month 15, in which william discovers the naughty corner
We have instituted time outs with William. I am a student of the John Rosemond book of toddler-training, and he says that the “twos” often start at 18 months…but William is advanced. If he can figure out how to work the lever on the dishwasher, he can figure out time out. If he knows to push the power button on the washing machine and then to spin the dial and then to push play to make the washing machine start, he can understand time out. If he can make himself invisible to avoid diaper changes, he can understand time out.
I have resisted starting time outs because John Rosemond says that to start such methods before 18 months isn’t really advised. But then Will took his climbing to new heights. And when you play around with safety, Mommy doesn’t play around with you. I had a choice–get rid of all the furniture in our house, or get Will to absolutely, positively not climb on the chairs and entertainment center. Enter The Naughty Corner.
The Naughty Corner is going very well. As per John Rosemond, I put him there until just before he was about to move away, and then I said “you can come out now.” The first two times I had to hold him in the corner for a few minutes until he accepted that he was going to either (a) stop fighting me or (b) meet a nice girl and settle down for life in the naughty corner. He stopped fighting, I let him out. Now when you take him to the naughty corner he puts one hand on the wall, makes the pouty face, and stays for three seconds until I ask him to rejoin our fun. I couldn’t believe that he caught on so fast. And best of all–it’s working really well.
I’ll be interested to see at what age our future children meet The Naughty Corner. A prize to the one that holds out longest. A big, giant prize from a grateful exhausted mommy.
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invisible will
When Heather was here, she took peekabo to a new level for us–Will had enjoyed playing it with blankets and towels before, but had never covered his own eyes…well, Heather taught him how to do that, and now I spend at least an hour every day playing “Where’s William?”
Nic and I are such good actors that Will is now convinced that when he covers his eyes, he actually disappears. How do I know this? Earlier this week, when I approached him after a meal for his traditional “squirm-while-mommy-tries-to-wipe-me-down,” he covered his eyes. Completely convinced that he had become invisible and was now impervious to my cleaning attempts.
He also does this trick as we attempt diaper changes…it is super cute, and a little bit sad that we have to break his illusion by wiping him down anyway.
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Nic has spent this week commenting on William’s “little boyness.” Will was a Hudge, then a Boober…and now he’s a little boy. Last night Nic looked at Will as Will puttered around the living room on his foot-powered car and said “Look at our little boy. I like the little person he’s turning into.” And it’s true–he is our little boy. Not much of a baby at all.
For Nic, this is infinitely better than the newborn/infant stage…which, truth be told, didn’t really float Nic’s boat. This–this little boy who wants to be read to, played with, taken places–this is Nic’s thing. As a newborn, Will loved me. Sure he loved Nic, but I was his true love. When Will was upset, I was the one with the magic boobies. Will and Mommy. It was a pretty solid duo. Now…Will still adores me, but he has plenty of room in his heart for his hero–Daddy. He throws a giant tantrum in the morning if he thinks Nic has left without a proper goodbye. Proper goodbyes in the Turchin household involve me holding Will and standing at the door while we wave to Nic until he pulls out of the driveway and closes the garage door.
Will then spends the rest of the day waiting for his favorite sound in the whole world–the sound of the garage door opening. He often hears it even when I don’t, but I know it’s happened because Will stops whatever he’s doing, stands up, and runs for me with his arms over his head while shouting “Da?!…Da?!”. This means “pick me up and take me to the laundry room and throw open the door so we can wave to Daddy as he drives in.”
It is virtually impossible to convince Nic that we ever have rough afternoons (and we have our fair share) because as soon as Will hears the garage door open, the crankies fade and he is all smiles. Poor Nic can’t even take off his hat or coat (and god forbid his shoes) because as soon as he nears us, Will throws himself at him for a giant hug. He usually then wants to read stories.
So I completely understand why Nic enjoys this stage ever-so-much more than the newborn blob phase.
Me? I’m missing the blob. The blob was awesome. The blob slept a ton during the day. My little boy just transitioned to one nap a day, but is still waking up at the crack of dawn (and usually before) and this one nap is only slightly longer than one hour. The blob could be tucked into a baby sling and worn for hours while I got stuff done. The little boy has serious opinions about how he wants to spend his time…and how I should spend mine. The blob couldn’t hold up his own head. The little boy touches, climbs, eats, and wants to destroy everything.
The blob was much easier than the little boy…and nobody told me this.
If they had told me this, I wouldn’t have gone balls-to-the-wall super mom for the first few months. I would have perhaps bought a basket, put Will in it, and went off in search of a river. I thought it was supposed to get easier, that the newborn and infant stuff was the hard part…and so I thought it was a piece of cake and I was gonna rock parenthood hard.
But now, 14 months, 18,000 hours of sleep debt, and countless loads of laundry later, I would like to trade my toddler in for a newborn for one week. A vacation.
One thought is getting me through…and that is preschool. Glorious, glorious preschool awaits Will in just three years. Nicolas (who did not go to preschool) is anti-preschool…calling it glorified day care. For years I fought this silly stance with opinions from actual kindergarten teachers…but now it no longer matters. I do not care if it is a thinly veiled attempt by mothers to pawn their toddlers off on someone else for a few hours each week, I want a piece of it.
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updates
I haven’t posted in a while–I usually do it on the downstairs computer while Will is eating in the high chair, but I broke the keyboard, so it’s out of commission for a little while.
Heather came for a visit this weekend, and while she was here she taught Will to high five and to play peekabo by covering his own eyes. It’s super cute. And she taught him both of these things in the time it took to drive home from the airport!
She’s my favorite visitor ever because she cleaned out the pantry, organized under the kitchen sink, folded all the laundry monsters, planted our mail order plants and made us dinner. She wins. And sets a high bar for all future visitors. If you’re planning a trip, bring a sponge and a bucket of bleach. I’m gonna put you to work.
I made rhubarb pie this week, but it’s a good thing Nana is coming to visit soon because my pie sucked. It wasn’t SO bad, but it wasn’t Nana.
Will has some sort of stomach bug again–he won’t stop pooping his pants. He’d been awake for three hours this morning and I’d already changed FIVE poopy diapers. Gross baby.
I’m starting a photography business. A friend of mine is moving away and referring her clients to me, so I hope I build a client base quickly! I bought back traciturchin.typepad.com to put all the photog-y stuff on. You might see your picture there if you’re super cute.
We had another blizzard this week. That means we’ve had seven months of snow. Once again wishing evil thoughts on all those people that told us it didn’t snow much in Colorado Springs!
William Francis has been napping for 1.7 hours. We were supposed to leave for a play group 30 minutes ago, but there’s no way I’m gonna wake that poop monster up–I wanna see how long he’ll go!
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best email ever
You may remember that I made a pledge to spend more time trying to become A Real Writer this year. Two weeks ago I actually sat down and did something about it…I wrote a little essay and sent it to Mothering magazine.
Well guess what?! Tonight they emailed me and asked if they could have it, that’s what!
What is my article about, you ask? William Francis’s schmeckie.
And that is why having a boy rocks. You can write about his penis and become rich and famous.
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play group
You may remember that the last play group Will and I attended did not go so well. The women were mean and I cried on the way home.
Today we went to a new play group and it was awesome. The women there were so nice, and pretty chill about the way the kiddos interacted with each other, and I was very happy about the whole thing.
So was Will, by the way. We went for lunch at a restaurant that has a play area right next to tables, so the kids play while the adults eat. We walked in, I set Will down in the play area, and he took off. No seperation anxiety whatsoever. No goodbye, either. I’m pretty sure I could have left, and two hours later Will would have sat down and thought “hmm. I used to have a mommy. Oh well.”
The other boys were all much older–3 and 4, but Will wasn’t phased…and enjoyed his parallel play alongside them. But what interested me the most was the way he stood up for himself.
One of the four year old boys was very interested in Will and managed to always be super close to him. At one point Will was standing on a little platform with a railing that came up to waist, and the four year old was standing on the floor, so they eye level with each other. The little boy just stood there right in Will’s face for a while. I might have missed something–the little boy might have been pinching Will or in some other way irritating him, or it might have just been that Will decided he’d had enough of this kid being all up in his face. Anyway, Will was done.
Did he run away? No.
Did he cry for mommy? No.
Did he decide to settle it himself, even though this kid was four times his age? Yes.
Will reached out with both hands and gently pushedthe boy away. Not a mean pushing, but just a “you need to be over here, now and get out of my face” pushing.
I was so proud of my independent little man.
So part of my brain was cheering “go, baby, go” and the other part was doing a little bit of physics at a very fast speed. As Will pushed, I thought “hmmm…if he keeps pushing, he’s going to lean over that little fence and then his center of gravity is going to be over the fence…and HOLYCRAPHE’SGONNAGOHEADFIRSTINTOTHECEMENT!”
I jumped out of my chair, sprinted across the room, reached down and grabbed Will’s shoulders as they were inches above the ground, flipped him up, around, and safely into a snuggle in my arms.
No crying from Will, just very giant eyes. And mad props from all the mommies.
Want to impress a group full of moms? Make a crazy awesome Baby Save move in record time. It was pretty awesome. I should get an Olympic Gold Medal for it, it rocked that hard. I wish someone had been video taping it, because I was so fast and graceful that you would have thought it was sped up for special effect. But no one was taping it, so you’ll just have to believe me when I say that you would have been seriously impressed and wanted my autograph afterward. (I’d like to donate that move to all the day care babies my mom looked after that I ever saved from injury. My mom started me in Baby Save training early.)
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now that’s what I call love
I posted several photos today documenting Will’s love of Cheez-Its. It’s beyond love, though…it’s more like an obsession. He wants them with every meal, and for every snack. I’ve read that toddlers often develop food obsessions that disappear as quickly as they appear, and that the best thing to do is just ride them out and try to squeeze some other food into them whenever you can. Luckily, Will seems happy to eat everything else, as usual…just as long as he’s also given Cheez-Its.
Okay, dude.
You can thank Nic for this. I think it was actually just his secret ploy to ensure that we will always have Cheez-Its in the house.
I’ve taken to using them for bait in the car. Will doesn’t take to his car seat well after the second or third time he’s gone in-and-out of it. This does not work well when we’re running errands. The kid is strong, and he uses his head for leverage, and getting him strapped in becomes an epic battle that never ends without tears (usually mine). As I stand there in the parking lot using every ounce of strength in my biceps to pin my screaming and thrashing child into the seat, I know that I look like a terrible mother…or at the very least, a very stupid toddler-snatching stranger. So I’ve taken to using the box of Cheez-Its to distract Will. I give him the box, strap him in, and let him graze his way from one location to the other.
This doesn’t make as big of a mess as you might imagine…he is very careful about making sure that each one that leaves the box enters his mouth, but it does make for a lot of orange stained clothing and some grubby little fingers and a very grubby face.
Anyway, today as we ran errands, I would come around and take him out of the car, and inevitably he would have one or two crackers in his hands. I would let him keep them (because I’m cool like that), but each time he fed them to me. His last Cheezits for the time being, and he wanted me to have them.
That means one of two things:
1) He loves me so much that he wants to share the last of his most beloved snack with me.
2) During the course of our drive Will’s eaten so many that even he can’t stomach the thought of one or two more.
I prefer to think it’s the former.
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a DIRTY laundry commercial
I was watching tv and knitting, and I’m so glad I was too lazy to fast forward through the ads, because I got to see this Clorox one…
”Your mother, her mother, they all did the laundry….maybe even a man or two.”
Grammar check your sentences, ad agencies. No reason for me to be thinking about great-grandmothers “doing a man or two” on top of the washing board.
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feeling down
Three main things bringing me down today:
1) Laundry. I do laundry constantly, and yet the amount to be done would shock a person. A family of three should not generate this much laundry. Ever.
2) I break EVERYTHING. I spilled cream soda on my laptop yesterday, and in spite of my best efforts to prevent damage (ie–unplugging it immediately and turning it upside down so that all of the soda would drip out…the space bar doesn’t work. At all. Space bars are kinda important. I took it to Best Buy and they said it would be $200 if they could fix it…and I’m not spending $200 on a laptop that has two colored lines down the screen and is missing the down button.
3) Will’s inability to behave himself at Joann Fabrics today. Picture the frazzled woman with the out-of-control child that looks like such a hobo at Joann’s. Today that was me. I *hate* when it’s my turn to be the hobo mom.
Do military schools in Switzerland accept 14 month olds?
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new video
I posted several new videos today…the last one is in questionable taste, so you should know the following before viewing it: no Boobers were harmed in the filming of said video and no Boobers even cried.
In other news, Will signed “thank you” to me after nursing today, which was the first time he’s used that sign…and Nic and I almost passed out from the adorableness of it.
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my boober’s back…and there’s gonna be trouble
The Will we know and love is back. On Thursday he found his independence, happiness, and appetite again.
He’s back to being the Cheez-It loving, nap-fighting, house-destroying baby that keeps us on our toes.
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a series of bad decisions
Sometimes in life you make a series of small mistakes that lead up to a really bad situation. And I imagine that while you’re standing there in the sum total of your bad decisions, looking at the heavens and screaming “Why, God?! WHY?!!” he looks down, says “idiot.” and sends you the list of exactly why you are sitting in a bathtub at 3am covered in feces.
My bad decisions began last night around 11:00. I’d just finished talking to Heather, and was supposed to go to bed. Will would be waking up in five hours, I’d slept for less than 8 hours in the past two nights combined, and a normal person would have gone to bed. I said “one more row” and picked up my knitting. One row turned into five, and then I noticed a mistake, and ripped back…and then of course I had to put it all back on the needles and fix it before I could even think about going to bed. Next thing I knew, it was 1am, and as we checked on Will before tucking ourselves into bed, we couldn’t help but notice the stink.
He’d pooped himself. We needed to change his diaper in as sneaky a way as possible to minimize the midnight waking. We took him out of his crib, and I nursed him while Nic dealt with the bottom half and then left for bed.
Not wanting to disturb Will further, I made mistake number two: I didn’t put his pants back on. I figured I’d stay with him on the futon and sleep there to make sure he fell back to sleep and so that maybe I’d catch him early enough in his 4am waking to stretch him out to 5:00 or 6:00.
But after a few minutes it was clear that Will didn’t want anything to do with me. He unlatched, scootched away, and turned himself so that his feet and head were the opposite of where they should have been. Clearly he wanted to be alone…and that was cool with me, so back in the crib he went. I had a niggling feeling that the lack of pants would make him cold and would wake him up early, but I pushed off this fear (mistake number 3) and covered him with a blanket.
At 3:30 (two hours after I went to bed), I woke up to crying. It took me a minute or two to get out of bed and stumble to Will’s crib. I had a feeling that I should check his diaper for poops before brining him back to bed with us, but decided that I’d have smelled it. This was serious mistake number 4.
Halfway back to our bedroom my nose woke up. Holy hell this kid stank. And then I realized that something didn’t seem right. His butt seemed less puffy than it should have been…and squishier.
Oh. God. No.
Upon waking and crapping, Will had taken off his disposable diaper (disposables seem like such a good idea when your baby has an intestinal issue…until you remember that they don’t have babyproof snaps, just flimsy little tape). Then I had picked his poopy body up and cuddled it all over me.
I was covered in poop. Will was covered in poop. It was 3am. Time to call for backup.
Nic came in and tried to clean up Will while I tried to clean up me. Not easy, since Will was now really angry that he wasn’t snuggling with mommy in some kind of poop party. Nothing makes a situation seem more desperate or more horrible or more impossible-to-think-your-way-out-of than a baby screaming at the top of his lungs and desperately trying to get to his mommy.
We took a bath, got back into pajamas, I sent Nic to clean up Will’s crib (which we’ve just had a towel at the bottom of for the last week), and then we all went back to our respective beds.
Of course, I catch myself complaining in my head about this little 3am poop fiasco and then I smack myself silly because it could have been so much worse. Will took his diaper off, slid it down his leg, put his foot in it…and that was it. I lifted him out of the crib before he’d put his foot anywhere else (apparently). He didn’t put his hands in it. He didn’t smear in on the walls or his hair or my hair. So really, instead of saying “Why me, God?!’ I should say “thank you for not making it worse.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I find it so hard to believe that in just one year we’ll be thinking about having another baby. We’ll be lucky if we survive that long with the one we have.
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update on Will
I took him to the doctor today because I wanted to make sure that he wasn’t getting dehydrated. He’s not dehydrated, though, and just has rotavirus (which, I will have you know, is exactly what I thought he had…proving once again that google skills are almost as good as a medical degree).
Afterward, we did a very manly thing. We went to Lowes and bought a piece of particle board that was entirely too large for my car. So I took it back inside and had them cut part of it off. Then we wedged it into my civic where it acted like one of those partitians in cop cars…Will was my little prisoner. We both thought it was awesome.
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it’s tough to be a daddy: 36 hours in the life of nicolas
We talk a lot about how hard it is to be a mommy…but for the last two days, it’s been very tough to be a daddy around here. Let’s take a look:
0400 Monday morning: Will starts crying. Traci goes in to check on him and he has crapped himself so thoroughly that it’s leaked out of his disposable diaper and is now playing games inside his pajamas. She wakes Nic up with some of his least favorite words: “Nic! We have a poop situation in here!”
0405: Nic changes the horrible diaper while Will screams and Traci holds him down.
0415: The family climbs back into bed to try and nurse and snuggle their way to a reasonable hour.
0445: Will projectile vomits all over Traci and the sheets. Nic is again rudely awakened (if you can call what he was doing while getting kicked and punched repeated by Will sleep). He strips the bed and Will while Traci climbs into the shower.
0530: Nic gets ready for work.
0600: Nic helps Traci change another horrifying diarrhea diaper.
0700: Nic leaves for work.
While Nic is at work, Will and Traci make the most of their day by spending three hours in bed nursing and napping, nursing and napping. This is not an option for Nicolas, not only because his nipples are merely decorative, but also because they tend to frown upon napping at work.
1730: After a hard day’s work, Nic returns home. He is promptly sent out to get pizza for the family.
1800: Nic feeds William dinner.
1815: William throws up his dinner, and once again Nic cleans him up before taking him upstairs for a bath.
1825: Traci brings the pizza upstairs and the family has a bathtub pizza party.
1840: After drying Will off, Will turns around and poops on the carpet. Nic goes to get the carpet cleaner, and begins scrubbing.
1845: Traci nurses Will to sleepiness.
1900: Will throws up all over Traci…takes a deep breath, and does it again.
1901: Once again, Nic is called in with the carpet cleaner, and while Traci takes Will into the bathtub so they can get clean again, Nic cleans the vomit off the carpet and rocking chair.
1930: Nic and Traci put Will in his pajamas and into his crib. He poops. They take him out, change his diaper, put him back in the crib…and he poops again. Nic and Traci again change his diaper, put him back into pajamas, and stand over his crib until he’s asleep.
0400 Tuesday morning: Nic is woken up to the words “Nic! We have a poop situation!” again. He comes to the rescue, helps change a hysterical Will, then crawls back to bed.
0530: Nic wakes up, gets ready for work, and leaves for a ridiculous day of low-crawling through mud in the freezing cold.
William and I will understand if today’s 1730 entry goes something like this: Nic gets in his car, starts to drive, and just keeps going.
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poor william francis
Poor Will was throwing up over everyone and everything (okay, just me and the carpet, and then me and some towels after we realized that this was going to go on for longer than we had carpet cleaner for). He made a turn for the better about an hour ago and we put him down for bed. Hopefully he’ll have a good night. But you should be thinking good thoughts for us, because probably he won’t have a good night. Probably we’ll be dealing with with puke laundry at 2am.
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I met the Yarn Harlot…
…but you’re just gonna have to take my word for it. I drove up to Denver, got lost, got found, got a parking space, got in line, got to hear her hilarious speech, got to have some books signed, got to have my picture taken with THE Traveling Sock (with THE Yarn Harlot holding MY sock)…but here’s the thing. It’s not so much a picture of me, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and our socks so much as it is a picture of two very scary monsters holding two very watercolory socks.
This is why you should always (a) double check your camera settings before you force someone to take a picture for you with your very intimidating camera and (b) check the picture before stuffing the camera in your bags and being on your way. When I got home and checked my photo, my biggest worry was that it would look like I had a double chin. It never occured to me that I might not have a chin…or any facial features at all, for that matter.
But I was there, Nic stayed home and watched Will for the entire evening, and it was awesome. Maybe she’ll come back to Denver at the launch of her next book and I can try again for a photo. Or maybe I could just stop being such a groupie.
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book lover
It happened overnight. Will went from book destroyer, to book lover. I can pinpoint the exact day that he discovered his newfound love of reading–last Friday.
Before Friday, when we read to him, it never kept his attention for more than a page. Now, he hasn’t stopped bringing me books for a week. All day long he toddles over to bring me a book. He has three favorites: a little taggies book from Joan (I think) that has the words to “if you’re happy and you know it”–this one delights him because there’s clapping involved. And if you ask him to point out the pig, he will. Then there’s his “Happy Baby Words” book from Laura and Boris that has photos of babies and typical objects that babies see. His third favorite is his interactive Sesame Street cloth book from my mom and dad. He loves to carry that around.
I was a little tired of reading these same three books at least fifty times a day, so I took him to Barnes and Noble to pick out some more favorites. He definitely likes the ones with photos the most, so he got a few “baby words” type books, and a book about tractors and trucks that he picked out all by himself. It’s a pretty awesome book for a baby boy.
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all that dancing
I do believe this might be in Will’s future.
PS–as if to prove the point, Will danced to that video just now–arms in the air and everything.
