1 Mother 2 Another

My daughter is an adrenaline junkie.


As if chasing after a naked superhero weren’t enough, I have
to periodically scare those (optional) pants off my kid. For fun.


Yes, we’ve reached the stage in Maddie’s development
where she absolutely loves hide and seek. Not content to simply
have you hide and then seek you out in good, old-fashioned, calm
style, Maddie wants you to hide and stay hidden while she
stealthily (ish) creeps around the house trying to find you. Just
before she gives up but after she’s exhausted all her places
to look my Xtreme Adventure girl wants you to jump out of your
hiding place and scream at her.

When Maddie was only a few weeks old, I
began a game every morning with her as she was dressed. In order to
distract her squirminess, I announce the arrival of Naked Girl,
timing the dramatic monologue to coincide with the removal of the
diaper. Then I’d say, “Naked Girl! Bringing a smile to
the world, one dimple at a time.”


Come on, you’ve done stuff just like this yourself;
you’re simply not bold enough or stupid enough to tell other
people about it.

A recent href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16709587/site/newsweek/">Newsweek
article brought my attention to a new free booklet put out
by the nonprofit organization href="http://www.zerotothree.org">Zero to Three a
valuable parenting resource site that’s listed on my target="_blank"
href="http://www.1mother2another.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=34#top">
Top 5s Page.


This new booklet, “Healthy From the Start”, is endorsed
by the American Academy of Pediatrics and outlines sensible and
healthy eating habits for babies and toddlers – and more
importantly, what we as parents can do to encourage these
habits.

If Babyhood is all about Sleep –
learning to sleep at night instead of day, learning to sleep
through the night, being able to self-soothe and go back to sleep,
getting into regular naps, and so on – then Toddlerhood is
all about Control.


And when I say control, I mean control in many guises: developing
motor skills control, learning about emotions and how to control
them (also known as Not Throwing a Tantrum), realizing adults
control you, discovering how to control adults (can you say
Manipulation?). But there’s one more type of control that
dominates any toddlerhood – potty training.

No, this isn’t a review of that
penguin movie.


My daughter, who has not seen that movie, has Happy Feet of her
own. She and her daddy, who spent a lot of time together last
weekend while Mommy started working on family taxes, came up with a
new game – Happy Feet.

We’ve finally seen a turn in the
weather; it seems winter is actually here to stay. Undaunted, I
simply bundle my kid up extra-well and head out to the park in
spite of the cold. But the past couple of days we’ve had a
snow threat and so have stayed inside, relying on play dates.


So when my friend Ingrid informed me we wouldn’t be seeing
them yesterday because of a dentist’s appointment, I
panicked. No Naomi! How would I keep my child from noticing we
never actually left the house all day?? Which is why I unthinkingly
said, “Why don’t you simply drop Naomi off at my house
while you go to the dentist? Then they can still play
together.” I promise, my motives were purely selfish.


My first inkling that this might be harder than I anticipated was
when Ingrid fell on the floor in gratitude. I hadn’t really
thought about this as being babysitting, just another play date
where one of the adults happens to not be there. But how bad could
it be? Naomi knows me, knows Maddie, knows my house. What could go
wrong?

I’m afraid that our cat’s got
some competition in our household now; what has been up to this
point a one-cat home has suddenly become the residence of two
kitties.


Of course, one of them is my daughter.


I’m not sure where she got this idea, but she absolutely
loves to crawl around on the floor and pretend she’s a cat.
She’ll crawl all over the house, saying, “Meow! Meow!
Meow! Meow!” And just in case I don’t get the message
from that, she’ll periodically stop, pet herself on the back,
and say, “Soft!”

I never thought I’d say this, but my daughter is too concerned with cleanliness, and it’s driving me crazy.

I think the first time we noticed it was during our beach vacation. Maddie had just turned 15 months and been eating solid foods for a long time, and while she never had a spontaneous one-baby food fight, she certainly didn’t seem bothered by the excess pureed blueberries smeared across her face. And while she had never really had a chance to get down and dirty in, say, a mud puddle, she seemed to enjoy finger paints as much as the next child.

A couple weeks ago I told you about a
recent Consumer Reports test; the Consumers Union tested 12
rear-facing infant car seats and reported that 10 out of the 12
seats used failed at least one of their tests.

Last week, the Consumers Union retracted
that report after the federal government claimed the failure
results came from drastically higher test speeds than stated in the
report.

Consumer Reports has announced an internal
investigation into the veracity of the government’s claims,
and that they will re-do the tests as soon as possible and issue a
new report. Meanwhile, they are still urging a recall of the
Evenflo Discovery, the car seat that failed the most in their
tests.

I imagine that if you’re a parent
using one of the infant car seats that got low marks, you’re
feeling partly relieved but partly confused right now. I know I
would be. I’m not sure what I would do in your situation.
Here are the things I know to be true:

Consumer Reports works really hard to
provide unbiased, high-quality, dependable information to
consumers. They refuse to accept advertising or sponsors, conduct
all their tests anonymously so they don’t get
“freebies”, and do not allow companies to even use
their name in advertising such as “Consumer Reports rated us
the best!”

I also know that ANY car seat is better
than no car seat at all. So here are some things you can do:

-Make sure your car seat is in good
condition. If your baby is the sixth one to use it, you may want to
think about buying a new one. Buckles and straps start to wear down
with time, and the plastic may be weaker than you think.

-Along those lines, I’d encourage
you not to buy a car seat second-hand; you have no way of knowing
if that seat you picked up for 20 bucks at a garage sale has
already been in a wreck or not, and thus may be structurally
weaker. Only borrow a used car seat from someone you know and
trust, make sure you have all the instruction books, and look them
up on line to make sure the model hasn’t been recalled.

-If you buy a new car seat, register it
with the maker so they can notify you of any safety issues or
recalls.

-Sign up at href="http://www.cpsc.gov/cpsclist.asp">this site to be
notified of any government recalls; they’ll email you
automatically.

-Get your car seat installation checked.
Click href="http://www.seatcheck.org/">here to find a location
near you. Having your seat correctly installed is half the
battle.

-Click href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/011907dnnatcarseats.55ad0942.html">
here to read an article on the car seat test retraction.
You can also read about it at href="http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cu-press-room/pressroom/2007/2/0702_eng0702ccs.htm">
Consumer Reports’ website or read the
government’s updates on the situation at the target="_blank" href="http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/">NHTSA
website.

-Use a car seat. All the time.

I’ll let you know if there’s
more news on this topic as I find out about it.

Recently one of my girlfriends went to put her 15-month-old down in his crib for the night. As he hit the mattress, he grabbed for a small object nearby. After she pried the object out of his fingers, my girlfriend realized it was a small plastic vial full of medicine used to fill her son’s nebulizer. He’d somehow gotten hold of one and hidden it in his crib. And if he hadn’t brought it to her attention, he’d have found it in the middle of the night and shoved it in his mouth.

Maddie’s been enamored with the
alphabet for a few months now, and while I want to encourage this
fascination and so forth, her distraction when faced with what she
realizes are Letters and not just A Jumble of Lines is beginning to
wear a bit thin.

Am I the only mom whose kid goes through these passionate love affairs with a specific food, only to suddenly shun them without warning one day?

Maddie’s always been a pretty good eater; as a baby she’d eat just about anything and I smugly assumed that would continue through toddlerhood. I’d listen pityingly to my girlfriends moan about their kids’ refusals to eat veggies and think, “Glad I won’t have that problem.” She doesn’t refuse them completely now, but she is much more enamoured of pasta and cheese than I’d prefer, and broccoli, carrots, and the occasional asparagus (NO CORN!!!!) are about all I can get down her. Thank you, Lord, for Veggie Booty.

Highest on her list, though, has always been fresh fruit, and at first her preferences followed the seasons. Last summer she ate a lot of berries, then fall came and it was apples, and so on. But for the past couple of months she gets this craving for a specific food and God help you if you don’t have it on hand.

We’ve been incredibly spoiled this winter up here in the Northeast; with temperatures unseasonably warm, Maddie’s been able to indulge her passion for the outdoors pretty much unabated. We have yet to have our first snowfall, and in fact this past December was the first December without snow in 120 years. And just a couple weeks ago we had an entire Saturday at 70 balmy degrees!

But I know that this weather won’t last – we’re descending into the 20s and 30s this week, much more typical for this time of year. So I’ve been reading up on how to keep Maddie warm and safe (since telling my toddler “no” to the outdoors is definitely not my favorite option) and I thought I’d pass on what I’ve learned.

As Maddie passes her nineteen-month marker
(yes, I still keep track,) I’m amazed at how different
developmental skills suddenly take off.


She’s always been a talker; in public or with people she
doesn’t know she’ll be quiet and reserved, simply
taking it all in. But with family and close friends she’s
quite the chatterbox. For several months – actually, about a
year now! – she’s been jabbering in her own emphatic
language, using gestures to help us stupid adults keep up. And of
course she started saying individual words last summer – the
basic “dada” and “mama” and so forth
– but recently she’s been forming her own short
sentences, and you’re left to extrapolate on your own.

Infant car seats made news recently when Consumer Reports ran a new batch of tests against 12 brands of rear-facing infant car seats. Using speeds of 35 and 38 MPH rather than the government speed of 30 MPH, Consumer Reports found that 10 out of the 12 car seats failed.

Yes, 10 out of 12 car seats failed.

In addition, Consumer Reports found that when testing a European model of a popular car seat, that car seat performed better than any other car seat they tested. The American version – same manufacturer – failed. Coincidentally, car seat testing in Europe is much stricter. CR also found evidence of problems with the LATCH system, and said seats did better when secured with a seatbelt. One car seat, the Evenflo Discovery, didn’t even meet government standards, and Consumer Reports is urging a recall of that product.

Three car seats failed all of CR’s tests – the Evenflo Discovery, the Graco Safeseat, and the Britax Companion. Only the Baby Trend Flex-Loc and the Graco Snugride with EPS passed every test.

For more information, read the entire report by clicking here. And even if you’ve got a top-rated car seat, I encourage you to find a car seat inspection station near you to make sure your seat is properly installed.

And of course, remember that any car seat is better than no car seat at all.

I recently hit the 20-week mark in this second pregnancy, and as I move forward towards the five-month mark, I recall that this is the time in my last pregnancy where it began to feel as if it were moving more quickly. Do you know what I mean? At the very beginning you’re excited and dreamy, and perhaps exhausted and nauseated, but you have this long pregnancy stretching out before you. Then suddenly you “pop” and have something that’s clearly not “just fat” in front of you, and it becomes much more immediate and real and you start to look anxiously at your “to-do” list. Or perhaps, start to think anxiously about making a to-do list.

I’ve hit several of those moments over this past pregnancy – those times when something you’ve forgotten completely about your last pregnancy comes rushing to the forefront and you can’t believe you ever forgot it. So I’ve compiled a bit of a list, because Lord knows I’ll forget it again if there’s ever a third time. And why is that? The answer is item number one on my Things I Forgot list:

The verdict is in, and the hot new must-have accessory this winter is –

Sunglasses.

Maddie’s had a couple weeks now to break – I mean, break in – her new toys, and she’s ready to offer up her stand-out favorites. As a reminder, Maddie’s 18 months old right now.

Maddie and I have been sick with a cold for the past several days, and while it hasn’t been the worst one ever it’s certainly been the longest one ever- going on ten days now – and my creativity has been sorely taxed. I’m one of those moms that won’t take her kid to the playground until the child is free from a cough or runny nose; I wouldn’t wish a toddler with a cold on my worst enemy. Add to that the fact that Maddie didn’t really feel well enough to run around the park, and we had a long several days of a sick, listless, but still stir-crazy kid.

And apropos of nothing, but if there’s one thing worse than having to take care of a sick toddler while you’re sick as well, it’s having to take care of a sick toddler while your sick AND PREGNANT as well. Without Sudafed or even Motrin to help me out, I’ve been suffering through my drippy nose and raspy cough and sinus headaches cold turkey. I actually found myself thinking one night, “In the grand scheme of things, how bad could it really be for this unborn child if I take ONE DOSE of Nyquil? I mean seriously, it’s not like I’d be doing a line of cocaine!” In the end I chickened out and resigned myself to a sleepless night; my doctor’s so strict I’m not allowed to use most brands of cough drops while pregnant, so the thought of confessing the Nyquil to her was too much to bear.

But I digress.

If you’re not au currant on our history with Elmo, read here and here.

If you are familiar with Maddie’s longstanding love affair with the Red Menace – I mean cute lil red guy – then you’re probably bracing yourselves for what comes next. Fear not – nothing new has been added to our Elmo-stuffed household.

But something I thought could be gotten rid of has been raised to level of favored toy.

Remember how I said that Maddie would have nothing to do with the hot new TMX Elmo? Apparently that’s not entirely true.

There was a remarkable drop in holiday
mellowness last week, right about, oh, December 26, and I
can’t help but notice that it happens every year. The nation
virtually shuts down for the last week of December, but for some
reason it’s seen as slothful or lazy to simply enjoy the
downtime and do nothing; we have to briskly pack up the tree and
lights and hit the organizational sales.


I understand that some of us often procrastinate household chores,
which in this case means still having a bald tree up in the middle
of March. So I can see the attractiveness in using some vacation
time to get a head-start on post-holiday cleanup. But can’t
we take a few days to enjoy the slowness of everything? We spend
all of December “getting ready” – the baking, the
cleaning, the gift-buying and wrapping – all for that one big
day. Why don’t we simply enjoy the fact that our to-do list
is done, and we’ve nothing that really needs doing for a
while? It’s not wallowing, it’s simply being in the
moment and coasting. Those same neighbors who glared at us as
Grinches for not having our lights up the day after Thanksgiving
are now giving us the Stare of Shame for still having them up three
days after New Year’s. Three days! Don’t we at least
get until the weekend??

You’ve successfully survived the holidays, but your house ain’t looking too good. In fact, it looks like a Toys R Us at closing time on the day after Thanksgiving: toys strewn everywhere, assembly instructions hanging from the chandelier where you threw them in frustration at 3 a.m. on Christmas day, and empty packages of batteries littering every square surface. And of course, then there’s your child, who’s now completely acclimated to the whole tree thing and expects tinsel and lights for the next 364 days.

Or maybe it’s just my house.

Seriously, what do you do now? How do you get your toy volume back under control, and keep your baby from discovering Post Holiday Blues?

Well, I’m back and can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve posted. I had meant to post a bit more often last week, but found lying on the couch watching videos with my hubbie infinitely more appealing. Sorry.

And not that it’s been a while since I’ve had time to watch movies, but did you know they made a sequel to that Pirates of the Caribbean movie? It was pretty good. Apparently there’s going to be a third one as well; can’t wait to watch that one next Christmas.

I think my slug-like inability to sit down and write pretty much sums up our entire Christmas vacation. With Brian off from work all week and me errand-free, Maddie was in hog heaven, basking in all the adult attention.

And of course, there was Christmas itself.