Category: Kids & Parenting

Boys and Their Toys

Published by dee on February 12, 2007

It was late Saturday night and I needed to get Zach changed and ready for bed. I gathered up a fresh diaper and his pajamas and wrestled him down to the floor to change him. He fights me these days when it is time to change his diaper or clothes so I try to make it fun by playing around with him.

I finally got him settled down enough and removed his diaper. He had a pretty bad diaper rash going on, so I coated him in Desitin before putting on the new diaper. During the process he kept trying to grab at his boy parts and I kept telling him no and blocking his hands so he didn’t get the Desitin all over the place. I finally got the new diaper on him just as he looked up at me and said clear as day, “You MEAN!”

At first I was shocked because he had said a new word, but as soon as I realized what he had actually said I laughed harder than I have in a long time.

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Here We Go Again

Published by dee on February 8, 2007

Last night Zach came up and snuggled up in my lap with a book. I didn’t think anything of it because we frequently read books at night. When he leaned up against my cheek I felt the heat coming off of his forehead. I suddenly understood why he refused to eat dinner and begged to lay in my bed watching Blue all evening. A quick check with the thermometer and I found he had 101 degree fever.

This morning we headed off to the doctor for a strep test because Zach had been around my nephews and sister last weekend when they had strep. Fortunately, the test came out negative, but unfortunately, he has another ear infection. The doctor suggested he might have a viral thing starting as well. What I can’t figure out is the fever. It goes down with a dose of Motrin but spikes back up as soon as the Motrin wears off. He doesn’t usually have fevers like this with an ear infection (and we have plenty of experience with ear infections) so I’m thinking something else is definitely going on. He’s also not eating which is very unlike him.

Zach and I spent the rest of the afternoon at home together. He took a long nap while I tried to get some work done and then we spent the evening playing and watching a billion episodes of Blue’s Clues. Right now he’s in bed trying not to go to sleep. I hate the idea of sending him off to day care tomorrow but unless he gets much worse I’ll have to do so.

These are the times when I really hate being a working mom.

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Can You Define "Bloggy"?

Published by dee on February 6, 2007

I haven’t been feeling very bloggy lately. I go through my daily routine and nothing really seems like it needs to be written about. Yet, for some reason I still feel the need to write. So here I am. I guess it’s time for a little bit of catch up.

Zach is being a bit of a terror lately. I think we have definitely hit the “terrible 2’s” stage of defiance. No matter what I say to him, the answer is “NO!” Getting him dressed in the mornings is a major chore. He fights me every step of the way until I am so frustrated I can’t wait to drop him off at day care. Then two seconds later he lifts his arms, gives me a hug, and totally redeems himself. When he’s not frustrating me, I sit back in amazement while I watch his latest accomplishments. I love to listen to him talk and sing. He is learning so many new words and his speech is getting more and more clear. He may just be a normal 19-month-old kid, but to me he seems like a genius in the making.

Work has been really busy lately. It always is this time of year but for some reason it seems even more stressful this year.

The diet is going okay. As of Sunday morning I had lost 4.5 pounds, but on Monday (my official weigh-in day) I was only down 2 pounds so that was what got recorded. The Super Bowl snacks are most likely what did me in. This week is going to be really tough. My boss took me and my mom out today for our birthdays and even though I had a salad, it had lots of fattening stuff on top. Then we had cake and ice cream back at the office to celebrate. I think I’ll do all right the rest of the week. Well, until Saturday when we do our family birthday dinner. February is just always a tough month.

I’ve become a little bit of a wino since Christmas. My sister gave me a set of wine glasses that I absolutely love and I want to drink wine just so I can use them. She also gave me a big bottle of White Zinfandel which has come in quite handy. My only problem is that I’ve never really drank wine much before so I don’t know what I like. I know I like White Zinfandel and this really cheap peach flavored wine that I found and that I don’t like Merlot, but other than that I’m pretty clueless. I tasted a Riesling when we were in Hawaii and I liked it but I don’t even know what else to try. I’m afraid to buy something I don’t already know I like because if I don’t like it then I’ve just wasted my hard earned money. This new “hobby” of mine is also not good for the diet.

Thanks to the suggestion of a good friend, I’ve been doing a little re-evaluation of my priorities. I feel so overwhelmed sometimes with all of the things that I feel like I need to do. I’ve been trying to spend a little less time on the internet and more time doing the things I need to be doing. I spent a big part of the weekend cleaning and organizing my house. I de-cluttered, re-organized, and just generally made things look better and it felt great. I also went through my blog subscriptions and cleaned out about half of them. There were so many that I just really wasn’t keeping up anymore so I figured I needed to cut back. As a result, I’m spending more time actually working at work and I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing. Now I just need to quit that bad habit of adding new blogs to my feed reader.

And finally, the bad news of the day. I found out yesterday that my sister-in-law had a miscarriage. I want so badly to talk to her, to comfort her. But again, I just don’t know how. What do you say to someone in that situation? They were both so excited that she was pregnant. All she could talk about when we were at their house was baby, baby, baby. I can’t even imagine what she must feel like right now. I feel like such a schmuck for telling her how perfect and easy my pregnancy was. I hurt for her, for the baby that is no more, and for my brother-in-law who was so excited at the prospect of becoming a father.

And that’s pretty much what’s going on with me. Exciting, huh?

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19 Months

Published by dee on January 26, 2007

Dear Zachary,

Another month has come and gone and I find myself sitting here wondering if time will ever slow back down. It seems like everything is on fast forward these days and I don’t know how to push the stop button. You are growing up so quickly.

Over the last few weeks you have become very opinionated. Your favorite word is “NO!” and you love to scream it out whenever we ask you any kind of question. I’m really starting to miss the days when your answer to everything was “yes.”

You are also showing even more signs of your daddy’s stubbornness. You went almost a whole day at day care refusing to eat just to show that you did have the power. When I got there to pick you up, you were still sitting at the table with your untouched snack. As soon as I told you to eat it, you gobbled it right down. Then we came home and fixed dinner and you ate like you had never seen food before. This whole concept of using food for power confuses me because Mama never misses a meal. Well, except for that one night that I just totally forgot to eat dinner.

You are still learning new words every day. I’m not sure whether you know what all of them mean, but you can repeat most words that you hear. Three of your most commonly used words–drink, down, and done–often sound very similar and you get frustrated when I can’t figure out which one you are saying. I hate it when I can’t understand you because I really love that we can now communicate with language.

Your love for music has expanded this month into singing and dancing. Every time you hear a song with a good beat you bust out into a dance and shake your booty. It is about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. You’ve been trying to sing along to your music for a while, but now you can actually say some of the words in the songs. Last night you surprised Daddy and I by singing along to the ABC’s on your Leap Frog toy. You couldn’t quite enunciate all of the letter names but you had the basic sounds correct.

A couple of weeks ago, Daddy and I took you on vacation to Hawaii. We had a great time while we were there and you were an absolute angel. We stayed with your Aunt and Uncle and Granny and Papa were there too. I really enjoyed watching you with them. Even though we don’t see them often you somehow still remember them and know that they are yours. My favorite part of the trip was watching you play on the beach. You would run up to the water with a giggle and let the waves wash over your feet. As soon as the water hit, your laughter would turn into a cry because the water was very cold. Then you would go back to laughing again. I wish I would have been brave enough to take my camera near the water and video it but somehow I think it will be burned in my memory forever.

Returning from Hawaii was quite an adjustment for all of us. Besides the four hour time difference, our leisurely days had to return to our normal structured routine. For you that meant returning to day care. The first couple of days back you were pretty clingy when I dropped you off. Your friend H. must have missed you because she spent most of that first day back holding your hand. She may have been protecting you from the new kids a little bit too.

Yesterday was a difficult day for you and I both. I got a call from day care saying that you had been bitten by a little boy (who was there for his first day). Your day care provider was pretty upset about the whole situation and apologized profusely. You were bitten about four times on your face from what we can tell. While your face does look pretty bad with all of those bite marks, the part that hurts me the most is that it was the first time that you had to experience someone intentionally hurting you. You have rarely experienced pain in your life and never pain that was inflicted upon you by another person. It breaks my heart when I think about it. You, however, have been very tough and are going on like nothing even happened.

Some days I look at you and see a little boy standing before me and other days I see a grown man. I imagine what you will be like as an adult and know that that time will come all too quickly. I just wish I could slow it down because I never want to give up these days with you.

Love always,
Mama

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As If The Guilt Wasn't Bad Enough Already

Published by dee on January 25, 2007

As a working parent, I think one of the things I dread the most is to hear my phone ring and see the day care number flash up on my caller ID. That number means that something is wrong because if everything was right there would be no reason to call. When that number shows up it means that someone is sick or someone is hurt and neither one of those is a good thing.

Today I got the call. Zach was bitten four times on his face by another little boy that just started day care there today. Not only was he bitten, but the little boy was sitting on his chest holding him down while he leaned over and chomped on Zach’s precious little cheeks. While I haven’t seen the damage yet, I was told that he bit hard enough to break through the skin a couple of times.

His day care provider was even more shaken up than I was about the whole situation. She has cared for him since he was 6 weeks old and loves him just about as much as her own kids. When the biting happened she was in the middle of nursing her 4-month-old and couldn’t jump up right away. The kids were all in the playroom where she couldn’t see them. I’m not angry at her because Zach has gotten hurt plenty of times at home when I’ve walked out of the room for a few minutes.

I do have to wonder though, if he was in a bigger day care center–with more teachers around–would something like this have happened or would it have been stopped before my child was hurt? If he was at home with me, this most definitely would not have happened. I hate it when I have to question my parenting decisions. I chose home day care because it was the closest I could get to having him home with me. I chose a provider that I trusted and had full confidence in. I wanted him in a relaxed setting for the first few years of his life. I wanted someone that would care for him with as much love as I would and I do believe that is what he gets there. On most days he thrives there. In fact, he rarely wants to leave when I get there to pick him up because he is having so much fun with the other kids.

The worst part of all of this is that I desperately want to be at home with him. As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. I have written about it over and over again on this blog. Most days I try to avoid thinking about it but it is always there. No matter how I figure it, there is just no way we can manage without me working. My past financial mistakes have caught up with me and there is no way out of it. I have to work or we don’t eat.

I just wish there was a way to make all of the guilty feelings go away. I want to hold my son and hug him and tell him that everything will be okay. I know that I can’t protect him forever from the harshness of this world, but he is still so little. This is the first time that anyone has intentionally hurt him. Even though he is probably too young to really understand it, I have a feeling that this experience will change him in some way and it breaks my heart to know that I wasn’t there to help protect him when he needed me. I just wish he could be unaware and innocent a little longer.

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I Hope You Dance

Published by dee on January 24, 2007

Zach has always been into music. I can’t remember exactly when I figured it out, but I know that he started responding to music when he was very young. He is obsessed with Jack’s Big Music Show and begs for his Laurie Berkner cd’s every time we are in the car. He sings along when there is a song on one of his favorite tv shows and occasionally at church during the hymns.

It really was no surprise when he started copying the characters’ motions and moving along to the music while he watched tv. He copies my actions on a daily basis. It cracked me up the day that he picked up my flat iron (it was turned off) and tried to straighten his hair with it.

Given his previous behavior, I’m not really sure why it surprised me so much when he started dancing in the middle of a restaurant one day. I’m not talking a little swaying back and forth. It was all out booty shaking going on. And? It was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Almost everything he does is cute (in my opinion), but this really takes the cake. Soon after that he started dancing at home. Any time he hears music he breaks out in dance. And the most amazing part is that he keeps a beat really well. He is always right on with the music. I have yet to get a good video of it, but I hope to soon.

A couple of nights ago we went out to dinner and while we were sitting there waiting for our food to arrive a song came on with a good dance beat. Zach started bouncing and shaking in his chair so hard that I was afraid he was going to fall out for a second. When he noticed us laughing and enjoying his dance he started dancing even harder. His arms were up in the air and he was really getting into it.

Looking at the smile on his face reminded me of how innocent he really is at this age. He has no inhibitions whatsoever. He didn’t care who was watching him or what they thought of him. He was just sitting there in that highchair having the time of his life. I wish that feeling could last forever for him. I never want him to feel the shyness or the insecurities that I felt as a child (and still sometimes feel as an adult). I want him to always feel like that carefree little boy that I watched dancing in his highchair.

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