The Small Family     

Well, this week’s title is in honor of Theo, who is now officially a Super Beast! No, this is not a commentary on his behavior (ha!); rather, he started the fall semester of Little Gym this week, and he moved up to the Super Beast level. All went well--the class seems very much like the Beasts class so far, so he adapted just fine. Technically, Super Beasts are age 2 1/2 to 3, but he won’t be 2 1/2 until October. Still, it’s close enough--he’s just one of the youngest in the class.

I had to laugh this week at his class, though. His substitute teacher for the week, Brandi, came up to me and said, “I was so excited to get Theo in a class. Teacher Weezie [who had him last semester] said, ‘Oh, Theo’s in that class! He’s so funny--he keeps standing up in the middle of class and yelling, “MUSIC!”' I’ve never had a kid do that in class!” And indeed, Theo loves, loves, loves his music and is not shy about asking for it! When I took him to the gym today, the playcare people said, “Hi Theo! Do you want to listen to music today? Go turn it on!” I guess he’s known for being their little music-lover.

In another milestone this week, our little Super Beast got his first big-boy haircut. I’ve trimmed his wild curls a couple times, but he hadn’t had an official haircut until now. I’m a little sad to report that he is losing the curl from his hair, so it had become a sort of Donald Trump-esque pompadour, and thus we felt a cut was finally needed. So Tuesday morning, Theo and I went down to Jack and Jillybeans salon for the big event. He got to drive a nifty firetruck and watch Baby Einstein while they gave him a quick and tidy cut. (He was not pleased with his viewing option. Although formerly an ardent fan of Baby Einstein, Theo has decided he much prefers Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and thus he kept demanding that Mickey ought to be coming on. He did, however, very much like the fire truck.) I requested just an all-over trim. I’m not ready for my little boy to have a buzz cut yet! And I have to say, it’s quite cute. And yes, he does still have a lot of wave/curl in his hair, although not as much as before. But enough that it still stands up wildly, which I love. Everywhere we go people comment on how cute his wild hair is, so I was kinda happy to see it return post-cut, because I think it’s pretty darn cute, too!

Later that afternoon, Theo and I went downtown to visit my friend Estelle, who I hadn’t seen since my baby shower. We kept meaning to get together after Theo was born, and it just never worked out. But finally, it did. Some of you might remember that I rented Estelle and Casey’s “granny cottage” for a couple years while in graduate school. They're still living in the same house, so it was fun to see my old “stomping grounds.” She still has one of the dogs she had when Luna, Bits, and I lived there (Penny), but she also recently adopted a huge 3/4 greyhound, 1/4 borzoi. The dog, standing on four legs, is taller than Theo! Sweet, sweet dog, though. Estelle claims he’s very hyper and was a beast to train, but he was quite good when we were there, and I think Theo liked seeing him and Penny, as well as Estelle’s mom’s dog, Stella. And, perhaps most exciting, Inga’s gecko! Inga (Estelle and Casey’s daughter) was in Sweden with her grandparents and various other relatives, but when Estelle heard that Theo is a big fan of yizards, she took Inga’s gecko out so he could see it. He wanted to “scratch” it, because he knows Luna likes to be scratched, so he figured the gecko probably would, too. I’m not generally a reptile person (I prefer fuzzy pets!), but I have to say, the gecko was small and very cute. If Theo ever decides he wants a reptile for a pet, I’m all about the gecko. No snakes in my house, but I could handle a gecko for sure.

After we left Estelle’s house, we joined Chris downtown for dinner, as he was working downtown that day. We went to Tower Café, which many of you may recall is where Chris and I had our first date. Always tasty food (including wicked-good desserts!) and a fun, casual atmosphere that is quite kid-friendly, so we had a good time. And this time, I got to eat! (On our first date, Chris only fed me chips, salsa, and tea, despite the fact that we were there for five and a half hours. He's lucky I went out with him again--ha!)

Wednesday Theo and I headed back downtown for lunch with Auntie Jeanette. The most memorable part of our lunch was probably when Theo agreed to demonstrate the “hot-dog dance” (from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse) as well as his gallop for Auntie Jeanette. I managed to get both of these on video this week (although not at the restaurant), so if you go to the More Videos page (as opposed to the Videos page--apparently I reached my limit on that one, so I had to create a second page for videos) and scroll to the bottom, you can watch Theo’s little hot-dog dance and gallop (where he looks amusingly like Quasimodo, in my opinion). Chris also did a short video of him at the park today, so I posted that on the Videos page, too. He’s chatting away about various things.

We stuck close to home this weekend. Theo was a little “off” in the later part of the week--not full-on sick, but just not quite himself. He wasn’t eating much, seemed very tired, was rather emotional, etc. And since we’re leaving in just over a week, we didn’t want to get him run down with lots of activities, just in case he was coming down with something. (My guess? We had a dairy trial on Tuesday, he stopped eating much on Wednesday morning, and it lasted a couple days. I’m thinking the dairy item upset his tummy for a few days. We’re supposed to try dairy every so often to see whether he’s outgrown his sensitivity to it, but it’s hard to tell when he’s too young to really vocalize how he’s feeling. But my guess is the cheddar goldfish crackers got him a little “off” for a couple days.)

So Saturday, we decided to just take a walk to the farmer’s market near our house. It was unseasonably cool (and WONDERFUL) this weekend, so we took advantage of that and enjoyed a cool morning stroll. I made some tasty plum jam (it’s a bit thin but very yummy) with plums we got at the market, and I botched a batch of strawberry jam (forgot the sugar…ooops!). Ah well, try, try again.

Funny aside about jam-making. I read an article online about jam-making, and it had this very serious paragraph in it about how “sometimes, jam just doesn’t work. And it’s important to remember that IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT!” That had me and Chris laughing, as we were imagining some poor person terribly distraught that his or her jam hadn’t worked. OH NO! Seriously, in the grand scheme of things, am I going to get upset about jam that didn’t set up? Um, no. But I appreciate the website letting me know that it’s NOT MY FAULT!!!

I was actually a little under the weather Saturday, so we didn’t really do much. Chris took a few hours to himself and puttered around town while I stayed with Theo, and he returned the favor on Sunday, when I took a couple hours to putter around while he held down the fort. (I bought hand soap. That’s it. What an exciting life I lead! But we’re in money-saving mode for our upcoming trip and estimated-tax bill, so I didn’t want to spend anything. Still, it was nice to wander around on my own and buy…hand soap.)

Our other Sunday event was a pug meetup! Chris isn’t the world’s biggest fan of pug meetups, but he gamely agreed to go along and watch Theo so I could chat with the other pug parents. It was held at a park in Carmichael that I knew had a good playground, so Theo was plenty happy with that. Give that kid a big grassy field and/or a playground, and he’ll be happy for hours. We had a pretty good turnout for the meetup, and I fell in love with a four-month-old brindle pug puppy named Brix. SO cute! Another sweet little puggy named Pancake I could’ve grabbed, too. Isn’t that a great name for a pug? I love it!

Chris has agreed that we can get a second pug after our late-summer travels are finished, so I shall be on the lookout over the coming months.

Speaking of travels, Theo is so excited about our trip. Mostly because he wants to stay at the hotel for dogs. He asks me every day, “Hotel for dogs? Please???” It’s so sweet! To him, nine days is an eternity (and obviously he doesn’t yet have any grasp on time), so I just have to keep telling him that soon, we will go on a big airplane, and we will stay at lots of hotels for dogs! He is beside himself with excitement about that.

Last but not least, I promised I’d stop talking about potty-training, but we had an unexpected and very pleasant milestone this week. Theo has been what we consider to be potty-trained for about six weeks now. That is, he wears underwear during all waking hours, has very few accidents (none last week, only one this week), goes to the potty independently most of the time, goes when we ask him to before we leave the house, etc. (I explain this because I had an interesting discussion about what constitutes “potty-trained” earlier this week, so I figured I’d spell out what WE consider to be potty-trained.) However, the two things Theo has not mastered are staying dry consistently while sleeping and using a full-sized toilet. We figured both of those would come in time. He’s pretty young to be any form of trained, so we’re just happy with what he has accomplished, and we haven’t pushed the two areas he’s still working on.

So, big toilets…he’s been terrified of them. He’s happy to use his little potties anytime and all the time, but full-sized toilets terrified him. He’d generally cry and get quite scared if we tried to get him to use one. And then, suddenly, he started using them on Friday, as if he’d been doing it for years and it was no big deal. And he’s been using them since, with no signs of stress or fear. Really, he acts like he’s been doing it all his life! He does frequently still use his little potties just for convenience, but he has no problem using big toilets now.

So what brought this on? I’m not actually sure. Given how frightened he was of them, we thought it would take much longer to get him accustomed to them. His one accident this week was a pee accident at the gym early in the week. They have a public potty there, but he’s been frightened of it most times. So when I picked him up from playcare and he was wet, I assumed he’d decided he’d rather be wet than use their scary toilet. So I said calmly, “What happened? Peepee goes in the potty, remember? Not in your pants. I know you don’t really like the potty at the gym, but it’s not scary. It’s just like your little potty, only a little bit bigger. You can use it anytime you need!” He looked rather seriously at me but said nothing. And twice in the past two weeks, Chris has sat him on our full-sized toilet just to get him comfortable on it…but he did nothing.

Enter Friday, at the chiropractor’s office for yet another adjustment to try to fix my back after the treadmill incident. Theo was rather panicky (he HATES seeing me get adjusted), and he announced, “POTTY!” right before my chiro was about to come in. “Really?” I said. “You just went, but we can go try. But I don’t have time to take you out to the car to use your little potty, so you’ll just have to try to use the big one here.” I took him into the restroom, thinking he would do nothing--that this was just a plea to get him out of the room where I get adjusted. He spied the big toilet and said, “No! All done!”

“Hmmm, let’s just try,” I said. I held him on the toilet…and he peed! “Wow!” I said, “You did it! That wasn’t scary at all, right?” I heaped some more praise on him and thought, “Well, okay. Good step.” I really didn’t expect that to be the turning point. But after my adjustment, we went to my Mom’s house to get some paperwork notarized with her, and he used her big toilet twice. And then we got home and he used ours several times throughout the day. And he’s been using it since, alternating between it and his little potties. Go figure. I thought that would be a much harder transition, given his resistance to it.

That’s the funny thing we’ve found about Theo, though. Chris and I have marveled at how some things were so hard with him…and then things we think will be challenging are surprisingly easy. For example, infancy…wow. In some ways, it was a bit of a nightmare. He screamed and cried all the time, it was nearly impossible to feed him…. I remember thinking, “How can I feed my child??” He wouldn’t latch well to nurse…plus, anything I ate seemed to upset his stomach. But he couldn’t tolerate any formulas either. And then I didn’t produce quite enough to keep up with him. And he spit up all the time. And then when we started giving him solids, he gagged and spit up a lot for quite a long time. And then the naps…oh, the naps. It took me over a year of being very consistent with his naps to actually get him on a schedule. A year! According to all I’ve read, this should take a matter of weeks once a baby reaches a certain age where they actually are on some sort of schedule. Maybe a month. But no…a year. And then there’s acclimating Theo to new situations, which has gotten much easier in many cases, but which could be really challenging when he was little. Chris and I still shudder when we think of his cousin’s first birthday, where Theo shrieked nonstop and there was no way we could calm him. Float lessons? He took so much longer than most kids to master that! I watched so many kids go through the program in a matter of weeks or a couple months, and it took us two seasons to get him to graduate. And temper…oh, has he got a mighty temper when he wants!

So all this…but then the kid turns out to be a very good night sleeper from an early age. He self-weaned from his pacifier at four months. No problems getting him to switch from breast to bottle to breast as needed. When it came time to wean him from nursing, no problem--he didn’t seem to miss it. Picky eater stage? Haven’t gotten to it yet, even though I know a lot of kids are definitely into the picky stage far younger than he is now. He’ll eat anything we put in front of him as long as it isn’t eggs (and obviously, we don’t give him dairy). And potty training? A rock star.

So for every challenge, bump in the road, and curve ball Theo has thrown at us, he has given us a wonderful gift of something easy in return. And boy, do we ever appreciate it! I’m sure all kids are like that--hard parts and easy parts about raising them. But maybe we appreciate it tenfold just because he was such a difficult baby. Now, these wonderful little things that he goes easy on us with…oh, we relish them. If we ever have a second child and it’s an “easy” baby, I wonder if we’ll just shudder when that child turns out to be a challenge in some way or another. An “easy” baby might lull is into a false sense of security…ha!

Anyway, sorry for the somewhat lack of photos this week--as I said, I wasn’t feeling real hot this weekend. But hopefully the two videos will make up for it. Have a good week, all!