Last week I was privvy to some ridiculous mommy and baby behavior. I’m usually not a judgmental mother. Really. But some mommy/ baby behavior needs to be called out. Like the mom who brought her baby and her nanny to the nail salon to … no joke … get her baby’s nails cut and buffed.
At first, I thought the baby was a little girl trying on nail polish for the first time. Fine. Sitting on her nanny’s lap with her mom taking pictures right next to her. Ok, I guess they were excited. When I realized that the baby was a boy, and was only there to get his nails cut, I was perplexed. He was no more than 13 months old. Was this his weekly visit to the salon, I thought?
Yes, cutting a baby’s nails can be one of the more fear-inducing tasks that parents must do to their children. You have to cut their nails to avoid Edward Scissorhands-like face scratching, but you don’t want to cut them too short to the point where you’re drawing blood on the digits.
So, you may ask for help. I remember that my sister-in-law first cut my older son’s nails when I was too afraid to try. After a few practice runs with her, I was like a regular trained nail tech. Maybe you are lucky enough to have an experienced nanny help and she may be assigned the chore. Or maybe you have no choice but to just suck it up and figure it out yourself like every one of our ancestors who didn’t have nail clippers, scissors and filers did before us.
There’s outsourcing your baby’s hygiene maintenance and then there’s OUT-of-your-mind sourcing where you have the hired help to cut the nails but still pay a pro to do it while you just watch on the sidelines idly. I can only hope the edges were a perfect rounded square.
In other absurd mommy and baby news, a bunch of moms in my baby class were chatting about where our older kids were going to preschool. I run in a small, fortunate crowd of people who will be sending our children to a private school next year. My husband and I worked hard to give him that opportunity and I am grateful he will get educated in a place where I think he will do his best. It was a whole, big, stressful process I won’t get into here, but didn’t even think to worry about it until my son was three-and-a-half.
However, I encountered a mom last week in the class who was already stressing about where her five-month-old child was going to preschool. That she already called the school of her choice and said she would put down a deposit TODAY if that meant her son could get in in 3 years.
I’m working on an article about “hands-off” parenting about how we should back off of our kids and let them learn, grow and make mistakes on their own. Not guide them into what we “think” they should do, but what they “want” to do. We all want the best for our kids’ education, but how do you know at five months what kind of child yours will be at preschool age? I don’t fault that mom for being nervous, but I would warn her to not let her nervous energy be transposed onto her innocent baby already. There’s plenty of time to be worried about school and grades and “getting in.”
Let’s leave our kids’ nails and schooling up to nature a little, shall we?
Cross-posted to Second-City Baby.
When I make up my mind to do something, especially with regard to parenting, I do it. I hate being half-assed. I either decide I’m going to be very, very lazy about something, or completely obsessive compulsive. I’m like Dr. Spock and Mr. Mom. One minute I’m the sleep training Nazi, next I’m letting my kid having a snack of M&Ms and chocolate milk while watching 3 episodes of Dora in a row.
Enter the vicious world of potty training.
I had it in my OCD (or CDO if you’re Busy Mom) head that my son would be trained by the ripe old age of three. Enter Dr. Spock. Or Dr. Something.
First, I obsessively asked my son every minute if he wanted to wear underwear. Next, I twittered my few tweeps to see what the consensus of non-OCD moms were.
Then I made a decision. We were going cold turkey. Child-led, shmild-led, I had enough of diapers and thus, it was time to get rid of them. And as my husband said to my father, “she’ll be damned if this doesn’t work.” So we made the ceremonial visit to Target to procure the goods. You know, the tighty whities with various Disney characters on them. No tags! No Thomas! Of course they only had one freaking pack of Lightning McQueen toddler 4T left. Apparently, all three-year-olds are picky about who they wear on their ass. We scooped up the last pack.
And, we needed some bribery gifts. Gift du jour? More animals. Thank the Schleich g-ds the polar bear and doggie he picked out don’t have genitalia to speak of. I couldn’t deal with that. It’s bad enough the kid is diddling his you know what all day now that it’s free in the land of cotton.
That was Tuesday.
Yesterday was Day 2 of the Great Underwear Experiment. One trip to school in underwear, one poop on the potty, one nap and afternoon poop in a diaper, back to underwear for dinner time today, three loads of laundry later and I’m not sure how successful we are.
But we’re doing it, and that’s half the battle of parenting, right?
Tagged as:
potty training
Leaving town without your kids is exhilirating. Coming home is exhausting.
I took on a fair amount of risk leaving town for the weekend by myself. Leaving always means I have some sort of recalibration to do regarding my child when I get back.
Too much juice? Yes. Must do something about that.
Too much blankie time? Of course. That’s gonna be a tough one.
Too much I’ll give you anything you want as long as you don’t whine any longer? Part of the package. For me, too.
I get all of this, but why is it that the rules get all shot to hell when you leave your kids with your parents for a couple days?
My mom always says, “that’s what grandparents” are for. But she doesn’t have to live with the consequences.
Because as soon as I get home the proverbial #2 hits the fan, the light fixture and the nice painting hanging over my bed. I always have to break my son back into reality whenever I let him go to the wolves, er, the family.
Don’t get me wrong – Nana and Papa get the job done. My son adores them, and I can’t ask for anything more. I just sometimes wish there was a little flip I could switch on the kid. Up: Nana. Down: reality. It bites.
Oh, it’s gonna be a long week when I get home.
I’m not good at many things, but one thing I know I did well was quit my job. In fact, I’m gonna go right out and say it. I’m really good at saying “no,” “I don’t think so,” “when monkeys fly out of my ass,” you know.
I’m an excellent quitter.
Once I decided to pull the plug, I did it, and didn’t look back. It may have costed me headaches freelance work, but whatever, I had decided I wanted to be a slave to the little man a full-time SAHM. And, so here I am, still changing adult-sized poops one year after I stormed into my old boss’s office and told her what’s what.
Why am I getting into all this now? Because I have a ton of friends who are ready to pull the plug (even in this economy) and they’re nervous as hell about what to do. So they call me because I once was like them, full of vim and vigor for the workplace only to have it sucked out of me like the squeegie-tool gets the snot out of a baby’s nose. They, like all boogers, want out. Any way they can.
But getting out is scary. Going from a cozy place, whether it be a nostril, or your sky-high office with well-paying job is scary. And here’s where I can help. (And where the squeegie-nostril analogy will end.)
(Almost.)
I’ve been thinking about it for awhile, as you can tell, and I think it’s time for my unsolicited advice for all my friends out there on how to psych yourself up to quit your job. (Drumroll, please.)
- Once you have made the decision, STICK TO YOUR GUNS. Negotiating with your boss is a little lot like negotiating with your toddler. Giving in is sin. And what I mean by this is that if they want you to stay on a month and you want to give two weeks, split it in the middle and stay for three. Unless they’re gonna throw in some ridiculous hanger-on bonus or something.
- Don’t worry about what you’re going to do after you quit. If you are quitting to spend more time with your kids, then maybe try that until you’re blue in the face from playing Candyland all day long. And then you’ll kick yourself for not being back at work. I’M JUST KIDDING. Nothing’s permanent. If it’s not working for you at home, I’m sure there are other jobs out there. Welcome to McDonald’s, can I help you?
- I know, I know, you’re worried about child care. If you quit, you’ll lose your nanny, you can’t afford day care anymore, you don’t need the help. And you probably can’t or don’t. But really, who needs extra help when you get to spend every waking moment with that little ray of sunshine you call caffeine. I mean, really?
- Really, you know yourself better than anyone else. You know what’s best for you. Not your cubemate, not the mail delivery guy, and no, not the barista on the first floor. When you’re ready to leave, you just know. Trust your gut. Even if it’s put on a few pounds in the last year.
Now go on, get! You’ll be happy, I promise. Just think, in a year, you’ll have mastered the SAHM thing just like I did: you’ll have figured out exactly how to force-your-child-to-sleep-all-afternoon-so-you-can-watch-your-favorite-shows-and-dick-around-on-your-computer-while-simultaneously-empyting-the-dishwasher.
It’s a beautiful thing.
Tagged as:
quitting your job,
SAHM
I’ve never been so tired from a vacation trip in my entire life. I’m not complaining about spending a week in the sunny mountains of Colorado, but oh man, if someone would have told me I would have been woken up at 5:30 every morning only to take care of a delerious non-napping toddler for the duration of my vacation trip, I would have asked to be sent back on the next flight back to O’Hare even if the only spot was in the cargo hold.
Vacations trips as a solo parent are exhausting. While Nana and Papa are supremely helpful, no one is mommy. No one can put a jacket on like mommy. No one can fill a glass of milk like mommy. No one can wipe a nose like mommy. No one can play with the zebras and “smooth tigers” like mommy. Yes, we bring the Schleich on vacations too.
There were times of pure joy and happiness in between the mommy mommy whining. Ever see a 3-year-old on skis? It’ll melt your heart. And your wallet, but that’s where Nana and Papa’s helpfulness come in handy.
I ignored couldn’t hear the shouting for mommy through the helmet.
I know I’m extremely lucky to have been able to get away like this. But I just once wanted the roles to be reversed. Mommy, can I get you a glass of milk? Mommy, would you like to sleep in after sunrise?
But as such, I am the mother of a toddler, who, in strange locations, just needs a familiar being to latch onto. Besides, by the end of the vacation trip, everyone around me was too tired to pitch in even if the little man would have let them.
Ski lesson for the grandson: $100. Falling asleep on bench at lunch spot: priceless.
Edited to add: for the best list on the web of what sippy cups/ bottles are completely BPA-free go to Z Recommends.
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I finally did it. I caved in and got rid of my plastic sippy cups. I’d been avoiding the inevitable for quite some time now, trying to believe that all the ruckus around leaching and B.P.A was just hype. But when the New York Times published the story last week that Canada is likely to label the chemical B.P.A. toxic I finally took note. (Sorry folks, I still need an old school press outlet to print something before I really kick into high-gear neuroses.)
That meant throwing away perfectly-good but potentially harmful Nuby sippy cups (information received from company representative was timely, but ultimately too confusing to figure out which parts of the cup actually still have B.P.A. in them for neurotic Jewish mother) and replacing them with overpriced, very heavy and oh-by-the-way-they-don’t-tell-you-but-you-have-to-wash-them-by-hand stainless steel versions.Â
I went with versions from SIGG and Foogo because I didn’t have to crane my eyes to read which number plastic was listed on the bottom to see if it was okay (is it 2? 6?) and because I like cartoony-looking airplanes. I’m just like Herve Villechaize.
Da plane! Da plane!
Yes, it was more expensive, but so far it’s been worth it because my son seems to be handling the transition just fine. Apparently, “leak-proof” works just the same with stainless as it does plastic. He can still use the straw to flick milk all over unsuspecting satin pillows or interior of clean car. (Praise to the genius who figures out how to not collect milk at the end of a sippy cup straw.) Also, it would appear that milk tastes better out of stainless steel because I’ve already gone through a gallon since I instituted the B.P.A. ban (that was Monday). Maybe there is something to this story?
Which brings me to my most sanctimomious moment ever when me and my lead-weight (oh wait, lead is poisonous too) diaper bag went for a playdate at my friend’s house. Little did she know that I’d turned into the B.P.A. police overnight. She offered my son a sippy cup of water. I inspected the bottom of the cup. A 4! G-d love Playtex! The plastic cups she served us? No number, so I ceased drinking. She fed her young daughter her bottle. I chimed in without any solicitation:
Uhm, are you sure you still want to use Dr. Brown’s bottles?
Who am I to comment on the bottle feeding habits of another smart mom? She told me that she wasn’t informed and needed someone else to help tell her what to do, but I’m far from an expert. Even though I’ve rid my house of the “plastic devil,” I still have been known every know and then to accidentally microwave those little Gerber plastic bowls full of macaroni and cheese or leave the plastic on the string cheese enough so my son has ingested more of the Frigo guy than the actual mozzarella.Â
Frigo man says, “don’t eat me, please!”
My information on the topic is unproven, untested. But everybody’s talking about it and the experts say if you don’t do it you might have a kid with three boobs who runs around in circles all the time. I mean, my cousin, the doctor, the researcher, threw out all the plastic bottles for his three-month-old too. But he also knows words like polyethelene. All I know is what I read in the paper. Which was enough for me to ditch the neon for the metal.
And boy does my back hurt as a result.
Tags: BPA-free, bottles, SIGG, Froogo, BPA
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I know I said no blogging because it is spring out, but I got carried away and inspired because the article I fretted about is slated to run this June! Maybe the working once in awhile isn’t so bad after all…
