When eggs are the enemy
I’m over at Scratch or Sniff talking about C’s egg allergy!
I’m a huge fan of Roo’s sites (she’s known for her famous This Is How I Feel Fridays over at Neon Fresh), so it’s exciting to be guest-posting for her.
If you have a little one with allergies, I hope you hop over to check it out!
xo
The worst game of tag … ever
Almost two (two!) years ago, I posted about how much it sucks when your kids “tag-team” you at night.
You know, older kid wakes up screaming/crying, you drag yourself out of bed and deal with them, and then just as you’re falling asleep again, younger kid chimes in with their own separate complaints/issues.
Well, here’s an update for you: it still happens when your kids are three and almost-two!
Last night, Darling Husband was working an overnight shift — isn’t that always the way? Holla at me, shift-work spouses! — and the kids were doing everything in their power to overwhelm and exhaust me …
- I come up to bed and start reading
- D is now whining because his throat hurts
- Tell D that he needs medicine to make it feel better, he refuses
- C is cheerfully calling “Hi, Mummy!” from under her bedroom door
- Tell C to please get some sleep and she happily responds “Oh-tay!” (“Okay!”)
- D starts crying because of his throat, and I also suspect he has to pee
- Carry D to the bathroom, make him pee (I was right)
- Carry him downstairs to the locked medicine cupboard, show him his medicine choices (orange chewies, grape chewies, or grape liquid), he declines them all
- Tuck D back into bed
- Huge crash from C’s room
- I run into her room — dropping my iPhone on the floor in the process, so y’all know I was concerned! — and she is hysterical. A framed photo fell from her gallery wall (my bad!) but luckily nothing broke, and she wasn’t anywhere near it.
- C won’t calm down, and I feel really guilty about my crap photo-hanging abilities, so I bring her in bed with me (something I never do, but I figure it can’t hurt just this once)
- Tuck C in next to me, close my eyes, tell her it’s time to sleep
- C lies next to me, breathing softly
- *poke* *poke* “Ah-bows!” (She is poking my eyebrows)
- “Go to sleep, baby!”
- C lies next to me, breathing softly
- *poke* *poke* “Ah-washes!” (She is touching my eyelashes)
- “Yes, C! Go to sleep, please!”
- C lies next to me, breathing softly
- “Daddy blah blah blah DADDY blah blah blah BLAH?”
- “Shhhh, C. Daddy’s at work. Go to sleep.”
- C wraps her arms around my neck and says “Mamaaaaaaa!”
- I hug her back, and start realizing I am never going to sleep with her in the bed
- Fifteen minutes later, I ask if she wants to go back to her room, and she says yes
- Carry C back to her room, tuck her into her “floor bed”
- Console D, who woke up cranky again because of C
- Collapse into bed, and sleep straight through until, well, the crack of dawn when I hear D puttering around his room.
Sew your own Frozen costumes for $10 each
- 2 metres light stretchy turquoise fabric (for Elsa’s skirt, Anna’s sleeves and faux V-neck)
- 2 metres of dark grey/black corduroy (for Kristoff’s tunic and Anna’s bodice)
- 1 metre of blue fleece (for Kristoff’s sleeves, pants, faux V-neck, mittens, and hat)
- 1 metre of super shiny/sequinny ice blue fabric (for Elsa’s sleeves and bodice)
- 1 metre of ice blue tulle (for Elsa’s train)
- 1 metre of deep maroon silky fabric (for Anna’s cloak)
- 1 metre of deep blue silky fabric (for Anna’s skirt)
As you can see, I really do just kind of “wing things” when I’m sewing — which would drive a lot of serious sewers crazy, I know. I don’t measure things. I’ve just made enough little baby-girl dresses to be able to eyeball sleeves, bodice shapes, etc. so that’s why everything is very basic.
I hope I’ve inspired someone (anyone! Bueller …? Bueller? …) to make Frozen costumes for your little ones. Other than the pain-in-the-butt cloak (*$#* cloak!) I would highly recommend playing around with it.
And now, of course, the goal is to get my kids to WEAR these costumes!
xoxo
Language explosion x 2
“The language explosion.” I remember doctors and hearing & speech therapists talking about this all the time, when D was struggling with his hearing loss.
“There’s a language EXPLOSION around 18 or 20 months,” they would tell us excitedly. “You’ll see!”
Um. No. We didn’t see.
(If you’re new around these parts, D had a serious speech delay and was diagnosed with a mild hearing loss when he was 18ish months old. He had tube surgery right after he turned two to clear the gluey fluid blockage, did speech therapy for six months, had another tube surgery when he turned 3 1/2, and is doing great these days)
But C, on the other hand, has never worried me in the speech department. She seems like a total GENIUS, actually, because we’re accustomed to having babies who are the strong, silent type! (She is blissfully average, though, I promise — not a Janine Kishi)
I looked through my archives, but I can’t find a single post where I write down the words C can say — like I madly chronicled for D, during his issues.
I just looked at a list of words he could say — right after he turned two — and shook my head. I couldn’t begin to write down all of the words C can say, now at 22 months. D’s spoken words were simple ones like “pullpull” (purple) and “Sissy” and “muk” (milk), but he could do dozens and dozens of ASL signs.
C only knows a couple of signs (“more” and “jump” are her usual ones) but she jabbers on like she’s telling you the greatest story of all time, and a lot of it is intelligible. She calls her dolls by name (“Janey” is her favourite) and can ask me for any food or drink imaginable. She requests a “sweatshuuurt” when she sees someone else wearing one, demands “ceeem” when she wants some of my face cream, and says “Pincessssss Anna” when she wants to watch Frozen clips on YouTube. (Oddly enough, she calls Barney “Nanny,” though)
In the past few weeks, though, I’ve noticed huge improvements in both D and C’s language. D’s speech has been improving rapidly since he began attending preschool in the fall (two mornings a week).
I’m constantly blown away by his maturity, as he comes home and starts talking about subjects so knowledgeably — like how poisons can hurt your skin so you have to keep them away from kids. Or how that thing on the wall is something you squirt on a fire so it puts the fire out. Or how smoke detectors go BEEP BEEP BEEP when there’s a fire, and you STOPDROPANDROLLANDCOVERYOURFACEMOMMY! DID YOU KNOW DAT?
He was on a knock-knock joke kick a few weeks ago, but he didn’t know how to tell them. I think I confused the issue by trying to teach him the “Who’s there? Orange. Orange who? Knock, knock. Who’s there? Orange” repeating one — that ends with “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?” — because he would say “Orange who?” and then burst into hysterical laugher before the punchline.
He’s telling me the plot of Honey I Shrunk the Kids. He’s discussing what happens at preschool with vivid detail. He’s memorizing entire books — like Just Go To Bed and Green Eggs & Ham — and blowing my mind with how he “reads” them aloud. He’s asking real questions about things, and I’m actually giving him real, thoughtful answers instead of jokingly making something up — because he remembers everything!
It’s very strange being able to have a real conversation with both kids, while I’m driving. Or quizzing them on something when I read them a book. Asking them questions and getting answers from both of them.
It’s a new, big-kid phase of life that hammers it home that we’re done having babies. But it doesn’t make me sad — well, not really — because I’m really enjoying being able to talk with them. It’s fun! They’re like PEOPLE or something!
xo
My famous potty-training advice? Nudity, television, and candy.
Right after Christmas, I shared how Little Miss C — who had just turned 20 months at the time — immediately decided she wanted to be potty-trained.
Longtime readers will remember that this was very … uh, very! very! very! … different from how D’s training went.
(To quickly recap, we started with him right after he turned two, gave him a couple of months of nude’n’casual potty use, another couple of months wearing undies around the house, and then began wearing underwear full-time (even out of the house) at 28 months. He wore a diaper at naptime and bedtime until right before he turned three, when we bit the bullet and stopped — and he was fine! Long, slow approach, but ultimately very, very few accidents — even in the very beginning — and I’d highly recommend this “method” for fastidious little ones.)
So back to C! She really worked at the whole potty thing, and it became clear that she was not going to give up anytime soon. She was wearing underwear full-time around the house — except for naptime and bedtime — and getting better about accidents.
We kept that up for about six weeks, and then the accidents had all but vanished. She had stopped her constant potty requests, and was going long, long stretches without requesting to use it. (When we’d ask, she’d usually respond with a perky “Noooope!”)
At not quite 22 months, we knew she was at the same point D was at 28 months — ready to leave the house in underwear. A full six months ahead of what we thought was expected! Let me tell you, it was SCARY. Probably even scarier than those first underpants-in-public outings with D, because he’d had so much more practice and I felt more confident in his abilities. But I didn’t like putting a diaper on C whenever we left the house (which is often). I didn’t want to mess up how well she was doing. So I went for it!
I’m probably jinxing myself by writing this, but so far she has not had any accidents out of the house! We’ve had a few, er, false alarms that had me sprinting for a bathroom when she didn’t actually end up “going” — and cursing myself for getting knee-deep in fabric bolts while she cheerfully waited in the stroller, not remember that she could shout “Poooooo!” at any moment. But she’s used public bathrooms a couple of times, and all is good.
(Of course, I’m still carrying around two extra outfits and two extra pairs of undies at all times — just in case!)
*** Updated to add: Of course! Writing this post jinxed me, and C had me rushing her to the bathroom at the mall FOUR DIFFERENT TIMES THIS MORNING — and then didn’t even pee! ***
C just turned 22 months, and she’s been preferring the Baby Bjorn potty around the house these days (she initially preferred the toilet seat). I wish she was still cool with running around pant-less with a pair of BabyLegs on, but no, the little lady insists on underwear and leggings at all times — which means lots and lots of yanking her pants down and up. Other than that, it’s very easy at this point.
(Oh, one major boy/girl difference — we now have to keep a roll of TP hidden behind a framed photo in the living room, for pee wiping! Never had to do that with D!)
C won’t turn two until the very end of April, so I’m not out of the diaper-woods yet. I still plan on keeping her in a diaper at naptime and bedtime for a while, mostly because I don’t want to be rushing upstairs every five minutes (or five seconds) when she yells “Pooooooooo!” She’d quickly figure out that was an easy way to divert going to sleep, and I’d be a potty prisoner.
It’s funny that I expected potty-training to be more difficult than it ended up being, both times. It was also different than I thought, both times. I feel like I got lucky, a bit, but even writing that feels like I’m going to be jinxed with nothing but accidents tomorrow.
When friends who are first-time parents ask me what to expect, my biggest piece of advice is to start with the Naked Potty Time in Front of the TV with Candy Rewards. I really believe in it. I should patent it! It’s worked with both kids — just casually hanging out in the living room, sitting on the potty naked, and watching TV. Even if they get up and move around — and pee on themselves! — they will quickly figure out that if pee or poo get in the potty, they will get an M&M. I’m a big fan of bribery, yes.
Perhaps someday I will write a parenting book, and the chapter about potty-training will be called “Nudity, Candy, and The Road to Freedom.”
xo
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