Tag Archives: parenting

Independence

I have independent girls.

Sometimes people exclaim how wonderful it must be to have such independent children, I say yes but… Have YOU ever heard your daughter say from two aisles over at the grocery store: “Do you know where my mom is?” This is a normal occurrence for us. Unfortunately the adult being asked where I am is unaware of this and I see a bit of panic in their eyes when I pop around the corner. Because while Ivy may not know where I am she’s pretty easy to keep track of, you just listen for her constant chatter. But I digress…

Some of their independence is just personality. Ivy has always been out and about on her own without a problem, and now that she’s three that’s been taken to a whole new level!  Clara also seems to have got some of that same personality.  She won’t even let someone hold her hand while she walks, try to do that to help her out and you get rapid head shaking followed by yelling if you persist in trying. Clara is going to do it herself!

Other parts of their independence (particularly Ivy) is a learned thing. My favorite parts of motherhood do NOT include putting on clothes, shoes, socks, jackets, getting glasses of water, finding toys… Therefore the general rule I follow is if she can do it I’m not going to. Which is why last year when Ivy was two I woke up one morning to the sound of firewood being dropped on the floor. I went downstairs to discover my two-year old had gotten up, gone down stairs, put on boots and a jacket and hat, gone out to the porch and brought in a load of firewood.

She was very proud.

I was a bit worried that I was able to sleep through all that.

Truly though I love that Ivy is so self-sufficient and independent. Today as we were getting ready to go to the park I tried to remember that.  Last year, I would find the clothes and shoes and things and she would put them on. This year she does it all. The problem is she does it all on a three-year old’s time table (which translates to no timetable or urgency but lots of stories about princesses).  As we slowly, slowly got ourselves out the door I thought how easy it could be…

If I found her clothes and put them on her, if I found the socks and shoes and stuffed her feet in them, if I found the toys that were apparently completely necessary for our five minute drive we were taking and if I loaded her into and buckled up her car seat.

It’d take ten minutes.

But when we got to the park would she have played by herself and with Clara while I walked dogs  in circles around them?  Fixed her shoe by herself? Figured her own way up the unfamiliar ladders?  Relentlessly followed other kids around the park talking to them? Maybe.  But after the 30 minute struggle to get out the door I like to think that what I’m doing is actually helping her become a better person rather than just torturing all of us.

Besides had Ivy been glued to my side she never would have had the opportunity to excitedly yell across the playground: “MOM! Guess what!? I can get boogers out of my nose with my tongue!”

Clearly this is not a recent picture of Ivy. This is Ivy with her finger up her nose at four months. At four months it’s sort of funny, a current picture of her activities would not be so endearing!

Sick

Remember how on Mothers Day I wanted to be the Dad?

I want to be the Dad again.

Everyone in our house is sick, we range from head colds and teething to flu like symptoms.

The Mom’s job in our house is to take care of the (now grumpy) kids.

The Dad’s job is to go to work.

Mom can do (read, has to do) her job unless she is at deaths door.

Dad works with hazardous chemicals and the rest of us prefer it if he not do that when he is not on his A game  for fear there will be no Dad.

In order for Dad to get back to his job he must recover quickly.

Mom is still doing her job.

Dad gets lots of naps.

Mom does not.

I want to be the Dad again!

Screamfree Parenting by Hal Edward Runkel

I don’t read very many parenting books, but this one kept cropping up everywhere so I thought I’d see what all the fuss was about.  I admit I did not read this slowly and thoughtfully while answering all the “reflection questions” at the end of the chapters, it was more of a skimming, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, hmm that’s interesting, sort of read.

My issue with reading it was my own avoidance of parenting books problem, it breaks down something like this:

one part,”I’m doing just fine thank you very much,”

one part  “If I read all the parenting books, I’ll probably start thinking that I need to do everything different, they will all say different things and then I will go insane which would have the opposite effect I was hoping for.”

and one part “I’m half Finnish and I don’t think that half of me is interested in reflecting on my inner feelings, thank you have a nice day.”

I read it anyway, and tried to stifle my eye rolling on the bold texts that said things like,

“Pain is often the greatest catalyst to powerful change.”

and

“Screamfree Parenting is not a problem-solving or behavioral modification model; it is a growth model.”

Not that these things aren’t true, it’s just that my aversion to books like this was in control of my eyeballs.

My point, I did have one…

This was better than I thought.  For the most part I liked what he said (it helped that I also do/believe many of the things already) and it did give me some stuff to ponder in daily life with my three year old. Hopefully my Finnishness will subside and I can even implement a bit of it. And I liked the basic message of the book. While the author multiple times mentions his disapproval for “what works for fideo will work for your kid”  type books, I’d say, what I took out of it sounded an awful lot like Caesar Milan. The dog whisperer and this guy have the same basics.  Calm assertive pack leader and calm consistent parent aren’t too different when you get right down to it.  I know it works on the dogs, I’ve seen it help with the kids, but knowing it will help and actually being calm are not always the same thing!

Would I recommend it? I’m not recommending any parenting books. Not because how I feel but because what you want to read in that area is completely up to you, I’d hate to add to any insanity (see avoidance issues above).

“Choices”

After hearing glowing reviews from friends who offered their kids “choices” I thought I’d try it with Ivy. Not to be mistaken for choices, “choices” are more like this:

You can keep eating or you can leave the room.

You can help me or you can play by yourself.

You can pick up your room now or you can go straight to bed.

I phrase the “choices” above in a  friendlier manner and try to involve the word choose, amazingly Ivy thinks she’s getting to decide what happens and responds well to it. Hopefully it will take her awhile to figure out that it is just her manipulative mother calling the shots! Of course there are days when she makes poor choices, I try to go with it and cross my fingers that she’s learning something.

Today was one of those days. Today the choice was: we could go for a walk or get ready for our afternoon rest.

Ivy’s choice: Walk

Ivy being the helpful girl that she often is went and got both of us shoes for our walk. She returned with my flip flops and Johns flip flops. Now I can go anywhere in flip flops, and Ivy has been a good understudy but Ivy in her Dads flip flops is a different story. So it was “you can wear those but I will not carry you, or you can go get your own shoes”

Ivy’s choice: Wear Dad’s flip flops

So off we walked, and it all went swimmingly, if very slowly,there is not much speed to be had in over sized flip flops. Then we left the pasture and there were *gasp* BURRS and PRICKERS!!! Do you want to keep going though the burrs and prickles to the corn field or head home for a rest?

Ivy’s choice: Keep going

Keep going, and crying and screaming.

“MOM, there are prickles!”

“Owie!… Owie!… Owie!”

“MOM THERE ARE BURRS ON MY DRESS!!!”

Clearly a major problem was that I had not realized her dress was actually an extension of her body and therefore burrs caught in her dress would  be causing Ivy pain. This was true even if the burrs were wrapped and tangled in the dress so as not to be touching her skin in anyway.  Sadly this is not a new phenomenon, her pink blanket has the same attribute.  In the car if Piper sits on the end of the blanket it’s all “OWIE! MOM, PIPER IS SITTING ON MY PINK BLANKET! OWIE!” so I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised, but it was a bit disappointing. A pink blanket that feels pain is inconvenient, a dress that has the same problem is downright ridiculous!

Ivy then decided the best thing would be to take off her dress.

“MOM THE SKEETOS ARE GETTIN’ ME!”

Soon after that she got burrs in her hair, and thought flailing around her head and messing up her hair would somehow help. Then just after we reached the corn field (the burr and pricker free cornfield) she decided it was time to turn around and go back home.  All the way back through the 12 yards or so of burrs and prickers I heard pathetic comments like:

“MOM I HAVE BURRS IN MY UNDERWEAR!”

“OWIE!”

“MOM THE SKEETOS ARE GETTIN’ MY BUTT!”

Once we hit the relative “safety” of the pasture things improved until we got home.

Choice: Sleep with burrs in your hair or let me comb them out.

Ivy’s choice: comb them out

“OWIE” — – “Ivy I haven’t touched it yet.” —“BUT IT”S GONNA HURT!” — “Should we leave them in?” —” NO GET THEM OUT!”

Ten minutes later she was deburred, mostly naked, full of mosquito bites, tears, snot and on her way to bed.

While it seems that I may have spent an hour torturing my kid I was hoping she learned something from it, but I wasn’t convinced. When Ivy got up from her nap she came smiling down the stairs in new clothes and said:

“Look Mom I’m wearin’ my long sleeve clothes to keep the prickers off me!”

Then a few minutes later she showed up with some barrettes and said:

“Mom, you put these in my hair so I don’t get burrs in my hair?”

While I’m not counting it a true success until we head out on another walk  it looks like perhaps something sank in!

The one thing I will say for Ivy is through all of her crying about burrs and prickly things, she never once asked me to carry her, even when her flip flops were falling off. I like to think this was because she knew that was the choice she made at the beginning of our walk.  Unfortunately it also could have been because she was too busy saying “Owie!”   Just picture a little girl with pink Care Bear underwear full of burrs walking determinedly, if very vocally though the woods, now tell me that doesn’t bring a smile to your face. I’ll keep giving Ivy “choices” and while I watch her figure things out for herself I’ll try to keep my giggling under control!

Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder

Ivy’s recent quotable Dad comments:

“I don’t ask you nicely and politely I only ask dad nicely and politely”

“You don’t love me, DAD loves me.”

“I’m not your kid. I’m Dad’s kid, Clara is your kid.”

Now I like to think that I take all the snotty three year old comments in stride.  I don’t let them get to me, sometimes I think she’s  funny, and most of all I’m very glad that Ivy loves her Dad so much.  Nor do I feel unloved by my girls. Clearly since I am the one required to read bedtime stories, rock girls to sleep, kiss hurt fingers and wipe dirty butts I am dear to them as well.

But sometimes…

When every night when John gets home he is trampled at the door by the dogs and kids, and the only way for me to get my own kiss hello is to wade in pushing everyone else out of the way.

When Clara lights up when she hears him talk, and Ivy can go from problem child to angle at the drop of her hat on hearing his voice.

When unknowingly John will ask Ivy to do something that I had been waiting her out on, and she’ll jump up and go do it.

When Ivy asks where her Dad is ten times a day.

…it starts to get a bit grating in a  you-rotten-kids-do-you-forget-who-spends-the-whole-freakin-day-with-you sort of way.

So when I was the only one home when the girls came back from spending a night at Grandma and Grandpa’s I basked in my two minutes of fame. I loved the lit up faces, the hugs hello, and hearing how much Ivy missed me…

…right up until I heard, “Where’s Dad?”and Clara threw up on me.

I hear absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I’m planning my next vacation!

“Nnnn…ummm…OK.”

Since Ivy was born I have been a big fan of the theory that everyone should sleep where everyone in the house gets the most sleep.

I became a fan of this theory when we co-slept with Ivy the first night she was born. I hadn’t been specifically planning on co-sleeping, but we did it and it worked great. Why mess with a good thing? Ivy shared a bed with us for a few months before moving into her crib in a separate room.  We also co-slept with Clara up until she started the dreaded “sleep crawling.” Now Clara has also moved out into her own room and crib across the hall from Ivy’s room where she now sleeps in a regular bed.

Or should I say where Ivy slept in a regular bed. We have now entered a new phase of sleeping arrangements that I did not foresee.

It started when Ivy kept showing up in our bed in the middle of the night. Going with my theory if she was actually sleeping when she showed up, I probably would have left her there.  Ivy is not fun to sleep with, first she spends far to long, talking, whispering, wiggling and touching my face, then when she does fall asleep she turns into a dead weight that is impossible to move off your pillow and is only revived when it involves wiggling and flailing around to take up more of the bed. Ivy in our bed is not a plan where everyone gets the most sleep.

Here is how it would go:

Ivy would come into our bed.

I would try to ignore her.

It wouldn’t work because she would do really awful things to me (like set paper snowflakes on my eyelids, and if that doesn’t sound awful then clearly you’ve never been subjected to it!)

I would get up and put her crying back into her bed.

She would want to snuggle with someone.

Depending on my level of kindness (directly related to amount of face touching I had endured in the last few minuets) and time of night, I might lay down with her for a few minutes.

I would get back up and go back to bed.  Or if John returned her to her bed he would fall asleep there and I would never see him again.

Ivy would show back up…

If  you add into that the fact that Clara still wakes up in the night you have the recipe for one grumpy sleep deprived family!

One memorable night recently I put her back in bed three times only to find that when John got out of bed in the morning she had been sleeping on the other side of him! Something had to change.

A few daytime discussions about how we all sleep in our own beds was getting me nowhere.  Ivy’s room was “Not for sleepin’ in”, she was lonely, her room was dark and before we knew it she would be back in our bed poking at my face. Then Ivy told me she wanted to sleep with Clara. I said,  “Nnnn…. ummm…. OK.” And we tried it.  Thank goodness I was able to curb the automatic “No.” that almost slipped out!

Clara goes to sleep about an hour before Ivy,  Ivy goes through her night time routine then slips into Clara’s room and sleeps on the bed we’ve made for her on the floor in there.

Since sleeping with Clara, she has not: come into our bed,woken Clara up, been woken by Clara (how, I have no idea, I think the girl could sleep through WWIII),or been woken by John or I (she has been stepped on at least once with no reaction).

Then in the morning Ivy likes to tell me that I can’t come in when they wake up because they are playing.  Really could life get any better?! I have been able to laze in bed for an extra half hour or so while I listen to them play- I have nothing but good things to say about our current arrangement!

I’ll admit it’s a little odd,  I never thought I’d have a three year old who would want to sleep on the floor in her baby sisters room. I also never thought that when I said “OK. Great!” when I was informed by that same three year old that she was peeing in the bathroom that I should inquire if she was using the toilet… clearly there is quite a bit of this parenting gig I haven’t thought of yet.

One Hundred and Seventy Seven

One hundred and seventy seven questions asked of me, from Ivy, from the time she got up from her afternoon nap until she went to bed.

That was over a period of two and a half hours.

Which puts her questioning rate just above one question per minute.

Then you realize that I didn’t actually talk to her for two and a half hours straight (because clearly my head would have exploded).  It was more like many minutes of blissful silence while Ivy was otherwise occupied followed by rapid fire questions as soon as she caught me again. At one point I counted seven questions in one minute. SEVEN in a minute, I’m not even sure how she manages to breathe.

Then she got back out of bed, and went to the bathroom and between hearing about the “mama poop” and the “baby poops” and getting her back into bed I had another 31 fired off at me.

That’s right a grand total of TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHT since five o’clock.

Yes, I know, learning, development, blah, blah, blah…

Just don’t come over here and ask me any questions, I’m not guaranteeing what the response will be.

She Stands, and Stands, and Stands…

My Mom has always said that just when you think you can’t take any more of what a kid is doing, they grow and change and stop whatever was making you pull your hair out and start something new that causes you to pull your hair out.  The new difficult trait is new so it’s a bit different and that somehow makes it a bit better.  Clara’s new challenge has to do with the fact that she is pulling herself up to standing, on everything.  And I mean everything, chairs, couches, small toys, big toys, beds, cats, dogs, sisters and parents, everything! Now most of the time this has not been  a problem, she pulled her self up, stood around plopped back down and went and found something else to stand up with. Every now and then I had to go save a dog she had trapped or comfort her after an especially nasty fall but for the most part we were good.

Then enter the speed crawl and the speed stand. All of a sudden you can’t stop for more than 10 seconds without looking down and seeing this:

and sometimes that’s alright. For instance while outside, watching Ivy play in the sprinkler. It’s  great I can say “hi”, take a picture (like my lawn, it’s green, short, even a baby can stand barefoot in it, and it’s made out of creeping charlie), admire her cuteness, and just stand there so she can keep looking around.

In the house while I’m attempting to work on something it’s  whole different story.  Here are the three ways it can go:

1- She can be occupied elsewhere in the house, usually with Ivy, standing with the assistance of something inanimate which is happy to stay immobile for her.

2- After option 1 gets boring and she comes looking for me, if I’m actively doing things around the house I just start moving faster. When she goes into speed-crawl-hyper-drive-mode (is there a real term for that running crawl?) Clara really flies, but I’ve still got legs more than a foot long and I can out run her around the house. This often requires me pretending that we are actually playing peek-a-boo and not that I’m just trying to run away from her but it get’s the job done. This has the added bonus that sometimes she gets distracted on the way through the house and we end up back at option 1.

3- This is the bad one, and it often happens in the kitchen. This is where I am mostly immobile but need to move, say three feet to the left to get into the fridge and then back. This leaves me with a few options:

A-I can pick her up and carry her.- Bad option when cooking dinner.  She doesn’t want to be carried she wants to stand.

B-I can squat down, get her interested in something else, quick move once she’s off and try to grab everything I need on the other side of my kitchen before she notices. – Bad option while cooking dinner. Unless its OK that it takes twice as long, which is not OK ever. When describing myself I don’t throw procrastinator in there lightly!

C-I can plop her down on the floor and listen to her scream about it. -Bad option while cooking dinner.  If I’m having a Clara limpet problem while cooking that means I have most likely been on my own with the two girls for 11-12 hours.  Screaming at this point makes me insane and causes me to yell at the dogs far more than they deserve.

D-I can walk reeeaaaalllyyyy ssslllooooooowwwllyyy, then she can walk with me. – Bad option while cooking dinner see option B

Anyone seeing a trend here?

The solution, I think she needs to discover stairs, or walking, or something!  I’m really tired of this stage and I’d like a new one… before I have to cook dinner tonight…

*Don’t leave me a comment saying that they grow up quick and I should enjoy every minute, I hate that.  I think one day soon I’ll elaborate on why I hate that, and then if you do leave a comment like that you’ll end up feeling bad so lets just not go there!*

For the record

John said that in years down the road I get to sit around, eat bonbons and read books while he goes to work.

OK,  that’s not exactly what he said.

It was more to the effect of, “Just think you are putting in all your time with the kids now, and it’s hard, and I wouldn’t want to do it.  But all this time will pay off when they are older, down the road I’ll still be working and you’ll be done.” He was trying to cheer me up after a rough day. It worked. I asked if he would please write that down so we could refer to it at a later date.  He declined, and said he would never own up to such a comment once the girls are off to school or out of the house.

So I’m just saying, for the record, John said I can sit around and eat bonbons and read books while he goes to work.

That is what I heard, and I wouldn’t lie about something that important!

*What are bonbons anyway? Would I want to eat them while I read?*

If/Then

The other day Ivy and I had a conversation that went like this:

Me: If you can put all your clothes away in your dresser, you can have a cookie.
Ivy: That OK Mom, I watch you eat a cookie.
Now you a probably thinking, wow she is clearly bribing her daughter to do things, and it’s not even working! But I don’t really like to think of many of our conversations as bribes, I like to think of them as those If/Then statements I learned about in high school.

For example:

If you put your clothes away, Then you can have a cookie.
If you brush your teeth, Then I’ll read you a book.
If you eat dinner, Then you can have dessert.
If you throw that at me, Then I will take it away.
If you scream in the house, Then I will stuff you in the garbage can.
If you wake your little sister up one more time, Then my head will explode.

Ivy put her clothes away, all by herself, for the first time ever, about fifteen minutes after our conversation. Then she came down stairs and asked for her cookie. I happily handed it over, mentally added one more chores to Ivy’s list, and thought about thanking that math teacher in high school. Then I remembered the grade I got in that class, figured I probably have the whole premise of the If/Then statements wrong, that he was one of my least favorite teachers ever, and decided bribery is a fine thing to call it!