Saturday, November 28, 2009

Sorry

Sorry for the interruption in service. The blog settings got messed up. You don't need to be invited to follow the intrepid adventures of team Cox...I believe I've fixed the problem and if it happens again shoot me an email.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Blinded by love for thier offspring....

Parents do really dumb things.

 
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About a week ago, we acquired a small black kitten that seemingly had nowhere else to go. You could argue that the appropriate thing to do would have been to take him to the shelter, but it's hard to overstate the case when describing how much Owen LOVES this kitten. I swear the first day we had him in the house was the very best day of Owen's life - and how can you take away the root cause of the very best day of your child's (admittedly, short) life? you can't. Hence, we are now the proud owners of kitty the cat. We've tried and failed to explain the concept of proper names to Owen, so it seems that Kitty is, by default, the newest member of our family's name. Good thing we're not letting Owen name the new baby, or we would certainly end up with a child named 'baby'.

Kitty is remarkably patient with Owen. Owen spends most of his time chasing him, and probably catches him about 60% of the time. Clearly, Kitty is letting himself be caught because if he wanted to, he could camp out in the top back corner of the nearest closet and let Owen have nothing to do with him. Instead, he allows Owen to carry him all over the house (frequently upside down), kiss him wetly and repeatedly, roll around on the floor clutching him and giving him hugs, and chase him until they're both exhausted. Earlier this evening I took a series of pictures (which sadly, I cannot make Blogger upload right now) in which Owen manhandled Kitty to the point that I was sure any other feline on the face of the earth would have taken his face off, but Kitty purred and was a good sport the whole time. I have to say, all the reasons we shouldn't have acquired anything new to take care of right now - and you're right, there are many - become totally moot every time we pull up to the house now and Owen starts shouting "KITTY! KITTY! KITTY!". I've really never seen anything make him as happy. So yep, we now have to get a cat sitter when we travel. And with our luck, Owen will be off at college someday and we'll be giving insulin injections 6x daily to our geriatric, diabetic cat. And it will probably scratch up everything we own and shed and drive us nuts all night.

But really, HOW could we say no?





Thursday, November 19, 2009

Dear Dr. Ferber

Dear Dr. Ferber,

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for calling you an overhyped quack who doesn't know what he's talking about. I know we've never met and so technically I could have gotten away without apologizing, but I believe in giving credit where credit is due and I feel badly for maligning your good name for the past 20 months. After a third reading of the revised edition of "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems", I have finally realized that I was not following your instructions precisely as laid out in your treatment plan, and so was judging the results unfairly.I have now learned that it is important to adhere to the letter rather than just the spirit of the program, and I also finally sucked it up and let Owen cry for 5 (yes 5) hours without breaking down and letting him get some sleep in either my bed or his. I even observed the full 10 minute waiting period before going in for each check in and back pat, a period of time which hertofore has seemed excessive and I have always capped at 5 minutes. Miracle of miracles, for the first time in almost two years, we seem to be making headway on the sleep issue. Last night Owen slept in his own bed for the whole night, with only two minimal episodes of crying and both times was resettled without a parent getting into his bed, just like you said would happen if we followed the program exactly as written. Amazing.
I promise to follow all your instructions from now on, even though it's going to make us far less flexible than we would otherwise be for the next 30 days. I will not doubt you again.

Your devoted servant and biggest fan,

Jenny

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Revelations while playing hookey.

I didn't go to work today, and the only thing that was on the to-do list was go to target, so I figured Owen and I would take a little field trip. And then I remembered that I had been hearing really good things about a new indoor playground that had opened in Watertown. A quick google revealed the indoor playground to be 5 minutes away from the target, so the fates were aligned. Early this morning, we packed up a bag and headed to The Inside Playground (100 Parker St., Watertown: http://www.insideplayground.com/). What a fabulous, fabulous idea. It was a huge indoor space, maybe the size of an indoor rec complex that can hold two hockey rinks or indoor soccer arenas filled with every toy you can imagine. Ride on toys, push toys, trucks, planes, legos, dress up clothes, play kitchens, a ball pit, a giant sesame street bouncy house (side note: One thing I am adamant about is that Owen not watch television. And no sooner than do we walk in the door he starts pointing at the bounce house and yelling, "ELMO!" Seriously? I want to know: how does he know Elmo?)plus a huge, 20 foot inflatable train. If you're two, this place is pretty much the best thing that ever happened to you. And I think it was perfectly priced, at $10. You can stay as long as you want - we stayed from about 9-12. It wasn't so much that it was prohibitive to go there but not so little that it was a zoo. Owen had a fabulous time, and I was thanking my lucky stars that I found it before the winter came and we face long, dreary days stuck inside. Anyway, at noon I decided I'd better get a move on if I wanted to feed Owen and run errands at Target before he started having a must-nap meltdown, so we left. It just so happens that there's a Friendly's in the parking lot of Target, and I thought - hey, why not. We're playing hookey from work and school, might as well make an event out of it. And so I set foot in a Friendly's for the first time since high school. I didn't have high expectations of the food, but was pleasantly surprised - the kids menu actually had pretty good choices. Yes, there was a selection of fried and cheesed items, but you could swap out the fries for broccoli, steamed veggies, mandarin oranges, white rice, applesauce, baked potato, etc, OR you could combine a bunch of healthy sides for lunch, which is what we did. (Owen won't eat hamburgers or hotdogs anyway, but can put the hurt on mandarin oranges). In that case, I felt much better about him eating the clown sundae (you know I couldn't take him to friendly's and not get this) that came free with the kid's meal. Add a salad for me, and it was overall a pretty good experience for $13.50. Go Friendly's. Who knew? We ran our quick errand at Target and hit the car just about 1:30, late enough that Owen's eyes closed the minute he hit the carseat. Perfect day out: Major success.

Our great day made me, oddly, appreciate being a working mom. You might think that I would be thinking, "Oh, I wish I didn't have to work! Wouldn't life be awesome if I was home all the time?" But instead, it inspired the opposite feeling. I had a great time at the indoor playground - really, I spent three hours chasing Owen on various ride on toys, building towers, and jumping in the bounce house, and it was a certified blast. But I can't sustain that level of interest in toddler pursuits day in and day out. There are people out there that can - and I am grateful that I can pay them to do so while I apply the talents I do have to another productive endeavor. I don't have the perfect job right now, but I certainly don't mind working. And I don't feel like I work too much. What I do feel is that I wish there were just a couple more hours in each day, so that I could spend just a little bit more time with Owen than I get to. But not a LOT more time, just a little more time. An hour or two. That would be nice. Short of that, I wish I could outsource more of the stuff I hate: cleaning, shopping, organizing, cooking. And if I could somehow do both at the same time? Well that would be perfect.

I know there are people out there who still think that being a good mom means being a full time mom (sadly, some of them are so rude as to actually make their opinions known in the company of working moms. Way to be an ass.) But I think that ultimately, staying home because you think that's what a good mom should do when you're not cut out to do it won't make you a good mom. I think it would make me a resentful, bored, and probably depressed mom. In fact, if I could make improvements to the situation I have now (which is truthfully, pretty good) I would get a MORE challenging (or at least interesting) job, work about 8 fewer hours per week, and pay someone to do the stuff "good" moms do - clean bathrooms and bake pies and make dinner and make sure the baby has had a bath in the past couple days. I know plenty of people who are staying at home because they like doing those things. For a long time, I think I thought that even if you didn't like those things, staying home and doing them ANYWAY was what you should do if you could. But I've been thinking alot about it lately, and today I realized that that's not the case at all. If staying home suits you, then great. But if it doesn't, you're still being a good parent. The trick, I think, is to find ways to maximize the quality time you do have while not feeling guilty about the mundane time you don't have.

Anyway, enough rambling. the point is, we had an awesome day, which has capped off a pretty awesome week for Owen. More on that later, when I get some pictures uploaded.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Norwegian Star Hat

As a general rule, I don't like to make any knitting project twice. That would be boring, and besides, there are so many patterns out there that I want to make, I don't have time to waste going back and doing something I've already done. But I'm going to make an exception in this case. I made Owen this Norwegian Star pattern hat for the winter:




While I was making it, Andy said "when are you going to make me a hat?" and I told him that I would make one that matches this one. Because as you may know I have a weakness for anything that involves dressing Andy and Owen alike. And then I realized that in a scant 10 weeks I am going to have THREE boys to torture and embarrass by insisting they dress alike. So there's pretty much no option: if Andy's getting a Norwegian Star Hat, then so is the new baby. So stay tuned. Because those pictures are going to be awesome.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Big Boy Bed, Part 2: Night 1

well. I'm as surprised as anyone - more surprised, actually, I assure you - that the reprot on the debut of the big boy bed is not that bad. Overall, weighted to the positive, even. I expected a disaster, and we actually ended up with a moderate degree of success. Not that I got any sleep - I was awake all night, anxiously anticipating the *THUMP* and subsequent screams that never materialized. I was so worked up about it I ended up getting up and making a cup of tea at 2:40, hoping that would work. But until a little after 4, I heard....nothing.

Now, we did stack the deck - we basically skipped his nap yesterday and then kept him up an hour and 15 minutes later than normal to the point where he was trying to put himself to bed on the living room rug, handing me back toys and saying "night night. night night". I figured this would make the boundaries of the cage-free sleeping arrangements less tempting to test, and to a degree it seems to have worked. He did wake up crying at around 11, but I went in and rubbed his back for awhile and was able to get him back sleeping and successfully sneak out.

at about 10 past 4, he woke up crying. I found him sitting up in bed, crying to be picked up. He clearly didn't associate that he could just get out, and I wasn't about to illustrate it for him. I got into bed with him, and he tried and failed to go back to sleep. He closed his eyes, but he embarked on the famous routine where he flails around, keeps checking to make sure I'm there, insists on wrapping his hands in my hair, and kicks like a donkey. He kept this up until 5:15, when he fell back asleep again. When I finally managed to nod back off, he was up for the day. Luckily, Andy was kind enough to let me return to my bed and sleep in until 9:45.

Overall, the score: Owen stayed in the new bed all night. He woke up MUCH later than he normally does (with the exception of 11:30, but I'm willing to discount that since I was still up, and he went back to sleep). He still ended up sleeping with a parent - not ideal, but at least not in our bed. He still has this weird, restless, half awake half asleep state that results in screaming if you leave him alone but prevents you from sleeping and also results in severe battery if you stay, which is bad. But on the bright side, I only had to endure it for about an hour rather than 2 or three which is what happens most night.

We still have a long way to go - I have no idea what naptime will bring. He's notoriously more resistant to naps then to bedtime, and might take that opportunity to just climb out. Also, as we have learned many, many times in this great parenting experiement, nothing is generalizable from one experience. We'll see how it's going in a week.

And ultimately, it can still be classified as an overall fail because I still ended up in the bed with him - not sleeping. But I really think it's a much milder fail than oh, say, the past year and a half. I call this making progress.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Owen gets a big boy bed

Owen helping Daddy put the bed together:



We thought long and hard about what to do about the crib situation. We have one crib, two bedrooms, and 1 and 1/2 children under the age of two. Not bad numbers, but as you can see they don't exactly add up. We had lots of options. 1) do nothing. keep owen in his crib, put baby #2 in the cosleeper until 6 months, and deal with it then. 2) buy/borrow/steal a second crib; put it in Owen's room. 3) make the leap to a bed, toddler or twin.

I got lots of opinions on what we should do, mostly from people who've dealt with the 2 under 2 situation recently. And ultimately, we decided to go straight to the twin bed. There were compelling arguments for the others, but the deciding factors were these:

-unlike most 20 month olds, Owen still does not and has never slept through the night consistently. He does still end up in our bed every morning. We've tried so many things to break this pattern with no luck, so, baby steps here. First thing: No more coming into mom's bed. Mom might very well have to come into Owen's bed, but the pattern where he gets himself into our bed stops tonight. Bonus: small possibility that after mom comes in and lies down in new big boy bed, she can sneak back out once Owen is back to sleep. We'll see if this works. So, a toddler bed wasn't going to work for this.

-I feel like major transitions are best tackled separately. So, either we do something now or not till way after baby 2 gets here. I'd rather do it now to avoid taking Owen out of the crib one morning and putting the baby in it that night. Better to have him done with the crib before the little interloper even shows up.

- 2 cribs seems excessive. Plenty of kids transition to a bed between 18-22 months, we don't need another crib, especially since we probably won't have any more babies. It feels like a waste.

So, we'll see. We shall see. Tonight is the maiden voyage. Wish us luck.



Le bed du big boi:


Friday, November 6, 2009

Good news: I'm not crazy.

For about the last two weeks, I've been feeling a little anxious about driving places. Recently, each time I've been in the car, I've been hearing...something. Something that sounds like a voice, but I can't tell what it's saying. It's a muffled, low sound that for all the world sounds like a man's voice. This sound is not loud, and a lot of times it's drowned out by the sound of general traffic, the radio or Owen chattering away, but at other times, particularly at night when it's quieter out, it's undeniably there. The first time I heard it, I was listening to NPR and using my GPS, so I thought it was a malfunction on the radio. I thought that there was some muffled recording error on the talk show I was listening to, and forgot all about it...until I heard it again on my way home. That's odd, I thought. They usually are pretty good about picking up and correcting technicial errors on air. Then, I promptly forgot about it again.

Then next time I heard it, I was listening to a CD, but using the GPS. This time, I figured it must be the GPS doing something weird, like repeating directions sotto voix or some other malfucntion. But what was it saying? To find out, I held the GPS up to my ear while driving to try and figure out what it was doing. Here's a tip: Don't do this. I was listening so intently that when the woman who normally barks directions at me spoke up to tell me to turn left, it was directly in my ear and scared me half to death. I almost caused a 10 car pileup.

After repeated experiments with and without the GPS, I realized it was happening even in it's absense. I looked all over the dash to see if something was wrong with the radio. I started driving around with the radio turned unescessarily loud. And I started wondering if maybe I was even hearing the voice at all. My job isn't excessively clinical, but heck, I am a licsensed and practicing mental health professional. If there's one thing I absorbed from two years of dozing through grad school it's that hearing voices is Not Good. With a capital N and a capital G.

So it got to the point where I was approaching the car pretty warily. I even skimmed parts of my grad school DSM-IV just to see if it said anything about a location-specific auditory hallucination (it did not).

Until today. I left work a little early, and on my way home I took route 9 instead of the Jamaicaway like I normally do because I wanted to swing by Barnes and Noble for a few minutes. As those of you who are local can attest, route 9 at 4 on a Friday is a nightmare, and it ended up that I had to stop short behind a truck that decided to make a break across the lanes from the Chestnut Hill Mall driveway. The car lurched forward a bit and all of a sudden, in an extremely clear, deep male voice, I heard:

RECTANGLE.

Rectangle?

For a second I was confused. My auditory hallucination was....a man saying "rectangle"? bizzare.

I pulled into the Barnes and noble parking lot, and the mystery was revealed. Tuesday before last, I had to bring Owen into my office for a little bit for a short meeting I couldn't miss. I brought along some toys for him to play with, which I took back out of the car when we got home except for a shape naming puzzle which apparently got stuck under the backseat. When I stopped short, it dislodged and was out in the open, so I could listen to it malfunction all the way home.

rectangle!
rectangle!
rectangle!