June 3, 2005
It’s been crazy
around here. Our sitter’s kids were sick all this week so I’ve had K and Lauren
home all day every day. Luckily, Kristin came to help out a few days and they
even took Katherine bowling today. Katherine has been really great this week.
We spent some time making crafts and just playing around. It’s fascinating to
play with her and let her lead the way. Interesting way to figure out what is
going on in her brain.
Lauren is
sitting up with support now. She can tripod herself (hold herself in a sitting position
with her arms) but as soon as she grabs for something, she smashes her face.
She’s getting very strong. She also has a funny, grunty – squeaky laugh. I
thought it was pretty funny but then I was watching some of K’s old videos and
we have one of her at exactly this age making the same silly giggles.
June 5, 2005
Took some naked
baby pics of Lauren this evening out on the porch after her batch. I was trying
to get a good picture of the Mongolian spot on her rear but it doesn’t really
show up in the pictures.
She’s really
strong. I bet Woody that she will be sitting unsupported within 2 weeks and
crawling in 4. She keeps putting her bum up in the air and then she will drop
it and do a full push up. If she managed to do them both at the same time,
she’d be crawling. We need to get on baby proofing ASAP!
She also ate
some baby oatmeal tonight. She loved it…so did K. J
June 8, 2005
Not a very good
start to the day. I was awakened at 6am by crying coming from the living room.
I stumbled out of bed to find Katherine in a sobbing, wailing heap on the
floor. I asked what the problem was, trying to hide my annoyance at being woken
up so rudely. She was distressed that she couldn’t get her blankie to cover
her. What I thought was “You’ve done it a million times before”. What I said
was “ok honey, do you want to come to bed and lie down with Lauren and I?”. She
was happy and jumped in my arms. I felt all warm inside and…wait a cotton
pickin’ minute! Wet outside?!? Yep, she had peed so much in her pull up that it
was dripping all down my side and there was even a little puddle on the floor
where she’d been sitting. Grrrreat! I
changed her pull up and vowed to never give her any more apple juice after 7pm.
Hahahaha! I crack myself up. That will so not happen ever.
While changing
her diaper and trying to swallow my frustration at the issues that had started
my morning so poorly, I explained that she would need to be very quiet in our
bed because Lauren was sleeping. She said “ok mom” and climbed into the bed
next to Lauren. Picture of bliss? NOT! She tries so hard to be nice to her
sister but the thing that she doesn’t understand is she should just leave
Lauren alone when she’s asleep. Katherine patted Lauren’s head & gave her a
hug & a kiss and then, viola! Lauren was awake with the rest of us. I did
not scold Katherine because she was trying to be sweet, and she was being
sweet.
I turned on
Winnie the Pooh for Katherine to watch and commenced getting ready for the day.
I usually get up at 6:30 and run around packing my gym bag, packing Lauren’s
bag for the daycare at the gym, getting K’s apple juice, eating something,
drinking scads of coffee, packing K’s bag for daycare, showering and getting
dressed, making sure I have what I need for any morning errands, picking out
clothes for the girls and checking my calendar for my tasks that day. When the
kids are up, it really sets that plan on it’s ear. I don’t like it at all when
my morning ritual is messed up. It gets to me.
Katherine’s
watching Winnie the Pooh, eating cereal and drinking apple juice and Lauren is
playing in the crib. OK, I’ll try to get my stuff done. 10 minutes of activity
and K comes in to tell me that she peed on her backpack. Nice, she’s gone and
wet her pull up so much that it’s leaking again. What did this child drink last
night? The entire flipping bathtub? I cart her off again to change her pull up.
We get in her room and I whip the pull up off and out comes poop! The little
stinker said nothing about poop. We are having some issues with potty training
and I’m trying to keep it positive so I said. “Katherine, why didn’t you go
pee-pee and poop in the potty?”. “I don’t know”. So I said, “Ok, here is a rule
for today, you can watch any movie you want tonight but only if you don’t have
any more accidents”. It’s like she thinks the entire house is her own personal
diaper. The anger is boiling up at this point and I seriously want to just rant
a bit but I control myself and with a little swat on the butt and a kiss, I
send her off to play so I can finish getting ready.
While she’s
playing, I call Woody for a reality check. I have been stuck in the “house of
madness” for two hours with Lauren and the formerly-wonderful-child named
Katherine. He talks me out of pinching her tiny little head off and gets on the
phone with her and explains that she needs to be a good girl for Mommy. What he
doesn’t say is “you mother is controlling herself right now but it’s she’s only
got a tenuous grasp on her sanity right now. Just get out of the way if she
takes off running through the neighborhood singing the theme song to any one of
your silly little cartoons at the top of her lungs”. I’m happy he doesn’t share
that part with her. She says OK.
It’s almost
time to go and I asked Katherine to come over so I can dress her. She says no.
I said “you can come over and get dressed now or you can go to Candice’s in
just a pull up”. She melts in a heap on the floor, fake crying. I say “last
chance” and give her the choices again. She’s still in a pile. “OK, lets go get
in the car!” I say, the same way I do on any other morning. Instead of doing
what she normally does (follow the instruction) she throws a block (no
throwing! I say), and sits on the sit and spin cackling “I’m a nekkid baby!”.
It’s all fun and games until she falls off of the sit and spin and onto one of
the 300 blocks that she’d dumped out in the middle of the living room floor 20
minutes ago. She starts screaming “I’ve got a boo boo”. I get boo boo bunny out
of the freezer and put it on her little scrape. I’m totally steamed by now but
again; I swallow the vileness that is surging up, wanting to spew out ugliness at
a rapid rate. Instead I kiss her boo boo and give her a big hug. Then I talk to
her a bit about making big messes and what sometimes happens when we throw
blocks all over the house.
At this point,
Lauren is also not very happy having gotten little attention all morning since
her sister was hogging me so she’s crying in her car seat.
I finally get
Katherine in the car and we are halfway to Candice’s (Sweet salvation) before
she suddenly realizes she’s naked. “I don’t want to go to Candice’s naked
mommy” whining…crying. UGH! I give her the “choices” talk and explain that she
made the choice to not get dressed. I call Candice to warn her of the impending
stripper. I wonder about my adeptness as a parent and I also wonder if a) I’m
going to scar her forever by doing this or b) she will enjoy being naked so
much that she will never put on a stitch of clothing before leaving the house
again. I have a sudden vision of a 16 year old Katherine who is greeted, nude,
at the doors to the high school by lots of boys…. and some policemen. I don’t
like the vision at all & I shake my head to clear it from my addle-pated
brain Candice assures me that it’s ok to bring her naked.
I finally drop
her off, tossing a jaunty “good luck with her today!” over my shoulder to
Candice. As I’m heading to the gym, I can feel the tension in my shoulders. I’m
not a happy camper. I’m almost on the verge of tears but proud of myself for
not losing it with her this morning. She drives me to distraction but I know
it’s mainly that we aren’t communicating well right now. I hate to see her
sadness when she knows she’s made me angry or disappointed.
I get on the
treadmill and go for 30 minutes. I feel better now. Hopefully this evening will
go better for us.
June 9, 2005
I was driving
Katherine to daycare this morning and during our conversation I said that I was
going to work after I dropped her off. She said "At the circus
mommy?".
I said
"Katherine, what does mommy do after you go to Miss Candice's?"
K: "you go
to the gym"
Me: "yep,
that's right. I go to the gym to exercise. Then what do I do for work...for my
job?"
K: "you go
to the circus"
What the heck
does she think I do for a living? I WISH I went to the circus every day
June 12, 2005
We went to a
pool party for one of Woody’s ex-co-workers 1 year old. Katherine, who never
before showed any interest what-so-ever of getting in a pool pestered us until
we finally decided that she could get in with her panties and tee shirt as long
as she stayed on a step next to us.
Then she talked
about the pool and swimming the entire, long, ride home.
June 12, 2005
Lauren is
sitting up unassisted for minutes at a time before tumbling over.
June 13, 2005
Lauren tried
bananas for the first time last night. I don’t think she liked them very much.
She was also up every hour last night with gas pains. She loves the oatmeal and
will eat a lot of that. I think we will stick with that for a week or so then
try the bananas again…when I can sleep in.
June 15, 2005
We enrolled K
in a swim school and she had her first lesson today. They are private lessons
& she did great! Miss Nicole really has a way with children. Katherine put
her head in the water and she blew bubbles. Just 4 days ago she was afraid to
put her face in the water or get her hair wet. I watched the class and was very
pleased.
K was so proud of herself! She will have 3 classes a week for 4 weeks. By the
time we go to
June 19, 2005
Who needs hands
to hold herself up while sitting? Not Lauren! She’s a sturdy sitter who can sit
& play as long as she wants.
She does this
weird rocking/bouncing thing when she’s sitting though. Kind of like she’s got
a good beat in her head. She also has the doorway jumper down. She would bounce
for hours in that thing if we let her. I’ve noticed that she is way more oral
than Katherine ever was. She mouths EVERYTHING.
June 27, 2005
Lauren has been
eating more. She seems to prefer the plain cereals but she has had butternut
squash & she seems to like it most days. Apples, not so much.
She has started
really blowing raspberries and had Woody and I giggling during K’s swim lesson
on Friday. She is also pushing her entire chest off of the floor. She can heft
herself up all the way to her belly button & if she could figure out how to
put her knees under her, she’d be crawling. I’m ok with her taking her time
learning that skill. More time to child proof. I was right on with my 2 week guess on sitting
but luckily I was off on my crawling prediction. Whew!
Katherine is
doing wonderfully with her swimming lessons. She will willingly (most days)
swim to the wall and climb up. She still isn’t really keen on getting her head
wet or floating on her back but we will continue to practice and give her lots
of encouragement. She had gotten really fussy during two of her lessons last
week and on the way to class one day we had a discussion about bravery. She
turned on the charm and did awesome! The instructor came up to me after class
and said that Katherine was “the cutest” and that when she’d been floating on
her back, she sat up and said “the pool was singing twinkle twinkle little star
to me”.
We took her to
the park last weekend and Woody taught her how to pump her legs on the “big
girl swings”. She got going a bit & was quite pleased with herself.
June 27, 2005
I was reading
some entries from February 03, when Katherine was Lauren’s age. I ran across a
paragraph where I was mentioning that Katherine dropped from the 50th
percentile in weight at 4 mos to the 3rd at 6 months. I thought,
“well, I’ll be next to the pediatricians office this afternoon anyway so I’ll
take Lauren in for a weight check”. She weighs 15 lbs which means that she’s
also dropped but not quite as drastically. She’s gone from 50th to
10-25th percentile for weight. Great…I’ll try not to worry. She
seems to have a better attitude towards food than K ever did. Lauren actually
chases the spoon. I rarely have to coax her to eat.
I introduced
carrots to Lauren tonight. She liked them and ate about a tablespoon mixed into
her rice cereal but then she barfed, Technicolor orange, all over her crib
after I got her out of the bath. Could be the carrots or it could be the slight
cold she has…could also be teething or the fact that she barfs almost every
single time she takes a bath. Hmmmmmmm
Katherine
is…well, she’s almost 3. Potty training is going great, no accidents in over a
week. She’s even dry in the mornings but I’m hesitant to do away with the
night-time pull ups. Eating is touch and go. As a parent (and food
connoisseur), you read about picky toddlers and their erratic eating habits but
they are hard to comprehend until you are living the drama. For 3 nights in a
row, Katherine refused to eat any dinner. We were all stressed out and dinner
time was rather unpleasant. Tonight she ate a TON though. Hopefully the
positive reinforcement we gave her tonight will help to continue the trend.
Candice says she eats well for breakfast & lunch so I suppose she won’t
actually starve but it’s still frustrating. I’ve cut out any snacks that aren’t
nutritious until after she’s eaten dinner and we are going to start limiting
her apple juice intake as well. I’ve also started giving her carnation instant
breakfast in the mornings before Candice’s. She thinks it’s chocolate milk
& guzzles it down. She only has 2 more swimming lessons before they end.
She’s doing really well! Now she will go underwater to get weighted rings,
float on her back (assisted), blow bubbles, swim to the wall & turn around
& catch the wall if she falls in. She got a “great bubble blower” ribbon
and we hung it on her door next to the life sized paper Katherine that she made
at daycare. Finally, she’s really doing well with her letters. She knows most
of the sounds and will point them out and say “K says K”. She also has gotten
really good at tracing letters. Today in the car she said “I start with K. What
do you start with mommy?” Then she went on to ask about Daddy and Lauren.
At her swim
lesson today I realized that maybe Katherine will be a commentator when she
grows up. She literally narrated every single move of every person in the pool.
It was crazy. I did not realize how much she was talking until her lesson
started and it was quiet. Wow that girl can chatter!
No comments:
Post a Comment