So, our daughter has never done well at a restaurant.  Never. She can’t sit still for more than 2 minutes, and that includes if she has some toy, food, drink, or other distraction that mommy and daddy have desperately thrown in her face to avoid the squirming, screaming, embarassing outcome of our child trying to stay in a high chair.  I figure that we just have such high expectations for such a sweet girl, but sitting still for extended periods of time “ain’t her thang.”  She’s mobile, she’s active, hell, she’s only 1.5 years old.  Asking her to sit for that length of time is like asking a dog not to chase after a squirrel or asking me to sit through a complete episode of “The View.”  It’s cruel, it’s unrealistic and it isn’t going to happen.  We have tried many times and debunked many strategies of theoretical victories.  I think we may have to put an end to non-fast-food restaurants until she is at an age where she can sit still for an entire meal.  C’est la vie.

I find it somewhat amusing that at my job I was recently asked to build a web application that chronicles events leading up to taking a Time Out.  That is vastly different from the Time Outs that are taken at home with my daughter, although the purpose is incredibly similar.

I like the concept of Time Outs for children, but I grew up with a threat of spanking, so it’s hard to change my perspective.  I always thought that a good spanking could tame any misbehaved child.  Walking through any store, I would look at children getting into trouble and say to my wife, “that child needs to be bent over a knee and spanked!”  Our daughter is 15 months old.  Discipline at this age is blurry at best because it’s hard to tell when the child knows if they are doing wrong or if they are just being a 15 month old.  However, there are glimmers of understanding.  Piece at a time, she is testing what she can get away with and we respond swiftly and strong.  Let’s hope this time out thing works, if not, I believe her back porch will be painted red…

I think the thing I like the most that my daughter does is when she wants to be read to, she will hand you a book, turn around and sit in your lap.

Let me set the scene:
interior-child’s playroom

Mommy and Daddy are sitting on the floor, both drinking from glass cups.

Daddy has his iPhone in his lap (the iPhone is the childs favorite toy that she can’t have).

Child comes over to Daddy and puts an object into Daddy’s drink. While Daddy is fishing out said object (hands full), child takes iPhone from Daddy’s lap. I’d discipline her if I weren’t so damn proud of her.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that early parenting can be put into a three month cycle.  For the first week or two things are difficult and constantly changing.  After those initial weeks, things begin to settle down into a rhythm and for the remainder of that three month period things go fairly well.  Then your next three month cycle starts over.  I guess my experience has been that there are typically short, bad days/nights either caused by ear infections or sicknesses followed by longer stretches of calm and happiness.  These three month cycles aren’t only linked by bad milestones such as ear infections.  They can also be brought on by changes in diet, sleeping habits, or developmental milestones.  As a parent you have to constantly adapt.  You adapt to their abilities and your own.  If you are up all night, you can change a diaper half asleep.  If they can crawl, then you have to put some things out of their reach.  Each cycle builds you into a well-rounded parent, with the knowledge and wisdom of what you did before.

More often than not, I get the pleasure privilege of cleaning the poopy diapers.  I have the stomach for it and I don’t mind when I hear, “Honey, can you change her diaper??”  They are typically harmless.  No chance for outside-diaper contamination, two-or-less wipers.  But there are those occasional events that stay with you…like this morning…

Over the past year I have seen just about everything that you can see come out of another human being, short of a green plastic army toy.  There have been hard, silly-putty poops as well as, well without getting terribly graphic, the other end of the spectrum.  I have seen colors from pinks and reds,  greens, khaki-colored, and the deepest blacks.  We have changed sheets, changed onesies, and double-teamed the clean-ups with an onslaught of wipes.  Although, we have become more efficient in the changing of the diaper, the blow-outs haven’t changed.  This morning’s offering was one short of a 10 on the diaper richter scale where I would have simply given her a bath (which I assure you we have done before, at least twice), pretty high on the smell scale as well.  If I hadn’t had the training that I went through over the past year, this on would have been messy.  I felt good about the change.  No collateral damage (other than a spot on the Boppy cover, immediately put in the wash).  A solid performance, on my part, not my daughters…

It seemed that once we got into a good rythym of changing the diaper that she now wants to move around on the changing table.  This adds a certain degree of difficulty to the change, especially when there is a ‘niner’ to be cleaned up.  I pray for the day that she graduates to the potty and we are free from this never-resting clean up duty.  There will be a party and there will be balloons.  Music will play and I will dance the ‘No More Diaper’ dance.  It’s a happy dance.  I certainly believe that is our next milestone in our little one’s development and it can’t come sooner.

I don’t mean to go off on a rant here, but…

I have about had it with know-it-all, condescending, advice-givers, lecturers that think they can talk down to you because they either have: 1. A child that is older than yours, or 2. more children than you.  I recently commented on a friend’s Facebook notification that indicated she wasn’t happy with inconsiderate parents exposing their sick children to those that are healthy (namely her own) by means of sitting on the wrong side of a waiting room.  I ultimately and vehemently agreed with my friend and was consequently belittled by a stranger (one of my friend’s friends) who indicated to us, in short, that we were ignorant and naive (I’m paraphrasing here) to think that 2 sides or “the invisible wall” of the waiting room would keep our children from getting sick.  Her closing comment still echoes with patronization “…you will catch on to the realities.”

In all honestly she probably didn’t mean any harm and pardon my displaced anger, but the proverbial straw has broken the proverbial camel’s back.

Where the hell do people get off?  you will catch on to the realities…do you know how conceited that makes you sound?  It’s as if you know everything there is to know about being a parent and I will not be on your level until I see everything the same way that you do.  I don’t appreciate being deemed anything less than a good parent, illusions intact or not.  Don’t think that because you have more (quantity) or older children (quality) experience it means that my view of parenthood is any less than yours.  If that theory were true then Nadia Sulaiman (“octomom” for those that watch “Inside Edition” at 5:30 each night) must be a phenomenal mother and provider…would you trust a pediatrician that isn’t a parent?

I am singling out this event, but there have been plenty others; people that chuckle at an overpacked diaper bag, a scoff at wiping off a dropped pacifier…there are more tactful and decent ways of giving advice, cause here’s the thing…nothing is the same for every child, not every trick works, not every child will respond the same to everything.

So here’s my advice- make suggestions, don’t patronize.  Even if you are thinking it, don’t open your mouth and show how high and mighty you think you are because you have experienced that already.

We rencently returned the Graco monitor and traded up for the Safety 1st option with DECT technology (whatever that is).

We couldn’t be happier.

No scratchiness and clear reception.

First of all, I think the majority of parents these days are both working and that makes it difficult when a child is sick.  Gone are the days of stay at home mothers tending to ill children, cooking chicken noodle soup.  And then there are the families that can survive on one income.  Where I live, there are several families that have the luxury of a home maker and a bread winner as the two roles of mom and dad (whichever the role may be for each).  For this minority a “Mother’s Day Out” program was created as a type of daycare that was available for less than a full time job schedule.  This is not typical daycare.  This program is for “moms” that drop there children off so they can go play tennis or meet the gals at the country club for a white wine spritzer…
For the majority, this is our daycare.  Mom and Dad both have full time jobs and we are penalized in the pocket for dropping our young ones off early and picking them up late.

And the term Mother’s Day Out kind of eats at me…what if Dad stayed at home?  In fact, since I am off each Friday, I drop my child off at MOTHER’S day out even though MOTHER is at work.

Oh crap, I have just shown my PC side that was never to be seen!!

I feel like this country is facing a revolution like the women’s lib movement.  Father’s are more involved and we are more present in our children’s lives than ever before.  We want respect as one of the parents and we don’t wish to be seen and not heard.  We want to be consulted on more than just discipline and serious injuries.

We’ll leave the outfits to mom, but we can surely handle more than what is expected of us.

What a piece of crap! Digital. Clarity. Maximum range.

Lies, lies, lies.

Static. Scratchy. Muddled. Tempermental. CRAP!

Now we have to travel all the way back to Babies r Us to return this junk. I’ll post the model later but I know that it is a Graco, with some “vibe” feature.