ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

Yesterday at the playground, August found two children that she really hit it off with. The three of them were like little butterflies dancing around buttercups. All laughs and smiles and it felt great to watch them. The only problem was, the two other kids were drinking water and when their parents showed up with a sippy cup they'd just drink. My kid did no such thing. Her face was red, it was 88 out, we were in the shade but ugh! I kept trying to get her to drink water or eat a peach or have the apple I brought. When the other kids had a water break I'd bring her sippy cup and encourage her to drink like her new friends and told her it was the thing to do in the heat and if she wanted to stay playing at the park she'd have to drink. Off she went.

Really soon after that the loopiness of a kid who has overexerted themselves started to show. At that point I referred to our deal earlier which was playground, then ice cream, then home for a nap. That went out the window. So...after some pleading and sweet reminders that we were going to leave soon if she didn't drink water etc... I finally just got her when she was on the monkey bars and carried her kicking and screaming off to the truck. Halfway there I put her down to walk but she only tried to run back to the playground. I picked her up again and she was hitting and kicking me. That's all new to me.

I told her I knew she had fun but she didn't drink the water and we had already been there a really long time. It's important to drink water. I told her we would return tomorrow, a promise I always keep. She was over tired and cried all the way home. I dropped by the store just a block away and got her coconut water, put that in her sippy cup and she drank the whole thing immediately. The other sippy cup had water that she drank up as well. I told her had she done that at the playground we could still be there. Anyway, I felt really bad just picking her off the monkey bars that way and wondering how that whole situation could have been handled better. In the past I have brought juice, water and coconut water and she wouldn't drink but it was so much cooler weather. She also has been agreeing to when we leave, but yesterday she was just having too much fun.

tbh I think you handled that perfectly

Yeah, me, too. And there's probably nothing you could have done to avoid the kicking/screaming part. If you let her keep playing without drinking, she would have gotten loopier and less rational (plus that is potentially dangerous!) so you needed to get her out of there, get her hydrated and rested. You did the right thing!

Agreed. My girl has reached a stage where I've had to give her a few talkings-to, or withhold fun activities. She used to be ridiculously well-behaved too. It's nothing big, just being a 4-year-old, ya know? But the other day I had to turn around and take her back to the house (while we were on our way to go get ice-cream, coincidentally!) because she was being rude to her brother. That was a real downer.

But yeah, especially with dehydration on the line there, you can't really screw around.

I can't even keep myself properly hydrated, not sure how I'm going to manage it with a child.

Stillsuit

http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/blog/15-3-30-dune.jpg

LOL

Thanks because I did feel I did something wrong and started re-reading Happiest Toddler on the Block...I panicked over no water but also thought just plucking her off the monkey bars was mean and spirit breaking. But we did have a serious talk about hydration and little bodies drying up in the sun, raisins vs grapes, health etc....how drinking water, coconut water, peaches all equal more time at the playground.

this is probably wrong of me but I am pretty much wholly on board with the "benevolent overlord" school of parenting, at least up until the age when they are capable of presenting arguments beyond "because I want to"

On some of the occasions where I've had to have disciplinary conversations with my daughter, she pretends to suddenly fall asleep. It's cute, but very frustrating. She'll start fluttering her little eyes just like at bedtime and then slump over. I actually got real worried once, because I thought maybe she was having seizures or something, but I was able to bring her around by asking if she wanted a chocolate milk.

my daughter's favorite tactic when attempting to avoid discipline is that telling her she needs to change her behavior "hurts her feelings"

somehow this ties into the Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism thread I'm sure...

Yeah Evs has started blaming her "imaginary friends" (who she never references in any other situation) when she gets in trouble for doing something she knows she's not supposed to do. Or she finds some excuse to get mad at us instead, like we try to talk to her about what she did wrong and she says "I ALREADY KNOW THAT!"

the urge to avoid guilt produces strange behavior

I so badly want to see a Huggies baby-sized stillsuit with like cartoon sandworms all over it.

We gave Cecil a sippy cup full of formula the other day for the first time and he never quite figured out how to drink out of it but soon realized it was the heaviest thing he has ever held and began just banging it on his high chair like it was mjolnir with the most determined look on his face.

ha ha ha

lol

All of the above has made me laugh today. Oh it's great when it's not your kid :) And yes pretending to fall asleep sounds extremely cute.
I am very familiar with hurt my feelings, that's what August does and it's delivered with award winning bottom lip quivering and chest heaving sighs and cries.

haha my son does that with his sippy cup! He nearly got the hang of it and grabbed it with both hands - but backwards so he couldn't get anything out of it.

http://www.munchkin.com/miracle-360-7oz-trainer-cup-white-24353.html

This is a good one (I don't know if it's available in the UK, though). Also only three parts so you're not washing and losing a bunch of fiddle little sippy cup components all the time.

Except that it spills more than other sippy cups when tossed on the floor.

True. We prefer it for water.

We definitely have munchkin stuff here - granny has one of their booster seats. Free-flowing sippy cups are a pita but much better for the teeth according to a leaflet the health visitor gave me.

On another note, how steadily to your kids grow? Between 12 and 16 months, F has grown a centimetre and put on no weight. Are we in for the mother of all growth spurts or have his two beanpole parents somehow produced a toddler? I'm taking him for an official weigh-in later this month but if the HV is going to give me a lecture on nutrition I'd like to prepare myself. Oh, and he eats like a horse. Three horses.

toddler tiddler DYAC

It took Ivy foreverrrrrr to go from 19 pounds to over 20 pounds, and she grew in height in the meantime. She finally hit 21, almost 22 pounds at her 18 month pediatrician visit and now she's 20th percentile for weight, and 50th for height. The doc asked some questions about what she ate - whole milk, lots of fruits and vegetables, does she eat meat (yes, we're in a mostly fruit phase but she eats a ton, and sometimes but she also likes tofu and black beans and peanut butter) - and satisfied that we weren't starving our child or putting her on a weird diet, she didn't really say much else about it.

But yeah I was getting anxious when she just wasn't gaining any weight, but that phase also happened when she was starting to really walk a lot so I think since her activity increased, she was just burning all of her calories instead of storing them.

D & J were RACING to 20 lbs; by the time they hit 12 months, D was pushing 21 lbs and J was just under 20, and then they got another respiratory illness and ended up back in the hospital and both lost 2.5 lbs of weight.

D is just now back at the weight he was 3 months ago and J is still a few ounces shy.

On the cup front, Ivy's really into straw cups now. We use these - http://thefirstyears.com/products/take-toss-10-oz-spill-proof-straw-cups-8-pack - and Ivy drinks more milk out of them than she does out of anything else.

(they are called "take and toss" but you can reuse them and they are dishwasher safe so I am not sure what is so "toss" about them.)

xp oh poor guys.

Toss on the ground?

I wouldn't recommend it. I think the philosophy behind the name is that they are durable enough to reuse but if you happen to leave one at a restaurant or in your car long enough for it to get disgusting, you can throw it out without feeling like you are literally burning money.

But yeah I was getting anxious when she just wasn't gaining any weight, but that phase also happened when she was starting to really walk a lot so I think since her activity increased, she was just burning all of her calories instead of storing them.

i've got the same thing going on with my daughter. she crawling and climbing like a manic now (taken a few steps too) and that has coincided with a plateauing of her weight. she's still growing and the doctor doesn't seem too concerned.

also, i think the "toss" part in the name of those cups, is that kids can literally toss them around and not make a mess.

Definitely not.

the free-flow sippy cup we use is basic and only has a cup with a lid (the spout folds down) and still I get more enraged at it than any other baby thing because it's a bastard to get the lid off.
The kid surprised us both by grabbing my tea mug and trying to sip from it - he must have seen us drink so many cups of tea! we've bought a doidy cup (slanted open cup thing) so going to try that.

Ivy loves nothing more than backwashing drool and food into whatever glass I'm drinking out of.

I'm way late to the Scik Mouth party but here's my two cents:
COSLEEP
COSLEEP
COSLEEP
for the love of all that's holy COSLEEP

Aww and Tera you did exactly the right thing. I know you feel bad about pulling her off the monkey bars but if she was refusing to drink and she ran back to the playground when you let her down, chances are you would have had to pry her off those bars anyway. Plus she got a great dietary lesson which like no kids get ever. I'd say that's pretty stellar parenting.

agreed

in my own life cosleeping was a non-starter because they wriggle around so much in the bed that nobody got much sleep when they were in with us

plus not sure how to put this delicately but it was sort of an impediment to getting it on

Tracer, you do know you can get it on elsewhere, yeah? ;)

In related news, Molly finally slept in her own bed for the whole last night, and slept through! First time ever, one week shy of four years old!

Madchen, do you need to go and see the HV? I never managed to go after I went back to work with A, and tbh, with M, I hardly went at all. Both slowed down massively on weight gain once they were active and at nursery, both were fine. Just keep an eye on clothes fit (that they're not getting baggy) and nappies (plenty of poo and wee)

Nora's sleep stretches have lengthened a bit in the last few days; she did a 3-hour stretch and several 2-hour stretches over the last couple of nights. Em is generally taking her our of the hammock and into our bed (that I've barely slept in in months!) halfway through the night.

Re: cups, ya'll need DOIDY: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=doidy&newwindow=1&es_sm=122&source=univ&tbm=shop&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=Anh1VaeZOcHSU6bXgdgP&ved=0CCEQsxg&biw=1280&bih=899

(xp) Congratulations on the long sleep Vicky! That's it, she'll sleep right through every night from now on :)

We have plenty of poo and wee, that's for sure. Just want to get him done on the same set of scales he's always been done on. They also recommended he go back at 18 months for a check anyway because he was a big fatty in the 92nd percentile for weight and between the 25th and 50th for height.

^^ Those measurements were at 12m.

Oh, and we got F measured for his first pair of shoes yesterday and the only pair in his size were boring brown. Had no choice but to get them because he really needed them for outdoor play at nursery - he was ruining all his socks - but I am so mad about the boring, boring brown.

Tracer, you do know you can get it on elsewhere, yeah? ;)

Just saying, from our co-sleeping experience, this usually involves one parent waiting downstairs on the couch for an hour and a half while the other is upstairs trying to lull the kids to sleep, followed at like 9:45 pm by a text message "just come up. I'm too tired for this shit now."

Child transportation ideas, please.

I'll be needing to take Nora to the nursery at work from September. If I go direct, which I will with her, it's a 1.5 mile route, mostly down a straight but reasonably busy road (busy with people going to campus).

Trailer looked good until a friend said he'd never use one on the road because motorists don't see them.

Child seat seems OK.

Would like a cargo bike but they're expensive.

Ideas and thoughts?

We're really fortunate that our nursery is a 10-min walk away, so I do that with the pushchair. I can see that becoming grief when F starts insisting that he has to walk and won't sit, though. There are quite a lot of bicyclists who leave their babyseat in the buggy park at the nursery, that seems a popular way to do it.

(How's the sleeping going? You guys catching a break yet?)

(See above; very minor improvements.)

OMG I just googled this out of interest and you can mount a maxi cosi on the back of a bike! Not sure I would, mind...

success w/ co-sleeping imo is very much dependent on the nature, demeanor, and personality of your kid. co-sleeping was a non-starter with my older son who is very fidgety and high-energy and dependent on highly-controlled environments for sleeping (e.g. black-out curtains, lots of white noise, large bed to roll around in), and since birth he has never really been cuddly and gets anxious and claustrophobic if cuddled too much. nobody slept well when we attempted co-sleeping. he would toss and turn and bump into us and would get really upset.

our younger son is very chill and relaxed, loves being held, immediately starting sleeping better when we started co-sleeping. they are both boys have have incredibly different personalities, it is wild how apparent that was even right after birth.

Tons of people, including many I know, use bike trailers for their kids and we're going to get one soon (baby is now 8.5 months old). Montreal driving is kind of ridiculous but lots of people bike with their kids and people I know say they feel safer with the trailer than a kid bike seat on the back of their bike. Imo any drivers who can't see a big bright trailer shouldn't actually be driving... They're not exactly tiny. Use the orange flag and reflectors though obv! Is there a less busy set of roads you could use that wouldn't add too much time?

xp

Co-sleeping has not worked for us at all - I tried though, thinking it'd be a comfort to him. Alas... He has a lot of energy and wakes up often still and when I do bring him into the bed at 5am bc he won't go back to sleep in the crib he'll fidget and nurse and nurse and nurse just because it's there - not restful for either of us!

We often plop the kid in our bed (in this walled co-sleeper thing some friends gave us) if he fusses after 4am or so. Often he spends half an hour making fart noises and pawing at my beard but eventually falls asleep in a way he never will in his crib at that point in the morning and we can get another couple of hours of sleep.

I've also been looking at bike trailers but everything said you shouldn't use them until they're at least 12 months old so I assumed that would be off the table til next year. Or is this just a suggestion?

I think it's just a suggestion (all kids are different, of course); it seems to be about them being strong enough to sit up by themselves.