mommapalooza

Single-Parenting Report: Day 3

This is the sixth or seventh time that Chris has left Madeline and I alone while he's travelling on company business, and I swear that each and every time he goes, Madeline falls ill. I retrieved her from her crib following today's Non-Nap™ to find her bleary-teary-eyed and ... sniffly. Coincidence or not? I keep on thinking that she's allergic to dandelion fluff but maybe what she's really allergic to is the absence of her dad ...

Anyway, rough day. All I wanted was ten minutes to myself and all Madeline wanted was every nano-second of my time. I feel bad for not wanting to give her the attention that she wants, and really tried to make it up to her before dinnertime. I asked if she wanted me sit with me on the sofa and read a story, and it hurt when she said, "No!" and turned away. Usually things go really smooth for us when Chris is gone (suspicious illnesses aside) as I handle both dinner clean-up and bedtime regularly, but this was one day where I was really wishing that he was home. A fresh face and pair of hands would have done wonders for Madeline and I.

Madeline's sniffly nose has bought her an extra day or two of nursing. I was going to cut out her night-time breastfeeding sessions today, but I can't turn her down when she's not feeling well. I had been doing okay for the last few days in terms of managing my delusions, but this afternoon really brought me down.  Thank goodness that tomorrow is another day ...

One nice thing about being on our own is that I don't feel any sort of pressure to prepare a home-cooked meal. This evening, I tossed a spinach-and-mozza pizza in the oven, poured two glasses of milk (skim for me, 2% for her), and we had a nice picnic.

Bedtime tonight: 7:45. Hopefully she won't wake up until House is over ...

Single-Parenting Report: Day 1

Well, Madeline and I dropped Chris off at the airport a few hours ago. Madeline was happy to be at an airport again, chirping "Airplane! Fast! Clouds!" from the backseat, and even more enthusiastically "Daddy eat cookies!". I guess she remembers our trip from a few weeks ago. Or at least the cookies that the flight attendants were handing out.

So, no nap today. Thus, more tv than I really would like. At least Bambi doesn't have advertising, aside for the promo for Cinderella. Sleep is going to be interesting this week. Madeline's been electing to read instead of sleep lately. She'll look at books in her crib until 9:30 - 10:00 pm after being put to bed around 7:30 - 8:00 pm. Chris and I don't hear a peep unless she calls for more books or "Mommy! Dark!" which means that she wants her door opened further to let more light from the stairwell in. I'm not so keen on a repeat performance this evening. I've actually removed every single book from her bedroom. Of course, there's basket full of those cheerily-illustrated objects of temptation in the living room. It's not that I don't want my child to love books - I would just like her to love going to bed at an appropriate hour more :)

Update: Madeline was in bed sleeping at 8:30 this evening - not bad! That gave me plenty of time afterward to win her a cute pair of jeans on eBay :)

bonds

It's good to have a dad around.

Madeline had been getting up every hour for a good stretch of the night for four nights in a row, and it had really been rough for me. The greatest stretch of sleep I'd been getting was only from about 4am - 6:30am.  Chris rescued me when Madeline woke up in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, less than an hour after I'd re-settled her back in her crib, and attended to her. Words cannot describe how heavenly it felt to contine to lie still in a warm bed with my eyes closed (I could so get used to that)!  I still had to get up and re-settle her in the end, but those minutes when I knew that I had a partner in the night-time parenting jig made me feel like all was right in the world!

The surprises don't stop there, though! Chris took Madeline downstairs to read and play when she woke up today, a responsibility that defaults to me at on at least six days out of seven.  Today, I didn't have to get dressed in a huge rush with either a toddler wailing across the hall, or impatiently following me around, insisting the she be carried downstairs N-O-W! This small gesture from my husband has totally made my day!  I don't know about it taking a village to raise a happy and healthy child, but I know that having a partner to share the good and bad parts of being a parent with makes me approach my roles as a wife and mother much more positively and with a lot more optimism. It's been a long time since I've felt this good and peaceful. And it was awfully cute to see Chris and Madeline curled up on the sofa together this morning, reading stories :) 

taking care of terrific

I really dislike the label "terrible twos". For one thing, I think it kind of scares parents into thinking that their child will be mysteriously abducted and then replaced by a monstrous little imposter for a year of horrific misbehaviour. Secondly, it's never quoted as the "terrible and terrific twos" so there is no implication that there will be an upside or positive moments intermingled with the challenging parts. Thirdly, I just hate labels. Madeline is two years old, and she's a little person who is trying to figure out what the appropriate standards of behaviour are for someone here age in a variety of situations.

Yesterday, she failed miserably in this endeavor. She had a bad day. Two molars coming in, not feeling well, a skinned knee ... who wouldn't be cranky and short-tempered? I was quite sympathetic to her mood, even offered a sugary popsicle treat to numb her gums, but something happened that gave me pause. As I was buckling Madeline into her carseat for the trip to the store to buy the promised popsicle, Madeline suddenly decided that she didn't want to accompany me for the trip, got angry at me, and started to hit and shove! I chose to ignore the behaviour and continue buckling, but I realized that Madeline might have crossed a new line and I'm going to have to think of how to address this behaviour when it happens again in the future. 

The Runny Nose Standard

Are all runny noses equal?

I know that it's frowned upon to take a child suffering from a cold or some other runny-nose-inducing contagious illness to places where they might exchange germs with other little children, but what if the runny nose has nothing to do with a cold? What if it's seasonal allergies? What if it's teething?

I ask because Madeline's getting her bottom 24-month molars in, and her teething symptoms regularly include fever and a runny nose. Teething certainly isn't a contagious condition, but I am very apprehensive to take her anywhere that she might encounter other young children. It's not readily apparent that she's teething - I imagine that everyone would think that Madeline has a terrible cold and I'm an ignorant mom bringing my poor child to places where their own children will pick up her germs and catch her terrible so-called cold. Argh! So we lay low while her nose is running. No playground. No swimming pool. No playing with the other kids at the YMCA.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm thinking too much and no one else on this planet becomes a hermit when their child's nose is merely running out of sympathy for his or her tender gums.

Friday Finds and What Not to Say

Fridays seem to have become the designated link day on several of the parenting blogs that I follow, so I thought that I'd try my hand at following suit, starting today. But first, a story that I have to vent about because I'm in disbelief:

The other day Madeline and I had walked down to the northeast end of Quidi Vidi Lake. That's the part of the lake favoured by the duck population, and it had been awhile since we had visited our feathered friends. Well, Madeline was more interested in walking along the large flat rocks that border the lake path than watching the ducks, but another mom had brought her little boy there to see the ducks at well. A few feet away from the ducks, she popped her son out of his stroller, but he wasn't really in a walking mood. The Other Mother got mad, and snapped at her son to stop "being lazy". She dragged him closer to the ducks (who were swarming as someone had just dropped off a pile of fresh breadcrumbs for them), and the little boy got quite upset. The Other Mother chided him for "being a coward!". Umm ... honestly, her kid was probably less than 18 months old. And his feelings ought to have mattered. What kind of positive outcome can grow from a situation where a parent is being so disrespectful of their child? Ugh. Madeline and I got out of there rather swiftly.

And now, a vibe that I can get behind.  I think I've mentioned that I have a crush on the It's Not All Mary Poppins before. My favourite posts from Mary's blog? The "Eating Green" series (The Direct Way and the Devious Way), the "Tantrum" Series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) and a new one this week on Benign Neglect. I recently read a good one on whining, but I can't find it at the moment. But I probably will before Madeline actually starts to whine :)

do the right thing

On a fairly regular basis, I find myself observing other parents and wondering how on earth their infants and toddlers are ever going to learn anything if they aren't given the opportunity to try, or the opportunity to do something right.

My first experience with this was about a year ago - I attended a nutrition seminar from Raymond Parenting. It was held at the home of a friend of another mom that Madeline and I met in Gymboree class. There were about a dozen babies, of varying ages, in attendance. I think that Madeline was the second-oldest; Allison, the daughter of the hostess, had just turned one. Allison had all sorts of fun toys (perhaps from her recent birthday), and all of the mobile babies swarming around her plastic Fisher Price house because it was the coolest toy they'd ever seen. Of course, Madeline was trying her best to stake out a piece of real estate by the toy house as well.

I knew that babies around Madeline's age experiment with touching and often push and shove aggressively because they don't realize how strong they are, but I watched as Allison's mom would repeatedly and immediately haul her daughter away if she got near another child who was playing with the plastic house, or if another baby approached Allison, she'd grab that kid and remove him/her to a distance that she judged acceptable.  I understand that she didn't want her daughter pummeling another baby any more than she wanted someone else's baby to start beating on Allison, but I was kind of dumbfounded as I watched Allison's mom continue to enforce buffer zones around each of the older babies throughout the entire presentation. I mean, how did she know if Madeline was crawling towards Allison to knock her over or to give her a sweet pat on the shoulder? Madeline admittedly had a history of hair-pulling, but she'd recently turned a corner and was interacting with the other babies really well. She lately had delighted in giving "gentle touches". I fail to understand why Allison's mom didn't want to give her daughter and the other babies the chance to do something right and assumed that they were just going to do something wrong.

It's important to Chris and I that we allow Madeline the opportunity to do something right - the chance to walk down a flight of stairs safely before scooping her up and carrying her down, the chance to drink from a grown-up cup at a restaurant before removing it from her reach, the chance to climb up to the slide at the playground safely on her own before lifting her right to the top. I don't think that this is overly permissive parenting as much as it is an opportunity for Madeline to learn something about independence and a life skill or two. I guess I just don't understand it when I hear of other parents who don't allow their 15 month-olds to feed themselves with a spoon because "it would be too messy" or take their 20 month-olds on errands without strapping them into a stroller because "they might run off". It may be a little more effort to take the time to teach the mechanics of eating or the importance of holding hands in public places, but it's worth it to let your kid know that you trust them to make good decisions, no?

when mom's your frenemy

If you should happen to walk by our house during the day and happen to hear someone howling through an open window, I'm probably just changing Madeline's diaper. She thinks it's a form of torture. I mean, I need her to lay down and stay relatively still, whereas she'd rather be racing around the upstairs with a cool breeze on her bum. I hate the entire process. It's funny - yesterday Chris remarked that Madeline is cooperative whenever he changes her or puts her into her carseat.  I doubt he means to imply that I am thus doing something wrong to cause her to howl and protest, but part of me is really bothered by that. Another part of me is really pleased, too, because Madeline reportedly is quite agreeable when she's in the childcare at the YMCA. I'd hate to be asked not to bring her back!  She's normally a really swell kid, and I'm glad that she is learning how to behave appropropriately amongst others.  Just wish that she'd share some of the good stuff with me, from time to time ...

Is it typical for children to save their worst behaviour for their moms? I don't remember my mom ever mentioning that my sister or I were like that, though I remember her commenting, back when she used to babysit for her cousin's little boy, that as soon his mom came to fetch him, he'd run around touching everything that my mom told him not to touch! 

placebo effect

I was in the kitchen getting dinner ready the other day when I heard Madeline sounding kind of panicky  in the living room. When I ran over to see what the cause of the commotion was, I was met by a teary toddler who was waving a bleeding finger at me. Eeek! It looked like a little bit of one fingernail snagged something and ripped off. Poor girl. Apparently, bleeding is a very scary thing when you're not quite twenty-one months old. I didn't really know what to do to help Madeline. The only thing I could think of was an adhesive bandage, so up the stairs to the bathroom we went ...

It occurred to me that the reason why we consumers have the option to buy colourful, licensed-character-sporting Band-Aids at the drugstore is because kids dig Band-Aids.  We don't have any of those ones in the house, but Madeline's never had an adhesive bandage before (well, one for a boo-boo, not for an immunization) so I figured that she'd be sufficiently impressed with an ordinary flesh-coloured one. I did my best to fit a tiny Band-Aid on Madeline's ever tinier little finger, but my efforts didn't really cover the afflicted fingernail very well, and she cried even harder, ripping it off. I impulsively tore open another small band-aid and stuck it on the back of her hand! Well ... this time it was love at first sight!  The tears abated and my toddler patted her band-aid with definite interest and pride. I guess I have a lot to learn about the mysterious healing power of Band-Aids.

let the games begin

I spent forty minutes working out on cardio equipment this morning, but in the end, it was my twenty month-old who whipped my butt, figuratively. I'd had a lovely workout at the Y, Madeline had a lovely little time playing in the nursery, and she was in good spirits when I went to collect her to go home and have lunch. Usually, before we leave the Y, Madeline runs around the empty studio right beside the nursery while I get her coat and boots ready for her. Today, the door to the studio was closed as there was a school group using it.

Well, that's not how things are supposed to work, and Madeline, lover of routine,  knew it. She stood outside the studio door and screamed and wailed. I gently told her that she can run around at home instead, or play in the snow outside the Y, but she screamed and wailed. I put on her coat and boots, and the screaming and wailing prevailed.  And Madeline wasn't going anywhere. Her feet were planted firmly outside the studio door.  Kicking and screaming, we made it outside the doors of the YMCA. Kicking and screaming, we fought our way across the parking lot. By the time we were negotiating the always tricky carseat matter, Madeline had perfected her screaming and wailing to extent that she was also to successfully throw in a third trick - stiffening up like a wooden plank. Gah. Man. I think we're both exhausted.