September 19, 2018
Halfway to four
How did we survive 3 and a half years? Whew. What a journey this has been. I like JB a whole lot and there are a lot of days I don’t enjoy zir company so very much because it’s so frustrating just getting shoes on zir feet every morning why does this have to be an argument every single morning –
but I guess we’ll keep zir.
Hands on your belly!
Kitchen safety is harder to teach to an antsy 3 year old than I expected. I want JB to help and to encourage that zest for helping but also don’t want zir to catch on fire or slice off a finger, so instead of saying “Don’t touch X” which never ever ever EVER works, we do “hands on your belly!”
When we’re standing next to the stove together, giving zir wandering hands a docking station of BELLY! is the only thing that prevents zir from dipping hands into boiling water to fish out that one floating dumping, or stirring the pasta prematurely, or grabbing the pot handle and upending its contents all over both of us. (more…)
August 15, 2018
Looking Backward
Now that this particular transition is in the rearview mirror, I can breathe easy and be ever so grateful that we never had any trouble with reflux or transitioning JB from bottles to sippy cups to regular cups. (Ze still wanted zir sippy as recently as two months ago but just for fun, because rummaging through the cabinets gives zir nostalgia like it gives me, and has wholeheartedly embraced the late-introduced camelbak.)
A cousin is struggling with their kid’s transition away from bottles. They’re going on three and still refuses milk in anything but bottles and that reminded me that at least on that point, we were incredibly lucky. When I gave JB zir first couple of sippies just to play with around a year, ze chewed up the spout enthusiastically, then THERE IS WATER IN HERE. WHOA!
At around 14 months, I decided that traveling with bottles again sounded awful, so we were ditching the bottles. We started giving only water in bottles, and milk in sippies, then I started giving only water in sippies before naps because we were supposed to avoid teeth rotting from having milk before sleeping. Picky though ze was about many other things, this was a non issue. Within a week, the bottles were phased out entirely and the next time I heard a peep about bottles was when ze discovered the bottles stashed in the closet a year later and was Extremely Curious about what they were and why they were stashed. Thank goodness we had that bit easy.
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July 18, 2018
Not quite peer pressure
We don’t do a LOT of socializing and play dates, but we accept 2-3 birthday invitations a year from JB’s classmates. In some, the whole class is invited for a big bash at some place that caters to kids, which is probably at least a few hundred dollars, and for some, it’s just a family affair with a small group of classmates but still far fancier than any birthday party that we’ve had for ourselves in the past ten years.
That includes when we fed 18 people at a taco party for PiC!
Either way, they’ve got JB thinking about all the kids that ze wants to invite to zir party. Um … what party? We weren’t planning on doing any real parties for a while, our house still isn’t in any shape for that kind of entertaining. The indoors is simply too small to have more than 7 adults and 2 kids at one time, comfortably.
One day, the yard might be perhaps, but zir birthday is also not in September in those few weeks of the year that may be reliably counted on for warm weather and thus suitable for an outdoor / backyard fun thing. If it were, we’d reserve a BBQ at the local parks and let the kids run wild for not too much money there. But it’s not. I’m pondering what kind of compromise would make sense for a fun birthday that doesn’t cost $300 and a quarter of my brain. It’s not around the corner but if I don’t think now, nothing will happen by the time zir birthday arrives. I know me.
I’m always in favor of tacos again but then again, when am I not in favor of tacos?
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June 6, 2018
Imagination Town
Ever since spending time with a pregnant Auntie Crystal, JB has been pretending that ze has a baby in zir belly. Ze also pretends that PiC and I do too. It’s a little weird but whatever, we play along. Ze also enjoys reassigning our genders, for some reason (YOU da mommy, and you a BOY. YOU da daddy, and you da GIRL). Not sure where that came from.
Oh and ze also has an invisible baby hamster that gets wrapped up in zir favorite blanket, or goes missing every so often. Invisible baby hamster gets handed to me at the end of the night to “put on Daddy’s belly to keep warm”.
Morning Glory no more
Alas, JB no longer wakes up like a bright lightbulb clicking on. Ze has morphed into me: groggy, grumpy, so not ready for morning to come.
I’ve had to harness all the good cheer that I can find so that I can pass it on to zir and get us all out the door at a reasonable hour. I keep thinking that we really need to outgrow this or else it’s going to make the transition to school really tough. That’s coming up much sooner than I’d like to think.
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May 21, 2018
Meltdown city, continued
We had four glorious days with JB. Ze was calm and cheerful, reasonable, playful and obedient. That was an amazing four days. The OTHER days were soooo much harder. The tantrums of last month? Came to stay.
Ze was so prone to melting down over the most nonsensical reasons, it was incredibly hard to grab hold of my temper with both hands and hang on tight through it all.
We had to be alert for when ze was simply being bratty or when ze was losing ability to reason and react accordingly. One bleak afternoon, overdue for a nap, ze started to melt down AGAIN because ze didn’t WANT to go to put on pajamas, didn’t WANT Daddy, WANT MOMMY! (believe me, if I was the one putting zir to bed, that would be reversed immediately), don’t WANT to read a book.
I grabbed zir vest and dug into the pockets with both hands and told zir to do the same: take out alllll that attitude. Scoop out the grumpy! Pull out all your grouchiness and whining and tears and yucky feelings and dump them on the floor here. I’ll sweep it up later. Go on, pull it all out!
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April 30, 2018
Viral
This flu season is particularly terrible with a death toll. We’d all gotten our flu shots early but we also stayed away from humanity as much as possible. It didn’t save us from the common cold, of course, one of the lesser scourges of having a preschooler attending a daycare where only fevers and vomiting are stay home worthy. Generally it’s ok, we’ve gotten through the worst of it in year one but I’m still pretty cautious and don’t share food and drink with JB if ze is dribbling fluids. We’re really lucky that ze has been relatively robust, certainly more so than I am, and recovers well or has been only lightly touched by most germs but even still, those nights when ze can’t stop coughing rend my heart. Ze is having one such night so I’m sitting up cuddling a bundle of mostly sleeping three year old so that, even if the propping up doesn’t help zir breathing and coughing, ze knows I’m here and loving on zir. It’s almost more for me than zir. I miss my mom fiercely, never more so than when I’m sick or hurting to the point of vomiting, and long to lay my head on her lap. I understand now why she was sad that I didn’t do so as a young adult, when I was busy trying to carry a burden twice my size. At the time, I didn’t think I could afford to need my mom. I had to be strong every minute lest a crack in my shields break them wide open. All the more my loss. I could have gotten and given comfort that I’ll never have again. Now, with my own child, I know to hold on tight on these late nights when maybe all the comfort I can give is being a human pillow. That’s fine. As long as ze still wants me, I’m here to be zir pillow. (more…)
March 14, 2018
Mixed feelings
JB (who definitely needs a new blog name as ze is no longer a baby but probably still The Unstoppable something) is turning 3.
I don’t know how to feel about year 3. Everyone keeps harping on how much harder 3 is over 2, but 2 was pretty dang hard. Didn’t we get a lot of that difficulty out of the way yet? No?
We are exhausted many days keeping up with the mood changes and high spirits. But ze is suddenly so much more capable too! But only if ze is motivated.
We’re having real, if distracted and fractured, conversation punctuated with random Christmas songs and outtakes from one of 4 favorite movies. Ze can help around the house a bit, is interested in the world, is interested in sharing zir thoughts with us.
Learning & responsibilities
New lessons and skills
Generally if you want JB to learn to do anything new, ze is interested. If it’s a repetitive chore, then the shiny tends wears off after the second or third time. That’s not nearly enough time for zir to competently do anything so I like to make up silly little songs to keep zir entertained/interested. Bragging rights naturally top the list of motivations, but ze doesn’t have much to revel in when we’re talking about necessary and not fun things like washing your own hair.
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