parenting

Ollie Bites the Big One

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Oliver has now had his first injury requiring a trip to the hospital.

Last Wednesday, Oliver was running in the park and tripped over his own feet, falling just so that his chin slammed into a bench, causing him to bite deeply into his lower lip.

Now I wasn’t there, so I’m telling all of this second hand. As you can imagine, a deep lip wound bleeds like a gusher. By the time Sara got to him, his hands were covered with blood. He calmed down pretty quickly, but he wanted to be held. When Sara managed to get a look at it, she was pretty sure it would need stitches. Unfortunately, they were about a mile from the hospital with no car. At least Sara was with a co-worker, so she didn’t have to deal with this all by herself. Sara called me at work, so I left for home, but by the time I got there most of the excitement had died down.

The good news is that Sara has the hospital connections, so we actually avoided a trip to the emergency room. Sara planned to go to the ER, but she wanted her boss to take a look at it first, to get a second opinion. I felt like it was definitely worth having him take a look. A trip to the ER would have been very painful, slow, and expensive and having to sit and wait and have his wound poked and prodded, not to mention having his blood pressure and temperature taken, etc. would most likely be a lot more traumatic for Oliver than the actual stitches.

They managed to have several doctors look at it. It was sort of a borderline case; it wasn’t too deep, but it was right on the lip line. One doctor said, “20 years ago I would have said stitches for sure, but these days I’m not so sure.” Finally, Sara’s boss and one of the doctors applied liquid stitches in his office. For Oliver’s part, he was content to let whomever do whatever they wanted to his lip. He never cried after the initial injury and sat still and quiet while they stretched his lips and applied the glue.

The liquid stitches were kind of gross. They’d probably be okay on your arm or something, but between the glue starting to peel off and bits of food getting caught up into it, it kind of seemed worse than having nothing at all.

When Sara called, my first thought was, “How is Evie taking it?” She worries about Oliver so much, and is so protective over him, and is so sensitive about him getting hurt, that I know she would be absolutely freaked out. She certainly was. Afterwards, she made a card for Sara’s boss that said, “Thank you for saving Oliver’s life.”

Anyway, now the glue is mostly off and everything looks a lot better. I’m not sure if he’ll have a very noticeable scar or not, but it’s definitely going to heal. Unfortunately, it hasn’t stopped him from running face first into everything he can find like a human bowling ball.

Evie’s First Ballet Recital

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Over the weekend, Evie had her very first ballet recital. She performed the frog dance.

She had a dress rehearsal on Friday, which meant that I was responsible for hair and makeup that day. Eek! You have no idea how stressed out about that I was. I practiced a little, and I have to say, the ballet bun turned out much better than I expected. I didn’t go full on makeup mode, just stuck to a little blush. All in all, not nearly as scary as I thought it would be!

Evie was very excited about the recital. She didn’t seem nervous at all, and I kept wanting to ask her if she was nervous, but I didn’t want to then make her nervous by bringing it up. It seemed like it hadn’t occurred to her to be nervous. But then again, of course it didn’t, because there’s nothing she loves better than performing for a crowd.

In fact, as I mentioned on facebook, that morning she was lying on the floor crying, “I need some attention!” I said to her, “Evie, in an hour you’re going to be on a stage with a whole audience watching you.” She got this slow, luxurious, evil smile on her face that looked exactly like:

It was almost creepy. My brother saw it too, and he said it put goosebumps on his arms.

Her recital was the day of Baconfest (posts to come next week), so my brother and I wore our Baconfest shirts. I wasn’t sure if I was a little *too* dressed down (hey, the shirt was pink!), so I was nervous, but it ended up being okay. At one point I saw a dad in a Captain America tee shirt sitting in the row behind us and marked his location. Always good to know who you can count on in case trouble goes down.

I saw the costumes at the dress rehearsal, but Evie made Sara promise not to look at the pictures so it would be a surprise the day of. I thought the costumes were pretty awesome.

The day of the recital, Sara took care of the makeup and hair preparation, and (not surprisingly) she did a much better job than me. I’m not sure how I feel about requiring makeup for 4 year olds. I know it is part of performing, and part of what makes the whole thing feel special, but it had me feeling a little “Toddlers and Tiaras“, you know?

I was pretty excited to see her, but then something strange happened. Almost immediately, as soon as the first performance began, I started to get a lump in my throat (frog in my throat?). It was very strange, and unexpected. I mean, in retrospect it makes a lot of sense I guess, but it really had never occurred to me that I would get choked up. And it wasn’t even Evie performing yet, the girls on stage were like 15. Next up was a group 3 year olds and I totally lost it. I was taken completely by surprise! I looked over at Sara and she was wiping tears from her eyes too. “Are you crying?” I mouthed. Sara nodded. “Me too,” I said. The extra funny part was that I apparently got it all out of my system, because I didn’t get choked up during Evie’s actual performance.

I was pretty impressed that, through the entire performance, none of the kids freaked out or froze. Considering parents aren’t even allowed to sit in during practice, I thought an entire auditorium full might throw at least the 3 year olds. Not so. Kudos to the dance teachers!

Oliver was so proud of his big sis. He’s really excited to do ballet when he gets old enough. Evie was really on cloud nine afterwards. I bought her a flower from the farmer’s market, and she got another from her teacher. She seemed so old, with her flowers and congratulatory hugs and pictures with her friends. All in all, it was pretty awesome, and I’m glad she did an activity that she really enjoyed. It really seemed like the performance was one of the highlights in her life thus far.

4 simple steps to successfully potty training your child

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Well, it’s that time folks: potty training time.

Oliver had shown some vague interest in the potty some time ago, but we hadn’t really forced the issue. “When we get back from vacation,” we said, “we’ll really give it the ole college try.” (We didn’t actually say, “the ole college try”. Who talks like that?) (I do, that’s who, but in this case, I didn’t really say it.) (Okay, I actually said, “the full court press“, which isn’t much better)

The game of potty training goes like this:

  • Step 1 – Get him to go on the potty at all costs. Pull out all the stops and do whatever it takes. This means as much bribery as you are physically able to manage.
  • Step 2 – Overpraise and make as big of a deal as you can when he goes in the potty, even if it is by accident, so that he thinks he is exercising power over you by making you act like a fool at his whim. Also, the bribing.
  • Step 3 – Somehow continue to drag out step 2 as long as possible by any means necessarily. This is the tricky part, because eventually, no matter how many bribes you give and how much you act like a fool, he will eventually grow tired of this “putting pee pee in the potty” game.
  • Step 4 – If you manage to drag step 3 out long enough, you’ve now tricked him into going potty enough times that it is becoming a habit. Going to the potty is just what one does. You’re over the hump now and, even though there will be minor setbacks and accidents, you have successfully broken your child’s will and ground his resistance into dust. Congratulations!

It sounds so easy, doesn’t it? It’s not. Here’s the thing: you’re walking a very fine line. Around this time*, your child is looking for any reason to defy you. If they catch a whiff of the fact that this is not just a fun game you’re playing, and they actually wield immense power over you with the ability to crush your parenting hopes and dreams, they will use that power against you without a moment’s hesitation. This means no forcing. It always has to remain fun (for the kid, it will probably not be as much fun for you, and sometimes you’ll have to smile one of those I-swear-I’m-smiling-not-baring-my-teeth smiles). No shouting, no shaming, no holding down on the potty. You must outsmart your adversary, not use force.

*Side note, the sooner you potty train, the better. It might seem like it is easier to put it off until later, when your kid can better understand what’s going on, and you can reason with them. This is a fallacy. In reality, each day that goes by your child is going to be more willful and better able to defy you (both physically and mentally, as they better learn how to push your buttons). Best case scenario, you slide in right before the terrible twos hit. And for you parents with two year olds? Believe me, three is even worse. So unless you’re planning on waiting until they’re ten, you might as well start as soon as you think you can, before it gets any worse.

Okay, so enough with the philosophy, let’s get down to specifics. This is how it went with Oliver:

As with Evie, M&Ms were the perfect bribe. I swear kids will do anything for those little colored crack candies. We called them “pee pee chocolates” and he could have one if and only if he put his pee pees in the potty. He was really resisting going on the potty, and it seemed like a hopeless cause until the very first time he got a pee pee chocolate. Literally one time and he was hooked. In this case, we always gave Evie a pee pee chocolate as well, to avoid jealousy. Oliver didn’t seem to mind at all, he always made sure to get her, so she wouldn’t miss out. No one else is aloud to touch the pee pee chocolates, sometimes not even me.

Ollie: “Mama is in charge of the pee-pee chocolates.”

We did the usual overpraising, clapping and dancing, along with “hip-hip-hoorays” (in which I toss him up in the air and catch him three times), and singing the song we made up for Evie when she was potty training, which he loves. (“Pee pees in the potty, Ollie listened to his body!” congo-line style) He also enjoyed wearing his “big boy underwear” (or “big boy panties” as they get called as often as not in our house…this is what happens when you have an older sister).

Then came the hard part, where you need to come up with a constant stream of new ideas to keep him interested. The whole, “Nala wants to see you go pee pee” wore out very quickly. It just goes to show you, what motivates one child, doesn’t necessarily motivate another.

No, instead, what worked the best for him was to say, “wouldn’t it be so funny if…”. He was really into the phrase at the time, so I came up with the idea of co-opting it for our purposes. “Wouldn’t it be so funny if you put your pee pees in the potty?” “Wouldn’t it be so funny if you went pee pee on the potty in the kitchen?” “Wouldn’t it be so funny if you went pee pee on the white potty?” It was a stroke of genius, and it worked like a charm. Hey, whatever works. This is what got us started, and worked for quite some time.

Eventually, everything stopped being so funny and this technique finally stopped working. After a moment of panic, where he didn’t want to go and we didn’t have anything motivational, we came up with another brilliant idea: “Wouldn’t it be soo funny to go pee pee on some toilet paper”? Why yes, apparently it would. Ollie loves to “get it wet” as he terms it. Just put a piece of toilet paper in the potty and he’ll sit right down and go on it. I had eventually planned to turn this into a whole host of things it would be so funny to go pee pee on (the only other one I could think of was a Cheerio, but there must be other things I could think of if I had to), but it turns out they weren’t needed (Actually, the first time this technique was successful, it involved going pee pee on a handful of sand in the potty. It was so funny.). Even now, this is the best motivational tactic we have. Oliver usually rips off the toilet paper and puts it in the potty himself, before going.

I think we have now moved into the final stage, because he now no longer even questions sitting on the potty. When we say it’s time to go, he goes.

It should be noted that a kid this age is not going to fully get everything at once. The first step is to teach him what to do with a potty. We still have to put him on the potty every hour to avoid accidents. If he has to go, he just goes. He doesn’t understand about holding it, not even with wearing big boy underwear and getting a dried cherry if he keeps them dry. However, now that we’ve accomplished step 1, it’s pretty clear that he’s starting to get the other parts too, even without us telling him. Several times now he’s told us that he had to go before he went. Yesterday, he went all day with no accidents, and even went poo poo in the potty for the first time. He’s also kept his diaper dry for his nap several times. So he’s certainly getting it.

One final thing, I had mused about the commonly held wisdom that boys are harder to potty train than girls. I think I can say that we did not find that to be true. At the beginning it seemed that way, since Evie had been interested in the potty before potty training and Oliver had not. However, Evie was potty trained by about 22 months, and Oliver will be by about 24 months. In other words, it is within the margin of error. Oliver looks like he will take a little bit longer to be completely trained, but it was MUCH less stressful than with Evie (though I think this is mostly due to us being much better at it the second time around, and keeping it fun). Also, it’s quite possible he could have gone two months earlier if he had been wearing cloth diapers and we hadn’t had to schedule it around our vacation.

So that’s it. KEEP IT FUN and you too can successfully enjoy leaving the house with half as much stuff and constantly begging to use the bathroom in strange places!

When is “big” too big?

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Oliver is a big boy. He’s not 2 yet, but he weighs more than Evie did when she was 3.

The other day we were at a restaurant, and an enormous guy with a voice deep enough to vibrate my sternum came over to tell us that he could tell Oliver was going to be big when he grew up, and he’d never heard a boy with such a deep voice. He went on to say that Oliver was a “little Brian Urlacher”.

Although Oliver is heavy, he doesn’t look chubby. However, we charted him on the growth curve. He’s off the chart on weight, and about 90th percentile for length. You might think that means that he’s just big, but actually if you plot his height vs. weight, he’s over the 95th percentile on that one too, which means he meets the definition for obesity.

Now, I don’t necessarily think there is a problem with his size. I think that he is built very solid, and there’s probably not much we could do to change that. I also think that kids grow at different times, and probably other kids will catch up to where he is.

Certainly, there are not many kids on this planet who eat healthier than he does. Today he ate oatmeal made with milk, mixed with applesauce, peanut powder and chia seeds and 1 – 2 oz. of milk for breakfast. For lunch he had a hard-boiled egg, 1/2 a cup of brown rice, 1/4 cup of mixed vegetables, 2/3rds of an apple, and 6 oz. of milk. For supper he had 1/2 a cup of whole wheat couscous with sauteed zucchini and chickpeas and about a tablespoon of peas, with about 2 oz. of milk, followed by 1/4 of an orange for dessert. Now, not every day is necessarily that good, but I would say this is pretty average. It occurred to us the other day that he might never have had a cookie from a package in his life, and maybe not more than 8 oz. of juice total in the almost two years he’s been around.

Biologically speaking, I have trouble believing that a kid who is eating that healthy could possibly get obese naturally. So again, I’m not really worried about it. But I guess everyone could use a little more exercise, so now that the weather is getting nice, we’re going to try to make an effort to play outside a little more.

With a little luck, our little linebacker will one day play for a better team.

It feels way too soon to be dealing with this

/ Shane / 3 Comments

We have come into something of a sticky situation regarding Evie’s social interaction. It has become apparent that Evie’s a part of a group at school, and there is another girl that that group doesn’t like.

After some delicate questioning, it seems that there’s really nothing about this girl that Evie doesn’t like, nonetheless, she talks about her in such disparaging tones. I have to believe that this is coming from the circle of friends (not to be a naive father or anything, I’m sure all those girl’s dads are saying the same thing). There really isn’t anybody that Evie doesn’t like (unless she has a really good reason), but it’s the thing to do to make fun of this other girl, so she does it too.

Of course, she’s too young to fully grasp what’s going on here. We’ve seen her play with the girl when her friends aren’t around, and they seem like they get along. Evie tells us she has a good time with the girl, but then later said she told her friends she didn’t have fun playing with her. She told me, “But daddy, I only said I didn’t like her when she wasn’t there!” and really thought that made it okay. I think in the back of her head though something is bothering her about it, because when I said, “Evie, I’m very disappointed in you,” she burst into tears instantly.

I really have no idea what to do about it. I’ve tried asking her how she’d feel if she were in this girl’s place. I’ve tried telling her that she shouldn’t talk about people behind their backs, but instead act as if the girl was always there, listening. I’ve tried reminding her that she does have fun with this girl, and she shouldn’t say she doesn’t like her if it’s not true. I’ve tried just about everything I could think of.

It’s kind of the worst part about childhood, and I’d really rather she didn’t participate in it. Do we just throw our hands up and say, “that’s childhood?” Is this just girls being girls? Aren’t you supposed to be older than 4 before you start getting catty with the other girls? Is this happening younger now then when we were kids?