Yet another amazingly relevant Dooce entry

I know many of you read Dooce.com anyway, and probably don't need this link, but I couldn't help but feel like I could have written this exact same entry (well, if I were able to write as well as she can): http://www.dooce.com/archives/daily/03_28_2005.html

Anyway, I thought that some of you with dogs (Noble and Kendra) might enjoy it as well and see what you have to look forward to. Or rather, what your dogs have to look forward to.

Poor Addy. His little spirit has been so trampled upon. No wonder he has infected anal glands. AGAIN.

Baby. . . or alien life form??

After I posted about Lilli's recent frustration with our inability to understand her, and OUR frustration with our inability to understand her, suddenly she's started to communicate much better. For example, she's been saying "all done" and "all gone" for awhile now, but recently she's been using them in very appropriate and informative ways. Instead of screaming and hollering and spitting out whatever food we give her at mealtime when she's full, she just smiles at us and says "all done." And then I say "ok Lilli!" Behold! The wonders of linguistic communication!!! When she wants us to pick her up she says "up!" instead of "ah ah ah ah." Lovely. She even said "poop" once today when she farted! Not perfect but pretty close!

She's been trying to give us more complicated instructions as well, but those are much more difficult to decipher, especially as they mainly consist of baby blabberings. She kind of reminds me of some sort of superior alien life form that has descended upon us to instruct us in a higher level of existence and is totally and completely frustrated by our idiocy and inability to understand the simplest of alien commands. For all I know, she may indeed be telling us how to build a spaceship to the mother planet. That's what of what her long winded nonsense speeches sound like. In any case, we do know who is in charge around here. We exist but to serve.

But anyway, I guess she's getting tired of trying to get us dummies to learn her language and is deigning now to learn ours. Phew!

Please and Thank You

I had to laugh at this entry on Dooce.com today, because we are happening to have a very similar experience just now:
http://www.dooce.com/archives/nubbin/03_25_2005.html

We've been trying to teach Lilli mainly how to say "please," because she basically makes our brains explode when she wants something, what with the high pitched shrieking and whining and all. Usually she does this when she wants to nurse. She will push me back on the bed, straddle me, pull up my shirt and maul by boobies. Very violating, even when it is your baby doing it. Hey, I guess she's thirsty. So anyway, Bob and I will say over and over "say please" and then she just shrieks louder in frustration because, clearly, we are just too stupid to understand what she is trying to say. How stupid can we be? She's hitting me on the boobies and pulling up my shirt! So Bob will take her away from me and then she will cry the cry that should never reach human ears, the cry that means "No! Don't take away my boobies or I will DIIIIIIIIEEEEE!!" (On a sidenote: I'm not sure how I'm ever going to wean this girl. Ironically, the whining for the boobies may literally drive me to drink.)

This seems like the perfect time to introduce etiquette, no? When your child is screaming and clawing at your chest? We repeat "please, please, please" over and over and she just gets madder and madder. So we gave up that time. She won round one. So tonight, we decided to go for Round Two. We were at my parents house for dinner, and she was REALLY enjoying the salty strips of seaweed my mom was feeding her. Since she really wanted them, and yet they were not boobies that could inspire The Scream, we decided this was a perfect time to spring "please" on her again. I don't know how many times we said "please," but clearly Lilli thought we were pretty stupid that we couldn't tell she wanted that rice wrapped in seaweed. She made the usual ARRRRRR! noises and then just finally opened her mouth REALLY WIDE and LUNGED towards my mother. Look you stupid people! she seemed to be saying. Look at my mouth! It is open! Put the food in it you dummies! However, with much much persistence, we finally got her to say it. We celebrated and clapped our hands and congratulated her and then the piece of food working its way happily towards her mouth. . .well, it dropped on the floor. So much for the that educational moment. Luckily, my mother made a quick recovery with a backup strip of seaweed and although she's sometimes saying "please" after the fact, at least she's saying it. Now we will have to work on "thank you." That would SO be music to my ears.

I read this post awhile ago, but I like a lot of what this blogger has to say on the subject of how judgemental we mothers can be. She has a somewhat different take than me and I thought you might enjoy it:

http://citymama.typepad.com/citymama/2005/02/medicated_mommy.html

(Sarah! she lives in Portland! Maybe you could look her up!)

On Empathy and Respect

I have recently had a somewhat *interesting* discussion in the comments section of a post a few posts back (if you want to read it, go to the only post with any comments :)). This discussion has made me think about the propensity of some parents, and it seems to me mostly mothers, to judge other mothers. Go to any parenting message board and among the helpful advice judgements are rampant. You are doing that WRONG. You are totally going to SCREW UP YOUR CHILD. You SUCK. Why did anyone let you REPRODUCE? Ok, maybe not that harsh, but occasionally, pretty darn harsh.

So I've been thinking: Everyone (well, most everyone) wants to feel like they've done right by their child. We love our children, and we feel that their futures are at stake. This desire to make the right choices for our children is commendable. However, we sometimes overanalyze every parenting choice that we make, and imagine that consequences of every itty bitty little decision. We want to be perfect parents. We want our children to be Ivy League college bound rather than junkies. And we feel like we have the power over that outcome.

See how much is at stake? We feel we have so much at stake, in fact, that we have to whole heartedly embrace the choices we make or daily suffer agonizing self analytic decision paralysis. We have to feel good about our parenting in order to be good parents. Great, great and more great. What is so human in all of us, however, is often the need to see our style as right in exclusion to other parenting styles. How can we BOTH be right? If I am right, well then, you are WRONG! And I have to be right, or hell, I just totally screwed my child up! We also like to shore up our total insecurity in our parenting (after all, what if I AM screwing my child up?) by feeling superior to other parents. Wow, we think, at least I'm doing a better job than YOU.

We all do this, even if some of us realize how flawed this neurotic self doubt can be. I know I have my own strong opinions on parenting, and they generally tend to favor the way I've done things. After all, why would I have done things the way I have if I didn't believe in them? I believe in breastfeeding, I believe in cosleeping, I believe in not letting children cry it out by themselves. I believe that all these things are right for us. I try NOT to let these strong beliefs influence how I feel about the choices other parents have made for their own families. After all, I have to respect and trust the judgment of others when it comes to their own lives. And I would NEVER presume to tell them that I felt that I was right and they were wrong when it came to their own choices.

Why do we feel the need to tear each other down? Why can't we be supportive of each other, even when we sometimes make mistakes? After all, we all do make them. I write about the mistakes that we make because I don't want anyone to think that mistakes aren't made in the parenting process. Maybe some other new parent will feel a sense of relief knowing that no one can be perfect and that it's ok to make mistakes and find your own way. This is for many people a joyful but difficult time, and rather than seeing ourselves as competing with each for the title of best parent, why can't we support each other in being the best parents that we can be?

I welcome all your opinions and would love to have engaging debate on any parenting topics. Just with the understanding that empathy and respect is expected from all.

Onay

Oh, and did I mention that Lilli as learned the word "no?" She is a master of "no." Almost as good as David Spade in those annoying commercials. She has a very succinct, no nonsense kind of "no." Almost Italian in its staccatoness. She never uses it angrily though. Mostly she employs it to refuse food in a kind of polite way. Would you like some more tofu Lilli? No. Milk? No. Cereal? No.

She has also started doing this weird thing where she inverts syllables. For example, these days she often says mima for mommy, deeda, for daddy, and gida for doggie. I'm not quite sure what this means developmentally. Maybe she thinks that as long as she uses all the syllables in a word, the order doesn't really matter? Maybe she thinks syllables are independent of words? Maybe she's just weird? Who knows. We think it's funny anyway. Maybe she'll master Pig Latin at a very early age.

It's been awhile since I posted. I've been lazy, but I've also been too depressed by our sleep situation to even write about it. I guess, actually, I've been too exhausted to write due to our sleep situation. Lilli just keeps on waking up and throwing a fit and then just lying there awake and so I end up bringing her to bed and nursing her and then she wants to nurse all night. Sometimes I just don't have the energy to ineffectually try to get her to go back to sleep in her crib first, and so I just bring her to bed right away. I know all of this isn't helping us to get the message across to her that she needs to sleep in her crib and doesn't need the boobie. I'm just too damn tired to care at 3am. Or worse, ten minutes after we've gotten into bed. (Those two blissful weeks of sleep were such a tease!)

We formulated a plan, however, a couple of nights ago, and have at least tried to stick to it. We decided to let Bob handle the first outburst and let her try to get resettled without the boob. If she is absolutely inconsolable then I nurse and put her back in the crib. It's hard to actually have patience with the tantrums and I hate for her to cry like that. I know that she's ok and she knows we're right there. She's just so darn angry that we are not heeding her demands. But still. You hear your child cry out for you like that and your heart breaks. Last night Bob got her quiet after she first woke up but then she just stared up at him in that spooky way she has in the middle of the night. So Bob got back in bed (which is about one foot from the crib) and then she let us have it. Knowing she'd been calm just a few seconds before and knew Bob was right there, I tried to hide in the covers and ride it out. But I couldn't take it anymore after a few minutes and I ended up nursing her. Thankfully she was pretty easy to get back to sleep in the crib after that. A bit of fussing but I laid down on Bob's side of the bed and held her hand through the bars, and pathetic as it seemed at the time, it seemed to work. Sorry if that rather long recounting was a bit incohesive. Sleep deprivation=bad writing.

Another reason I've had trouble finding the time to blog is that March Madness is upon us. I really don't care much, except perhaps the tiny inkling of a hope that UW might go far and hoping that Bob's teams win so that he'll be in a good mood. Bob knows about my indifference to his favorite sport. He's a pretty clever one, however, and in a bold attempt to involve me in his favorite time of year, he once again roped me in by harnessing that most dominant of my characteristics: competitiveness. He got me to fill out a bracket. That way, I have something riding on every game being played: the chance to beat him at his own sport. I guess he's willing to risk being beat to hear me say the words, "hey, who's up in the Duke/Mississippi St. game?" Who knew? Actually, last year, I almost beat him with my bracket. This year it's looking even better. I'm currently tied for fourth in our pool of seventeen, with Bob coming in at #11. Mua ha ha ha ha! To be beating Bob is a glorious thing! It almost gets me over the hump of exhaustion.

Anywho, so wish me luck, both with the sleep and with the basketball tourney! I will try and keep you all updated on both.

Icky!

The thing about teaching babies to say things is that you're never sure exactly what they're going to take away from the learning experience. Lilli is pretty much able to repeat anything I say to her over and over and she doesn't always know exactly what it means. Sometimes she associates a meaning with the word, but doesn't really get what I'm trying to say. Case in point: "icky." I tried to teach her "icky" so that she wouldn't touch things that I deemed "icky." Things like used tissues, the dog's food bowl (truly icky; I need to wash it more than once a month), bits of garbage. This has backfired. Now she brings me things that fit into the "icky" category and proudly declares that they are ICKY!! It is cute in it's own way, but it is no fun to be brought out of a pleasant doze with the dog's food bowl and a wad of wet tissues in your face. Maybe I should teach her "chocolate" instead. That would be a nice change.

Eating: Words and Boogers

You know how a couple of posts ago I was so dang proud that Lilli was sleeping through the night? Well, soon after writing those fateful lines, I have had to EAT MY WORDS. It is as though the baby gods, angry at my hubris, have decided to smite me with many night wakings. The worst thing is, I totally don't get it. I didn't understand why she decided to sleep through the night all of a sudden a couple of weeks ago, and I can't figure out why all of a sudden she is waking up in the middle of the night now. Don't get me wrong, she's still sleeping for a long stretch. But for the last couple of nights she's been waking up sometime between 1 am and 4 am and then losing it and I have to bring her into the bed and then she wakes up throughout the night, while each time I BEG her to go back to sleep just until the sun comes up. If I could just understand why she was doing it all of a sudden, then maybe I could rectify the situation. But I don't. :(

In other musings, I was noticing the other day how much my tolerance for grossness has greatly increased. I think this is a phenomenon that all mothers notice about themselves. It's hard to think of anything about our babies as gross. Suddenly, even poop just doesn't seem that bad. (Baby poop that is. Adult poop still grosses me out. Even thinking about adult poop gives me the heeby jeebies, but hey, I 'd touch baby poop. It's just the end product of her digestive process right? How come I don't feel that way about adult poop?)

But anyway, I think we all know that I may be grosser than others. After all, I often PUT IN MY MOUTH the crud that collects in the corner of my baby's mouth. Like mushy cookie & saliva or saliva diluted yogurt. Why do I do this? I have no idea. Suddenly, I don't even realize what I'm doing, but I have partaken of nastiness. Only, at the time, before thinking about it, it doesn't seem that nasty to me. It just seems better than wiping it on my clean pants. After all, when is the next time I'm going to be able to do laundry? So the other day, I was trying to fish a GIGANTIC booger out of Lilli's nose, because it was really hampering her breathing (gross unto itself, I know) when the thought FLASHED through my mind, for just an instant, that I could put it in my mouth rather than making the trip to the garbage can. I KNOW!!! Totally foul right? How have I reached such a point? That booger just didn't seem that gross to me. After all, it came out of my sweet Lilli's cute little button nose. But I would NEVER NEVER NEVER eat a booger. EVER. I am NOT A BOOGER EATER. So what has happened to me??? Where has all my perspective gone??

The language development of babies is really amazing. I'm glad I'm semi keeping track of it in this blog, so I don't forget any of the juicy linguistic details. It really is fascinating! Lilli is still full on in mimic mode, and one of her favorite things is to call out "Lilli!" and "Bobby!" just like I do, the little rascal. She also copies a lot of the words we say or try to get her to say, even though I'm not sure she knows what they mean. Like "please." She just knows her daddy and I both smile really big when she says it.

She has picked up A LOT of new words though in the last few weeks. I don't think I can even list them all here, and frankly, at this point none of you probably care for a blow by blow account. Let me just say however, that possibly my favorite of her newer words in "clock." She often wakes up wanting me to get the alarm clock off of the bedside table so that she can play with it. Sometimes I wake up from dozing off while nursing to "mama! clock! mama! clock!" The thing is, she has trouble saying "clock." I won't spell it out for fear of Googling perverts, but she has trouble with that initial "cl" sound. In fact, the "L" often goes missing, if you know what I mean. Ah, nothing like a little innocent potty humor in the morning to get you going.

What's most interesting to me though, are the words that she's kind of figured out for herself, without any prompting from us. The other day I was sitting on the couch, and she came up from behind the arm of the couch and yelled "peek!" I couldn't figure out what she was saying, even though it may look obvious in writing, because I was thinking it could be any number of words: big, pig, pick, and honestly, it kind of sounded like bitch. For awhile there I thought, dear lord, my child is screaming bitch at me. And then I figured it out after she kept saying it over and over and over while bobbing up and down behind the couch. She was saying "peek" for "peekaboo!" My child, the genius! How could I ever imagine her yelling obscenities at me! I don't know where she figured out that she could just shorten the word and make it easier to say, but now it's a favorite. Although this morning she modified it a bit to "peeky." Nothing cuter.

She's also kind of figuring out how to string words together, although we are still limited to "hi" and "bye" together with different people. She loves to say "bye daddy" when we get off the phone with him or he leaves for work, or she also likes "bye doggie" when we leave the house and leave him behind.

Anyhoo, I'm sure all of this fascination sounds rather self indulgent and boring to many of you, but there really is nothing more interesting to a parent then watching their own child's development, whether or not it's happened a bagizzillion times in the world or not. I just can't wait to see what happens next! The suspense is even greater than wondering what's going to happen next on America's Next Top Model! (Stupid Brandy should have been cut last week. . .poor Brita.)

My dad and I took Lilli to Grand Park yesterday because it was beautiful and the light was so good. When I was a baby we lived across the street from the park, so there are a lot of pictures of me sitting in the same grass, under the same trees. Nostalgic, no?

HI Grandpa!

The park was beeyootiful! The cherry blossoms were just at their peak and the daffodils were nice and springy. Ha ha, East Coasters! Eat your hearts out! Of course, they won't be paralyzed by drought this summer. Oh well. Actually, I kept thinking back to my year in Japan where the custom is to get nice and drunk with your friends beneath the cherry trees. This year will be a little different, I guess. . .:)

She loved the cherry blossoms. She kept pointing at them and saying "pretty! pretty!"

We finally got her to walk in the grass. See Lilli, it's not so bad! She does look unsure though doesn't she?

Pretty daffodils. . .

She's ready for her closeup. I can almost see the booger I was trying to get out before Grandpa came in for the kill with his camera.

At the end of our walk we went to visit GGMary and Lilli found one of her favorites: a staircase! Woohoo!

Lilli is STILL sleeping through the night. Can I stop holding my breath now? I guess the next step will be getting her to fall asleep while in the crib, rather than lulling her down in our bed and then transferring her.

However, all this getting up at the butt crack of dawn stuff is a little difficult for me. I have been called a night owl in my day. I also am fond of a solid eight hour's sleep. This means that if I want to sleep 8 hours I have to go to sleep at 10 o'clock. 10 o'clock!!! The Real World and RR/RW Challenge don't even start until 10! That means that Bob and I would have just a tad more than an hour of time together and/or alone before we'd have to go to bed. I just don't know how practical that is. But something has to give. Precious sleep or precious alone time. I HAD thought that the uninterruptedness of the sleep would make up for less time elapsed from start to finish but somehow the body seems to adjust and always wants MORE MORE MORE. Hey body! what happened to just wanting four hours straight! How come that's not good enough anymore!?! Huh? Huh? It's amazing, the body's ability to adjust. I was amazed how little sleep I needed at one point. I guess our poor little temples can only take so much.

Of course, here it is, past ten and guess who's on the internet? Me! I'm afraid I will never feel rested again. . .(whine, whine whinity whine. . .:))

Why the neighbors hate us. . .

We are back! We had a great time with Bob's family at their cabin. Much relaxing and game playing was done and it was nice to have someone to play Boggle with finally. Thanks Cindy! And. . . much sleeping was accomplished! That's right, the streak continues. I think we are at something like 8 nights in a row. That's over a whole week! Woohoo! Lilli was very well behaved on top of sleeping through the night, and Bob and I feel newly encouraged in our road tripping potential. She was good in the car, even when awake, she managed not to break anything in the house and was generally very sweet and lovable. She learned a couple of new words, her favorite being "Bikol" for "Michael" which she liked to say over and over and over again. I think Michael was pleased with this development, even though Lilli does love to tease him and refuses to kiss him. It was much the same behavior she displayed with my Uncle Randy a while back when she wouldn't let him play with her hammer toy. Maybe she's just a big ol' flirt.

Anyway, the other skill she learned this week? How to set the alarm off on our car using the key remote. Which she now does often. And early. In the morning. And that is why the neighbors hate us.

Ahhhhh, true refreshment! To hell with the finger sandwiches and punch!

I woke up this morning, completely refreshed. (dramatic pause. . . .) !!!!! Do you realize how amazing this is?? I haven't woken up without a bodily protest on the scale of the Sixties since, oh, a little over fifteen months ago. This was so revolutionary, in fact, that my body didn't quite know what to do with such refreshment. I think I would have bounded quite merrily through my day if I hadn't had to go to the gynecologist in the afternoon. There's a downer if there ever was one.

But ANYWAY, last night was the FOURTH night in a row that Lilli has slept through the night in her crib. Actually, she woke up a half hour later than usual this morning and waited until the sky was actually kind of rosy and pink. I was SO pleased with her. I kissed her all over and offered her the boobie without her even having to ask.

I *think* maybe that my body is finally catching up a bit on the sleep I've been lacking and/or I'm finally relaxed enough at night to actually sleep well and not worry every second that Lilli is going to wake up. I do find that I miss sleeping with her though. I know, am I being silly? I'm going on and on about how great it is to sleep alone (well, with Bob, but no baby). But she was just getting to that really cuddly stage where she would sometimes wake up and just cuddle up to me or lay on top of me and smile at me blissfully and then drift away. I kind of miss that. I guess that's what naps are for. I can't give up on the uninterrupted sleep now. No, no, I don't think I miss the cuddling that much. Plenty of time for that during the day! Well, anywho, at this rate we may be able to move the crib back into the nursery since she isn't needing us during the night. Then the stage will be set for cosleeping with the next baby. Hah!

Oh yeah, I may be away from my internet for the weekend. We will see how Lilli handles the sleeping thing away from home. Pray for us.

Dang cute Lilli. . .

Watchful Lilli. . .

Thoughtful Lilli. . .

Oh these darn mittens! They're are SO funny! And look at my hat! HiLARious!

Hats and mittens. . .

Reading a book with GGMary.

Mmmm, fruit AND remote control. Life is so gooood. And. . . poor Addy.

What?? No Kitty?

My dad took these at my grandma's. Here are Lilli and Addy looking for the kitty. They both LOVE kitties.