One Thousand Words

We dressed Niko up as a train engineer/conductor, which is a super easy costume that can be reworn year round. We slapped a white shirt and striped overalls on him. How easy is that? Very easy. He also had a striped cap from “Day Out With Thomas” that we held onto as a special Halloween costume component surprise and although he loves it (actual quote: “It THOMAS! I love it that hat! Oh! Thomas!”) he refuses to actually wear it. Also a red kerchief would have completed the look but we didn’t have one of those either… Nesko’s sister moved on the 31st and a lot of Nesko’s time was taken up with helping her locate, clean, and move furniture so we didn’t have a lot of opportunities to go bits and bobs shopping. We also had an orange jackolantern bucket (I have no idea where it came from) lying around so that was useful, too.

We went around our block and up and over one other block. There were a lot of houses that were decorated, including one that had one of those expensive inflatable decorations, but the interior lights were off and nobody answered the door. Now, perhaps they simply weren’t home from work yet or were out with their own kids, but it feels like kind of a cheat to have a decorated house and nobody giving out treats. If you don’t want to give out candy or participate, that’s fine… a LOT of houses were dark and we didn’t try them, assuming they weren’t into the Halloween spirit of things. But to decorate and then not be home? Eh. DISAPPOINTING.

I was worried that people wouldn’t know what Niko was. Would they think he was just wearing some overalls? But no, pretty much everyone got it and told him how cute he was, even when he tried to barge into their houses. He said “Trick or Treat” unprompted and said “Thank You” when reminded. One lady near the river was giving out full size candy bars; one dude was giving out pretzels. We stopped into a few shops and a nursing home/rehab center thinking they might have a program for the residents and they didn’t but the front desk had candy.

There’s this tiny house set way back from the street that looks like it used to be the carriage house or guest house or something for the gorgeous bungalow next to it. It’s surrounded by giant trees and instead of grass it’s all hosta and ivy and lilly of the valley and other shade loving plants, the long walk lined with little solar lanterns. It looks like something out of a fairy tale. It’s got a gate that is always closed, with a sign asking people to keep the gate shut/keep out, but last night the gate was open so we tried the house. The dude who answered the door gave Niko a FISTFUL of chocolates and also a bunch of pennies, and I know pennies get a bad rap as a Halloween thing, but Niko is at that age where pennies are glorious things. The guy was really nice and we chatted a bit and then we moved on; the huge houses flanking him were dark and nobody answered the door.

Our street in particular and neighborhood in general has a lot of multi-unit buildings, which tend not to be active in candy giving. Last year, for instance, we got zero callers and I didn’t see anyone out on the street, either. We’d discussed going to a different neighborhood for trick or treating, but I’m glad we didn’t; I’m glad we stuck close to home. Niko didn’t get much of a haul, but we only covered about 2 1/2 blocks and that included some businesses. He’s a toddler, he doesn’t need a lot of candy. To be very honest, most of what he got will be going into Nesko’s lunch bag.

We had fruit snack pouches to give out but nobody came while we were home, which isn’t surprising as we live in a 2-flat. We didn’t buy any Halloween candy this year because we’re boycotting slavery-produced chocolate in general and Hershey’s products specifically (they manufacture a lot of stuff that’s sold under brands other than “Hershey”). So once the chocolate currently in our house is gone, that’s it  unless we buy fair trade stuff, which on the one hand tends to be more expensive… but on the other hand tends to also be higher quality and tastier.

Niko keeps asking me if he can go trick or treating again. Sometimes he comes up to me with his orange bucket and says trick or treat and I stick something in it that’s at hand (a book, a sock, a nail file, a block, WHATEVER) and he thinks that’s hilarious. I’ve tried telling him that Trick Or Treating only happens once a year, and that next up we have Thanksgiving and then Christmas. He said “Oh, that when I get Rusty and the Boulder!” That is the Big Gift we purchased for him a while ago and stashed in the office. We have not mentioned it around him. I don’t know if he’s seen the side of the box and guessed or is just wishing really, really hard. It’s hard to tell with him, sometimes.

Technorati Tags: halloween, parenting, toddler

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I don’t even know how long Niko’s been sleeping in his own bed at this point. Two weeks? I think it’s something like two weeks. Or three? I have no idea. Part of this is because when he wakes up at night he is all OH GOD FREAK OUT I AM ALL ALONE OH HELP ME THERE IS A TIGER and someone has to go in and settle him down again which is fast, but internets?

I have insomnia.

I have a hard time getting to sleep.

I have a hard time staying asleep.

When a panicky toddler wakes me up at 2am because his pacifier fell out of his mouth and is wedged between his neck and his shoulder and he cannot FIND it and he NEEDS IT and I have to get out of my nice warm soft bed and walk across the creakiest floor in the world and come fully awake? I’m up for at least an hour after that. And at his peak of waking, he wakes up 4-5 times a night. That’s kind of eased off as he’s gotten more used to sleeping by himself but I? Am tired. So tired. It’s a little like having an infant again, only I’m not fumbling with formula in the darkness.

Thank God.

So on the one hand, I can sprawl out in bed and nobody is scratching me or kicking me or shoving me onto the floor; on the other hand I’m exhausted from waking up all the time.

Although that’s getting better!

What’s not getting better is some of Niko’s behavior is regressing. When we initially weaned him off daytime pacifier use he panicked and started clinging to his pacifiers, sleeping with one in his mouth and one (or more) in each hand. He’s started doing that again. He’s jumping on the furniture again, getting into the bread flour and dumping it on the floor again, scrubbing the sink drain with my tooth brush, and other behaviors that seriously we halted these behaviors months ago WHAT IS GOING ON. Fear and insecurity is what’s going on, also possibly he’s cutting his third molars. No, not his third YEAR molars, he’s got what looks like an additional (third) set of molars pricking through his gums.

I am not entirely surprised by this because while Niko seems to have a normal sized mouth and normal sized teeth (I have a small mouth and large teeth) he seems to have my cyclone crooked teeth, including a bunch of teeth just like slanting sideways, like what is even up with that, is your head crooked or something? So he’s got my dental drama going on, apparently including extra teeth. Although  mine were premolars, not molars. Haha! Fun.

ANYWAY. Before you get all jellus on me because my toddler sleeps in his own bed, making him a high achieving prince among toddlers, let me tell you our other problem. Namely, his room is DIRECTLY off the kitchen, and he sleeps with the door open. Which means when he’s napping (for a 2-4 hour chunk of time a day) or asleep (and I put him down at 7:30) I have to curtail my kitchen activities. In other words, the only time of day I am toddler free, I can’t do my toddler-free chores like wash dishes or make bread or make noise in the kitchen because Niko will take that as his cue to strike up a conversation and delay sleeping.

We’re considering swapping his bedroom with what is now the office. The office flanks the living room, which  means if we wanted to watch tv after he went to sleep we’d have to keep the volume down LOW; and it means if we had guests we’d have to provide everyone will ball gags to shut them up. However, we also want to carve out a mini pantry that would butt into his room (the kitchen has VERY little storage space OH GOD IT IS TERRIBLE) (but not the worst kitchen I’ve had; that one had no counters other than a drain board on the side of the sink, and you couldn’t open the fridge door all the way OR the oven door all the way AND the oven was plugged in with an extension cord. That kitchen had a pantry that was sweet as hell, though.) and if that room was an office instead of our precious baby boy’s bedroom I’d feel way less guilty about hogging space for my cookbooks, microwave, and huge bins of flour.

Do I even need to stay that swapping an office with two computers and a bunch of books and papers and general junk and guitar stuff with a toddler’s room is a lot of work?

Because it is.

On the other hand, his closet is extra deep, so we could put shelves all along the back for storage AND hang coats in front, because this apartment? Does not have a coat closet (or a linen closet or a pantry or a broom closet). There’s a lot of stuff I love about our vintage (1930s) Chicago 2-flat. Lack of storage is a problem, though.

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SOMEONE has been teaching my kid habits that are UTTERLY BUGFUCKING HILARIOUS but which I have to formally, as a mom, disapprove of. This is perhaps the hardest part about parenting, having to keep a straight face and say “no” sternly when really I want to laugh loudly and encourage my kid. If this were someone else’s kid I’d probably do just that because I’m a huge jerk and I wouldn’t have to personally live with the behavior, but in our household? This is behavior I want to nip in the bud.

When he has a runny nose, Niko runs up to someone and rubs his nose/face against their arm/chest/whatever while shouting BOOGY BOOGY BOO over and over. If he were doing this without the runny nose it’d be cute and funny, but it’s poor policy to encourage your kid to use other people as snotrags. Also: I get enough snot on myself as it is, I don’t need someone purposely putting more snot on me. He also comes up to people and announces that he has “a boogy” and then asks them to pull it out. Which I guess is better than picking his own nose, but really, that request should be saved for his parents and possibly grandparents. (he gets huge freakin’ boogers up in there, too. Like, how does a dude this small get boogies this big? It’s like he’s fertilizing them.)

One of my favorite comicers is Erika Moen, who published a long running webcomic called Dar: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary that features one comic that made me laugh so hard I had an asthma attack. (I should note that her comic, her work in general, tends to be very not safe for work.) What I’m trying to say is, I’m totally down with dick and fart jokes. But I’m also old enough, experienced enough, to understand that there is a time and place for dick and fart jokes. Toddlers? Not so much.

So, in general, we’re trying to keep a lid on dick and fart humor in our household.

It is hard. I mean, I have a kid who loudly proclaims that he doesn’t need a new diaper because he only “did a big pee and some toots, no poop!” and who asks to walk around “in my diaper” when he wants to be almost naked or “in my kitza (penis)” when he wants naked time. Kids are basically walking dick and fart jokes. I know that eventually we’ll lose the battle and the dick and fart genie will be out of the bottle. But until then? I try not to snicker when Niko farts and says “Oh! I tooted! It was loud!” and I encourage him to excuse himself.

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Yonks ago, before I had a kid, before I was married, back when I lived near the always-foul-smelling Morse stop on the red line (seriously, every single time I walked past it some dude was urinating on the wall of the building like urine alone was keeping the station standing), I got sick.

I was low-key miserable. You know how it is. Tired, cranky, full body ache, scratchy throat, listless, vaguely nauseated, my upper lip a snot trough. Nesko went to the store to pick up canned chicken soup, crackers, ginger ale, drugs, and Martha Stewart Living magazine all of which are vital to my recovery process. He kept calling to check in and see if I wanted/needed anything else. I added coke, frozen pizza, and popsicles to my list. He called again. I started teasing him with stuff stores don’t carry. I said I needed an elephant.

He came home with my groceries, AND some flowers, AND a stuffed elephant. Because he is the best.

That elephant has had a special place in my life ever since.

Niko hasn’t really used a lovey until recently. Sure, he uses a pacifier when he’s sleeping, or feeling ill, or getting jabbed again and again with sharp needles at the doctor’s office because I delight in his suffering. But he hasn’t really had a comfort object.

And then, somehow, out of all the stuffed animals and blankets and sharp pointy trains he has, he selected the elephant as his special lovey. He flirted a bit with a soft blanket, and with a baby doll, and with a length of wooden train track, but he settled on the elephant. At nap time, he protests that he NEEDS his EYAYINT. WHERE MY EYAYINT? I NEEEEEEEED IT he bellows, then he finds it and drags it back to bed by its trunk, singing a song. He settles in, nuzzling it. He tips its head back, trunk pointing up, while making elephant noises. Sometimes he brings his baby doll along for a ride.

I bought a copy of “Good Dog, Carl” at the thrift store. It’s a slightly mis-bound board book and Niko, who loves dogs and babies, really enjoys it. I checked “Carl’s Masquerade” out of the library about a week ago, and it’s in heavy rotation right now… read before every nap and bedtime and sometimes in between as well. Niko reads it to us, and reads it to his baby and his elephant. And then he decided that his elephant was named Carl, and Carl looks after Baby, and Baby rides on Carl.

So he sits on the floor and prop his baby doll, Baby, up on Carl the Elephant’s back and trots them around. When he goes looking for his elephant, he reminds me that HE NAME CARL. And when he goes to sleep now, Carl and Baby snuggle in with him.

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I cannot stop sniffing my child. He smells so good. I have no idea what’s going on, but he just smells super tasty. Maybe it’s the cherry-lime fruit twist he ate (warning: contains no actual fruit). Maybe it’s the playdough he’s been playing with, or the strawberries and (home made, buttered) toast he’s been eating. But I just keep sidling up close to him and sniffing him. What’s that? Time to cuddle up and read a story together while I sniff you? Peace out. Let’s do this thing.

That is all.

Technorati Tags: parenting, toddler

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Here are five totally ridiculous things my 2 1/2 year old says, that wouldn’t sound ridiculous coming from an adult, but seriously, he’s 2 1/2.

• Surely not!
• Can you come here for a minute?
• Good bye! Have a good day!
• Despicable!
• I’ll be riiiiiiiiight back!

Now, those of you with young kids might recognize “despicable” as something James says on “Thomas and Friends.” The rest? Apparently stuff he hears us say a lot. Luckily for us he’s picked up on adult-sounding conversational phrases and not cusses. I have no idea how we dodged that bullet.

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I don’t want to jinx anything, but last night was the second night in a row that I got Niko settled into our bed, read him two stories, collected my pyjamas, turned out the light, and left the room with him still awake. I could hear him humming to himself last night, and I poked around online a bit so I could hear him if he fussed/cried/called out. But he did not, and I took a shower and made my husband’s lunch for today, and did some tidying up.

This is basically the best thing ever, and I hope it continues.

Later today, I’m going to try and settle him for a nap the same way.

If we can do this all this week and all next week, bed time and naps, then the week AFTER I’m going to try and transition him to his own bed. His “new bed.” The one with “THOMAS sheets.” The one he CLAIMS to want to sleep in, then protests wildly about.

I am really looking forward to a child-free bed.

Part of this is because I’m tired of getting punched and kicked all night. He has literally kicked me out of bed before, and once he kicked me so hard he knocked the wind out of me and I woke up alarmed and gasping with a foot buried in my midsection. But more than that, I miss my husband. And it’s not even a sex thing, it’s just a general physical contact thing. Pre-baby, we’d sleep spooned up, me with one arm flung around him, my front against his back. I felt so safe with my giant husband teddybear to hold on to. Or he’d sleep on his back and I’d rest my head on his shoulder, one arm and one leg tossed over him. I miss the physical contact, the touch, the skin against skin, the smell of him.

I’m looking forward to regaining that, reconnecting.

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I’ve got a dual Friday Five for you, involving some of Niko’s favorite foods.

First up, we have his five favorite healthy foods:

• Apples
• Plums (even though they have A SEED)¹
• Carrots ²
• Strawberries (both fresh and dehydrated)
• Corn

Now, so you can feel superior to us and our food choices, his five favorite unhealthy foods:

• Fruit Snacks ³
• Pretzels
• Popcorn ⁴
• Chocolate Raisins
• M&Ms, also known as NEMINEMS

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I paint my nails fairly regularly, and Niko’s pretty entranced by the process because look! Color! Painting! He’s seen Nesko paint the ceiling/walls, he remembers when our bathroom used to be a different color, and my in-laws hook him up with old paint brushes and a bucket of water at their house so he can “paint” the sidewalk. It’s great! And mama does it TO HER NAILS! They are red/blue/green/orange/whatever. He asked me to paint HIS nails on Saturday and I agreed.

He wanted green but I don’t have a fast-drying green, so I offered him red or blue. He chose red, and I painted his toenails.

It was an incredible mistake.

Just like red cars go faster than non-red cars, and red shoes make you walk faster, those red toenails made him SUPER SPEEDY. It was hard keeping up with him.

We had specific plans for Saturday that we engaged a baby sitter for, and then those plans were cancelled on account of someone involving coming down with food poisoning (the horror!) so Nesko and I decided to see a movie but then couldn’t find a movie we wanted to pay money to see, so instead we… ran errands. SEXY! The babysitter took Niko to the zoo, where apparently he ran laps for most of the time he was there. Because red toenails!

She brought him back home in the evening, and he demanded (politely) that his shoes and socks be removed so he could look at his “red paintings.” I removed his footwear and he was thrilled and kept showing off his toes to everyone.

I swiped his nails with nail polish remover Sunday night so as not to shock and horrify Nesko’s parents, but the polish didn’t come off that easily and his toes look kind of gruesome now… like his toenails have been bleeding. He’s not as fast as he was, though, so that’s good.

Technorati Tags: parenting, toddler

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The weather forecast went from predicting a 40% chance of rain on Saturday to a 50% then a 60% chance of rain. A few hours before we were set to leave, the heavens opened and rain came lashing down in torrents. Thunder boomed. Lightning crackled and flashed. Niko was excited.

“Go outside? Inna rain! I put on rain coat. Rain comin down! It rain on cars. Cars all wet! Tata’s car all wet! I go outside in rain coat and splash.”

We did, in fact, bundle him up in a rain coat but then we prevented him from splashing because we are total killjoys. We took our knapsack loaded up with snacks and water and changes of clothing and piled into the car and somehow — SOMEHOW– managed to get out of the house on time. We drove through the rain and I told Niko, who was yawning and also chatting happily away at us, that we were going to do a lot of boring driving so it was ok if he fell asleep. He told me to stop fooling (actual words: STOP FOOLIN MAMA) and made fun of me a little bit, but five minutes later he was suspiciously quiet. A quick peek back revealed that he was dead to the world. Score! He slept the entire drive down, including when we pulled off at an Oasis¹ for lunch and ate in the parking lot waiting for a bit of the rain to let up.

It had stopped raining by the time we got to Union, IL, home of the Illinois Railroad Museum, and we were mere feet from the parking lot when we had to stop at a small railway crossing. Niko woke up and stretched and looked around.

“What dat? Oh. It’s a train! OH! IT’S THOMAS!” Sure enough, the train came along the track, and there was a bright blue cheerful Thomas puffing away! Niko’s tiny mind was blown.

We got there around 2-ish, picked up our tickets, hit the first tent where Niko played with megablocks and wooden trains a bit, and then walked around some. We found an area with picnic tables and Nesko told Niko that he had to eat lunch first then we would go ride on Thomas. There were a million portolets (including some baby changing portolets), and also flush toilets inside buildings. Sadly, we had no cash because we live in a bright and shining futureworld where everyone takes debit cards, and the ILRR museum grounds hasn’t reached that future yet, so we did not have Lemon Shakeups or ice cream cones or corndogs or any other fair food. Niko finished eating and we walked over to the giant snaking lines waiting to board the coaches. We got there just in time, as people began boarding, and trooped on.

Niko was a little wary of the trip. This train was very different from the ones he’s ridden before. But he still had fun and looked around a lot.

We also saw a LOT of train exhibits, walked past but did not wait 20 minutes in line for a photo with Sir Tophamm Hatt, rode a red cable car, walked some more, and Niko jumped in a bounce house for the first time.

He was super wired all the way home. I thought he’d fall asleep again, but no, he demanded and ate a bunch of snacks in the car, and then sang every single song he knew in a desperate attempt to stay awake. We stopped at IHOP for dinner (a huge mistake, the food was bland and the service was… not very good. PROTIP: when you’re serving adults and children, bring the child’s food FIRST and not LAST.) and he was a real handful the whole time, very loud, very antsy. We got him home and topped him off with some more food, then into bed.

We woke up on Sunday and asked him what he’d done on Saturday. “Snakes bite [me],” he answered. Then he claimed he’d gone to the beach. When we challenged that claim, he gave us A Look and spoke very slowly and clearly. “I tooka brown train to the BEEEEEEEESH.” ² We asked him again, and he said “I ate food an then I went on THOMAS,” and then he talked excitedly about how he rode on “a red Toby.” Toby’s a tram car and we did not ride on a tram car, we rode on a street car. Gah, small child! How could you make that sort of mistake? Anyway, it’s interesting that he lumps eating lunch with the Excitement that was ACTUALLY RIDING ON THOMAS’ ACTUAL COACHES.

It seems that he’s needed to take awhile to process what happened, because he was chattering excitedly today about seeing Thomas, and when Nesko dropped him off at Baba’s, Niko was telling her alllll about it, with great gusto.

He was pretty sold on this beach thing, though. If we’d done that instead we’d have saved about $100 or so. Something to consider.

I took about 150 photos and I’ll post them later. I’m at the point where I’m considering just installing a photo album on my webspace because I have more photos than the free version of Picasa will support. If I do that, I’ll have an album just for Thomas.

Technorati Tags: parenting, thomas and friends, toddlers

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