Tips, tricks and adventures in parenting two kids.
Wow, it’s been a while on the pictures front. And after all those posts about great picture posts!
All these pictures were taken last Friday.
Hayden is a weirdo.
Where on earth does he get this from?
Oh.
And by popular request, my belly, as of a week ago (34 weeks/6 weeks till my due date):
Today I was the rude one at the doctor’s office. Hayden and I were sitting by the television (because the first thing Hayden will tell you about the doctor is “Doc’tor? Wats deetee! [watch TV]!”). Another mother was checking in and her two children came to sit by the TV, too.
The older child, a boy about five or six, sat with Hayden on one of the little kiddie benches. The younger child, a girl about three years old, started picking up and moving the other kiddie bench a couple inches at a time, dropping her weight on it with each step.
It was one of those omniscient mommy instinct moments—I knew this wasn’t going to end well as she approached me. But I was trying to read a really great article (which I’ll probably write about soon, if I can find it on the Internet, or I’ll have to wait until I can photocopy it), so I didn’t pay quite enough attention.
Sure enough, within seconds, she hopped the bench right onto my foot.
“Ouch!” I said. “Please be careful!” (I might have even asked her to apologize, and she might have done it. Note that her mother was still busy checking in—I have far more patience with mothers who are actually clearly doing something that makes it difficult to monitor their children than mothers who are literally staring off into space instead of making sure their children aren’t hurting other kids/ME. Yeah, that happened.)
“That was my sister,” said the little boy.
“Yeah. . . .” I said. “And that was my foot.” I’m a terrible mother.
It’s one of those pieces of wisdom dispensed to every mother with a toddler: choose your battles. Its frequent repetition, however, doesn’t make it less true.
Of course, the things we choose to battle over will vary from mom to mom and child to child. But I think there are at least a couple things we can agree are worth fighting over—and a few that will only end in tears all ’round.
Worth fighting for
Like banging your head on a brick wall
As Hayden becomes more and more fierce in his independence, I’ve realized there are some things that you shouldn’t or really, truly can’t make someone else do.
Really, I guess, you can’t make people do anything, really, but as a parent we’re used to having some modicum of control (or being expected to have some modicum of control!).
These are just the first things I thought of—what have you found is worth fighting for? What’s not?
Last night, I caved. Hayden hadn’t fallen asleep after an hour in bed (which is very unusual for him). I went in to him because he was starting to cry—and he instantly asked for toast. Coming from a two-year-old who can’t seem to gain any weight, and who only had a half of a sandwich for dinner, the pitiful cry for “toast” broke down my mean mom resolve and I brought him out for some toast.
Hayden is still working on many of the finer points of syntax (just wait until Linguistics 430, kid!), so his questions are often framed like, “Toast, me?” Or, one of our favorites, “Bite, me?”
So when Ryan was trying to tease Hayden into sharing his toast, Ryan said, “Bite, me?”
Apparently we’ve pulled this joke on Hayden too many times. Rather than offering his dad a piece of his toast, Hayden opened his mouth wide and aimed for Ryan’s nose.
Yep, kid. Your dad said “Bite me.” Good answer.
Hayden has a small, crying monkey toy. Squeeze the monkey’s belly and he cries (or makes a monkey shriek, but Hayden has always called it crying). We call the monkey Baby Marty.
Today Hayden and I found Baby Marty while exploring his (not-so-) quiet time options. I handed Haydie the toy and he was very happy to see Baby Marty again—and of course, first thing, he squeezed Baby Marty’s belly.
When Hayden first got Baby Marty, he would make the toy cry, then cuddle it, holding it up to his shoulder to comfort the tiny monkey.
Today, though, he seemed to have changed his nurturing technique. After a few rounds of monkey shrieking, I asked Hayden, “What’s Baby Marty doing?”
“Cwying.”
“And what do we do when he cries?”
The old answer was to demonstrate loving up the monkey. But today, Hayden’s answer was:
“I s’ake!” And he shook Baby Marty.
He will probably not be the one in charge of helping to calm the baby when she comes.
So the nap transition hasn’t gone well since that first day. Wednesday, Hayden was sick, and spent six hours sleeping during the day and went to bed early—but that much sleep meant he wouldn’t go to bed until after 11 PM Thursday night, and you can forget about a nap.
Tuesday, Thursday and Wednesday, Hayden was much less enthused about sitting in his bed looking at books. It was less like “quiet time” and more like “scream at mom for two hours.” For some strange reason, this is incredibly stressful for me(twenty-eight exclamation points and several ones). The whole point is for me to have a break (lie: the whole point is for me to work, which makes this even more stressful), and I’m just not getting it.
I’m 32 weeks pregnant, and I really don’t think my blood pressure can handle much more of this. I can hardly do this now; I don’t know how I’ll make it with a new baby and next-to-no sleep (let alone time for myself).