taken back in time, vividly and quickly.

Rocking him through naps a little over a year ago while watching Mad Men on my phone. Fumbling through 2 a.m. nursing sessions, bowled over by the peace on my son’s face. Earning my Nursery Ninja badge by changing the batteries in the swing as he slept in it. Several times. Sitting by the crib, patting his chest, teaching him that it is a safe and happy place to sleep, my arm numb from being over the rail for so long. Endless diaper changes and swaddlings and book readings. Crying as he cried because of the worst diaper rash in world history, hoping he understood that I had to hurt him to help him.

People who know me well will be shocked that I did not cry during this episode. This was not a sentimental event, but a river-deep revelation: This is where I’ve spent my best and worst moments, in this 10 x 10 room filled with baby smell and elephants and love.

As suddenly as the wave had picked me up, it let me go. I moved on to the day’s next task, safely returned from the my trip back in time.

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“Could be his molars coming in.”

With that simple sentence, I lost a bit of love for our pediatrician, which is okay because I have enough love for him that losing a bit is tolerable.

The baby had been waking up for a few nights running, and since he had an ear infection the last time that happened, we were there to rule out that possibility. With it ruled out, I was left with no simple answer to this maddening new trend in my baby’s behavior.

As the days went on, he did it over and over, waking between 2 and 4:30, upset but easily calmed, sometimes soaked through, sometimes dry. One night, for extra fun, he woke up an hour after the first time, just as I was drifting back to sleep.

Naturally I turned to the Internet and books for possible reasons. None of them seemed fun:

– Molars. Two-year molars coming in seven months early, could take a few months to fully erupt. Neato.

– Separation anxiety. Really? I’m with him ALL THE TIME.

– Overtiredness. The more tired you are, the worse you sleep. The worse you sleep, the more tired you are. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

– Night terrors. He’s a little young for this, but one of the hallmarks of this lovely phenomenon is a freaked-out kid who suddenly calms down and passes out again, which is pretty much what he was doing. He also paused during a crying jag to chirp, “hi!”

– 18-month sleep regression. This is where the kid starts waking up at night for no apparent reason, and you get to decide how to deal with it. Regardless of your course of action, you still end up with a tired baby and shredded sleep.

– Just a fun new limit-testing behavior. Because making Mommy get out of bed is fun!

– Full moon.

Go ahead and laugh at that last one. He stopped his wee-hours wakings the night after the full moon.

Apparently I’m raising a werewolf.

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“Enjoy every moment.”

“That’s kind of a lot of pressure.”

My response was out of my mouth before I could stop it. I may have offended her, or hurt her feelings, and I don’t feel great about that. I wasn’t trying to be mean or bitchy, but that nice lady I had just met unfortunately uttered my biggest motherhood advice pet peeve on a day when my speech filters were not fully operational.

She meant it nicely, of course. It’s one of the things people think they are supposed to say to people with babies. When you say it, the other person is supposed to smile and nod and maybe tilt their head to the side in a wistful manner. But there are a few reasons why it sets me off

First of all, as I said to her: I don’t need more pressure to do motherhood the right way. I put enough on myself, and the media takes care of the rest. Pick up an issue of “Parents” magazine and check out any article on Having Maximum Fun With Your Child to see what I mean. Perhaps I’m too much of a literalist, but the flip side of “enjoy every moment” is: If you’re not enjoying every moment, there’s something wrong with you, or your parenting skills, or both.

Secondly: What if you’re just having a bad day, or a string of them, because oh I don’t know… Insomnia, cramps, crushing headache, your sister/cousin/brother/dad/partner is being awful just then, you have no idea how you’re going to put the kid through Kindergarten. Granted, there are times when caring for a kid provides respite from bad days, but my experience is that being a parent on a day you just need a break from being a parent is the opposite of enjoyable. (Which is why I will never again have more than two glasses of wine on date night.)

Thirdly: Come on. Poopy diapers and teething and spitup and sleep deprivation suck, deeply, for a long time, and everyone knows it.

Finally: What if your kid is sick? I don’t mean like with a cold, I mean with cancer or some serious illness you can’t tell they have just by looking. My kid, for the record, is (knock wood) very healthy, but I do sometimes allow myself to think about what it would be like to deeply love a very sick child. There is no possible way parents of sick kids are enjoying every moment. They’re just enjoying the ones they can.

So maybe that’s the better statement: Enjoy as much as you can. It’s not as pretty, but it rings true to me.

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The other day I read and re-posted Glennon Melton’s excellent screed on the sacred monotony of parenting. And it got me thinking about how I respond when people ask me how things are going or what I’ve been doing.

As she points out, the answer is not actually “wiping bottoms and washing bottles.” That stuff is a given, but it’s secondary to the driving force behind all the chores. In essence, my days revolve around the answer to the question, “What does this baby need?” And I ask that question, silently or out loud, dozens of times a day.

Some days, the answer is as simple as a fresh diaper or a bath. Those are good days that I sail through, feeling like motheriest mother there is. Other days, I try to answer the question, the baby makes it clear that I’ve guessed wrong, and I feel like an utterly unqualified Martian. I mean, really, how hard can it be to help a baby get to sleep? But sometimes, it’s ridiculously hard, and even if the baby has the answer, he’s not exactly coherent when he shares it.

I also ask about my own needs. I tend to need things I can either get easily (chocolate, a laugh, a hug) or mollify myself into waiting for (quiet, sleep, a beer). But again, sometimes I don’t know what I need. And those moments, or afternoons, or days, suck, and I go to bed thinking, tomorrow will be better, I hope.

Then there are the needs of the couple to consider: We need a lot more just-us time than we get. When we do get it, sometimes we reconnect easily, and other times we spend our precious baby-free time reading from different pages of different scripts, our needs colliding and going unmet. Even though I know these clashes are temporary, they’re frustrating.

Last on the list of needs is the house. There is always a surface to vacuum, scrub, wipe, sweep, mop or dust (my least favorite). I try not to worry too much about doing these things on a schedule, but it’s also true that one of the things I need is a certain level of order and cleanliness. And while my husband helps, most weeks I do most of the routine cleaning in between meeting the needs of the baby, myself, and my marriage.

So that’s what I’ve been up to: Managing competing needs as best I can, letting some things go as I move others to the top of the list. It’s hard to explain why, but in some ways it feels like an invisible game of Jenga.

On good days, the tower never falls.

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As we’ve journeyed through the jungle that is feeding a baby, or at least feeding this baby, we have discovered that Baboo favors the novelty of food that comes out of packets.

That’s right: baby food now comes in squeeze-out packets. I discovered this just before we took the baby on a plane for the first time. I think I fell on my knees in Schnucks.

Anyway. Even a baby knows food from a tube is cooler than food from a tub, so one or two packets a week quickly becomes one or two a day and suddenly you’re all like, how did I spend $50 on one bag of groceries? Oh, easy: a gallon of organic milk and squeeze tubes of baby food.

It’s not that the kid doesn’t like the food I make him. I know this because on several occasions, something I’d offered him from a bowl was rejected, only to be greeted with enthusiasm when squeezed out of a Frankensteined packet. But that approach quickly became tedious, and the bottom closure was always problematic.

So my research-happy hubs hopped online and found several refillable food pouch options. And of course we picked the cutest ones: Squooshies.
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And so now even if Baboo rejects something, we can still get him to giggle at whatever animal we’re waving in front of him. Much better.

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You are 15 months old.

You decided to start walking a few weeks ago, and now you cruise the length of the house like you’ve always done it. You’re slowly giving up your adorable crabby-gorilla crawl which makes us a bit sad — but also happy we captured it for posterity.

You have been through your first ear infection, and your first experience with antibiotics. This was not a happy time, but you remained sweet through all of it.

You throw yourself down flat on your belly or back when we come to pick you up after a nap. You laugh your fool head off when you do this.

You love to gnaw on hunks of apple, though Cheerios are still your favorite food.

You cannot resist the impulse to take things out of the recycling bin.

You prefer the Spanish setting on your musical table. This is why Mama knows the ABC song en Español. Sometimes she sings it to you, and you look at her like, “How do you know that?”

You recently spent a significant amount of time putting a toy into an empty baby biscuit box and taking it out and putting it back in and taking it out… (See photo above) You were very happy while you did this unless the toy got stuck, in which case you made unhappy noises and asked Mama for help.

You have a pair of shoes that you like to have Mama put on and take off over and over. We hope you’ll be okay with leaving them on when you start to walk outside.

You have had three haircuts. For the latest one, Mama let you watch the “Mnah Mnah” video while Grammie did the snipping. You were slack-jawed the first few times, and then you got really excited about it.

You form kisses with great concentration, making a puckery fish mouth first and then popping it open with a loud smack.

You have used the sign for “please” a few times.

You use the sign for “more” to say “help” and “want.” And “more.”

You have begun to make like a wet noodle when you don’t want to be picked up.

You want to touch all the trees, bushes and flowers we pass on our walks. You even want to touch the pine tree in our yard even though you know it’s pokey and you make an “ick” face when it pricks your fingers.

You like to help Mama put your bath toys away.

You enjoy brushing your teeth so much that Mama has to remind you to wait your turn because she needs to go first.

Your current nicknames are Baboo, Boots, Boo, Chickoo, and Little Mister.

You have discovered the joy that is “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

You understand that you can put things in pockets.

You can work a zipper.

You laugh uproariously at the “comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush” page in “Goodnight Moon,” but only when Daddy reads it to you.

You are 15 months old and we’re pretty sure you’ll start running someday soon.

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Baby sign language is useful for those tricky pre-verbal months when the kid knows what he wants but can’t use words to tell you. Baboo has known the sign for “more” for a few months, but I only recently began teaching him “please.”

I assumed food would be the thing that got him to use “please” independently since that’s what got him going on “more.” So I’d sign “more please” before I put more grapes on his tray or broke off another bit of animal cracker for him. But he kept doing “more” without “please,” not even taking a stab at it. I’d move his hand to his chest and say “please,” say, “good baby!” and then put the food in front of him.

Sometimes, he gave me the stink-face when I did the sign for him. I began to harbor a theory that he just wasn’t interested in being polite, much as he has no interest in pasta.

This morning, he did “more please” on his own. For this:

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Now, he smacked his chest with both hands — a far cry from the actual sign, which is making a circle with one hand in the middle of the chest — but I’ll still mark this as the day my kid first said, “please.”

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