Stealth Baby's Life: Oh Happy Birthday to Stealth Baby! He's now 26 pound 8oz and almost 32 inches long. So he's at the 95% weight and off the charts in height. The doctor said (twice) that he has enormous feet! His birthday was quite amusing. Hubby's sister (Kat) and her husband (JM) were in town (this is the Hubby and Pumpkin and Precious just love. It's very odd but he just has a way with kids. They both adore him!) Anyway, it was a nice day and we didn't know what to do -- so off to the zoo we went (BTW I took all 3 kids to the zoo on my one that Thursday, so this was the second time in 4 days they had been there.) And we left late so NONE of the kids took a nap. However, it was a great time and we saw the baby monkey (Rigby) and then saw the orangutan's swing across the O'line; we saw the baby giraffe and the seals get fed; and we saw the Pandas. We were close to leave, but JM really wanted to see the elephants - so we walked from one end of the zoo to the other and saw the elephants pushing logs around. And I got to see the cheetahs, which are my favorite. Boy are cheetahs sexy the way they move around and look right through you. Stealth Baby freaks out over the monkeys! I think he identifies with little Rigby, who is about the size of my hand, if that. They have a big glass enclosure outside, so Stealth Baby in the stroller is exactly the same height as the monkeys sitting on the logs in their enclosure. The monkeys sit in the corner a lot, so you can reach out and touch the glass, and your hand is inches from their face. So they'll turn and lazily look at you -- and Stealth Baby spazes out. Anyway, by the time we left Precious actually fell asleep on Hubby's shoulder - but the minute we tried to put her in a stroller she woke up and screamed (my lord was she LOUD) her head off. She just screamed and screamed and screamed. So we headed home and she fell asleep in the car, as did Pumpkin and Stealth Baby. So we stopped off at the grocery store to buy cake, ice cream and balloons. I stayed in the car with the sleeping kids. We get home and Stealth Baby and Pumpkin wake up - Precious is still asleep. (note: it's only 5 pm) So we go and get Kenny to celebrate with us and Hubby, Kenny and Pumpkin go to McDonalds for a round of Happy Meals. I go and change Precious's diaper and clothes ~ she refuses to wake up. We ended up celebrating Stealth Baby's birthday without Precious, but Kenny was the happiest guy alive! Stealth Baby is the most fabulous baby in the world! He's a very laid back calm sort of guy, with this simply fabulous laugh and a very alert and intent stare. He LOVES animals - just loves! It's one of the few times he gets really excited. We'll be going for a walk and he'll start squealing and bouncing up and down and otherwise trying to turn the stroller over - so I know he sees a cat somewhere! That and balls and balloons. He simply loves to play ball where you roll the ball back and forth, or where he plays by himself. I am continually amazed how much he is able to amuse himself! He'll find a ball and roll it all over the room without much adult interaction. And does he LOVE balloons. The first time we went to Chi-Chi's back on Feb 2 was the first time he's ever seen a balloon and understood the concept that "pull this string, the balloon moves." I now really enjoy getting him balloons because he never tires of them; pulling on the string, batting them around, pouncing on them when they start to run low on air. Oh yes, he also likes to be in the swing. (As I write this, Pumpkin and Stealth Baby are in Pumpkin's room playing with matchbox cars, more or less together.) ((OK, THAT didn't last long.)) Stealth Baby has just figured out how to climb down the stairs correctly. (March 14) Up until this point his has attempted to go down head first (I just noticed he has a chip out of his front tooth, sigh.) He still only goes down one or two stairs feet first and then he seems to get bored not seeing where he is going, and then he turns around and will fall if I'm not right there to catch him. He is quite the climber and scoots up the stairs as fast as he's able every time I turn around. I've given up trying to keep a gate at the bottom - the older kids keep knocking it over, and if it's not firmly attached Stealth Baby has already figured out how to stand up and then fall over holding onto the gate and thus pull it over releasing him from his downstairs prison. You should see him stand up now! Of course he's quite the cruiser, and he uses things like his baby mobiles and miniature walkers to walk around the downstairs. But what is amusing is how he crawls to the middle of the floor and then slowly rises to his feet. And then he just stands there. He'll be walking soon! Unfortunately, Stealth Baby is still pretty clear that he doesn't want to sleep through the night. He's no longer getting up twice a night, so some progress is being made. But he'll still get up around 3 to 3:30 ish. This wouldn't be any big deal - and I don't even mind nursing him at night. The real problem is that I am so stressed about other issues - which you will have the joy of reading about in the following paragraphs - that I end up staying up for an hour or more, unable to fall back asleep. So, due to circumstances beyond his control, poor Stealth Baby is going to be night-weaned. And, again, this wouldn't be such a big deal except that currently Stealth Baby and Precious share the large nursery. When Stealth Baby was getting up twice a night, (and was so sick, so he was getting up more than twice a night for awhile) I started to allow Precious to sleep in our bed. Well, you can just imagine where that led us. So I'm now in the ugly process of trying to get her to sleep in her own bed. So when Stealth Baby gets up at night I desperately want him NOT to wake Precious up. We shall she how this goes. I don't remember having this problem when Pumpkin was 3 and Precious was 1?? Pumpkin's Life: Pumpkin's life just got much worse, but he doesn't know it yet. His best friend in the whole world, the sometimes annoying but usually very useful Kenny, is moving!! Oh NO!! (Can this year possibly get any worse?!) Pumpkin is going to be just devastated!! As it is now, Pumpkin doesn't understand the concept of "Kenny's not home" and on Thursday and Friday Pumpkin asks me over and over again if he can go to Kenny's and where's Kenny and on and on. So I already envision several weeks of Pumpkin continually asking where Kenny is. Oh this is going to just stink. (Not that Hubby and I wanted Kenny et al to live there forever, just until Pumpkin met other kids his age in first grade. Another 2 years! Was that too much to ask?) Gosh is Kenny useful. He's like a free babysitter - Pumpkin, it is a beautiful day and you are bouncing off the walls. Go outside and play with Kenny. And low and behold, Pumpkin and Kenny will play on the swings for 3 hours. Or ride bikes, or even come inside but stay in Pumpkin's room. (And I feel very bad for Kenny. Sometimes I think I am the only person in the whole world to ever give him a hug.) Just last night we were all out on the swings for 45 minutes. Kenny (who still have no idea that he may be moving in a month - although the longer this goes on the less likely it seems like they are actually going to get out of the house) Anyway, Kenny is talking about how they are going to take a week long vacation on their boat this summer, and he says to us, "Boy! You know, I'm really going to miss you guys." I just wanted to cry. Oh honey, you don't know the half of it! I feel for both of them. At least Pumpkin will still have 'US', the wonder parents. Kenny will have no support structure at all. So not only are we going to go bananas without Kenny to amuse Pumpkin, I also have a great deal of fear about who is going to move into this house, which Kenny's family has let go to shit. Kenny's mom's name is Pam. Anyway, Pam's stepdad owns the house and I can only assume when they moved in they were going to buy it. However, they have really (really!) bad credit and no common sense. I mean, they have a boat and just got a new car but apparently get can't a mortgage. Oh yeah, and one day their boat disappeared! It had been re-possessed! It turns out it shouldn't have been because they made the specific payment in time, but you can only wonder about how bad their credit must be or how many payments they had missed. So, Kenny's whole family are white trash scum. But they are USEFUL white trash scum!! Basically a year and a half ago when they realized they were never going to get the house, they just let it go to hell. They've ripped out walls in the bedroom, the tree in the front is overgrown, there are 2 dead trees in the backyard, the chimney needs to be rebuilt. There are holes where the soffits (those things on the roof overhang that ventilate the attic) should be. The house has NO curb appeal any more. To make matters worse - the house smells. Really. They have 2 indoor~outdoor dogs and the dad chain smokes. In the spring when they have their windows open, you can smell their house from the sidewalk. YUCK. (When they first moved in they obviously thought they were going to get it. They painted it, planted flowers and really seemed to care.) What is the real kicker, though, is the ripping out of walls in the master bedroom. If they hadn't done that I think it would be a nice house, because it has a new kitchen. I fear the current owner - who never cared that much for curb appeal when he actually physically lived in the house - will simply want to dump it on the market and try not to put a penny in it. Lord knows who will move in, especially if Kenny's family doesn't move out first! Which is worse? Kenny leaving soon or the house selling to scumbags? Kenny leaving not only destroys the summer, it also has implications for next year - which is when Pumpkin starts kindergarten. See, originally I was just going to keep in at LL, even though they bus their kids to EV - which is not our local school. I figured, here in the neighborhood he would have Kenny, so I wasn't concerned that all his school friends would live far away. What to do, what to do. Should I keep Pumpkin at LL for kindergarten? He would keep his current friends, it would be cheap, and we would continue to drop all 3 kids off at the same place every morning. My work day routines wouldn't change. The negatives? Well, it's not the local school, so I'd have to drive Pumpkin to school - or maybe to daycare and let him catch the bus? And Thursdays at this school are 'short' days - meaning he's let out early, so I'd have to pick him up at 11:15. Which makes for a very short morning indeed!! Besides, it's nearly guaranteed that someone will be sleeping when it is time for me to go and get Pumpkin. The new problem is that Pumpkin will have no friends in the neighborhood, and no way to meet new friends here. If Pumpkin doesn't go to the local kindergarten, how will we meet people in the neighborhood. Also, when he does switch for first grade he will have to meet all new people then anyway. I do not wish to understate how much I feel connected to LL too - I really feel a part of the LL 'community'. Heck, the cook and her daughter are our babysitters! So, I guess I'm reluctant to break that bond. Unbelievably, on my nightly walks with Precious, well, on one of them I noticed a car pull up, a woman get out, and this woman walk back to her car with her young son in tow. Hey! This person 1 street from my house is running a daycare! I don't know much about it yet. I called and it's 65 bucks a week for K'g and they have 2 other kids that are Pumpkin's age. And one of them is a boy! (Which is proof that there are plenty of kids Pumpkin's age around here - I see them getting off the K'g bus every Thursday - I just don't know how to meet them!!) However, do we really want to drop Pumpkin off at one place and Precious and Stealth Baby at another? Are they licensed? What do they do with the kids after school? On rainy days when they can't play in the fenced backyard? How many kids total in the house? How many older kids and how do they interact with the younger ones? Would it be possible to move Precious and Stealth Baby there too? What questions do I ask this woman to make sure it is a good place for my kids? Finally, there is a child care associated with the school called "ASACS" , but it is only for first grade and up. They haven't sent me a packet yet about what activities the children do. However, it is VERY expensive. For before school care it's like 45 dollars and after school care is 47 dollars - for both it's 70 bucks a week. Ok, it wouldn't be expensive if I were using it every day, but I don't get a rebate for only using 3 days. Plus I'm trying to think of a way to NOT use before school care once Pumpkin is in first grade. Anyway, assuming I go with ASACS - well, then I definitely DON"T want to move Pumpkin from LL to private daycare this year and then switch him again next year. I don't know what to do. I am SOOOO stressed. Funny Pumpkin quote. Pumpkin: "I want a new dad." Me: "Ok, and who would you like your new dad to be." Pumpkin thinks a second and says, "How about JM?" New funny quote from Pumpkin. "WELL! When I get my own house I will make my own rules and EVERYONE will be allowed to eat catsup in the basement!" This after I explained that he could eat his dinner in the basement in front of the TV, but he wasn't allowed to have catsup (I knew that eating without catsup would be unacceptable, so it was safe to say, go ahead and eat down there.) So Pumpkin wanted to know what that was so, and I said "It's a rule" So Pumpkin says "Did God make that rule?" And I said, "No, mommy did." Pumpkin: "Why does mommy get to make the rules?" Mom: "Because it's my house." Pumpkin: "I thought it was MY house." Mom: "No honey. It's mommy and daddy's house. You just live there. As long as you live there, you have to follow our rules." Pumpkin: "When do I get to make rules?" Mom: "When you are older and have your own house, you can make any rules you want." Pumpkin. "WELL! When I get my own house I will make my own rules and EVERYONE will be allowed to eat catsup in the basement!" Precious's Life. OK, Precious's life sucks too. So she was on the mineral oil. This worked, and she had soft poops which Hubby and I were ridiculously interested in. Well, once Sister and JM came up we got a little lax with the mineral oil, and on both Sat. and Sun she had a crummy (IE usual) diet. She quit pooping. Immediately. So when we went in with Stealth Baby I wrote Bonnie a letter explaining all my concerns and asking what we should do. I was concerned that Precious would start to need the mineral oil to poop, so I was kind of trying to wean her off it and just give a good diet for pooping. But the fact that the minute she wasn't getting 3 teaspoons a day she quit was very concerning. So Bonnie sent me a couple of pages about toilet training resistance. Here is a paragraph from the literature Bonnie sent me. She assures me this is not that unusual in the 'head strong' child: "Any child who is over 2 1/2 years old, health, and not toilet trained after several months of trying can be assumed to be resistant to the process, rather than untrained. Consider how capable your child is at delaying a bowel movement until she is off the toilet or you are on the telephone. The most common cause of resistance to toilet training is that a child has been reminded or lectured too much. . . many parents make these mistakes, especially if they have a strong-willed child." So, what caused this? I don't know. Often it is because a parent has pushed to hard about potty training. But I really haven't. (At least, I don't think I have?) And I've never punished her for peeing in her pants on the rare occasions I let her run around without a diaper. I actually don't feel that I've spent any time trying to toilet train her at all. I've placed the plastic potty in the family room, and I let her run about now and then in underwear hoping after she peed on herself a few times she would get the picture. I wonder if the reason she holds poop in is because Precious HATES to be changed. She is more or less ok with just wet diapers -but try to wipe her and she screeches her head off and flails about. This starting happening in February. She doesn't like the whole process. To make matters worse, in mid-Feb she had a very VERY hard movement. It was so traumatic for both of us I actually made a note of it on my calendar. Obviously, to get that big of a mass in there, by this time she was already holding BMs in. (Which I totally missed. I didn't notice she wasn't pooping.) The way I figured it out is that Precious leaned on the coffee table crying 'It hurts, it hurts.' I was so scared. I rushed to the store and got an enema then to fix her - which was too late since she had already pushed out a large hard mass. But the BM really hurt - and she was violated in the processes, which just freaked her out. So, ever since then it's been this big deal about poops - and I think the extra attention has made her more determined to never be wiped again as compared to figuring out that, when she uses the toilet, she is free of being wiped. Unfortunately, by getting so constipated that the BM does not fit out, I am forced to give her another enema. She now recognizes the little tube and starts running about screaming "NOOOOO" when she sees one. Also, Precious's favorite word now is "NO!". Lots of things going on in that tiny head! Boy is she in a negative stage, which does not bode well for potty training. Precious knows when she is going pee - she'll even tell you, but she most certainly NOT going anywhere near the bathroom. But she's in the horrid negative stage and won't go on the potty. And when she poops she stinks - but she'll look you in the eye and say "still clean." So, for the next month she's given 3 to 6 teaspoons of mineral oil a day. This will make her 'runny' so that she no longer even thinks about pooping -it will just happen without muscle contractions. Then 10 minutes after meals we sit on the toilet until she poops (hopefully) so that she just starts thinking that poops go in the potty. (I don't see that working) And when she poops in the potty we give her very big rewards. The goal is to have her associate pooping with bathroom, and also to view pooping as a 'fun' activity. (Yippee!) Bonnie says it is very important to 'retrain' her thinking process, or at the end of this month we are going to be right back with the constipation again. What a difference from Pumpkin! Who potty trained himself! Well, I just can't tell you how much this - grrr - irritates me. I think Precious is a relatively bright little girl, and for the life of me I can't figure out WHY this is happening. One interesting thing did happen. Well, when Bonnie sent me all this 'nonsense' about toilet training resistance I thought it was just that - nonsense. Why in the world would Precious be so opposed to the process, especially since I haven't even started it yet? However, that very night it became apparent that all the mineral oil in the world wasn't helping, so I had to give her another enema - which I had be trying so hard to avoid since I think a lot of the problem is the violation of her personal space. Anyway, gave her the enema and placed her on the toilet all ready to reward her with candy once she produced. She refused. And refused. And refused. She held her poop in so hard she was crossing her legs and shaking. She was screaming "get diaper! No potty!" My heavens I was amazed! I quickly decided that I was breaking the very important "make pooping fun" rule, so I put her in her diaper and about 5 minutes later she pooped. What am I going to do with her? Fast forward to today, the 22 - we may have had a minor breakthrough? We were at McDonalds and against all my better instincts I allowed Precious to be in her underwear and not a diaper. I took a full change of clothes knowing - just knowing! - that she was going to have an accident. I took her to the potty and she was excited to go to the room - this because it was in a dirty McDonalds and not at home, where she resists. She sat on the potty for all of 2 seconds before demanding to get off (never force a child to stay on the potty, says the literature.) Of course, like 2 minutes later she peed on herself . Grrr. So I calmly took her back to the rest room and sat her on the potty again and talked about where pee goes. (And then cleaned up the mess.) Maybe an hour later she ran to me saying - "I have to go potty" Well, we didn't make it on time - this was poop which she no longer has any control over (I was taken aback since I didn't think she had anything in there, bla) but at least she seemed to understand the process. Funny: So now I'm out of changes of clothes?? So I just let her run around in her shirt and a diaper. Yes, I am the white trash scum that I'm worried about moving in next door. However, I'm going to keep her out of diapers as long as I'm at home so that she gets 4 days worth of 'training' On totally non-poop related news, Precious is now 'riding' the little fisher price bike. It is beyond cute to see her do it. It's a tiny thing, doesn't even have breaks. But she sees Kenny and Pumpkin ride their big bikes and she wants to much to be included, so now she rides this thing. Totally adorable. She is such a doll (a headstrong doll, but a gem none-the-less.) Mom's Life. On Monday's Hubby takes Pumpkin to soccer. Usually Precious wants to go with, so I get some free time with Stealth Baby. So a few weeks ago was a really nice night, so I figured I would take Stealth Baby for a walk while there were gone. Of course, this caused some cell in Precious's brain to go on high alert. So as I'm pushing Stealth Baby up the hill and they are pulling out of the driveway she begins shrieking that she wants to go with me. Believe it or not we had a really nice walk. I do so love to be outside, and I really really look forward to these walks. I've been trying to take one every day or so. Sometimes I'll take Kenny even if Pumpkin isn't around - Kenny gets so excited. Hubby even comes now and then - except when he comes he always has to carry Precious, because she knows she has daddy wrapped around her little finger. Something amazing happened the day Bonnie sent me the literature. I'm getting my ride home to the car (remember, Hubby and I switch cars because he gets home an hour before me and he gets the minivan to pick up the kids.) As I arrive at the commuter lot I can see our minivan - the TV top makes it very distinctive. And I'm like, what the heck? Hubby should have gotten the kids an hour ago - first I'm aggravated thinking he's screwing around at work and then I start to get worried wondering if he's been in an accident. So I'm rushing to the car and Hubby suddenly appears looking sheepish. "Hi babe, do you think you could unlock my car?" You locked your keys in the car?!? Hubby had gone to a computer show that gave out freebies, and before getting out of the car he went to grab some candy for the kids - and then forgot to pick up his keys. (That was pretty funny) It ended up being a good thing; I told him to go home and start dinner and I would go and get the kids. So I get to daycare and her teacher is concerned because Precious tried pushing twice and both times said 'it hurt' and then stopped. I explained that she had incomprisis and that she was constipated and that I was going to take care of it that very night. I was explaining the symptoms and the cure and the director (Cathy) was like - ohmygosh, we have another child that is exhibiting the very same systems! The parent has been to several doctors but no one has diagnosed the problem. So I brought in my literature for them to photocopy and give to the other parent. That's what I mean about feeling a part of the LL community. Well there are tons of things I could write about myself, but I'm out of free time.