27 Wednesday Feb 2013
Posted in Life and Love
Tags
books, children, fatherhood, fathers, Lawrence J Cohen, parenting, parenting books, play, Playful Parenting, reviews
Okay, I have found my new all-time favourite parenting book.
This is one of those books that make you want to run around, handing it to people you know whose parenting makes you wince, and handing it to people whose parenting is already awesome.
Because Playful Parenting is AWESOME.
26 Tuesday Feb 2013
Posted in Life and Love
Tags
Owl is now officially weaned, and I’m not sure he likes it.
We’d been slowly cutting down on the nursing for a while. When he was around 18 months old we stopped nursing on demand. He could nurse in the morning and in the evening and before naps if I was home, but he couldn’t just yank my shirt down.
By the time he was two, nap time nurse sessions had been cut even if I was home.
Then, a couple of months ago, he stopped asking for milk before bed. PH had put him to bed a couple of times in a row because I was out training dogs, and Owl didn’t ask and I didn’t suggest it, and that was pretty much that.
The morning nursing sessions continued.
Part of it was simply that we were unmotivated to try and wean him first thing in the morning. We were tired and if latching him on would get us another fifteen minutes of rest, we would take it.
But I wasn’t enjoying it any more. My breasts were producing milk but were never full, and Owl’s nursing just felt annoying.
But he wanted it, every morning, and I was reluctant to cut that last string.
Then my mother came for a visit, and that fixed it.
Mum would go to Owl when he woke up in the morning and he would spend an hour or more happily on her lap reading stories or watching videos on her tablet. In fact, if I tried to come into the room he’d shoo me away. “No, that MY Nana!”
And so a week went by wherein he didn’t nurse in the morning. When Mum left, PH took over distracting him in the mornings, so he didn’t go back to his old ways.
And that was that – he was weaned.
But I’m not sure he’s happy about it. He has asked for Mommy Milk a number of times, and even cried for it when he was feeling sick.
He will also just whine for Mommy, even when I am holding him.
“I’m right here, Owl, what do you want?”
“Me want YOU, Mommy.”
“But I’m RIGHT HERE! You have me!”
It’s heart breaking and frustrating. In fact, it’s a lot like when he was a colicky newborn. I’m giving you what you want – why aren’t you happy?
He also started chewing his nails a couple months ago – right around the time he gave up the nighttime weaning. He bites them right down to stubble, and no matter how much Daycare Lady hounds him about germs or how many times PH and I remind him that he’s giving himself “owies” by doing it, the fingers go back in his mouth.
Lately, he has started sucking on his fingers as well.
I don’t really know what to do about this. When I see it, I feel guilty for taking away his comfort, but after all, I nursed him for 28 months… that’s more than most kids get!
But yesterday, he pulled at my shirt and said “Me baby now,” he said cuddling up. “Me drink Mommy Milk.”
“Mommy Milk’s all gone, Owl,” I reminded him.
“Me pretend have Mommy Milk” he insisted and nipped at the shirt for a moment. Then he patted my breast and said, “Me finished the Mommy Milk. Me eated ALL the Mommy Milk.”
“That’s right, it’s all done,” I told him.
And I hope he doesn’t suck his skin right off his fingers as a replacement activity.
21 Thursday Feb 2013
Posted in Life and Love, Pointless Posts
Tags
children, children and media, children's programming, jim henson, old school sesame street, preschoolers, sesame street, toddlers, tv
Now that Owl is two we occasionally allow ourselves the luxury of putting Owl in front of the TV for some quality programming.
Over Christmas we had fun showing him The Grinch (which he loved) and Muppet Family Christmas (which he liked) and Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer (which he had no interest in).
Sometimes we let him watch some Sesame Street.
I really notice a difference between letting him watch Sesame Street on Netflix versus the Old School Sesame Street DVD that we picked up years and years ago.
Sesame Street has really changed over the years, and it’s more than just the loss of Jim Henson.
17 Sunday Feb 2013
Posted in My Blag is on the Interwebs
So, other than my usual volumes of booby-googlers, my blog has been fairly dead for the last couple of months. Some of my posts have gotten zero comments. Most get way less than they used to.
So I figure I must be getting boring.
If anyone is still stopping by here, what would you like to hear about?
16 Saturday Feb 2013
Posted in Life and Love
Food seems to be a shared obsession in my house.
Not only do PH and I have food issues, but our dog and cat constantly act like they have never been fed, ever.
Inexplicably Loved Cat is possibly the worst offender. When he was 12 weeks old, he stole a hunk of gouda out of the fridge, took off with it down the hall, had the plastic wrap off of it and ate most of it before Perfect Husband chased him down.
He is particularly obsessed with carbs, especially corn based products. If you have a bag of Smart Food, you cannot get him off of your lap.
It’s totally bizarre, because cats are carnivores, who don’t even digest carbohydrates properly. It’s like a horse being obsessed with meat.
Anyway, Owl has learned that his food just isn’t safe if he leaves it unattended.
After a couple of traumatic incidents where he returned to his cereal bowl to find that the food had disappeared, Owl has become hypervigilant about the cat.
If he needs to go potty while eating, he spends the entire time worrying about his food.
“Kitty no eat my food!”
“I won’t let Kitty eat your food. He’s not even in the room.”
“NO EAT MY FOOD, KITTY!”
“Owl, honey, he’s not even here. Let’s go potty.”
While he’s peeing he will point warningly at the slumbering cat and said “YOU STAY! NO EAT MY FOOD!”
“He is asleep. He isn’t eating your food.”
“No eat my food. No! STAY ‘WAY!”
“He is UNCONSCIOUS. YOUR FOOD IS SAFE.”
Owl is under the assumption that our cat is a ravenous beast, willing to consume anything and everything. Much like Owl, in a way.
If Inexplicably Loved Cat sniffs ANYTHING, Owl will storm in saying “No, Kitty! No eat it!”
The cat has been warned off from eating Owl’s coat, Owl’s hat, Owl’s boots, THE COUCH, and even the TV remote control, which Owl felt was in such peril from the cat’s depredations that he personally chased the cat away from it.
Between the cat eating our electronics and the dog drinking Owl’s pee, apparently nothing is safe from the ravenous appetites of the inhabitants of this house.
It’s surprising we still have a roof over our head, really.
OM NOM NOM
12 Tuesday Feb 2013
Posted in Life and Love
Tags
light, SAD, sun sensitivitiy, sunglasses, sunshine, toddlers, travel
Owl is well nicknamed.
You guys did a good job with that.
Boy oh boy, is he an Owl. My child hates the sun. HATES IT.
He is a true child of Vancouver.
He happily announces that “it’s sunny out, today” if it happens to not be raining.
And if sun gets in his eyes? Oh boy. Screaming, writhing, gnashing of teeth. “AAAH, SUNNY! NO! MAKE SUN GO ‘WAY! AAAAAAARGH….” I expect him to wail that he’s meeeeelting and simply disappear into a puddle.
It’s weird because he’s not particularly reactive to other aspects of environment. He doesn’t mind fluctuations of temperature, he’s not picky about textures or textiles, he doesn’t cover his ears when things get too loud. He doesn’t mind the dark. But sun? Sun is EVIL.
One morning there was a glorious sunrise outside, and he was scared of it.
“No go in sunrise! NO! Make sunrise go ‘WAY!”
Clearly he thought the sun was overtaking the world with its fiery minions.
It’s hard to believe he is related to me. I grew up on the island of Curacao, which looks like this: 
Rain was so rare there that when it happened, the teachers let us out of class to go play in it. Every now and then it would rain so hard that the storm drains would overflow and we would get a Rain Day off school, but that only happened once every couple of years.
I wonder if that is why I’m so sensitive to the seasons. I get so sluggish and sleepy and depressed in the winter, whereas in summer I am much less depressed (usually) and often an insomniac. Maybe I just got accustomed to sunlight when I was a kid.
The sun charges my batteries, lightens my gloom, and colours my world.
Meanwhile, my child thinks that the sun is everything that is wrong and evil.
The only thing we agree on about the sun is that it makes us sneeze. The first sign I had that he was related to me (we hadn’t noticed his webbed toe, yet, which he got from me) was when we took him home from the hospital and he sneezed in the sun. The sun always makes me sneeze.
But to me, it’s just a sneeze. When the sun makes Owl sneeze he screams and writhes as though he thinks he’s going to sneeze himself into dust, even though he doesn’t mind sneezes in general.
Anyway, you can imagine how much he liked that warm California sun.
The first two days at Disneyland we had to keep our little vampire in the shade at all times, because every time the stroller had to enter direct sunlight Owl would go from happy irrepressible extrovert to writhing ball of screaming misery. “AAH, NO, SUNNY. SUN HURTED MY EYES, NOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Even if we handed him something to hide his face behind he would moan and squirm and sob until we were safely back in the shade.
So I started to look for sunglasses. It is HARD to find sunglasses to fit his tiny little head. Every set I looked at was size three and up. Owl was wearing 12 months shirts. You can imagine how well the search for sunglasses went. I spent our entire week in Vegas shopping for sunglasses for him with no success, and now I was repeating the continuous string of disappointments in Anaheim.
Eventually, on the night of the second day, I found a pair that almost fit. So I bought them, telling him that they would make the sun go away.
Well, it worked. The next day was cloudy.
But it’s okay, Owl will use them. You see, spring is arriving in Vancouver, and the other day it was partly sunny, and he was NOT IMPRESSED.
Problem solved.
11 Monday Feb 2013
Posted in Life and Love
Tags
disneyland, parenting, rides, toddlers, travel, two year olds
Well, the Karmic Realignment hit Perfect Husband’s gastrointestinal system shortly after midnight. He spent the night vomiting violently and the day groaning in bed while I carted Owl around Disneyland by myself.
It could have been worse.
As much as it sucked to leave poor PH in the dark of our hotel room and play single parent at the happiest place on Earth, and as challenging as it was for me to find food and potties in a timely manner without my Map Man, Owl and I still had a really good day.
(As a side note, possibly due to sleep deprivation I recurrently misread signs announcing that “The Happiest Place on Earth Just Got Happier” as saying “The Happiest Place On Earth Just Got Herpes.”)
Ready to start another day
He hugged a bunch of dressed up characters (insisting in getting in line for a second dose of Goofy hugs).
We did Peter Pan’s Flight which was too dark and jerky and he bumped his chin on the stop at the end.
I took him on a carousel as consolation, and then he fell in love with the Finding Nemo Submarine (which WAS frigging awesome – they have underwater holograms of the Nemo characters so it’s like they actual animated characters are swimming right out your window in 3D).
Even though the ride has a faux explosion and a scary lanternfish, the young set loved it. The 18 month old next to me surprised her parents (who I previously had heard arguing over whether she was old enough to appreciate anything, ever) by absolutely adoring the bubbles and fish.
That was the first ride which wasn’t a carousel that Owl demanded to go on repeatedly. I think we went on it three or four times.
In the late afternoon, PH managed to stagger out of the room long enough to find us in line for yet another round of Finding Nemo, and come with us to the evening parade.
On the last day PH was still feeling sick, but was at least able to walk around. We took Owl to Goofy’s Kitchen for breakfast which blew his little mind. SO MANY CHARACTERS TO HUG. Pluto led him by his hand to our seats and we were visited by Chip, Dale (who liked to jump up behind people), Goofy, Belle, and Rafiki of all people.
Owl was in extrovert heaven. I have very cute videos of him demanding that Rafiki “Come hi me.”
Then we did Pirates of the Caribbean (which Owl weathered surprisingly well), and the Monsters, Inc ride which Owl insisted on repeating four times in a row and featured a holographic Randall who appears out of thin air and then disappears again.
If you go to Disneyland, go in February. Look at the line for the Monsters, Inc ride.
That is a 0 minute wait, right there.
We did those 4 repetitions within a half an hour. The longest line we had to wait in was probably 20 minutes for Finding Nemo.
Then we went to A Bug’s Land and that was where Owl found his Mecca – Heimlich’s Chew Chew Train which features (get this): A hungry caterpillar train that goes around eating GIANT PIECES OF FOOD.
OWL HEAVEN!
Heimlich munches his way through a giant apple, a giant watermelon (which smells like watermelon) and a giant box of cookies (which smells like COOKIE). My food obsessed toddler spent forty minutes going on this ride again and again AND AGAIN.
“Caterpillar EATED DE WATERMELON, MOMMY!”
Finally, PH took Owl back to Carsland to say goodbye to McQueen and Mater while I went on Soaring Over California, which was awesome and not at all scary, as promised by the coworker who recommended it.
And then we grabbed a bite of sub-par food (which is just called “food” at Disneyland and costs about three times as much as it is worth), finally found a stuffed Nemo (Owl insisted in picking up Dory while we were at it), and it was time to say goodbye to Disneyland.
Exteroverted out. FINALLY.
Here is a montage of our three days at the most Oppressively Happy Place On Earth. Beware, it contains a lot of Owl hugs.
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/59408366]04 Monday Feb 2013
Posted in From The Owlery, Life and Love, Perfect Husband
So, remember how my boss gave me that money for a trip?
We went to Disneyland.
And no, the money didn’t cover the whole trip. Not even close. But you cut a thousand bucks out of the price tag and it begins to be doable for us, if you take into account the fact that PH is more willing to spend money on life experiences than tangible possessions. Pefect Husband had already been thinking about taking me for my birthday BEFORE we got given the money, because he’s like that.
So, off we went.
It did not start out auspiciously.
We picked up Owl from daycare after I worked a half day, and the first thing he did as we set out for The Farm Fairy’s house to drop off the dog was… throw up all over himself.
Then he began to wail.
01 Friday Feb 2013
When Owl was around one year old, he began to enjoy slides.
The local mall has a slide that is nicely baby-sized, so we started him on that one. From the beginning we taught him basic slide safety/etiquette which is, of course, that you must always go around and go back up via the ladder, and not back up the slide itself.
This is basic etiquette, isn’t it?
I have begun to wonder, because we are apparently the only parents IN THE WORLD who enforce it.
I am probably exaggerating because my friend Pug Mama also enforces this basic requirement when we have visited slides with our children, and I assume that my other friends do as well with their children. But that’s because I have awesome taste in friends.
Everyone else in the world seems to think it is TOTALLY FINE for their kid to spend five minutes trying to climb the wrong way up the slide, while other children line up on top with feet pointed at the rogue child’s head.
Then, of course, Owl starts imitating the behaviour. PH or I immediately swoop in and correct him and Owl goes back to his law abiding ways. 
Sometimes the other parent would become aware that my one year old was better behaved than their three year old and would suddenly start enforcing the rule, which no doubt confused the kid completely.
Sometimes, that doesn’t even happen.
A few weeks ago Owl was at that same slide and had quite an altercation with two little bruisers with buzz cuts. One looked about Owl’s age and the other was three or so. They were both climbing up the slide while Owl sat on top of the slide poised to go down and said in an increasingly annoyed voice, “Excuse me. Excuse me! EXCUUUUUSE ME! NO!! GO ‘WAY!!!!!”
He began poking at their eyes, which I put a stop to instantly, but I felt bad, because after all, he was in the right. But if we poked out people’s eyes whenever they broke the rules, we’d have a lot of fun, but probably end up in prison.
The parent of the two kids, by the way, was watching with pleasant-faced bemusement throughout all this. I would have said something but I didn’t know she was the kids’ mother, since she was watching with pleasant-faced bemusement.
It was only when Owl and the up-sliders began to engage in a battle to the death on the top of the slide that she redirected her kids, who were back and going up the slide again within five minutes and the mother just shrugged at me like “Ehn, what else can I do?”
I was tempted to tell Owl to slide down anyway and kick those kids in the face.
It’s not only a problem at the mall.
The local indoor play gym has big signs up everywhere about NOT CLIMBING UP THE SLIDES, often in quick succession and merely phrased in different ways so as to try and penetrate people’s thick skulls. 
It doesn’t seem to make a difference. Parents stand around and smile indulgently while their kids struggle up the slide going the wrong way. 
Last time I tried to embarrass the parents into action. Owl pointed at the kids going up the slide and screeched “Mommy, YOOK!”
“Yeah, they’re breaking the rules. Never mind what they do. YOU go around,” I said to him loudly. The group of watching parents didn’t even blink.
I suppose I could be a douche and point out to the parents that their kids are getting in the way of everyone else’s kids AND endangering themselves in the process, but it’s none of my business and I’m not naturally confrontational.
So beyond the occasional passive aggressive comment, I just watch in bewilderment.
I just don’t get it.
It’s one thing if your kid is nine years old in a deserted playground, and able to understand the difference between sharing a busy piece of playground equipment and enjoying having the slide all to yourself.
But in a busy play park packed with self absorbed toddlers?
Really?
Even if you don’t believe in etiquette, even if you want your child to be a rebel and explore playground equipment in novel ways, even if you don’t think that your kids should have to learn turn-taking or follow posted rules…
…don’t you worry that a descending child will torpedo your kid in the face?
…Or am I the only one?
If By Yes 