ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

The bad one is this bigger kid pushing me down for no apparent reason on the playground - remember feeling this existential confusion about the injustice of life even at that age.

did you have siblings? my kids bash each other mercilessly with zero provocation; i have to imagine that it's steeling them for the inevitable slings and arrows of the playground

o my god, Beeps went on this fluid rant last night about her little brother's poor playing skills on the Lego Batman video game. She established points to make, provided reasons and rationale to why this annoyed her, and used complete sentences with subjects and predicates.

It came out of nowhere, lasting about as long as it would take someone to push each key on a piano starting from left to right as well as sounding much like that music scale. She and sunny sat down later and talked about a few problems happening at school, so the frustration likely may have gotten spilled over from that.

But still. She got put into time-out for the first time in months the other day for "accidentally" hitting her brother again. She explained to me at the time in so many words that she doesn't really want to hit him, but subliminally (my words), she does it anyway. I told her to punch a pillow or go upstairs when she reaches that boiling point, and instead, she launches into this rat-a-tat-tat monologue.

Kids, man. They'll surprise you every day.

ai ai ai, that's a bummer.

xp No I was the oldest which I guess explains my reaction.

So my parents are visiting and it is mostly great because I love them and they love Ivy but woooooooo they are still racist tea party nut jobs at heart, even though they try really hard to keep that shit under wraps around me to preserve harmony. After three days of hearing my mother refer to the act of farting as "shooting Indians" I suggested she substitute "shooting rabbits" instead. To which my mom responded by picking up Ivy and saying, "Is your mom raising you to be a PC baby?"

Picture me going into the bathroom and shutting the door and slowly counting backwards from 100.

I explained that Ivy goes to daycare and will go to school with kids from a lot of different backgrounds and that it would be dreadful if she used the phrase "shooting Indians" and hurt a small child's feelings. Right? RIGHT MOM?? YOU DON'T WANT TO HURT A BABY'S FEELINGS, RIGHT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. I just got a noncommittal "Hrmmm" but she did stop saying it at least.

Also somebody give me a god damn trophy for RAPIDLY changing the subject this morning at breakfast when both my parents started talking about how nobody understands the concept of personal responsibility these days.

oh man, the worst problem we had with my folks was my mom spilling a bottle of formula on our couch cushion

well apparently she also told my wife that she needed to learn how to change a diaper faster, which was really stupid, but having watched my wife change diapers I can understand why someone would think that this is something that you could get away with saying (even tho you can't)

My relationship with my parents is already complicated because I love them dearly and I have so little family as it is, but god DAMN they espouse fucking odious ideology and now I get that extra awesome dimension of feeling my heart swell with joy when they interact with my daughter because while also wanting to puke because they use a genocidal metaphor for baby farts.

I think the rule of thumb for mothers-in-law is that unless asked for advice or constructive criticism, to keep that to yourself.

when they interact with my daughter because while also wanting to puke

it was kind of fun counteracting every arch "oh you're doing THAT" comment my mother made with "yes, because that's what the doctors told us to do *pulls up AAP report on phone*"

I'm sure there was a point where, as a research librarian, she started feeling that I'd been trained too well

We have our share of annoying mother-in-law things because she watches K two days a week. The main problem, I've realized, is that the MIL just doesn't like saying no to anything K asks for, so if K asks for stuff she thinks is bad, she gives it to K but then blames us for giving it to K in the first place. It's kind of fucked. Like I'll pick up K and she'll say "she's been watching way too many videos all day -- she's addicted to it," implying that's our fault for ever showing her videos in the first place instead of her fault for showing K a video every time she asks for one.

Haha my parents have straight up put Ivy in her bouncy seat pointed directly at the TV more than once to calm her down while I've been working or showering or at the dentist. On the one hand, don't do that please but on the other, at least we don't have cable so they aren't subjecting her to Fox News.

"K just eats snacks all day!" Hmm, that's funny, she doesn't do that with us.

I just explained baby-led weaning to my mum. She was clearly very careful indeed not to express an opinion.

it was kind of fun counteracting every arch "oh you're doing THAT" comment my mother made with "yes, because that's what the doctors told us to do *pulls up AAP report on phone*"

Yeah, my mum just glides past authority and science. "I don't care that the WHO and the NHS recommend breast-feeding for at least six months, this old woman I met raised TEN CHILDREN and she also says he should be on solids already."

My mum has been an emotional tasmanian devil since Fox was born, tbh.

The "that's how we did it" parenting bias is very strong and will probably affect us when we are grandparents. The truth is that you can find humans all over the world who believe in breastfeeding anywhere from 0 months to 4 years and a very tiny percentage of any of their kids turn out to be psychopaths or become unable to function in the world as adults. But it will always "seem like just too long" to somebody who did it for less time or "seem like not long enough" for someone who did it longer.

It reminds me (sorry for bringing this up) of those studies about how most people believe "too much masturbation" is unhealthy, but the respondent's definition of "too much" range anywhere from "more than once a month" to "more than once a week" to "more than once a day."

There's "that's how we did it" and there's the rider "SO YOU HAVE TO DO IT THE SAME". I hope even if I have the first I don't have the second. xp

More than once an hour? (xp)

Teething at 12 weeks, oh my Christ. Our non-crying baby has started, and it's heartbreaking :(

Aww those memory things were so neat! I guess my earliest are from about 3 since they're from when I was in pre-school but even those are so strange that I question their authenticity. My memory now is really pretty great but memories from about 3-8 are sorta patchy.

As a follow-up to my story about the car, my little girl asked me to buy her a balloon at the grocery store this weekend! I swear she can pick up on things like that. Anyway, they come with little clips now that help keep them from flying away. Still, it was incredibly breezy this weekend so I drove home with the windows rolled up and carried it in the house with her. Anyone else have kids who are psychic?

Some major cowinkydinking there!

When August was a real baby-baby I had these terrible dreams of forgetting her in the truck or leaving her on a store counter then full on nightmare of trying to find her and having lost her...I'd always wake up to her smiling in her sleep. Happened four or five times. A friend, who is into all things esoteric, said that was because August had escaped my dream world into one of her own and was being mischievous in doing so. I thought it was a fun way to think of it all.

I think it had more to do with nursing her in my sleep.

Dear god, alternating night fussiness because neither of them can reliably hold onto a pacifier is a Horrible Thing

We lined Henry's crib with pacifiers like they were landmines in the DMZ. Don't know if they can hold with their hands yet, but maybe they can roll over with their mouths open or something.

They can pull pacifiers out of their mouths and fling them at their feet. They can also spit pacifiers out and then roll their necks directly on top of them for maximum discomfort.

Ivy was the same way. She'd push the pacifier out of her mouth and then wail because she'd push the pacifier out of her mouth. Do you have bassinets or cosleepers or something you can move up next to your bed? Then you can dangle your arm into their bed and you barely have to wake up to stick the pacifier back in.

We had a pack and play at the foot of the bed (the only place it would fit) and Jeff spent a fair amount of time sleeping with his head by my feet so he could do this.

We have these rocking Fisher Price bassinets that we moved into our bedroom last night. I plan to move them back out tonight and go back to sleeping on the couch in the living room with them because OOF

Hi.

!!!

Due in November.

I've been sleeping partial nights in K's room pretty often. We came to the conclusion that it was best to just reduce her anxiety around sleep and separation right now rather than fight the sleep-training battle again. The hard fast rule is that she doesn't come out of her crib and there's no middle-of-the-night entertainment (toys, books, music etc.). Ferber says at this age it's better to do things that way, w/e.

Oh and congrats SM!

And DJP, the pacifier was completely hopeless with K when she was that age -- every time she fell asleep, it would fall out of her mouth and then she'd wake up again.

Congrats, SM! November is an excellent month in which to be born.

congratulations!

Amazing Scik, congratulations!

congrasts, sm!

congrats, even.

how do y'all handle sleep stuff when you have a sick child?

J has an ear infection, horrible screaming wake-ups, and generally not responsive to our normal patting/singing/comforting to get him back down. things got so bad a few nights ago that my wife broke down and nursed him - something that we kind of set a rule against earlier in 2014 after 15 months of frequent night-waking to nurse. he finally started sleeping through the night a few months ago so we're kind of terrified about fucking that up. at the same time though, with this ear infection, we just want to go back to sleep and nursing seems to do the trick.

Congratulations dude

abandon all sleep ye who enter here

It's that whole thing about weighing up what's best for today against what's best for the years to come, isn't it? IMO, sick baby definitely means doing what's best for today - resolutions go out the window.

(Congrats, Smouthy)

ear infections = do whatever works. all bets are off.

yea that makes sense. hopefully when he's healthy again it won't be too hard to go back to our normal sleep schedule

also nursing is cool and babies totally dig it

how do y'all handle sleep stuff when you have a sick child?

Ayeeeee, yes, very feeling this at the moment. Ella has a cold, not too bad, but the constant runny nose means she can't breathe at night, and it reduces her to despair and rage, which of course means tears which means nose running even more, which means no sleep for us. I shouldn't complain because she usually goes to sleep at 7.30pm and stays that way until 6.30am, but this is no fun.

Re the poo talk, it's always surprising when undigested and identifiable bits of food (entire dried apricot, lentils, kidney beans) emerge in the nappy.

xp lol definitely, nursing is cool and babies dig it. J is 19 months and still nurses a lot, but for our own sanity and sleep when he turned 15 months we put a nursing ban in effect from 8pm (after my wife nurses him to sleep) until 5:30 or 6am (when J wakes up). it's what finally got him to sleep through the night, which is why we kind of freaked out when he got sick this most recent time and my wife started nursing him throughout the night to get him to go back to sleep.

I'm talking straight out of my ass here (but as this is the internet, I refuse to let that stop me) but I think giving your sick kid that extra bit of comfort is going to be a net good even if it sets back the progress of sleep training a little. It seems like sleep, like potty training, is a two steps forward, half-step back kind of process anyway. Plus the little guy's only 15 months.