Hayden and his friend Ethan found a puddle at the park. After plenty of stomping and splashing, they found another way to play in the water:
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Category: Kids/Parenting
Tips, tricks and adventures in parenting two kids.
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Sleep poke
We’ve been traveling a bit lately. As I mentioned earlier this week, last week was my brother-in-law’s wedding, which was wonderful. Other than, y’know, spending over eight hours in airports and airplanes with an almost-eighteen-month-old who just wants to walk around, for goodness’ sake! Actually, Hayden was quite good at traveling, despite not having a nap all day that day. (He dozed off in the car on the way to the hotel, and Hayden is not a car-sleeping kid.)
Now, we’ve also made a nine hour car trip out to visit my parents for a while (sans Daddy, who headed back home. Stupid day job.). Naturally, Hayden has had to deal with all manner of sleep disruptions lately, not the least of which is adjusting to sleeping in two completely different cribs in two completely different environments. Some nights have been better than others. Tuesday night, Hayden went to sleep just fine, but awoke crying two or three times. The second time, only minutes after I thought I’d settled him down, I went back to snuggle and rock him for a little while longer.
In the dim light, I couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or shut as he lay peacefully in my arms. I stroked his hair to help comfort him and whispered “sweet mommy nothings” to him to let him know I was there and I cared.
I guess he was more awake than he let on. As I held him, marveling over how small and cuddly he could still sometimes be, his hands and feet moved continually. His feet pushed at the pillows next to us. His hands ran over my back and my face, as if he were checking to see if it was really Mom.
He finally gave it a rest and dropped his hand to his side for a moment. I watched his little hand continue to move, though, as he curled three fingers under to form a fist, leaving his index finger extended. He slowly moved his hand to play his favorite waking game.
Poke!
He went right back to sleep when I put him down that time.
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Right from wrong
Dear Mom,
Thank you for teaching us right from wrong. It’s so easy these days to let children and teenagers just do whatever they want. I see it all the time. Everything from letting children run wild in public places, trample strangers and ignore basic courtesies to passively allowing teenagers to engage in any behavior they think will make them happy. “Standards are antequated,” everyone seems to say today. “Kids are going to do what they want anyway.”
While some teenagers and children will always do what they want no matter what you say or do, that doesn’t mean that we should just give up and let our children run amuck. Just because a child or teenager wants to do something or thinks that it will make him or her happy in the short run doesn’t mean it’s actually a good idea.
And my mom knows all this. She knows the pressures of raising teenagers today—just six years ago, she had four daughters at home. We didn’t grow up in some idyllic time when it was easy for teens to choose the right. We dealt with pressures and my mother did everything in her power to steel us against them.
And she did quite well. To date, my three sisters and I have yet to make the big, life-altering bad choices that I’m so very afraid my children will make one day. When my mother was asked to teach a class on coping with children who go astray at a church women’s conference, she told me with visible mirth—it was the third year in a row she was teaching a class on something she felt she had little personal experience with.
And it’s not a coincidence. My mom didn’t just end up with good ones. That contributed to this outcome, certainly, but without proper standards instilled in our minds and our hearts, even good children wouldn’t have made the same choices we did. I also think that having these standards rooted in something concrete to us, our religion, reinforced them in a way that an amorphous “you should do this because it’s right/it’s for your own good/I said so” never could.
So thank you, Mom, for what was probably one of the most important gifts you’ve given to us. I know sometimes it was hard and my reactions to the rules (not the rules themselves, as I almost wrote) strained our relationship from time to time. But honestly, looking back, sometimes I wish the rules had been stricter.
Thank you for caring about us enough to work so hard to instill core values in us. And thanks especially for proving to me that it can be done, even in this day and age, and that it’s worth it.
Love,
Jordan
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Dancin’ Fool
Hayden loves to dance. Now presenting Hayden’s first music video!
Note that he does, in fact, say, “Kitty” (or “Ditty”) as he’s getting up. And then he makes monkey sounds. What can I say? He’s a talented kid!
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Everybody’s a critic
Even Hayden. Check out this insightful analysis of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
I know, it’s just one of those silly videos only a mom can love, but I thought it was pretty funny.
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Hayden’s secret identity
I came across this on a post about personal vs. professional blogs today:
I don’t personally think I’d trust a blog about parenting if the blogger revealed the names of their children! I’d think that blogger was exploitative. But someone else might think the opposite — that blabbing about your kids to virtual strangers is the only way to earn trust and develop a connection.
From time to time, I do regret using my son’s real name on my blog. (Or at least I’ve let you all think it’s his real name, Mwahahaha!) On the other hand, I’m confused as to why this would be “exploitative” (that would be pretentious-ese for ‘exploitive’). I once called my son by his “real name” in front of a complete stranger. That’s gotta break some law, right?
On the other hand, calling my son by his name has nothing to do with earning trust and developing a connection with you guys (no offense). I pretty much do it because when I started blogging it was all about letting my family know what Hayden was up to. But really, if you think about it, isn’t “blabbing about your kids” at the heart of almost every mom blog?
In fact, if I don’t see some mention of a blogger’s children somewhere, whether real names, pseudonyms or the stupidest nicknames I’ve ever heard, I’m pretty unlikely to trust his/her parenting advice. We all remember what it was like to have no kids and all the answers.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. And do you think that this:
is less exploitive than this?
I obscured his identity…