On a sick leave. Again and again.

Well hello, there! Remember me? 🙂 Apparently I’ve been lost in space and time and I’ve finally found my way back to here and now! 😉

The thing is, I was sick. I had a bad case of tonsillitis which lasted for a couple of weeks, during which the kid and I went to recuperate at my parents’. What would we do without mothers/grandmothers, eh? Just when I got properly on my feet again, the kid got sick! Of course! Another two weeks passed. This brought a ton of work for my job and the household on standstill. Just imagine the piles of dishes and dirty laundry, heaps of clean clothes waiting to be folded, ironed and put away. Ahhhh. Never ending story. My partner does help, but some days are just impossible with him being late from work and the kid clinging to me incessantly. So lately, I’ve mostly been doing that.

Well, apart from the time the kid got sick again, puked all over the bed five minutes to midnight on the 31st of December. Oh, joyous New Year! The next day he refused to eat or drink so I had to take him to an intravenous rehydration to the hospital, where we stayed for two days due to severe dehydration. This was crazy! The kid didn’t even look so bad to me but because he couldn’t hold anything in I thought maybe we should take him to the doctor to get him checked out, just in case, and when they tried to take his blood it wouldn’t even flow because of the desiccation. So we had a bit of a scare, there. Pheeww! Not to mention that my father also got sick, as well as my partner and my grandmother. I thought, oh well, I am as healthy as a horse, until I had to vomit violently (sorry if this is to graphic :D) right before we were released from the hospital. My mother was the only one left (alive) healthy and had to take care of all of us. Thank god for mothers/grandmothers, again!

I don’t know should I blame the kindergarten or this year’s mild, too warm winter. All the kids I know have been down with this or that in the last couple of months. You’d think the kid would have a break from it for a while, but no. He’d contracted god knows what two weeks ago and after eight days of fever the tests for viruses and bacteria were still all negative. We were half on our way to the infectious disease clinic when the antibiotic he was prescribed on the off chance that it might work started doing it’s magic. Phew, again!

So now, with the kid safely back to day care, I am finally able to sit down, check what’s up with my blog and perhaps write a post or two again. I still have a lot of work to catch up on, but I am tired and need some time for myself, else I might get sick again, too. Which in my case wouldn’t be so bad at all, to be completely honest. A bit of television and books, my partner cooking for me and doing the household chores, the kid being especially nice (yeah, right!) and above all, lots and lots of couch! With me on it! 🙂 Until the day in the very near future when the kid burns up again, no doubt on a Friday evening when I cannot reach his doctor till Monday. 🙂 Well, yeah. Se la vie. But for now, I’m enjoying a little quiet solitude with a little treat, just for me, all for me. Freshly out of the oven! Hungry, anyone? 😉

 

 

Are your kids healthier than mine? Do you have them at home or do they go to the kindergarten?

 

The Kid’s Nocturnal Craziness. A Very Short Story

The kid’s been having trouble sleeping all week. I don’t know if it’s the moon or the fact that he’s been going through some changes in kindergarten, but he’s been unbelievably annoying every single afternoon and half awake during the night. It’s not nice to say that of your own kid. Other people’s kids are annoying, mine is picture perfect most of the time. 😉 But he has his moments and this weeks the moments have stretched into age. You know, like the weather turns into climate.

Speaking of which – perhaps it is the weather. We’ve been having inordinate amount of rain this summer (what, summer, what is that?) which precludes us for going out as much as we could and would have if there was sun. Well, there is sun. Somewhere. Behind all those clouds. Somewhere else. So the kid gets bored and nags for constant attention.

Anyway, the kid and I were alone last night, and I put him to bed at 8 pm and went out of the room, rubbing my hands gleefully, yaaay, some mummy time. What to do with all this free time? One attack at the fridge and remote control later, I hear from the bedroom: “Mummy! Mummy! Mummmyyyyy!”

I shout from the couch: “Lie down and go to sleep.”

Quiet again. Oh, joy. Let’s see what films have I got on my USB.

“Muuummmyyy. Dink. Mummy. Mummyyy. Dink. Dink.”

Dink is drink. Ok, so he’s thirsty. I take him a glass of water, he drinks and lies down.

Ok, here we go. Only Lovers Left Alive, this should be good. Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston. Oh, goodie!

“Mummy. Mummy.”

I ignore him. He sometimes whines, but if I leave him alone, it only takes a couple of minutes for him to stop and go to sleep. Well, not today.

“Mummmmmmyyyy. Dummy.”

He lost his dummy. Oh noes. He won’t sleep without it. I get up, go in and find his dummy. Back to tv, press play.

Ten minutes later.

“Mummy. Mummy. Mummy. Dummy.”

Whaaaaattt? Again? I hesitate. Should I just let him try to sleep without it?

“Mummmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyy. Dummy.”

Alright, alright. Coming. I retrieve his dummy again, lie him down and leave.

Of course it happens again after 15 minutes. By this time I realize that he’s stacking his dummy away on purpose. There is a hole between his crib and the wall and if he puts it in there he won’t be able to reach it by himself. I get angry and tell him to stop doing that or he will sleep without a dummy and I won’t come back in either. Surprisingly, that’s the end of it and I do get to enjoy the film. Awesome film, by the by!

When I go to bed he’s fast asleep. He sleeps in our bedroom; we live in a small apartment, so we have to share, but he has his own bed. I wake up to him calling “mummy” again. I check the clock. 1 am. What the what?

“What is it, kid?”

“Teddy.”

He reaches for  his teddy bear on the nightstand, which is ornamental, because he has a dog to sleep with.

“Teddy.”

“Take it,” I say “then lie down and sleep”.

I roll over and nearly fall asleep again when I hear him again.

“Mummy. Mummy … Mummy?”

I turn around and he’s standing in his crib, holding his teddy towards me and goes “RRRAAAAAAWWWWRRRRR“.

I start laughing and then he starts laughing and we both look like lunatics laughing uncontrollably in the middle of the night. I finally give in and take him out of the crib to my bed. Needless to say, we both sleep like babies till morning even if that’s a very poor comparison, because even babies don’t sleep like babies and I feel like slapping the person who came up with this saying. Harumph.

Toddler Talk

I think the kids are at their most adorable when they first start talking. And I don’t mean talking talking. There is this phase between babbling and speech when they become so vocal about everything! You cannot understand it all, but if you know your kid, and as a parent you do, the sounds soon start to make sense and suddenly, even though they can’t form completely proper words yet, you start communicating.

A while ago I talked to a friend whose son is three and doesn’t talk. At all. They took him to the doctor to check if there was a problem somewhere in his mental or physical development but there was nothing, the kid is healthy, bright and he obviously understands everything. What the paediatrician did say, though, was that he doesn’t talk because he doesn’t need to! He doesn’t go to kindergarten and his grandma who is watching him during the day answers his every whim before he even asks for it. So it goes somewhat like this:

 

Grandma: What would you like for breakfast, Tom (let’s name this imaginary conversation counterpart Tom)?

Tom points his stare and finger towards the refrigerator.

Grandma opens the fridge: Would you like some butter?

Tom shakes his head no and points more fixedly to the fridge.

Grandma: Would you like marmalade?

Tom shakes his head no.

Grandma: Would you like peanut butter? Cereal? Honey?

Tom shakes his head vigorously again and starts whining.

Grandma takes him out of his high chair and takes him to the fridge so he could show her what he wants.

Tom points out cheese spread and they happily enjoy their breakfast ever after.

Moral of the story: In the name of all that is holy, woman, let (make) the boy tell you what he wants!

 

My kid started with his limited word selection a couple of months ago. He must have loved the sound of “lolo” because why else would he use it so much? Lolo could be either water, ball, flower or even puddle. I would know which one it was if we were outside and I saw him looking at the thing, but when he remembered his lolo out of nowhere I’d be in the dark. So he gradually started distinguishing letters and words and he is way better at it now. There are no more lolos, water is now wotta, ball is ball, flower is flowa. And he is so proud when he says something right! We would go on a walk and he would say pudd and I’d say puddle. Then he’d say pudd for twenty more times and then he would finally make it to puddle and he’d look at me with those big eyes with a million dollar smile on his face and say: “Mummy, PUDDLE!”

Adorable, I told you, says a very biased mum. 🙂

 

Do your kids talk yet? Do they crack you up? Did you experience any speech difficulties? Tell me in comments!

 

Potty Training: Diaper Free In One Week

So, I’ve conducted a not so scientific experiment with my kid. Hold on, hold on, don’t call the social services just yet. It was harmless! I wanted to see if I can succeed in potty training him at the age of 18 months. The results: yes. Yes, I can!

I started thinking about kissing his diapers goodbye when I realized it was going to take another year or so to do it if I didn’t try it now (now as in August). I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard of many parents that succeeded in potty training in cold weather. The other thing that prompted me was the apparent fact that (according to uncle Google and T. Berry Brazelton) the child is ready to potty train at approximately 18 months when he begins to be aware of his elimination. And the third thing, well, let’s just say I was sick and tired of changing the darn thing!

Here’s how I did it.

First things first. A friend lent me an elimination communication book when the kid was successfully introduced to solids and his poop went solid, too. I must admit I didn’t have either time or patience to read but a few pages but did start to carry the little one to the toilet when changing his diaper. He caught on to it fairly quickly and he has been telling me when he has to go “poopoo” since he was one. Now, I had no idea how to go about peeing, but as we didn’t have to go quite from the scratch I was confident (if a little scared).

Just before the kid turned 17 months we went to the seaside and I had him naked most of the two weeks there. I had no plan, I just thought let him figure it out when he does it and how he does it. Yeah, right. He peed himself countless times. And happily informed me that he’s standing in a puddle, afterwards. Back at home I ferociously attacked google and read hundreds of blogs and parenting pages (of course I exaggerate) and found little to nothing. The only advice I got from a friend and a mother of three (and I shamelessly quote here) was “you just have to watch ’em like a hawk” and while that’s definitely true and useful if was insufficient for a mother of one. I really didn’t want to spend money on another book I will not read so I concocted my own plan from all of the above; a bit of information here, a bit of advice there. It was like my cooking, really.

Rule number one. You need a plan. Why? Because. Because while it turned out to not be that big of a deal, I would give up after a couple of days if I didn’t have a plan. A plan is important!

The plan was as follows. Take the kid out of kindergarten for a week. Check. Clear the schedule for that same week, you do need to watch him like a hawk. Check. Come Monday, tell the kid he is a big boy now and he doesn’t need diapers any more. Leave him commando. Intermezzo: I read on several of those mummy blogs (totally off topic but have you ever wondered why we use the same word for mother and preserved dead body? Yeah, me too.) that underwear will give children the same sensation they have while wearing diaper so leave them naked or, if that’s not possible, have them wear very loose pants. Prepare lots of floor wipes, because you will be doing lots of wiping. In my case it was four times that first day, but he did go to the loo four times as well, although I nagged him all day asking him if he had to go or carrying him there every hour or so anyway if the answer was no (which it mostly was). We didn’t go out save half an hour with his father late in the afternoon and we managed that without accidents. He had a 50/50 ratio of success so I didn’t know quite what to expect for Tuesday. Next day it was pretty much the same, but we did go out by ourselves for more that one hour and he was dry. No sign of progress, however, and I was a bit worried. On Wednesday he managed to pee in the toilet for the whole day, but had a bombshell for me in store. In the afternoon, he peed on the couch. Twice! And once again on Thursday. I was almost on my was to a drugstore to buy him enough diapers for the next two years but then thought, hey, the plan was to try and make it to Sunday so let’s stick with it (see, the plan). And surprise, surprise, the kid was completely dry on both Friday and Saturday, even told me that he has to go “peepee” once, and had one minor incident on Sunday! And so, we did it!

And yet, he wet his pants once when back to childcare on Monday, and also occasionally in the days following. I have also removed his diapers for his day nap and he stays dry at home but would sometimes pee during his nap there. We give him time. We had made great progress during that week and he has learned to pee in the toilet but cannot control it completely yet, and cannot always remember that he has to go while he’s engrossed in play. I don’t expect him to, but encourage him to tell me and ask him often. I found that he didn’t react well to the constant pressure of “do you need to pee?” every fifteen minutes and that he couldn’t or wouldn’t go when I took him even if he said no. When I stopped doing that he started telling me himself. We’re not quite there yet and he still wears his diaper at night, but it’s only been three weeks and we’re slowly but confidently nearing the finish line.

To sum it up – this is a quick potty training that will get your child diaper free in one week (approximately). And these are the tips to make it easier:

• Make a plan that is in accord to you and your kid. If you think you (or he or she) need 10 days, take them. If your child is older, you will perhaps need less. Stick to the plan!
• Clear your schedule and have the child at home while potty training.
• I’m not sure if being naked helps, but it worked with my kid, so … This is your choice, really, but I don’t recommend potty training pants because they don’t give the sensation of wetness which bothers children.
• Often tell your child that he is now without a diaper and he has to tell you when he needs to go pee or poop. You can be disappointed when he has accidents and tell him so but do not get angry with him.
• Take your time and – be patient!

 

 

 

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section!