Maybe the dingo ate my baby?*

Because someone definitely stole my daughter and replaced her with a monster.

Sheesh. What a weekend!

This was most definitely the weekend of testing mummy, and tantrums. Almost every activity involved some kind of full-on screaming fit of some kind. Either Daisy didn't want to do it and had to, or Daisy did want to and didn't want to be stopped. Either way, almost everything elicited either a strong love or hate relationship that forced the edges of my patience and emptied two bottles of wine.

No nappy = no happy

Let's start with the fact that Daisy does not nap on weekends now. I think I've mentioned it before but now it's gone from a temporary phenomenon to an ongoing issue. Despite my patient and repeated attempts to get her to sleep in her crib, it just doesn't happen. What does happen is that she just sits there quietly for 20-30 minutes (if I'm lucky) and plays with a stuffed toy.

This would all be fine and dandy if "quiet time" was all she needed but the reality is that, as soon as I then decide to go out somewhere, she falls asleep in the car, leaving me with the agonizing decision of either waking her up and risking bad moods later, or letting her sleep and dictate the path of my day. Either option doesn't seem stellar from my point of view but, given that I only get two precious days a week with her, I tend to (although not always) opt for the letting her sleep. Better to have the path of my day dictated with a happy toddler in-tow than forge ahead, blinkered, with my plans, dragging a kicking and screaming little girl along for the ride. Maybe you disagree with my choice? I'm not sure I'm always that happy with it either.

Here, by example, are the net results of both strategies:

1. Saturday afternoon I spent 45 minutes burning gas in a Target parking lot, while waiting for Missy to wake up. 
2. Sunday, I pulled her out of the car, mid-nap, to go to BabiesRUs for diapers, but wound up carrying her around as she continued to sleep on my shoulder.

This would also be known as a lose-lose situation. I don't do well with that. I like to win.

No listen = No kissin'

It's easy to discipline a child when they do obviously naughty things like hitting or biting. What's not so easy, I have found, is trying to just get them to listen. Especially when you're dealing with a toddler who, while somewhat ahead of her age in comprehension, doesn't understand all the subtleties of what you need to tell her.

For instance, on Saturday I took Daisy to a park (see more on my other blog about this soon). There is a petting barn there, run by a local girl scout troop, and I thought it would be cool to go pet some goats or something together. Unfortunately, it's a big park and getting from the free parking lot (sorry, not paying $10 to park for a toddler's attention span of 45 minutes) to the petting barn, which was clear on the other side of the park, proved to be a problem.

I didn't want to take the stroller because I was also (at the time) planning on taking her on a train ride and didn't want to leave the stroller somewhere while we zoomed off around the park. So I decided to carry her through the parking lot and then let her walk the rest of the way.

Even while recognizing that getting a toddler to walk anywhere in a focused, straight-line fashion, requires patience and ingenuity, it was a bit of a disaster.

It started when she ran straight to the fishing lake and yelled "Swim! Kick-kick! Daddy!" because she thought it was a pool (she had been for swimming lessons with her dad that morning.) All my calm and soothing explanations did very little to dissuade her of that assumption and she literally beat me off with flailing arms, Exorcist-twisting head, and kicking feet, as I attempted to restrain her from launching herself over the edge and into the green, murky water. (Of course, there was screaming too. To save me some characters, let's just assume that, from hereon out, all of these case stories involve blood curdling screaming, ok?)



The only way out of this one was to pick her up, which I'm sure you can guess she did not like.

I suppose I could have reversed strategies at this point and told her if she didn't behave then we would go back to the car and she would miss out on the petting barn. But here's the reality: she didn't really understand why we were there and so telling her she was missing out on it would have very little (if any) impact, except to say that we would have missed out on the one part of the excursion that was fun (the petting barn itself) and I would have been forced to figure out what the hell to do with us for the rest of the afternoon.

(Here we go with that lose-lose again.)

Getting back from the barn was a little bit better, as I steered her towards some large grassy areas and literally ran ahead of her, keeping her engaged with keeping up.



Of course, there were the side-trips to grab and throw dirt, which I can totally deal with. I'm not one of those moms who doesn't let her kid get a little dirty.



The problem came when Daisy saw a clearing and flew into it ahead of me, refusing to change directions. The issue here was that there was a baseball game going on in the clearing and she was heading right for third base. Again, not amused as I retrieved her before being tagged by a baseball in the head.

Back to the car we finally got and then off to Target, where I turned around to get out and, as you already know, found her sleeping soundly. Super.

This nightmare walking issue continued yesterday as Daddy and I decided an evening walk around the neighborhood would be a nice way to gear-up for dinner. Daisy, however, had other ideas.

She arched her back and kicked her feet when we tried to put her in her stroller, refused to leave the driveway for ten minutes, would only walk on the edge of the curb which resulted in her falling and scuffing her knees repeatedly, ran up people's driveways and sat down or flung herself on the floor when I tried to pull her back to the side-walk, and wrenched her arm out of its socket when I tried to hold her hand. Finally, I picked her up and walked her back home, with her screaming at the top of her lungs.

We ended the day with her screaming bloody murder from her crib for 20 minutes before she would go to sleep and me shaking the wine bottle for those last, vital few drips.

Ahhh... we have definitely launched ourselves into full toddler-hood now. Time to buy shares in Kendall Jackson.

-----------------------------------
*If "Maybe the dingo ate my baby" means nothing to you, watch this video from a classic Seinfeld episode

What's going on down there?

The title of today's post has two meanings:

1) What happens downstairs. stays downstairs

When I'm upstairs working, sometimes I hear whoops and wheals and squeals than just can't be ignored and I run downstairs to see what I'm missing.

Today it was stuff like this...











and this...






2) What's going on "down there"?



Pooping in the potty is what! We're not always in-time and successful but Missy is definitely trying to do her down-there business in the potty. No success on pee-pee yet. Good news, however, is that it's taken vert little formal planning to get this far - she's been telling us about her "movements" for some time now, it was just a matter of getting the diaper off in time to successfully depost the gift in the right location.


While I'm here, here are some other Daisy favorites from the last week...

I'm off to Costco for some froth

Remember in one of my previous posts, when I said Daisy had lost enthusiasm for her nightly bath?

Yeah, well, just call me "Mother of the Year" or something because I totally turned it around. All on my own. That's right. Without help. Minus Hubby. Almost in "Single Mum" status. (You can put my gold stars in the mail.)

The magic ingredient? BUBBLES!

Sounds pretty remedial but, prior to, well, yesterday, Daisy never had bubbles in her bath. We tried it once and she got pissed, mostly because she couldn't find her toys in the froth. So, the pink bottle of bubble bath has been sitting on the sink top for some time now.

Not any more! I'm gonna have to go out and buy me a Costco-sized bottle now.

Daisy at 16 Months

With all the other things stealing our attention of late, Daisy's 16-month birthday almost passed us by. We're just 2 months away from a year and a half, which is plain scary.

Since I prattle on a lot on thig blog about Daisy's fantabulous developments, I thought you might appreciate some more pictures and a few less words. So, here are my favorite Daisy photos from the last month...

Denied!

It's one thing ignoring your baby's screams as they fight their naps or some other action that bothers them but, I have discovered, it's quite another when your toddler's bloodcurdling suddenly starts to wrap itself around words.

"Muuummmmmyyyy!!!!" is much harder to ignore than "Waaaaa!" for instance. It demands your attention, specifically. It says "I need you!" and refusing to come to the call is basically saying, "I know, but I'm ignoring you anyway." Ack.

Similarly, crying in the car for what would appear to be no apparent reason is not the same as "Binkieeee! Binkieee! Binkieee!" wailed at you through crocodile tears and spit-sputtering. We used to be able to ignorant and say stuff like "What's wrong, baby? What do you need?" but now we get an answer to our questions and we're forced to specifically deny the request.

There are a whole slew of examples like this recently and even my ability to detach my emotions from rational thought is challenged by some of the cries.

Sometimes, however, it's just hard to keep a straight face. When your toddler sounds like a Jewish grandmother bemoaning the state of the world ("Ohhhhdear! Ohhhhhdear! Ohhhhhdear!") you can't help but smile through their "pain".

Handful

After almost 4 weeks of coughing, and a resurrection of the morning snot fountain, we had to admit that whatever Daisy had, was not going away. So, today we had a visit with the pediatrician. Ms. Daisy has a mild sinus infection that is causing her cough. She's on antibiotics and should be fine soon.

(We're doing well over here since I'm also still coughing and Hubby was diagnosed with a mild case of pneumonia this morning. Fun!)

The sickness part, however, is a walk in the park in comparison to the gut-wrenching, ear-splitting torture chamber that has become the doctor's office. No binkie can save us now from the full-on, full-body meltdown that Daisy has whenever we enter the treatment room. One look at the nurse and she goes BALLISTIC. I'm not talking crying here, I'm talking screaming bloody murder and wailing Ohhhdear! Ohhhdear! Ohhhdear! Muuuummmmyyyy! (repeat) She shakes, spits out her binkie, goes beet red in the face and uses every ounce of strength in her compact, little 20lb frame (yes, she is STILL just 20lbs... just) to fight any check-up or treatment that comes her way.

The nurses and the doctor cannot even listen to her heartbeat these days without her reacting as if they just stabbed her in the back with a serrated-edge knife. It used to be that only the ear-hole peeking thingy did this to her but now that's just the peak of the screaming crescendo, with all 3 of us - me, Hubby, and the doc - holding her down on the table (one taking legs, one taking arms, and one taking head) with every ounce of our strength. This kid can wrench herself out of the grip of all three of us, easy, I kid you not. She is 20lbs of pure fire. If I can harness this for the "beware of strangers" talk in a few years, she'll be formidable and untouchable. I defy anyone to hold her down single-handedly.

Even the doc had to admit that she is one of the strongest toddlers she has ever encountered. Based upon just these visits alone, she now has the impression that Daisy is quite the handful. (Ok, maybe she is sometimes but most of the time she is a pretty happy handful) She consoled us with the fact that Daisy will probably get out of this phase by, say, oh.... age 3. Sooooper! So, only 18 more months to go. God help us as she gets even bigger and stronger. I foresee some kind of Hannibal Lecter restraining device in our future,

In other news, Daisy has taken a sudden and intense disliking to her evening bath routine. Time was she would rush to the stairs and climb up, eagerly, whenever Hubby called down that bath was ready. Then she would play happily in the water and be almost difficult to get out. Over the last few days she has screamed "Nooooooooooooo" at us, at the mere mention of bath (see video below, at end, for a live demonstration) and then, if we proceed, she cries and cries and cries pitifully. Of course, I have absolutely no idea what brought about this sudden 180. After all, she's a toddler, I'm the parent; I don't think I'm supposed to get it. That would just suck all the fun out of guessing.

There have been other 180s too - naps, for instance. Good luck getting any of those wonderful 90 minute mommy-breaks on weekends now. Daisy has pretty much given them up for lent. I've been lucky to secure 50 minutes over the past few weeks, which barely gives me time to do the dishes. I tell myself it's because she's just so excited to spend the day with me that she doesn't want to sleep. (Hey, it could be true!)

Here is a video of Miss Muffet in all her glory, before bedtime tonight. One of her favorite activities these days is to sit in the laundry basket with her furry friends and her beloved sets of Mummy and Daddy's "keyyyssss", throw everything out, and then demand - one by one - that we give them back her. God love her. It's a good job they make these kids cute!