ILX Parenting 6: "Put Some Goddamn Pants On Before You Go Outside!" is a thing I say now

How's life: ouch! That sucks.

kinder: don't feel guilty yet. The first trip is going to be traumatic but it will get easier on him.

So we have friends who are from abroad and have no family and not many friends here and we offered to watch their son (3) when the mom goes into labor with baby #2. It just happened, and he's gonna stay in our apt tonight after he gets out of daycare. I keep thinking that it's weird that I'm gonna have to wipe the butt of some kid I don't know very well, although I guess that's what preschool teachers do all day.

Do you know how to speak his language??

update: may not happen after all, the dad may just come to stay with him for the night. FWIW he speaks some English bc he's in an English preschool, but my wife also speaks his language.

designated butt wiper

Everyone in our house has just had the flu, but it doesn't slow Ella down in the slightest.

can i just say, i LITERALLY have no idea how any of you who are single parents do this. especially if you have more than one kid.

Um, some dad at K's preschool today started talking about how it was important for a girl not to be the oldest in the class, but ok for a boy. Has anyone ever heard this before? I have no idea what he was talking about, and he probably didn't feel like explaining after I was like "Um, my daughter is the oldest."

She's actually not literally the oldest, but she's like #2 or #3. And she's also tall for her age -- is this some kind of a height/different development speed thing? I was the youngest in my class and hated it, but it never occurred to me that there would be some gender aspect to this.

that is bizarre

Is it some kind of dating thing? I mean she can date someone a little younger imo (I'm 6 mos younger than my wife) and she can also date someone a grade up, like plenty of people do, so I am really perplexed, yet obviously anytime a parent drops shit like that on you you start to worry about it.

preschool does seem to be about the right time to sort out dating rules

my thoughts exactly

I'm just confused. Never heard anything like that.

lol djp

fwiw I don't know this dad well but always got a douchey vibe from him, including having noticed him ogling/hitting on moms at the school.

btw D figured out how to climb out of the portable play yard today

RIP D, it is only a matter of time before you find a way to kill yourself at your grandparents' half-childproofed house

Just be proud of his talents, and never take your eyes off him ever.

also wrap him in bubble-wrap

I will pass that all on to my wife, who is there with them while I'm back home working

Judah is in a strange phase lately. We were having tons of trouble getting him to go to bed/stay in his room/go to sleep, but then we got rid of all his pacifiers and now he goes right to sleep. wtf.

on the downside, he has also recently "discovered how strong he is" (as his pre-K teacher says) and now he's realized that it's actually kind of really hard for one of us to physically restrain him if we need to do - so now he's throwing shit, hitting people, scratching etc. I mean not all the time, but when he's upset or doesn't want to do something this is a thing he's now discovered he can do. fun times...

nb: I am not always great at following my own advice to never take my eyes off them, in spite of having a rowdy 3.5 yr old and a fragile 5 mo old.

I'm much better at it than my wife is, which is part of what is currently worrying me

shakey: start lifting bro

start with the kid

eh I'm just getting one of these, tell him to "punch the clown" whenever he feels like hitting something
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fkidtimes.files.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F12%2Fbozo-and-boppers.jpg%3Fw%3D460&f=1

bouncer is part of your job description, they don't tell you that at the hospital

it is kind of alarming how strong a 2 1/2 ft tall 3yo can be

oh yes. I remember a morning when I literally could not get her into her stroller to go to school and just kind of gave up until she calmed down.

right? Not long ago if I needed him to do something/go somewhere and he refused well I could just pick him up. nowadays if he doesn't want to go up the stairs and insists on lying on the landing instead I just wait til he gets bored.

you also have to develop special holds/carries to avoid getting kicked

That's the thing, he might only weigh like 40lbs, but it's 40lbs with momentum in all directions at the same time. I sometimes think they should develop a dynamic workout based on a device that moves like a tantrumming toddler.

Not re tantrums, but I know that in one study they got athletes to lie down next to pre-walking babies, and copy all their arm/leg movements, and the athletes got exhausted waaay before the muscle-building babbies did.

all of you with the little one, I hope you don't get the combination of newly grasped strength + teething-related love for biting that my littlest called the "Old Buffet", in which she'd yell those words and chase us in order to bite us hard, like we were the buffet. some of us still have scars.

When J is tired, he wants me to pick him up. When I do so, he bites my collarbone. This is not actually cute.

baby teeth second only to baby nails in list of World's Sharpest Things

omg those fucking nails, and they are so hard to trim

I let E (teething) gnaw on my index finger like it was a chicken bone sometimes -- it sort of hurts and is adorable at the same time.

I used to cut beatle's nail while she was asleep

the same dad who said the weird stuff about how it was bad for girls to be one of the oldest ones in the class and how girls need to be held back a year just told me tonight that Europe should just build a wall to keep the muslims out. Racism aside, I just can't even fathom the stupidity.

Old Buffet! Is a great line

Holy fucking shit it's expensive to have an out-of-home kids' bday party.

Yeah, we spent nearly $200 to have one at my son's kung fu school once.

lol $200, this is NYC

And I mean even in Queens, it's like, relative shitholes cost $400 for a package that may or may not include everything you actually need.

for J's birthdays we've always done playgrounds, brought our own snacks or ordered a bunch of pizzas. his bday is in september though so weather has always been nice. F's birthday is in march so idk what we'll do

I wonder how much my parents spent to have our parties at chuck e cheese back in the day. we always halfass our birthday parties, except the year we went to one of the world's best restaurants (tm) in a rural basque town. that was more than $200 too.

Yeah, ours is February so a picnic is out of the question, and we don't want to do it at home because apartment/problems with downstairs neighbor.

Yeah it also makes me wonder how much my Chuck E Cheese and gymnastics center bday parties cost.

When I say relative shitholes, I mean these dinky little rooms where the paint a piece of plaster as their activity, and everyone gets a headache because there is nothing to absorb sound on any surface.

We haven't done one like that since, but attended one at a place called MyGym that was really fun. The base cost is $275.

yeah birthdays are tricky - ours are in the winter, which means odds are free/outdoor spaces are just not gonna work. But renting some space out and having a ton of people over is $$$. So we've made a deal with Veronica that we'll alternate celebrations: one year she can have a big party w all her friends somewhere (chuck e. cheese etc.), the next year she gets to choose something special to do with just family or 1 or 2 friends. Kinda minimizes the damage.