getting the wiggles out

A theme of this blog is the many ways Rob and I were unprepared, baffled, and at times blindsided by life with a child.  Neither of us had much experience with young children before Ally’s birth.  Short visits with our younger nieces and nephew or with friends’ children were brief enough that we could explain away challenging behaviors– oh, they’re acting that way because we’re visiting! because it’s a holiday! And frankly behavior a parent may consider frustrating can be, to a visitor, quite adorable. Perhaps that is why, at a moment that revealed to many family members Ally’s current mealtime eccentricities, I broke into tears with laughter while trying to explain just what she means by “scrape the sides, Mommy.”  Because for that moment I saw the charming quirkiness rather than the annoyance of, yet again, being asked to push all of her food into a pile so she could scoop properly with her spoon and fingers.

So here’s five things that make mealtime fun with Ally these days, in the effort to make them cute and charming in the public sphere.   Because at home? Not so fun.

1. The first five minutes of every meal is spent negotiating whether the food is too hot or not.  And blowing on it.  And trying her portion and saying “mmm! Just right!”
2. Ally insists that her food be provided in BIG pieces.  She’s getting better at taking bites, but sometimes she pushes the entire portion in her mouth, gags, then sort of retches it back at you.  But cut the pieces smaller? Then she won’t eat it at all.
3. Condiments are best eaten by the spoonful.  Especially ketchup and guacamole– a meal in itself!
4. There was a time when I thought that mealtimes would, over time, become less messy.  A linear progression, if you will, eventually leading to the possibility of a table cloth or at least a meal that didn’t require a roll of paper towels at its conclusion.  I am learning that the graph would perhaps better resemble a sine wave, because meals these days are even messier than when she was a baby, and as a parent it is more frustrating because she knows better than to smear the barbecue sauce in her eyes.
5. For a long time the end of meal time almost always led to a time out, either because she threw her food or because she would hit us while we tried to wipe her down.  We have learned to take her food away the moment she starts to play with it to prevent throwing, but for a long time we didn’t know how to prevent the hitting, and time outs have not been an effective deterrent.  Then I decided to try to pull her away from the table and say, “Ally! Let’s get the wiggles out!” So at the end of meal time these days, everyone shakes their arms like crazy and when she’s done, she lets us clean her up.  Granted, more food goes flying. But no hitting.

Ally here

Hi, Ally here. Everything has been a bit weird lately. Mommy keeps turning green every time we play ring-around-the-rosie, and Daddy gets upset when I play my new kick-the-belly game with Mommy during diaper changes. Then they keep making me wear this t-shirt to family events and then people laugh and hug a lot. Well, whatever.

is this normal?

Last week Ally arranged all the family room pillows on the floor and then sat on the pillows a variety of animals and dolls. After careful adjustments, she got out a book and began to “read” to her captive audience:

Once upon a time,
ponies, ponies, ponies,
The End.

your toddler needs a haircut

26 months after birth, we finally reached a point when we agreed that it was time for Ally’s first haircut. Not that she had a lot of hair, but it was really uneven and shaggy, and beginning to resemble a baby mullet:

So, off we went on the morning of the 4th of July to the Cartoon Cuts at the mall, bribing Ally with the promise of a ride on the merry-go-round if she was good for her very first haircut. She was appalled at the indignity of the apron, but was otherwise complacent as a nice woman trimmed her bangs and the back of her hair. It turned out very nicely, particularly in the back. And have I mentioned that her hair is suddenly curly? For the past month we have seen more and more curl. It’s really quite cute. Here she is with Rob after her haircut having the time of her life on the merry-go-round.

Since recovering from her cold last week, and perhaps to make me feel a bit guilty about my last post, Ally has been absolutely delightful. We’ve noticed dramatic changes in her speech and in her playing style this week, with longer and more complex sentences (”Daddy will you take my milk, so I can carry teddy?”) and a new style of playing.  She suddenly is playing with us– telling us what to do to play with her and inventing elaborate games, often involving her dolls or her play food, for us to play together, and disciplining us if we do not follow the rules of the game.

I don’t know if cutting her hair sapped her strength Sampson-style or if she is overcome by some kind of developmental change, but this morning she slept until 8:30.  8:30, people!!!  Ally wakes every morning between 6:30 and 7:00.  If she’s sick she may make it to 7:15, or even 7:30.  But the last time I remember her sleeping until 8:30 was when she was a newborn and she had, say, a 5:00 feeding and fell asleep afterwards. Rob and I were stunned.  And thankful.  And if someone told me that dropping $15.99 at Cartoon Cuts would cause my daughter to sleep that late the next day, we would be there every weekend.  Because you just can’t put a price on 8:30.

hermits

There’s a toddler guidebook I rather like called Toddler 411, sequel to the Baby 411 book that got us through our first year together. On Friday night I was browsing through the discipline section and came upon a statement I remember smirking at this time last year– a moment when I thought, with a certain level of smugness, that will never happen to us– which can be paraphrased as roughly, “there will most likely come a time when you will be embarrassed to be in public with your toddler.” Oh, Toddler 411, how right you are. And, to be fair, there were times last week when I was embarrassed to be at home with my toddler. Moments when her behavior was so mortifying and exasperating that I prayed for some toddler version of our newborn swaddling blanket, a.k.a. the straitjacket. And I suppose nothing says that more than acknowledging that I spent my Friday night looking at a toddler discipline book after she flung across the room a full cup of strawberry applesauce.  So that’s Ally with a piece of her favorite Cariboo game in her mouth at the end of a very long day of being sick and crying and whining.  I should have taken it out of her mouth– we’re trying to break the pacifier obsession, right? and it’s not safe, right?– but I just couldn’t say “no” one more time.  So I took a picture.

if I had slept for 16 of the last 24 hours

perhaps I would look like this while sucking a pedialyte pop for 25 minutes.

I know that being sick really stinks. And if I were sick right now, I would think that I was insane for even letting such thoughts cross my mind, but oh to be sick the way kids get to be sick! Endless TV and food prepared for you and blissful uninterrupted sleep.  No obligation to call out from work, or need to feel guilty for things you aren’t doing.  It’s just not like that when you grow up, is it?

disciplined and punished

To us, Ally’s sleep is sacred. Naptime’s at 1, at daycare or home or Gram’s. Bedtime is 7:30. And we just don’t mess with it. Thinking that perhaps we need to loosen up a bit, this weekend we planned a later evening for Saturday, so Ally wasn’t in bed until nearly 9. As I zipped her sleep sack, she was jumping and vibrating with such vigor that Rob had to hold her still so I could fasten the zipper. As expected, she woke at 6:30 to start her Sunday, which held the promise of a family reunion that began at 1:00 at a state park. She slept briefly as we drove there and we hoped we would get through the day with that short nap, but as 2:00 passed and she began to lie on the playground equipment and say “I’m sleepy,” we concluded that it was time to go.

End result? Let’s phrase it like a recipe. Take one toddler who didn’t get enough sleep the night before, and add a bunch of playtime on a sunny playground, and poor eating, and what do you get? A vomit-soaked t-shirt, shoes and socks; a 101.6 fever; and a toddler sleeping at 5 PM who most likely will have a rough bedtime. Lesson learned.

pooped

One of Ally’s favorite activities is to run up and down the hill on the side of our house. So we run up, and then down. And then up. And then down. And if you stop you get dragged and prodded and really, it’s just better if you keep running. So when we come inside we collapse on the floor. She’s been sleeping really well lately. So have we.

blink

“Ally, what are you doing?” “I’m making it dark.”

giving in, one day at a time

The appealing, neutrally toned highchair on the left is the one we selected before Ally was born. It was a great highchair until we realized that its arms were too high to fit under our kitchen table and we were ready to have her eat at the table with us. So, we decided to try the booster seat, which she loves, but its lack of restraint has grown to be a bigger and bigger problem as time passes. In the past month she has started turning around in the seat, standing on it, and wiggling so much she nearly launches herself onto the floor as we quickly try to finish our meal– without a seat belt holding her in, she just can’t stay at the table a second beyond when she has finished eating, and trying to clean her up as she stands and jumps and wiggles has turned into so many time outs that we have given up. Good-bye, booster seat… hello yellow and orange monstrosity.

Which brings us to the seat on the right. On a trip to Babies R’ Us this weekend I fully intended to pick up the white, blue, and green booster so popular with other parents we know.  To my surprise, the store was only carrying a slightly cheaper seat for the amazing price of $21 or the decked-out Rainforest version for $36.  And being the frantic and, at times, lazy parent I am, I couldn’t stand to go to another store, and I also couldn’t stand to spend $15 more for a different color and a toy that would never be used.  So I brought home the ugly yellow and orange seat.  But man, this thing is ugly.  It’s so ugly that when Rob saw it, he said, “can’t we get that in another color?” And began looking online.   I’m wondering if Fisher Price has some kind of secret plan to get parents to pay more by offering a cheap model with a color scheme that burns the back of your eyes.  But our plan has worked: Ally likes her new “big girl highchair,” and when the meal ends and she tries to wiggle away from the table, she forlornly says, “I’m stuck!” and Rob and I nod pleasantly to each other across the table and say, “that’s the idea, sweetheart.”