Fine Young Cannibals

Sam spent her first half-day at a day care center last week.  It was a free trial day that they offer to give parents and kids a chance to evaluate the center and the teachers.  Sam has been to child care before and has had a number of babysitters, so I wasn't too concerned about the whole thing.  I was already pretty comfortable with the center but I used the free day so Adam and I could go to the DMV - woohoo!

 

After about 4 hours, I called to see how Sam was doing.  Brooke, a cheery, squeaky type of girl, told me that Sam had been a bit clingy but was doing fine overall.  Then she added, almost as an aside, that "she did get a bite, though."  Something about this just didn't compute for me, so I asked her, "What?"  She said again, "Sam got a little bite, I'm afraid."  The squeak was muted into what sounded like a bit of concern, although it's hard to tell with those cheery people.  Then she started talking about how the kids were washing their hands and "it just happened" but I couldn't follow her. This is what was going through my mind: 

 

Hmmm, "bite" - Sam ate some food?  Well, she's supposed to eat there, so why is Brooke telling me this?  "Bite" - oh, maybe she was bitten by a mosquito or a spider.  But she said something about washing their hands - that happens inside.  Are there bugs inside their facility?  I didn't see any.  That doesn't seem right. Wait...I'm getting something...processing...something is coming through here... I think I know what she means but I can't quite catch up....

 

Brooke was still talking when I finally interrupted to say, "Wait, do you mean she was bitten by another child?"  Bing bing bing bing!  I had broken through the bubbly tone and passive voice and figured it out.  It turned out to be no big deal and it didn't really bother me much.  It's just that being bitten by another human being wasn't part of my universe until that moment.  Welcome to the next phase of parenthood, Amy!

Poo-paranoia

Samantha isn't the only one who is thinking about potty training.  The following incident actually happened a couple of months ago, before I saw the signs that she might be ready, and it got me thinking that I might be ready.

 

When Sam was younger, I used to worry about the "poop-out" all the time.  She's been making 3-4 movements per day for as long as I can remember, and before that it was more.  Some of these are just so big and messy that no mere diaper can contain them, especially if you don't change her immediately.  (I've discovered that the diaper size your baby should be wearing is not related to the size of her body, but to the size of her product.  Sam is usually two sizes up from what is recommended for her weight.) I'm sure this happens with all babies, but I've never heard of it happening quite as often as it did with Sam.  It was simply a regular occurrence and I became very anxious about it, constantly checking and worrying.  I think the worst leak happened when Sam had her first real playdate.  I was considering joining the local MOMs club in Lexington and brought Sam to a stranger's house to hang out with some other kids.  Before I knew it, she was scooting around on her bottom (her alternative to crawling) leaving a brown trail all over the woman's nice hardwood floors.  I never did officially join that group.

 

But my poo-paranoia has subsided recently, as Sam seems to have inherited from me the curse of being a nervous pooer.  I think it's a girl thing.  When we're out of the house, she just saves them up until we get home.  It actually makes life more convenient for me right now.  I hardly ever even sniff her bum in public anymore, and I almost never have to change a diaper anywhere but at home.  Almost never.

 

In Lexington I'd been taking her to the YMCA with me, where she stayed in child care while I took my yoga class.  She had separation anxiety for a while, and they'd have to pull me out of class to come get her.  It was embarrassing, and missing Savasana at the end of a yoga class kind of ruins the whole thing.  I kept going, though, and she eventually got over it.  In fact, she got so comfortable there that she started pooing.  So then they started calling me out to change her diaper - arrrrg! 

 

One night, they called me out for yet another diaper change.  I went in and saw the big brown stain on her butt...sigh.  I got my diaper bag from my locker, came back, and started peeling off her clothes.  I took a deep breath, unVelcro'd the Velcro and...nothing in the diaper - what???  I looked at her pants again.  It looked like poo.  I sniffed it - it smelled like graham cracker.  She'd sat on a cracker.  They had pulled me out of yoga for crumb-bum, goddammit!  Talk about poo-paranoia.

 

When we start potty training I know it will get worse before it gets better, but I'm ready.  By my calculations, I've changed at least 3000 diapers already.  And now you know why "poo" is the most common word in my vocabulary.

The Sam Update - Twenty One Months Old

Click for pictures! 

 

Samantha just hit the big 1.75.  Okay, so now I know what people mean about the time going quickly.  Sam's first 10 months went by so slowly, but all of a sudden she is almost 2 years old - that's crazy! 

 

Walking really jump started Sam's development.  As Dr. Suess observes, walking and thinking are connected:

"You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself

any direction you choose."

Since we moved I've been able to entertain Sam just by taking her outside to roam about since it is a new place to her.  I enjoy observing what will attract her attention.  She likes flowers, manholes, trees, squirrels, any kind of water, and license plates.  But I think she mostly just loves the independence of moving around as she pleases.

 

Sam loves music right now.  We know what music to play for her because if she likes something she'll dance, but if she doesn't she'll cover her ears.  Her dancing is so cute - sort of a cross between an orchestra conductor and a jazz musician snapping his fingers with his elbows tucked in to his body.  If she's really loving it, she'll turn in circles until she is dizzy.  Even though Sam still doesn't talk (just a word here and there), she can sing.  Adam and I have independently identified certain tunes she will sing, although it's usually just a few notes.  Other times we hear no tune, but it still sounds like sweet music to us.  Today we bought her a 37 key electronic keyboard since she is obsessed with the piano.

 

I'm quite surprised to see Sam playing with figurines in a way that looks like imaginary play.  She'll take two figures, say a horse and a cow, and make one bite the other (while she growls), and then make them kiss (while she makes the kissy noise), and then make them walk around together and all kinds of other stuff I don't understand.  She favors two figures at a time and they always interact, and she seems to narrate the whole thing in her adorable toddler-babble.  I don't know what is in her head, but she loves this kind of play.

 

Adam is having a great time roughhousing with Sam.  He flips her and throws her and rolls around the floor with her.  I don't think there is anything that makes Sam laugh as much as that kind of play with her dad.  Oh, and what a laugh!  I've got to get out that video camera before that laugh changes.

 

Bumps and bruises are a normal part of Sam's life now, as we try not to interfere unless there is serious danger.  After riding an elephant back in March, Sam rode her first horse a couple of months ago.  We continue to try to expose her to new things as much as possible.  With a few exceptions (and those are doozies), most everything we do is just so much more fun with Samantha.  We spent close to an hour walking a quarter mile with her the other day and we weren't bored at all.  Tonight we all walked around outside in the rain.  We've been careful not to make a big deal out of getting wet in the rain, and to show her how cool it is to see water coming from the sky, and what do you know - Sam loves the rain and doesn't mind getting wet.  She even danced to the thunder.

 

We're thinking about putting Sam in day care a few half days a week so that I can work on my new project - freelance writing.  It will probably take me many months to get anything published, but I hope to make this my next career.  This blog is my exercise - my way of writing on a regular basis while I'm pitching ideas and hoping for an assignment.  When Sam is three we plan to enroll her in a Montessori preschool for three years, and if I can manage to build a solid part-time writing career by the end of that time, I'll home school her.  That's the plan.

Crawling Up the Stairs

My daughter, Samantha, is a late bloomer.  She didn't walk until she was almost 18 months old, and she never crawled at all.  She "scooted" on her bottom to get around, but didn't even start doing that until she was over a year old.   At 19 months she began working on climbing stairs.  Most kids start by crawling up stairs, but she'd never moved around on all fours so I didn't know how it would work out. 

 

We lived in a one story house at the time she found her stair calling, but at least there were 4 steps outside going from the deck to the sidewalk.  We practiced a lot with me holding her hands as she stepped up or down as an adult would.  She loved it!  While playing on the sidewalk, she would come back to the stairs over and over again.  If I wasn't there to hold her hand, she would just sit on the bottom step.  After a few days of this, she began swinging her legs up so that she was completely up on the first step.  I told her that she could get up the rest of the steps in the same manner - just stand up and repeat it three more times.  I thought she'd probably do it that way eventually.

 

One day she was playing outside on the sidewalk by herself while I put groceries away inside, watching her through the window. (We were surrounded by farmland with no neighbors, traffic, or other dangers like that.) She had been out there about 3 minutes when I looked out to see her crawling up the steps on her hands and feet!  She was on the third step and just about to reach the top.  At first I was terrified but I restrained myself, watched her complete her mission, and then went out and gave her a big hug and congratulations.

 

I never showed her how to crawl up like that.  Nothing in her experience made me think it possible that she would even try it.  If I had been outside when she tried it I would have hovered, worried that she would fall.  But I don't think she would have tried at all if she knew I was watching. 

 

Quite often, the new things that Samantha does occur while I'm watching out of the corner of my eye.  Even when I show her how to do something, she usually doesn't give it her full concentration and effort until my back is turned.  And many times, she doesn't do things the way I showed her to at all.  Stepping back and not helping her too much is a great challenge for me, but I feel a deep joy in watching her find her own way.  She is already an independent, thinking being - and I think I like her.  I like her a lot.

Potty Training by Dog

It's interesting how various circumstances can come together and add up to one big mental billboard telling you to take action, now!  Mine says, "It's time for potty training!"

 

First of all, Samantha has discovered potty humor.  She finds the words, "burp," "fart," "pee," and "poo" just hilarious.  She doesn't find the events themselves so amusing, but say the words and you can have her rolling with laughter until she gets the hiccups.  She only says a few words yet, but "burp" ("bep") is one of them.  I swear, we didn't encourage this, but we do find it cute.

 

Next, she will finally, on occasion, agree that she needs to have her diaper changed because it is dirty, as opposed to agreeing so that she can play with my locket, stickers, the gold kitty cat, or Maria the Fish.

 

She loves to flush the toilet.

 

And lately, Sam has been very interested in watching the dog pee on bushes when we go for walks.  We hadn't "walked" the dog in months because we lived in a place where he could roam free on acres of property.  But we just moved to the DC area and we have a postage stamp yard, so he needs a daily walk.  Sam finds his potty behavior just fascinating, and she'll point and say "bah bah" which means, "what is that?"  I tell her that he's peeing, and we move on.  Of course, this is repeated about one thousand times during an average walk.

 

Today, after observing Toby do his business on the bush outside our front door, Sam walked up to the bush, turned her back on it, and squatted over it.  I asked her what she was doing but her eyes were glazed over.  Joking to Adam, I started to say, "It looks like..." but then...yes...it's not a joke, it's...yes, "SHE'S PEEING ON THE BUSH!"  I almost died with laughter.  Then I had to make quite an effort to convince her that my laughter was okay and what she did was okay.  I guess I did a good job because a few minutes later she did it again.

 

Where do you buy those little training potties, anyway?

We've Moved

I haven't posted in a while because we just moved from Lexington, Virginia, to the DC area.  Moving is terrible.  I've been trying to find some good little things to write about, but haven't come up with much.  Also, all my free time is being spent on unpacking and red wine. 

See you soon for the first direct-to-blog Sam Update!

Things You Can Rely On

Real Simple magazine's January, 2008 issue was devoted to "218 best buys," which, since they do a "best products" section every issue, is the magazine equivalent of the TV sitcom "flashback" episode - it's just a rerun in disguise.  Still, I like the magazine and the editor's note framed the issue in a more interesting way:  a list of the most reliable products and services.  I can't resist indulging in my own list.

 

• Hotel chain: Hampton Inn.  I love staying at a Hampton Inn - they get all the details right, from the super-comfy bed to the curved shower curtain rod.  They actually sell the products they use in their rooms and I plan to buy it all!


• Fast food joint:  In-N-Out Burger.  I'm never disappointed by a Double-Double, but I'm often disappointed when there is no In-N-Out nearby.  (They're only in 4 states:  California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah.  Try one if you're in the neighborhood.)  Runner up:  McDonald's.  After all, Ray Kroc was the innovator of reliability in fast food.


• Beauty products:  Noxzema and Curel.  Noxzema is the only product that keeps the acne at bay for me.  I've used it consistently for at least 15 years.  And every time I get bored with Curel and buy another brand of lotion I regret it. 


• Clothing store:  Talbot's Petites is my go-to store for just about everything.  I find that about 1 in 5 pieces actually fit me at Talbot's, which is twice as good as most other stores.  And no matter what the latest ugly fashion craze is, I can find at least one thing I want to buy every time I enter the store.  I wish I could find a shoe store that works as well for me.


• General/discount store:  Target.  The best thing about Target is their excellent discrimination in product selection.  I can depend on the fact that, if I bought it at Target, it's a good value for the money. 


• Book:  The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand.  I've read it about a dozen times and every time I'm freshly amazed at the beauty of this novel.


• Cookbook:  The Joy of Cooking.  I don't know how I'd get along without it.  The basic cooking methods for just about every kind of food are indispensable.  All the recipes work.


• Food:  Kraft Original Macaroni and Cheese.  Remember, this is a list of the most reliable things, not necessarily the best things.  Have you ever made up a batch of this stuff and been disappointed?


• Drink:  Coca-Cola.  This one is reliable, and the very best.