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“Niko, did you finish your apple? Go take your plate to tata if you want bacon.”
“NO! I do NOT want… oooh! Yeah! I DO want bacon!”

“Mama, is this dinosaur a plant eater, or a meat eater?”
“Well, it’s got forward facing eyes and big sharp teeth. It looks like a meat eater.”
“No, I think it’s a plant eater.”
“But look, it’s a therapod. It’s got two feet with three toes on it, and a long tail for balance, and–”
“WELL MAMA, next time Elliot comes over I will ask HIM if it’s a plant eater or a meat eater.”
“And will you believe what he says?”
“I will if he says it’s a plant eater.”

“Ahhhh! Ahhh! Ahh! The living room is fulllll of dinosaur zombies!”
“Oh, huh.”
“DO YOU KNOW HOWWWWW to stop dinosaur zombies?”
“Do you…. I don’t know. How do you stop dinosaur zombies?”
“WITH FLOWER GUNS! pew pew pew pew pew.”

“I wanna watch that train show with that fox and that hound.”
“Oh… do you mean “The Fox And The Hound”?”
“Yes, it’s got a train in it.”

“Niko, no puppet show in the kitchen. No toys in the kitchen. You need to take that puppet show out of here.”
“TOO BAD it’s stuck to the floor TOO BAD I can’t move it OH WELL TOO BAD.”

“Hey, do you want to watch ‘Word World’?”
“Yes! They make words on that show, that word world show. Do they make the word dinosaur?”
“I don’t think so, that’s kind of a big word and they mostly spell little words.”
“What about Stegosaurus? That’s my favorite word.”
“Why is that your favorite word?”
“Because of all the S’es.”

We are ONCE AGAIN trying to transition Niko to sleep in his own little bed and not in our bed, kicking and punching us all night. The night before last he was up literally every hour, yowling and crying, resulting in three very tired people the next day. I had a headache LITERALLY ALL DAY from lack of sleep. Nesko slept in until almost 11:00, scuttling our plans to run errands in the morning. Niko was lobbying hard to go to the park that day and I told him that we’d planned to take him to the park in the morning but we were too tired to go because he’d kept us up all night. TOO BAD. He asked several times and I told him the same thing each time. Why can’t we go to the park? Why can’t we go outside? Why can’t tata play with him? Because he’s sleeping, because he’s tired, because he was up all night because Niko was being mean and unkind and not being quiet and not letting us sleep.

Last night went much better. He did wake us up with his crying once, but I think it was a legit nightmare. Nesko settled him and came back to bed. We both went to bed around 10:30 (although I had a hard time falling asleep) and woke up around 8:00 and my mood and energy levels are both vastly improved. I’ve still got a sleep deficit but am feeling a lot better. Niko and I had a talk today about his future allowance.

Basically, he gets 10 cents for each night he sleeps through the night without being a dick and if he makes it for a full week he gets an additional 30 cents, which makes a dollar. Also, if he helps us pick up all his toys and books before going to bed he gets 10 cents with a 30 cent bonus if he does it every night for a full week. This is another dollar. So he’s got the potential to earn $2.00 a week just by being a decent person and not an asshole. He wants to buy some more trans, so he’s got a goal to work toward. I’m going to make a chart so he can see how well he’s doing, including showing how well he’s working toward his goal. The train he wants costs $10.95 and I figure Nesko and I can handle the tax since he’s so young. When he’s 6 or so he can start figuring that out and accounting for it himself.

I know some people will object to “bribing” him for basic good behavior, but honestly, I want him in the habit of doing these things and I want to give him an allowance any way. Some people push for giving kids a base allowance that’s not dependent on behavior or chores. I think most people just do what their parents did, but neither Nesko nor I got an allowance so we don’t have that to fall back on.

How do you handle allowance in your household? Was it an easy decision, or hard? Is it what your parents did, or different? Is it dependent on chores, or not? What’s your pay scale? I’d love to hear more.

BTW, I wrote a post about diets, body size, and taking photos of yourself at my main blog. Please feel free to check it out.

Some Recent Conversations Around Here is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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Niko is super super SUPER obsessed with Dinosaurs right now and his driving goal is to get out to the Field Museum to see Sue, but it’s hella expensive and they don’t have a parking garage and it’d take us like 90+ minutes to take the train and bus out there, so we’re forcing him to wait until it’s warmer like the huge cruel abusive jackasses we are. THE HORROR. He’s been watching a lot of “Walking With Dinosaurs” which I’m not entirely sure is appropriate for him (there’s a lot of babies getting eaten on that show) but one upside is that the narrator is Kenneth Branagh and Niko has started narrating his play in Branagh’s voice. Some day when he’s an actor famous for his melodious voice, I’ll be there to take all credit. Yes, yes. He learned it from the teevee.

I was putzing around the kitchen the other day when Nesko walked into the living room and saw something he thought was ADORABLE. All of Niko’s dinosaur toys were lying on the floor on their sides, their heads gently resting on wooden blocks.

“Aww, Niko, are your dinosaurs asleep?”

“Yes, they are. I tucked them all in and read them two stories.”

“And their heads are on their pillows?”

“NO, tata, dinosaurs don’t HAVE pillows.”

“Oh, but they could use nice soft leaves and grasses.”

“No, they are using meat.”

“They… are using meat… for their pillows?”

“Yes.”

“That’s… pretty disgusting.”

“I know. But dinosaurs are pretty disgusting a lot of the time.”

Later he arranged all his dinosaurs in a conga line.

One of his favorite games to play with me is where I’m a Stegosaurus and he’s an Allosaurus and I’m eating ferns and he tries to menace me and I swing my “spiny tail” (my leg) at him to keep him away. He hops around growling for ten or fifteen minutes until he gets bored, and then he climbs on my back. YOU SEE, I am a mama stegosaurus motorcycle and he has to ride me. BRRM BRRRMMMM.

In this case, “Meat Pillows” is not a euphemism. is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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We have a pretty simple bedtime routine. Around 7:00-7:30 (ideally, sometimes later) Nesko or I start herding Niko toward the back of the apartment. After brushing teeth, he gets his night time medication and then he changes into pyjamas OR opts to sleep in his clothing (a battle I am willing to surrender, who gives a fuck, seriously) and we make sure he has his lovey du jour and his water. Then he selects two stories and whoever’s putting him down cuddles up with him and reads two stories and then, if I’m the bed time parent, I sing him a special song which is as follows, sung to the tune of “Lydia, the Tattooed Lady:”

Nikola my Nikola, oh my sweet Nikola
Oh, my pretty baby.
Nikola oh Nikola, my funny Nikola,
joking, laughing baby.
Nikola my Nikola
arms and legs Nikola
growing bigger baby.
Nikola oh Nikola
I love you Nikola
Because you are my baby.
Na na na nana na
Na na na nana na
Na na nana nana
Na na na nana na
Na na na nana na
Na na nana nana

Sometimes I also sing him “twinkle twinkle little star” or “london bridge” or “wild rover” or “lord randall” or “greensleeves” or “crazy train” or something. Lately he’s been requesting “peanut butter jelly time.” WHATEVER, CHILD.

Then it’s snuggles time. Nesko usually falls asleep because he is a HUGE JERK who I am HUGELY JEALOUS OF, who can fall asleep pretty much anywhere in about five minutes LIKE A JERK. I, on the other hand, am very good friends with Insomnia. We play cards together nightly. Anyway, sometimes, to help Niko wind down, I ask him little questions like “what are 3 fun things that happened today” and “where are 3 places you’d like to go” and “if you could swap your tata for anything, what would it be?” (answer: a big fluffy bed. LOL WHAT.) (he would swap me for a pillow.) (he would swap baba for a big giant dump truck.) And we generally talk about his day, his week, what’s going on, etc.

Sometimes, while reading or afterwards, he asks ME questions.

The other night, we were reading “The Runaway Bunny” and he asked me a very important question.

“Mama,” he asked, “why is her butt in a pot?”

I started laughing, because seriously. That is a funny question and it tickled me that all these years we’d been reading the book he’d just assumed that the mother bunny was sitting in a pot or something in the middle of the river. I explained to him about really tall boots but I don’t think he believes me. In his personal head canon, that rabbit’s just fishing while sitting in a pot.

Insert pot to piss in joke here, I guess.

Bedtime Questions is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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Niko bounced into our bedroom this morning, bright and early.

I’m awake! It’s time to be awake now! The sun is shining! The birds are singing! It’s time for every body to be awake! All the adults have to be awake and get up and get all the way out of bed!

And then he climbed around us pulling off blankets and turning on the light.

How did I give birth to a morning person? HOW?

It’s especially tough for me right now because I am in the middle of a shitty cold and was up until about 3:00 am coughing (which means, of course, I also kept waking Nesko up, but that fucker falls asleep in about five minutes LIKE A JERK so he always gets way more sleep than me) so I was tired. Tiiiiiiired. So tired I couldn’t say tired and could only say tarrrrrhd. As I lay like a lump in bed, I was vaguely aware that Niko didn’t sound great. Cheerful, yes. He sounded cheerful. And excruciatingly awake. But he also sounded stuffy.

“You sound congested,” said Nesko.

“Thanks!” said Niko.

I’ve been stuffing him full of vitamin C having things (orange juice, strawberries, red bell peppers, etc) for the past two weeks trying to stave off this cold, but he persists in doing shit like LICKING MY SNOTTY NOSE OH MY GOD WHY WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK etc so I’m not really surprised he sounds like he’s been eating cigarettes. However, I also predict that he’ll be fully recovered in about 3 days, whereas I’ll still be struggling to breathe by this time next month.

I’ve basically been laid up all week doing the most slack ass parenting possible (you want pretzels and gummy worms for lunch? HAVE AT IT) which super sucks because I had Big Plans to do a deep and thorough cleaning of the entire house so that this coming week I’d only have to do light maintenance cleaning in preparation for Niko’s birthday party on Saturday. But whatever I’m sick with is so awful that my joints all hurt. Back? Hurts. Knees? Hurts. Shoulders? Hurt. Neck? Stiff and hurts. Tiny joints in feet and toes? What the hell, why do you hurt? This makes it hard to clean stuff! Also: the vacuum cleaner broke. Uhm. And so did the washing machine.

It’s possible we have somehow angered the gods of domestic cleanliness, I don’t know.

Sickness, filth. is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.

William Makepeace Thackery said that but if you’re anything like me you might remember it better from “The Crow.”

Niko is still in that stage where he thinks I know everything and can do everything. If he asks me a question and I don’t have an answer, he thinks I am holding out on him and gets angry at me. I gave him some blueberries and didn’t pluck a dried bit of leaf off one of them, and he was offended. “Why would you even think I like this?” He asks me to draw an Ornitholestes and takes it personally if I draw it “wrong” (holding an egg/not holding an egg/too big/too small/too happy/not happy enough/dancing/not dancing/etc). He had a hilarious looking pratfall the other day out of NOWHERE (usually you know why a kid falls down. They slip on a piece of paper or step on a floppy sock or stumble over a toy or slide on that slippery patch of floor they’d rubbed butter into earlier or something. He just flew right down.) that ended up fairly serious, with a badly bitten lip. He clung to me, sobbing, upset that he was crying so much and unable to stop. Then he blamed me. “You should have SAVED ME. You should have CAUGHT me.” It was my fault he fell, you see. Because I should have intervened. Like lightning. Like god.

I can’t save him. I can’t read his mind and make him happy. I can’t make everything all better. He’s still grappling with the idea of mortality, of death; with the idea that some day he might not have a mama and a tata, that he’ll be alone. I can’t just make that better.

He has nightmares, and night terrors. Maybe this is the side effect of a medication he’s on, or maybe it’s just his age or his relation to me (I get nightmares frequently, as in several times a week… during times of high stress they can hit every single night multiple times a night. It’s… not restful.) He screams and cries and thrashes and he’s seriously upset, and it just kills me that I can’t make everything right. I hold him, I try to calm him down. One particularly bad one I tried to reassure him that he was in his own little bed and he was safe. “I’m not safe. I’m not! I’m not safe anywhere!” he wailed. It was like a knife through the heart. He didn’t remember it at all the next day.

“Why didn’t you save me? You should have saved me!”

I’m trying, kiddo. I’m trying.

Mother is the name for God… is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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I was chasing Niko around his room the other day threatening to pinch his cheeks while he squealed and laughed. He flung himself onto his bed, covering his face with his hands, and I pinched his butt. He protested mightily!

Mama, those are not my cheeks! My cheeks are on my face! THAT IS MY BUTT BUTT.

LOL FOREVER AT BUTTBUTT, which he says solely to make me laugh.

I told him that the two slabs of flesh hanging off his cocyx were called his butt cheeks, and he did not believe me. OBVIOUSLY I was making shit up AGAIN and just calling body parts by random wrong names. I told him he could ask Tata when he was at home the next morning. He did not, however, question my use of the word “banonkers,” a portmanteau of “bananas” and “bonkers” which makes him laugh. Sure enough, he asked his Tata about butt cheeks and Nesko agreed with me and Niko was AMAZED that he has FOUR CHEEKS and I chased him around pinching various cheeks on his body while he laughed and squirmed.

A little bit later I was lying down in bed resting just a bit (I have a cold, it’s settling in my chest, I might cough myself to death). He joined me in there and was walking around on the bed. Then he said:

SOMETIMES my pants fall down…

and I heard a patting sound

And it shows my…

he gave a little bounce and I turned to look at him

BUTT CHEEKS!

He was standing there with his pants pulled down, slapping his ass. He laughed uproariously at the “punchline” (BUTT CHEEKS) and I laughed too because butts are HILARIOUS let’s face it. Then I called him banonkers and he laughed so hard he fell over and I laughed so hard I triggered an asthma attack and ALMOST DIED. AGAIN.

Butt cheeks.

4 cheeks! CHEEKY! is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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Niko’s been having a hard time lately.

He’s been really wild and out of control, ignoring us quite a bit, temper tantrumming, insisting on sleeping with us, speaking in a baby voice/refusing to speak and just pointing at things, and having pants accidents. The kid who’s been potty trained for MONTHS is suddenly soiling himself. It was a pretty big, and worrisome, regression. He’s also been refusing to try to do things like look at letters, count, etc. This is the kind of stuff kids do when there’s something huge and new in their lives: when they move, when their parents divorce, when there’s a new baby, when zombies attack, etc. But nothing is going on!

Last night I sat with Niko as he sobbed and cried, after over an hour of walking him (or carrying him) and his pillow back to his own bed. I told him it was time to sleep. His brain needed sleep. His body needed sleep. He sobbed out that he didn’t WANT to grow up.

Well.

Let’s look at that, shall we?

I asked him some more questions. Why doesn’t he want to grow up? Is he afraid of growing up?

He told me that he didn’t want to grow up because that means I’d go away and he doesn’t want me to go away ever and leave him all alone.

Oh, sweet child.

So we cuddled and we talked about growing up and parents and how mamas and tatas always love their kids and we talked about how Nesko and I are still close to our parents. We love them and they love us. He calmed down and fell asleep and slept soundly in his bed all night.

This morning we had another talk about growing up and I reassured him that growing up is a gradual process. You don’t just wake up one day grown up, it takes a long time. We talked about how long it would take. He demanded to know an exact age when one is grown up and I told him 25. I promised him that I would always love him and would always be his mama. He said he didn’t want to have kids instead of a mama. I told him he could have kids AND have a mama, and I would be his kids’ baba, but that he didn’t have to have kids if he didn’t want to. He could choose not to have kids. He said he wanted to choose to have kids and also have a mama. He told me that he wanted to be a mama and have kids.

IF YOU ARE CURIOUS: the difference between a mama and a tata is tatas have DEEP VOICES and mamas have high voices. He demonstrated for me, including doing a pretty spot on impersonation of Nesko.

He’s been a little less clingy so far today, although the day is still young. We’ll see how he does tonight. I’m really tired of him joining us in bed. He pulls my hair and tries to push me out of bed. He jams his feet up under he and scrapes his toenails along my body. I hate it. I HATE IT. So hopefully he’ll sleep in his own little bed tonight.

IRONICALLY a few days ago he got super pissed and fired me, told me I wasn’t his mama anymore and I needed to go away and find a new home because a new mama was coming to our home. I told him I’d wait until his new mama got here. “NO DON’T DO THAT” he said. “YOU WILL BE HERE FOREVER. YOU WILL NEVER GO AWAY.” My firing offense? Not letting him eat candy for breakfast. WORST. MAMA. EVER. Later that day he forgave me and rehired me, though. And, yes, this current behavior regression predates this event.

Oh well that explains that. is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

Technorati Tags: 3 years old, parenting

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Lately, I’ve been putting Niko down for a nap– or “a rest”– and he’s been highly resistant and not falling asleep until, like, 4:30. And then I wake him up at 5:00 and he’s groggy and out of it, and acts like a huge jerkass when it’s bed time and frequently doesn’t wind up falling asleep until after 10:00 pm (I like to get him into his jammies, teeth brushed, starting story time, by 7:30) and over two hours of screaming and escape attempts.

Lord.

So today, we’re totally skipping that nap.

Because maybe the inactivity and final late nap are just too much for him, and then he’s not tired at bed time.

And maybe this bedtime will be less horrific and I won’t be tempted to sell my child to wolves. Wolves are good caretakers, right? Nurturing, motivational? Human children wolves raise are well adjusted go-getters, yeah? They found cities and make something of themselves?

IN OTHER NEWS, Niko is playing with his trains and apparently they are full of bees! I DO NOT EVEN KNOW. I have no idea what’s happening here! Whew.

“Mama, this train is going so fast that I took a picture of him running away. And he ran out of bees! See? I took his picture.”

WHAT.

“But I buried him under the mountain before I took his picture. He’s deep in a mound.”

WHAT!!!

We’re going to be using our tax return to do some repair work in the kitchen, do a teensy bit of remodeling, and also to do a bit of work in Niko’s room. Ideally I’d like to gut his room down to the studs and put in new insulation (I don’t think there’s any at all) and new wallboard, but we might not be able to do that. We also want to make a bunch of built in looking (but not actually built in because it’s a very small room and the next people who live here might not want built in) shelves and cabinets to hold his toys and books. Again, might not be able to do that either. BUT!!! We ARE going to paint one of his walls and the inside of his door, at his request. He’s specified red and held tight to that choice for months now, and consistently picks a similar shade of red. I brought home a bunch of red paint samples and he’s settled on Behr S-H-190 “Antique Red.” We have a bunch of glow in the dark stars and some glow in the dark planets that you’re supposed to hang from the ceiling and I tried to talk him into painting the wall dark blue so we can make a night sky with glowing stars but he would have NONE OF THAT. It’s RED OR NOTHING. So I’m considering painting his ceiling (or part of his ceiling?) dark blue and putting planets and stars up there. I don’t know if that would work or if it’d be over whelming, with a dark red wall. Thoughts? Suggestions?

We are trying an experiment. PRAY FOR ME. is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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I was reading on the couch when Niko grunted and huffed and carried a big box over toward me. He set it carefully on the floor, draped it with a blanket, and arranged two short pieces of string in an X across the top.

“Mama, mama, do you know what’s in this box?”

“Uh, what?”

“It’s…” he threw off the string and blanket, dashed off the lid, and scooped up a double armful of beanie baby dogs “PUPPIES!!!” and tossed them joyfully in the air. Then he gathered them up and made them swarm all over me, “kissing” me.

Oh, be still my heart.

“The Great Mouse Detective” is vying with “The Aristocats” for ultimately place of love within his heart and he’s proclaimed many times that he wants to be a detective when he grows up and is big. We’ve talked about some of the different mysteries detectives solve, including fighting crime and doing police work, being a private detective, being a historian, being an anthropologist, and being a paleontologist. He’s decided he is going to solve the mystery of how dinosaurs lay their eggs and take care of their babies. Right after he takes his space ship to the alien planet Minnebonie, which is where aliens (also known as “slide bugs”) live. It’s a far away planet that nobody knows about yet and it’s where aliens live. DUH. Also he’s going to visit Mars.

He’s got a busy future ahead of him.

PUPPIES!!! is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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Niko was running back and forth through the house the other day, screaming and barking, while Nesko and I finished dinner. Then there was a big crash in the living room. We called him in to find out what he’d been doing.

“Well, Delilah–”

I’m going to break in for a moment here and explain something.

Delilah is a stuffed animal.

Delilah is a stuffed dog with curly fur and floppy ears.

“Well, Delilah was chasing me and barking and then I was chasing her and yelling and then she was chasing me and barking and then I was chasing her and yelling and then she ran into the living room and said she was going to dump my balls all over the floor and I said NO DELILAH DON’T DO THAT, THAT’S NAUGHTY and then she dumped all my balls on the floor and I stood there and I said HOLY CRAP–”

We interrupted him at this point, to laugh.

I tried to keep a straight face. I did! I swear. But then I saw Nesko trying to keep a straight face too and I lost it. I kept dissolving into snickers.

“And then I said NO DELILAH THAT WAS NAUGHTY and she chased me into the kitchen and what’s so funny?”

“No, nothing. Nothing’s funny.”

“Is it because I said HOLY CRAP?”

“Noooo… Tata told me a joke and I’m laughing at that.”

He insisted on hearing the joke, Nesko told him a knock knock joke, and then Niko resumed running through the house arguing with Delilah. Yes, arguing. Taking both sides.

Holy crap.

“Holy Crap!” is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

Technorati Tags: parenting, three year old

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