I’d forgotten how unrelentingly awful sleeping with a toddler is.

Posted on November 10, 2011 by

We’ve pretty successfully transitioned Niko to sleeping in his own bed, although he wakes up a few times a night and needs attention, and putting him down can take an hour or more which WHEE FUN! Sometimes I think “FUCK IT” because he’d gotten to a point, sleeping in our bed, where he’d go down in just a few minutes and I hate a drawn out bedtime ritual (which, just throwing this out there, is the worst when Nesko does it because that means Nesko is home, and Niko wants to party with him instead of sleep).

Sometimes Niko wakes up early in the morning and gets into bed with us/me and I don’t really care. He snoozes a bit longer, I get to continue lying in bed with no demands on me, whatever. Usually Nesko is already out of bed and getting ready for or already left for work. Then, the other day, Niko woke up and got into bed with us at 5:00 am after a very long and protracted falling asleep and also woke up several times during the night and Nesko and I were both too tired to put him back to bed. I’d forgotten just how much I hate sleeping with a toddler. He rolled around like a rotisserie toddler. He kicked me repeatedly, in the “drumming his heels on me” way. He got his fingers tangled in my hair and yanked it while thrashing around. He pushed at me. He tried to burrow his head inside of me. He stuck his feet under me. WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS.

It really strengthened my resolve to not let him into bed with us unless it’s morning and we’re just chillin’, even when he cries and says he’s lonely, even when he begs us to sleep with him “just a little bit” and pats his pillow and says we can lie down “on this spot right here.” Fffffffffffffffffff. NO MORE.

Does that sound cruel? He’s actually pretty good about sleeping by himself, especially at nap time. Nap time is usually not a struggle at all. In fact, he’ll finish eating lunch and say he’s ready to sleep now, and we calmly do our business and read two stories and I tuck him in and make sure he has his water and his objects of affection (Canada the moose, Carl the elephant, Other Carl the other elephant, Medo the panda bear (“medo” is how you say “bear” ins Srpski, so he has a bear named bear), Emily the Steam Engine and her Tender, his Special Blue Blanket) and give him some hugs and kisses and that’s it. He sacks out for 2-5 hours and while I can’t get anything done in the kitchen, I can pick up the living room or the dining room or work on lesson plans for the student I tutor or just sit on my butt and surf the net. You know. Whatever.

The little bits of regressing he’d been doing (crawling, and referring to himself as “a crawling baby!”, needing every single pacifier in the entire house in bed with him, asking for a bottle– something he gave up when he was 13 months old, with no fight at all) are easing off, although he still wants his pacifier ALL THE TIME when we’d already weaned him during the day, and he’s chewing on EVERYTHING including his fingers/hands (is he teething? HE HAS ALL HIS TEETH. Any teeth coming in are UNWANTED EXTRAS).

And at night, I stretch out in the middle of the bed (not the edge of it) and curl up with my husband and nobody kicks me or punches me. It is GLORIOUS.

 

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Wordless Wednesday: Park Edition

Posted on November 9, 2011 by

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Playground Etiquette

Posted on November 8, 2011 by

What is playground etiquette for making new parent friends that you meet at the playground or other public places?

I am a bit, how you say, “incredibly socially awkward and highly anxious in new situations” and go into public places assuming that other people will think I am a fool and hate me forever because I have something stuck between my teeth and I say nonsensical things and probably have food spattered on me or something. HAH FUN TIMES! THANKS, BRAIN! yet I blog, putting myself out in public, and I’ve enjoyed every retail job I’ve had because I enjoy the disposable human interaction of retail work.  Go figure.

I took Niko to the park the other day, and there was a woman with a FANTASTIC brown corduroy jacket and two adorable kids. I mention her jacket because she, like me, is Very Fat and so in theory I could also wear a brown corduroy jacket. We seemed to have similar taste within the stringent bounds of what clothing is available to fat women. And her boy was maybe a year older than Niko and very gregarious. (her other child was about a year younger, I think, and wow is there a vaster difference between 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 than there is between 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 or 4) He and Niko played together a bit, in between Niko running laps around the playground while roaring (he had juuuuuuuust a bit of pent up energy to get rid of), and he tried to play tag with Niko. He touched him gently and said “Tag! You’re it!” and then they ran off together. Niko has no idea what tag is, but he enjoyed the running and he climbed on things… at one point Older Child climbed on something that was not play structure and Niko gazed up at him admiringly and Older Child said “Here! Take my hand!” and my heart burst into ONE MILLION TINY ADORING PIECES BECAUSE OH GOD HOW CUTE WAS THAT. So cute it forced me to use ALL CAPS.

Anyway, I would have loved to try being friends with that other stylish lady and have our kids get together, but how does one broach that topic of conversation without sounding like an immense loser who has no friends? I should note that if someone approached ME with the question I wouldn’t assume they were immense losers with  no friends but hello! Crazybrain activity going on!

I’ve thought about making cards that have my name, Niko’s name, and my email address on them that I can hand out to people as like calling cards or something. Would that be over the top? Or would it seem “Type A” somehow? I am actually very lazy, indolent even, in my personal life so I don’t want to give an impression of a bustling, over-involved nature. Would it be weird? Should I put my blog address on there, or would it scare people away?

I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO NAVIGATE ADULTHOOD APPARENTLY.

But it was nice talking with another adult about our kids and how they are weirdly obsessed with rocks, sticks, and trains; it was nice that Niko was interacting with another child instead of just adults.

I imagine things will be different when he’s in pre-K next year, and it will feel more natural and logical to introduce myself to a bunch of strangers to be parent friends with. We’ve talked about enrolling Niko in some kind of toddler class, but we can’t afford any of them so that’s out. Most of the stay at home parenting groups are not in my area and would be difficult or impossible to get to as I don’t drive… and some of them charge fees, too, which is like… whaaaaaat? I just want to sit in someone’s living room while our kids wreck things together, you know?

I should start grabbing free museum passes from our library branch and taking Niko more places before the snow falls and locks us inside for 4 or more months, I guess.

How do you meet new parent friends/how did you meet the parent friends you have? Are calling cards weird? Does anyone know any nerdy parents of toddlers in northern Chicago I can glom on to? How do you feel if parents try to “pick you up” in public places? HIT ME UP WITH ADVICE PEOPLE, I AM IN NEED.

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Posted in advice, Living With A Toddler, month 33, Nikola, Other Parents, parenting, real life | 6 Comments

I didn’t eat your sandwich, I only touched it a little bit.

Posted on November 7, 2011 by

Nesko has some days where he has to leave the house around 7:00am, and some days where he doesn’t work until the afternoon. On his early days, I stick a frozen breakfast sandwich (that we buy at the store, I haven’t made forays into MAKING breakfast sandwiches. Yet.) in the fridge so it thaws,  then he nukes it before he heads out the door and eats in the car. I  kind of miss the time when he worked afternoons/nights which meant we had breakfast AND a dinner-type meal together every single day (I packed the leftovers for his meal-at-work), even though it meant I did all the bedtimes.

Today Niko happened to be up while Nesko was getting ready to leave. Nesko went out of the kitchen and when he came back in, Niko informed him gravely that “I didn’t eat your sandwich, I only touched it a little bit.” Which makes both of us think that if Nesko had been any later coming back into the kitchen, that sandwich would have been devoured.

Niko’s been a bit weird about food lately, picking at his dinner and then waking up in the morning demanding “food,” (“I  need food! Give me food!”) but then being unclear about what he wants to eat and refusing everything offered except for his vitamins, fruit snacks, or pretzels (I try not to offer the last two as meal options). Or he’ll agree to something then throw a tantrum when it’s given to him because that is not what he waaaaaaaants! Life is so unfaaaaaaaair! See: Bananas.

Oh, speaking of, this is how you know I have a tiny bit of class: I did not videotape Niko lying on his changing table slapping his bare behind rhythmically while singing “I like to poop poop poop apples and bananas!” (to the tune of “I like to eat eat eat apples and bananas”). But you also know I have only a tiny bit of class because I still mention it on my blog. If I were an actual adult with proper feelings and sensitivity I would not have mentioned it at all. But also, probably, nobody would read me.

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Speaking of moose…

Posted on November 3, 2011 by

I was looking for picture books about moose to put on hold at the library for Niko, when I came across The Moose With Loose Poops, a book that only one library branch had. I could not believe my eyes and snorted a little snort of laughter. Especially when I read this review on Amazon:

I accidentally bought this book (I was thinking of If You Give a Moose a Muffin) but I was entertained just the same. In fact, their plots are kind of similar what with the chain reactions and all.

Apparently, it’s part of a series of picture books discussing medical issues with kids (colds, sore throats, earaches… and gastroenteritis) written by a medical doctor. I can totally see the value of this book, of this series, in helping kids understand what’s going on with their bodies and not be afraid of something that is, frankly, frequently scary.

But dang, man.

Dang.

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Oh, Canada.

Posted on November 2, 2011 by

My sister-in-law was in Canada recently and came back with a gift for Niko, something she does frequently. This time, she brought him a little stuffed moose in a red sweater. There’s a Canadian flag embroidered on the bottom of one of his feet, and his sweater has a white maple leaf and the word “Canada” on the front.

Niko has named him “Canada.”

He is Canada, the Moose.

Canada joins Carl the elephant, Masquerade Carl (who is a green elephant my brother-in-law won at a carnival when he was in high school), and Other Carl (who is a blue sockmonkey style elephant) as special bed lovies.

Soon after Canada came into our lives, I held up his flagged foot and asked Niko if he knew what that was.

“Yes!” he said. “Iiiiiiit iiiisssssssssss a….. FOOT!” I think, sometimes, he worries that I’m a little slow.

Later, he determined that Canada has hands with fingers growing out of his head. I tried explaining that they were antlers, like horns. I showed him photos of other moose, and a video of two baby moose drinking water from a sprinkler while mama moose looked on. He remains steadfast that Canada has fingers growing out of his head.

Nesko was putting Niko to bed one night, and Niko narrated the following:

“Canada, why you got fingers growin out of your head? Because, said the moose, I am wearing a coat!”

This is, I suppose, some kind of toddler logic; internally consistent in some way that I can’t see. Or maybe he’s making a joke. It is very hard to tell with toddlers sometimes.

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How was your Halloween?

Posted on November 1, 2011 by

We dressed Niko up as a train engineer/conductor, which is a super easy costume that can be reworn year round. We slapped a white shirt and striped overalls on him. How easy is that? Very easy. He also had a striped cap from “Day Out With Thomas” that we held onto as a special Halloween costume component surprise and although he loves it (actual quote: “It THOMAS! I love it that hat! Oh! Thomas!”) he refuses to actually wear it. Also a red kerchief would have completed the look but we didn’t have one of those either… Nesko’s sister moved on the 31st and a lot of Nesko’s time was taken up with helping her locate, clean, and move furniture so we didn’t have a lot of opportunities to go bits and bobs shopping. We also had an orange jackolantern bucket (I have no idea where it came from) lying around so that was useful, too.

We went around our block and up and over one other block. There were a lot of houses that were decorated, including one that had one of those expensive inflatable decorations, but the interior lights were off and nobody answered the door. Now, perhaps they simply weren’t home from work yet or were out with their own kids, but it feels like kind of a cheat to have a decorated house and nobody giving out treats. If you don’t want to give out candy or participate, that’s fine… a LOT of houses were dark and we didn’t try them, assuming they weren’t into the Halloween spirit of things. But to decorate and then not be home? Eh. DISAPPOINTING.

I was worried that people wouldn’t know what Niko was. Would they think he was just wearing some overalls? But no, pretty much everyone got it and told him how cute he was, even when he tried to barge into their houses. He said “Trick or Treat” unprompted and said “Thank You” when reminded. One lady near the river was giving out full size candy bars; one dude was giving out pretzels. We stopped into a few shops and a nursing home/rehab center thinking they might have a program for the residents and they didn’t but the front desk had candy.

There’s this tiny house set way back from the street that looks like it used to be the carriage house or guest house or something for the gorgeous bungalow next to it. It’s surrounded by giant trees and instead of grass it’s all hosta and ivy and lilly of the valley and other shade loving plants, the long walk lined with little solar lanterns. It looks like something out of a fairy tale. It’s got a gate that is always closed, with a sign asking people to keep the gate shut/keep out, but last night the gate was open so we tried the house. The dude who answered the door gave Niko a FISTFUL of chocolates and also a bunch of pennies, and I know pennies get a bad rap as a Halloween thing, but Niko is at that age where pennies are glorious things. The guy was really nice and we chatted a bit and then we moved on; the huge houses flanking him were dark and nobody answered the door.

Our street in particular and neighborhood in general has a lot of multi-unit buildings, which tend not to be active in candy giving. Last year, for instance, we got zero callers and I didn’t see anyone out on the street, either. We’d discussed going to a different neighborhood for trick or treating, but I’m glad we didn’t; I’m glad we stuck close to home. Niko didn’t get much of a haul, but we only covered about 2 1/2 blocks and that included some businesses. He’s a toddler, he doesn’t need a lot of candy. To be very honest, most of what he got will be going into Nesko’s lunch bag.

We had fruit snack pouches to give out but nobody came while we were home, which isn’t surprising as we live in a 2-flat. We didn’t buy any Halloween candy this year because we’re boycotting slavery-produced chocolate in general and Hershey’s products specifically (they manufacture a lot of stuff that’s sold under brands other than “Hershey”). So once the chocolate currently in our house is gone, that’s it  unless we buy fair trade stuff, which on the one hand tends to be more expensive… but on the other hand tends to also be higher quality and tastier.

Niko keeps asking me if he can go trick or treating again. Sometimes he comes up to me with his orange bucket and says trick or treat and I stick something in it that’s at hand (a book, a sock, a nail file, a block, WHATEVER) and he thinks that’s hilarious. I’ve tried telling him that Trick Or Treating only happens once a year, and that next up we have Thanksgiving and then Christmas. He said “Oh, that when I get Rusty and the Boulder!” That is the Big Gift we purchased for him a while ago and stashed in the office. We have not mentioned it around him. I don’t know if he’s seen the side of the box and guessed or is just wishing really, really hard. It’s hard to tell with him, sometimes.

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Toddlers make bad decisions and it is hilarious.

Posted on October 27, 2011 by

I slipped into the office to check my email quickly and a sudden hush outside told me that Niko was probably Up To No Good, something that toddlers EXCEL at. So I made a little cuss and went outside to see if he’d spread flour all over the floor AGAIN. It turned out that he wasn’t in the kitchen at all. He was in the dining room, and it looked like he had a box of fancy chocolates.

Huh.

Where the hell did he get THAT? How did we have fancy chocolates in the house without me knowing?

Why are those fancy chocolates all round?

Because they were dried out peat discs!

HAH!

Niko reported that they were “icky” and “not chock-o-late!” and “duuuuuuurty” and I told him we could play with them after he took a nap. I think I have some oregano seeds someplace. We can soak the discs and then plant the seeds and see if anything sprouts. Is fall a poor time to start seedlings? Probably yes! But what the hell, right?

What the hell indeed.

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Sleeping: Solved! BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA Only Not.

Posted on October 25, 2011 by

I don’t even know how long Niko’s been sleeping in his own bed at this point. Two weeks? I think it’s something like two weeks. Or three? I have no idea. Part of this is because when he wakes up at night he is all OH GOD FREAK OUT I AM ALL ALONE OH HELP ME THERE IS A TIGER and someone has to go in and settle him down again which is fast, but internets?

I have insomnia.

I have a hard time getting to sleep.

I have a hard time staying asleep.

When a panicky toddler wakes me up at 2am because his pacifier fell out of his mouth and is wedged between his neck and his shoulder and he cannot FIND it and he NEEDS IT and I have to get out of my nice warm soft bed and walk across the creakiest floor in the world and come fully awake? I’m up for at least an hour after that. And at his peak of waking, he wakes up 4-5 times a night. That’s kind of eased off as he’s gotten more used to sleeping by himself but I? Am tired. So tired. It’s a little like having an infant again, only I’m not fumbling with formula in the darkness.

Thank God.

So on the one hand, I can sprawl out in bed and nobody is scratching me or kicking me or shoving me onto the floor; on the other hand I’m exhausted from waking up all the time.

Although that’s getting better!

What’s not getting better is some of Niko’s behavior is regressing. When we initially weaned him off daytime pacifier use he panicked and started clinging to his pacifiers, sleeping with one in his mouth and one (or more) in each hand. He’s started doing that again. He’s jumping on the furniture again, getting into the bread flour and dumping it on the floor again, scrubbing the sink drain with my tooth brush, and other behaviors that seriously we halted these behaviors months ago WHAT IS GOING ON. Fear and insecurity is what’s going on, also possibly he’s cutting his third molars. No, not his third YEAR molars, he’s got what looks like an additional (third) set of molars pricking through his gums.

I am not entirely surprised by this because while Niko seems to have a normal sized mouth and normal sized teeth (I have a small mouth and large teeth) he seems to have my cyclone crooked teeth, including a bunch of teeth just like slanting sideways, like what is even up with that, is your head crooked or something? So he’s got my dental drama going on, apparently including extra teeth. Although  mine were premolars, not molars. Haha! Fun.

ANYWAY. Before you get all jellus on me because my toddler sleeps in his own bed, making him a high achieving prince among toddlers, let me tell you our other problem. Namely, his room is DIRECTLY off the kitchen, and he sleeps with the door open. Which means when he’s napping (for a 2-4 hour chunk of time a day) or asleep (and I put him down at 7:30) I have to curtail my kitchen activities. In other words, the only time of day I am toddler free, I can’t do my toddler-free chores like wash dishes or make bread or make noise in the kitchen because Niko will take that as his cue to strike up a conversation and delay sleeping.

We’re considering swapping his bedroom with what is now the office. The office flanks the living room, which  means if we wanted to watch tv after he went to sleep we’d have to keep the volume down LOW; and it means if we had guests we’d have to provide everyone will ball gags to shut them up. However, we also want to carve out a mini pantry that would butt into his room (the kitchen has VERY little storage space OH GOD IT IS TERRIBLE) (but not the worst kitchen I’ve had; that one had no counters other than a drain board on the side of the sink, and you couldn’t open the fridge door all the way OR the oven door all the way AND the oven was plugged in with an extension cord. That kitchen had a pantry that was sweet as hell, though.) and if that room was an office instead of our precious baby boy’s bedroom I’d feel way less guilty about hogging space for my cookbooks, microwave, and huge bins of flour.

Do I even need to stay that swapping an office with two computers and a bunch of books and papers and general junk and guitar stuff with a toddler’s room is a lot of work?

Because it is.

On the other hand, his closet is extra deep, so we could put shelves all along the back for storage AND hang coats in front, because this apartment? Does not have a coat closet (or a linen closet or a pantry or a broom closet). There’s a lot of stuff I love about our vintage (1930s) Chicago 2-flat. Lack of storage is a problem, though.

 

 

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Questions

Posted on October 24, 2011 by

Niko has a bedding set with a licensed character set, Thomas And Friends. They were part of the “please please please sleep in your own bed FOR THE LOVE OF GOD stop kicking me all night” incentive when we got his twin bed set up in his room. And he’d refer to it as his “new bed” and his “little bed” and talk excitedly about his “Thomas sheets” but until recently he showed no interest in SLEEPING in that bed. He’d sit on it, he’d play in it, he’d drag the comforter off and roll around on the floor in it, but sleeping? Not so much.

Well, that has all changed (knock on wood)! Which means nobody kicks me all night, or pulls my hair, or scrapes their toenails all over my stomach/thighs while trying to warm their feet under my body. It also means I now have two beds to make every day.

When I make his bed, I put the top sheet on the bed upside down, then the comforter. Then I turn both back, so that the front side of the sheet, the “right” side of the sheet, is facing out. I do this when I make our bed, too. Years ago, when I was a little kid, a babysitter did that and I liked it and have been doing it ever since. But the other day I remembered more about the circumstances surrounding that little lesson, in a very visceral way.

Said babysitter lived down the street from us, and my mom paid her to babysit me and my brothers. She had two kids of her own, both younger than us. Even though she was getting paid to watch (and feed) us, she expected me to do housework for her, including dishes and picking up after her kids and making beds. When she provided us with food we didn’t like, she would literally shove food into our mouths, pinch our noses shut, and hold our jaws closed while we chewed and swallowed. She wouldn’t let go until we did so, which meant we couldn’t BREATHE until we did so. Which might just explain some of my issues with food, IDK. She was a screamer, and a slapper.

She took me to task for making the beds “wrong” once, and when I asked WHY she put the flat sheets on upside down she dressed me down for my stupidity in not knowing the “right” way to make a bed. Our sheets at home were cheap solid colored cotton, there was no right or wrong face to them unless you scrutinized the hem or something. Her sheets, even the plain ones, were far more upscale, with fancy hemming and binding. She came from money, you see, and married a poor dude out of love (he worked construction, he wasn’t what most people would consider poor; her wealthy parents gave her shit for marrying “beneath” her and both talked down to her all the time but also gave her gifts of money and jewelry), so there was a definite element of class to her dressing-down of me. But the biggest thing, and this was actually a theme amongst adults in positions of caregiving and teaching in my life, is that she went out of her way to make me feel stupid and wrong for asking a question.

I quickly learned not to ask questions because if I did, I would be shamed and ridiculed in public for not KNOWING. Don’t know where my seat is? Or the bathroom? Or how to do a math problem the class learned the year before, when I was in a different school? Don’t know the words to a song everyone else learned when I was absent? Don’t know someone’s name, or title, or how to get someplace? Don’t know what a food is called? Try to pick it up from context, and fake it, because otherwise? Someone will call. you. out. in the most mortifying way possible and that person? Will be an authority figure setting the tone for everyone else, every peer, in their interactions with you.

My childhood was incredibly stressful (and FUCKED UP), in so many different ways.

I so don’t want that for Niko. He asks questions and I try to answer them as fully as possible. He isn’t in the chain-of-whys phase, but he is interested in his world and what he sees and hears and experiences. And we ask HIM questions as well (do cows eat grass? do chickens? do cats? do goats?) and talk about the answers. I want him to be comfortable questioning his world, his adults, his peers, his assumptions. I know too many people who had that beaten out of them early.

 

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