ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

it's a good age for the balance bike imo

okay one of the things about being a new parent is that shit just does not get done. there's no time. it's taken me four days so far to install a safety gate on the stairs, it's still not done yet. we bought a new macbook 18 days ago and it's still sitting in the box and the plastic bag from the apple store. it took almost a month for us to finally lower the crib mattress. cooking dinner needs to be done in like 4 different stages.

Yep. This was pretty surprising to me too although im not sure why

my child is now the size of "a bunch of swiss chard"

fuck safety gates

yeah i said it

hmmm. id agree expect for crawlers and stairs

they learn.

when a friend of mine was a toddler he fell down a flight of stairs because he was fucking with a safety gate that hadn't quite been shut properly.

we have never had them ( = we are lazy, cheap ) and it's been totally fine. it takes just one time not respecting the stairs to learn to respect them. and then they're very careful.

thats true

Plus, they bounce.

yes indeed

At least the bottom gate will stop their fall and not embarrass you and your guests in the sitting room.

I grew up in a house that didn't even have a banister let alone a safety gate.

I didn't even have STEPS.

i did. cleared them on my tricycle when i was 2.

We briefly had one of those octagon playyard gates -- we used to call it "baby jail" because it looked so depressing and institutional, and K hated it. And it was an eyesore and way too big for our apartment, and it broke.

fuck safety gates

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, July 17, 2013 7:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea i understand. i'd totally be cool without one. especially since installing it has been such a pain in the ass due to no free time to actually sit down and work on it and also having to deal with shitty drywall workarounds and shitty baby products (the first gate we bought was so flimsy that we returned it).

but my wife's the one home with J while i'm at work, and in terms of getting stuff down around the house, it totally helps her not to have to pick him up every four seconds when he tries to crawl over to the stairs. when i'm home from work i'm mostly playing with him, and so I can be with him 100% to make sure he's safe. but my wife is also trying to accomplish daily tasks at the same time she's taking care of him, so it helps her in that regard.

At least the bottom gate will stop their fall and not embarrass you and your guests in the sitting room.

― pplains, Wednesday, July 17, 2013 11:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also lol

Our baby gate situation is pretty awesome. We've been able to remove most of them at this point (she's almost three), but we've left a couple specific gates in place, more to manage her location rather than prevent injury. About a month ago, she figured the gates out and demonstrated to us that she could do so. She had a few giggly little escapes and runs around the house. But since then, she hasn't escaped at all. Like, she wanted us to know she could work the gate, but is for the most part cool with staying in the part of the house where mommy and daddy want her to be.

I can't wait to get rid of all the gates though. They really fuck with the chi flow.

aw

Like, she wanted us to know she could work the gate, but is for the most part cool with staying in the part of the house where mommy and daddy want her to be.

that's cute

it totally helps her not to have to pick him up every four seconds when he tries to crawl over to the stairs

but what would happen if he crawled up the stairs? is what i'm getting at.

um, he could wind up rolling down the stairs. K has already a couple of times climbed up onto shit and then fallen off of it so this doesn't seem that unlikely.

Yeah. The "they bounce" explanation more boils down to "sometimes they are lucky about the manner in which they land".

i know we were talking about discipline being hard already but seriously how do you guys punish your kids or respond to bad behavior? i try to put evie in time out and she won't stay in the chair so i either have to let her go or force her physically to sit there. other times she asks to be put in time out so it's obviously not much of a punishment. but maybe that's ok.

also i don't believe in hitting/spanking kids but it sure must have been easier for kids to understand why they shouldn't hit when they could experience being hit themselves. evie hits when she's mad and the other day she wasn't even mad, just goofing around, and suddenly reared back and smacked me flat in the eye.

Henry also displays this exact behavior. We don't know what to do with him because if we put him in a 3 min time out it extends out to 30+ minutes because he refuses to stay there.

Henry is also big with hitting when he's mad or frustrated. Biting too.

um, he could wind up rolling down the stairs.

well i'm telling you, i have lots of stairs in my house, two kids, no safety gates and they have never rolled down the stairs. once or twice they've taken a tumble down a couple of them, and cried, but after that it has never been an issue. i may simply be justifying my extreme laziness, i don't know, but i really think it is much less of an issue than many people think. what completely paralyzes me with fear is fingers in door hinges but i'm not even sure how you deal with that besides getting those stoppers that mean no door in the house actually closes.

other times she asks to be put in time out so it's obviously not much of a punishment. but maybe that's ok.

personally i think the big benefit of time outs isn't as punishment per se (which i'm not convinced about the benefits of, anyway) but as a cooling off period. from that perspective the fact that she's asked for them sounds like a pretty encouraging sign of maturity.

I've even seen our son hit his sister and then sit down on the steps for a time out. Like Otis the Drunk letting himself in the cell with the key on the hook.

lollllllll yes

so willing to take the consequences

as for the stairs it really depends on the kid. with bee we wondered why babyproofing existed at all and with henry we found out. also we have zero doors in our house with the exception of bathrooms and bedrooms. theres no way to close the living room door or whatever. so that might be a consideration, no? anyway. if your kid is a wandering daredevil who crawls at the speed of lightning GET A GATE.

it totally helps her not to have to pick him up every four seconds when he tries to crawl over to the stairs

but what would happen if he crawled up the stairs? is what i'm getting at.

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, July 18, 2013 7:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also we have the gate at the top of the stairs. we live on the second floor of a two-family house, the stairwell goes down to our apartment entrance. i don't see a huge use for a gate at the bottom of a stairwell -- babies could take their time exploring it, learning to crawl up it slowly, etc. my wife wouldn't feel the need to pick him up every four seconds if we was crawling over to the bottom of the stairs. but when J crawls over to the top of the stairs he'd just tumble down the 12 or so steps down the stairwell, imo that's something that we'd like to avoid and i think that's pretty reasonable

ok sure! i'm just saying that i have empirical evidence, collected over 4 years with two children, that kids very quickly learn how to navigate stairs (or just leave them alone if they're not ready for them). when each of my boys figured out how to swing their legs down first, and go down the stairs "backwards", like climbing down a ladder, it was the source of a lot of pride for them (and me too, vicariously)

that said, there's stairs and then there are stairs. like if the bottom of the stairs was a concrete floor and the stairs themselves were varnished boards rather full stairs then yeah i'd probably ixnay that

We have empirical evidence that they do fall down a flight of 16 stairs and thats all im going to say on that horrific event.

took my kids to a four hour lunch the other day at one of the BEST RESTAURANTS IN THE WORLD (tm) and they were awesome and I feel like we're doing something right.

food was amazing too. phooey to anyone who thinks having kids means you have to live boringly

euler, which was your favorite guy fieri sushi roll?

pplains was tasked with fixing a friends parents computer last night. Beats went along for the ride and hit the jackpot - these people are selling toys online and she stumbled into the motherload in the garage. Of course she came home arms laden.

Woman has early Alzheimers. When she asked Beeps for the third time what's her name and where did she get those beautiful brown eyes, I swear I saw a look wash over my daughter that read "Hmmm. How can I work this to my advantage."

She also scored a Coca-Cola from the lady, one of the few forbidden treats she's not allowed to have.

total player

We have empirical evidence that they do fall down a flight of 16 stairs and thats all im going to say on that horrific event

life, the great teacher

yeah. as you said, the respect followed quickly.

:/

we just got a new kitchen table, and the corners are EXACTLY head-height for boy 2. he has totally CREAMED his head like four times on them, so i went and bought "corner cushions", for time in my life, installed them, he has not hit his head on them since, the cushions then fell off, probably because the heat melted the shitty adhesive they come with; he still hasn't hit his head since.

haha. i thought about getting those but decided against it. our only baby proofing right now are locks on the fridge and pantry so Henry doesn't eat all of the food in one shot and those door handle covers for all doors that lead outside because this boy just goes roaming out of the house and into the street. and by 'roaming' i mean he WAITS until pp and I are distracted then makes his escape.

We have this kind of padded "sash" for our very hard and sharp-edged coffee table. It's black just like the table, so it kind of makes it look like a claes oldenburg.

oh yeah, also a lock on the oven and covers over the gas knobs on the stove. danger boy.