productionMaven part deux

We burp in our family. We let it all out unencumbered, when the situation allows for it, and then we say excuse me, regardless of the company we're currently keeping. We've never laughed or made a joke out of burping, we just let it happen, excuse ourselves, and move on. We don't let Parker think that burping is "cute". The other day, she let out a respectibly loud burp, and followed it with "'suse me".

Then followed that by saying, "That was a real Cheerios burp".

And then I proceeded to fall off my chair. I guess she's heard me say that I had a Cheerios burp, and adapted it. To the best of my knowledge, she had not had any Cheerios prior to this expellation.

Yesterday we had a snow day (happy day! spending time with my family in the comfort of my own home!) and at one point P was sitting on my lap, semi-pulling on my most favorite piece of jewelry (aside from my wedding bands and my studs), a short necklace of tiny sterling silver beads strung on a thin silver cord that I bought myself years ago on Newbury Street in Boston. It's the perfect necklace for any time - it's casual, but sometimes the beads look like tiny little pearls, so it can be dressy too.

P was pulling on my necklace, as she sometimes does, and I asked her to be careful. She said "I want it, Mama" and I told her she could have it when I was dead someday. She reacted by saying "I will miss you when you're dead, Mama" and I told her I wouldn't be dead for a long, long time. She then asked me "Well, who will kill you?" And then I was rightly and properly stumped.

I guess I really have to watch what I'm saying to her now.... she has rudamentary understandings of a lot of things, but not a lot of detail. And I'll just have to be careful not to confuse her further until her understanding goes much deeper.

We've been taking swim lessons - by we, I mean Parker is getting a chance to splash & play in a warm kiddie pool, I'm trying to get her to listen to the teacher and participate while she is distracted by all the toys that are in the pool and paying $12 for the priveledge to sing songs about little froggies in the pond. However, I can't complain. She loves being in the water. Loves to play and do 1-2-3-jump and is getting the concept of alternating her arms & legs in the water and kicking and paddling. She's amazing in there, and I'm glad. We spend a lot of time in the summers at my parent's house on the lake and will do a lot on the boat so it's very important that she is not only comfortable around the water, but that she knows what to do in case she falls into the water. There is nothing more tragic than when people drown - especially when they live around the water.

When I was growing up, we spent our summers on our 32' boat. My brother and I lived in our swim suits and I distinctly remember the day when he was stripped of his flippers and lifejacket - he was more than capable of swimming on his own, but he didn't know that because he always had the safety of his flips and his jacket. The screams of protests echoed off the cliffs of the cove that we were docked in, until he finally tried to swim and then he realized the reality of how he could swim.

It's important for Parker to know how to swim and how to be around the water, and I'm glad she's getting the chance to do some swimming in the worst weather of the year. It's fun for me, too, if only to get wet and sit in some warm water. Parker likes to end class by going up the 7' slide and winging down to my waiting arms in the "big pool" (where the water is much cooler).

G and I really, really need to start watching our language.

Last night, after a lovely, spontaneous dinner out, we got home and it was time for P's bath. Well, she prefers a shower, really, which is just fine for all of us. I was telling her to get upstairs and stop playing around downstairs; it was almost 8:00 and we aim for an 8:00 in-bed deadline. She was dawdling and playing with her dolls and fiddle-farting around and after I asked her two or three times, she said "I'm going up there in a minute; don't give me any shit. "

I just about fell over. It's not the swearing, which, yes, yes, is horrible and I am a bad parent for ever swearing around her, etc etc but the fact that she's swearing and using it in proper context is both horrible and fascinating.

Then, to make sure I heard her, as she was heading up the stairs, she re-emphasized "Don't give me any stupid shit!"

Ok then!

This weekend she also dropped the f-bomb a couple of times. Again, horrible; but it was properly used. Hilarious. It's so hard not to laugh and give her any indication that she's stunned me or G: we don't want her to think that this is ok.... but, damn.

I mean: DARN!

Yesterday, in an effort to get some air and to get out of the house, P and I took a walk as it was starting to snow. We decided to go down to the school at the end of our road, and we cut through our neighbor's driveway and across their backyard to get to a path down a very steep hill to get to the school. When we got to the top of the hill, P started to trot down - I told her to be careful, and she said "don't worry, mommy, I'm not going to fall". You know where this is going, right?

So on she goes, and I plod behind, because I know about gravity and hills and all. She clears the little bit on the hill that is exposed shale, gets a little further down, and then - wouldn't you know it - trips on her own feet, does a complete unexpected sommersault, and lands on her back, with her legs folded underneath her. I'm watching this happen in slow-motion... seeing her little body flip over her head, praying that there was not going to be a broken neck or other shattered bones. I got down the hill as fast as I could, without falling myself.

I picked her up and held her close as she wailed and bled on my coat. She had bitten her lip, but there were no teeth missing. The bleeding stopped in short order, and I slowly carried her back up the hill. She told me she couldn't see out of one eye. I put her down, had a look. The eye is a little puffy, but it's all ok. She told me some warm chocolate - not hot - would make her feel better, so that's what we had when we got home, along with some snuggling with her daddy in front of the fire.

Why do the things that could affect your life strongly happen in slow motion? I'm so glad she's ok.

I was driving P to a birthday party yesterday, at her day-care provider's house. On the way, we passed a house that I think does deer processing during hunting season. It's November, it's Vermont, it's crazy fat men mostly drunk wearing camo and hunter orange carrying fully loaded rifles around in the early morning hours. It's hunting season.

(A note; I have nothing against hunters; my dad is one and, while I suspect he does a lot of drinking at hunting camp based on the lists of supplies he used to have me get while driving through New Hampshire - they have duty-free booze & wine there - he also goes to a private club that is gated and the hunters are members and they're not sighting their guns off their front porch at 7:15 on a Saturday morning like a certain neighbor of ours does).

So, pretty much everywhere you look there are deer hanging out to "drip". Last week I was alarmed to be driving up on someone's tail and realizing that there was a freshly killed deer in the back of their truck. It can be gruesome. I much prefer my meat coming in plastic and styrofoam, la la la! No killing involved! But venison is rather tasty. We had some in chili last night.

Back to my story. I was driving P, she was sitting quietly in the backseat, storing up her energy for the ScreamFest that was the party, and we turned and drove past this house that we drive past every day that she goes to school. They had a deer hanging outside, way up from the peak of their garage, out the way of dogs and other wild carnivores. Very quietly, and not asking me, just kind of as a statement, P said: "What the hell is that deer doing?" She was not alarmed, she did not sound sad. Just wondered why there was a deer hanging from someone's house, upside down.

I, on the other hand, almost drove off the road, I was laughing so hard.

We later explained to her the hunting phenomenon, so now she's thinking that there are hunters that are going to get her teddy bear, or something else. She's not scared, just very matter-of-fact about it.

Wait until people start putting up fake deer to decorate for Christmas! Then she'll really be confused!

spiders....


spider destroyers.....


kid-amping sugar-fuel (they got this when they left my house... I'm not stupid)


but they could have this form kid-amping sugar for while they were in the house....


and that caused a lot of running in the new room


sharks...


and corn....


lions and zebras....


a punkin'....


and a princess or two


pile them all on the staircase to get a group photo before everyone starts to leave in the driving rain:


then get dressed up a couple of days later for the real deal trick-or-treating with your tiger buddy




HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

We might have a situation, folks.
T.T., also known as "Ted" and "shee-shee" has run off again. We're not sure if a pet has something to do with his disappearance, or if the small child sabotaged him herself. He was last seen around 1700 last night, when I was in the middle of having a fit (that did not involve the bear), but as of 2000 hours on Wednesday he was no where to be seen. I don't know if, as the Velveteen Rabbit says, he became real (and ran off) because he was so well loved or not, but I've looked in every possible place in the house (I refuse to look in the diaper pail, and if he is in there that's going to require some bleach to remedy the situation), over the course of about 5 hours last night, and I can't find him at all.

If you have seen this bear:


Please redirect him home, because there is a small girl-child who is putting on a brave face and her mother who's heart is breaking a little while he is out galavanting. Hell, I'm probably more upset than she is. But still - bring him home!

A couple of weeks ago, while we were in the throes of the mess that was our home renovations (which reminds me, I need new pictures of that, don't I?), we also didn't have daycare. We switched daycares in the middle of the summer, and got to deal with not one but two weeks of daycare providers being on vacation. Great. To amp it up - just a little - P decided that her naps were optional. After all, she's 2-3/4 years old, so she's not old enough to vote, drink, or work but she can decide if it's naptime or not. When she does go to sleep, sometimes it doesn't happen until 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon, which makes for a challenging 8:00 bedtime.

On one particular day, she thought it would be fun to make me put her to bed three times, and G to put her down twice. We were trying to get work done (what? bills to pay? say it ain't so!). To her credit/defense, there was an awful lot of banging and pounding going on - it's hard to sleep when that's going on.

Finally it was quiet. G went up to check on her, and quickly, urgently whispered that I needed to get up there, pronto. I grabbed the camera, and here's what we found:


Note the fall-out of blankets, books, and stuffed animals all around the room. There was some raging going on up there while she fought off the urge to sleep.

A close-up:


She slept while G moved her quickly into her bed, and slept for a couple of hours. This is the kind of stuff that makes parenting such a challenge and then a reward: you know what's right for the child, the child disagrees heartily and fights it with every fiber of their being. Until they fall over, then you as a parent are once again vindicated as knowing what is right for that little person.

I just wondered what she was doing when she fell asleep - looks kind of like she was walking, then fell asleep mid-stride and fell over, doesn't it?

The girl astonished the hell out of me the other day. We're in the midst of potty-training, and it's going fairly well. But sometimes she's a little lazy, most of the time we are. We're still in full-on diaper usage. She can hoist herself onto the toilet, so usually we have to chase her to get a new diaper on after the deed is done.

But on Friday, we were driving to Maine to my sister-in-law's house, and P had to, well, pee. We asked her to hold it until we got to their house. We get there, grab her out of her car seat, unlock the door, run up the stairs to the only bathroom in the apartment, and she plopped onto the toilet, grabbed ahold... and peed. The child pissed like a racehorse: it went on for quite some time. She had HELD HER PEE, folks, for about 15 minutes. I am so impressed. I think big-girl pants are right around the corner for her.

(and, also: rather embarassed. I'm BLOGGING ABOUT MY CHILD'S BATHROOM HABITS. Good lord.)

Last Friday on our way out of town, G, P and I stopped by a potential new school just north and east of where we live. Some friends send their children there, and they (our friends) are rather selective - one of them in particular, due to a slight developmental problem with their son. Even so, I wasn't sure I would think this school was a good idea. I was prepared to be let down by what I saw, especially after speaking to the owner/director. She's a tad flaky and sounds a little new-agey.

Happily, I was wrong. The school is a Montessori school (anyone know more about this? I don't know much, but the name I know has quite a following) and is set in the middle of this woman's house. She might be a little flaky sounding, but she was peaceful; her one-year-old was, despite having her nap disrupted, was happy and cheerful. The rooms are bright, clean, sunny and welcoming, with age-appropriate developmental toys placed in tidy areas. P was immediately entranced by birdfeeders that were stuck to the glass doors. The cat, Zero, was loving on her as soon as she walked in the door, rubbing her hand with his head and purring.

We were rushed, but got our questions answered. There is no television watching, there are outdoor activities, school in the morning and more playtime in the afternoon. She has a canoe and a tent for the children to play in outside, with more outdoor equipment to come soon. She is $3 more per day than what we are paying. And, most importantly, she has an opening for Monday through Thursday.

We signed on almost immediately. P had a starter day there yesterday, due to the current daycare having to close for yet another family emergency. She will start there next Monday. I think this will be a wonderful place for her to grow and learn and be with her friends. Last night she was a little groggy (late nap), but she was much better about listening, much more pleasant and chatty, and there was far less whining than there is when she goes to the current daycare.

I am so glad that I can check this off my list of things to do. It's a far throw from the other place that I interviewed last week, where the woman said that the kids don't watch tv - she doesn't have cable or a dish - but they watch Disney movies during nap. And also that she doesn't read to them because the kids don't like books. That was an immediate DQ on my end - if you visited my house, you would understand the unnatural relationship I have with books.

(I only wish that the title of this entry referred to a monetary check, but those will come soon!)

This morning my daughter told me that she hated me.... OK, so I was trying to get her to wash her hands after squooshing a spider (Yay! Parker - 1, Spiders - 0 but there are certainly more of them than there are of her). But, really, does this really merit a "hate"?

So she got a time-out, and she screamed and cried, although she did sit in the time-out. Then we had a lovely snuggle, and looked at old pictures of when she was little, cute, and immobile.

Her behavior continues to be a problem on Fridays and the weekends - she picks up some pretty bad habits at daycare, because the daycare provider's son is a PUNK-ASS and future white trash and I just can't stand his behavior. My little blank slate - who is not perfect, I'm not that blind - goes there four days a week, then comes home and is a carbon-copy of him: she talks back, she grunts and demands things, she screams at us, she says no and runs away. I also am aware that this is typical 2-1/2 year old behavior. G and I tell her that that behavior is not acceptible: she needs to ask us using her words and her manners, and not cry and have tantrums. She is praised and applauded when she does things right, and we try to ignore and/or explain why the bad things are not ok. By Sunday, she is fine, and back to being pleasant, well-rested, and using her manners (for the most part), then it starts all over again on Monday.

I know this is a phase, and what she is learning is that in certain places, certain behavior is acceptable, and in other places it is not at all ok. There is a lesson here. She will act differently with other people than she acts with me. It's the trade-off of having her go to daycare (that said, it is absolutely necessary that she go to daycare, we can't have one of us work and the other be a stay-at-home-parent). I just have to remember to breathe, remember that she is just 2-1/2, and remember that she is still my sweet girl. She'll grow out of it, eventually.

(She's also getting out of her crib: this morning when she heard us awake and talking, she came in and said "good morning!". That was weird. She was out of bed before we were.)

Because when I was playing my new box set of The Clash (is it wrong that I bought it for $16.99 at Costco?), riding home in the car, after each song she demanded "More Moosic, Mommy!"

And, the other night when I was fixing dinner, she and G were dancing to The Pixies and Frank Black CDs, and she was squealing with delight.

I love that she likes our "moosic", instead of the pablum that kids are fed these days. If I had to listen to The Wiggles or Elmo singing pedantic songs every time we went in the car, or wanted music in the house, I think I would go a little mental.

Parker has 2 new words, one of which has sprouted over the last few minutes: awesome and goddammit. I'm going to have to work on eliminating that latter one.

G and I have had to get creative lately with P, because for about 2 weeks she has had a mild ear infection that has required antibiotics. The first round of medicine went down with nary a fuss; in fact she was so excited about medicine that she was reminding us when it was time to take it, and don't forget the Tylenol chaser, please. The first bunch of medicine finished up, she was still acting cranky and there was evidence of more eye-teeth coming through, so it was back to the doctor's. We left there clutching a prescription for a somewhat stronger dose, and got it filled that night, at a cost of $39.

P took that medicine the first night, spewed up most of it, and willingly accepted her shot-glass of children's Tylenol. The next day we tricked her into taking it mixed in yogurt, after she spit up the dose that I attempted to shoot down her throat. We both got covered in thick white goop. That night? No way. We tried the yogurt trick again. Fool me once, shame on me, Fool me twice, shame on you. We resorted to hiding it in her orange juice, and she drank it. One cup. That night? You guessed it - nuh uh!! "Don't ike it!' We had to keep it covered because the medicine changed the viscosity of the juice, and made it look milky, and we never cover the OJ because then the sippy cup sippy part gets clogged with the pulp and it's a mess. We resorted to the final dregs of Medicine #1, which went down without a fuss. Then we ran out.

So we tried the gross white stuff again, and it was soundly, repeatedly rejected. I called the doctor, and explained the situation. G tried to tell me that "we could wait it out" but somewhere deep in my brain I have memories of my brother's ear infections and the screaming that was packaged so nicely with them. I nay-sayed, and called the doc. They said "there's a chewable version, we'll send in a script for that". OK, right? Just tell her it's candy, she'll eat them right up.

The first dose, she did indeed chew up the "candy". We raised our eyebrows in happy surprise, pumped our fists in the air subtly, and moved on with our lives. The next 13 doses would be a breeze, right?

The next day, she refused the "candy". "Don 'ike it!". We asked her to just eat it like a candy, in her mouth, just chew it up. No. Suck on it. She did that, a little, and then spit it out. No. We took another dose and mashed it and mixed it into a bowl of applesauce. Success! She ate it all up! We did the little eyebrow move again, and resolved that applesauce will become a precious commodity in our home.

Last night, we tried applesauce again, and lo, it was a success! We were convinced we were in the clear.

And then this morning dawned, after a night of her getting up twice - which is a sure sign that something was amiss in the land of the Lady. She never wakes up during the night... unless she is sick. We tried the medicine in the applesauce, with much fanfair: "It's time for your applesauce!!! Before oatmeal! Yum!" It was rejected and pushed away from Her Ladyship. We attempted the OJ trick with pulverized pill, and, while she drank a good deal of the juice - we even broke out a neon bendy straw to make it more fun - she would not drink the dregs, where the pill bits had settled like so many little pink artificial coffee grounds.

So she was sent to school this morning with the rejected applesauce, that had more "untainted" sauce mixed in to cut the medicine. I told her teacher to keep offering it until it was gone: morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack. I am fully prepared to give the child ice cream for dinner tonight, in order to get that damn pill into her system.

The funny thing is, the plan that G and I had for her has backfired in a way: we have done our best to feed her mainly "real" food: we don't eat a lot of processed stuff in our family, and I don't mean to be preachy about that, it's just how we prefer to eat. Sure, there are plenty of treats in our pantry, but we do a lot of cooking, and eating fresh fruits and vegetables. I have battled a weight problem my entire life and, if I can change that for my child, I hope to do so. We don't have twinkies, or flavored snacks, or the kinds of things you find in a convenience store. We eat cookies, but I make them by hand. It's just how we like to eat. Sure, we get junk food periodically, but it's very rare indeed. And, training her tastebuds to enjoy real food has put us in this artificial taste situation. She doesn't know what Tang or Kool-Aid tastes like, and doesn't know that, when she has any opportunity to have something that tastes like that, she should run for the hills to check it out. Not that chewable penicillin is any prize in the candy world, but it's a taste of what's on the other side... and will keep those Eustacian tubes running nice and clear.