Doing Her Own Thing

Our daycare center hosted a parents’ night on Wednesday to introduce new teachers, allow parents to ask questions or bring up concerns and to talk about a fund-raising event coming up in June (we’re doing Relay for Life, so family members, expect me to hit you up to sponsor me in a few weeks).

The kids played in a classroom while the parents balanced on toddler-sized chairs or crowded around miniature tables and listened to the teachers talk. One of the new teachers is from Mexico, where she taught school before moving to Nevada. Since Spanish is her first language, she has been teaching the preschool class some basic Spanish. One parent spoke up and said that explains why her daughter has been counting in Spanish. I also piped up, and asked, “Is she teaching the toddlers too, because I swear I heard Emma count in Spanish last week!” Yes, I could have sworn I heard Emma muttering “uno, dos, tres, quatro, cinco” while playing with her baby doll. I even mentioned it to Sean, but we both thought that I was imagining things and just being overly hopeful that “Dora the Explorer” is more educational than entertaining.

The daycare owner kind of laughed and said, “No, we’re not teaching the toddlers Spanish.” And of course I shut up, somewhat embarrassed that I assumed my child could learn another language so young. Then the daycare owner continued: “The toddlers aren’t learning it, but Emma kind of does her own thing.” All the other teachers chuckled and nodded, and as if to punctuate the statement, Emma wandered into the room and climbed onto another mom’s lap and tried to steal her water and cookie.

And for some reason, that made me very proud. Emma is kind of like their little mascot at times. She follows the teachers around and demands to help them. She isn’t about to be told that she can’t hang out with the preschoolers, and when the teachers are braiding the girls’ hair or painting their fingernails, Emma is right there with them sticking her hands out too. I think she gets away with it because she’s so cute and easy-going. Sure, she has her moments, but generally she just wants to help (with EVERYTHING!) and tag along. And I’m proud of her for being such a unique, incredible little girl. She’s the kind of kid that people like to be around, and that makes me very happy. While she can be needy and clingy, she’s also wonderfully independent. I love that she climbed up on another mom’s lap (not a total stranger – she’s the mom of Emma’s friend at daycare) and that she tells me who’s who at daycare. She has her nose in everyone’s business, and at this age, there’s something very endearing about that kind of precociousness.

So yes, Emma does her own thing. She is a special little girl who doesn’t fit in a well-defined box. And I’m so proud of that. (and yes, she does count to five in Spanish!)

Show me the Shoes

I love to shop (who doesn’t?). But as I constantly remind my husband, I’m a frugal shopper and great at finding deals. So while I shop often, I don’t spend much money.

And that’s why I’m suffering some serious inner turmoil over a pair of shoes I want to buy (and blogging about it in the hopes that my readers will tell me to just go ahead and buy them and stop being so melodramatic about it already!).

How freakin’ cute are these?!?! I have spent way too many hours reading hundreds reviews online to be sure they really are as comfy and versatile as they look (and they are). I’ve compared prices on Zappos, Amazon, Planet Shoes, Overstock and more. I’ve slept on the idea and still want them. I’ve taken stock of my shoe inventory (which I’ll admit is large, but I don’t have a pair of shoes like these).

Everything says “buy them!” but I keep coming back to the price — $100 is a lot to spend on one pair of shoes for me. Sure, I can blow $100 on clothes, but it would take several outfits and cheap pairs of shoes to get $100. And Sean and I both can easily spend $100 on camping gear or home improvement stuff. This is one pair of shoes. One measly pair of incredibly adorable, durable, eco-friendly (hey, that should score some points, right?) pair of shoes I could wear for years. And really, most of my shoes I have been wearing for years, so I’m due a new pair, right?

But they’re $100.

Bored, Boring, Blah

Yesterday was a boring, rainy day. We watched cartoons, played with toys, watched more cartoons, tried to clean the house and watched more cartoons. I suppose we could have made granola bars together, but we were also trying to clean the house, not make more messes. Play-Doh has been 86′d from our house until Emma is a little older and can actually play with it instead of taking it out of its container and leaving it random places to dry and crumble into the carpet.

Sean tried finger-painting with Emma, which actually went ok but only used up about 20 minutes of the very looooong day. Thankfully, Emma made such a mess with the fingerpaints that she warranted a bath, so she and Sean played in the bathtub while I scrubbed blue paint out of the chair upholstery. It was so rainy that Sean couldn’t escape outside to mow the lawn or find other projects around the house. He was trapped inside with an energetic girl, a baby and a tired wife. Poor guy.

My poor husband was obviously going stir-crazy, and finally he asked, “Don’t we have any puzzles or board games?” No, Sean, you and I both agreed that puzzle pieces would be a disaster with our michievous dog who likes to chew on everything. And what kind of board game does a 2-year-old play? I have no idea but would love some suggestions! Maybe I should have bought some puzzles anyway for just such an occasion as my husband FINALLY understanding how bored I get when we’re cooped up in the house all day.

So my next trip to Target or Walmart will involve scouring the toy aisles for board games for 2-year-olds and puzzles that our dog will probably destroy. But at least I won’t be on the receiving end of my husband’s frustration over not being prepared for boring, rainy days. (or do I dare hope that our rainy days are over for a while?)

I Eat My Baby

“I eat my baby.”

“Um, Emma, that’s not very nice.”

“I eat my baby.”

“Emma, your baby is a good girl, why would you want to eat her?”

“I eat my baby.”

“Eating babies is not nice. It’s what crazy people do. You’re not crazy, don’t eat your baby.”

“I eat my baby.” She pulls the doll’s high chair up to the table and puts her baby in it, then places a tea cup and a spoon in front of her baby. As she spoons tea into her baby’s mouth, she repeats: “I eat my baby.”

Holy Crap, It Worked!

I’m constantly trying new ways to get my 2-year-old to obey me. Sometimes I resort to plain ol’ yelling and “You obey me because I’m your mommy!” But sometimes I hit on something that actually works (yes, I’m admitting that “because I said so” doesn’t work often).

At naptime today, I told Emma that she doesn’t have to sleep at naptime, but she has to stay on her bed. I put books on her bed with the usual assortment of stuffed animals and baby dolls, and even tossed in a few toy teacups because I felt like being nice. I explained to her that she has a new rule at naptime: Stay on her bed but she can play, read, talk to her animals, do whatever she wants as long as she’s on her bed. She seemed to love the idea… until it came time to actually stay on her bed. As soon as I left the room she melted down and followed me out to the hallway. I decided, “Hey, I gave her everything she wants at naptime, if she can’t obey, I’ll take it all back.” Harsh? Maybe.

So every time she cried and got out of her bed, I counted to three and then took away a stuffed animal (it’s no surprise

Sleeping on the bunny she got when she finally listened to me.

to her that nothing good happens when I get to three). Naturally she didn’t like this situation at all! But after losing only five animals, she started running back to her bed when I started counting. She was still really upset about losing her friends, though, so I told her that when she obeys me and stays on her bed, I’ll give her animals back. This turned out to be too vague, so I told her that if she stays in bed for five minutes, she’ll get her bunny back.

And, holy crap, it worked! She nodded and quit crying. Five minutes later I took her bunny to her and she was almost asleep! I just took Minnie Mouse back to her and she is zonked out (on her bunny). It worked! We’ll have to do this more regularly so it sinks in. I love the idea of giving her some flexibility at bedtime and naptime, and as long as she’s on her bed for at least an hour, I don’t really care if she’s sleeping or plotting her revenge on her evil mother. At least she’s doing it quietly.

Go Back to Sleep!

Emma’s sleep issues have resurfaced. Basically, her issues are that she’s a typical 2-year-old who does not like to be told no and who does not like to go to bed. Bedtime is a major fight every night. Even Sean, who is not easily rattled, gave up last night and just walked away with his hands in the air.

I don’t entirely mind doing battle at night — I’m pretty firm and make her go to bed whether she wants to or not and whether she throws a tantrum or not. Sometimes she pushes my last button and I make Sean take over, but usually I can handle it. But lately she has been waking up early in the morning and melting down when I tell her to go back to bed. And my patience is seriously lacking at 5:30 in the morning. In the past when she would wake up so early, I’d steer her back to her room and make her crawl back into bed, and she’d easily go back to sleep. But the last couple of mornings have been a nightmare! She wakes up and screams and cries when I put her back in bed.

I know she’s still tired, and I suspect that she’s really still half-asleep when she melts down, so I have a hard time really getting firm with her. But if we let her get up, she’s tired and grumpy and wants to be held and cuddled while I’m rushing around trying to get ready for work.

Life is so much easier if she’ll just sleep until 7. I have a schedule that works, dammit, and she’s messing it up! We’d all get along so much better if she’d just sleep in! What kind of child doesn’t want to sleep a little longer?

Swine Flu – to worry or not?

I tend to think all this hysteria over the swine flu is, well, hysterical. More than 35,000 people die every year from the plain ol’ flu. That seems more like a serious epidemic than this swine flu, and flu happens every year. The U.S. doesn’t declare a national health emergency every year during flu season, despite tens of thousands of people dying from it. I’d bet that more than half our nation’s population gets the flu every year, but so what? People die of it and we all continue our lives until the next flu season when we pray we don’t get it so we don’t have to miss a few days of work.

That’s my logical side talking.

This morning there’s a report of the first case of swine flu in Nevada. Now my mom side is kicking in and trying to override my logical side. My mom side is telling me to pull the kids out of daycare, stock up on antibacterial soap, buy face masks, take Abbi, who has a terrible cough, back to the doctor to be sure she’s ok (and she IS ok – just a cough and congestion, no fever, no loss of appetite, no lethargy, just a cough).

As a mom, it’s so easy to panic because I know see just how fragile life is. Terrible things happen every day to wonderful people, so what makes me and my family special? We could be one of those wonderful families to suffer a terrible loss. And those are the thoughts that I wrestle with as I read the news and see that the infection count is up to 91 this morning. And then I think “91 people in a country of more than 300 million, that’s nothing!” So I struggle between trying to be level-headed and wanting to pack up and head for the hills. I guess that’s par for the course on this crazy journey called motherhood.

(Breaking news alert: The Nevada case of swine flu is a 2-year-old girl in Washoe County – that’s Reno – and she was not hospitalized, just confirmed to have swine flu and sent home. No other details available yet.)