More Park Happiness

Kate got lots of park time over Thanksgiving weekend, and enjoyed showing off all her moves to the family.



Kate's currently practicing putting things in other things: food in bowls, toys in boxes, caps on bottles, and her most recent attempt... keys in locks...

the "highly sensitive person"

Thanks to Pamelanders for reminding me about the work done around "The Highly Sensitive Person"... so, according to their self test I myself am a highly sensitive person. I know Daddy P has traits too (needing to do one thing at a time, sensitivity to textures of clothes and tags on his skin, and so on), so basically Kate's screwed. :) But really, what she says on her site sounds a lot like Kate: she observes closely before doing anything, she notices small details in her environment, she has a hard time sleeping after a crazy day, she has a hard time with changes to her routine... so on and so forth... a lot of the child self-test questions I couldn't yet answer since she's not verbal yet, but I'm anticipating...

Looks like I'll be ordering a book...

The "who is this child" conundrum

Sometimes Daddy P and I look at Baby Kate and wonder who she is. These past few weeks she has been becoming increasing sensitive to, well, everything. For two nights we had given her Tylenol before bed to help her sleep due to teething (and waking every hour screaming without it). Last night she decided to make up a sign for Tylenol. And she used it, again and again, since we weren't giving her any. Caught in the dilemma of trusting she knows it's effect and wants it for pain relief and not giving it to her because we thought she just wanted it for the syrupy sweetness, we were at a loss as to what to do. We didn't give it to her. She screamed and thrashed, so we brought her out of her room after 30 minutes because she was incessantly signing "bottle." Well, apparently, "bottle" now means "dropper" from the Tylenol container. We returned her to her room, without the medicine, and tried again.

This led to an hour screaming, kicking, throwing fest as she made her anger and frustration clearly known (a sight that is becoming very familiar as I am realizing that she has an even low frustration tolerance than I do...). As I sat next to her crib last night, singing to her as she screamed and thrashed around, I tried desperately to analyze the whole situation. Is it her teeth? Has she figured out that Tylenol takes the pain away? Is it the taste and she is just being stubborn and wanting what she wants? Is it something totally different? Her dad is hypersensitive to texture on his skin. Maybe she is reacting to a stray tag in her p.j.s or something literally rubbing her the wrong way? Holding her provided her no comfort but she seemed equally upset in her crib. It was killing me to leave her there, but I channeled my weekend of yoga and chanting and just sat and chanted next to her, hoping to calm us both.

Exhausted from the emotion and screaming, I slinked out of the room as she lay in sleep, still taking gagged sobbing breaths, wondering what the "right" thing was to do.

This morning Miss Kate threw a similar tantrum (screaming, kicking, scratching, and pinching herself) because I changed her diaper. I mean, really? A diaper? I just look at her sometimes and wonder if this is really who she is, or just a stage she's going through. But as the weeks go on I am realizing we have a child that is going to struggle with emotional self-control in big ways, and who is very very sensitive. At times this sensitivity is delightful. She is so emotionally attuned to other people it's remarkable. She notices everything in her environment, and picks up language amazingly quickly. Unfortunately, the flip side is that she is so quick to absorb her environment, I think she has a hard time shutting it out when she needs to. As a baby if I just held her very tightly I could help her calm down. She would trash, but then submit to my hold and let go and sleep. Now she pushes and scratches her way out of my arms when she's upset with me and then cannot calm herself down very successfully on her own either.

How I'm wishing I had more early childhood training in my psychology program... Self-soothing tips, anyone?

In the meantime, we are going to try to re-cast bedtime and her bedroom as a happy, quiet, soothing place, instead of the place of struggle and sadness that it has become...

Park fun

Kate wants in every free moment to go to the park. And, she gets her way a lot.

Vaguely Baby Related

Continuing on my trend of only barely touching on baby relatedness as it pertains to Kate...

Our new favorite food: Quinoa! Oh my gosh! How have we not had this before?? It's a grain, which means baby Kate loves it. AND it has a ton of protein in it, which means I don't have to worry about only feeding her beans (she's a vegetarian by choice currently, unless fed by our nanny who she will eat turkey from). AND it's yummy and easy to prepare.

I did a dinner swap with some vegetarian moms and one dish we got was curry and quinoa and Daddy P and I loved it, so we decided to add it to our repertoire. I was happy to find out it was easy to cook and I didn't even mess it up.

Mommy Ranting

I am learning that I cannot take Kate to playgrounds. I am too judgmental.

Oh, the annoyance of the “I like how you are so nice” indoctrination. How many mothers have I now heard say “Play nice” or “You need to share, I like it when you share” or “I love how you were so nice!” Way to start your child on her path to anorexia early. Okay, that was a little over the top.

In Western society, we not only socialize our children to be competitive (beating the other guy is more important than improving your individual personal achievement – paraphrased from Karen Horney’s work) but we socialize our GIRLS to be NICE. So, ladies. Tell me how you can do both of those things? Be nice and competitive?

Uh, can you say “relational aggression?” Yep, popularity and friends, all with a perfect balance of gossiping and prosocial behaviors.

But really my complaint is about this idea what our little girls have to share everything they have, they must sacrifice for joe-schmoe, and they must smile and enjoy it. Give it up girl, and love it.

Again, probably crossing a line there.

But seriously, studies have shown that we expect our toddler girls *more than our boys* to share toys with strangers and guests. No one expects me to share my car with a strange person. Or my mp3 player. Or the book I’m reading. Or my LUNCH! So why the heck do our kids have to? Sharing doesn’t build empathy, it builds resentment. If you make me give up my mp3 player to the guy next door for an hour because he’s making sad puppy-dog eyes I’m not going to be happy and joyful. I’m going to call the cops! Aren't there other ways to teach empathy and community building besides just forcing a child to share under threat? Doesn't forced sharing just reinforce this notion that we're nice because we get approval and feel good about ourselves for doing it, rather than because it helps someone else out?

So we teach young girls to mask their anger and just suck it up and be nice.

Our current tactic with Kate is to teach her hand to hand combat while raising her to believe that her best can always be improved and is never good enough.

Maybe if we overcompensate she’ll balance out the rest of the world.

Okay, but really. How do we teach our kids empathy while also teaching them to be assertive? How do you teach a child to look after their fellow man while not forcing them to conform to a “be nice to be liked and approved of” attitude?

Of course, I do not want to turn into the parents I heard on the playground yesterday who were saying that "my son is too young to be expected to understand sharing" (He was five.) and whose same son not only invaded my personal space but also was about to knock Kate over before I physically moved him and verbally confronted him.

So really, this is about me learning to not judge. I'm a long ways off. Obviously. They feed you something at the hospital when you have kids that decreases your empathy for other parents. I think it's the jello.

P.S.

Bottle free and loving it!! Cold turkey, and not a peep of a protest. Lovely!

The hard-to-get 13 month shot

So, here is how it went...first there were tears because she couldn't hold the camera.



then she played some music on her mp3 player for a bit...



Then she wanted the camera again...



The phone kept her happy for a bit...



But, then she was done...



and wanted the camera...

Slow Bloggin'

Since I don't have a home-office right now, blogging is a little trickier. So I apologize for the infrequent blogging and hopefully will get my space set up this week and be able to be more regular about it.

In the meantime... Kate's still running all over the place. She's added "dancing" and "bath" to her frequently used signs list. Mostly she just insists on a bath throughout the day (it's quite possibly her favorite event next to park-going).

Her new most common behavior is "eh"ing and directing. "Eh" now means "help" and it is used very very frequently. Think, 45 times a minute.

"Mama" is a new word in her vocab. It makes a rare appearance, but whenever she is hurt or needing something there can be heard across the valley, "mamamamamamama" in a sorrowful tone.

Oh, directing. She will now take your hand and lead you where you should be or what you should be doing. Something this also includes pulling your pants in the direction you should be going in. A good 13 mo old move.

And no, I haven't posted her updated picture. Darn. Okay, 13 month pic to be posted ASAP.

Halloween

Well, Grandpa flew in for Halloween weekend to help Daddy P in the construction of his home office. So, the weekend was filled with the excitement of adding insulation, an A/C unit, a sliding glass door, and drywall to the building. We got a lot done (I use "we" liberally here) and are heading in the right direction.



As a result, we didn't much celebrate Halloween. Kate dressed up and paraded around the house and the front lawn, but we didn't really see any kids out or get many trick or treaters. Is Halloween dying? Reserved only for college co-eds who want to go outside in their underware? Well, Kate the chicken represented.