ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

I've seen much uglier versions of that irl...

Good points.

Was watching an episode of Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated with Abby last night. At one point, Daphne tells Fred "no means no" which Abby got a big kick out of and repeated back. Sigh.

Ultimately that's a good thing for her to internalize.

Yeah, I'm with you there. I was glad to see it even brought up in a kids show. Still...

My son just made an abrupt shift from wanting to wear the expensive Assassin's Creed and Minecraft and Doctor Who shirts that we had been indulging him in. You know, so he could express his unique tastes or whatever. He now finds all such clothes completely unacceptable and only wants to wear solid colored shirts, of which he owns maybe 3 and they're all in the wash at present.

Dude's basically a teenager now, right?

normcore iirc

want:
http://gizmodo.com/a-car-seat-with-retractable-stroller-wheels-frees-up-tr-1582050397/+andrewliszewski

― Mordy, Wednesday, May 28, 2014 5:51 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is cool, but (1) the carseats with the separate base are easier to deal with because you just install the base and leave it there (the seat just pops out) (2) you only use this style car seat for a relatively short period of the baby's life, (3) a snap-and-go is like $50 and doesn't take THAT much room in a car, not to mention that many other strollers have car-seat adapters. $500 is a lot to pay for something that can't even serve as your primary stroller.

Oh can I recommend the wheels that you can get to fit the Chicco Keyfit 30? Those things are amazing.

We got a used Snap-and-Go for like $20 and probably used it way more than our big bulky Mamas and Papas stroller. Now we have a subway stroller and never use the M&P stroller.

Solid food scorecard so far:

Baby oatmeal - D
Sweet potatoes - B-
Bananas - G (for GAG)
Peaches - F

My son just made an abrupt shift from wanting to wear the expensive Assassin's Creed and Minecraft and Doctor Who shirts that we had been indulging him in. You know, so he could express his unique tastes or whatever. He now finds all such clothes completely unacceptable and only wants to wear solid colored shirts, of which he owns maybe 3 and they're all in the wash at present.

Dude's basically a teenager now, right?

― how's life, Thursday, May 29, 2014 12:00 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was thinking fondly of this post this weekend.

This weekend my wife was holding D while talking to her mother on speaker phone. My MIL kept saying "Hello, D! It's Granny! Hello! Hello!"

D very clearly said "Hello!" back. The child is not even three months old. What the everloving fuck.

that reminds me that my least favorite vice as a parent is that i can't help myself from comparing my kid's developmental milestones to their peers. i think my kids are super smart + wonderful in every way but whenever i'm around a friend's similarly-aged genius kid who is spelling in two languages or 3yo and already playing violin i start comparing in my head. it's def not a good or healthy thing to be doing + i feel bad about it. :(

I always remind myself that no adult gets a prize for having been a genius at 3. There's a quote maybe from Benjamin Kunkel or some other novelist along the lines of a character realizing he "could no longer be considered precocious at age 34"

or maybe it was "could no longer be considered a wunderkind" or something like that

Nothing quite like sharing something shockingly cool and unexpected that your kid did and being greeted with "that's okay, he's gonna grow up to be an unexceptional adult"

ILX is here for you.

Has D said it again? Or anything else? Does J show similar inclinations (they're identical twins, right?)?

They're fraternal. We couldn't get D to say it again but we were watching So You Think You Can Dance on demand and at one point, D responded to Mary Murphy's "WOW!" with a "WOW!" of his own. It was hilarious and terrifying.

J's grasp of verbal communication is currently centered on the realization that someone will pick him up if he screams, so he has started screaming what feels like 75% of the time.

That is amazing! (The talking that is. The screaming seems pretty standard.)

I'm considering it very good mimicry rather than actual speech, since we can't get him to repeat anything he's said, but it's shockingly clear, like he's bypassed most of the "I'm going to put syllables together to try to figure out this speech thing" to get straight to "words sounds work like this, dunno what they mean but this is what I heard".

Ivy just shrieks when trying to talk. I taught her that one.

We haven't really got beyond saying "wahoo", but boy are we talented at staying awake.

last night, I started getting annoyed that J wouldn't really wake up for his middle-of-the-night feeding

then I remembered the previous week when I was fervently praying that they both would just sleep through the night one time so I could get more than 90 minutes of sleep at a time

I've decided I'm a fickle dick

I'm considering it very good mimicry rather than actual speech, since we can't get him to repeat anything he's said, but it's shockingly clear, like he's bypassed most of the "I'm going to put syllables together to try to figure out this speech thing" to get straight to "words sounds work like this, dunno what they mean but this is what I heard".

― On-the-spot Dicespin (DJP), Monday, June 2, 2014 1:03 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

K is kind of at the stage of doing this with grammar, she comes up with the weirdest sentence constructions (probably also on account of her mom speaking another language to her), like "Bear and another bear miss you" or "What derrick throw?" or "What does letter elephant start?"

xpost it's like I always said, parents are jerks

If Ivy spoke comprehensible words when not quite three months I would have called a priest but that's because I've seen too many horror movies.

I've decided I'm a fickle dick

Babies aren't the only people who get accustomed to routine. Plus when something changed you've got to figure out is it a problem? The new normal? An outlier?

If Ivy spoke comprehensible words when not quite three months I would have called a priest but that's because I've seen too many horror movies.

that was, no joke, my first reaction

my second was "we have to stop swearing NOW"

oh yeah K learned how to swear by a year old. I think she's forgotten it now because we've been disciplined about it.

I expect Michael to be the youngest kid ever to get suspended from day care for saying "pigfucker"

lol. That's my go-to swear for when I've stubbed my toe or hit myself with a hammer, etc. I'm sure I've dropped that one in front of the kids a few times.

My mom got called in for a kindergarten meeting because I picked up some of my dad's swearing. There was a little toy multi-level garage that sent Matchbox cars down a spiral ramp and I said "look at that goddamn son of a bitch go!"

oh god, speaking of day care

We've started looking into how much we should expect to pay starting in 2015 and literally every single place I've found so far is looking to run somewhere between $2200-$2400 per child before subsidy, which we don't qualify for. I had always thought the nanny route was the route of excess but it's looking more and more like the only viable option aside from one of us staying home.

Ha yeah my primary goal re: swearing is not to swear talking to the baby. Not like swearing at the baby (although I don't want to do that either) but just being like, "Wow, Ivy will you look at that crazy rainstorm! That is going to fuck up my basil plant!" as a possibly word for word example from about fifteen minutes ago.

If we had twins, we would definitely have a nanny. We couldn't afford daycare for two.

I had always thought the nanny route was the route of excess but it's looking more and more like the only viable option aside from one of us staying home.

ime this is pretty much the case. now I understand why so many of my parents generation stayed home (I didn't know a single person who was raised by a nanny growing up). I'm pretty anti-nanny tbh.

nanny/daycare basically eats an entire person's salary cuz they know that's the max amt of money they can get

in a better system, everyone gets to work if they want to and daycare is publicly funded but hey... AMERICA!

oh god, speaking of day care

We've started looking into how much we should expect to pay starting in 2015 and literally every single place I've found so far is looking to run somewhere between $2200-$2400 per child before subsidy, which we don't qualify for. I had always thought the nanny route was the route of excess but it's looking more and more like the only viable option aside from one of us staying home.

― On-the-spot Dicespin (DJP), Monday, June 2, 2014 1:35 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is that per month? Yikes! We're looking at $1200-1400 month for nursery school now (probably starting in fall) but I think daycare for under 2 is more expensive. I would think at that price you probably could get a nanny. Our solution was pt nanny and pt with in-laws, who live near us.

Is that per month? Yikes!

Yup! Including places that require the parents of children attending to volunteer once a week working at the day care.

The main reasons we're strongly considering a nanny:

1. My wife is adamant about returning to work and I am adamant about remaining at work.
2. We make too much money to qualify for day care subsidies but not enough money to pay for two children at the same time.
3. One of my wife's bridesmaids/former roommates is a nanny whose current child is aging out of her care this year.

We found a daycare near us that is a drop-in style center and charges an hourly rate. Given that my wife usually works night shifts (and her work week typically wraps around the weekend) it's been working out well for us. She drops off our toddler around 2 p.m. and I'll pick the kid up between 5 and 6.

One of my wife's bridesmaids/former roommates is a nanny whose current child is aging out of her care this year.

ah well, a nanny that you have an existing personal relationship with is way different from just hiring a random one. I only draw this distinction cuz in my experience observing nannies at work in the wild, man that is some shitty care, and they all seem to hate/resent their employers.

Eh, I think it varies. We're pretty happy with ours. But I'm still glad she's with her grandma a couple days a week, there's a huge difference between how stimulated and happy she is with her grandma vs the nanny.

I really like Ivy's daycare and our current system (she goes to daycare three days/week, I do my best to work at home with her two days/week) is working so far but there are some serious logistical perks to having a nanny. Like not having to bundle the kids into the car with all of their required gear every morning, which means not having to get them dressed or cleaned up before you leave, plus at least in our area, nannies will usually also do light housekeeping and run errands.

The first day taking Ivy to daycare was such a frantic, stressful mess that Jeff and I signed up for a nanny search website that afternoon, but we never followed through with talking to anybody. We just got better at getting Ivy to and from daycare.

daycare pricing is just brutal

I don't think you could say all nannies are shitty any more than you could say all day cares are shitty? Anyways IIRC in Chicago day care for <2 yrs is about twice as expensive as day care >2 years.

if michael were in full time day care the best rate i could get is $1350 a month

Yeah I'm just sitting here trying to do the math of adding one or two more days vs. what impact it might have on my career to basically do a half-assed job 2/5 of every week and the same thing happened as when I think to hard about my student loans, ie I somehow find myself on Etsy browsing twee handmade purses and thinking about maybe going for a walk to the library later.

yeah infant care is exponentially more expensive cuz its so much harder/intensive and the kids are just that much more fragile and the parents are that much more hypersensitive, I would think.

My nanny judgmentalism is strictly based on my limited local experience - the nannies in my building, the nannies I see at the playground/library/school, the nannies my wife interacts with, etc. We talked about it as an option but my wife just didn't like her job that much to warrant sacrificing her salary to pay for childcare that would in all likelihood be inferior to what she could provide herself, is how we thought about it.