Geez, that is so sweet! I really enjoyed reading it - I hope you print & save for Sophie when she grows up (or hits those teen years!).
Time for a pause to reflect on your delightful imagery…
Oh, I had a question - you said Sophie was glad to have you “back” - have you been away serving in the military?
I was actually waiting to write news of my adventure today - sort of the opposite of yours. This evening, from 6:09 to 10:42, my Hubby watched both kids on his own and I went to ORCHESTRA REHEARSAL! I play the violin, very poorly but with great passion, and I’ve missed Orchestra terribly. That’s the most time I’ve had TO MYSELF since before the kids were born 7 months ago! And I’m counting hospital time in there, those days were a whirlwind & I didn’t sleep a wink.
Hubby did a good job – well, both kids are intact, nobody had to call DCFS :p, they’re currently asleep, and he’s frazzled. Apparently they fussed/cried most of the evening, which they did most of the day anyway, more teething. He did call me halfway through rehearsal to order me to COME HOME NOW, but I calmly reminded him that it’s a 40-minute drive anyway and just listened to his complaints & reminded him that he’s doing a good job. Which he is.
The ladies in orchestra were highly amused by his call & let me know the strategies they’d used to get away for rehearsal when their kids were young. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to want ONE night away, I’m certainly willing to reciprocate & then some. I hope it’s easier for him as they get older; I know he loves them dearly, but he gets so frustrated when he can’t keep them content.
Well, duh, that does make more sense; guess I had military threads on the brain.
So do you think it’s more difficult for men to deal with babies & toddlers (in general) than it is for women? My girlfriends would say so, but then we need to vent sometimes & that might not be an accurate portrayal. Our visitor this weekend was reading a book on intuition & talking about how woman are (in general) more intuitive, and I was thinking that might be why it’s easier for me to handle our pre-verbal, pre-logical children.
Anyway, I hope that in time my Hubby is able to just enjoy our kids as much as you obviously enjoy Sophie.
Well, let’s see. Mariah (the four-year-old) is settling into Pre-K, even though she still cries for a couple of minutes every day when she first get into her classroom. She has a boyfriend at school (his name is Kevin, and he was in her class last year, too). She’s going to marry him, but not until she’s ten, because that’s when she figures she’ll be old enough to get married. But she’s going to have a little baby soon. There’s a baby in her belly now. It’s in her belly because she swallowed it, and soon we’ll have to take her to the hospital so they can help her get it out. (Where does she get this stuff?) What she’s really enjoying now is anything that’s “new”; IOW, a departure from our regular routine. For instance, part of her bedtime routine is that we play in her room for a little while before we read books. But last night, we went outside to play instead of playing in her room. It was dark! We never go outside when it’s dark! Hey, that’s new! She was delighted. I heard her up and in the bathroom last night after I put her in bed. I didn’t think much of it; she frequently goes in to get a Dixie cup of water, or use the potty. But then, at about ten o’clock, Amanda (the 17-year-old) went up to use the bathroom, but came right back down and said “Mom, you might want to go upstairs and take a look at the bathroom” “Why?” says I. “Because the baby put a pair of her panties and a pair of shorts in the toilet”. I couldn’t wait until Mariah got up this morning, so I could ask her about this. But our conversation was wholly unsatisfactory. Here’s how it went:
Me: You put a pair of panties and shorts in the toilet last night!
Her: (laughing) I know. Wasn’t that silly?
Me: Yes, it was very silly! Why did you do that?
Her: I don’t know.
Me: Please don’t do that anymore.
Her: Why?
Me: Because then mommy has to get them out of the toilet, and that’s nasty.
Her: Okay.
Her afternoon Pre-k schedule makes my afternoons and evenings very easy.
I drop her off at school at 12:30. She gets off the bus at about quarter to four. Comes home, has a snack and crashes until dinner is ready (about 6PM). She plays for a half-hour after dinner, then has snack. Unwrapped (a TV show we both like) comes on at 7:30, and we watch it together, then it’s time to get her ready for bed. By 8:30, I’m done putting her to bed; I change into my nightshirt, go downstairs and wash the dinner dishes, and then the rest of the evening is mine (uless one of the older kids needs something).
How do you mean “difficult”? Such a simple term, fraught with layers of… difficulty.
Let’s start with “intuition”:
As far as the physical stuff goes (giving bottles, changing diapers, giving baths), that’s just practice, and while the average man probably won’t be as “perfect” as the average woman, other than disability there’s no reason for any father not to be able to competently do those things.
I’ve been pretty good intuitively with Sophie, even as a newborn, but then I’m pretty good at reading people, at times it almost is like reading a book.
For example, when she was four months old, we put her in her own room for the night, and she was OK with it. However, this one night she woke up fussing and crying, and after a change and an empathy bottle 'n burp, tried to put her back down. No go… she’d start crying, and while Mom was fussing, I got the feeling that she just wanted to go to sleep with one of us there.
So I held her in my arms, turned off the light, sat down and put my head close to hers… and started breathing very deeply, a little loudly, like I was sound asleep. She stopped fussing immediately and was asleep in 15 minutes. Put her down in her crib, snuck out of the room, and made sure the monitor was turned up in our room (we put the baby’s room at the opposite end of the house from our bedroom).
I’ve never done anything like that before, don’t have the slightest notion where the idea came from, but it seemed like the right thing to do, and it worked.
I think men have intuition when it comes to young children, but it’s a more demanding intuition, one predicated upon the idea that the kid should understand that, no matter what, don’t bother Daddy.
Now, put baldly like that, that looks self-serving as all hell. But, let’s be honest: what man isn’t self-serving? What man, especially when he is in the feverish grip of his desires (be they intellectual, financial and job related, artistic, sexual, atheletic, and etc), wants to be bothered? And children, no matter their good qualities, at times are a bother.
So Daddies get mad, yell, maybe swat a butt. And the children cry, go to their rooms, pout. But the child learns: Daddy has his limits. Don’t scream in his ear. Don’t bother him when he’s on the computer. Don’t touch his tools.
Which gets translated (eventually) into: everybody has their limits. Don’t scream in their ear. Don’t bother them when they’re doing their thing. Don’t touch their stuff.
Men also are driven to make their children self-sufficient, to get them out of the house and on their own as good, family-raising taxpayers. They’ll tend to push the kids more than their mother will:
watching 3 kids on the brand new trampoline
“Do you think it’s safe?”
“Of course! What could go wrong?”
Now in regards to “difficult”
The reason I went into the above is because of an odd (but probably more common then I think) occurance that’s happening between Sophie, Laura and myself: Sophie is far better behaved when I’m around then she is when I’m not. Amazingly better, so much so that the child Laura describes doesn’t sound like the child that I take to Target. Screaming, kicking, falling down and refusing to get up, all has commonly occured between Laura and Sophie.
But she never acts like that around me. (And neither does Sophie. :rimshot: ) I think the reason is twofold: Sophie knows that my fuse is much less shorter than Laura’s, and she is well aware that I am willing to meet her bad spots, physically and psychologically, much more readily than Laura will. So she doesn’t have them around me.
There was this time when she was 18 months old. The three of us were driving and the hit of the household was the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode on CD, which Sophie just adores. Anyway, I was tired of Buffy and turned on to something different.
“Buffy!” pronouced ‘bud-Dy’
“No Sophie, I want to listen to something else”
“Buffy!” more insistently. I look in the rearview mirror and our eyes locked:
“Buffy!!”
…
“No, Sophie.” Sophie comes back with the all-time classic.
“Waaahhhh.” *Still looking at me in the mirror. All of a sudden I realize: I’m being challenged. I could see it in her eyes - her mouth was crying, but her *eyes ** weren’t.
“Oh, John, just put the CD in.”
“I can’t. It’s now become something more than a choice of music, it has become a test of wills.” humorously
“Really?” looks back at her calculatingly-crying little girl “I see.”
“Sophie, you can stop that crying right now young lady!” sharply “We are going to listen to what we want on the radio and that’s final. Isn’t that right, Mommy?”
“That’s right, Daddy.” this back-and-forth question is commonly used by us to show a united front on an issue.
“sniffle-sniffle.”
I just don’t put up with it and I try to shut it down quickly. I can tell when my child is needing of comfort and when she is being a brat, and I’m perfectly willing to match her will against mine - at the worst, I can always pick her up and move her, an option Sophie doesn’t have with me.
However, the best is to accomodate, to learn to do what you need to do while making the child happy. When I shop with Sophie, I rarely put her in the cart rather having her walk freely, following me. Since I’m not “looking” for stuff (I know exactly what I’m there for, or else why would I go to Target?), I can keep a closer eye on Sophie and warn her “Hands. Hands!” as she’s reaching for something. She is much happier walking around, being able to look at things much closer than from the cart. And, because she’s not in the cart, I don’t have horror-stories of how Sophie hates the cart.
Hey there everybody. We were out of town, and then the boards went all icky, so I haven’t been here much. Glad to see this is still alive!
Our trip was fun, but exhausting. California is too big. On the first day we just drove to my brother’s place to sleep, almost halfway to our destination. They’re about to have a baby, and sooner than we thought due to placenta previa. Next day we drove down the coast to Santa Maria, my home-town, a small, nondescript town between Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo. Property values have gone insane there, because it’s ‘affordable.’
We stayed with my best friend, who just had her third baby girl. So, five small girls in a small house–with one working bathroom because the other one disintegrated right before we came!! DangerGirl instantly developed a worship for the oldest girl, age 7, and they got pretty wild. DangerBaby looked like Goliath next to their second girl, who is exactly the same age but tiny and running around, unlike mine. (Yes, she took a few steps–and then I took her on a trip and subjected her to lots of strangers, and she quit.)
Anyway we had a great time, except for when DangerGirl scribbled green crayon into her dress (why? does anyone know how to get crayon out of knit cotton?), and it was really hot. And they got to know the CareBears, sigh. And I got a lot of news about my old friends and acquaintances from various people, so that was nice.
We got home–a full day of driving up I-5, whoopee–and they both developed colds. So we’ve stayed home as much as possible, and used a lot of Kleenex.
DangerBaby is producing a new word every day–this week it’s “book,” “Oobi” (a TV show), “bubble,” and some others I don’t remember just now. She produces a really interesting sound for cat and dog. But she has not resumed walking.
I took a self-defense class last night from the kung-fu teacher, which was thrilling news for DangerGirl. I think I’ll put her in another class soon; I really want her to have physical confidence and to be comfortable with her body, and this seems like a good way to practice it. A friend of mine doesn’t like the idea, and complains that the community only offers ‘fighting’ for young kids (you can take fencing at age 7 or kung-fu, or there’s also soccer)–but she has boys. And I think I have a different perspective with my girls; I want them to be able to be assertive and physical if they need to be (unlike me!), while she’s more concerned with not encouraging fighting. Also I like the discipline aspects of martial arts, where they talk a lot about not fighting or hurting unless it’s really necessary, and they purposely don’t teach the young kids ways to really hurt each other, so it’s very controlled and they learn to channel their impulses rather than ignore them until they lose control. I’ve long wanted to take a class myself–it’s just that whenever I think, “yeah! I’ll take karate!” I’m usually about 7 months pregnant. :smack: Thoughts on this fighting stuff, anyone?
I guess that’s enough rambling for now. Sorry about the length…
So norinew - When exactly was that easy part of your day? I seem to have missed it .
dangermom Although mine aren’t there yet, I think that fighting urge is inevitable. Might as well channel it constructively. My son is a really physical baby, it’s just the way he is.
You guys are terrific writers.
I’m not sure if this thread format is going to work, but I have to say I’ve enjoyed reading about everyone’s parenting adventures. I keep wanting to respond to everything people say, the way we smile and nod during IRL conversations, but here it just looks dorky & overeager, and I think it’s actually inhibiting the flow.
One of the reasons I started this was to try to stay in contact with the same people - I have such trouble keeping names straight, when I see someone I definitely recognize, it’s a delight. And I love the Doper community, I can’t think of a group of parents that I’d rather get to know. So if we don’t keep in touch here, I look forward to crossing paths with everyone on other threads.
JohnT Your essay really gave me a lot to think about, I really enjoyed it. There’s an article in this quarter’s Brain, Child about male parenting and how Mom’s are often reluctant to give up control. They speculated that if women had more leverage in the workplace it would inspire us to share power on the home front, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. You make better points about the innate differences between men and women and how they translate to valuable experiences for the kids. Women in my family were particularly feisty (diplomatic word for it) and it’s a struggle for me to back off. Thanks for sharing your point of view, you’ve given me more incentive for reigning in my power urges.
Well, in order to appreciate how my afternoons are easier now, you have to know how they were before. Before Mariah started pre-k, I would go into the kitchen at about 4:30 to start dinner, and the whole thing would go like this: I’m washing dishes, emptying the sink so I can start dinner, Mariah wanders in and says “I help you?” “Well, honey, you can help me dry the dishes, okay?” Of course, washing dishes takes twice as long when she’s “helping”. We’re washing dishes, when Arielle comes in to announce that she doesn’t like whatever I’m cooking. I stop everything to clean up the water Mariah’s gotten all over the floor. While I’m cleaning it up, Mariah announces that she’s hungry and needs something to eat right now and cannot possibly wait until dinner time. I tell her eating now is not an option, so she asks for a drink, instead. I tell her to get a drink of water from the one litre bottle I keep in the fridge. But instead, she gets a cup, puts ice in it, pours water into the cup so she can have ice water. While I’m cleaning up that water, Amanda comes in to tell me that she’s not hungry, and she’s not going to eat. I tell her she has to eat, because if she doesn’t, she’ll eat junk food later. We have a three-minute argument about her eating habits. Finally, I can get dinner started. While I’m cooking, there is constant whining from Mariah because: she’s hungry, she’s still thirsty, she wants to watch a video but Arielle is watching something else, she wants paper to draw on, etc. etc. etc.
Now, however, Mariah naps right through dinner prep. I still have the other two to deal with, but you can see how removing the little one from the equation could help!
fessie, if you want to keep in touch, and this thread doesn’t work out, my email addy is in my profile. Just be sure to put SDMB in the subject line, so I don’t accidentally delete it.
I am having trouble staying up with this thread, but I’m really enjoying it when I do get a chance read it. (Belated congrats to the Kilts, btw!)
I wish I could find a group like Dopers on the parenting boards out there. I’ve yet to find a group that doesn’t send my blood pressure through the roof.
MrValley and I have been sick for over a week now, and I wonder if ValleyGirl isn’t sick as well. She’s suddenly stopped sleeping through the night. Last night was particular torture, waking up at 11:30pm and 3:00am. She gobbled down milk both times, so it may be a growth spurt as well. The worst part of all is that she’ll usually go back to her crib awake after late night feedings, and fall asleep. But at 3 this morning, she wouldn’t sleep until 4:30. So of course, with lack of sleep we’re just not getting over our illnesses. A vicious cycle, I tell you.
But to end my post on a more humorous note, I’ll share an embarrassing Mommy story. On Friday, I had a diaper emergency. They were all sold out of ValleyGirl’s size at the drugstore, so I went over to WalMart. I’m leaning into the backseat to get ValleyGirl out of the carseat when I see a hip-looking guy walking towards me and waving in my general direction. Of course, I think, hmmm I wonder who’s behind me that he’s waving to. :smack: Because honestly, I don’t think I know any hip-looking guys, particularly hip-looking guys who shop at WalMart. Anyway, at this point, ValleyGirl has seized the moment while my hands were untangling her from the carseat straps, and has taken my glasses off and is gumming the lenses. Then I hear “Hey Lily!” So there I am, saying “Hi!” somewhat vaguely, desperately trying to get my glasses back from my daughter’s claw-like grasp, pretending I have any clue who this guy I can’t see is. It turned out to be a former co-worker out doing chores on his break, so we had a nice little catch up. I hope he didn’t go back to my other former co-workers and say, “Man, motherhood is making Lily into a wreck!”
Oh, I was going to strangle my husband this morning!
Yes, I stay at home with Chloe, so normally it’s my job to get up with her during the night and I’m the default caregiver at all times. BUT . . .
Last night I felt really crappy, so DH said I should go to bed early (9:00). At 10:30, Chloe screamed. Sometimes she does that and goes right back to sleep, or maybe is crying in her sleep, so I didn’t wake up all the way - kind of set my brain on “half awake” for a few minutes. Well, it didn’t get better, so I got up.
DH wasn’t in bed though. He was wide awake, ten feet from our second monitor, playing EverQuest! I went up, nursed her, and went back to bed.
And the exact same thing happened at 11:00, just as I was falling back to sleep! As I went by, DH said he was going to go and get her “in a minute” (in EQ-speak, that’s 15-20 minutes).
When she woke up at 2:00, I told him to go sleep upstairs and take care of her for the rest of the night, because I was turning off the monitor in our bedroom and getting some rest.
This morning he was back in our bed, and when I went up to Chloe’s room, the side of her crib was down. DH is soooo lucky she didn’t fall out and hurt herself (while the monitor in our room was turned off no less!). He said he wasn’t thinking clearly because he was so tired. :mad: I told him for future reference, if he had taken care of her the first two times when he was awake anyway, I would have handled her later.
So that’s my perspective this morning on the man/woman childcare thing!
Goodness, Aeryn, I’m glad the baby didn’t fall out!
I’ve been a little stir-crazy the past few days. Both of the girls got colds, but one at a time, so that we stayed home for as long as possible. I tried a grocery-store run Thursday morning, but that was kind of a disaster, and we just stayed in for the next few days. I was also missing out on my early-morning walk, because the baby was waking up early and only wanting me.
So by Saturday night, I was full of ennui or something, and getting pretty unhappy, when DangerDad pointed out that I hadn’t been outside that day, and I realized that I had barely been outside for 3 days, and no wonder I was messed up. And by that time, it was dusk, and I couldn’t go out because of the mosquitos (I’m allergic to them or something, and they love to chew on me).
I still had to stay home on Sunday; I would have really liked to go to church but the baby was still coldy and DDad had to teach, so I had to stay home, but we hung out on the lawn and played Ring Around the Rosy, so it was fine. I’m better now and got a great walk this morning.
Now we’re getting ready to go to pre-school, and we have to take things that start with B. I have a million errands to do, and a presentation on books to give tonight, so wish me luck…
I am turning into my mother. Or a Responsible Adult, or something. In the last few months, I’ve instituted several changes. I go on walks instead of sleeping until the last minute, I have a housecleaning schedule, I’m trying to give up sugar, I take notes on my reading, I teach at church…what has happened to me?? :eek:
AerynSun, on behalf of all guys everywhere, I apologize. :gulp:
I don’t think people do a very good job of selling the joys of parenting, especially to the fathers. All I heard when Laura was expecting was “X more months of freedom!” (also heard before my marriage - even though I had exclusively dated Laura for 7 years prior! :rolleyes: ) All Laura heard was-never ceasing stories of the difficulties of labor,
with a knowing pause “… especially for first-time mothers.”
Then there was the talk about perpetually crying babies, “oh my child had the cholic for 4 months!”, perpetually tired parents “it’ll be a long time before you know what sleep is like, yuck yuck”, and, of course, the various “jokes” about how a child effects sexual performance on any number of levels from
“Hope the child doesn’t make her… hips too wide, if you know what I mean.” Actually said to a friend of mine.
to
“After the hell of dealing with a newborn, the last thing you’ll want to risk is sex!”
(Actually, that last one was kinda true. )
And the first few weeks, months were hard but by 2 1/2 months we had made the adjustment. And it was fun, fun because I pitched in. I made bottles, late-night feedings (like DH I would stay up on the computer to 1-3 AM most nights (no headphones!), so Laura got to sleep for a while… I also made sure to always feed Sophie right before I went to bed), and tried to do what I could do when I could do it. We worked together as a team on raising Sophie (this is what we’re married for, right?) early on, and I really don’t have many bad memories of that period. Rather, for my wife and I, it was a period where we fell in love with our little girl. She describes it the same way… one night, four months home from the hospital, Laura looks up from her Parenting magazine and asks
“Don’t you just love little Sophie? I mean, I just can’t stop thinking about her.” I’ll never forget the look on her face.
“I just… adore her. She’s so sweet and tiny.”
“Yeah. It’s the little things that I love, the way she bobs her head when reaching for the bottle, and how she coughed two times before crying when she was a newborn…”
and we went on in this vein for quite a while. And still do.
So, tell DH this: raising a family is fun! Soon, this little girl will grow from being the irritation that’s taking you away from your precious computer into The Most Fascinating Person On Earth™, the computer being put into its proper place and perspective. She needs her daddy, and that’s you. And there’s no better sense a pride a man could have than having a well-raised little girl, one who draws praise from strangers. No thrill from EverQuest can ever match that… period.
Actually, my husband is usually pretty good about parenting. When Chloe was born, he took 3 weeks off from work. And we did have a sleeping shift arrangement set up when she was tiny, so each of us got a near-decent amount of sleep - and he took the night-owl shift, playing games when she didn’t need him.
Unfortunately, she goes to bed before he gets home from work, so he doesn’t get to see her too much. I assume this will get better as she gets older and goes to sleep later than 5:30!
In fact, when he was up with her at 2:00, he said he had to just let her stay up and play for a while, because she was having so much fun and it was a pleasure to watch her.
So generally, he is pretty good with her (she LOVES it when he roughhouses with her), and I feel he did proper penance for this incident by taking her at 2 a.m. But at the time, I was ripshit over it - just another wonderful part of the ups and downs of marriage/parenting!
Today Caterpie was playing around in the living room, pulling himself to stand while holding on to things and the box we have for his toys an empty diaper box) was on it’s side. He was standing while holding onto it and he leaned forward…
The box went back and landed on it’s bottom with him was laying across the open space, trying to wriggle and get off. The look on his face!
I haven’t been here much either, although I do try to read from time to time.
This week’s Adventure in Parenting here is that we are having a 2nd birthday party for my daughter today. Her birthday isn’t actually until Friday, but we figured next weekend was too close to my due date to plan a party.
Anyhow, I decided I had to make this cake for her. OY!! What was I thinking??? I am 38 weeks pregnant, had to clean and wrap presents and entertain a soon-to-be-2-year-old yesterday while it was pouring rain outside…yikes.
I ended up doing a reasonable job on it, kind of making up my own technique as I went along, but it took me several hours.
As for the gender differences…I find that there is generally enough give-and-take in my household. Yesterday, I felt like I was the one doing more. By 8pm, when I was struggling with my daughter and I finally asked DH to help me, he said, “I was just waiting for you to ask.” Um, I need to ask??? But today, when I am tired from overextending myself yesterday, he has pretty much taken the initiative with all that remains to be done around here and I have no complaints.
It doesn’t always work like that, though, and I do find myself sad at times that there’s so much more sniping at each other than I ever thought there would be. However, when I look at the big picture, I see that we really do have it pretty good.
flutter, remove the extra “HTTP:” that is in it. That’ll do it.
Btw, it’s an Elmo cake. Fortunately, we’re a Nick family so the wretched devolution that Sesame Street has exhibited in the past 15 years don’t constantly depress us.
