Dance Baby, Dance!

On Friday morning Ari tried out her first dance class and it was very monumental to us.  The teacher had initially told us that most times parents will stay in with their child the first couple of lessons and then eventually, the class is supposed to be for the child to be there without the parent.  We went into the class and joined in with everyone and it was really nice but I realized that Ari was really into things for brief times but then she would turn to me instead of listening to the instructors.  I decided that the next moment she was distracted by the activity, I would sneak out and as soon as she got upset, I would come back in, but I was obviously more in the way than supportive.  

Well... Ari stayed in and loved the WHOLE class.  All 45 minutes with me only there the first 5 minutes or so.  She had such a good time with the other children and dancing around to the music.  The class is set up perfectly moving from one thing to the next so fast that they don't even really have a chance to consider being unhappy about mommy not being there.  The milestone is that, while Ari and I have done a lot of classes together in her lifetime, this is the first one where she was experiencing it without me.  My heart was both joyous at how well she did and sad to think that it was really the start of her having a lot of new experiences without me in the near future.  

I totally recommend this dance school.  If you want to hear more about it, please feel free to leave me a comment with your email address if I don't already have it.  Also, leave me your special milestone in the comments, because I would love to hear about them!

Ari's Amazing Day Yesterday

Ari is learning things so fast lately that we are hard pressed to keep up.  I am not good at pulling out my video camera so instead, I am going to start blogging some of her cuter or more amazing moments so that her family can read them and she can read about it when she is older.  :)

Yesterday, was full of such moments so I will just make it a bullet point type of list.  Hehe...

1.  My Mom (a.k.a. Safta, which is grandma in Hebrew) recently bought Ari some underwear.  It isn't because she is potty trained, but more for her to enjoy and also to help keep droopy diapers held up better without wearing a onesie.  Ari loves them!  So I'm changing her yesterday and she wants me to put her underwear on her and I do.  Afterwards, she stands up and says, "underwear.  present. thank you Safta!"  (She actually said someone else's name, because my mom's friend had gotten her presents from the same place and given it to her on the same day as my mom and she mistook who gave the underwear to her.)  She got the presents like 4 or 5 days ago.  I was impressed she remembered they were a present and even more moved by her still thanking the person who gave it to her.  :)

2.  So, as a joke 2 days ago, while we are sitting at a restaurant next door to a starbuck's, my mom's friend points to the starbuck coffee sign and says to Ari, "What does this say?"  This is the perfect trigger for my little speller and so of course I have to now spell the words and then repeat them to her.  S-t-a-r-b-u-c-k-s Starbucks!  C-o-f-f-e-e Coffee!  Yesterday, we ate at a place that was across a wide parking lot from a Starbucks  and this same friend jokingly points across the parking lot asking Ari again, what does that say?  I tell her, look at the green letters honey.  She looks over and finds the green letters and sure enough says without faltering, "Coffee, Starkbucks Coffee."  LOL  We're starting her vices early!

3.  Also at this same lunch yesterday, as we are all eating and playing with Ari, with no prompting from anyone, Ari starts to say something that we are all scrambling to understand.  I ask her to repeat herself and struggle again.  One more time, honey.  Ari: "Uno, dos, tres, quatro,..."  Apparently, she has learned to count in Spanish from watching Dora.  Thanks Dora!

4.  As we are leaving lunch she starts saying Big 5, Little 5.  I figure she is seeing some sign that has a big 5 on it and a little 5 on it.  I look around and find that what she is really doing is reading from the store sign.  "Big 5 Sporting Goods"  She was reading Big 5 and then supplying the little 5 since so many of her books work in opposites.  Hehe...

5.  Lastly, we went to a park in the afternoon and a little girl about her age came up to her and said "Hi."  Ari replied, "Hi!  What's your name?"  That had me in stitches.  She gets it from one of her Signing Time DVDs that is all about meeting new friends.  

Man, they pick up so much!

Sweet Dreams

This is going to be the big elephant in the room with me whenever I am in a room talking about sleep with other moms.  I tend to keep my own council unless I see someone else who is showing signs of seeing this issue in the same way I do.  That said... I have VERY strong opinions about children and sleep.  Strong like... want to tour around convincing people to my way of thinking.  It's such a touchy subject, though, isn't it?  Most of us want to do what is best for our children, but there is soooo much bad information out there and as sleep deprived mommies and daddies, if someone offers us a way to a good night's sleep and tells us it is good and healthy, we are likely to take them up on it.  So... what is this really all about?  It is about what I like to call the Cry-It-Out (CIO) myth.

Let's tackle self-soothing first because it is the big one that you are told is so important about doing CIO.  My pediatrician doesn't really advocate one way or another and I have no idea because I didn't care to know, what he did with his own children.  When I asked him about self-soothing, he said that self-soothing isn't something that is only acquired by leaving a child to cry at night.  It is a day and night thing.  If your child gets into a difficult or frustrating situation and can figure out how to take themselves from frustrated/angry back to calm and even happy, then you have a self-soother.  There are children who truly have no self-soothing techniques and they will completely lose it and have no way back from a bad situation without a parent intervening.  So... doing CIO because you want to teach your child to self-soothe is not necessary nor necessarily productive (see later comments).

Next, let's talk about actually getting sleep.  That's always an important part of why people choose it.   The truth is though that I have never met a parent who used CIO who hasn't over and over again time and again had sleep issues come up.  Children are just not made for sleeping well every single night (not that most adults are either).  They get sick a lot, which keeps them up, they have milestones that get their little minds working so hard that they can't sleep, they have belly aches that they can't convey to us, they wake up from a bad dream and can't convey that either, they need a lot of love and needing comfort and loving isn't something we turn off when we go to sleep.  Haven't you woken up from some bad dream and wanted to cuddle into your spouse for their comfort and warmth?  Now... we have all sorts of advanced thought processes that allow as to mentally say, "my spouse is sleeping peacefully and I don't want to wake him because he has a big day tomorrow, so I will just work it out on my own and go back to sleep.  I'll get my hugs in the morning."  Children can't reason like we do.  So this brings up a few points I would like to separate out. 

When you do CIO, what really happens?  Does you baby learn to happily just go to sleep on their own or do they learn that when they cry, no one is going to address them and their needs so they give up.  There is, after-all, an inherent intelligence to all of us that says when you try to run through a wall, that eventually, you will have hit your head enough that you will figure out nothing is going to change the fact that you can't run through the wall.  So... eventually, a baby will wear themselves out enough and come to the realization enough that they will stop crying and go to sleep.  The problem arises from what I said in the previous paragraph.  When your child gets sick, you can not let them just cry themselves back to sleep because something could very well be wrong.  So... you are now very attentive for a few days.  After they are better, you want to go back to your previous sleep behavior, but your child is now used to getting your attention and you essentially have to start all over again with CIO.  

It has been proven that while all of the things that have happened to us are not in recall memory, they are memories.  This leads to another problem for you as the parent when using CIO.  Who do you think is going to have a better sleep association?  The child who remembers sleep as a traumatic, lonely, separation anxiety full time or the one who has happily been lead to sleep with comforting and nurturing techniques?  Which child then is easier to get to sleep as a toddler?  The one with a positive happy association to sleep or the one who has a negative association to sleep?  Essentially, what I am saying, is that you are shooting yourself in the foot.  Yes, you will get more sleep when they are babies, SOME OF THE TIME, but you will be fighting to get them to want to go to sleep or to go to sleep without too much fuss, for a long time to come.

Let's talk about nightmares and nurturing now.  I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point our society decided that anything that can't speak, is not as worthy of affection and respect.  If you were to ask most parents, what would happen if your 4 year old came to you in the middle of the night and said they had a bad dream and they were scared, they would say something along the lines of they would invite the child to sleep with them, they would go sleep in the child's room, they would help the child look around the room for monsters and show them everything was alright, they would use some sort of imaginary play to vanquish the monsters, and they would definitely hug and kiss their child letting them know they are safe.  Somehow, because our older child can tell us what is bothering them, we are more willing to extend ourselves overnight while our babies and young toddlers, who don't have any way to communicate except crying, are left to deal with any fearful emotions on their own.  Even if an older child came in and said, "Mommy I'm lonely and sad," we would address them in some nurturing, compassionate way and yet, again, our little ones are left crying for a hug alone.

I'm sure I have more to say on the matter and might post again, but here is my last two thoughts on the matter.

Someone once said, though I don't know who, that "a society can be best judged by how it takes care of it's youngest and oldest members of its society."  Essentially, how we handle the most vulnerable around us.  Many people use CIO and many stick the elderly in homes and barely visit.  I wonder how we will be judged?

The last thing is a bit of a story for you to follow.

You have just been in a horrible car accident.  You cannot move anything except your neck up, though unfortunately, your vocal chords were severed as well.  Your loving family, including your husband, are taking good care of you and supporting you.  Your husband feeds you, he gives you something to drink, he takes care of cleaning you and all of your toiletry needs.  After taking care of all of these things all day, he has now brought you up to bed.  He talked to you as he tucked you in.  Told you how much he loves you and said goodnight.  Now... your husband has rigged a string dangling near your face that is connected to a bell downstairs.  If you turn your head, you can bite it and pull and he can hear that you need him.  You are laying in bed trying to sleep and something is wrong... Maybe you started to fall asleep but had a nightmare, maybe you just can't get to sleep no matter how hard you try and you are laying there lonely, maybe even though you did eat, you are hungry again, or thirsty again, maybe your just feeling sad, etc.  Who knows?  So... you turn your head and you give the strong some tugs.  No one comes.  You give more tugs.  You start getting upset as still no one comes.  You tug even harder and more frequently and tears start to fall from your eyes.  You are pulling and pulling but no one is coming!  Eventually, you have worn yourself out, your eyes are droopy from all of your salty tears, and you fall asleep.  This is you experiencing CIO.  

I wish I didn't have to put it so bluntly or it wasn't so harsh, but it is what it is.  And this is what it is.  

I want to say again, that I don't judge most moms that use CIO (most because I can't deal with the idea of actually turning off the monitor and not knowing if your baby needs you or not, I'm more talking about those doing CIO the ferber method or others where it is a progressive and then ultimately left alone thing but you are still listening to know if something is truly wrong like croup developing overnight).  I feel they are just told by pediatricians and books that CIO is good for their baby because they will learn to self-soothe and be good sleepers and that is why I call it a myth.  A doctor can tell you that clinically speaking, your child can sleep through the night at 6 month, but just because something is clinically okay, doesn't mean that it is what is right.  It doesn't take into account that as parents we are here to nurture our little ones day AND night.  When I talk to the older generation, they all say they don't remember sleeping much for about 2 to 2 1/2 years and then their kids (with no training) started to sleep through the night.  They didn't feel entitled to sleep the way many of us do.  It was just a part of being a parent.  

Ari has never been allowed to CIO.  There are times that she has cried from one thing or another in my arms as I comforted her, but she has never been allowed to lay in her room by herself and cry.  She is now almost 28months old and loves to go to sleep.  We have to fight over sleep maybe once or twice a month because she had too long a nap, too late in the day, and she isn't ready to sleep when we feel it is as late as we are comfortable with her going to sleep.  Again, it's very rare.  There are actually times where she will initiate her sleep routine.  We will be watching her bedtime show and we think she still looks kind of awake so we play another short show and she will grab her frog friend in the middle of the show, ask for her pacifier, and say "goodnight mommy" because daddy mostly puts her to sleep.  She gets a certain amount of books, maybe a song or story with the lights off, and we lay her down completely awake, say we love her and goodnight, and she goes right to sleep on her own.  There are no short cuts to this.  Ari slept well from 6 weeks to 6 months using "The Happiest Baby on the Block" techniques.  After that, I have had about 1 1/2 years of on and off bad sleep but still easy going to bed and naps.  Just lately, she has started, on her own, sleeping through the night.  

If this doesn't convince you, then I hope it at least gets you thinking.

There will be more lighthearted posts in the future, but for now this was a big thought I had to get off my chest.

Thanks for reading!

Michelle

Addendum to Terrific Twos

So... my Mom lives just up the street from us and on some mornings, she will take Ari for an hour or so to let me take care of the house or what-have-you. My husband will walk her up there, they say their goodbyes, and he comes back to get his laptop and goes off to work. I should also mention that usually my daughter will just say and want "a hug and a kiss." Lately, though, she has been really into spelling things. She asks us to spell all sorts of random things and we feel like we are a walking spelling bee.

So... my husband comes back today and tells me how it went.

Ari: Spell erough. 
Hubby: Erough?" 
Ari: NO! Spell erough!
Hubby: Enough?
Ari, now pouting: Spell Erough!
Hubby: I'm sorry honey I don't understand.
After about 5 minutes as Ari is getting more and more upset by his total lack of understand...
Hubby: I love?
Ari: YES!
Hubby: I-L-O-V-E, I love.
Ari: Spell you!

It brought tears to my eyes! They can be so amazing and sweet!

The Terrific Twos

Another short but sweet thought.  

You hear about the terrible twos every time you turn around, but does anyone else think of them as the terrific twos?  Are we the only ones?  I'm not saying we don't have stand-offs, days with lots of limit testing, and times of strict discipline, but we also get to actually play together (versus me entertaining), we laugh, we hug each other, we share jokes, and go on adventures.  

My husband and I are soooo not baby people and are so much happier with Ari as a toddler and yet I keep seeing these things that call this time period terrible.  Maybe it is just a perspective thing and when you look at it as terrific, it really is, and when you look at it as terrible, it really is.  The whole self-fore-filling prophecy.  All I know is that I love Ari as a toddler, tantrums and all, because we are having so much more fun together and she can communicate to me her thoughts which are always surprising and interesting.  Getting a glimpse into how her mind works is a wonder.

On a funny note for discipline, one of our standard disciplinary actions that I take is if I need something done timely (i.e. pick clothes out, buckle car seat belt, put clothes on, etc.) and she is giving me a hard time, I tell her I am counting to 10 and X needs to get done by then.  The first few times, Ari didn't quite get it and since she loves to count, she would count along with me, speeding me up, but would by the end or right after, swiftly get it done.  Try keeping a straight face through that!  The more recent variation that I couldn't keep a straight face through was:  

We were in the car with my mom and Ari has to do her seat belt herself.  "Baby's turn!"  When I see she isn't really doing it, but won't allow my mom to do it, I say, I am counting to 10 and then Safta (Grandma in Hebrew) will do it.  I start counting and as I get to 3 she yells out, "Almost there!"  With a barely contained grin, I keep counting and reach 6 and again, "Almost there!"  With a barely contained laugh but a big smile, I continue, and when I get to 10 she yells, Yay!  We did it!  Safta do it!"  Then she laughs.  After our little excursion, we get back in the car and I am prepared for the fight, when I jump in the car, as my mom is about to do up her car seat, Ari says, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10!  Safta do it!" and proceeds to laugh.  So much for my discipline.  It is now a fun counting game.  At least we know who's in charge!  LOL  I really do love this time in her life!

Not to make it seem like it's all rays of sunshine, Ari and I have had 45 minute crying, angry, stand-offs, where we missed one of her classes, because we were fighting over putting on a shirt.  I wanted her to wear one and she was thinking maybe no.  Needless to say, I won, because I don't cave once I have put my proverbial foot down, but she got to choose a coat to wear over it, though it was super hot outside.  Ahhh.... I'm still learning the art of compromise.

So... This installment was not as short as I had thought initially, but hopefully still sweet or at least a good chuckle worth.  :)

"You're Going to Spoil that Baby"

How many of us have heard this from strangers because we are holding our babies a lot or being attentive when they cry.  "You are going to spoil that baby", must have been beaten into some people by someone who was not sparing the rod.  LOL

So... what is spoiling?  Is it showing another human being that you love them unconditionally?  If my husband showered me with endless amount of love but our relationship was exactly the same otherwise, would I be spoiled?  Would I expect to always get my way?  Would I behave badly with others?  Would I believe that my wishes were more important than other people's?  Or... Would I just be a person who knew she was loved and was able to be confidant in myself and the world around me knowing I could always turn to my husband when a day goes poorly?

I don't believe there is any way to spoil a child with love and attention.  I do believe that you can spoil a child when you give into their demands all of the time.  If you have said "no", but then turn around and cave because they are crying and throwing a tantrum.  If you let them run amok in a public place without checking their behavior.  If you allow bad behavior to go unpunished because you aren't following through with consequences.  These are the building blocks of spoiling a child.  The amusing thing I have found, is that a lot of times, those same parents who don't believe in giving a lot of attention to their children are the one's caving in to a crying child.  So... whose child will be spoiled?  My disciplined beloved baby girl or the unruly child loved at a distance?

I say... Love, love, and more love!  If I'm spoiling her, then let the spoiling continue!

This is a brief one.  Isn't it nice I'm not writing a novel every time?

Being a Perfect Parent.. NOT!

So... originally my intention was to find enough time to come on here once a week to write, but like all good relationships, when they start, you just want to spend all your time together.  Now that the spigot has been opened, I'm sleeping even less because all those ideas I've been harboring in my mind are all trying to step up to the plate to be the next entry.  Sheesh!  I really need some sleep!

I once saw Rabbi Harold Kushner, a writer, speak at a college I was attending.  He was discussing the topic of forgiveness, but in the context of this topic, someone brought up parenting and Rabbi Kushner had a response that has stuck with me to this day.  Now... if you think I have the memory to quote it verbatim, then you don't know me very well (and since this is a blog, actually, most of you don't, LOL).  He said that it is important to show your children forgiveness but also yourself forgiveness when being a parent.  That if we never show our children that we accept ourselves as people who make mistakes and who then need to apologize for those mistakes, then we are teaching our children that to be loved you can't be wrong.  What an important message we send with a simple "I'm sorry" to our children when we are wrong so that they know we love them whether they make mistakes or not. 

I now keep that message tucked away in my heart and will do my utmost best to take responsibility for my mistakes and blunders, in front of Ari, as often as possible.  I have apologized for yelling too loud when I got mad, for accidentally whacking her against something when I am carrying her, for bumping into each other, for spilling food, and for taking apart the legos creation she has made without asking permission first.  It is easy for me to find places in my life to show off my mistakes and blunders because I am often a walking accident.  I apologize when I can't keep a promise to her or if something is taking longer than it should.  I make sure she knows that I am about as faulty as they come but that I hope she loves me anyway.  I also always make sure to reiterate to her how much I love her when I make her apologize for hitting, or throwing "the hard stuff", or yelling when I ask her to be quieter.  

The message of not being perfect has sunk in with me so much that when my husband and I were dating, at one point while driving along, I told him that I wanted him to tell me 2 things he didn't like about me.  He looked at me like I was crazy and said "I know this is some kind of test."  I said, I'm a big girl and that I truly wanted him to be honest.  

You see...  I had been in a relationship once where the person put me on a pedestal and I had hated it there.  The person refused to see ME, all of me, and whenever I would do something that didn't suit the perfect picture he had created in his head, there would be an intense argument.  Even when I finally left, this person refused to understand why it wasn't working, why it would never work, or to see me as anyone other than the picture they had in their head.  

Fast forward and we are back in the car with my then boyfriend/now husband and he's trying to come up with 2 acceptable things to say that he doesn't like about me.  He actually did really well.  He didn't like 2 things about me that I didn't know were there.  Which ended up being kind of a funny twist to it.  And here I thought I knew my flaws and, whammo, I've got some new ones.  In the end, I thanked him for being honest and said... I just wanted to make sure you saw me for who I AM and loved me anyway.

So besides apologies and imperfections in what we DO, sometimes it is hard to see our children as people who aren't going to be perfect in who they ARE.  I have never met any perfect person adult or child and I don't plan to.  Ari is a darling who likes to play, to learn, and to laugh (though this one is still new to us, she has always been very serious).  Ari is also extremely headstrong and commanding.  She tells us whose turn it is to sing a song.  If I start singing and she doesn't want it, she will outright say, "NO, It's Daddy's turn!".  She tells us precisely which CD she wants to listen to in the car and on that CD which song.  Sometimes, her commands can be complied with and it's no big deal, but sometimes of course, the parents will be the ones making the decisions and life as we know it must come to an end.  It can get aggravating and even angering.  That's okay, though.  My parents find me aggravating and angering sometimes too.  So does my husband, my friends, and I'm sure if you asked her, Ari would probably say the same thing.  We all have parts of our personalities that make us difficult in one way or another for others to get along with.  It's just another facet of who we are and we take the good perfect pieces of those we love as well as the bad messed up ones.  :)

Unfortunately, we often try to achieve being the perfect parent raising the perfect child fall far short.  I can't have a child who is cuddly but want her to also be independent, or active and happy but want her to be a good sleeper, or cautious and safe but be adventurous and aim big.  So, in some respects, this harkens back to my first post about boxes.  How can you classify any child into only all the boxes that you think are positive.  That isn't going to be fair to them and it surely isn't going to be good for your relationship.  

Guess we're left with loving them for all the wonderfully good and horribly bad things that they are.  A whole person.  Just as we hope they love us too.

To conclude this one I'm going to quote (and by quote, once again I mean paraphrase) one of my favorite teachers growing up, Mr. Hansel.  He had a twenty something daughter at the time if I remember correctly and he said, "I love her dearly, she's my daughter, I just don't like her right now!"  And that's okay!

Little one rushing in!  Gotta go!