Hello Mudduh Hello Fadduh: ILX Rolling Parenting Thread

we have a 16-month-old son, named z0ller, or Z, who was born three months premature and spent 90 days in the hospital before coming home (not the best 3 months of my life) -- but who has been completely healthy and happy ever since. we still adjust his age for, you know, evaluative purposes, because he's more like a 13-month-old than a 16-month-old, but obviously that'll matter less and less with time.

anyway, we split his care. because i mostly work evenings (and weekends) and have time off midweek, we only need a nanny two days a week, which is nice. (and way more affordable -- it would be hard to pay for 5 days of child care.) where he's at, development wise -- still crawling, but also "cruising" (walking around by holding onto things, i didn't know there was actually a verb for it, i feel weird when i tell people my son is cruising...). he'll walk three or four steps unassisted before teetering. i guess he'll be walking outright in not too long, but i'm not in a hurry. he's hard enough to keep track of as it is. no real words yet, except possibly "ba" for bath -- my wife wants to give him credit for this, i'm not totally convinced -- but lots of babbling. and he completely loves music. he's obsessed with my guitar, so we bought him a small guitar and a ukelele of his own, which he'll sit and strum, kind of adorable.

um, i'll shut up for the moment because i could probably write about him for hours. but that's the basics.

my parent profile: a son in grade two, a daughter in grade five

son's obsessions: the color blue, becoming a broadway star, ulysses s. grant, legos and bionicles, judaism, the eruption of mt. vesuvius, the state of north carolina, swords, narnia, beetle bailey, time warp trio, the four tops' greatest hits album, stuffed animals, the milwaukee brewers (but maybe not so much now that junior spivey and lyle overbay, his two favorite players, are gone)

daughter's activities: youth choir, piano lessons and recitals, soccer, hebrew school, sunday school, school safety patrol, exchanging e-cards and chain letters and joke emails with her friends, watching reruns of 'felicity' and 'gilmore girls' with her mom and premiership matches on saturday morning with me

Everyone always says "Oh, they're lovely at that age" no matter what age they may be. Like it's all going to go horribly rotten any time soon.

I say they're wrong, and we'll be pals for life. SO there!

Sarah's the only part of my life I'm not stressed to a frazzle about right now. I don't know how many parents of teens can say that.

Everyone always says "Oh, they're lovely at that age" no matter what age they may be. Like it's all going to go horribly rotten any time soon.
I say they're wrong, and we'll be pals for life. SO there!

I like this a lot, and agree.

Eats well - there's little we've given her she hasn't wolfed down. Started off in the 9th percentile but now she's in the 50th (20lbs).

Illnesses - bout of gastro when she was 8 months, frequent colds (especially since she started being more social with the local babes) including one nasty chest infection which was our first tentative foray into medicating the child. Obviously she's hooked on amoxicillin now.

One night when her chesty cough was keeping her awake we brought her to bed with us (for the first time since she was about 15 days old) and she rewarded us with "Mumma". We nearly phoned the papers. "Dadda" and "Yeah" (or its infinitely cuter variant "Yeth") have followed but, for all her freeform babble, she's not yet pointing and naming. She can sing the Banana Splits theme though - or a Coltrane-style reimagining of it anyway. Disappointingly, she really doesn't like the spin cycle on the washing machine or the sound of the vacuum cleaner; maybe she'll grow to love the drone like her dad.

Slept wonderfully well for the first 7 months but since the onset of teething she has at least one bad night once a week. Naps twice a day if we're lucky; Saturday we give her breakfast in bed with us and she drifts off after a bout of larking about. Saturdays are ace.

She'll dance (an up-and-down hip wiggle) to practically anything with any semblance of melody or rhythm. If I clap out a beat, Steve Reich style, her face lights up and she starts strutting her stuff. She's lost in music.

My wife was meant to return to work full-time a few weeks ago but the childcare options just weren't affordable; instead, I work full-time and she freelances (overspill from my job, actually) - she grabs the laptop every Ava naptime and also between 9 and midnight most nights. It's tough but there's no other way to make ends meet.

Here's a little picture of her...

ihttp://static.flickr.com/36/74747750_59f6ce8c34_m.jpg

She can be the sweetest or most insufferable creature ever at any given moment. But I love her to pieces all the same.

My wife's home with her while I "bring home the bacon."

Lola loves to dance, and my wife has recently been playing a lot of latin jazz, the gypsy kings and the soundtrack to the last temptation of christ, which lola loves!

We're trying to potty train. It was going great a few weeks ago, but lola has lost all interest in using the potty at this point. Not sure what to do now.

Tons more stuff going on, but I'll leave it there.

Louis is seven weeks today. He does not have colic. VICTORY.

Here he is from a week ago:
http://static.flickr.com/13/89302126_e39276305a.jpg

The thing I worry about now: we let her sleep 5 and a half hours (and even a bit longer) during the night. We've been told that it should be five max, so are we being selfish letting her sleep longer? Worry? Me? Oh yeah. :-)

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Here she was about three minutes old.

(Can I just say posting here on this thread is freaky but also makes me insanely happy! I AM A MOMMA! :-) )

Louis vs. Ophelia CUETNESS FITE!

ava is lovely, wow.

People who are into it are really into it (and I can see why), people who aren't, just aren't. It's hard to say there's an average american view toward it. My husband has two brothers and neither of their wives breastfed, and neither did my mother-in-law, so she was asking a lot of questions. She thought I must not be producing enough milk when we said he ate every two hours (actually I am producing too much, it's just that it gets digested more quickly than formula) etc etc. Not exactly supportive but not discouraging either, it's like it's just another weird thing I do.

If your experience is similar to mine, Nathalie, you're just getting past the hardest part, where everything hurts and you're both figuring things out. I remember in the third week it suddenly turned into the most awesome thing ever. I can't imagine fiddling with a bottle and formula every time the kid cries, he's pissed off enough by waiting until I get a boob out.

The golden rule regarding sleeping/feeding is if the kid is making enough poop and pee, don't worry about how often they eat. If they're not 'producing' enough, it's possible that they're not eating enough and don't have the energy to wake up. Enjoy the long stretches of sleep. Louis does pretty well in this regard too. I sleep with him in my bed because he goes longer between night feedings that way--only wakes up once or twice. And it's so nice to cuddle with him. Sleeping with a baby is a bit controversial but I'm going with anything that makes the family happy.

My wife tried breastfeeding, but didn't take to it and we switched to similac after 2 weeks or so.

Here's a picture of him at Halloween, hope this works. If for some reason it doesn't, will anybody be kind enough to tell me how to post pics?

ihttp://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/tcbeing4/detail?.dir=5759&.dnm=5a75.jpg&.src=ph

3rd grader began reading before she was four, and read The Secret Garden and The Wizard of Oz the summer before going into Kindergarten. She still reads constantly, but now she reads crap like Mary Kate & Ashley and Hillary Duff adventures (blech). She had a part in the school play a few months ago and now is convinced that she wants to be a drama queen, so we're getting her in classes soon.

Kindergartener is the typical boy. He likes bugs and boogers and annoying his sister. He is quite possibly the biggest dork ever. I have a little media file of him dancing in a poodle skirt, water socks, and a bridal veil to the Miami Vice theme song. He likes to make everyone laugh and he's friends with everyone.

Baby is still a baby. She screams and laughs and punches and spits mashed squash all over the dining room. She rolls and rolls but has yet to fall off anything. She can almost sit up by herself. And she's huge. Last doctor visit she weighed 18 pounds. I think she's in the 90% for weight and only 25% for height. But all my kids were porkers that evened out when they started walking. So I don't care. I'll keep feeding her when she's hungry.

http://homepage.mac.com/rebmcdowell/.Pictures/Photo%20Album%20Pictures/2006-01-13%2009.25.54%20-0800/Image-0FE7D829845511DA.jpg

One step-son, Sean who is 29. One daughter, Sarah who turned 24 this week. One step-daughter, Carolyn who is 23. One son, Jordan who is 22.

Sean and Carolyn live in Seattle and work for the same commercial printer. They are both heavily into bikes. Sean does beautiful things with flowers and did the arrangements for our wedding 2 years ago. Carolyn did do wonderful black and white photography, but got bored of it. She's studying urban environmental planning, off and on. I met them for the first time a few months after I began dating their father, when they came to a holiday party, and I got the opportunity to really get to know Carolyn when she lived with us for 2 years.

Sarah is in the master's program at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, studying Spanish and focusing on translation theory. Her bachelor's degree is in Spanish and art. She's engaged (which troubles me), and they were to marry last year, but have postponed it indefinitely. We are going to Las Vegas next weekend to see her.

Jordan lives in Florida and is a business analyst for a bank. He doesn't call his mother nearly enough, and I get panicky occasionally when I don't hear from him for months on end.

From 1996 - 1999, I had a job that required incessant travel. Fortunately, I was able to take Sarah and Jordan with me on several long trips, including one of 4 weeks to various parts of Australia (Sydney and Darwin mostly). We are all very computer-literate and began keeping in contact electronically. In 1999, I made the wretching decision to divorce their father, and I moved from AZ to Seattle. Due to their school situation, the kids stayed in AZ with their father, visiting me for summers and occasionally at holidays. After Sarah began college, Jordan began failing school. Everything, including driver's ed. He spent his life, 20 hours a day, on-line playing Everquest. His father, who has his own problems, didn't notice and when he did, didn't know what to do. After a summer staying with us in Seattle, Jordan decided to stay with us, opting to get a GED and try community college and working. He is a self-taught programmer. Due to his incessant gaming, he can type (accurately) 180 wpm, so eventually he got a job doing data entry for a bank. This repetitive work bored him, so he wrote a few programs to handle the task. Someone noticed he was processing several thousand times the data of anyone else, and now he's doing well for himself with them.

Except for a few months of maternity leave, I worked. When we moved to AZ (ca. 1990), their father stayed home with them while I worked. This worked out well for the kids, but not so for him or our situation. Anyway, they have turned out well, and I'm immensely proud of them.

Kids are totally underrated.

Sounds good to me. Ava's never had much of a problem filling that nappy.

Sleeping with a baby is a bit controversial but I'm going with anything that makes the family happy.

It just seemed like the obvious solution when it was clear she wouldn't settle from day one in the cot; we were nervous about it but it seems almost as there's some invisible force preventing you from rolling over during the night. We only did it for a couple of weeks, then she graduated to the bassinet at her mum's side of the bed, then to the end of the bed, then to the bassinet inside the cot and, finally, after maybe 6-7 weeks, to the cot all on her ownio next door. We felt like we'd really accomplished something!

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/tcbeing4/detail?.dir=5759&.dnm=5a75.jpg&.src=ph

Can we talk about the childcare situation? My wife and I both work, but currently have the luxury of 'working from home' one day a week each, so oliver is at daycare the rest of the week. This will not last, as work is suffering for both of us. I like having him in daycare for social reasons, and he seems to love it, but I HATE that he (and us) are sick ALL THE TIME! What are your childcare solutions? Is the ultimate really to have one parent home all day with the kid(s), or is this a myth of a previous generation?

Rightclick on the photo and choose to Copy image location.
In your post, type (without the space between the < and the img), then paste the photo link, then type (again, without the space).

http://us.f2.yahoofs.com/users/41cb082fz7929dc0b/5759/__sr_/5a75.jpg?phQUk2DBAcf4T1jX

Kids get sick a lot no matter what. Yeah, daycare is a disease incubator but they are going to run across disease in kindergarten.

Got another one in the pipeline - due July.

With my first son, we started at 18 months and tried hard for 45 days but he just couldn't do it...we tried this early because his brother was on the way and we thought it would be great to only buy one set of diapers. He ended up getting trained at 25 months. Our second son got it at 23 months. Up until the 1950s, 90% of kids were potty trained at two. The advent of disposable diapers changed everything because a) it's harder for kids to discern that they're wet, b) when they do get wet, the diaper doesn't get uncomfortable and c) parents are either lazy or don't get any help from their childcare provider.

RAH TEENY FOR BREASTFEEDING!

http://www.gushertech.com/potm/images/photo5.jpg

thanks don and congrats on your new one. I do really enjoy breastfeeding but it can be hard sometimes, totally no judgement on anyone who goes the formula route. But it is so urgent and key that you have lots of support and education--my trials have been pretty minor and I was still ready to throw in the towel plenty of times. I think we've got the hang of it now, and I hope I can breastfeed my little guy for a while. I'm not sure if my oversupply problems will resolve themselves or not, and I've read that kids will often self-wean early in this situation--they get tired of the fire hose when they start and can't effectively nurse for comfort when the boob is empty because it never really gets empty and they overfeed. Nursing for long stretches on just one side has helped a lot. But if I hadn't had the internet I would have never figured it out.

I did for both with a diaper service and these wool covers called BioBottoms. We had a nanny at home (we lived in a trailer! I paid more for childcare than we did for housing.) until Jordan was 6 months old - at that point, they both went to daycare. Sarah was potty-trained, but Jordan had to go into disposables. More expensive, but definitely more convenient. When my brother was a baby (I was 9 or so), my mom used cloth diapers that we washed. It's a ton of work.

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random thoughts --

breastfeeding: this was a casualty, kind of, of Z's prematurity. my wife dutifully used a pump for the whole 3 months he was in the hospital, refrigerated and took the milk in for the nurses to feed him. but i think it was hard to really get things working at full capacity. physically and psychologically, i think you really need a baby there. (actually, the psychological part of it was really interesting. you think it's just some automatic thing, turn it on and it works, but it's way more complicated.) when he came home, he did breastfeed for a few months, but it was never enough to fully feed him and over time just tapered off. my wife was really sad when it ended.

sleeping: we've been co-sleepers, but we're working him toward the crib finally. he goes in there at least half the night. it's funny, we didn't start out intending to do have him in the bed, but it was so much easier initially, and once everybody gets used to it then it's kind of hard to just kick him out. (also, i have a friend who wrote a book on "attachment parenting" who's very pro-co-sleeping, so that helped reassure me.) we never worried about rolling over on him, because he came home from the hospital with a repiration and heart monitor that we had to hook him up to every night (preemies being at risk for apnea, etc), so we had an alarm that would go off if anything went wrong. we had that monitor for about 5 months, and by then he was big enough that it didn't seem like a concern.

of course, now he's even bigger and he's starting to take up serious bed space, plus the rolling and kicking, so it's definitely time for him to be in his own bed. it's kind of sad in a way, tho -- we're both used to him being there, it's so sweet to wake up in the middle of hte night and find him cuddled against you. i know there are people who freak out about babies in the bed, but it seems completely natural to me. it must be how babies were raised for thousands of years, before someone invented cribs.

xpost:
my mom used cloth diapers on my little brother. he's 12 years younger than me, so my sister and i changed and washed a LOT of those things. tellingly, neither of us use them for our own kids...

It's a nice ideal to have a natural birth with no painkillers or other interventions, but personally I'll take the epidural (or at least the option), the painkiller for stitches, and the other comforts of modern existence (like D & Cs, done with anesthesia).

I guess I just find those radical midvives frustrating because they seem determined to ignore the experiences of a large number of women who not only want but desperately need medical intervention (like me).

I knew J. was going to come fast because Alex was quick for a first baby; I was actually a bit worried about giving birth in my car! I didn't think the car was going to recover from that kind of experience, so was glad that didn't happen.

In my small city, you could have a home birth, but you'd be hard pressed to find an RN to attend it. However, there are Certified Nurse Midwives who deliver in the hospital in a town that is close. You might be able to find a lay midwife, but I think my acquaintances who did have home births did it themselves (I knew them through La Leche League).

I've had problems with births, so if I were going to do it again, I'd stick with an OB/GYN. Others might feel most comfortable with a general practioner who delivers babies.

Northfield offers some of the options, but not all; if I wanted to give birth with a CN-M, I'd have to drive at least 20 miles to another town.

As for a home birth - I think it can be good, but if things start to go sour, it can be pretty horrible. Some friends of ours had a stillbirth because the midwife kept insisting that everything was fine.

we just went through four days of misery; both baby and mom had the flu. quite scary though he never got a high fever, but he was verging on dehydration most of the time, and the liquidy nasty poos he sprayed all over himself, the crib, and everything else on a nearly hourly basis had to be seen and smelled to be believed. holy god.

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A little drunk. Just had dinner with my boys and one most excellent girlfriend. Sent them home with all the leftovers( stuffed shells).

Oh, Nath, sorry to hear about your trip. Glad you got there safe.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/145/378158253_e11e0db032.jpg?v=0

Check us out yo! In Nakameguro, my parents' flat.

Sorry your travelling was so rough, nath. Are those your parents in the photo?

Kids getting ill is too scary.

Of course, Owen didn't seem to mind:
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My older son had a strangulated small-bowel when he was 19. It was a couple of days of test and torture before they doctor figured out what was causing his terrible pain. I was climbing into the hospital bed and holding him while he cried, morphine notwithstanding. Finally a CAT scan revealed the problem and he had middle-of-the-night emergency surgery. The small bowel had turned blue, and would have perforated by morning. He now has a scar from above his navel down to his pubic bone.
WORST TIME OF MY LIFE.

If I had read the last few posts before I had kids, I might not have had kids.

I couldn't watch. My husband did. He said it was a slow drip, like a maple tree being tapped.

I had one of those when I was six. I just remember being in this tiny, hot room with three nurses lying on top of me to keep me still. I was terrified. When they wheeled me back to my room the doctor told my mother I was "a very uncooperative child". :(