Emphasizing the positive
This week, we achieved the following triumphs:
1) I have finally mastered breathing on both sides while swimming the crawl. I have mastered it so beautifully that I can no longer remember which side I used to not be able to breath on at all. Gold stars for me!
2) Dutch has slept in her own bed ALL night for seven of the last eight nights. I had been pondering the issue of her sleep habits (in her bed to start the night, with a parent there until she falls asleep, then getting up in the wee hours and coming to our bed), and considering whether I should take action to get her to stay in her bed before the baby comes. I decided I was just too lazy to do the work of training her, and we have a co-sleeper for the baby anyway, so whatever. We'll make do. But she seems to be making the shift all by herself, with no prompting at all - she's decided she wants to sleep all night in her own bed, and maybe there's been a physiological change. I don't really care what the reason is. I won't be surprised if this turns out to be a temporary change, but I'm enjoying it for now.
Two things about this - the first is that both Cook and I are happy to find that we miss having her in the bed, after years of wanting her out of it. It's lovely to look at her sleeping face in the morning, and to wake up with her tucked against my back. It's even more lovely to not be kicked in the kidneys all night.
The second thing about this is that, in my experience, all the big growing-up changes have happened this way. All my efforts to get her to do things like take naps, poop in the toilet, etc., have, in the end been totally fruitless. She's worked her way around to everything all by herself. I cringe to think about the thousands of hideous hours I spent when she was new, trying to get her to take three 2-hour naps a day, the way All Babies Are Supposed To. I worked SO hard at it, and made both of us miserable, and in the end she has always changed her behavior (particularly in the area of sleeping) when she was ready for it, for mysterious reasons that seem to have nothing to do with any parenting. I finally reconciled myself after a while to this, and once I embraced it, my life got much easier, and I think Dutch's did too. Supernannies and other experts would be horrified by the sort of things I've done - letting Dutch nap on my chest when she was a baby, letting her sleep in our bed half the night for years, stuffing her into a backpack and running errands instead of having her take her alleged 2-hour nap every afternoon at home, giving her a diaper to poop in at her request when she was almost 3, etc. I think they'd say I was letting her manipulate me, and actually doing her harm. And as with every parenting dilemma, half the parents I know are horrified too, and half just shrug and say "well, she won't be sleeping in your bed/pooping in diapers/etc. when she's 18, so who cares?"
This doesn't mean we haven't put (effective) work into parenting. We've taught Dutch some basic manners, and we occasionally make her clean up her room. We've taught her (with the help of many wonderful daycare teachers) that hurting other people is not allowed. She's turned out to be a perfectly fine kid who says "thank you" to the bus driver when she gets off the bus, sleeps through the night (!), eats whatever we've cooked for dinner, uses the toilet appropriately, and doesn't seem have any major sociopathic issues, in spite of her bad table manners. (Those really are our fault.) But the stuff that seems more physical than that, we haven't taught her. We've just tried to set the stage, and then waited for her to arrive on her own time. Pushing things just makes everybody cranky. Life is short, and I've got better things to do (sleeping, baking cookies, reading trashy books, etc.) than try to force my kid into doing something she's truly not ready for yet.
I think Kid #2 is going to really enjoy manipulating us - we're not going to even try to impose our own timetable, this time around. Hopefully s/he really won't be still wearing diapers and sleeping in our bed at age 18.
Speaking of which, I haven't yet provided Kid #2's Secret Fetal Nickname, but this is it: Anaximander.* My mom translates it as "Salamander" and Dutch translates as "My Aximander." Dutch was called Plog** in utero, so we apparently have a tradition of bad Fetal Nicknames, eschewing the adorable classics like "Peanut" or "Bean." But it does make sense to prepare the kid for a childhood of bedtime stories about famous cartographers. I was totally nonplussed one morning when Dutch started telling me about the life of Gerard Mercator.*** Little Anaximander will have a head start.
* You have to skip down to the "cartography" section of that link to read why Cook decided that was a good name - he loves knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
**The secondary inspiration for this is that Bill Lee, in the Ken Burns "Baseball" documentary, seems at one point to be indicating that his dogs are named Plog and Yewpie - Kid #2 is lucky not to be called Yewpie. Cook and I are terrible dorks, and we love Bill Lee.
***He's an interesting guy all on his own, actually, but when you filter his life through the brain of a sleepy preschooler, you get a pretty crazy life story.
1) I have finally mastered breathing on both sides while swimming the crawl. I have mastered it so beautifully that I can no longer remember which side I used to not be able to breath on at all. Gold stars for me!
2) Dutch has slept in her own bed ALL night for seven of the last eight nights. I had been pondering the issue of her sleep habits (in her bed to start the night, with a parent there until she falls asleep, then getting up in the wee hours and coming to our bed), and considering whether I should take action to get her to stay in her bed before the baby comes. I decided I was just too lazy to do the work of training her, and we have a co-sleeper for the baby anyway, so whatever. We'll make do. But she seems to be making the shift all by herself, with no prompting at all - she's decided she wants to sleep all night in her own bed, and maybe there's been a physiological change. I don't really care what the reason is. I won't be surprised if this turns out to be a temporary change, but I'm enjoying it for now.
Two things about this - the first is that both Cook and I are happy to find that we miss having her in the bed, after years of wanting her out of it. It's lovely to look at her sleeping face in the morning, and to wake up with her tucked against my back. It's even more lovely to not be kicked in the kidneys all night.
The second thing about this is that, in my experience, all the big growing-up changes have happened this way. All my efforts to get her to do things like take naps, poop in the toilet, etc., have, in the end been totally fruitless. She's worked her way around to everything all by herself. I cringe to think about the thousands of hideous hours I spent when she was new, trying to get her to take three 2-hour naps a day, the way All Babies Are Supposed To. I worked SO hard at it, and made both of us miserable, and in the end she has always changed her behavior (particularly in the area of sleeping) when she was ready for it, for mysterious reasons that seem to have nothing to do with any parenting. I finally reconciled myself after a while to this, and once I embraced it, my life got much easier, and I think Dutch's did too. Supernannies and other experts would be horrified by the sort of things I've done - letting Dutch nap on my chest when she was a baby, letting her sleep in our bed half the night for years, stuffing her into a backpack and running errands instead of having her take her alleged 2-hour nap every afternoon at home, giving her a diaper to poop in at her request when she was almost 3, etc. I think they'd say I was letting her manipulate me, and actually doing her harm. And as with every parenting dilemma, half the parents I know are horrified too, and half just shrug and say "well, she won't be sleeping in your bed/pooping in diapers/etc. when she's 18, so who cares?"
This doesn't mean we haven't put (effective) work into parenting. We've taught Dutch some basic manners, and we occasionally make her clean up her room. We've taught her (with the help of many wonderful daycare teachers) that hurting other people is not allowed. She's turned out to be a perfectly fine kid who says "thank you" to the bus driver when she gets off the bus, sleeps through the night (!), eats whatever we've cooked for dinner, uses the toilet appropriately, and doesn't seem have any major sociopathic issues, in spite of her bad table manners. (Those really are our fault.) But the stuff that seems more physical than that, we haven't taught her. We've just tried to set the stage, and then waited for her to arrive on her own time. Pushing things just makes everybody cranky. Life is short, and I've got better things to do (sleeping, baking cookies, reading trashy books, etc.) than try to force my kid into doing something she's truly not ready for yet.
I think Kid #2 is going to really enjoy manipulating us - we're not going to even try to impose our own timetable, this time around. Hopefully s/he really won't be still wearing diapers and sleeping in our bed at age 18.
Speaking of which, I haven't yet provided Kid #2's Secret Fetal Nickname, but this is it: Anaximander.* My mom translates it as "Salamander" and Dutch translates as "My Aximander." Dutch was called Plog** in utero, so we apparently have a tradition of bad Fetal Nicknames, eschewing the adorable classics like "Peanut" or "Bean." But it does make sense to prepare the kid for a childhood of bedtime stories about famous cartographers. I was totally nonplussed one morning when Dutch started telling me about the life of Gerard Mercator.*** Little Anaximander will have a head start.
* You have to skip down to the "cartography" section of that link to read why Cook decided that was a good name - he loves knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
**The secondary inspiration for this is that Bill Lee, in the Ken Burns "Baseball" documentary, seems at one point to be indicating that his dogs are named Plog and Yewpie - Kid #2 is lucky not to be called Yewpie. Cook and I are terrible dorks, and we love Bill Lee.
***He's an interesting guy all on his own, actually, but when you filter his life through the brain of a sleepy preschooler, you get a pretty crazy life story.
Comments
Whoa. Dorky.
How wonderful.