Strollers

Another pet peeve of mine–when parents strap their kids into the stroller with the shoulder straps, rendering the child unable to move and look around.  Yes, those straps have good use when you are jogging quickly with an active child, or if your child has an uncanny way of wriggling out of his or her lap belt, but for the vast majority of children they are unnecessary.  It bugs me.  I’m not a stroller-basher anymore as Adrian absolutely LOVES his stroller (though for the most part I still don’t agree with putting a baby in a stroller, but that’s a story for another day), but it does bother me that kids are now strapped in so they can’t even look around and enjoy the ride.  Just had to get that off.

Adrian is now able to ride his little bike pretty good!  He sits on the seat and pushes off with his feet, though still only goes for about half a second.  That’s okay though, he’s learning and having a great time with it.  It’s a lot of fun to watch.  I can’t really think of much else to say today…hoping to go hiking and swimming this weekend and camping next weekend.  I miss the outdoors.  And for the record, I hate working full time over the summer   It’s making me very very sad…

At the Fair

Dylan, Adrian and I went to the Oregon Country Fair yesterday.  As before, we had a great time!  That is just such a magical and fun place I find myself looking forward to next year’s the minute I get home from the current one!  We met up with Lilah and Linus, who we used to nanny, and their parents.  Adrian had been talking all week about how “on Friday, we go to the country fair and see Lilah!!!”  So, needless to say, he was thrilled when we finally got there and saw Lilah   While at the fair, Adrian learned how to hula-hoop, LOVED looking at all the tall people (on stilts), enjoyed ice cream (vegan) for the first time, took a nap in the stroller even through all the commotion, and peed in the urinal in the outhouse twice!  It was a very eventful day and lots of fun.

Today Creston (3), Tabor (1), and Dan (25) had a joint birthday party at the park.  At one point Adrian and Creston started fighting over something, and it looked as through Creston was about to hit Adrian with this plastic baseball bat.  So I walked over just in time and said to Creston, “it looks like you’re angry at Adrian”, to which he replied quite huffily, “yes!”.  Me: “how come?” Creston: “I don’t know.” Me: “you don’t know?” Creston: “Well, I want to teach Adrian how to swing the bat”, at which point I found out by asking Adrian  that he didn’t want to swing the bat, but would be okay playing with another plastic bat identical to the one in Creston’s hand, which seemed to please both of them.  It made me start to think though about the assumptions we make about children.  Had I made the wrong assumption about Creston and hadn’t stopped to talk with him and see what was bothering him, I never would have learned that he just wanted to show Adrian how to play baseball.  Just by allowing him to express his anger to me and showing him that I understood, while also mediating the conversation between Adrian and Creston, I was able to completely divert a potentially violent situation and change it into two very happy little boys.  It is times like these when I am so grateful for the skills in problem solving and non-violent communication that I know.  I also had a little audience, too, which was also really great to show others how well this process works!

On the slide

After work today Adrian and I went to the open swim session at Creston pool.  We both had a lot of fun and were pooped by the end of it!  There is a little slide in the shallow section where the kids can go down on their own.  After showing Adrian where to go the first time, he was all about standing in line and going up the stairs and down the slide on his own.  I was waiting at the bottom of course.  This was great because it gave him a huge sense of independence while providing a lot of fun and a great learning experience.  Adrian is really great at standing in line and taking turns, but he doesn’t like it when people stand in line behind him.  For some reason he always wants to be last.  He hasn’t quite figured out yet that this means he sometimes greatly delays his turn.  Or maybe he just doesn’t care.  So the first few times Adrian got into line on his own and tried to go behind the kids who lined up behind him (ie: give up his spot to be last) I went over there and helped him stand in line and keep his spot.  The other kids were generally great about it.  Then after a few times of this, I decided I would just let Adrian do it his own way.  So for several minutes he would stand in line, then back out and wait until he could be last again.  Then more kids would line up and he’d back out.  After this happened a few times some of the 5, 6, 7 year old girls caught on to Adrian and helped guide him into line.  It was very cute.  Then after that Adrian just stayed in line when kids lined up behind him!  He was definitely the littelist kid in line most of the time and it was adorable watching him interact with all these bigger kids.  He does love older children.

The downside of the day though, is that Adrian’s sandals got stolen while we were at the pool.  They were in the locker room, with my stuff, inside the diaper bag in a locker.  Not locked, as we were only gone for 45 minutes and I just didn’t think it would be an issue.  Apparently it was.  His little Teva’s were the only sandals he had that fit.  I was so mad, and so upset too.  Why would someone steal little kids shoes?  I think being mad about that wore me out even more than all that bike riding in the hot sun, swimming, and chasing after little kids all day.  So I’m going to bed now.

Adrian’s purple truck

Okay, okay, so I know it’s been probably over a month since I’ve posted.  I’M SORRY!!!!!  I will do my best to be back on track now.  Promise.

So yesterday we flew back home from Arizona.  On the plane as we were coming into Portland Adrian was beyond ready to get off.  So he was looking out the window with Dylan, “finding” our house, nana’s house, Linna’s house, our truck, nana’s truck, and then Adrian’s truck.  Come to find out, Adrian has a truck of his own, and it’s purple!  He had big plans to drive us all around town in his purple truck when we got off the airplane.  It was very cute.  He was even talking about his purple truck again this morning.

Hmm…what else to say…much to my dismay Adrian now goes to sleep in his own bed in his own room every night.  He has been doing this for several weeks now.  All on his own one night he decided that he wanted to go to sleep in his bed, and ever since then that’s the way it has to be.  When he wakes up usually around 11 or so I’ll go get him and bring him into our bed to finish the night out with us.  I’ve finally been able to go to sleep occasionally when he’s not with us, but most of the time I just lay in bed waiting for him to wake up.  He seems to have this pretty good nack though, where most nights he’ll wake up about 5 or 10 minutes after Dylan and I have gone to bed.  It’s great timing, really   I do still wish his bed was at least in our room, but Dylan really wants it in his own room, and Adrian does really enjoy it, so I guess it’s okay.  Plus it’s pretty nice to have that little bit of snuggle time with Dylan again that we haven’t got much of in the past two years.

Adrian’s first sucker

Adrian and I rode our bike to the bank a few days ago and they always have little bowls of hard candy sitting on the counter there.  Once several months ago I let Adrian have a lick of one of the candies I got there, and ever since then he always tries to get candy when we go into the bank.  So on Wednesday when we were there Adrian snatched up a little dum-dum and DID NOT want to let it go.  So we put it in his sweater pocket until we got home, which by then he had forgotten about it.  Apparently I did too, because he found it in his pocket on Thursday!  Not only that but he demanded on eating it.  So we sat together and very kindly shared his sucker–he took a lick, I took a lick, he took a lick, I took a lick and so on.  Adrian was in charge of holding on to the sucker and he was very considerate with making sure we both got licks.  Until we got almost halfway through, then he started being more possessive and wanting to double lick.  And when I pointed that out to him he wanted to keep it to himself even more!  Eventually it reached a point where the farther we got through the sucker, the more he was willing to share with me.  Then it broke in half and he got half and I got half.

It was very interesting, though, this change that occurred halfway through.  I guess it is part of human nature to be greedy and want to keep things to yourself.  Which brings me to the point of where do kids learn things from sometimes?  On a totally different subject but somewhat related as well, Adrian loves looking for bugs and digging for worms.  Only now he wants to hurt them!  No one has ever been mean to bugs or worms like that in front of Adrian, not even the 5 and 6 year olds he’s friends with.  Yet somehow Adrian decided it would be fun to cut worms in half and squish ants…where did that come from?  Is it really just part of his innate boy-ness?  I don’t know.

Fireworks

We took Adrian to see the Rose Festival fireworks on Friday night.  It was a late night for him, but it was well worth it because he was in complete and utter awe over them.  It was so cute.  Shanna, Dan, Creston, and Tabor went with us too.  We brought some adult drinks with us (hehe) which was kind of nice for a change.  We then all went back to Shanna’s to drink and hang out together for the late evening.  Well, Dylan, Adrian and I ended up staying the night!  The funny thing was, we all woke up in the morning like it was completely normal and something we do all the time.  We also all woke up with mighty headaches though too…

We also finally got to use this weekend the bike trailer we got for Adrian!  He loves it!  We rode our bike/trailer down to the fireworks on Friday, then to Lilah’s birthday party today and Adrian really seemed to enjoy it.  I don’t know if he likes it any more than his bike seat, but I’m glad that he likes the trailer in general.  We’ll still probably use his seat for most of the summer though because I like having him so close to me.  And it’s cute

While we were at Lilah’s birthday party today, someone said something to his daughter that made me fume.  Everyone at the party was just about to get cupcakes to frost and sprinkle ourselves.  A little girl, probably about 4 years old, that Adrian had been playing with earlier was sitting on the floor next to me, crying.  Then I heard her dad say to her “Well, you can have a cupcake but no frosting on it because you peed your pants!” which of course made her cry even more.  It made me so mad to hear someone being so disrespectful to his child.  I don’t usually do anything when I see things like this because I feel like it’s not my place, but then
I thought that if no one ever says anything, is it just confirming his belief that he is right, that this is okay?  It is all so frustrating to me.

Playing Pretend and other stuff

I might have mentioned some time before how Adrian and Linna love to play pretend with each other, but now Adrian pretends a lot! It is so cute!!! One of his favorite things right now is to make juice with whatever he can find that looks like a juicer. He’ll come up to me and ask me for a cup, and I’ll go get him one. Then he’ll ask me for an apple, and I’ll hold out my empty hand with an “apple” in it, which he’ll gladly “take” from me. Then sometimes he’ll ask for a knife to cut the apple, so I give him another pretend knife with which he’ll cut his pretend apple. Then he’ll stick the apple in the juicer and bring me a cup full of juice and we’ll drink it together! The whole process is just amazing and says a lot about Adrian’s brain development. You can just see his brain working sometimes when you ask him a question. He’ll sit there for a few long seconds, literally trying to figure it out before responding. I love it!

We spent the last weekend in Bend with Ryan and Corey. We all had a great time, despite the rainy weather. We went to the Modest Mouse concert at the amphitheater there, and even Adrian enjoyed it He was kind of running around like a mad-man, making fans in the beer garden. Then we rode our bikes home in the dark, and he thought that was pretty cool too.

While we were in Bend we stopped at a bike store and Adrian tried out this new kind of bike, called a balance bike.

It has no pedals so the kids learn how to balance first, then when he gets old enough Adrian can go straight to a big two-wheeler bike without training wheels.  He tried it out in the store and loved it!  Norma’s going to get it for his birthday, so we’re pretty excited

Honoring Obligations

It’s always nice when I read an article that is basically a confirmation of my faith in parenting. Particularly when I had never actually read anything about the subject at hand and was just acting that way because I believed it to be best. Then some time later down the road I read something I respect that discusses the merits of my actions and beliefs and I think to myself, “wow, so I was right all along!” The short article that follows is one of those examples. From the website www.joyfullyrejoycing.com.

Honoring obligations
If your child asks you if he can paint a picture, and you say yes, but specify that he has to clean up the mess when he is done, are you going to then clean up the mess for him because when it’s time to do the actual work of clean up, he whines about having to do his part, which was stated beforehand?

I think it makes it confusing to try to mix goals. The goals above are 1) giving a child an opportunity to be creative and 2) to learn to stick to promises.

Personally I think the most important goal in that scenario is for the child to express creativity. If they want to be creative enough to agree to clean up then they must want it pretty badly.

If the mother is putting a barrier of “you must clean up afterwards” between the child and an outlet for creativity, if the creative juices aren’t flowing fiercely enough to brave that barrier, then they’ll choose not to be creative.

So what’s been lost? There are plenty of opportunities to discuss obligations and promises. I don’t think creativity should be sacrificed for a lesson in being true to your word.

My daughter does treat her promises seriously because I’ve made a point to treat my promises seriously. We’ve talked about what it means to lose confidence in someone and how it’s hard to regain that confidence. She knows the consequences and doesn’t want to lose my confidence nor do I want to lose her confidence in me. So we’re honest with each other. But that means that I shouldn’t pressure her into making promises that it will be very difficult for her to follow through on, or that might interfere with something more important. I don’t want her ever to choose not to do something because she is avoiding some made up consequence.

My job is to help her explore the world. Part of that is setting up and cleaning up after her creativity. I do ask her to help. And now that she’s 12 she does do it willingly and can do enough to actually be helpful. Before that, though it seemed a minor thing to me, it really was a major task to her and too big of a burden that got in the way of being creative.

And Dylan wants to move to Phoenix!

I HATE hot weather.  With a passion.  Today, at a whelping 96 degrees, was too hot for both me and Adrian.  It took him an hour and a half to go to sleep tonight.  Poor baby, and poor mama too!  By the end of the day we were both grumpy and tired.  Adrian especially, since he was still grumpy and tired from the sun of yesterday!  This is exactly why I so strongly veto a move to Phoenix.  Never in my life do I want to live in a place where the temperatures are this high and insanely higher for 6 months straight.  I am NOT a hot-weather person!

It’s a bike world for me and Adrian now…

Well, it’s been a while, but in case you didn’t notice Adriano didn’t win the Kentucky Derby.  Must not have been his day.

On a happy note though, things are going pretty well here.  Adrian is usually dry all day now, except when we’re at home when he just doesn’t seem to care much.  He did even poop in the potty two times in the past two weeks though!!  I was very excited   He is growing up so fast right now.  He is very into playing pretend a lot, which is new from about a month ago.  It started several weeks ago with Linna and Ethan, who like to pretend that they have an ice cream stand.  So Adrian started pretending to eat ice cream too, and is now into it all the time.  Watching him pretend play is possibly one of the cutest things I have ever seen him do.

We went to my moms for a mother’s day dinner tonight, and Adrian and Creston unbelievably played in the backyard, together, by themselves, for a very long time.  I’m talking like probably an hour over the course of the evening.  They were taking turns with one basketball, kicking a soccer ball back and forth to each other, playing with rocks without taking them from the other person, pretending to water the plants together, and even holding a real conversation in comprehendable English with each other.  I was very impressed, since the two of them tend to fight a lot when they’re together.  Then just before they went inside they took off their pants and peed in the yard together.  Quite comical.

Now for the big news of the day: I sold my car this morning.  Yep, it’s gone!  Looks like I’ll be busing, biking, and walking from now on.  My manual driving lessons have been going well.  I only need now to work on hills a bit more.  Once I get that down though I’ll be good to go!