matching tracksuits

Power outlets, books, and CDs are the only things we really say “No!” to with the girl. Oh, and plants and hot things and climbing on the stairs and so on. And the cat, when we had a cat. (He ran away some weeks ago. Some say he’s supposed to come back any day now.)

Still, it’s the forbidden that’s attractive.

(I’m sure it didn’t help to send mixed messages by saying “No!” and taking the picture. But I just happened to have the camera and couldn’t resist.)

Fortunately, there are plenty of things in the house to hold her attention.

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Last night, before L went to bed, I’d put in a Nina Simone CD, figuring it was calming enough to play in the evening.

There are some videos of Nina on YouTube. Here’s one of her singing “I loves you, Porgy,” but not the utterly calm version I have on CD. And here’s a very sweet claymation video set to “My baby just cares for me “

Little did I know.

A few minutes later, while trying to put the Girl to sleep, I began the CD again. She wasn’t crying, but she wasn’t settling down. I rocked her, walked her, bounced her gently, talked to her — all the tricks, but she was just not completely calming down.

When track six — “I loves you, Porgy” — began, instant calm. So I did the logical thing: hit repeat and put the Girl to sleep by playing one of the loveliest songs ever…about fifteen times.

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When the girl is being put to sleep, she sometimes gets angry. Scratch that — furious. She can howl and scream and whimper endlessly when I’m the one trying to put her to sleep instead of K.

I usually just wait her out. She’ll literally scream and push and wiggle and cry until she literally passes out. While she’s doing this, I simply walk around the apartment, holding her close, and whispering sweetly (or as sweetly as I can manage while every last nerve in my body is being assailed simultaneously). There comes a time when she’s crying, then whimpering, then crying, then tumbling quietly toward sleep — until something disturbs her and reminds her, “Oh, yes, I am indeed irritated.”

That’s when toys can become landmines.

There are two beeping, flashing, musical toys that are particularly deadly. In one of them (a caterpillar that plays about four songs and flashes lights where one wouldn’t think caterpillars would have lights) has expired: the batteries are dead, and gosh darn it, I just can’t seem to remember to replace them. Touch it and it begins a loud, loud, loud symphony.

The porcupine is not much better. Give it a kick (as I did last night) and it begins talking to you. Nothing too intelligent, but you wouldn’t expect physics from a porcupine.

Last night, I kicked it dead center. I’m not sure which woke L: my sudden, frustrated gasp, or the porcupine.

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The video is fixed — don’t know why it wasn’t playing, but I just re-”compiled” it and it seems fine.

Update: Some folks tell me the video stops halfway through. I give up on this one…

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We’ve been taking L to swimming lessons at the local YWCA. Within a few weeks, we’ve gone from calmly moving her about the pool (“Dig, dig, dig! Kick, kick, kick!”) to dunking her under water after blowing in her face. She doesn’t much like the former, and the latter sets her to screaming more often than not. The instructor suggests that it’s the water running down her face when we pull her back up that upsets her.

Still, we take her regularly and follow the instructor’s advice, on the hopes that it’s the unfamiliarity of it all that is bothering L.

There’s a progress report at YouTube.

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Few things in life are more of a milestone for a child than to learn how to use the toilet. There’s tons of advice about when and how to begin. “Most children show signs of readiness to begin using the toilet as toddlers, usually between 18 months and 3 years of age,” writes one site. It continues,

These signs include staying dry for at least 2 hours at a time, having regular bowel movements, being able to follow simple instructions, being uncomfortable with dirty diapers and wanting them to be changed, asking to use the potty chair, or asking to wear regular underwear. You should also be able to tell when your child is about to urinate or have a bowel movement by his facial expressions, posture or by what he says. If your child has begun to tell you about having a dirty diaper you should praise him for telling you and encourage him to tell you in advance next time.

Well, L can’t communicate yet, and in fact she’s just learned how to sit up on her own. That doesn’t mean she can’t use a potty chair already. How do we know? Because she’s successfully used the chair several times.

Is this real “potty training”? I do indeed think so — we’re giving her an alternative to dirty diapers from an early age, and we’re showing her how “grownups” do it.

The key is knowing when she usually relieves herself. BMs are the easiest, because she announces it clearly and well in advance. But at least two times, we’ve sat her on the potty chair after eating when she wasn’t showing any signs, and within a few moments, she made use of the chair.

Our hope is that this will make “real” potty training more manageable. We’ll see in a few months…

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Last Monday we took L to her first swimming lesson. Granted, most of it was for us parents — teaching us how to hold our children, how to roll over with them into a back float, etc.

L loves water. She splashes like mad when taking a bath, so it seemed fair to expect her to like swimming. And she did. Sort of. It got old relatively quickly, but she valiantly survived to the end of the thirty-minute lesson.

Yesterday, we finally took her swimming in our apartment complex pool, complete with the floating crab the grandparents brought:

In reality, L really didn’t like the crab that much. Or at least she tired of it quickly. Being tossed about was much more fun, I suppose.

She enjoyed it, but she seemed happier while drying off.

A few more pictures are at Flickr.

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L’s been able to lie on her stomach and hold up her head from some time now. Recently, she learned that her arms can help her in the endeavor.

It’s the first step to crawling, no pun intended. At least we hope. We’re a little worried that she might want to skip crawling since she’s already “standing” and “walking” all the time. Why? Well, there’s all the hype about the importance of crawling, like this:

There have been some studies that indicate that late walkers score better later in life on academic achievement tests. It is hypothesized that because of the use of alternating sides of the body (e.g., right arm and left leg, then vica versa), there is increase communication between the two sides of the brain thus enhancing learning. (The Mentor Mom)

On the other hand:

There are many perfectly normal, well-coordinated children who bypass the crawling stage to move onto other modes of locomotion. Two of our own children, Robert and Erin, had very short crawling stages. Robert (now a partner in the Sears Family Pediatric practice) scooted on his bottom with one leg straight out and the other leg bent under him. Our daughter, Erin, stopped crawling at nine months and “walked” on her knees. (Parenting.com, via the Way Back Machine)

It’s just one of the many “do I really need to worry about this?” parenting issues…

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When we first had L, we did what we thought was the environmental thing: we used cloth diapers. Today’s cloth diapers are not what they were thirty or so years ago. Now there’s liners of all sorts, including silk and impregnated wool liners that supposedly keep baby dry longer. “All night!” the makers boast, but at thirteen to eighteen bucks a piece, you’d think they’d just about have to change themselves to be worth it.

And then a little common sense. Though we were not filling the landfill with our daughter’s nasty diapers, we were using a heck of a lot more energy with all the extra washing. Our power bill more than doubled when we had L and were using cloth diapers. Of course, it was late December and we were keeping the apartment a lot warmer than we had been in the past. Still, a lot of that jaw-dropping electricity bill was due to the extra washing.

So, environmentally, it’s the cliche “six of one, half a dozen of the other.” Fiscally, disposable wins by a slight margin.

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The girl has begun reaching for things. For anything. If it’s in her field of vision, she’ll put out her little hands and try to grab it.

The other day, she grabbed a glass of water while we were eating dinner and turned it over on K. First time, certainly not the last.

And so, for the first time, I proposed making pre-planned video. “Just go around the apartment and hold her in front of things,” I asked K.

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