Posts in ‘Mommy-ing’
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Round Robin Date Nights
From February 06, 2010 @ 6:00 am
We’ve been placing a lot of pressure on my sister and her husband to help us have a date night by watching Fiery. They’ve been awesome about it so far and we’ve been able to have date night a few times since Fiery has started to primarily eat when she’s hungry rather than nurse. This does, in my mind, place a fairly large burden on them, however, and I’ve been trying to think of a fairer way for parents of young children to have date night without having to resort to professional (or unprofessional) babysitting services.
How’s this for an idea?
Have a sort of round robin affair within a circle of friends who all have kids. The way it would work is thus: One family is up, all the other family’s can drop their kids off at a predetermined time (say, 6 o’clock). The one family can have activities or whatever and a large but simple to prepare dinner (grilled cheese?) that can be shared by all the kids. All the other families can go out and plan to be back no later than a given time so that the family hosting the children can expect when to be relieved (say, 10). That gives all but one family the opportunity to go out for the night. Rinse and repeat.
If you have a large group of friends, you’d only be up every couple of weeks. With five families, you’d have to watch about 10 kids every 5 weeks, and 4 weeks in a row you could have date night. That seems like a win. You could even organize this in your church depending on how much you trust your fellow church goers. If your circle is too big, then just split it up so that the family responsible for watching the kids isn’t overwhelmed.
Or…
We could always go with The Baby Sitters Club.
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Fiery is 10 months old!
From August 06, 2009 @ 1:15 pm
My little girl turned 10 months old today!
Her favorite things as of this point: opening and closing doors, books, and cabinets. Although she’ll eventually become curious as to what’s behind the door or in the cabinet, she might spend a good 10 minutes amusing herself by swinging wood on hinges.
She loves to dance. We discovered this when we pushed the yellow bell on Fiery’s fire engine that plays a hyped-up version of the “ABC’s” and Fiery immediately started to bounce her arms up and down like you would to a really phat hip-hop beat. Now she does that to almost any kind of music. Whether it’d be a commercial or a song in a movie, she’s dancing :-)
She’s developed a real liking for emptying books and DVD off shelves (before it was a DVD or two, now it’s the whole shelf). I also can’t seem to give her enough food. I’ve heard that at about a year old they slow down with how much they eat because their growth slows down and maybe I’ll be able to catch up with her intake then! She still remains skinny, oddly enough.
It’s been such a joy to see more and more of her personality. She’s stubborn, yet inquisitive, likes to be held, but will rarely, very rarely cuddle. She thinks talking into my breast is the funniest thing ever, but gets upset when that ends the session. She gets mad if I try and put a gate up to keep her in one room but she will happily play in one room for an hour. I could not love who I’m finding her to be any more.
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Fiery is 9 months!
I’ve been surprised how much she enjoys it when we read to her. I was reading “Where the Wild Things Are” to her yesterday and she actually was laughing at some of the parts. She can be totally cranky and soon as you say “do you want to read a book?” she perks up and looks over at the book shelf. She knows what “no” means. She will deliberately make noise to show me when she’s about to bite a cord, shake her potty (and yes, it does happen, and yes, pee goes every where… yuck). And then she teases me, grabbing the cord, I say “no..” she drops it, grabs it again, I say “no Fiery..” and then she drops it. I find it hard not to chuckle at her innocent evil. What’s ultra adorable is at some points she decides to leave the room and when I say, “Fiery, where you going?” and start to go collect her, she starts B-lining it as fast as she can go screaming “ahhhhhh!” Elimination communication is getting easier and easier. Fiery holds it in longer, goes quicker when she’s placed on the potty, and pees less. I think we’ll be experimenting with a toilet seat reducer as that way I won’t have to dump out the contents of her potty into the toilet :-). As far as eating goes Fiery has been eating more (and really enjoying it!) Here’s an example of her ingenuity with vanilla yogurt:
My baby (and I can still call her that) is 9 months old! She’s officially been outside of the womb longer than she’s been in. She is developing SO much more personality with so many more preferences. If I’m holding her on my hip I would usually hold her leg with the opposite hand but Fiery immediately pushes my hand away. She likes to be held a certain way.
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Baby Led Weaning
I was planning on doing purees. I even asked for a tiny food processor for Christmas to make my own (cheaper, more nutrients). It’s still in the box. A friend of mine told me about something called Baby Led Weaning so I thought I’d do some research. My gut reaction was “won’t the babe choke?” I mean, really. How could a 6 month old know not to shove a carrot down her throat? Or know how to deal with apple skin? A spinach leaf?I think the common belief is that babies need to be taught how to chew, and that they’re not capable of knowing what will hurt them and what won’t. But this couldn’t be farther from the truth. What’s amazing is that God designed infants to be totally self-teachable when it comes to food. An infant’s (say 6-9 months) gag reflex is actually bigger than an adults. Which means that while sticking a piece of food near the back of the tongue may not trigger an adult’s gag reflex (for we know better than not to do that), if an infant sticks a piece of food back too far she will gag and therefore will learn “doing this causes this unpleasant sensation. I will not do that anymore.”
The theory is that babies, especially breast-fed babies, are expected to know how much to nurse. We trust that a child who needs more will nurse more, and a child who needs less will nurse less. We also expect our toddlers to feed themselves. So why is there this middle age where we feed them? I am a firm believer that babies know how much to feed themselves. It’s no coincidence that many toddlers will go on a food binge with lots of carbs just before a growth spurt, or why a baby might refuse a certain food and then later on the parent finds out they were allergic.
It was amazing watching Fiery learn how to eat a banana. I split the banana into thirds (long ways) and gave her a piece about 2 inches long. She put too much in the first time and almost immediately spit it out. This happened several times. Over a day or two she gradually took smaller and smaller bites and chewed until she swallowed. The other misconception is that babies have to “learn” to chew. When in fact it’s a lot like clapping: one day they can’t do it, and another day they can.
She’s never choked but she’s gagged and to be honest it’s a little nerve-racking but once you understand that it’s necessary for her to learn and babies fed purees also gag, I’m doing better with it and it’s happening less and less.
It also gives the babe an opportunity to develop her independence in choice. I’ll give her three different kinds of food (like a strawberry, a piece of apricot, and a carrot) and let her choose what she wants to try first. Most of the time she enjoys a little bit of everything, and when she’s done cleans her place by dumping everything on the floor. I believe this will make her more confident about her food choices in the future, and will also give her a wider palate for food.
It is messier. One thing I didn’t think about it. But the mess is totally worth it. Fiery loves, loves, loves, loves, eating with us. She loves to feed herself yogurt with a loaded spoon and as of today, at 8 months, can use a cup all by herself when she wants water. Feeding your infant can be so stressful and a fight of wills but baby led weaning makes feeding your babe enjoyable. I highly recommend it.
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Fiery is 8 months old!
My beauty turned 8 months old last week. Last month was our first food, our first sign, our first crawl, and our first cruise. She is now ALL over the place. We have stuff animals in strategic places until we find a more permanent place for things like the guitar, the stereo, and the bottom shelf of our book cases.I continue to enjoy breast feeding, teaching her about her eliminations, and giving her massages 2 times a week and Tim and I both enjoy wearing her, cosleeping with her and watching her teach herself about solids.
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The Crux of Attachment Parenting
I’ve been thinking about this for awhile now: what is the premise of attachment parenting? How can I best sum it up in one sentence?
It’s this: when a child chooses independence, they will be more independent in their choices.
Ask yourself: the choices that you’ve made (whether or not to go to church, where to live, what to eat, where to work, etc.) do you think you would be as confident of your choices if you didn’t have a choice? Didn’t you understand your identity a little better when you decided if you would go to church or what you would do for a living? I believe it’s the same with children.
When a child chooses when to sleep on their own, when to wean from the breast or bottle, how much to eat, when to use a potty, they will be more confident and more independent in their decision because it wasn’t forced on them. I think as parents we get scared that they’ll be dependent for an unhealthy amount of time. That they’ll never wean, never use a toilet, and never be able to fall asleep on their own unless we put them into a situation where they’re forced to wean or cry it out. But that fear is as silly as someone saying, “I turned 16 and didn’t want my permit” or a 2-3 year old who wants to be held all the time or the 18 year old saying, “I never want to leave my parent’s house.” We all want independence.
Children have so little things that they can be independent of. Why don’t we give them practice with the choices they actually can make?
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Fiery the Resilient
Maybe one day Fiery will slam her head into our hard wood floors and cry but it’s not happening right now. Or possibly it’s just an age-thing and once Fiery understands that when she gets hurt it warrants immediate attention from mommy, she’ll start reacting to her falls.
Last night Fiery smashed her head into our head board, gave out one cry, then started growling like a monster and thought it funny.
She frequently (and I think purposely) falls backward when she’s sitting, making a huge thud with the floor, gives out a tiny “ehhhhh!” and then turns over and happily crawls away. The first time she fell off the bed she cried for not even 5 seconds and then started gleefully babbling. Tim and I almost started to worry there was something wrong with her nerves, but they’re fine.A couple nights ago Fiery got to taste her blood for the first time. One of the drawers that holds my art supplies was sticking out and Fiery managed to fall on the corner of it, splitting her lip (picture shown). She started to sob and I picked her up and noticed her mouth was all bloody (talk about a scare) and by the time I was done cleaning the blood off her cry turned into a soft whimper and was gone after I nursed her. It was interesting seeing her pause in the middle of her crying being like “what is this weird taste?”
So maybe this will all change in a couple of months but for now I think it’s adorable. I can just picture her taking her first steps running as a toddler, falling on her face, and getting right back up to do it again.
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I’m a Wild Thing!
Do you really wanna know? Yes I really wanna know- where the wild things are!
They’re in our living room!
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Fiery’s Crawling!
On Sunday morning Fiery started crawling on ALL fours! We were so excited! I don’t know how she does it on the hard-wood floors. They hurt my knees. It’s funny because she still isn’t really the best at sitting up. It seems like she actually enjoys falling over or prefers being on her tummy so she never spends a lot of time on her bum. Enjoy the video :-)
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Sacrificing Your Child
I think a lot about (proabably too much) what it would be like to loose Fiery. Usually it’s an unexpected death but once in awhile I think about how the Father killed his Son for us and I think of what it would be like to willingly kill Fiery. Killing her for the world (gosh, this post is so morbid) is a bit too big for me so I try to think in smaller terms like the city of Norristown.
I can’t even comprehend what it would be like to sacrifice her like that but more importantly I would want her death to be honored and revered. She was sacrificed so a region could come closer to God. I would demand that people take advantage of what she gave her life for (right now she wouldn’t understand, so this is more about me) and what I had to go through as her mother. I would want every individual in Norristown to know, to hear, to care, to grieve, etc.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand what God went through, but I could not help but think “what a waste!” if I sacrificed my daughter and no one cared, no one paid reverence, but instead people cursed her name, split over meaningless theological arguments about why she died and if she died, and the majority of Norristown wouldn’t even think of her on even a daily basis (even those who believe she actually died), or me for that matter who killed her to make their lives better. I’d be completely outraged.
We had a very expensive hostas in our front yard left over from a previous family who used to live in our apartment. Yesterday a three year old hacked the life out of it and now it’s just a pile of steams. I was shocked at how much I grieved over that plant and how angry I was at that little boy for killing something so beautiful. How tasteless. It was just a plant and a three year old boy! How much more if it was my daughter and the world.
