ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

that is awesome xpost

trying to separate the breast from bedtime. what had become a pretty easy bedtime ritual is now again a nightmare, only with a bigger, louder kid.

The house of sunnyplains must be a magical place.

Alright here's where I get you all involved with a dispute between me and my wife (not really a full-fledged dispute): K has started going to this "mommy and me" class with her babysitter. Apparently the first couple of times she cried a lot and at least one parent complained about it. The director of the preschool that holds the class said maybe K is "not ready" for it. I was inclined to say "yeah, maybe she's not ready" and just pull her out. H thinks we should keep going regardless. I feel sort of bad about making the other kids and parents sit through K's wailing, and it seems like K is miserable there. H thinks she has to get used to it. We sort of came to the conclusion that we should try a couple more times and just have K come out for a minute to cool down if she cries. H thinks the class is important to get her used to daycare (it's at the place we want her to go to daycare). I think it's NBD because she's going to hate daycare at first anyway. But I do think maybe continuing to bring her to a place where she cries a lot every time would not be good for her or for our relationship with other families in the neighborhood.

I don't understand what kind of class she's attending. how old is K?

parents who go to child-centric events and complain about someone else's child crying are monsters btw

for real like what??

hurting all this stuff is so nebulous and day to day, what a kid is "ready" for, what YOU are ready for, etc. i'm sure you guys will figure it out somehow.

Apparently everything went fine at the class today so looks like there's no issue anymore. It's all good.

parents who go to child-centric events and complain about someone else's child crying are monsters btw

― what's up ugly girls? (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, October 1, 2013 7:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^ real

Yeah. Plus unless the kid is crying in an R rated movie or symphony or something completely adult, getting angry about kids crying generally is like getting angry at wind.

"Why don't those patents teach that two year old to express her overwhelming and possibly unfamiliar emotions in a calm, rational manner, preferably quietly in writing!"

Going back to the conversation about swearing in front of kids: last weekend we were driving and a guy cut in front of me and I honked my horn. Evie asked why I honked and I said "Because that guy... is... not doing a good job of driving." A quick adjustment in the heat of the moment.

I'm going to be so bad about not swearing. Poor kid.

Carl may be even worse than me.

lol CA

and lol NA

I've tried to reel in my bad-driver name calling as well. I still call them names, but I aim for less vulgar ones if I'm thinking about it. My knee-jerk, go-to reaction was just to yell "shitbag" at people. Nowadays I go for "nincompoop" or "nudnik" or "bozo".

Oh, and my kid went through a phase a couple weeks ago where he tried to cut out cussing by replacing bad words with the word "butter". Holy butter! What the butter? etc. It didn't last though.

So I take it as a positive sign that he's doing some conscious self-regulation there.

K seems to have forgotten the word "fuck" thankfully. It helps that she pronounces "fork" and "frog" very similarly, so we always have those as cover if she ever exclaims it in public.

just this last week I've become conscious of my ten year old son's inclination to swear when he's under pressure. we were playing a video game together & upon engaging one difficult enemy he exclaimed "what an aaa...." and let it trail off embarrassingly. it's fun to see him work his up to being a good swearer in the right situations! you have to feel it & know when to let them fly if you're going to be a good swearer.

lol "what the butter" I'm totally stealing that

Be careful. I tried it out as a substitute in "motherfucker", but I substituted the wrong word and caught ten shades of hell from my wife.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEyjZx7QDHk

oh weird...

Love that song...

Carl may be even worse than me.

When I met Jeff's parents for the first time, I asked him later if I did okay and his response was, "You did, but maybe you could have cursed less."

Also the last time I tried to correct my driving potty mouth, I made a last minute switch from the c-word to... slut. :/

lol nice work Carl (you ignorant slut), and good youtubing there ShakeyMo - I was about to post the song too!

The really effed up thing is I was trying to avoid a gendered insult!

carl, allow me to refer you to terms of contempt (all-purpose, non-bigotted)

Useful. Thank you.

This morning August and I were playing on the bed and she was sort of squirming around on her belly and she kept getting closer tot he edge of the bed, I didn't worry at first because she knows to slide off the bed feet first and slowly lower herself down and so I kept watching, waiting for her to turn around and suddenly I realized just how close she was and right when I when to grab her she went head first off the bed. Its about 3 feet down and she was on her back crying when I picked her up. I almost had a heart attack. She didn't cry for too long she started playing again soon afterwards. She seems fine, but this week has been rough on her. It seems like she's getting hurt day after day and we watch her so closely. I feel like a bad father.

Aw. My girl dealt with some falls like that when she was little. The first time we freaked out so bad we called 911. It's definitely scary, but if she's playing now, she's probably okay.

dude, you're not a bad father, they fall all the time

(take that with the grain of salt that maybe I'm just a bad father)

No that's OTM. You are not a bad dad!!! A bad dad would scoop them up BEFORE getting scraped up EVERY SINGLE TIME and then they'd be overcoddled and become a spoiled wreck who can't fit into society and fall into deep drug dependency and oh god

if I worried much about being a bad father than I'd be so distracted that I'd be an even worse father

signed a dad whose kids have falled off enough high places to have broken arms, had head scans, and so on

Thanks guys, I don't really feel like a bad day so much as failing to protect her against everything. It's just impossible to always keep a little person from getting hurt and that's scary. Also after we finished reading a Panda Bear Panda Bear What Do You See, she threw the book into my throat! She's got an arm on her!

er bad dad I meant.

xp I figured you were, and I hope my SNL reference was not terrifyingly misunderstood!

No, ma'am! I got it! xoxo

It's been a hard week.

lol, the time I accidentally let K roll off the bed, oh boy, steam out of every opening on H's face. And I couldn't really blame her. But we later both realized that falls happen. You know what, a couple days ago I actually MADE K fall, it was terrible -- I was trying to take her to the subway and get her to the grandparents so I could go to work, and she threw a huge tantrum and didn't want to be in the stroller, so I let her walk a little, but she started to run off and get really difficult, and as I was trying to grab her the stroller started to tip over and I kind of forced her off balance trying to grab the stroller. She was super upset and we were in public and I felt like a child abuser.

And then last night when we were trying to leave her with the babysitter so we could go to our co-op board interview, she ran into the living room and fell face first and her lip got all bloody, and we basically had to quickly put ice on it and then walk out on her. But they survive these things.

Awww...it happens but hard to get use to. It does feel better to hear other stories, except I read one online earlier today that ended tragically and ugh, it was back to fear. Since I didn't see it happen, I was more stressed. I felt I could handle it better if I had seen it. So I decided to ask J. over and over how it happened and re-created it with Raggedy Ann and the way that rag doll hit the ground just didn't help. Fear, stress, distraction, fear, stress, stress, stress...thinking of taking the bed of it's frame.

I'm kind of an absent-minded/ADHD person, and this is going to sound really neurotic, and it is, but sometimes I constantly think about things that could go wrong in order to keep myself attentive. I've had to do it less as time goes on and I get more acclimated to parenting (and also as K gets more capable of being ok without literally being watched every second).

I do that, Hurting

"So I decided to ask J. over and over how it happened and re-created it with Raggedy Ann and the way that rag doll hit the ground just didn't help."

"Jacob show me on the doll where you neglected our daughter. I know it's painful, but we need to do this."

Current age (nearly 3) seems to be series of massive seemingly source-less bruises. "Where did this come from?" "No idea." They move so fast that a lot of the time even when you are there you don't even know what they did to hurt themselves and your left trying to interpret a lot of choked up pointing (he pushed me vs. he took my truck and while I was walking here to complain about it I hit my head on that other thing).

HA! New day...better day already.

Several months ago my friend told me her three year old daughter bruised her forehead playing at the park over the weekend. A few days later she was at school and re-injured the same part of her forehead playing outside. The lump grew and the bruise grew and was two different colors. She then re-injured her forehead, the next day, running in the house, slipping and falling into furniture. The day she was telling me all this over the phone she had to go because her daughter came crying up to her rubbing her forehead.

It's gotten to the point where 3-year-old Hank Sr comforts me after he gets banged up.

We were at the playground and he wanted to hang from the parallel pole (as seen here.) I lift him up and BAM, raise his head right into it.

I put him down and feel on his crown, going Are you ok? He gives me a hug and says "Sure, daddy. I'm all right. You try again!"

awww!