In my (nearly non-existent) spare time, I’ve been reading some parenting advice, especially a book by Alfie Kohn called “Unconditional Parenting.” He raises lots of good points about the pitfalls of punishments and rewards, but I haven’t gotten far enough to know what he DOES recomend. There are a few points that make sense to me already, though, and I’m trying to keep them in mind more.
One of them is “say ‘no’ only when you need to.” I’ve found that when I check my actions against that test, I’m using “no” a lot, and often for the wrong reasons. One example–Hallie loves to eat on our back deck. And realistically it only takes about 3 extra minutes to move everything out there. But I kept dodging her requests because I thought it was a pain. Now I’m checking with myself, and if the only reason I don’t want to do that is that I’m feeling lazy, out we go. And Hallie is thrilled.
Another thing I’m really trying to work on is consistency in my reaction to Hallie, regardless of what else is going on. I’ve found that I’ll get frustrated or impatient with her, when really what I’m reacting to is Travis fussing in the background, or knowing that if we don’t hurry he’ll start getting grumpy. Having him be needy always ratchets up my stress level. But it’s not fair to take that out on Hallie. So, I’m trying to isolate my reactions to her and keep them the same whether there are external pressures or not.
It’s been fun watching Hallie get more and more into caring for her “babies,” which includes all her abundant stuffed animals. At any point, she’s usually got two or three favorites she’s busy putting to bed or nursing or cozying up. Much of what she says and does with them is a direct reflection of what we do with Travis. She spent a few days this week focused on a lamb named Willie, and she kept saying, “All she wants to do is Stand UP!” Hmm. Wonder where she heard that?
Today is T’s 8 month birthday. Hallie asked to sing to him at dinner tonight. I think that was more because we’d been to a birthday party for Grace and Olivia today. But we had fun singing to T anyway. Happy birthday, big guy!
The day after I posted that Travis wanted to move, he moved closer to that goal. For weeks he’s pitched a fit when he rolled to his tummy because he couldn’t get back again. Then this week he just nonchalantly started rolling up and then back down again as if it was the easiest thing in the world. I had to watch a few times to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. What a funny guy!
He has rolled over all the way in the same direction, but he hasn’t figured out this is a way to get places. He’s learned to pivot himself on his stomach. And when he really wants something in front of him he’ll get everything going to try to get there and he’ll actually move himself–but backwards. This makes him mad, so I usually have to intervene. But it’s pretty funny to watch.
He’s also starting to pull up on things. He can’t get himself up yet, but he almost pulled his busy box down on himself the other day. And if you give him a little help, he’ll really work toward standing himself. And of course he loves to stand whenever you’re supporting him there.
He’s still pretty wobbly, so we’ve got a little while before he’s really “cruising” on things. But probably not too long!
Travis has been solidly sleeping through the night for several weeks now. But in the last week he’s been up three or four nights, one night more than once. Once he was lying on a toy and another time he had his foot stuck out of the crib. But I also finally spied his third tooth peeking through, so maybe that’s the real problem.
For a few days I’ve thought I saw something on the bottom row, but now I’m sure. It’s his second on the right side of the bottom. And I think the left one might be coming, too. I keep trying to see if there’s anything happenign on the top. But he won’t let me get a good look, and I”ve learned the hard way that it’s dangerous to try feeling around in there.
Other than the night stuff, he hasn’t even been noticeably grumpy. So maybe he’s following in Hallie’s footsteps of being an “easy teether.” Let’s hope so!
When I talked to Mark this afternoon, I told him “festival of poop and spit-up” was the best summary I could give for my day thus far. We actually had a really good day. But it was a messy one!
My previous post that the increased dosage of prune juice worked was a fluke, and we were back to the usual hard, uncomfortable poops from Hallie for the last few days. But it (or something) finally took effect today, and with a vengeance. Hallie had several major blow-outs, all but two of them in her Pull-Ups (and one of which she managed to share with our white couch). Add that to Travis’s standard 4-5 poopy diapers a day, and I felt surrounded by the stuff! Travis was also doing more spitting up than usual today, and I didn’t make it past breakfast with clean pants.
All of this set the stage for our pre-nap fiasco. I changed Travis’s (poopy) diaper, and my nose told me Hallie needed attention, too. I put T on his back in the hallway with some toys and got Hallie to the potty. Her diaper was a soupy mess. After I got her cleaned up, I headed straight for the diaper pail with it. Apparently I was careless in my packaging, since before I got it in the pail I dripped some of the contents down my arm, onto the changing table, and onto the floor.
I managed to do some basic damage control there, and headed back for the kids. Hallie, fortunately, was still intact on the potty. Travis, however, had been busy. He’d managed to roll himself onto his tummy, spit up all over the hallway, and then do a belly-and-face-plant in his sweet potatoes and chicken with apples.
I’ve never gone through so many wipes in one day ever! One more round of damage control, and I finally had them both in shape for naps. I felt a bit like Cinderella as I scrubbed floors and sofas. But despite it all I had two happy kids. And that’s what’s important, right?!
We took another afternoon walk to the greenway to throw rocks in the stream today. We had a bumpy start, but soon Hallie got engaged by everything we were seeing. We had fun stopping to look at worms and beetles and mushrooms. And we tossed rocks and floated leaves down the stream.
On the way back, Hallie picked up some large nuts from a tree along the path. We talked about how they were the seeds for the trees they came from, and I told her it was fine to bring them home with us. Subconsciously I figured they’d knock around for a few days and then get discarded and that would be that.
As we got closer to home, Hallie asked what was inside them. I told her I didn’t know. But a few moments later my dense brain kicked into gear, and I told her we could open them at home to find out.
After another block or two, Hallie commented, “Mommy, they smell spicy!” And again, Hallie jumpstarted my slow mind. Here she was, just naturally using all of her senses to explore things. And it took her comments to beat me over the head with what a good opportunity this was to talk about her senses and to find out what they could tell us about her nuts.
We got home and found a mallet to open them up. We had fun comparing the green, softer shells and meat in two of them to the darker, harder shell with the dry inside of the third. We even shook them to see if they made any noise. (We decided we wouldn’t experiment with the sense of taste!)
Our outing provided us with a great chance to experiment and for Hallie to discover neat things about her world. I’m just lucky she was there to show me how to show it to her!
We spent a fun Father’s Day with a morning hike and a midmorning visit to my parents’ home to spend more time with them and my sister’s family.
Afterward, I had Travis sitting in my lap while we watched the U.S. Open. He was grabbing at various items while I was watching the TV. When I gently pulled something away from his mouth, he began jabbering.
“Awmahnanabpffffdaddypfffhff”
I blinked. Did he really say what I think he said?
I called over to Kelly. “Did you hear that, honey? Did Travis just say ‘daddy’?”
“It sounded like that to me,” she replied. Whoa.
Yeah, he’s not yet 8 months old, and he certainly didn’t seem to realize what he’d done, but the word “daddy” DID come out of his mouth.
Not a bad Father’s Day present at all.
On all too many days, I feel like we spend time “getting things done,” at the expense of “doing things.” We stay close to home in the mornings for T’s nap. Once he’s up, usually around 10:30 or later, and I change and nurse him (and often change him again–he’s a poop machine these days!), and get Hallie on and off the potty and have a snack and put on shoes, it’s almost lunchtime before we leave the house. A trip to the grocery store eats up our whole mid-day window, and then it’s a scramble to get back home for lunch and naps.
Our afternoons are reversed. Hallie usually sleeps a lot longer than T, so he and I stick around waiting for her to wake up. And by the time she does, it’s often so close to dinner-prep time, we can’t really go anywhere (not to mention T’s penchant for falling asleep in the car). When each of them is sleeping, I try to do worthwhile things with the other. But I often abuse that time (especially with Hallie, who’s so independent) to get laundry and chores done.
Today was a really good, kid-focused day, though. (I ran to the grocery store last night, so it was great to not have that to deal with.) Hallie and I had a great time making scones this morning while T snoozed. When he was up, we headed for the library and then did some good swinging at the park. After naps, I loaded T into his stroller and Hallie put her baby in hers, and we set off for the nature trail. Often it’s hard to get Hallie to walk very far. And since I can’t push or carry both of them (without the huge double stroller, which is a pain), we don’t trek too much.
Have her baby along today helped, though, and we trotted merrily over to the greenway. Our goal was finding rocks to throw in the stream. We did that, and had a ball. But we also saw a bunny and a groundhog and some crows and a cherry tree, and some robins, and several dogs. It was a gorgeous day, almost cool, and we were so glad we took advantage of it!
We’re getting ready to batten down the hatches. It may still be a little while, but I doubt long, before Travis is crawling. . . or walking! He wants to stand up any chance he gets. When he’s on his back and you pull his hands, he doesn’t sit up anymore–he locks his knees and stands. He can support himself for a few moments when leaning on a toy or a sofa. And he gets the biggest grin whenever you let him do that.
Mark watched him yesterday as he stretched and reached and finally grabbed part of his crib mobile. We took quick action, and Mark had the crib lowered before bedtime last night. We know his cousin Mary Beth walked at 9 months. I hope we’re not on that track, but we’re probably not far behind. While I videotaped last night, Mark helped T get his knees up under him in a crawling position. T kept flopping back to his tummy, but every time Mark put him up again he grinned and chortled. He thought it was great!
We’ve got next Sunday reserved for doing some serious baby proofing. I hope it can wait that long!
