The Age of Opinions

Well it has finally happened...my little 25 month old Peanut has developed an opinion on just about everything. She wants to assert her will on what movies she watches, what clothes she wears, what she eats, everything. That is all fine and dandy except for the fact that she changes her mind at the drop of a hat. For example, she will say she wants to watch Nemo. Then as soon as I put Nemo in the DVD player, she wants to watch Big Bird. Or she picks out the pajamas she wants to wear before we take a bath and then as soon as we get out of the bath she wants different pajamas. This morning I was giving her some strawberries and she only wanted certain ones on the plate. If I don't somehow read her mind or cater to her every whim she has a complete meltdown. She definitely is a girl. She changes her mind about every two minutes and everyone else just has to deal with it. Seeing as I am with her 99% of the time I guess I am the one that just has to deal with it. Which means trying to ignore temper tantrums until they flare out. Oh the joys of motherhood.

My Baby is Two Years Old!!!

Two years ago today my life changed forever. It certainly was not the BEST day of my life. My labor and delivery was absolutely horrible. However it was the best thing that ever happened to me. It let me know that I was capable of anything. The joy that my little Peanut has brought to my life is immeasurable. She is the smartest, funniest, and sassiest little girl I have ever met and I still can't believe that I could ever create something that beautiful. I love her more than life itself and I can truly say I would do anything for her. Happy Birthday Peanut!!!

Master of Disguise

Thanks to my wonderful mother who spoils the crap out of her, my little Peanut has developed quite the taste for all foods junk related. She loves chips, cookies, ice cream, chocolate milk, and candy. While these foods are ok in moderation in my opinion, it has been quite a struggle to get her to like anything that is healthy for snacks during the day. So I have tried to be creative and disguise some healthier choices as junk food. For chips, we use baked vegetable straws made from spinach and beets. For cookies, chocolate flavored rice cakes. For candy, yogurt covered raisins. And for ice cream, I bought go-gurt tubes and freeze them. She now asks for "ice cream" every night and enjoys the cold yogurt treat. And for juice, I give her half water, half

V-8 fusion, the fruit and vegetable juice. While I know that these are not a substitute for fresh fruits and veggies, they are a great alternative to the junk food that is really bad for her. Does anyone else use any smart mommy tricks to get healthy food and snack into their kids? I would love to know.

Peanut is Putting Us Through Baby Training

Well, Peanut does not want to sleep at all anymore I guess. At least not at night. For the past couple of weeks she has been waking up in the middle of the night, hysterical. She runs to her door and yells for us, we put her in bed with us and most times she just sits there awake. She is very squirmy too so it is really hard to go back to sleep. The problem is, she is so tired from not sleeping at night that she takes like 3 1/2 hour naps at 2pm every day and then can't go to bed at night. I am praying that the new baby is a good sleeper because I have dealt with Peanut's inability to sleep like a normal human being since the day she was born.
I keep telling my husband that Peanut is putting us through training for the new baby. That we are getting used to waking up at all hours of the night and then putting ourselves back to sleep as soon as possible. But he tells me that he doesn't need any training. He KNOWS what to expect when the new baby is here and he doesn't need the practice right now. Always the optimist he is.
Yesterday was the best. Peanut went out for a while with her uncle and he took her to the park and the pet store. Then he was going to take her for ice cream but she fell asleep on the ride there so he took her home. I grabbed her and went to lay her in bed when she sat straight up and started chatting as if she never was asleep. The problem here is that when this happens, she thinks she has taken her nap for the day, even though she was only asleep for ten minutes. Then she fights me tooth and nail to take a nap for the rest of the day even though I know she is tired. She finally passed out at around 3pm and I had to wake her up at 5:30pm because I didn't want her going to bed at midnight. We put her to bed without a fight at 9pm, then she woke up at 1:30am and my hubby tried to get her to go back to sleep until 3:30am. Then I just yelled to put her in bed with us and she fell asleep until 6am. So that was pretty fun. She is just so off and I am off and we are all off together. And I know that in about a week things are just going to get worse.

Just Call Me Mommy: The Naptime Slayer

After writing two posts about how naptime is my nemesis, I am happy to report that for now (fingers crossed, knock on wood) I have defeated naptime. How did I do it you ask? Well, a few ways.
The first and most important thing in my opinion was patience. Anyone who knows me personally will report that I am not the most patient person in the world. I generally want what I want when I want it. Add to it the fact that I am a big, huge, cranky pregnant lady and you get someone who has no scrap of patience left in them. But at my wits end I vowed to take a breath and give my Peanut the patience she deserved. So every day at naptime I take the time to read her three books of her choosing, the same as at bedtime. I also had to realize that even though I may be ready for naptime to begin at noon, Peanut does not feel the same way.
Another thing I did was to distinguish naptime from bedtime. The first thing I did was call it our "quiet time" instead of "night, night" or "bed time." I tell Peanut that it is time for her quiet time and that Mommy needs her quiet time too. I turn out the lights, read her stories, and turn her music on. Then, instead of at bedtime, I put a gate in front of her door. That way she can see me and knows that she is not locked in her room for the rest of the day. This has eliminated the head banging on the floor or the door.
Finally, I have tried to keep the time for naps consistent. Generally we are taking naps at about 2pm. I try to be home around this time every day so that she can get a good nap in and doesn't lose her routine. While this does put some limitations on our schedule, I think it is important for now.
Peanut still cries sometimes, but not the hour long tantrum that used to accompany our old naptime routines. She doesn't bang her head or the door. Sometimes she falls asleep on the floor in front of the door which really touches my heart because I know she just wants to hang out with me. She generally wakes up about a half an hour later when I tell her to go lay in her bed and she does. I am totally amazed by this because this is a complete 180 from previous naptime experiences.
Maybe before was a phase that she was growing out of. Maybe she was in pain from getting her last few teeth. Maybe some of the things I am doing are actually working. I don't really care if is any or all of these things. For now, naptime is no longer my nemesis.

Share your Snacking Ideas

Now that Peanut has decided to get over her hunger strike she has had for the last several months and finally eat the meals I make her, I am now at a loss as to what to feed her for snacks. So I am turning to the Mommy blogosphere to help me out. Please leave a comment and let me know what your kids loved to snack on when they were Peanut's age (22 months). While you are here please come enter my Giveaway. Entries are pretty low and this is my first one so I am hoping to get a good turn out. Thanks!!!!

Something My Daughter Actually DOES Do

A lot of my posts are about all the things Peanut won't do: take a nap, sleep in general, not have a temper tantrum in public, allow me to use the bathroom with the door closed, ect. Last week I learned that there is something my daughter DOES do that not a lot of kids do. She wears and keeps sunglasses on. Like everywhere we go. She loves, loves, loves her sunglasses. I didn't know that this was something that not every kid does until moms in stores or at the pool would come up to me and ask me how I get her to keep them on. Truth be told, I have no idea. I secretly think she is worried the paparazzi will catch her without makeup on. She has loved to wear her sunglasses since she was a little baby and now has a pair in every color to go with all of her outfits. The other night, in fact, she wore them at her grandma's house and all the way home at night. I still have no idea how she could see anything. She is so goofy, but I love her.

Great Weekend, Not so Great Week

Well after the great long weekend we had, we have not had so great of a week here. Tuesday morning my little Peanut woke up and was laying with me in my bed watching a movie. She was drifting off to sleep (weird for her so early in the morning) when she sat up and proceeded to vomit all over herself, me, the dog, my bed, everywhere. I quickly snatched her up and threw her in the bath to wash her off. I just felt so bad for her as she hasn't thrown up like that since she was a baby. I cleaned her off, put her in new pajamas, stripped my sheets, wiped the dog off, and laid her on my bed to sleep.
At this point she was running a fever but I didn't want to wake her up to take her temperature or give her any Tylenol so I just let her sleep. She slept on my bed for about an hour and when she woke up I gave her a little white grape juice to drink and a little Tylenol to try and get her fever down. Not five minutes late, the juice and the Tylenol came back up all over me again.
I took her temperature and it was 103 so I called the doctor's office and they said to come in. I was covered in vomit so I put her in her bed to lay down and I quickly jumped into the shower to clean off. While I was in the shower I heard her crying so I hurried up and got out. When I went into her room she was vomiting in her bed. I called my husband and desperately asked him to come home to help me clean up all the linens and the dog and help me take her to the doctor (keep in mind I am 31 weeks pregnant).
He came home, I got her cleaned up again, and we rushed into the car to get her to the doctor. I brought a bucket with me and sat in the back with her and I am glad that I did because as soon as we started going she started puking again.
She saw the doctor and the doctor said she had a stomach virus and just to push fluids and slowly introduce crackers if she was hungry. We went home and started to deal with the mess while she slept. From this point until now she has not vomited which was a good thing. But for the first night, she slept in our bed, waking up every couple of hours crying, burning up with her fever.
Yesterday she slept a good portion of the day but she would not let me leave her side. Again last night she slept in my bed while my poor hubby slept in her bed. I did not get much sleep because I kept waking up to check on her. This morning I woke up feeling terrible. My body hurts, my head hurts, I am nauseous, and exhausted. Peanut is feeling much better with no fever and her appetite completely back, thank goodness. My wonderful mother took her for part of the day today so I could get a little break to sleep but my hubby is working at night tonight so we will have to see how it goes later. Let's hope I feel better and that my husband does not get sick. OK, my head hurts now. I guess I will go lay down until Peanut comes home.

Naptime is My Nemesis: Part 2

In an effort to make things both easier on myself and Peanut, I have decided to let her sort of decide when she wants to take a nap. I have figured if she is tired enough, she knows where to sleep. She has fallen asleep in her room a few times on her own and mainly has fallen asleep in the car on the way to or on the way home from whatever activity we are doing. I know this is "cheating" but I have figured that she is going through a phase where she wants to assert her independence so I ought to let her have some say as to when she should nap.
Well today my parenting philosophy came back to bite me in the butt. After sleeping for about 8 hours, Peanut woke up chipper as ever. I, however, had been up since 5am with a terrible leg cramp. Not so much fun. We went through our day preparing for company, going to the store, straightening the house, playing outside, and even going to the pool for a little while. I was certain that at some point she would take a nap, even if was on the way home from the store or the pool. Nope, she just kept going.
Let me just say too, I NEED naptime. As a pregnant mother in her third trimester in the middle of summer with a toddler, I NEED a break during the day. I don't care for how long and I don't even care if I don't get a nap myself. I just NEED a break. Today was not my day.
So as 5pm rolled around and Peanut had not yet taken a nap, I figured at this point no nap time would translate into an early bed time. So we went and played outside, had some dinner, and watched a little tv, all the while Peanut running around like the energizer bunny. So at around 6:30pm I took her upstairs for bathtime. I have her a bath, put her in her jammies, and read her some stories, sure that she was ready to fall asleep. She normally goes to bed between 8 and 9, so 7pm with no nap seemed reasonable to me.
I turned on her nighttime music and went to leave her room when she leapt out of her bed hysterical. Normally she is a really good nighttime sleeper and falls asleep on her own. Not tonight. She was running around, reading her books, and playing with her toys. She just did not want to go to sleep tonight. It was like she snuck out when I wasn't looking and got some Starbucks.
Finally, around 8:30pm I had enough. I still hadn't eaten dinner (daddy was working tonight) and I knew she was exhausted. So I finally put her in her bed, turned her music back on, and closed the door. After about 15 minutes of hysterics and banging on her door, she FINALLY fell asleep (on her floor no less). I went in and put her in her bed, snuck out of her room, and breathed a sigh of relief.
I am praying that today was just a fluke. It has to be right? She can't be outgrowing naptime already at just 22 months. Either way, I need a new game plan. I just haven't figured one out yet. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Cosley Zoo: A great Place to Take the Kids

As a mom of an almost two-year old, I am constantly looking for activities that keep Peanut entertained, are fun, and affordable (preferably free). If you live in the Western Chicago suburbs, The Cosley Zoo in Wheaton is a great place to take the young ones. The price is right: its free for everyone for now (although starting July 15th it will be $3 per adult, free for kids still). I think the admission price is still worth it.
This "zoo" is not a zoo in the traditional sense of the word. You will not find zebras and giraffes here. What they do have are ducks, horses, cows, goats, pigs, llamas, coyotes, deer, foxes, raccoons, rabbits, and various birds. Peanut loves this. Not only does she know how to say the name of most of these animals, but she also loves that she can get up close and personal with them.
The atmosphere of the zoo is also very beautiful. It is a small park, but it very well maintained. The greenery is very pretty, with plenty of shady areas to sit. They also have a snack bar with a full menu and a picnic area for those who want to bring their lunches in.
What I really love about the zoo is you do not have to plan your whole day around going here. It is large enough to keep your children entertained, but small enough that the whole visit takes only as long as you want it to. We went yesterday and spent about 2 hours leisurely walking our way through. And with the low admission price, you don't feel guilty only spending a short amount of time here.
We really love going here and I would recommend the Cosley Zoo to anyone with young children. It is really a great place to spend the day.

"The Look" Decoded

In my post about our attempt at gymnastics class yesterday, I talked briefly about "the look" that other parents give you when your child acts out in public. The look that basically says, "My child would never act in that way." Well, while we were out and about today Peanut had a few freak outs and as I looked around I saw several distinct "looks" from several distinct groups of people that I would like to decode now.

1. The look from the two college aged girls in the mall says (think Paris Hiltonesque accent) "Oh my God! Look at that kid! Thank God we don't have kids. There is no way I am having kids till I'm like 35 and even then they will never have temper tantrums in public."

2. The look from the elderly couple at the next table in the restaurant says (think grizzled old man accent) "In my day when a child had a temper tantrum in public all we had to do was give them a good, hard public spanking that way they will learn their lesson. Parents these days. Thank God we are done raising kids."

3. The look from the mother with the two teenagers walking down the sidewalk says "Oh I've been there although I would never really admit it to anyone. Thank God my kids are out of that phase. Now they just silently hate me."

4. The look from the wealthy couple laying on beach chairs by the pool says "Look at those parents. Our kids never act like that in public. Or maybe they do. I'll have to ask Katie when we get home. Thank God for nannies."

I'm sure there are many more but these are just the few looks that I have managed to decode going through my day today. If you can think of any more looks, please leave me a comment.

The bottom line is this: babies cry, toddlers have tantrums, and older kids misbehave in public. And I can say from experience that 95% of the parents involved in caring for them are doing the best they can. We don't want to disrupt your shopping, dining experience, or relaxation time. But sometimes kids freak out.

One other thing: at any stage in our lives we have all stared at a screaming baby or toddler in a restaurant and without even knowing it, silently judged the parents of that child for their behavior. I know I have, especially before I had kids. But maybe the next time we catch ourselves doing it, we should turn our look into a smile and give the parents the look that says "Hey, we've all been there."

Gymnastics Class: The Failed Experiment

So as my daughter has now fully entered the "terrible twos" I am constantly trying to find activities that not only keep her busy but also don't piss her off. On any given day you can find me playing outside the house in the yard, at the pool, at the playground, or at the mall, generally with Peanut on the ground next to me having a temper tantrum. She really does like to be active and run around, and she loves to climb on things and try to do headstands. I thought the perfect idea would be to get her into a gymnastics class. After all, my sisters and I all took gymnastics when we were younger and loved it. And I wasn't looking for anything too serious, just maybe a little structure to get her comfortable with being at the gym. So I found a gym close to us that offered a 45 minute parent and tot under 3 class and thought that would be perfect. Being pregnant and not knowing how much physicality would be required on my part, I decided to take Peanut to the Saturday morning class so that my hubby could come with me and help me out if need be. They also allowed us to participate in the first class for free, and I am really glad they did. We got there and filled out her information and waited for the class to start. We were instructed to take our shoes off and that is when the meltdown happened. Peanut had a complete conniption when she had to take her sandals off. I mean FREAKED out. So I let her hold onto them as we went into the gym. The first activity they had us do was run in a circle. Peanut was not having it. She again freaked out and proceeded to follow my husband around in the circle crying the whole time. Then came the looks from the other parents. I never get that. Surely every parent has had the opportunity to experience their child freaking out at an inappropriate time, yet they always give other parents "the look" when those children are misbehaving. You know "the look" like "Well my child would never behave that way." Yeah right lady, thanks. I decided to try and stick it out with Peanut and see if she would loosen up. Not so much. By the time we were on the floor doing stretches, Peanut had had enough. She was crying and climbing up the front of me on the floor, all while myself and my husband were doing stretches that we hadn't done since high school gym class. We gave each other a look and knew it was time to leave. I told the teacher that maybe we would try it another time and she said that sometimes it takes kids a few times to get used to it. I really hope so. Mostly I was happy that I didn't have to pay for the 10 minutes of Peanut freaking out in the middle of a gymnastics gym. Oh well, back to the drawing board I guess.

How to Terrify Your Daughter Without Really Trying

So last night when we put Peanut to bed we realized that Cash, one of our dogs, was still laying in her bed. We decided, for fear of waking her up, that we would let him sleep in her bed. After all, what was the worst that could happen? She loves snuggling with him during the day and now is so proud that she can even say his name. So we went to bed and....at 2am awoke to the sounds of our daughter screaming. You see, when you are a two year old who is not used to a dog sleeping in your bed, it may terrify you when what you believe is one of your stuffed animals starts to move. And, seeing as Cash is all black, it may terrify you even more when a black figure mysteriously moves around in your bed. So as my wonderful husband leaped out of bed to see what was the matter, Peanut was running toward him from her room. He put her back into bed, put Cash in our bed, and all was calm again. Oh well, lesson learned. Do not allow dog to sleep in a two year-old's bed. Got to add that one to my list.

Naptime is My Nemesis

So every since Peanut was born, she has never been a napper. Or should I say an independent napper. Oh, she took naps alright. Only when she was a baby she was firmly attached to my boob. Then as she got older she fell asleep in her infant car seat and I could bring her into stores or back into the house with no problem. She never, I mean never, took a nap in her crib or pack and play. I tried so many times to get her to sleep in her crib. I would let her cry it out, sometimes for hours on end. She would take a small nap here or there, but never the hour or more that I desperately needed.
Now we are in the beginnings of the terrible twos and the nap problem is rearing its ugly head again. The problem is now we have moved her into a big-girl bed in preparation for new baby's arrival. Nap time now involves me putting her in her bed, waiting for her to fall asleep, and then trying like a CIA operative to stealthily sneak out of her room, praying that I do not step on a creak on the floor. But, as most often happens when you live in a 100+ year old house with all wood floors, the floor creaks and Peanut wakes up. And then I am in for it. See Peanut will sleep, only as long as I am lying on the floor next to her, holding her hand the entire time. Yeah, I'm not going to be doing that. Seeing as there are a million and one things that need to get done around the house, including eating a meal without having to share it or using the bathroom with out the door open to name a few. And on top of that, I am seven months pregnant and would like to occasionally take a nap that doesn't involve being curled up on the floor of my daughter's room like a dog. So most days recently involve the biggest temper tantrum in the world complete with head banging on the floor and her door which inevitably leads to her passing out in a heap of tears in front of her door and me ready to pull my hair out. I spoke with the pediatrician about the head banging and she said it was perfectly normal and the only way to stop it was to ignore it. Yeah, not my daughter. She will bang her head until it is black and blue to get her way. So for now I am at a loss. I am trying to be more patient and understanding, but all I really want is a cocktail. I am praying for the day that the nap thing will one day click. For now, in the battle of wills, Peanut is winning.