Language Confusion

While taking walks, R's current favorite game is to pick a letter of the alphabet and then brainstorm as many words as possible that start with that letter. Generally, she will throw out one or two suggestions, and then she nags, "more, More, MORE!" until I give up and suggest another letter. While we were out walking on Saturday, she picked the letter, "C." I suggested car, corn, and carrots. I was careful to stay clear of "celery" and other words with a soft "C" sound. As she demanded more words, I said, "cucumber."

Before I could add another word, she stopped me. "Maaahhhmeee," said in her most chastizing tone, "CUE-cumber starts with a Q."

Huh?

I started to correct her, and then I thought about it. The girl had a point. No wonder it's so hard to learn to spell.

Science Experiment

Having kids is like one giant science experiment that starts at conception. Actually raising the children leads to all sorts of new complications. In order to get results which even roughly approximate the desired outcome, variables must constantly be tweaked. The most recent experiments in our house involve sleep, or rather, the lack thereof.

For the past two weeks, L has slept less and less. At first he gave up nighttime sleeping. And eventually he gave up daytime sleeping to, to the point our little rock star was seriously sleeping no more than a few hours a day with one two-hour nap during the day, and a couple of 60-90 minute chunks at night. It has been crazy.

In our first attempt at getting them to sleep, we decided to introduce solid food. (Just to be fair to my man, in most instances, particularly where the results went awry, when I say "our" I mean "my" attempt.) So two weeks, ago, we started solids, even though the boys weren't showing quite all the signs of readiness for solids. I already wrote about the first oatmeal experiment. It was not so great. So then I introduced carrots. The boys loved carrots. That was good. So I added baby oatmeal. They liked that too, and L, in particular wolfed it down. That seemed good. Until he was screaming in pain at 12:30 in the morning two nights running. Apparently his little body was not quite ready to digest oatmeal. Scratch that.

So the next attempt involved weaning. I hadn't planned on weaning this early (natural weaning does not actually occur until after 18-24 months, and even the American Academy of Pediatrics advises against weaning before one year) but L did seem to be showing less interest in the breast, so perhaps it was time to fatten him up with bottles of formula. So we tried that. Instead of a cozy nursing session after I tucked R into bed at night, I passed him off to his dad. He started chugging 6 ounces. This seemed great. And he even slept for 6 hours one night after these bottles. But once we started the bottles at night, he started getting up for an hour and a half in the middle of the night and refusing to go back to sleep. He wanted to play, despite it being dark and quiet in the house.

So after two weeks of this drama, I was a complete grouch-a-saurus. R even picked up on this. Friday night I overheard her playing in the tub with her families of fish and ducks. One of the babies (I don't know if it was the fish or ducks, as they all cohabitate) was asking its mommy for something. Then the mommy said, "No. Mommy really tired." Ouch. But this at least gave me insight as to why R has been such a terror lately and has even had some major potty-training setbacks. I've been giving her no attention.

At that point I still didn't know what to do. R was a terror, and L wasn't sleeping. (Fortunately, M has been doing relatively okay, despite now having almost four teeth.) I never would've guessed that L would actually tell me the answer. Sunday morning, around 3:00 a.m., I was again unable to get him to sleep. We were sitting on the couch, and I was trying to give him a bottle. He drank about two ounces and then started screaming. In my frustration, I asked him what he wanted, not knowing I would get a response. He then started saying, "Boo, boo, boo!" and beating my chest. So I asked him if he wanted booba, our term for nursing, and he greedily latched on. He calmed down, so I fed him, then tried to tuck him in. More screaming. Finally nestled him in bed between me and Jeff. He snuggled in so that his whole body was touching mine and then passed out. We officially have another hippie baby.

So yesterday morning, I was back to reading Dr. Sears. I had only paid moderate attention to the info online, after I read one of the strategies for getting your child to sleep through the night was wearing a nightgown to bed.* But in reading some of the basic strategies in The Baby Book, his advice didn't seem that crazy. Things started coming together in my head. L associates nursing with cuddling and spending time with me. His teeth had been hurting, which made him not want to breastfeed, or eat in any way. My attempts at feeding him solids had taken away our play time in the evening. So he had been getting up all night just to have some cuddle/play time with me, because he knew I would hold him to keep him from screaming and waking up his siblings.

So I devoted yesterday to spending time with him. At it wasn't even all that hard. Yesterday morning, R decided she wanted to make a cake for Father's Day. While we were baking, I brought the boys in the dining room with us rather than leaving them in the living room like I usually do. While the boys only moved 8-10 feets, this seemed to make a huge difference. M happily jumped in his jumperoo the whole time, and L gnawed on a toy while sitting in his new bumbo. While I cleaned up, I put L in the sling. At lunch time, I needed to pick up milk and get fried chicken for our Father's Day lunch. In the past, I've always just taken R with me to run errands so that she had special time, but this time I took L too. I thought R would complain, but as we walked through the parking lot at Walmart, for the first time ever, she happily held my hand rather than whining to be carried. She even commented that she was just like Zoe (from Baby Blues) and then she recited the comic in which Wanda tells Zoe she can't carry her because she is carrying baby Hammie. I was worried about L missing his morning nap, not that he has much of a schedule, but he even slept for 20-30 minutes in the car.

Having gone on an adventure with me, in the afternoon, L miraculously took a nap. There was actually over an hour in which all three kids were sleeping in the day time. I'm not sure that has ever happened before. It was lovely! At dinner time, he nursed for an hour. This seemed good, but as bedtime loomed, I was still wary. After baths, he nursed for 45 minutes again, just like he used to do. When it came time to put him to bed, he started fussing, so I laid down on my bed near him. (The boys are still sleeping in our room.) Within 15 minutes, he was sound asleep. Last night, he only woke up twice. Each time I was able to easily nurse him back to sleep. Without him getting up all night, M slept much better, only getting up once at 2:00 to eat. Because we hadn't been up all night, his dad was rested enough to give him a bottle then, which he drank and passed out again. By the time the boys got up at 5:45 for breakfast, I was rested enough to actually get up for the day.

Of course, I have to work all day today, so who knows what this will mean for tonight. But, at least for one night, the science experiment went exactly as planned.

*In case this has you completely baffled, Dr. Sears is assuming that your child sleeps with you, you are a mom, and you sleep topless so the little one can nurse whenever he or she wants at night.

Proud Parent

Overall, I consider myself a fairly laid back parent. I am rather relaxed and understand that kids will do things like sitting and walking when they want to, so it is nothing to worry about. Even when R was little, I don't think I freaked out as much as a typical parent. Others pointed this out to me as well, so it must be true...really! Every now and then though, I really doubt myself and start to feel like a complete and utter failure. There were moments of "I'm a horrible mom" thoughts when R was a baby, but for the most part I trusted my instincts. Then the boys were born. The first thing we were told by the neonatologists (those would be NICU docs) is that everything we know about babies is wrong because we now have preemies and they are "sick." That is so not what you want to hear when you are all hormonal and have two newborns, but we muddled through that phase and survived. By the time the boys were about three months old, I was back to trusting my instincts and asking for help and advice when I needed it.

Then yesterday I had lunch with a colleague. Her little one was born December 14th, so he and the boys are practically the same age, especially when adjusted for L and M's prematurity. I don't know this woman well, but we met at a training session, and we had both been excited to find another transplanted family with little ones. I met her at the restaurant, and I should've known better than to get sucked in when she started our conversation with, "I'm having the hardest time getting Stevie* to eat finger foods." But I didn't. I was sucked in to the comparison game, and my mind immediately flashed to the scene the night before.

The boys have not been sleeping lately, which is pretty understandable given the chaos of our lives. But it's a little hard for me to function at work when I'm only getting five hours of sleep at night, with much of it coming in 20-30 minute segments. Out of sheer desperation, I decided on Wednesday night that it was time to start the boys on solid food. M has been acting ready for weeks. He has been studying us while we eat, and he opens and closes his mouth as we chew. He also lunges at our plates and tries to swipe food off them. However, we've been holding out because the best way to protect against allergies is to avoid solids until kids are six months old, and the boys won't officially be six months old developmentally until July 1st. Also, L just hasn't seemed ready, and it's just easier to start them at the same time. But L does put everything in his mouth, and he has two teeth, so I decided to go ahead.

I hadn't actually planned on giving them food, so there was no box of rice cereal or jar of pureed veggies waiting. So I had to get creative and actually make baby food. (Crazy, I know!) One of my hippie mama cookbooks had a recipe for baby oatmeal, so I grabbed some whole oats, ran them through the food processor, and cooked them in the microwave.

As soon as M saw the spoon coming, he opened his mouth. He was ready! He delightedly ate the first bite. So I then went to give L a bite. He just stared at me. When I tried to put the spoon in his mouth he was just confused. I think he was wondering why I was offering anything other than a breast. (Seriously, the kid is a breastfeeding freak. He was sooo happy on vacation when he could nurse on demand for 9 days straight.) So I jiggled the spoon into his mouth thinking he might catch on if he tasted it. Nope. The oatmeal that did go in came right back out. So I gave M another bite. Not quite so enthusiastic this time. Tried L again. Same result as the first time. Offered M a third bite, and he was even less enthusiastic. Offered another bite to L, but I decided to not even bother trying to put it in his mouth since he had a large trail of oatmeal dripping down his chin and onto his shirt. By the 4th spoonful, M was done with oatmeal too. While it wasn't exactly a monumental disaster, the boys' first meal wasn't exactly successful either. So I gave up and decided to just give the boys baths and call it a day. But all I could think about at lunch was the fact that we aren't even close to trying finger foods like Stevie (who eats three full meals a day).

As Super Mommy went on about her little angel, my inferiority complex grew.

As the topic changed to activities, I learned Stevie can sit and play with toys. Stevie loves his jumperoo and his exersaucer. Stevie happily plays by himself. Again, I flashed to my kids and all but winced. M can roll from his front to his back and his back to his front, but he can't balance his big ol' belly to sit unsupported. He will occasionally play by himself while on his tummy, but he generally prefers to be entertained. L will roll from his front to his back, but he hasn't ever even really tried to roll the other way. He is too happy to lay on his back and gnaw on his toes. In fact, the only time he plays by himself is when he is laying on his back, curled up in a ball, eating his toes. Super mom's little one is turning into a little kid. L is turning into a little rat.

Even when it came to teething, she managed to make me feel inferior despite the fact that my kids have teeth (one of M's popped through this morning!) and Stevie doesn't. We were commiserating on how miserable our kids were, and she made it clear that Stevie has been suffering longer and harder. Plus, I learned, Stevie is not stuck with crazy, hippie parents. Stevie gets Orajel, but Super Mom shared that I "should try the natural tablets. I've heard lots of great things about them from people like you." Uh huh. As ludicrous as this seems while I type it, it managed to make me feel like complete poop as I sat there eating my pita. (Which, in case you were wondering, was phenomenal.)

After lunch, I felt so bad and like such a failure that I ended up reading up on developmental milestones for the millionth time last night as well as looking for tips and tricks to help the boys. And you know what I discovered? They are perfectly normal. My boys apparently skipped the whole sitting thing and went straight to scooting. And that is okay. As long as they are learning new things, they are okay. The book said so. Crisis averted.

But while I was running errands at lunch, I still bought a used jumperoo for the boys. Just in case.

*His name has been changed to protect the poor kid's innocence.

Holiday Road

We survived Vacation, Part I. Despite traveling with the whole crew, it was actually a pretty good trip. However, the most memorable moments for me as a mommy have nothing to do with the excursion.

As a wee little one, R loved to reach milestones away from home. She learned to crawl while she and her dad tagged along while I was attended a conference in Indianapolis. She made great strides towards learning to walk during a long weekend in Youngstown (pun intended, sorry, just couldn't help myself). Her little brothers are apparently doing the same.

While we were gone, M decided to start talking on June 2nd (I think) he started saying "ma - ma." I'm not entirely sure he knows what he is saying, but hey, I'll tell myself he knows exactly what is coming out of his mouth! The first time he said it was when he saw me burping L around 5:00 a.m., and M was quite jealous that I was holding his brother. I like to think that he was arguing that I was his ma-ma and I needed to put his brother down NOW. (Even if that wasn't what he was saying, M did start screaming soon after that in an effort to let me know it was his turn to eat.) He has said ma-ma daily since then. He has also been quite verbal practicing other sounds.

M also got really good at scooting backwards while we were away. He can now fly across a room. In reverse. Then he screams because he is stuck in a corner.

L spent most of the trip being miserable. However, as a result of his misery, he now has his first two teeth! One came through on June 6th while we were at a wedding, and the other one was in by the morning of the 7th. With the appearance of those two teeth, he is back to the happy baby that he was until about a month ago. Oh, and while miserable, he did get much better at sitting up. Now that he feels better he can fully perfect the art of balancing on his little Buddha belly. (M has been sitting well for awhile.)

Meanwhile their big sis decided that a road trip would be the perfect chance to really work on potty training. Thankfully, the girl is a camel, and we didn't have to make any emergency potty stops for her. She is now at least 75% potty trained and improving all the time.

We are now home for a couple of weeks before Vacation, Part II, which should give the kids a chance to recover and plenty of time to plot their achievements for our next outing.