parenting

The little men who live in your stomach

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I don’t remember how this first came about, but we have somehow stumbled upon a very effective technique to get Evie to eat things she might not otherwise eat.

The story goes that there are little men in your tummy who take the materials you send down to them and use them to build things, which help you grow big and strong. For example, if you send down broccoli, they might make trees to line the roads. If you send down some tomatoes, they might add apples into the trees. Milk might turn into clouds or little white bunnies.

Dessert doesn’t help you grow big and strong of course, so the builders can’t use that for materials. However, it’s still okay to eat dessert because when you send some down, the little men take a break, sit down and enjoy their dessert.

This works great as long as you can keep thinking of things that the little men can build. If you keep building firetrucks, red is going to stop being interesting. This is harder than you think, especially when you have to play this game day after day after day. (I had to make a rule that I would only be a little man during meal times) You know things are getting desperate when white materials are being turned into things like toilets and toilet paper.

The other problem is that, the first time I was a little man in her stomach, I instinctively used the fake I’m-shouting-from-a-long-ways-away-but-I’m-actually-quieting-my-voice voice, as if I were shouting up to her from down in the pit of her stomach. Of course that became the default little man voice, and she gets upset if I forget and talk like a regular person.

So the good news is that we can get her to eat almost anything. The bad news is that dinner time just became a high pressure situation for me!

A very special day

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Being spontaneous is not something Sara and I are very good at. So I was very proud of us for seeing an opportunity and seizing the moment last weekend.

My extended family has an enormous rummage sale every year and we had some stuff in it. Now technically, if you want to have stuff in the sale, you should help out with the sale. However, for out of towners, I think they make an exception. Nevertheless, we had originally planned on being there for the sale, if at all possible. Plus, it made a good excuse to introduce Oliver to a few people.

Plans changed, however, and we scheduled my dad and step-mom to come down that weekend, so we put all those plans out of our heads. So when my parents ended up going home on Saturday to get their dog out of the kennel, we didn’t think of it right away. After thinking about it for a while though, we said, “You know what? We could go there tomorrow.”

Thus began our “very special day” in Evie’s parlance. For her, the fact that we got her up before the butterfly lights were even on to get her in the car was enough to make it a very special day. She kept saying every few hours, “Today is a very special day!”

So we packed an amazing amount of stuff for just a one day trip (a baby adds a lot of stuff, on top of what you need for a toddler) and took off. Evie had a pretty good time. She said her favorite part of the day was coloring with the sidewalk chalk (although I still think all the adults had more fun). She did about half a block worth of pictures, including a crocodile, an ant holding her baby, a mother giraffe, bubbles, and a mommy and baby spider, as well as a really good rainbow.

On the way home both of the kids were sleeping, and I said to Sara, “I’m really glad we decided to do that!” Later I said to her, “If I ever make a statement like that again, remind me to wait until we are actually home and done with the trip.”

So what happened in between? Well, we had some bad traffic, so we decided to stop and get something to eat, because it was going to be bed time by the time we got home. When we stopped, we experienced our first full scale meltdown of both kids at the same time. Ouch. Quite embarrassing, and we were forced to run out of there with our meal half eaten. I like to think of us as a sort of roving birth control for the teenagers sitting in the next booth.

Afterwards, everybody was in a bad mood, and it was pretty rough. When we finally got all of the stuff in the house and the kids in bed, we just collapsed into sleep, without even putting most of the stuff away. It was sort of spectacular how fast everything took a turn for the worst! But as Sara said, we sort of set them up to fail, since it was a long day and everyone was tired.

So anyway, long story short, it was sort of a mixed bag. Certainly we learned a bit about handling two kids out in public, and we’ll do things a little different next time. Evie has already asked several times if today was a very special day, or how long until the next very special day. So I think we will work on including more special days in the future.

Bad Dad

/ Shane / 2 Comments

The monitor volume button must have gotten bumped last night, so this morning the volume was completely off. Therefore, I missed my usual wakeup call at 6:42 when Evie starts hollering that the butterfly lights are on. I was snoozing blissfully until 7:30. I woke up and blinked sleepily at the clock. “Why is it 7:30?” I asked Sara. Puzzled, I picked up the monitor and discovered the sound was off. When I turned the volume up, I heard Evie mournfully sobing, “Please come soon, it’s been a long time!”

Oh man. I tell you, I felt about as bad as I have ever felt. This poor girl had been calling for me for about 45 minutes and I wasn’t coming. The butterfly lights had already been on and then turned off by the time I got down there. I don’t think I’ve ever not come before, so she was probably very worried and confused. I asked her several times why she didn’t come upstairs and wake me up (she has done this on other occasions), but she said she was afraid to come out of her room. Double guilt trip! Nothing gets to me more than when Evie says she’s afraid of the hallway or the monsters in the laundry room, etc.

I tried to make up for it with extra hugs and stuff, but tonight when I was putting her to bed, she said, “Don’t forget to come when the butterfly lights are on!” making me feel awful all over again. She also kept repeating, “I didn’t forget to call you when the lights are on, I won’t wait until they are off.” She’s obviously very worried that I will forget again tomorrow.

It’s funny how such a small thing can make you feel so bad!

What’s on your butt?

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Sometimes, you are just bone tired. Any parent can relate to this. However, your energy-factory toddler just can’t imagine being anything but hopped up. So as soon as I saw the title of this article, I was hooked.

Fun Toddler Games That Let You Relax; How to entertain your child while lying down.

Now that’s my kind of article! Unfortunately for our children, Sara and I are sort of low-energy parents. So most of these games came as no surprise to us. For the most part, we have our own variations on these games. However, game #5 stuck out. That was certainly one that I had never thought of before:

Game #5: What’s on Your Butt?

Position: Lying down with your eyes closed.

What your child will love about it: Butts.

What you will love about it: The roar of laughter that accompanies anything having to do with butts.

I recommend playing this one in your child’s room or wherever she keeps her toys. The participating parent lies face down on the bed and closes his eyes while the child finds an interesting object to place on the parent’s butt. Keeping his eyes closed, the parent guesses what’s on his butt. Your child will enjoy giving you endless clues in between peals of laughter from seeing Elmo or Barbie or her toothbrush riding your backside. This activity may last for a very long time as children rarely tire of seeing their parents with stuff on their ass.

Source: “What’s on your butt?” was invented by my genius husband on one of those mornings when we were cheerfully awakened by our sleepless child at 5 a.m.

That is pure genius.

Any other parents have games like this that can contribute to my laziness? (Yes, we’ve already covered timing her as she runs up and down the hallway)

Don’t smooch the baby!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I’ve never had two kids before. That is to say that I really didn’t know how they would act around each other (although I do have siblings of my own, but I don’t really remember that far back). Most, if not all, books and movies tell me that the older sibling would occasionally feel a little jealous or angry at the new baby. This sort of makes sense, at least to an adult, so it seemed reasonable. However, most people I know with a couple of kids said that the older one pretty much ignores the infant.

I don’t know if our situation is unique or what, but Evie had a totally different reaction altogether: an unceasing love so strong, that it threatens to smother Oliver!

Evie is constantly kissing and whispering sweet nothings to him. Every night she hugs him and says, “I love you Oliver!” in the most reverent tones. She gets so upset when he cries and always tries to make him feel better. She just can’t help it; if she sees him, she just *has* to smooch him. We are often telling her, “Okay, back up!”, “Give him some air!”, or “Okay honey, but he’s sleeping right now!” If I had a dime for every time she’s woken up or upset him when he was doing perfectly well on his own, I’d be able to hire a nanny to keep her at bay 24/7.

The thing is, you feel bad telling her to stop loving her brother so much. You feel a little silly when you realize you’ve been angrily yelling, “Evie, stop smooching him! He’s sleeping! I’ll tell you when you can kiss him!” On the other hand, she does occasionally attempt to literally smother him with love.

One time we were reading a “now you’re a big sister” book and there was a section about how sometimes you might get mad or jealous of the baby. I asked her if she ever felt that way. She looked at me as if I were speaking another language. I asked her again and told her it was okay if she felt that way. She looked like maybe she would cry that I would even ask her that. I quickly changed the subject. No need to put thoughts in her head that clearly weren’t there!

So anyway, if we have any problem in this family, it’s too much love. I don’t know how long it will last, but, since we’re approaching the 2 month mark, it looks like it is here for a little while at least. There are worse problems to have.