A Disconcerting Afternoon.

As far back as I can remember, Taylor has always been a little autonomous: choosing her own toys, choosing her own day and nightwear, putting on her own shoes, brushing her teeth, and regulating her sleep schedule to match Adrianne’s work schedule, but recently she has been acting a lot more independently. I’ve enjoyed watching her slowly take control of herself and her environment, little by little, milestone by milestone, word for word. There is an indescribable pride, like catching a pass and running 50 yards to score six points at one’s homecoming football game or creating a work of art with one’s own hands and having it recognized by fellow artisans, watching your children grow and steadily develop their unique personalities through both trial and error and those experiences which you’ve help create, like trips to the beach. Today, however, of all those days and of all those minor acts of independence and all those positive and negative experiences she has had in the last twenty-eight months, Taylor’s extreme self-reliance has confounded, bewildered, and even scared me.

Looking back, her daylong pedantic independence began last night. During her bath time she refused to let me wash her. She wanted to pour the bathwater over her own arms using the “green cup;” she wanted to put her own soap on “ba, ba, pants” (her name for sponges); and she wanted to wash the soap off all by herself. So this morning, at 6 a.m. to be exact, much too early to “go downstairs” as she requested, it didn’t surprise me when she refused my hand and climb into bed to catch a few more z’s before Simon awoke. What did surprise me is waking up 45 minutes later to finding her sleeping on the floor with one leg draped over the top of the clothes basket at the foot of our bed while dozing full-length on one of Adrianne’s pillows she had pulled to the floor. Little did I know that this behavior, the distancing and utterly complete independence from Dad, was only the beginning … the proverbial tip of the iceberg for the remainder of the morning and most of the afternoon.

On an average day one kid wakes about 30 to 60 minutes before the other. Lately, Taylor wakes before Simon. Our routine together, before heading downstairs, has been to pick out her day clothes, go downstairs, get changed, eat, and read together until Simon wakes. We then both go upstairs and get Simon changed and dressed for the day. I carry Simon down the stairs and I usually help Taylor walk down the stairs by holding onto her hand. Today, however, Taylor emphatically told me, “T no hold Dadda hand.” Strange, I thought, coupled with this morning’s nap on the bedroom floor, but it was nothing too crazy or too out of the ordinary, yet.

I was a little perplexed and concerned, although, when, two hours later, she didn’t tell me she had pooped. Adrianne and I have been working towards potty training her for some time now. We know Taylor is getting close to starting potty training because she usually tells us right after she makes a mess in her diaper. So I was dumbfounded to find poop smeared all over her bottom, meaning she had walked around and sat in feces for a while without whispering a word to me. I was even more troubled when she began screaming that her legs hurt when I was changing her, “Dadda hands hurt T legs.” I know that she has been going through a growth spurt these last two weeks, she’s eating everything in sight, she’s grown out of her 2T and 3T clothing, and her legs, my God!, have gotten so long. But I cannot remember the last time she felt pain anywhere on her body to the touch.

At the playground down the street she continued to voice her self-reliance and new-found confidence in herself: “T no hold Dadda hand,” over the rough terrain separating the sandbox from the swing set; “T no hold Dadda hand [down the] slide;” and “T no hold Dadda hand [on the] doggy [ride].” Monotonous? Yes. Fascinating? Yes. A cause for concern? No. But the pattern of shunning Dad’s help before it was even offered did start to get a little annoying.

As one may guess, Taylor’s independence lasted the remainder of the morning. She wanted to take out and use the bubble machine, alone, hold the soap bubble bottle by herself, and walk around the yard instead of riding in her push car. No problem, I thought. She’s just expressing herself.

By noon both kids were exhausted. Spending over an hour at the park and another hour outside in the yard had tuckered them out to the point of shear burnout. Simon could barely walk without tripping; his face was placid; and his eyes had “a deer in the headlights look” to them. It was, unquestionably, naptime for Simon. Our normal routine (Taylor’s and mine) for putting him to bed is for Taylor to come upstairs with us, turn on his wave sound machines, turn on his Fisher Price monitor, and gather two pillows of her choice from Mom and Dad’s bed to bring downstairs while I feed Simon. I’ve given up trying to put her to bed upstairs. Sadly, I’ve succumbed to allowing her to sleep downstairs on the living room floor. I know that someday I will pay for this allowance, but for now the concession works, Taylor naps. This afternoon, however, she barely had the energy to drag the pillows down the hallway from Mom and Dad’s room into Simon’s. And instead of throwing them down the stairs like she normally does, she passed out two steps into Simon’s room.

Simon, as anticipated, fell asleep. That’s when it happened.

While leaning over to pick Taylor up and carry her downstairs, I must have scared her from her slumber. Like a fullback barreling through the offensive line’s three hole, she sprang to her feet, forced herself between Simon’s crib and his ash dresser, and crashed her right arm and shoulder into a wrought iron dresser handle. The pain was immediate and intense. Simon’s reactions to Taylor’s screams were just as alarming, he wailed louder than any child should– frightened, shocked, and bewildered as to why his big sister was bawling beside his bedside.

I made a split second decision to take Taylor downstairs, calm her down as quickly as I could, and return to Simon’s room to comfort him before laying him back down for his overdue afternoon nap. Looking back, I truly was in a pickle. No matter which course I took– calming Taylor first or attempting to calm Simon first¬ or trying to calm Taylor in Simon’s room or attempt to calm Simon with Taylor screaming next to her– nothing would have worked better than what I did, I’m sure of it, I think. The unexpected consequences of bringing Taylor downstairs and leaving her there to tend to Simon, however, stabbed me through the heart.

I think Taylor felt abandoned. All day long she wanted her independence from me, but I was always by her side when she demanded it from me. This time, however, I think that in her time of need, justly or not, she still wanted her independence from me, so long as I held her in my arms while she cried her fears away. She just could not recognize that she was physically all right and Simon, because of being woken up so abruptly, wasn’t. He needed immediate comforting.

Thankfully, Simon calmed down after I picked him up and held him for a couple of minutes. Taylor, despite my hastily return downstairs, vigorously evaded me with fervor. At every advance Taylor repeated, “Dadda no touch T.” I was crushed.

For the next two hours Taylor shunned my very presence. If I walked into the room, she walked out. If I walked near her, she hid in a corner. My baby wanted nothing to do with me. In her eyes, compounded by exhaustion, muscle fatigue, and a sore shoulder, I had failed to be there when she needed me most. I felt sick to my soul.

Talking to her was useless. Comforting her was impossible. I gave her space, lots of it.

I worked in the office; I worked in the kitchen; I even re-did the dishes. In time, I caught a couple of glimpses of Taylor looking around the corner for me. Eventually, she asked to go outside and allowed me to push her around the yard in her Step 2 car and hand her a couple of freshly bloomed flowers by the stream. We didn’t say a word to one another, but I felt the tension was slowly breaking down, to my relief.

An hour later Adrianne returned from work. It was like a magical button had been pushed: all the animosity and all the avoiding disappeared– everything was back to normal. Taylor was laughing, playing, and she even jumped on Daddy’s lap as she played with her mother and me. By bedtime, Taylor was sitting on my left thigh and Simon sat on my right as we read book after book after book together. I guess Mommies do make everything better.

It has been several days since this incident happened and my stomach still turns in knots over it. I thought I did everything right. I thought I made the best decision. I thought … I thought … I thought. Sometimes there is no right decision. Sometimes no matter which decision one makes he or she will be wrong. I think in this case, however, my strong relationship with Taylor will smooth over this little bump in the road of our lives and all will soon be forgotten, except by me.

We'll Never Know.

Taylor’s vocabulary has expanded; she is speaking in complete sentences. Her average sentence length is roughly four to six words, and every once in a while seven words. According to the What to Expect: The Toddler Years, she is well ahead of the cognitive development curve. As a matter of fact, the book states that by three years old she should have a vocabulary of 31 words and speak in two to three word sentences, utilizing between one to three adjectives out of her language toolbox to describe people, places, things or ideas, and using prepositions and prepositional phrases such as “on the boat” and “in the air” and “out the door,” frequently. Proudly, I must announce to family and friends that she reached and surpassed those benchmarks months ago. We are finally at the point where we can ask Taylor what is wrong and she’ll answer us. If she needs something, anything, she can articulate it to us. And she is able to respond to simple questions such as, “What is Simon doing?” or “What would you like to wear this morning?” Simon, on the other hand, is still only fifteen months old. His needs and desires are heard by us, generally speaking, not spoken to us, in the form of a cry, grunt, or with clenched fists shortly followed by a groan, but he’s working on it.

This lack of dialogue, even in its simplest form, can be frustrating at times. For example, yesterday morning Simon woke up at 5 a.m. crying at the top of his lungs. My initial guess for his abrupt stir was hunger pains, followed by possible gas pains and / or teething pains. When fed, he ate little, stamping out the hunger guess. He hadn’t pooped during the night nor was he uncomfortable in a seated position– so it wasn’t gas pains. And, he wasn’t grabbing at his teeth nor did he mind when I palpitated the top and bottom of his mouth searching for a new fang or swollen gums. He did, however, have a slightly stuffy nose, but not enough to slow or impede his consumption of milk. I had, and I still have, no idea what was wrong with him. We’ll never know why he woke up early or why it took him another hour to fall back asleep.

The nice thing, even though it does little good at three o’clock in the morning, is that Taylor does understand Simon’s needs and his limited vocabulary. She is the first to let us know “Simon pooped” or “Si Pa hungry” or “Sipe’s want[s] [to] walk” or “Si Pa want gold fish [snacks].” I have, halfheartedly, thought about waking Taylor up during those nights that I can’t get Simon down for bed or when he wakes in the middle of the night and refuses to lay back down and asking her, “What’s wrong with him, Taylor?” I have to admit, as foolish and off the wall as this idea may sound, after an hour of crying, alligator rolling, and personal anguish, I’m ready to try just about anything. Thankfully though, Simon’s nighttime rousing doesn’t happen much anymore. And, if he is having a hard time falling asleep at night then it’s probably because he still has energy to burn before turning in or he is in some type of internal, gastric or muscular pain.

A friend of mine recently joked that I should be writing a child development book, comparing the developmental stages of girls and boys, utilizing my prior blogs as primary documentation and as a case study. I laughed then as I laugh now at the idea of making my kid’s lives more public, but that doesn’t mean I’m not considering it. I guess time will tell what I’ll end up doing with these 600 words every week. Until then, I’ll just keep typing away, reflecting on what I think I know, and making adjustments along the way. Someday, maybe, everything I see my kids do will make sense. Until then ….

Division of Play.

Having more than one toddler playing in a small area takes a little planning, a little creativity, and sometimes a lot of hands-on refereeing. Ideally, kids should be able to play by themselves with minimal support from an adult. Ideally. Toddlers, however, still requires one to give a bit more guidance and have a bit more patience and flexibility before letting them off on their own.

Over the last two years I’ve watched Taylor progress from complete dependence during her playtimes to a much celebrated virtual independence from me. There are times, although still too often to take for granted, that she’ll play by herself for such a long period of time that I feel obligated to stop what I’m doing and silently peek around the corner to check on her. Simon, on the other hand, is still very much dependent on direct adult interaction, regardless of how much his sister strives to have a twenty-five pound playmate; he needs to be watched. Too many times have I caught him standing on one of his play chairs, gnawing on a choking hazard, or poking around and into things where his chub fingers don’t belong. Simon is, however, more independent, if memory serves me correctly, at thirteen months than Taylor ever was at his age. I guess that is the difference between a girl and a boy and the difference between one’s first and one’s second child. Simon, by default, has learned to wait for attention while Mom or Dad takes care of his sister’s needs, complete house chores, cook, etc., whereas Taylor rarely encountered such delays at an early age and has only recently, with the birth of her brother, had to master the art of self-restraint. Thank God!

Through trial and error I’ve learned that if the kids are safe and are playing without assistance, guidance, or direct supervision that one should leave them alone. Little distracts the creativity of a toddler more than some big person sticking their nose or “helping” where it doesn’t belong or is not needed. At the same token, absolute freedom can quickly morph into absolute disaster if one is not careful. For example, the other night, about an hour before bedtime, the kids were running from room to room squealing with joy as one played the mouse and the other the cat. It’s a new game they have begun playing, fraught with anxiety¬– on my part– as they dash and stumble under and around toys, furniture, daddy and the cat, alike. On this particular night the chasing game last nearly as long as Jeopardy!– the only TV show I force the kids to tolerate Dad’s partial attention whether they want to or not. Moments before Final Jeopardy! the pitter-patter of Simon’s size 5s and Taylor’s size 6s abruptly halted in the far corner of the office, about the furthest away from my chair as they could get, and I heard Taylor’s emphatic three word command, “Simon no bite!,” followed by a piercing scream and the ear-piecing bawl of two crying tykes. Payback is a you-no-what!

Over the winter and spring, I’ve come up with a quick list of “must do’s” to keep my kids for bludgeoning one another with naked baby dolls and Lego’s during those long rainy days when we are stuck inside. While this list is far from extensive, thus far, it has worked for me.

1. If they are playing safely, leave them alone.
2. Don’t expect them to share. Have two toys ready before handing the first one out.
3. Play positioning is important. I’ve found that sitting them back-to-back instead of side-by-side or front-to-front helps limit toy jealousy, wandering hands, and flailing feet.
4. Offer limited choices. Filling a room full of toys causes more headaches than one can imagine. Besides tripping over them, having too many toys out confuses and frustrates the kids.
5. Along with number four, limit the number of parts of various toys helps to focus play. Does a toddler really need 235 Lego’s or 22 plastic animals out at one time?
6. Watch for signs of boredom or frustration and be prepared to step in and make the toy fun again or switch it out.
7. Along with number seven, before switching out a toy I find asking if they are done with the toy helps them transition to a new toy, especially if their sibling takes an interest in the old toy before it’s out of sight.
8. Switching or remove toys from the play area quickly. Do it fast and don’t hesitate! Renewed interest in an old toy rarely lasts but a few seconds before the being kicked to the side or hurled into the opposing corner of the room.
9. Sometimes putting toys away loudly or, say, driving the Tonka dump truck to its bin will illicit interest or curiosity. (I like to use this little trick just before taking down a new toy for the kids to play with. It allows me a few seconds to leave the room and introduce the new toy without a lull in the action.)
10. And finally, when the kids have had enough playing, stop. There does come a time when playtime is over. I suggest having a light snack or meal ready to cushion the space of time between toy playtime and another activity.

Good luck.

Rain Day.

I believe there are three levels of cleaning one’s house. These levels are familiar to all, although I’ve been in enough households to know that some people rarely make it passed beyond the first or second level. Just the same, a level one cleaning consists of moving items around and out of the way, picking up items off the floor– usually to place in larger piles to be dealt with at a later date, doing the dishes, and putting away whatever has been used throughout the day, somewhere. This is the type of cleaning one does immediately after receiving a phone call from family or friends telling them they’ll be over in 30 minutes for a visit; or late at night just after the kids have gone to bed so that one’s wife (mine in this case) will not pull her hair out in frustration over the mess one’s left for her to contend with before she takes off to work at 6 a.m. the following morning. In our house, a level one cleaning means putting the kid’s toys in the living room’s multicolored bins and baskets, wiping down the kitchen table and countertops, emptying and refilling the diaper supply basket, and stacking everything else in neat little piles on that same table and those same countertops to be taken care of later on. A level two cleaning involves a little more time, effort, and kid juggling. It includes moving furniture and large toys while vacuuming and dusting, washing and folding and putting away laundry, and a general sorting of toys, papers, projects, etc. into their proper places or at alternative sites. A level three cleaning, commonly known as spring-cleaning, takes the most time, most effort, and most patience. Over the last two days we’ve completed a selective spring-cleaning of the kid’s toys, and what an accomplishment it has been!

My wife and I are adventurous creatures, always have been and always will be. I fondly remember either being kicked out of the house by my mother for fighting with my older brother or taking off and trekking through the woods for long hours during the day. Later in life I continued my escapades by hiking through the woods or riding my motorcycle on the sharpest serpentine roads I could find. Adrianne also affectionately reminisces about taking her horse and galloping down old railroad tracks, up and over hills and pastures, and through countless open fields in her youth. So today, it’s not too hard to imagine why Mom and Dad like to go “bye-bye” quite often. In doing so, we often find ourselves at the doors of Wal-Mart, Target, Borders, and Barns and Noble picking up this and that for the kids. The kid’s also have generous family members and very generous grandparents. So today’s cleaning was more than a necessity.

I would like to say that this week’s cleaning was routine. It wasn’t. We have had so many rainy days these last two weeks that I’ve resorted to changing the kid’s clothing two or three times a day because of how soaked the backyard is. I’ve even had to resort to putting superglue on my toes because the skin has cracked from continual submersion in the muck and mud that separates our lawn from the creek behind the house. I’ve also used and the kids have played with just about every toy we own, causing pieces and parts of different toys to become intermingled beyond the expected accidental mixing.

Besides cleaning up a little clutter, we have been able to give away most of the out-grown toys to expecting mothers or to a local church. We’ve been able to reunite long-lost missing pieces, make once incomplete toys useful again, and organize the toys by ability level. In other words, I can now take an age appropriate toy off of one shelf and hand it to Taylor and take an ability appropriate toy off another shelf and hand it to Simon, without either one wanting the other’s toy. And since today’s forecasts, tomorrow’s forecast, and the next three days’ worth of forecasts all call for rain, the spring-cleaning could not have come at a better time.