Good company, kid update
Friend (and baby!) over during the day, then had some people over for a potluck, inspired by a recent Mothering Magazine. Kids all over, parents all over. Wine. Iranian cookies. And a vow that we'll all do it again soon. Delightful!
Josh is solidly in that difficult phase of young-childhood where one needs to assert oneself, and one doesn't necessarily take the needs of other people into account. We never got the 'terrible twos', and when I remarked on that many of my friends said, "wait until 3, or 3.5!". Josh is imaginative, delightful, and affectionate, but he's also obsessed with TV, violent, and can keep a bad mood going for a long time. I'm not really looking for solutions, because the only permanent one is time. We play games that give him a sense of power, and we try to avoid situations that require a lot of coercion. We make things into games as much as possible, ie: "Don't go into the bathroom, or I'll have to brush your teeth! Oh no!! Don't do that!!" combined with elaborate moans and despair when he 'makes' us brush his teeth. We roughhouse as much as we can, and play "Oh No You DON'T" games where we 'try' to prevent him from doing something. These kinds of games, once we muster the initial energy to do them, are really fun and take less time than fighting with him to get him to do something. I try to think of him as a parking meter, and every so often throughout the day I spend some time "plugging the meter": giving him my full attention so that he doesn't get all scrowly and balky later on in the day. Works well, some days, and some not so much.
Ella is sitting pretty reliably, and has just recently (sometime in the past week?) discovered that she can walk around if we hold her hands. I'm kinda hoping she doesn't learn to walk on her own for a while yet, because early walkers have No Sense At All, and are liable to run full tilt towards the top of the stairs. She doesn't seem that interested in crawling, though. Perhaps we'll have to spend more time in the carpeted basement instead of on the hardwood on the main floor. She loves solid food. My current favourite thing to do to keep her busy is to take a few bites out of an apple so that the flesh is exposed, and give her that to gum. She gets small pieces off and eats them, and enjoys sucking on it. She got a little tired of yams, avocado, and banana. Enjoyed the black bean/onion mixture I made tonight to put on burritos. When we go out for sushi, I share my mackerel with her, and she adores sushi rice. We're avoiding unfermented wheat, for the moment, because I read such terrible things about gluten, but I imagine she'll eventually be eating bread.
Got out in the garden a few times already. I put Ella on my back, and it's very reminiscent of building my garden with Josh on my back, a short two years ago. I'm all feverish with garden planning. I'm collecting rocks from the building site down the street, and imagining my completed forest garden.
And sometimes, staying up WAY too late on the internet :P
Josh is solidly in that difficult phase of young-childhood where one needs to assert oneself, and one doesn't necessarily take the needs of other people into account. We never got the 'terrible twos', and when I remarked on that many of my friends said, "wait until 3, or 3.5!". Josh is imaginative, delightful, and affectionate, but he's also obsessed with TV, violent, and can keep a bad mood going for a long time. I'm not really looking for solutions, because the only permanent one is time. We play games that give him a sense of power, and we try to avoid situations that require a lot of coercion. We make things into games as much as possible, ie: "Don't go into the bathroom, or I'll have to brush your teeth! Oh no!! Don't do that!!" combined with elaborate moans and despair when he 'makes' us brush his teeth. We roughhouse as much as we can, and play "Oh No You DON'T" games where we 'try' to prevent him from doing something. These kinds of games, once we muster the initial energy to do them, are really fun and take less time than fighting with him to get him to do something. I try to think of him as a parking meter, and every so often throughout the day I spend some time "plugging the meter": giving him my full attention so that he doesn't get all scrowly and balky later on in the day. Works well, some days, and some not so much.
Ella is sitting pretty reliably, and has just recently (sometime in the past week?) discovered that she can walk around if we hold her hands. I'm kinda hoping she doesn't learn to walk on her own for a while yet, because early walkers have No Sense At All, and are liable to run full tilt towards the top of the stairs. She doesn't seem that interested in crawling, though. Perhaps we'll have to spend more time in the carpeted basement instead of on the hardwood on the main floor. She loves solid food. My current favourite thing to do to keep her busy is to take a few bites out of an apple so that the flesh is exposed, and give her that to gum. She gets small pieces off and eats them, and enjoys sucking on it. She got a little tired of yams, avocado, and banana. Enjoyed the black bean/onion mixture I made tonight to put on burritos. When we go out for sushi, I share my mackerel with her, and she adores sushi rice. We're avoiding unfermented wheat, for the moment, because I read such terrible things about gluten, but I imagine she'll eventually be eating bread.
Got out in the garden a few times already. I put Ella on my back, and it's very reminiscent of building my garden with Josh on my back, a short two years ago. I'm all feverish with garden planning. I'm collecting rocks from the building site down the street, and imagining my completed forest garden.
And sometimes, staying up WAY too late on the internet :P