Clearing the Hurdles

Nora ate cheetos for dinner tonight. They were the “natural” kind, but still a horrible horrible dinner. A symptom of the larger problem – we have not established our school year routine yet. Thus we have no plan for dinner each night.

We didn’t feed her the cheetos on purpose. Ken was snacking on them and thus Nora wanted them. He gave her one. I said, “oh-no,” knowing that one cheeto is never enough for any normal human being. And Nora proved to be normal, wanting cheeto after cheeto until they were “ga-ga” from dad’s bowl. So when I offered her three different choices of things at dinner, she was already full.

This cheeto dinner made a great ending to a day that began at 4:30 am. I hope that it is Nora’s teeth and the change of routine that is causing the sleep disruption. She was doing so well! I was feeling so rested! But I guess good things have to come to an end. And hopefully bad things do too.

As I’ve written earlier, routines are really important to me, and I think to Nora too (as evidenced by the 4:30 wake up). This first real week back at work is so hard because, not only am I taking Nora to daycare full days for the first week, but I am not at school for my normal routine. I have to be at different places at different times for different trainings, all of which seem pointless to me. Next week, when the kids come, my routine will be a bit more set, but I have to survive this week first.

So far Nora is a star at daycare. They told me last Friday that they hoped to have a cloning closet this week so all the new toddlers would be as agreeable as she is. She didn’t cry at all last week, not once when I left and not once all day while I was gone. She didn’t eat all of her lunch or snack, but I think she is doing better this week. And she did cry yesterday when one of the teachers was giving someone else some attention after a fall. Nora wanted attention too.

She comes home so happy it makes me happy too. She jabbers about buses and taxis all the way home in the car. She comes into the house and immediately finds something fun to play with. I wonder if I think she is so adorable just because I’ve missed her, or if she does just get cuter as she learns new things every day. Or maybe she is trying to be extra cute so I don’t hate her when she cries at 4:30 am.

Aside from the routine being all out of whack and messing with our healthy eating habits, despite her cuteness and resilience, it just isn’t the same to be away from Nora all day. Tonight before bed, Nora whimpered and said “butt.” She has a terrible diaper rash, and as I put layer upon layer of aquaphor on it I couldn’t help but feel so guilty. If she was here with me her little butt wouldn’t be so red. I would change her diaper more often since I know she is teething.

So the first hurdles of the year back at work. We will get over them just like we did last year. It is just painful having to start the journey.

Lesson Plans

At the start of the summer I walked Nora out of daycare for the last day and wondered how I would possibly keep her entertained all day. At daycare there are two or three adults, eight of nine other children, lots of toys, tons of activity. Sure, I had spent many a busy weekend day with Nora, but I didn’t really feel confident that I could successfully fill our days in ways that would please both her and me. I wondered in my first blog, what do you do with an 18 month old all day?

I think I attacked my summer days with Nora much as I attack my days in my classroom. I needed a “lesson” plan. We had our routine that made me comfortable – confines to work within. I wonder how much Nora realized the routine. I tried to vary our activities enough to keep both of us interested. I tried to be patient and loving and kind even when I was tired. Being a mom is a lot like being a teacher. And I learned that being with one toddler is as tiring as being with 100 teenagers who I get to send home at the end of the day.

Nora and I settled into a routine pretty quickly. We would wake up, eat breaksfast and watch Elmo, take a walk and visit the chickens down the street, the “doo doo’s” as Nora calls them. Then we would play outside and inside until about 9:30 and then we’d go on some sort of outing – park, shopping, errands. I tried my best to keep her awake on the car ride back, came home, ate lunch around 11:30, read a book or two and started nap time around noon (more follow up on naptime in another blog…). In the afternoon we would go swimming or to Gymboree or to run around in Mimi and Papa’s at first empty house. Then we’d come home, eat dinner, play and go to bed. Writing it that way makes it sound so easy…

What entertains a toddler generally changes every 10 minutes, sometimes every 2 minutes, but I found some things that Nora generally enjoyed and were no-fail entertainers in every mood.

Stickers. For our plane ride I bought Nora a book of reusable Elmo stickers. It seriously entertained her for an hour on the plane. No joke. It was the best 8 dollars I’ve ever spent. The book said it was for ages 3 and up, but I got it anyway since we would be right there with her. The key is the reusable stickers. They are thick and don’t rip and, just like they claim, you can reuse them many times. When we got back from vacation Nora invented the game of sticking her stickers to the floor and to herself. Since they are reusable they don’t stick places you don’t want them to. If it weren’t for stickers I would have gone crazy many days. I love stickers!

Water table. In April, Ken’s parents got Nora the water table I had been looking at for her. It seemed like the perfect toy for the Texas heat. And I was right. It is a great compromise to the pool since you don’t have to commit to a swim diaper and all that jazz, but she can get wet, put rocks in it, splash, play with toys in it. This was a daily activity for us. And you can tell from the photo that five months after getting it, she still loves it as enthusiastically as she did on day one. That’s not true of many of her toys.

Shoes. Nora, as mentioned in an earlier post, is a shoe lover like her mama. Each evening and some morning she would change shoes and walk around the house in laps looking at her feet. The key was to hide a pair of her shoes for a while, bring them out as new and exciting, and then she would want to walk around and stare. She also loved to walk around in my shoes. This was pretty difficult and dangerous, but she managed pretty well.

Picture Books. Nora’s vocabulary is exploding. I was keeping a list of all her words, but now it’s up to 52 and she says so many new things every day that I can’t keep up with it anymore. I credit this to some of her picture books. Today in the car she said, “taxi.” If we lived in New York that might not be a big deal, but we don’t see that many taxi’s around my part of Austin. She learned this from one of her picture books. And she loves to sit and read them. She had all the animal sounds down and some tricks with animals that don’t make sounds.

Then there’s all the normal stuff – the crayons, the tickling, the chasing, the dolls and puzzles. And there are the times that the only thing she’ll do is cling to me and refuse to be “entertained” by anything, even stickers.

And, perhaps best of all, were the times when Nora just entertained me. There were many of those – she’s a pretty funny little girl.

THE Nap

The Nap

For the first two weeks of Nora’s life – when she was underweight from being early - I had to wake her up every 3 hours to eat. She never stayed awake much longer than it took her to eat. We don’t have any pictures with her eyes open until she is a month old. Even after that she pretty much slept all the time – or so it seemed. I remember going to my 6 week doctor’s appointment and reporting to the doctor that she had slept for six hours straight the night before.

And then something happened. I probably should never have reported to anyone that she was sleeping well. Night waking – night eating – night misery. But it ended and by 9 months I had her sleeping through the night (or at least until 5:30, when she’d join us in bed) and napping in her crib. And then something happened again – I honestly don’t even remember what it was exactly that started it. I think it might have been the three week killer ear infection at Christmas – but it could have even been before that. She would not nap in her crib. She would only nap on me.

And I thought a few times about “fixing” her – but it seemed pointless when I only had her napping here on the weekend anyway.

I resolved to begin Operation Nap in Crib in the summer – when I had time and patience to really “train” her to nap in her crib.

So I did. We started the first day I was out of school. The first day she cried for 20 minutes and then slept. Second day, 10 minutes of crying and then sleep. Third day, no crying. She was a professional crib napper – sometimes even napping close to three hours. All. By. Herself.

And I had a break.

But now, she is no longer a professional crib napper. She is a professional mommy manipulator. Or she is teething (which is what I prefer to believe. I mean, I can see the white bulges of all four cuspids and she has teething poop that even got all over the living room chair and her shoes tonight. So yes, no manipulation, just teething pain. That makes me feel better…) Yesterday no nap in crib, just nap on mom. And I felt trapped. Trapped in the chair, the bed, wherever it was we were napping at the time. I wanted to be reading – or napping by myself. Or talking to Ken. Or something. By. Myself. But she won.

Ferber says in his book that some kids are not good nappers – they are too curious or too “something” to be good nappers in their cribs. Reading that makes me feel better, but it doesn’t mean I don’t still feel trapped when I am stuck napping with her. And then The Nap takes on a life of its own and I ponder it all morning and think about what my plan of attack should be. Instead of just enjoying lunch and running around, I think of what will happen when I place her pretty little head on that pillow. The Nap.

Today she napped for 35 minutes by herself in her crib. And I was thankful for every minute of it.

AP Motherhood

I was always a good student – the kind my principal has currently labeled teacher-pleasers. I was curious too, however. I was just good at school (maybe that is why I am still there?) When Nora was first born, I read every book I could get my hands on. I wanted to know everything about babies, what I should be doing with her, what to expect, how to fix every little and big problem that could arise. My mom called it “AP Motherhood.”

I reviewed my Toddler 411 book on Sunday night just to be prepared for my first real day of summer at home with Nora.

And Monday was great! She napped well in her crib all by herself. Operation Nap in Crib, which had been postponed numerous times since the crib napping stopped in December, seemed to be a great success. She loved her swimming lessons, as usual. We had a great time at the park in the morning. She ate all her dinner without much fuss and gave me at least ten kisses before bed – on alternating cheeks,of course.

And then Tuesday happened. She woke up too early – 5:30 – for both of us. She was cranky and so was I. We went to walk at the lake to give her an opportunity to sleep more, which of course she didn’t. Then we had a good bit of playing, but by 11 she was zonked so she went down for her nap an hour early. She slept for only 45 minutes in her crib and then another 45 minutes on me. She ate some lunch and we had a good couple hours of adorable toddler playing with me seemingly saying “careful” a million times as she ran and climbed and reached both inside and out. And then I let her fall asleep in her stroller around 5. And I woke her up after 30 minutes because I was afraid she would just sleep all night. And she was MAD. So mad only Elmo videos on YouTube could cure it.

An AP mom wouldn’t let her child watch Elmo since the AAP says no media before 2 years old. An AP mom would have known to just weather the last tired hours and put her to bed a bit early instead of napping in the stroller. An AP mom would never have had to do Operation Nap In Crib in the first place. So then my mom guilt sinks in and I read my mom blogs and my mom books trying to figure out how to fix it all for tomorrow.

But then, before bed, she wiggles her fingers, claps her hands, says “mo” when I rub her legs. She kisses me on both cheeks and gives me a big hug when I ask and I realize that I don’t really need to fix anything for tomorrow. I just need to enjoy all of the moments, the good and the bad, that I am lucky to have time off to be a part of.