ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

the part immediately following "unless"

plus they are old and set in their ways

shit like that would make me update my resume

I mean, my colleagues always assume to not like, invite me out to happy hour or weekend gatherings or whatever, but it's an informed assumption

I get the opposite: "why can't you come out?" "Because I have to pick up the kids, take them home and feed them dinner." "Oh, you still doing that?"

"we won't stay long and we won't be any trouble!"
Look unless you're happy to share a single ikea chair between you and watch me sit with my boobs out, leaking milk everywhere and crying at adverts then gtfo

Oh ffs, my dad has done it again. Not the same thing but my husband is actually on the verge of tears because of how awkward he's made everything.

Oh kinder how frustrating and awful. <3

Oh it's stupid stuff really but just not what we need! Guy needs his own thread tbh

Well and I mean now of all times considering!

Would read his own thread tbh.

Finalized the adoption today which was shockingly fast as he's only 38 days old. There were no legal obstacles and I think it was just easier for a lot of things to do it before the end of the year. Only took a four and a half minute phone call with a judge and our attorney and he slept through the whole thing.

Legally his last name is a portmanteau of the first syllable of my last name and the last two syllables of my wife's last name which has been what a lot of friends have called us collectively since we got married 13 years ago. Only my wife's grandfather has given us any shit about it yet but I expect it to cause some weird issue at some point which I'm prepared to deal with.

Congratulations, joygoat family! Glad it went smoothly.

Wow, wonderful! Congratulations!

congrats!

hurrah!

Yay super ilx adoptive (and non-adoptive) parents! Which makes me wonder what became of haikunym???

congrats!

CONGRATS (also you lucky dog, we had an eight month lag between taking custody and finalizing)

Thanks everyone. We thought it was going to be at least six months between which would have been nice as we would thought we'd pay half the fees up now and half six months later but instead had to do it all at once which was kind of harsh but it's over with. Getting it done before the end of the year should make all the tax stuff easier. Thanks Republican congress for making the adoption tax credit non-refundable you pro-family fucks.

We know some other people who started at the agency at the same time and I think we're the only ones to finalize so far. One poor couple had the birth dad take off because he had a warrant and they haven't been able to find him - they have to publish three notices looking for him in the local paper over a couple months before they can terminate his rights (because everyone knows sketchy absentee fathers with warrants out for burglary often consult the legal notices section of daily newspapers). Our parental legal stuff has been great and super easy.

Thanks Republican congress for making the adoption tax credit non-refundable you pro-family fucks.

This cannot be said enough times.

When I step-parent adopted my oldest kid, his biological father was in federal prison and wouldn't sign/return any of the paperwork that we mailed to him to terminate his rights. We were never sure how much of it was out of laziness and how much was out of spite. She had had him arrested for dv and was later a character witness against him at his federal trial (on a different charge). Months passed and we were very worried that he wouldn't sign at all. Eventually, the paralegal from our firm drove to the guy's prison, a few states away, to try to get him to sign in person. Thankfully, that worked.

I've discovered the most amazing parenting technique recently, one I would almost call a "hack." My 3-year-old daughter is obsessed with queens, and has gotten to that phase where she always wants to wear her "queen" dress and crown in the house. So any time I want her to do something I just address her as "Queen K___" and speak in an exaggeratedly formal manner and a quasi-british accent, as though I'm her attendant.

"Queen K, it is of the utmost urgency that we brush the royal teeth. Please come to the sink at once."
"Queen K, the frigid temperature requires that we put on our coats at once"

etc. Totally changes her attitude toward me and she becomes completely compliant.

Hehe, awesome. May the trick continue to work for many weeks :)

F had broken his new year's resolution to sleep through the night by 3.30am. Honestly, that baby has no willpower.

kids today smdh

It's already wearing off :(

Sleep is a problem again, trip fucked up everything, we caved and let her sleep on her travel bed next to our bed for the moment.

Potty training has been awesome, but over the holiday she made us get rid of her little potty chair because she only wants to use the big one and I'm so sad you guys.

http://rockonmommies.com/rachael/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/pTRU1-4901658dt.jpg

i couldn't get our potty out of the house fast enough, another thing to clean/spill/get underfoot - SEE YA

Yeah, and I hated cleaning up after her and sanitizing it too. By those measures this is a positive. But it was so cute and puffy and the right size for her. The big toilet is cold and hard and blah white (like this cruel world I have brought her into) and she has to awkwardly prop herself up on it to keep from falling in. She loves it - so proud to be a big kid. What can you do? They grow up so fast. *sobs*

she is proud/happy etc! it's win-win!

So, our 2.5 year old has pretty much gotten potty training down. There have been the occasional accident since we did the intensive two day potty-thon, but her rate of failure is something like >10%. So, huge success so far.

On the other hand, she's REALLY blossomed into a two year old over the holiday break, and has thrown some epic tantrums. EPIC.

Our nine month old is taking it all in stride, and we expect she'll be walking within the next month. That's when the real shit hits the fan.

today was the first day of day care; I'm about to go home to see how it went

NERVOUS

good luck, djp. our 7 month old just started with a nanny today (same nanny we hired for our older daughter, so we're pretty comfortable with the sitch). even though i've done this before, i feel that same anxiety.

Let us know how it went. I was not happy when Ivy went to daycare. She handled it much better than I did, though.

When we dropped them off, the boys couldn't possibly have cared less. They both kind of looked at us like "oh, you're still here?" and had no outward reaction when the staff took them from us and brought them inside. The changeover was so quick my wife didn't have enough time to be weepy.

When my wife picked them up, they didn't want to leave. J in particular, who is the king of side-eye, looked at her askance was all "hell no I'm not going anywhere right now" and she had to cajole him into coming into her arms. They're both on the floor playing right now and are super happy. I am PSYCHED.

yay!

Awesome.

I was thinking about this earlier and the thing that really got to me was how Ivy smells different when she comes home from daycare. I'm used to it now but it upset me at first. Not like I was going to push her out of the nest or anything but just feeling sad and weird that other people had been handling her and getting not-our-home smells on her all day.

Not like I was going to push her out of the nest or anything

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

aw carl

Was reminded of something important tonight that I too often forget -- eye contact with your child is very important for trust.

Was having a lot of difficulty because the sleep routine has gotten all out of wack since our vacation, but my wife, now noticeably pregnant, really needs to sleep comfortably in her own bed and we really need our little one to sleep in her own bed. So tonight was the first night where we insisted that mommy was not going to stay on the mat in the room with her, and that I would, instead, until she fell asleep. She freaked out and seemed inconsolable, but what eventually seemed to work is when I was hugging her and looking her straight in the eyes and assuring her I would stay, and she suddenly calmed down.

Oh interesting.

Ivy is at the point where she would use that as an excuse to claw my eye out.

I feel like it's really easy to forget how little certainty/trust they have in the world. A few things happened recently that wouldn't shake an adult but could certainly shake a 3-year-old: (1) we were away from home for five days, staying in two other locations, one of which was unfamiliar to her, (2) my wife has a baby in her belly, and she sort of knows that although doesn't fully grasp it (3) two nigths ago I got pretty sick at work and wound up sleeping at my in-laws (close to work) rather than home (4) she just re-started school after break, (5) her teacher was out and they had a new sub. So I feel like in her mind there could be all these worries like "will my parents stop taking care of me or paying attention to me when there is a baby?" "when we leave home for a while is it always there when we get back?" "when daddy doesn't sleep at home one night will he come back?" "will my teacher come back?" etc.

yea totally! i've been trying to realize that some of J's tantrums are often about shit that he just has a hard time with developmentally - like when our routine gets fucked up, when a glass falls and breaks and water or milk spills everywhere (in his world that is NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN) -- J is only 2 right now so the tantrums happen at smaller shit than your 3-year-old i imagine, but yea i find it is very hard for him when his world gets messed up. he is learning that things go a certain way, and his routine is EVERYTHING to him, so when that shit gets messed up he sometimes can't handle it.

interestingly though he has taken a huge interest in mom's belly and the baby, gives hugs and kisses to it and says "hiiiiiii baby" pretty often. that might change when the baby is actually here obviously. but it is still pretty neat and i *think* he gets what's happening, because when we see a baby in a stroller or something he points to mama's belly too.

D has started doing this thing where when he's sitting in your lap or on the floor, he will start violently rocking back and forth. The first time I saw it, it was super alarming because it almost seemed like a seizure; my wife had a similar reaction and neither of us could figure out where he picked it up from or why he was doing it.

The other night I was feeding the boys solo; D was done and sitting in his high chair playing with a toy while I was finishing up with J. At some point, D dropped the toy, started doing his jerking rock thing, and scooted his high chair forward about a foot so he could reach the back of a chair, which he then started touching.

Kid can't fully crawl yet but he can scoot his high chair. Babies are endlessly fascinating.

Heh, we've had a similar thing with F - he does this weird, faintly disturbing, jerky head movement accompanied by strange noises. My first thought was, 'uh oh learning difficulties?' But then we realised he's mimicking adult conversation, possibly hearing us kind of like Peppermint Patty's teacher speaks in the Peanuts cartoons. So now we all make these stupid head jerks and noises together like a bunch of wallies.

Ivy used to shake her head back and forth really fast, which I think was just a thing she liked to do. But sometimes she'd do it on the bus and I'd want to be like, "OH LOOK AT YOU DOING THAT THING YOU DO SOMETIMES AND NOT HAVING A SEIZURE OR OTHER ISSUE WHATSOEVER."

Now her most alarming move is having these little mini-tantrums that involve arching her back and flinging her upper body backwards violently, which has more than once resulted in a bump to the head.

My parents are visiting and Ivy is taking total advantage of them, and getting my mom to more or less constantly walk her around (she'll walk if she can hold on to your hands and it is the thing she loves most in the world right now). She's learned this trick where she can walk my mom into the kitchen where the baby crackers are, and make her signature "AHHHHHHHHHHH BAH BAH" noise at the cracker box, and my mom will give her a cracker. Repeat 1,000,000 times.

My parents are being really amazing, though. My mom has already done all of the laundry, and my stepfather made breakfast AND did the dishes, shoveled the back steps, and took out the trash. And gave me $200 "for groceries."

LIL CEASE has started moving his head a lot, and will sort of have it held up before suddenly losing control and slamming it into my head or shoulder. He's also discovered that he can move his hands and cause them to hit things that dangle in front of him which is like the most mind-blowing thing. I guess when you're 7 weeks old everything is sort of mind blowing.

And kids reacting to kids is really interesting too - we have friends with a 5.5 year old and a 2.5 year old, and another on the way in June. The older one is fascinated by our baby, always asking "why does he look mad?" and "why can't he do anything?" and such. It's like he had no recollection of when his brother was born but knows there's going to be another baby around soon and is trying to figure out how they work.

yeah mine headbutts me quite a lot! also kicks his legs straight as if launching himself away from me. bound to end in injury sometime.

had the best day with him so far. which means i'm dreading tonight...

Oh yeah the headbutting. I fully expect to have my nose broken before Ivy turns two.