Category Archives: Parenting

>Panic Attack Magazine

>I have sworn off Parents magazine, hilariously referred to as Panic Attack Magazine in Baby Blues, and by one of the nurses at my OB’s office as One Thousand and One Ways Your Kids Could Die Magazine. But that’s all there was to read in the lactation room yesterday, so I told myself to just read it for the crafts, advertising, and halloween costumes. I swore I wouldn’t read any of the recall notices, milestone alerts, “it happened to me” horror stories, or parenting tips.

But then I got to the section on what to do in cases of emergencies, and I thought maybe I could use some brushing up on my first aid. So I read what to do in case of burns. Always good to know what to do in the case of a burn. Next section: Tornadoes. OK, I could use a refresher on that. Next: Bear attacks. I have bear-aphobia, so this looked like a good read. There was a lot of info on black bears, who normally don’t attack you. Grizzly bears, not so much info beyond: Grizzlies are not found East of the Rocky Mountains. Thanks a lot, Parents magazine! I guess your demographic is more Midwest/East Coast? Blood pressure rising. Next up: What do to if your car becomes submerged in water while driving? What!? Seriously? Who needs this kind of info? Who will remember it when it happens? And since it was presented as
1.)Problem
2.) Myth about how to solve problem
3.) Actual way to solve problem – OK, now all I remember is the myth, and not the actual way to solve the problem. Maybe because I tossed the magazine aside in disgust before I read what to do. For future reference, if your car is sinking in a lake, don’t wait for the car to become completely submerged and the pressure to equalize before you get out. That is a MYTH!

So I stormed off to complain about Parents magazine to Carolyn and she agreed that we’d never remember what do to if any of those freak accidents happened to us. But that maybe if I tore out the article and acted like an authority on under water car accidents that my mom would feel more comfortable going on drives with me.

>The Balance Myth

>I have a lot to say about the B word. (Balance.) But I don’t really have time to write the whole post now. I was thinking about it on the way to a work meeting at around 7:10 am this morning, at Jack’s 9 month check up, on and off during work, while I was riding my bike to the school meeting where I volunteered to be the kindergarten liaison, and I thought some more while I was nursing Jack to sleep, and then while Dave and I were picking up the house. Then I rode my bike to Andrea’s house to make a peanut butter sandwich for Luke’s lunch box since she lives halfway to the grocery store and we were out of peanut butter. So ideas are percolating about the balance myth. Just an FYI about what I am working on, in my little, sleep deprived brain.

Jack Report: He is meeting milestones like a champ, and he weighs 17 pounds, 6 ounces. This is slightly below the 10% percentile. He’s been right at 10 for his whole life and a little drop at 9 months is to be expected since he is so active. Of course, he is 9.5 months, but whatev. 50% for height and 25% for head size.

Luke Report: He did not get the milk! My powers are not as strong as I thought. I am just going to get him a thermos, I guess. At the meeting today a subcommittee was formed to discuss why 15 minutes isn’t enough time for lunch and what can be done about it. If Luke doesn’t want to waste precious eating time, trying to buy milk, I guess I can deal with it. He also came home yesterday and the day before in a very good mood and he made a friend at after school care so all is right with the world. (He now has $29.50 in his online account but I suppose he can use that up over the next 12 or 13 years.)

Megan Report: Speaking of milk, the daycare has been saying I am not sending enough milk and I have been stressing. Jack’s weight drop stressed me even more. I asked the Dr. about it, and I said the only thing I can think to do is add a late night pumping session. He said mother nature is in charge and Jack is doing fine. Whatever I pump is enough and I would be better off going to bed instead of trying to pump one more time. Yea! A tremendous weight has been lifted!

>A Break From the Funny

>Luke hates after school care. The reason: He has to sit on the floor and wait for the Y-Care teacher to come get him while every other kid says, “I see my mommy!”, gives the teacher a high five and walks out the door.

It breaks my heart.

I know a second grader who loves after school care, and a first grader who begs his mom to sign him up. I know a family that says their kids love every minute and are sad to be picked up. I am sure this is a phase and that I am more upset than he is, but it’s rough.

I am trying to remember how long it took from Luke to go from missing his mommy at pre-school to wishing I wouldn’t come to get him so early. I’m not going to try too hard to remember though because I am afraid it might have been a couple months.

>Settling Into the School Year

>Sometimes I don’t really feel like a mom, or like my idea of what a mom is. I remember when Luke was able to stand and play with the tupperware in the bottom drawer in the kitchen, that made me feel like a mom. Probably because I have memories of my sister playing in the bottom drawer in the kitchen. Kid playing in drawer while you work in the kitchen = quintessential mom. I hadn’t had that, “weird I don’t feel like a mom” feeling in a while – possibly because I have two children, and five and half years into the whole thing I am used to it. But last week when I was packing lunches (like the third of 3,960 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that I will be making over the next 16 or so years) I had this “wow, I really am a mom” feeling.

The next feeling I had was, “wow, that’s a lot of plastic baggies.”

So I took a sandwich sized tupperware to Luke and said, “Can you open this?”

He tried and wasn’t able to. He said, “Sorry Mom, you’ll need to get Daddy to help you.”

So I am investigating alternatives.

Also, Luke was very concerned about the homework situation before the school year started, and I really had no idea what to tell him to expect. So every day he has come home and said, “No homework!” But it’s almost like he’ll be relieved when he gets homework so the whole thing isn’t a mystery anymore. He did come home with a little piece of paper that was a xerox of the type of paper that you use to practice your letters. His name was written on it in dotted lines. He said, “No homework! But look! I have this!” And I said, “Maybe you are supposed to trace over that with a pencil to practice your letters? Maybe that’s your homework.” He said, “I don’t think so. I think that’s optional.”

Oh, one more thing. We were reading a bedtime story of Scooby Soo and the Alien Invaders and Luke was looking at the pictures. There was some graffiti on a wall and that said, “Aliens go home.” He pointed out the “go” and I asked him how he knew what that word was. He said, “We have a calendar at school and it lists everything we do for the day and it says, “Go Home” at the end.” I said, “What else is on it?” He said, “Recess.” And I said, “What else?” And he said, “That’s all I remember.”

>Did You Ever Have One Of Those Dreams?

>You know that feeling, when the alarm, or the sunshine, or something in the night is slowly waking you up, but you are in the middle of a dream, and you know you’d be so frustrated if it was interrupted? The outside world is seeping in, but you try to block it out and sink further into your subconscious towards the dream resolution that is right around the corner. Maybe you are about to win the 100 meter dash, or set a record in the butterfly. Or maybe your Olympic dream is more along the lines of rhythmic gymnastics with Michael Phelps.

Well, when my baby was trying to wake me around 1:30 am, I resisted. I just couldn’t bring myself to comfort or nourish my little child because I had something in my dream that I needed to finish. See, I was dreaming about emptying the dishwasher, and I didn’t want to be interrupted until it was done.

>Sent To His Room For Demanding Broccoli

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The boys are at Camp Grandparent this week, and loving it. Naps were taken, bikes ridden, puzzle completed, two playgrounds and a pool visited, and that was all on the first day. And perfect behavior can only lead to one thing: a dinner time meltdown. Dave grilled chicken for fajitas and I sauteed red and green peppers and onions, and also made pico de gallo. Yum. And a salad. Somehow Luke ended up at the head of the table and was getting served first. I had eaten most of my lunch today by 11 am, and I was hangry. Dave was explaining to Luke how we have a “no thank you bite policy” and he needed to take a bite of a vegetable before he could say no thank you, and please pick a vegetable, and Luke picked broccoli. Did we make any broccoli? No. Meanwhile I am just shoving food into Jack’s mouth as fast as possible so that on the off chance some food gets to me, I’ll have a brief interlude between squawks from my baby bird to inhale some morsels. Long story short, I sent Luke to his room for demanding to be served broccoli. Has any child in the history of these United States been sent to his or her room for demanding broccoli? Today, history was made.

After I had taken some bites, and needed to get up anyway for some reason, I made a quick detour to the room of the sobbing young man to try to calm him down. Usually in instances like these he makes up a story about hurt feelings or something, I console him and tell him he can come back to the table when he has calmed down. But I when I walked into his room he said, “I’ll come back when I GET BROCCOLI!” Okaaaay, at least I don’t have to feel like maybe it was unnecessary to send him to time out. So I said, “Well, if you want to influence what is served at the dinner table, you need to be more involved in the meal preparation. You know the rules, feel free to come back when you have calmed down. If we are still sitting at the table, you can join us.” Sobbing ensued. But he pulled it together and rejoined us at the table a little later.

Oh, and the other day I said, “Do you want some ranch dressing for your broccoli?” The fact that he turned it down isn’t surprising because he doesn’t really like ranch, but it was a little odd that he said, “No, just broccoli, straight up!”

Another point of view on broccoli.

Photo credit.

>Nature V. Nurture

>Dave and I were discussing Nature vs. Nurture at dinner last night (probably in regards to our awesome parenting and how much it impacts our perfect children.) But with your biological children, does it matter what comes from your genes and what comes from your environment and actions? What’s the diff? Who cares? And if something is not a genetic trait, but a learned behavior, does that mean it can be unlearned? Or relearned for the better?

I guess what I mean is, can people change?

The reason I ask is that Luke could not find his shoes this morning and it upset the delicate balance that allows us to get out of the house somewhere within an hour of on time without screaming, crying, or shaking our fists at the gods. Meetings were almost missed, bottles were forgotten, tears were shed. Luke’s shoes were right by the front door. I have to feel a little sorry for the kid because he seems to have my tendency to lose things, combined with Dave’s inability to look for and find things. Is the inability to look for and find things a genetic trait? Possibly on the y chromosome? Do I lose things because I need to scale back from ubertasking to mere multitasking?

This week I had to borrow Dave’s keys, mine were later found in a breast pump compartment. I went to physical therapy for my knee and couldn’t find my insurance card. I was sure it was on my desk, but it turned out to be in my wallet after all. It is time for a change. I don’t care if my very mitochondrial DNA insists that I lose things, I am going to try to keep track, and I am going to try to help Luke do the same. Wish me luck!

>B is for Bowling

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Most people already know this, but just to get everyone up to speed, I am sort of type A, and I used to be obsessed with my GPA. When I was in school, that is. I don’t care about it now, obviously. Or maybe not so obviously since that is what I am writing about. But back to high school. I am not going to put any dates on in, but I can guarantee this: when I was a junior in high school, and our gym class was held at the local bowling alley, Rob Base was definitely playing on the radio. (Parenting Aside: We went through a long phase of counting to 3 to give Luke a chance to follow orders without getting a time out. Once I couldn’t stop myself from following “1, 2, 3” with “get loose now.” Luke cried and said, “‘ ‘Cept I don’t want to get loose.” ANYWAY, I was not very good at bowling. And by “was” I mean, “as recently as two months ago, I took Luke bowling and got the bumpers for both of us, and he beat me.” In high school I was even worse. In order to get an A in bowling you had to bowl 100. It quickly became apparent that I would not be bowling 100. What to do? Was I to get a B for the first time since grades were invented? A B? In bowling? Well, there were easy two options for getting an A. The first would be to cheat and give myself a score of 100. Aside from the moral and ethical dilemma of debasing myself by cheating at bowling, there is a slight problem that I have with arithmetic. Geometry? No problem! Algebra? Calculus? I love you! Arithmetic? Hmm, not so much. I am not sure that I had both the understanding of how to keep score and the ability to make the numbers add up to something resembling 101. In retrospect, it is entirely possible that I was bowling A caliber frames, but not adding up the score correctly. But based on my scores at forced, work-related team functions over the years, that’s probably not the case. But I digress, I would never cheat, especially not at bowling. That left me with option 2: Bowl during my free time and bring in my score sheet for extra credit. Almost as bad as cheating, was having to bowl a terrible game in my free time and then turn the results in for extra credit. I have done many extra credit, brown nosing projects over the years, (I wrote a paper on the catalytic converter before I switched majors from engineering to the more employable field of botany) but I couldn’t make myself be a big enough geek. Sure, my friends would have been happy to go bowling with me! Sure, I told my parents I was bowling half the time anyway! (Hi Mom and Dad!). But I had to draw the line somewhere. I had to take a stand and plan to enter my senior year without a 4.0 in order to relieve to pressure and survive. I didn’t cheat, I didn’t do extra credit, I got a B and it was the healthiest thing I could have done.The point of this story is that in my first two games of wii bowling, I bowled a 144 and a 177, beating everyone. Because I am awesome at wii bowling. Or everyone else is really bad. But probably because I am awesome. I stole the picture from here.

>Creative Dinner Solutions

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I think my day can be summed up like this: I fed Luke dinner at the grocery store while I was shopping. He had most of a chicken tender, a slice of cheese, and lollipop. We had had appetizers at the park that included carrots and apple juice, but I would have to say this may be a new low. And even though I said, “This will be a fun adventure, what do you think we’ll find to eat for dinner?” he still said, “What’s for dinner?” when we got home. So I made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

(The photo is of Luke, probably around 6 months.)