Posts Tagged ‘Kids’

Elizabeth, Guest Poster

The eyes of every parent in the place were on me. They were staring me down, glaring at me, for subjecting my child to the ultimate danger: a deep, dark swimming pool.

The way they were looking at me, you’d have thought I was letting my daughter leap into a bottomless pit. Yes, I know she’s only 22 months old, thankyouverymuch. Yes, I know she’s not wearing water wings. Chill.

My husband was treading in the water below, patiently waiting for our almost-two-year-old to make this monumental leap of faith. My child’s a fish; she smiled the first time we gave her a sponge bath in NICU, started taking swim lessons at the local Y at six months old, and proudly blew bubbles in the big kid pool just last week. So when she asked me if she could go off the diving board like the “big kids”, how could I say no?

That’s the thing about raising self-confident kids. You have to let them try things, even if it terrifies you (and all the judgmental parents around you). You have to let them make their own mistakes.

For instance, when my daughter was only 18 months old, she wanted desperately to wear the Dora The Explorer underwear I’d bought for her. She wasn’t anywhere near ready to potty train, but she was insistent that if I let her wear the underwear, she would be able to make it to the toilet on time. She didn’t– in fact, in just one day, she peed on my couch, her car seat, and the kitchen floor– but the more important part of this story is, she tried.

A few weeks ago, DH & I took her to a Mexican restaurant. While we were eating the spicy salsa (free chips, yum!), she decided she had to try whatever mommy and daddy were eating. I knew the salsa was too intense for her. DH knew the salsa was too intense for her. But we handed the salsa over, and let her try it out for herself. She nearly gagged, and gave us both a look that said, “What were you guys thinking????” But, again, she tried it.

Life is one long lesson; we’re always learning something. Whether it’s mastering a new skill (like multiplication tables) or practicing a new talent (like ballet), life is a comedy of errors. It’s learning by trying, and yes, by failing. I truly believe that in order to raise a self-confident, independent, courageous child, you have to give them the room to– literally– jump.

So back to that diving board. I watched as she curled her ten little toes– the ones I proudly counted on the day of her birth, noting the perfection of each one– around the edge of that long plank. She looked down at her daddy in the water, then back at me, studying us for any sign of apprehension. I nodded at her, smiled bravely, and gestured for her to jump. Then, my baby counted to three– “wahhhh, tooooo, freeeeeee”– and leapt.

Jump baby, jump.

Elizabeth is a content writer for Online Schools who gives advice on the pursuit of education and living a healthy life. In her free time, she enjoys chasing her daughter around the house non-stop, while trying to launch her blogging empire simultaneously.

By Katie, Guest Writer, Katie’s Dailies (@RNRGRL)

Chocolate milk.

Is there anything quite as good? It’s thick, refreshing and well, it’s chocolate!

I drink it nearly every day. I drink it with my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I drink it after my runs, I even passed on my love of it to our son. It was the third word he learned to say. I was carrying him downstairs after his afternoon nap when he was a year and a half, when he turned his fuzzy, sleep wrinkled little face to mine and said the magic words, “Shockla? Shockla?” He has had it every day since.

It can’t get get any better than that.

Chocolate milk has always played an important part of my life. I was the youngest growing up in our house, and to help me get over “missing” my two older siblings while they were at school all day, (HA!) my mother would pack a picnic lunch of bologna sandwiches, apples cut into neat little wedges, and home made cookies. And she’d make chocolate milk.

But this chocolate milk was oh, so good! because we got to drink it from an old mayonnaise jar that my mother had rinsed out and saved after she had finished with it. We even dubbed it “Our Chocolate Milk Jar”.

Not real original, I know, but to a pre-schooler who had to share everything and had hand-me-downs, this jar was something pretty special because only my mom and I got to use it. And we thought the name was perfect.

We’d load everything up into Mom’s bike basket that she had on the front of her old purple Schwinn, I’d climb onto the wide fender that her bike sported, and away we’d go to the park down the street from our house. This was back in 1969, 1970, back before there were such things as bike helmets and bike carriers.

It was life on the edge, man, life on the edge.

Mom would holler from the front, “Keep your legs out, Katie! Stick out your legs!!” My blonde hair would be streaming out behind me, legs stuck out, Mom pedaling fast downhill, giving us tummy tickles and making us both laugh out loud. The sun would be warming our backs, I’d hug my mom’s waist tight, nuzzling up against her back, breathing in sync with her.

I never wanted the bike ride to end.

We’d get to our little neighborhood park, where we’d spread out the food we’d brought with us on a picnic table. While munching our sandwiches, we’d chit chat away about what made the “criss crosses” in the sky, why birds sing, if Mom swung me high enough would I be able to touch the big blue sky?

All very important things to a young child.

And after we ate all our food, came the best part.

The drinking of the chocolate milk from Our Chocolate Milk Jar.

It was truly nectar from the gods above in my mind. The fact that I was drinking something out of a jar always made me feel unique (maybe that explains my quirky outlook on life) and I thought this was how Laura and Mary felt when they were moving out West (at the time, Mom was reading to me “The Little House on the Prairie” and I related everything to the pioneer days. Another explanation to my take on life, perhaps?).

After we finished eating, we’d play on the teeter totters, the merry-go-round and take turns sliding down the slide. We always finished up on the swings, Mom pushing me higher and higher till my feet almoooost touched the sky. Then she’d tell me that it was time to go home, gradually slowing down my swing till it was finally still. We’d climb back on her bike and begin the trek back home, a little bit slower, a little bit more subdued.

After we reached home and unloaded her bike basket, setting Our Chocolate Milk Jar in the kitchen sink with soapy water in it to soak, it was time for my afternoon nap. Mom and I would stretch out on her bed, reading and reading, till Mom deemed that it was finally time for me to go to sleep. As she’d tuck me into my bed, she’d lean down till we were both eye-to-eye with each other, and she’d whisper, “Night night, my Big Blue Eyed Girl” and creep out of my room. I’d lay there awhile till finally the first half of the day would catch up with me and I’d fall asleep.

Every morning as I make my son’s chocolate milk, this memory drifts into my mind, and I smile.

In MinneSOOOta, we’re stuck inside for 9 months of the year…so when the sun shines (and it’s above freezing) we venture outside. We slather on the sunscreen and the bug spray and we soak it in…’cuz we know all to well that very, very soon we’ll be stuck inside. Dressed in layer upon layer and hoping our noses don’t freeze and fall off the next time we walk outside.

Anywho, back to summer. It’s awesome.

I am a mother who counts down the days of school WITH my children. The mother who gets just as excited for summer as I did when I was in school. I even went so far as to deny my 8 year old gymnastics this summer because, and I quote, “I don’t want to spent my summer in a gym!”

Hmmmm…now that I’ve written that, I wonder…does that make me a bad mom? I felt a little guilty, at first, when I told her that…but I knew that she would insist on me NOT leaving while she was there, and I’ll be damned if I was gonna sit in recycled air conditioning when I could be sitting beside a tennis court or a t-ball field breathing in fresh, clean air and soakin’ up the Vitamin D!

Now that I’ve confessed that, I sort of feel like I’ve just made myself out to be the “Summer Nazi”.

The, “YOU WILL ENJOY SUMMER WITH EVERY OUNCE OF YOUR BEING, SO HELP ME GOD!” crazy mother.

Uh oh. Will this be yet another thing my children blame me for in therapy when they get older?

Great.

Something else to worry about…

*Shrugs*…In the mean time, I’ve got to get my kids to tennis.

And t-ball…not to mention the beach…golf lessons…Little League…oh, and there’s bug spray to apply, sunscreen to slather…

Guess I don’t have time to worry!

I hope you are enjoying your summer!

By Michaela, Contributor, Mama Michie’s Musings (@MamaMichie)

When you have a second child, it should come with a warning: “It will take you 3 times as long to get out of the house than it does with just one child.”

Well at least it does if both kids are under the age of 2.

Maybe I just got used to being able to leave the house semi-quickly with just the toddler. As long as I had a sippy cup of water, some snacks, a diaper and some wipes, we were good to go. Leaving the house took a little longer than if I was leaving by myself, but nothing worth sweating over. Now though… that’s a whole different story.

For some reason I feel that it now takes us hours just to be able to leave the house for 30 minutes. Our routine now looks something like this:

1)      Fight a wiggling toddler while you try change his diaper and get him dressed.

2)      Change the baby’s diaper and get her dressed.

3)      Nurse the baby to make sure that she doesn’t get hungry the minute you walk out of the door.

4)      Change your top (or pants) because the baby spit up a more than acceptable amount on them while you were burping her (at this point you don’t care if it’s just a little spit up… you don’t even notice that anymore).

5)      Strap the baby into the car seat.

6)      Spend 2 minutes trying to find the toddler’s socks that he took off while you were nursing the baby, find one then give up and get a new pair.

7)      Put shoes on the toddler to avoid another sock fiasco.

8)      Gather purse and pre-stocked diaper bag (yes, you need this again because you now need to travel with an arsenal of baby and toddler products. It is best to always, always make sure that this is packed and ready to go.)

9)      Pick up the car seat to put the baby into the car. The moment the car seat is an inch off of the floor you hear what sounds like an explosion came from her butt. You look down and see your baby giving a look of both relief and discomfort.

10)   Take baby out of the car seat and change her diaper… again. If it was really explosive you may even need to change her clothes and pre-treat the old outfit.

11)   Put baby back into car seat, grab purse and diaper bag and toddlers hand.

12)   Open car doors, throw purse and diaper bag in front seat and put the car seat in back.

13)   Walk around the car to put the toddler into his seat. As you pick him up, you smell an offensive smell coming from his butt…

14)   Take both kids back out of the car, undress the toddler from the waist down, try to get him to leave his socks on, change his diaper, dress him… again and then quickly get both kids back into the car and drive off.

By this point you are sweated wet, but you’re happy to be out of the house. Unfortunately as soon as you stop the car and get to where you need to be, the baby is hungry… again!

There are some days where the hassle just doesn’t seem worth it and you think to yourself… “Do we really need (insert item here… milk, eggs, bread, whatever) so bad that I have to go out for it today?” and you just don’t leave the house after all.

Then again… had someone told me this before I had my second, I probably wouldn’t have believed them. Maybe it’s better this way after all!

By Honey B

I have an obsessive relationship with Amazon….and one of the reasons why is because it keeps me updated on all the baby crap that is available. LOVE it!! And one of the most entertaining things is explaining all these things to Marmot. I didn’t realize that if you’re a guy, you didn’t grow up knowing what all this amazing baby stuff is!

Now I just ordered my first Hooter Hider…omg but I love that thing. I got it in the mail and immediately modeled it for Marmot. He laughed, until I told him that not only are boobs fun to play with, but they could also save him over a $1000 on formula in the first year….suddenly, he felt that the Hooter Hider was not only a great investment, but stylish as well.

The first time Marmot saw the Tie Chair, he about fell out of his chair laughing. Let me get this straight, he says…you can tie your child to a chair? I explained that it’s portable, and good for restaurants, and uber-convenient….I explained all of that to him! But Marmot still refers to it as the baby straightjacket.

A diaper sprayer….Marmot gagged when I explained this one, and said bad words, and then swore that a cloth diaper will never cross the threshold into our house. Apparently the concept of scraping and/or spraying poop off a diaper is just more then the guy could handle. Even with the handy-dandy toilet attachment.

A doorway jumper swing. He took one look at it and said you can hang your kid in the doorway? I said yep, its fun for them, they love it, they get to bounce! He said oh you can get two of them and put them next to each other, its would be like a shoe organizer from Ikea.

Orthodontic pacifiers…ohh, it aligns their teeth before they have them he says…

Baby slings…ohh, you tie the baby to you instead of the chair he says…

The G-diaper…ohh, it’s a cloth diaper with a maxi pad he says…

All I can say is….wait until he sees a Diaper Genie…

There is never an end to the crazy baby stuff on the market…what is the craziest baby item you’ve ever seen??

Honey posts regularly at the Honey B. Blog, keeping you apprised of Baby Bucket List progress and the life of a wanna-be mommy!