Category Archives: My Kids and Family

Monsters – The Sequel

Posted on January 16, 2007 by Clint| Comments Off

Over at Daddy Daze, Dave has blogged a nice piece in response to my post from a few days ago called Things We Tell The Girl to Keep the Monsters Away. Continue reading →

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Things We Tell The Girl to Keep Monsters Away

Posted on January 10, 2007 by Clint| 3 Comments
  • That’s why we painted your bedroom pink. Monsters hate pink.
  • Monsters don’t want to eat us. We taste awful.
  • When we bought the new house, we told the Realtor we wanted to live in a no-monster neighbourhood.
  • Monsters won’t come into your bedroom. Monsters are lazy and don’t like climbing stairs.
  • Monsters can’t come down chimneys because the people who make chimneys know how to make them to keep monsters out, but let Santa in.
  • Mom and Dad’s protect their kids from Monsters. That’s one of our jobs.
  • Bad monsters don’t like coming into houses with love in them. Bad monsters don’t like love.
  • Maybe the monsters are lonely? Maybe they want to be your friend?

In addition, we hung some nazar (blue eye) amulets we got when we traveled in Turkey a few years ago. We told he that those were designed to keep away monsters. So far, no monsters, so everything looks like it is working as it should.

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Youthful Tendency Disorder

Posted on December 26, 2006 by Clint| Comments Off

Ah, thank goodness for The Onion, that online bastion of satire without whom we would never find out about a new, horrible disease striking kids all across the US: YTD or Youthful Tendency Disorder.

Continue reading →

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We Have a Root!

Posted on December 24, 2006 by Clint| 2 Comments

Things my 3 year old says that crack me up. I think this probably speaks more to my level of maturity than anything else.

  • “No, that was just fireworks.” When asked if the toot she had signaled a poo.
  • “No, Dad. I want it straight up!” When witnessing her Dad trying to dilute her juice with water.
  • “Mom, we have a root!” Upon seeing her infant brother turn his head to the side and open his mouth in classic baby rooting.
  • “It’s just a skidmark.” When asked if she just had a poo.

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And Baby Makes 4

Posted on December 12, 2006 by Clint| 1 Comment

It is really amazing how much calmer you are when you have a second baby. With The Girl it took forever to change a diaper. Three years later with The Boy, I’m like a Nascar pit crew.

I also forgot that new babies don’t do much more than poop, eat and sleep (during the day, not the night), which is good because anything beyond that right now would be a struggle. It’s not the new baby that we’re having to spend so much energy on right now – it’s The Girl. I guess I wasn’t really fully prepared for the extent of her adjustment period, but suffice to say it’s been difficult for her.

Not that she doesn’t love her new brother – far from it. She is overly eager to help and hyper curious as to what he is doing at every single moment of the day and night, which has led to some long nights and stressful days as we dance along the fine line of correcting her handling of the little guy and crushing her enthusiasm.

To say she has been emotionally tender is an understatement. Little things that she normally took in stride have become emotional obstacles for her. We’re finding that we spend a lot more time with her, helping he adjust to this new little person and not feel that she has been pushed aside, or that she is loved any less. Add in some Christmas hype and you’ve got a tender ball of emotions.

As for the regression to babyish behaviour we were expecting, it hasn’t really happened. She is going thru a soother phase, but she plays with it for a couple of minutes before discarding it, so that hardly seems significant. I should note that she never used a soother when she was a baby, so there is a novelty element to them. Not that we were planning on using a soother with the Boy, but some overly eager Nurse in the hospital eager to quiet him during his overnight stay in Neo-Natal gave him one.

On the upside, since she has become a big sister, she has taken the unilateral step of finishing off her potty training. The day her little brother came home was the first night she decided to sleep without a diaper, just her underpants. It’s been a week and so far, so good. And 2 days ago, I was summoned into the bathroom to witness her first #2 on the toilet – an event that almost made her Mom cry (at this point, those of you who do not have kids are bailing out of this post, wondering what the hell it is about poo and toilets that turn parents into socially inappropriate idiots). So, in terms of baby regression, I think we’ve come out ahead.

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It’s a Boy!

Posted on December 4, 2006 by Clint| 3 Comments

Our family has expanded! We have an 8 pounds 2 oz baby boy…Mom and The Boy are coming home today. It was not the smoothest of ordeals, but we had great support from our midwife and doula. I’ll expand on why I am a complete advocate for the midwife/doula route at a later time when I have more time (ha, yeah that’ll happen soon). Suffice to say that everyone is out of the woods and ready to come home today.

In the meantime, thanks to Phil over at A Family Runs Thru It for turning me onto this piece of YouTube video. It’s really a beautiful piece that speaks volumes about the importance of treating kids as individuals.

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The Tooth Fairy Has Been Banished

Posted on November 17, 2006 by Clint| Comments Off

If you come to our house, please disregard the letter to the Tooth Fairy posted on the front door.

Last night, The Girl got terrified the Tooth Fairy was going to come to our house. I’m not sure where this latest fear has come from, but she went to sleep last night saying she didn’t want to dream about the Tooth Fairy and woke up this morning almost crying, upset the Tooth Fairy was going to come.

I can’t say I blame her. The whole idea of some mythical creature sneaking into your room in the middle of the night and sticking their hands under your pillow without you waking up is a bit creepy (as I have posted about before).

So, this morning, to help alleviate a 3 year olds fear, we wrote and posted the following letter on our front door. It says:

Dear Tooth Fairy,

Please do not come to our house. There are no teeth here for you. Perhaps you could try the next house?

Thank you

I’m sure the postal worker and newspaper delivery people think we are looney, but it worked and calmed The Girl down.

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Gwanka and Gwoggy

Posted on July 27, 2006 by Clint| 5 Comments

Although I’ve never met them, there are 2 new kids living in our house – Gwanka and Gwoggy.

A couple of days ago I was in the backyard with The Girl. She ran around the corner of the house where the gate is and said, “oh hi! Come on in!” I couldn’t quite see around the corner and I wondered who was there. As I was walking towards the gate, she came back around the corner, looking like she was holding someone’s hand.

“Who’s there?” I asked.

“Gwanka,” she said. “She’s from Mexico.”

“Oh. Where did you meet Gwanka?”

“In a parking lot.”

“And how old is she?”

“5″

A few days later, we are jumping on the bed when all of a sudden The Girl asks Gwoggy to jump with us.

“Who’s Gwoggy?”

“Gwanka’s sister.”

“Oh.”

The Girl has imaginary friends. Fun. I hope I don’t have to feed them, too.

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Signs, Signs, Everywhere the Signs

Posted on July 20, 2006 by Clint| 2 Comments

Armin Brott (Mr. Dad) has a post on his website about teaching your baby sign language. As a parent of a child who learned a few signs before she hit 1, I can concur that yes, it does work and no, it did not delay the development of speaking in The Girl. I wonder how the myth began that babies who learn sign language could have delayed speech? It certainly isn’t the case with The Girl who, at 2/12, is a chatterbox.

The signs she learned were pretty basic – “please” and “more” being the 2 she seemed to use quite often.

The best part of teaching her sign language was that it seemed to reduce a bit of frustration in The Girl. Signing gave her a way to express herself, ask for something and have us respond to what she needed. And it was quite easy. As Brott’s article points out, consistency, repetition and saying the words as we signed them seemed to be key factors in how quickly The Girl picked up the signs.

If you are thinking about the sign route, I would highly recommend it.

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Tantrums

Posted on July 18, 2006 by Clint| 4 Comments

Yes, they have hit. Big time.

These are not tantrums to “get” something – these episodes are full on meltdowns that seem to be triggered by minor of things. When one of these episodes comes on, it’s as if all coping skill developed in The Girl’s 2 1/2 years go flying out the window.

They have become daily occurrences – sometimes multiple times a day, which has sent both Mom and I scrambling back to the bookshelf and baby/toddler library we have assembled. So far, Mary Sheedy Kurkinca’s book Raising Your Spirited Child has provided the best advice, and the best definition of what might be going on with The Girl, that is “spillover tantrums” caused by emotional overload.

In a nutshell, once one of the episodes begins, I make sure The Girl isn’t going to hurt herself, stay close but give distance and let them go until they get it out. So far, this advice seems to be working. When one of these episodes comes on, I basically shut up, stay close to The Girl and let it run it’s course.

At first, I tried to pick up or hug The Girl, but she wanted no part of it. So, instead of trying to hold her, I stay with her, but let her take the lead in how much physical contact she wants. I’ve found that, after completely losing it for a few minutes, The Girl eventually calms herself down enough to come over on her own and cuddle in my lap. Once she has calmed down, we talk about what happened.

It’s pretty tough sometimes for me to maintain my cool, but the times I have lost it myself and done things like walk away or get frustrated only make the tantrum worse.

There is, of course, more to Kurkinca’s method than this. And, regardless of whether you have a Spirited Child or not, the book is well worth a read.

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Reminding Pays Off

Posted on July 7, 2006 by Clint| Comments Off

Even before she could speak (thanks to sign language), we have been drilling the girl on using “please” and “thank you” when she wants something. Many times a day for the past 2+ years we have been reminding her to use those two words, but it seemed that no matter how much reminding we did, she just wouldn’t spontaneously use “please” and “thank you” in context. As soon as we would remind her, she would say please or thank you, but never on her own.

Then out of the blue 2 weeks ago it happened. The Girl asked me for a drink of milk, and ended her sentence with a casual “please”. Fantastic! Then, when she got her milk, it was a nice “thank you”. Lovely! So I made sure to give her a bit of positive feedback – “Hey, you said please and thank you and I didn’t have to remind you. Nice work!” To which she just gave me a grin and shuffled back into her play room.

Since then, the pleases and thank you’s have been flowing much easier from her. Occasionally, she still has to be reminded, but the frequency is less and less.

So for all you parents who (like me) were going batty with the endless repeating and reminders, take this post as a positive and persevere! As for me, I am making sure to enjoy it while it lasts.

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The Zoo and My Flexible Morals

Posted on May 31, 2006 by Clint| 2 Comments

Last weekend my wife and I set aside moral objections to keeping animals in cages and took our daughter to the zoo.

I was surprised how easy it was to make the decision. Perhaps because my wife and daughter had already visited the Vancouver Aquarium a few months ago, and, after doing a bit of research on that facility, I decided that the work they do is actually a bit more important and significant than just providing amusement for people. Besides, my daughter has this thing for Beluga whales and, barring an unexpected trip to Nunavut, probably won’t be able to see any in the wild for quite some time, long after she has outgrown her Beluga whale phase. So, when I planned the trip to the Vancouver Zoo last weekend, I naively envisioned an organization run with the same type of environmental integrity as the aquarium.

The visit was okay – there was only one animal that I thought might be a bit uncomfortable. A brown bear that seemed to me to be in a fairly small area, but the sign on the pen said it was a temporary facility and a new one was to be completed very soon.

All in all, though, I felt good about the trip and the zoo. The Girl had a good time and can’t stop talking about the nursing baby Wallaby she saw.

Which is why I feel doubly sick after reading in the paper this morning that the Vancouver Zoo – the zoo I so happily gave my money to 4 days ago – has become the first zoo in Canada to be charged with cruelty to animals.

Yep – not feeling so good about our family trip now.

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A Cute Story

Posted on May 17, 2006 by Clint| 2 Comments

This morning The Girl was lying in bed with Mom, doing the half awake, half sleeping cuddle. Her head was resting on Mom’s 3 month baby belly when Mom’s belly grumbled. The Girl shot up out of bed, big grin and wide eyed. She looked at me lying beside her and said, “The new baby tooted!”

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A Bad Dad

Posted on May 11, 2006 by Clint| 3 Comments

Man, I hope we haven’t done any damage with this parental screw-up, but only time will tell.

First, a bit of background.

  1. It’s official. Baby #2 is on the way (YAY!)
  2. #1 has always wanted a baby sister/brother. She loves babies and is always mothering her teddies & dolls. I suspect all toddlers go thru a “mothering” phase with their teddies, but The Girl really seems to take extra joy in making sure her “babies” are well taken care of. For this reason, we have always thought that when baby #2 comes, there is a good chance she will be a fantastic older sister.
  3. The Girl rarely used a soother when she was younger, and hasn’t touched one for close to a year. 2 weeks ago, a suckie was found and, despite our best efforts, it hasn’t left The Girl’s mouth since.
  4. Mom still sometimes sleeps with The Girl at night.

So, 2 days ago the suckie went missing. The Girl has been a bit upset by the disappearance. Mom and I have been trying to explain that suckies are for babies and now that she is a big girl she really doesn’t need one. In fact, maybe we should save the suckies for the new baby. Mistake #1.

Also in the past couple of days, we’ve been trying to prepare The Girl for the fact that, when the new baby comes, Mommy may not be able to sleep with her in her bed because the new baby might need Mommy at night. Mistake #2.

So, we thought she had been taking all this news rather well. Until last night when we heard he utter, “Don’t want new baby. New baby go away. I have enough babies.”

My heart broke. I felt horrible. What have we done? The Girl had been so excited about having a new baby and in the course of a couple of days we have managed to suck all the excitement of having a new baby right out of her.

In retrospect, our mistakes were obvious, including the references to her becoming a “Big Girl”. I think that is going to stop. I only hope that we can get her back on track to being excited about having a baby brother or sister again.

I’m feeling like a terrible parent right now.

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Monsters Under Bed

Posted on April 17, 2006 by Clint| 1 Comment

Easter passes and, like at Christmas, I can’t help but wonder how much I am messing with my kids psyche with tales of mysterious beings that can magically appear and disappear inside our house without anyone knowing.

Is it any wonder some kids become afraid of the monsters hiding under the beds or in the closets when we keep telling them that Santa and the Easter Bunny can creep about their house in the middle of the night while they are asleep? I mean, if Santa and the Easter Bunny can come in undetected and leave things, then what’s to stop some nasty thing from coming into the house and taking things?

And don’t even get me started with the Tooth Fairy. It’s bad enough Santa and the Easter Bunny can come into your house without anyone knowing, but to have someone come right into your bedroom, stick their hands under your pillow and get your tooth without you waking up and realizing they were there? Armed with that kind of knowledge is it any wonder that kids don’t want to go to sleep at night?

Why, oh why do we parents subject our kids to this insane torture? It can’t be because our kids laugh with abandon, get giddy with excitement and bubble over with anticipation at the merest hint of the imminent arrival of these beings? It surely couldn’t be the joyful flutter we parents get in our stomach as we faintly hear 6 am footsteps creeping down the stairs, knowing full well that the next few minutes will be filled with nothing but awe struck wonder that there is such a thing as magic in this world. Oh no, it surely couldn’t be that.

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