No More Babies

I suppose now that R has turned 1 year old I ought to give an update on how things are, huh? Lots of small changes have accumulated, many of them familiar from the first time around, and now it's reached a critical mass that deserves to be recorded for your benefit and for mine to look back on.

Let's do some quick hits for little R, just so you know where he's at.

• He's a bit over one year old.
• He just started properly crawling in the last few weeks.
• Before that, he was kind of army-crawling by pulling himself with his hands all over for a couple weeks.
• He sleeps from about 7 PM - 7 AM.
• Just after he turned 1, he basically weaned himself off of nursing entirely.
• Before that, he was nursing once when first waking up and once at 10PM.
• Despite eating only solid food, he has zero teeth. Where are your teeth, son??
• He likes almost all food, but not peaches. Okay.
• He says "hi", "bye", "daddy", and "mommy". He's recently added in approximations of "Laika" (one of our dogs) and "doggy".
• He waves when waved at and otherwise mimicks some movements.
• I shouldn't even say this, but boy, he's kind of an easy baby. He just pretty much cruises along with any situation.

Eating and, uh, the result of that

Mealtime with R is fairly straightforward right now, because the kid is like a vacuum cleaner. Basically anything I put in front of him he crams into his mouth: Cheerios are still his favorite, but also sandwich pieces, chicken stew, pasta, beans, mushrooms, bell peppers, beets, all kinds of stuff. Honestly, he's much less picky than G right now. I suspect that will change as he grows.

On the topic of eating, if there's one thing parents love talking about, it's their kids' poop, so here we go. When R got to be about 7 months old or so, he started switching more to eating food. At that turning point, his digestion, previously unaccustomed to anything but breast milk, overreacted to the influx of new substances and sort of... shut off. He went for a solid week without pooping, and I'll be honest, it kind of freaked us out. He didn't seem uncomfortable, though. We gave him a lot of prunes and stuff to try to loosen things up in there, and finally they started moving. It took a few more weeks for his body to transition from only being able to process milk to handling all the new things he was exploring.

But still, we find that we're constantly battling constipation in both our kids. Eventually, we learned a few important things that have helped in a huge way. Firstly, milk constipates if you have too much. Didn't know that, couldn't have guessed it. We started reducing G's previously unlimited milk consumption, and that helped a bit. Secondly, applesauce constipates. What?? Fruit is supposed to help here, not get in the way. Thirdly, despite what I just said about applesauce, apple juice helps with digestion. We've found this to be incredibly true, and make sure our kids now get some "power juice" (watered down apple juice) every day. It's helped tremendously.

An eventful summer - trip to VA

My work gives me 12 weeks of parental leave. For R I took 8 of those weeks right when he was born and the last 4 during this summer, to coincide with some trips and camping we had planned. It was a really nice time, but jam packed full of stuff. One major trip was a week-long visit to my parents in Virginia.

Virginia? Oh, that's another state. That means flying. With two kids. For the first time. Hoo boy. The flights themselves were not terrible, just a ton of work and preparation, like taking endless snacks and trinkets for the kids to play with to stave off boredom and the agony of the limited space. It also helped that my mother-in-law came along, another person whom the kids love and listen to.

Somehow we made it through the flight there. The following week of visiting was pretty great. The goals of the trip were 1) for family to delight in the kids' company, 2) for the kids to enjoy the company of family, and 3) for our numerous family friends to see them too. All of those goals were achieved with high satisfaction, of course at cost of significant parental effort.

My family always cooks up a storm when we get together, and there was an abundance of delicious food for us to eat. Little R was still a bit too young to eat a lot of solid food--mostly nursed, had puree pouches, and cheerios--so that always took a bunch of time to get him enough food.

At home, the two kids sleep in different rooms, so we carried that with us on the trip. I slept in one room with G in a sleeping bag on the floor, and my wife slept in another room with R in a portable crib. Everything is weird when traveling, and everything is magnified when you're a kid, so as a result neither of them slept very well. G especially had basically no interest in napping during the designated nap time. I would go up there and lie in my bed and read a book while he messed around in the room. I wanted him to play by himself or sleep, but half the time he instead wanted my attention, which was not ideal.

Night times were a bit better and a bit worse. He always needed my company in the room to get to sleep, but for whatever reason wanted to rail against sleep and fight it off. I'd again lie in the bed and have him look at a book in his sleeping bag, and evetually he'd pass out, at which point I would sneak out of the room like a cartoon villain. At least he never woke up once he got to sleep. Still, I can't wait for the age when we can go somewhere and everyone just goes to sleep in their own beds without all this handholding.

The magnificent flight home

The flight home is a story I've told some people in person because it's just too good, and so I must capture it here as well. On the day we flew back we got up at the usual time, around 7:30 or 8 AM. The flight was in the evening, like 6 PM or something. G per usual didn't nap at all, not for lack of my trying. He held it together OK in the airport, but once we were on the plane he gradually started to lose his composure over the 5 hour flight. He wouldn't rest or sleep or anything, just got more and more aggressive as he grew more tired. Towards the end of it, he was flailing his arms around and thoroughly loopy and incoherent.

That brain meltdown came to a dramatic crescendo during the plane's descent in the form of his body shutting down so that he abruptly became effectively unconscious. Limp as a noodle. Couldn't be woken up, wouldn't move, nothing. So my wife had to break out the baby carrier and strap R to herself when we got off the plane, and I had to carry G's jelly-like body off while she also carried the carryons. Just off the plane, R's stroller was waiting, but instead of putting R in it as is proper, we piled G in there like a sack of rice and off we went, with his arms and legs drooping over the sides (because of course he was far too big for it).

Through the airport we went, to baggage claim and then to the taxi area. We got a taxi, loaded everything in there, including the boneless form of our elder son. All the way home and up into bed, and not a stir. Well, when we finally piled him into bed he woke briefly, delirious, then passed out again. All in all, it was about an hour and a half from the time he shut down to the time he got into bed. Thinking back on it, carting my son around like a piece of cargo was probably the ideal way to transport him home in that situation. The alternative--if he'd been awake the whole time--would probably have been much less pleasant.

Starting up camping again

Before this summer, it had been years since I had gone camping. I camped as part of Boy Scouts regularly when I was a kid, including backpacking when I was a teenager. My wife also camped quite a bit as a kid, and she encouraged us to go during the beautiful Washington summers. We took three trips this summer, and they were all interesting and challenging and fun in their own ways.

First, some context. We have a crossover-type car: smaller than an SUV, bigger than a sedan. It has some trunk space but only two rows of seats, so not a ton of room for packing stuff. As for us, we have two adults, two kids (meaning two car seats), and two dogs--we couldn't leave the dogs out! That's a lot of stuff to pack in a single car...

Which is why we used two cars. Specifically, we used our car and my mother-in-law's gigantic truck. We pre-stashed most of our camping stuff down at her house (which has a lot of storage space). Then on camping day we drove down there, transferred the car seats and anything we packed from home into the truck, supplemented it with all the stashed camping supplies, and set off in the truck for the campsite. It's kind of shocking how much room was taken up just for a camping trip of any length, and that transfer into the truck (and subsequent unpacking at the end) is a ton of work.

Camping trip number one: going solo

Our first trip, by design, was a solo trip, meaning just the four of us plus dogs. It was also just a single-night trip in order to work out the kinks in the plan. This trip ended up being basically all work, not really relaxing at all, but still a bit fun.

In preparation, I bought a huge new tent, some bunk-bed cots, and a new sleeping bag for G. We packed clothes for us, a bed for the dog, a portable crib for little R, firewood for a campfire, enough food for lunch, dinner, and breakfast, a few gallons of water, and various other supplies. A bunch of that stuff had been stashed down with the truck beforehand but even the stuff we packed from home was hard to fit in our car.

I don't think we got out of the house when we wanted to. I was probably scrambling around doing last minute packing and trying to cram everything in the car, and so we got out by mid-morning instead of morning. The transfer into the truck took a bunch more time, with a lot of carrying and lifting. The camp site was less than 2 hours away, not too bad. It was hot when we arrived, and I set to work setting up the tent, crib, cots, and sleeping bags.

Boy, it was a good idea for that first trip to be just us, because it was my first time setting up the new tent and cots. The tent, thankfully, was pretty straightforward, but the cots--being the fancy contraptions that they are--took a lot of work to figure out, and it left me sweaty and exhausted. Adding to that, R was getting fussy after a while (tired and wanted to nap) and G wanted to "help" or really just get more of our attention than we could spare throughout. All in all, it was mentally and physically exhausting setting up camp.

The highlights were getting to take a pretty nice nap, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over the campfire, and walking down to a nearby creek. The kids clearly had a nice time, too. It was good to get them out to a really new experience.

They slept okay at night but not perfectly. It got cold, and so R woke up cold in the middle of the night and needed to be bundled up further. G slept through all of that, I think. This was one of the first times all four of us have had to share a space overnight, moreover a pretty tight space. It was new and different.

The next morning we had some simple sandwiches for breakfast and then started the long process of taking down camp. This was even more painful than setting it up, because for some reason seeing the tent getting dismantled set off some kind of anxiety in G, who wanted very badly to stay inside the tent and didn't like seeing it get taken down. All in all this was a very stressful process. My key takeaway is that one night of camping is not worth the effort of packing, unpacking, setting up, and tearing down. I felt like I spent half the trip working and traveling and not enough time relaxing.

Camping trip number two: very fancy

The second trip was a two-night trip, so already we had more time to relax. This one was at a busy family-camping campground with amenities (like a nice bathroom building). We had many of the same challenges setting up our campsite and tearing it down, but it was more familiar this time, so it went quicker. During the stressful teardown, I also had my wife take the kids with her for a long walk, which allowed me to speed through disassembly without G getting all up in my business. That worked really well.

This campground was so different from the types of camping I did as a kid. In Scouts, we were usually at somewhat primitive sites and took more or less the bare essentials, most of which was troop-owned gear for us to check out or share. Here, people clearly came to camp in style. We saw huge canopies with full sized grills, music systems and strings of lights, kids with toys and bikes and motor scooters... I never realized that people brought so much stuff with them while camping. I bet those families were staying for many days, to offset the effort of packing all of that.

Camping trip number three: kid playtime

The last trip was three nights and ended up being the most fun of all because we went with my sister-in-law's family, including her kids who are the same ages as my kids. G spent pretty much the whole trip off playing with his cousin, and it was awesome. The two of them were just going wherever and getting into stuff, thick as thieves. Perfect.

There was one hiccup. The campground was quite far away and didn't take reservations. Despite our best efforts, we ended up reaching there at something like 8 PM--nearly dark out and already past our kids' bedtimes. As we slowly inched through the campground looking for an open site, dread settled on us as we found the place completely full. So there we are, hours from home, with G starting to whine "I want to go lie down in the tent", when we didn't even have a site to use yet. I can't express my relief when we backtracked and found a single site in a campground about ten minutes back.

The other very lucky thing was that once my sister-in-law's family arrived at our site, even though it was late, the kids immediately started playing with each other, leaving us to set up in relative peace. Boy, it felt good to get to sleep that night. The remaining few days were awesome, with the kids playing together and the adults relaxing, with some light hiking too.

Saying goodbye to the pacifier

Ever since he was a baby, our elder son used a pacifier in various situations: when sleeping, when in the car, when in his room playing, and when napping. We didn't allow its use anywhere else, so we weren't too worried about him developing an over-dependence on it. Most advice we saw was that kids naturally gave it up during their fourth year, so we just allowed it and waited.

Unfortunately, at 3 and a half years old, he showed no signs of letting it go on his own, and so once the dentist said it was starting to affect arch development, we had to spring into action. We phased it out gradually over the course of a few weeks, basically by restricting its use more and more.

First we said it's not allowed in the car anymore. Then it was not allowed when he was awake in his room. Then it was only allowed at night time, not at nap time. Finally--and this was put into place after the third and last camping trip of the summer--it was no longer allowed at night time either. It took about two weeks for him to become used to the new normal, and it was fairly rough for him during that time.

That period of time is also what brought about "shortcuts". He got really insecure at bedtime without the pacifier and cried a lot and wanted us to keep coming back to check on him. We felt bad for him, and he was having a really tough time, so we did. Every 5-10 minutes we'd go into his room, give him a hug, and then leave. It wasn't as smooth as that at first; there was a lot of yelling that he wanted someone to keep him company. Nowadays, we still peek in, but he gets to sleep within about 10 minutes, so it's not a big inconvenience.

Nap time becomes quiet time

The trip to Virginia was a sort of premonition in that at around this time, G mostly stopped sleeping during his designated nap time. We still put him in his room just after lunch for about 2 hours, but he just plays in there. We started calling it "quiet time" instead, though he treats that term as a very loose suggestion. Even if he's not sleeping, it's clear that it helps him recharge somehow, and it's neat to hear all the weird pretending he does in there.

He often calls us to help him go out and pee or poop, and we haven't had a naptime accident that I can remember at all. On that topic, he keeps his pull-up dry during a lot of nights--but not all of them, so we're not quite ready to do underwear at night time.

It's interesting how often he doesn't mind going to his quiet time right after lunch. It's also cool how often he has big plans in mind and spends the whole time constructing elaborate gadgets or planning things with his stuffed animals in there. Through the baby monitor we can hear him carrying on whole conversations and doing all kinds of complicated things. When we go in there to check on him he's usually keen to show us some game he's created or "machine" he's made.

Making it not my problem

One way I've changed how I deal with G's many demands as he's grown older is to try to turn them around and make them his responsibility rather than my problem. I'll just throw out a bunch of examples.

• When he spills a drink at the table, we make rags available to him to clean it up himself. He's not allowed to keep eating until he cleans. By now he sometimes just cleans it without me even saying anything.
• If he's goofing around at the table too much and won't listen when I tell him to stop, I just put away his food and say the meal is done.
• If he pulls all his blankets off his bed, I won't tuck him in until he pulls them back on. I still arrange them, but I want him to put in some effort and meet me halfway on this. "Call me when you have your stuff back on you bed and are ready to be tucked in."
• "It seems to me if a kid can take all the blocks out of the bin, he can also put them back. You can come out of your room when you're done putting those away."
• "When you're ready to brush your teeth, climb up on your stool in the bathroom and call me."
• "When you're done watching that TV show, come on out to the kitchen."

OK, that last one may be a bit of a stretch...

Anyway, in most of these cases, if I sat there and watched him, I'd be waiting and pestering him to do the thing I want. Instead, I go do something else and come back when he decides to do it. Of course, I can't do this when on a timetable, like his morning routine getting ready for preschool, but I apply it whenever I can, to save me some stress.

The ten second rule

Some people think the ten second rule is about how long you can leave a piece of food on the floor before it become irredeemably inedible. I'm talking about the the time it takes little kids to process verbal information. A lot of parenting books say that after you tell a kid something you should pause. It's easy to dismiss that part of the instructions because there's usually a lot more complicated advice about how to phrase your words and so on.

But I've found that the pausing step is absolutely vital, because kids' brains don't always immediately process what you're saying. A lot of the time I'll ask something, seemingly get no response, but then he listens and does what I want after a pause. For that reason, I make a conscious effort to count to ten in my head after basically any request or command. I get good results this way.

Two kids together

Now that R is fully crawling, things have gotten more interesting. He really wants to investigate the dog food and water, cables, sockets, G's toys, and especially anything electronic. We have to watch out for him a lot, but he is surprisingly accommodating when we tell him not to touch stuff or to take it out of his mouth. Even when we have to take things away, he doesn't get mad all the time. He often wanders off to look at something else.

We especially have to watch out for close interactions between the two kids. R wants to get way up close in whatever G is doing, but he usually is "working" on something and doesn't want his little brother to interfere. We spend a lot of time going through acceptable ways to express displeasure (using words, asking for help), unacceptable ways (pushing, mainly), and ways to avoid problems entirely (move the toys you're using out of reach). We have to talk a lot about which toys belong to each kid and which are family toys. It's okay to take out a toy and have a reasonable expectation that you can play with it by yourself until you're done. Likewise, it's not okay to take toys from the little one just because he has them.

These kind of struggles happen almost constantly, but there are also many times when they happily play together without disagreement or make silly sounds at each other and set each other laughing, and it's times like those when I get a glimpse into the future and see how much fun they'll have in a few years.

When R was an infant I felt slightly disconnected from him for a while, because he just didn't have the capabilities to interact a lot. I was hopeful that as he grew a little I'd feel that same closeness to him that I do with my older son. Now as I lie on the floor and look at him grinning and charging at me, or give him a shoulder ride and hear him cackling up there, or play word sound games with him, or hold him up in the shower and watch him fiercely attacking the nozzle, I know that any fears I had were unfounded.

I've come to realize that my happiest moments with my kids are when they're just clambering all over me like I'm some kind of mountain, or when they're hanging off me and roughhousing some way or another. This must be some primal "dad" feeling surfacing that I just can't get enough of. I can't wait until all three of us can go running around together. It's going to be great.