November 15!

Here there are irises blooming because we are still having crazy things like 60+ degree days in the middle of November.

November 14!

Believe it or not, this is my cat thinking that he's hiding from the vacuum cleaner.

November 13!

Surprise! Today we have a video of Bear learning how to count diapers.




Two! Six! He has all the animal sounds and all the colors (including silver and gold) down pat, so apparently next we'll work on counting.

November 12!

today I am going to cheat a little bit. I think technically I am supposed to post a photo that I took today, but it's 6pm and I'm still in bed, so really there are no photos to take or post or anything. and, this is a photo I've been meaning to post for a while.

During the weeks of the equinoxes/equinoces?, DC turns into a henge, because we were designed to have streets that line up directly east-west. So if you go stand in the middle of one of the letter streets at sundown on either the vernal or autumnal equinox, the sun sets right down the middle of the street. It is pretty close for the few days before and after, too.

Anyway, here is my photo from the autumnal equinox this year (Sept 23), from L Street, SE:

Also I post this because I miss the long days. Winter Solstice, come quickly!

November 11!

Apparently I am only interested in taking photos every other day!

This was my snack:


Animal crackers and apple juice. So tasty!

November 9!

This is the best egg I poached today! I know it's not flipped over on itself like it's supposed to be, but it's nice and roundish! And then it jumped off of the spoon on to the floor, and it was so hot when I picked it up (duh) that it jumped from my hand into the garbage disposal as I tried to rinse it.

Jerk egg.

Pretty, though, right?

November 8!

Ok, so I missed yesterday. Sue me! No, don't, because it would be a waste of your time and money.

This is what I did today!

The weather was lovely and I think it will be one of the last days to be so lovely until spring, so Bear and I went to the zoo! We saw this alpaca, which Baby Bear would have stared at all afternoon, but we had a very important meeting at nap o'clock, so I had to tear him away to get him home in time. We also saw lions, elephants, a hungry growling tiger, a napping tiger, a sloth bear (very close to the glass! so cool), and the sad sad emu that paces in its habitat next to the zebras.

I love the zoo.

November 6!

Today it gets dark early, and also the trees are very bright. this photo obviously does no justice.

I learned a really excellent Ysaye Barnwell song yesterday and I will try to find a good link to it.

November 5!

Happy Guy Fawkes day!!!

So, let me explain my photo. It's NaDruWriNi, and I wrote a great poem about broccoli and then drew a picture to illustrate and then I took a picture and this is what happened:


more margarita!

November 4!

November 4 was a long day. A pretty good one, though!

It's rice, in the photo. A clever mother has improvised to make up for her lack of a sand table. It vacuums! Apparently you can put food coloring and make rainbow rice! I plan on stashing this one in the idea vault for FutureSpawn.

November 3!

Baby Space Monkey went to the doctor today so I went to Whole Foods, and he has RSV and bronchiolitis and I have some Tillamook cheese and likely a cold coming my way.

November 2!

Today started off not as much rough as ... well, it was as though I was being rubbed on a cheese grater.

But now I've almost finished cleaning up the havoc I wreaked this morning, and soon I won't remember that part, but the part I will remember is this:


Baby Space Monkey! He's 18 pounds and cut his first tooth yesterday. Which probably explains part of my morning. Also, he's crawling, and wishes that he could eat sammiches.

November Surprise! November 1 Picture!

Here it is, November again, and I almost forgot to do my post. I am trying to do Picture Month, because that is not one I have done yet!

here is what I did today:



Also, Bieber Bear finally has started saying my name! It sounds remarkably like "Wookoo" which I think is pretty good. His mom said "did he just call you Wookie?" and I said that I'd take it. His words are crazy out of control exploding.

Things For Which I am Eternally Grateful, episode IV

The bus driver who honked at the other cars to get them to stop while Bear and I were crossing the street today, so that we did not get hit when it was our turn to cross

That Baby Bear holds my hand EVERY TIME when we cross the street, 99% of the time without fighting

The sound a cow makes

Fresh peaches from the market

Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything, given to me by my sister, for whom I am also eternally grateful

The DC Public Library website, which has recently become much more user-friendly. Also the librarians there, who are abnormally and sometimes unsettlingly friendly and helpful, and

Otter Pops.

Trash fairies

Bear and I have some sort of hack routine for our weeks, because three days in a row with the same person can be tiring. Monday is eat snackylunch in a coffee shop (to practice being polite in public and also to try eating new foods), Tuesday is library day, and Wednesday is adventure day! Where we try new things, or go to a new place, or at least a fun place. Today we went to the new Playseum! It is brand new on Barracks Row and it is kind of expensive ($6 a person, even for the little ones) but holy wow it is so worth it on a hot day like today. Also I guess there is this other place called the Family Room where I have not been yet, because it has stairs that look intimidating. I am pretty sure these two places are making SO much money.

Baby Bear and I spent almost 2 hours there and went only to two rooms - the room with the bunnies and turtles and zebra finches, and then the room with the train table, and we pretty much spent the whole time in the train table room. Which means that if/when we go back, we still have the sand room, the painting room, the dress up room, the pizza-making room, the cupcake-making room, and the million other rooms to explore. it sucks that we could only be there for 2 hours, but, you know, lunch and naptime.

Big and Tiny were there, too! It was nice to see them because I haven't seen them for about a month and a half. Tiny is crawling! She's so cute. Tomorrow morning is when I get to hang out with Space Monkey! He's a winner.

The DC DPW fairies bestowed a lovely gift on us this morning - a trash can! We got a recycling can a few weeks ago. Now, hopefully no one will steal them again, or blow them up or put some stupid trash in them, and also hopefully the trash people will always take our trash! everyone that lives on our street puts their trash behind our house because we are at the mouth of the alley and the trash truck doesn't go down the alley, so there are always piles and piles of trash right behind the house. Sometimes the trash guys don't pick it up because it isn't always in cans, or other people put their stuff in our cans and, I dunno, maybe the trash people are all "man these people have so much trash I'm not gonna pick up all their stupid trash" when really it's the trash from, like, 4 or 5 houses at least. Anyway, thank you, DPW fairies!

that's not my blog!

Today is Stellina's 3rd birthday!! I went to the toy store today with BieberBear (who came out of the experience with a new toy helicopter, the lucky dog) and we got Stellina a card, Cloudette, and That's not my... coloring book! which I kind of want for myself. So she will get her presents on Thursday when I take her to camp and then I get to hang out with Space Monkey. I guess I am invited to her birthday party on Sunday but it is in Alexandria and it will have many 3-year-olds, so as much as I love Stellina I do not want to add to the chaos. I am thinking about it.

it is also Cleo's birthday (that's a link to Cleo's mom's blog which she hasn't updated in a while, because um... parenting is really hard work) and it is weird to me that I remember being so excited for Cleo's birth and I have seen lots of pictures of her and I still have never met her, but since Stellina is the exact same age, I actually remember the day of Stellina's birth long before I ever knew Stellina.

We had some squash plants but then I weeded around them and it turns out that the weeds were giving them shade and holding water in the soil, so now the squash plants are dead. RIP Squash plants. I do not think that this year we will have a water pipe burst to rescue the squashes, but ... who really knows. I am not super great at keeping plants alive. Over the span of my life, I have about a 75% success rate at keeping plants alive. I'm sorry, squash. Requiescat in pace.

Recipe for a delicious snack

Here is a recipe for the snack I made after I was done eating my ditalini pasta with homemade pesto!

Recipe for plum-peach-vanilla yogurt:

Step 1: take out the vanilla yogurt from the fridge that you bought a while ago but you've been too bored by to eat. Pour some of this into a bowl!

Step 2: take out the plum-peach jam that your mommy made from the cupboard and packed in your suitcase the last time you went home, pry open the jar. Spoon a generous amount of this delicion into the yogurt bowl.

Step 3: MIX INGREDIENTS

Step 4: ENJOY

Pairs well with toast coated with a moderately thick layer of plum-peach jam. Also pairs decently with a glass of water and various vitamins and supplements.

As I surrender unto sleep

Thanks, Eric Whitacre, for the song stuck in my head this morning.

Yesterday I finished a four-day, three-night marathon with BiebzBear. His parents went on vacation, and his other babysitter had him one day, and grandma had him part of another day, but goodness. it is much different to not have a 5pm end-time in sight and instead know that you have three more days. Highly effective birth control. he only woke up once during the night on each of the first two nights, and then slept 11 hours the third night, which was preeeetty excellent.

Then I went straight from there to Stellina and Space Monkey's house! They are great. Space Monkey is huge already, but really he is still pretty tiny. Neither of them had napped, and Stellina had already gotten a bath by the time I got there, so both of them were super exhausted and ready for bed. Of course, bedtime still took an hour and a half, but that's not so bad. Stellina fell asleep either before I left her room, or just after, because when I checked the video monitor, she hadn't moved from the same position she was in when we were singing "Baa Baa, Black Sheep." Space Monkey was up for a little while longer, and we had some good sleep-on-the-shoulder time after he was done with his last bottle. He's just so warm and wiggly and perfect and if you grab his toes and smile at him he breaks into this ginormous grin and spits bubbles. Also as a side note, I really do love the Miracle Blanket. Space Monkey can kick out of the feet bucket but man it makes him calm.

I had a long conversation on Thursday with Stellina and Space Monkey's mama about how we don't know how to have normal, grown-up, intellectual conversations with people anymore. I can think critically about infant and child development, especially now that I am reading all the books, but it is getting harder for me to wrap my brain around certain things now, like explaining how all the things in that Alanis Morissette song aren't actually ironic, and also that race is not a real thing but is just a social construction. There is only so much room in brains! And mine is getting filled up with feeding times, nap coercion, and poop. So that's kind of what's happening with this blog. Sorry.

Remember that Stellina is blognamed Stellina because at 14 months when I met her she loved to walk around the kitchen in counter-clockwise circles? She will be 3 years in 2 weeks and when we went out in the backyard yesterday the first thing she started doing was walking big counter-clockwise circles. Also she can dress herself and speak in whole sentences and peel her own bananas, even though the way she says banana is more like the French word for pineapple (ananas), and I blinked and wonder when that all happened.

What to Expect

I've been reading a lot of toddler books lately, which has been really helpful in understanding how my various kids operate. I don't think I mentioned it, but around the time of my last blog post (I'm delinquent, I know), I looked at BiebzBear and told him "You're not eating any more baby food when I'm here," and he hasn't. It makes things a little more difficult, of course, because damn, those pouches are super convenient when he gets hungry and we're out. Also, it's basically his only source of vegetables and fruits. So, that's a thing we're working on together. We've been trying lots of new things when we go out, which is great. Last week we had a ham-and-scallion scone, and also a peach smoothie, and a little bit of turkey sammich.

The sleep thing is more of an issue than ever. He's been taking bottles of just water to go down for the past month or so, but getting him to go to sleep is almost impossible some days. Even if he is 150% exhausted (like he was on Wednesday, when we went to the Postal Museum, and then took the metro back, and then I got him out of the stroller and he walked the mile from the metro station home), if he knows his mom is home, he stands there in the middle of the crib crying and throwing out his blanket and screaming and falling asleep standing up and then crying more. For hours. And yet, on Tuesdays, when his mom isn't home, he lies down in the crib, and falls asleep within ten minutes. This past week on the screaming days, I gave up after an hour each day, dragged him to sit with me in the rocking chair to look at books, and he was asleep in three minutes. And I have to stay there with him until he falls asleep, because that's what his parents want, even though he screams whether I'm in the room or not.

So:
Crib not comfortable enough?
Hears his mom, who seems to pick the best time for her to noisily prepare her lunch in the kitchen right when I am putting him down, and knows if he cries long enough she'll come in?
Should have been sleep trained and doesn't know how to comfort himself?
Running around is too exciting and now he thinks he doesn't need to nap anymore?
Going down for a nap just a little too late and missing the "window of opportunity?"
All of the above?

Despite the massive battles that are naptime, Bear has become a complete angel all other times, especially when he is well-rested after a nap (SURPRISE). We've been eating outside at Peregrine once a week for a while, which has been great for getting him to try new foods. The other day when we were leaving Safeway, I unbuckled his stroller belt and asked if he wanted to walk home. and he trotted along calmly next to me and held my hand when he felt like it, and of course when we crossed the street, and didn't run in traffic and didn't dawdle all that much at all.

A couple weeks ago when we were getting ready to go out to the playground, I told him that I couldn't carry him up the stairs to go out the front door, because I had to carry the stroller and the stroller is very heavy. So, I would take the stroller up the stairs and then come back and help him walk. I got to the top of the stairs and Bear was halfway up behind me, and since then he's been doing the stairs himself, both up and down. Then the other day, we were leaving for a walk at the same time his mom was leaving for errands, and she said "We've been working on not carrying him up the stairs." and I said, "Oh. Huh. He's been doing the stairs for weeks." and then of course he refused to walk up them because he KNEW since he mom was there she'd carry him, which she eventually did.

I read this book recently called the No Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers, which by the way is a huge bunch of bullshit, I feel, but the author mentioned that scientists say that most babies have the ability to put themselves to sleep by six months of age. She then said that since the majority of parents put their children to sleep up until the school years, it is perfectly normal and okay. She also said that kids all learn to walk and talk at different ages, so it's normal for kids to learn to put themselves to sleep at different ages. Two things with which I have major problems:

1) Most kids learn to walk around one year, give or take a few months. Most kids have a certain number of words and speaking skills by around their second birthday. Pediatricians use these milestones as indicators of healthy growth and development. So saying that a 5 year old in kindergarten that doesn't know how to put herself to sleep is just "falling in the normal spectrum of development, just like walking and talking" is not the same.

2) It's absolute nonsense to compare sleeping to walking and talking, if you're also saying that it's normal for parents to be putting their child to sleep long after pediatricians agree the child has the ability to put itself to sleep. Once a baby can walk, do the parents prevent him from walking? Once a toddler has the ability to talk, do the parents tell her she is not allowed to talk? It's not likely. So, once a child has the ability to put itself to sleep, why not let it?! I find it terribly frustrating.

Citations forthcoming. I let Bear's mom borrow the book and I have to get it back from her so I can return it to the library. Some of the stuff is really interesting, like the idea of making a bedtime chart, or a bedtime story with your child as the main character ("First Susie brushes her teeth! Then she gets her jammies on. Then she reads a story with Daddy, and then she gets in bed, closes her eyes, and goes to sleep until morning."), but not necessarily applicable to the younger toddler. But, a whole lot of her logic is complete garbage.

Anyway, this is all just a fancy way of saying I think that kids should be given the treatment that corresponds with their age, treatment that includes respecting autonomy, and also having certain expectations about actions (cleaning up toys, feeding self, walking instead of carrying). Having Bear an average of 4 times a week now and working really hard on those things has really helped him be better behaved and happier, and I'm much less frustrated, too. Easy for me to do all these things, I get to go home at the end of a day to a house filled with sharp table corners, gate-free stairs, and under-sink cabinets that are full of chemicals and have no locks on the doors.

a treatise on toddler sleep and helicopter parenting

It is May! Today I ate a banana. I learned that it is sad to ruin your fancy $4 delicious latte by accidentally dumping way too much sugar in it. I find the smell of carrot juice borderline revolting.

Okay, that's out of the way.

Tonight is my last night with Dave Jr, which is sad, but also great, because I am so tired of traipsing all the way across town for an hour for what usually ends up being $50 and then traipsing all the way back for an hour. Instead I am going to have Biebzbear all day Wednesdays from now on, in addition to all day Mondays and Tuesdays, and every other Sunday night, and the occasional date night. So really I am making more money and not going insane.

I am coming to understand Bear's parents, and therefore Bear, a little better. So, Bear still takes a bottle to go down for sleeping times, and is not putting himself to sleep. So, I have been giving him his bottle in the glider, and then putting him in his crib awake but drowsy, and then rubbing his back 'til he falls asleep for at least 5 months, and lately he's started actively trying to keep himself awake by wiggling his feet, even if his eyes are slamming shut like nobody's business. It took him until 9:30pm to go to sleep last Tuesday evening, so I kind of casually asked Bear's mom if they have a plan to teach him how to sleep on his own. She agreed that they need to do something differently, because he has been giving them trouble, too, both for naps and night time.

Sunday night they told me, "so we're not really spending much time rocking him after he finishes his bottle..." and then explained that they are giving him not 8oz that I have been giving him, but 16oz of whole milk, while in the glider, and then burping him, then standing up and rocking him in their arms until he falls asleep, then putting him in his crib, at which point he wakes up a little, so they rub his back until he falls back asleep. Yes, they are burping an 18-month-old. I understand that burping is totally a bonding thing, sure! go ahead, burp your baby as long as you want! but I genuinely believe that this is the parents not wanting their baby to grow up, and so unconsciously pretending that he isn't. He's not a baby anymore, he's a toddler. yes, he still wears a diaper, and he's not talking yet, but the dude is almost three feet tall, and is already 30+ pounds.

I don't want to tell his parents that they're doing anything wrong, because, well, they're not. they should raise Bear however they see fit, and if that means giving him a bottle and rubbing his back until he falls asleep on the night of his senior prom, go ahead (ohhh I'm a bitch). I'm worried that they don't realize that he doesn't need these things, like bottles and baby food, and that they don't realize that everyone's lives would be happier without those things. I'm not going to be the one to sleep train him, that is not my place or my job, and it's going to have to be his parents doing it anyway.

But I have started doing things that will hopefully make it easier when his parents are ready. Instead of giving him 8oz of whole milk to go down for his nap, I cut 2oz of whole milk with 6oz of water, which he has been drinking 3oz of (probably because he thinks it's disgusting) and then going to sleep just fine. My goal is to get him eventually to straight water in a bottle, then move to a sippy cup. We've been doing a routine of the same four books before every naptime, and I've been working on telling him "It's time to go to sleep now," which I know he understands.

People keep telling me "oh you're going to be the best mom ever because you know so much." Yes, I read parenting blogs and books and all that, and when it comes to things like sleep training, I will understand generally how to do it and when to do it and why to do it better than someone who has had no experience with babies ever. But I am afraid of putting FutureSpawn into a little box of "you have to be sleep trained by x month" and "you will not receive bottles after y week because this is what I read in a book and also my experience with z baby" and I don't think that's right either. Since I have never been an amateur parent (I joke that I am a professional parent), I think it is probably very difficult to find the perfect balance of advice vs trial and error. So, FutureSpawn, I'm sorry, but I'll try my best.