Now what?

When Chris and I left the hospital after Jack was born, I thought, “How can they let us walk out of here with a BABY?  We have no idea what we’re doing!”

I read a lot of blogs/journals by people who have kids, and oftentimes they’d write things like “Susie’s favorite food is Greek yogurt,” or “It was time to switch Jimmy from two naps to one,” and I’d think……… How do they know?  How will I ever learn these parts of parenting?

I’ve read some parenting books, but on the whole I don’t think they’ve guided much of my behavior.  Talking to my mom and sister, and my friends who have kids, certainly has influenced me.  But a lot of it just seems to happen of its own accord.  It turns out a lot of my opinions about how to raise Jack, and how our daily lives should go, was already in me.

I certainly don’t mean to say I have it figured out, or that I never think “What the heck are we going to do about this?” or “Boy, that was the wrong thing to say.”  It’s just that some of those little things that filled me with anxiety before I had Jack, have largely been non-issues.  We learn as we go.

How did I know when Jack needed to go from 2 naps to 1?  He told me, I guess.  He stopped taking his afternoon nap; he had trouble falling asleep for his morning nap; we tried some 1-nap days and it seemed to work out.  It didn’t happen in one day, and there was back and forth, but it happened.

Thankfully, so far Chris and I have been pretty much on the same page about the day-to-day raising of Jack.  I imagine that we’ll have conflicts as the years go by, but that’s ok.  We’ll learn it as we go!

Contrasts

Yesterday Jack and I went down to my friend Lisa’s for the day.  Her son, Jon, is 4.5 months younger than Jack, and we try and get together once a week.  Jack was fine in the morning, and I kept reminding him we were leaving soon.  When it was time to go, he helped me put his crayons away, and then when I asked him to get his shoes and socks, he started freaking out.

He was shrieking and crying and hanging on to my legs, didn’t want to put his shoes on, tried to stop me from going out the door to the garage.  I finally had to put him into the car seat forcibly.  That’s no picnic for either of us.  I figured once we got on the way he’d be fine, but he cried on and off the whole drive down.  When we got to Lisa’s neighborhood, he calmed down, and after I got him out of the car, he ran to meet Lisa when she opened the door.  He was perfectly happy all day, then cried again off and on on the drive home.

I thought he might be so upset because he was afraid we were going back to the gym childcare!  But maybe that’s just me projecting.

This morning he was good as gold, even helping me put on his diaper.  We went off to preschool without a hitch, but he was unusually clingy there.  Most of the time he doesn’t even look back, but goes off to play.  Today he kept coming back to find me (I was on the art station) and was crying a couple of times.  He didn’t want to do a handprint.  He did play by himself eventually, but it was just a different Jack.

Words

Jack’s been saying more words lately.  Very few of them are clear enough to be understandable out of context, but there are a bunch that are recognizable to me and Chris:  bath, bird, hat, hot, more, tea, house, moon, ball, bowl, Jack, milk.  (And of course Mama and Dada.)

Words he may be saying but I’m not positive:  truck, car, chair, bubble, socks, up.

Signs:  more, banana, bread, bus, train, down, cheese, milk.

Sound words:  tick/tock, moo, meow, baa, ssss (for snake), neigh, bzzzz (the noise the washing machine makes when the buzzer goes off).

If I had to pick his “first” word, besides Mama and Dada, I think I’d go with “bath”.

I am sure I will think of more later….

NaBloPoMo

Whoops… completely forgot I signed up to do NaBloPoMo this month (that’s National Blog Posting Month).  You’re supposed to write an entry for each day of November.  Oh well.

Today was a milestone:  I dropped Jack off at the childcare center at the gym, while I went swimming with my sister.

The good news is:  he was never upset enough that they had to come get me.  The not-as-good news:  he cried when I left him (not a big surprise there), and when I came back to pick him up, he was in the “quiet” room, in a swing.

A swing?  They put 18-month olds in the swing?  She said he didn’t seem to want to play and was very mellow and seemed happy in the swing.   I have to admit, I’m not really comfortable with that.  Jack’s a pretty active guy, in general.  At pre-school, he roams all over the place and hardly ever checks in with me.

He’s on the borderline between the pre-toddler group there and the toddler group, so I think next time I will ask if he can go in the toddler group, and please to not use the swing.

He was very upset when I walked in to pick him up, but the woman told me he’d been fine most of the time.

Not looking forward to the next time we give it a try… but I am hopeful once he’s gone a couple of times, and realizes there are lots of fun toys to play with, he’ll be ok with it.

Tiny Ninja

Tiny Ninja

For last year’s Halloween, Jack dressed up as a Space Shuttle Commander.  This year he was a ninja.  I got the idea when my 7-year-old niece Molly put Jack’s hair in a topknot; he was also wearing a bib that had stiff shoulders, and it made me think of a samurai.  Didn’t find a samurai outfit, but the ninja one was close enough.

Chris’s parents just came over for a 2-week visit.  We visited the (relatively) new California Academy of Sciences, went to Walnut Creek to see my family, and visited the pumpkin patch in Half Moon Bay.  They came along to Jack’s preschool, and spent lots of hours playing with him.  He really bonded with them and liked to hold his Grandad’s arm while he sat next to him at the table, and snuggle up to Grandma Jenny to read books.  He did lots of scribbling with Grandad, and Grandma Jenny took him on walks in the stroller.  He also learned how to say “tea”.   I wish we could see the

Grandad, Jack, Grandma Jenny

m more often.

Jack is still surprising me with what he knows.  Yesterday I had to close the cats up in the study for a bit, and I told Jack I

was taking the litterbox upstairs.  When I came back down, he’d ca

rried the cats’ water and food bowls over to the stairs, ready for me to take up as well!  He managed to spill water everyw

here, but I thought it was hilarious… it’s just another reminder at how well kids are observing everything we do.

On Wednesday, I went down to Stanford University, to participate in a research study at the Center for Infant

Studies.  I held Jack in my lap while he looked at pictures on a big screen, and they tracked his gaze while saying words with a Spanish accent.  I had to wear dark glasses so I wouldn’t influence him, so I have no idea what he was really looking at.  We’ll go back for one more visit next week.

As always, I think the current age is the best.  18 months rules!

18 Months

Jack is 18 months old today.  As always…. how did he get to be a year and a half already??

He continues to amaze me with all the things he’s learning.  He is getting very good at communicating his wants, even though he doesn’t have a lot of words.  He has created some of his own signs, like doing the “Wheels on the Bus” motion to mean bus.  He laughs a lot.  He wants to do a lot of things on his own, like setting the table with his placemat and fork and knife.

We’re still going to a cooperative preschool once a week, and he spends a lot of time shoveling gravel into containers and having tea parties at the picnic table.  We got a water/sand table for the backyard, and he loves to get soaking wet splashing around.

His sleeping has been a little more hit and miss.  He’s had a cough for almost three months (I took him to the doctor; she said “either allergies or a virus, not much to be done”) and sometimes it wakes him (and me!) up at night.  We are mostly over the nap strike, I think; most days he goes down without too much fuss.

He’s gotten a little more particular with his food, though I still wouldn’t call him picky.  Some days he eats everything in sight; some days he won’t touch his dinner.  I think that’s pretty normal todder behavior.

Overall, he’s still a pretty easygoing guy, with the occasional tantrum thrown in.  We’re so lucky to have him in our lives.

No-Nap Jack

Umm…… I guess WordPress ate my post.  I wrote a bunch of stuff about how Jack hasn’t napped much this week.  On Tuesday he didn’t nap for even one second.  What is the deal?

Too tired to write it all again…

A Parenting Low

This morning was a new low for me in the parenting department.  Lately, it’s been very difficult to change Jack’s diaper.  Sometimes he wriggles and squirms so much, it’s just impossible to get the diaper on him.  Usually, some singing, or playing with a toy, or asking him to point out the things on the wallpaper border next to the changing table, will serve to distract him, but sometimes it’s just an epic battle.

This morning was one of those times.  He was crying, and I was patient at first, but I was also in a hurry because we were meeting up with a friend.  I started getting really mad.  Finally I picked him up and put him on the floor, diaperless, and went out of the room, slamming the gate behind me.  When I went back in, he was happy as a clam, running around half-naked, but I scooped him up to put him on the changing table again and the battle resumed.

I was just so ANGRY.  I got the diaper on him (though not very well) and got him dressed and we left, and I was still steaming.  It wasn’t good… I mean, he’s old enough to understand that I want him to not squirm so much when I put on his diaper, but he’s not old enough to understand why it matters, or why I’m angry.  So now I just feel bad.

I think it was compounded by the fact I was in a hurry.  Next time I find myself getting this angry, I should just let him be in his room until I’ve totally calmed down, and just be late.

Generally, I don’t think I have much of a temper.  I don’t know why this was such a trigger.

A Night Away

Last weekend, I went on an overnight trip with my friend Lisa, to Monterey.  Back in February I came up with the plan for us to take a little trip on our own, and take a break from being moms.  (Lisa’s son Jon is 4.5 months younger than Jack.)  We settled on Monterey, and Lisa did all the planning.  She picked out a great hotel and dinner restaurant, and booked us for a 3-hour kayking tour for Sunday morning.

We drove down late afternoon on Saturday, checked in, and had a quick workout at the hotel gym, then sat in the hot tub.  We went out to dinner at the Montrio Bistro, which was delicious.  I had my first alcoholic beverage in.. almost 5 years?  I can’t remember for sure.  (I’m not a big drinker.)

Sunday morning we got up and walked over to the kayak place.  There were three other people, plus the guide, on our tour.  He gave us a lesson on the beach, and then we were off.  Lisa and I shared a kayak.  She’s been kayaking once before, so she went in back and had the lucky job of using her feet to control the rudder.  We paddled out and around the boats and around the jetty.  As we were nearing the jetty, we saw a sea lion surface right in front of us.  We started pointing and squealing, forgetting we were in the boat lane!  The guide started yelling at us to paddle so we got out of there.

We also saw otters, seals, jellyfish, and cormorants.  The trip was cut a little bit short because one of the other people got seasick, but I didn’t really mind.. paddling was hard work!  It was tons of fun.

Afterward we cleaned up at the hotel, checked out, and had a nice brunch before heading home.  I was away 29 hours, the longest time yet.  It felt a little funny to be away, but we had a great time.  Chris and Jack had a nice time, too.  I asked Chris how it went, and he said, “It was easy,” so I guess I’ll be doing this more often!

Body Parts

Today I had a follow-up with the knee doctor to go over the results of my bone density scan.  The good news is, it looked pretty normal, so no need for action there.  The not-so-good news is that he doesn’t know what caused my right knee stress fracture, nor really what to do about it.  He gave me a prescription for some general knee physical therapy, and a followup MRI, but.. I have my doubts it’ll help.  I mean, I had the same pain a year ago, took a year off, and it came back.. so I don’t see why another month of taking it easy / PT will help.  But I’ll give it a go.

In other news, Monday was my last day of nursing.  So far it has been going just fine; Jack has some (cow’s milk) in the morning before breakfast and doesn’t seem to notice the lack of nursing.  It also means we change up the morning routine a little:  on weekdays, I got up and nursed him and, unless I was exceptionally tired, I’d take him downstairs and make his breakfast.  Now, we’re going to switch off every other weekday and I can stay in bed while Chris gets up!  Woo hoo!  Of course, this morning, it was Chris’s turn and Jack decided to sleep in til 8, so I was the one who did his breakfast anyway.  When it’s my turn he wakes up at 6:45.   What’s up with that?

It does mean however I’ll give up one of my weekend sleep in days, and let Chris either sleep in or get up and have some time to himself.  He doesn’t care about sleeping in as much as I do.

Photos are up for Hawaii and Twain Harte.  Some day, I will post videos, too.