Tag Archives: parenting

Puking with a quiet dignity

“Daddy, I had to puke in the night,” he told me.

Of course, my first feeling was one of concern; Mommy gets a tad bit grouchy when she has to add an extra sheet-washing to the schedule, and I have to live with her.

The boy was lying on the couch, watching cartoons instead of getting dressed. We had already determined that he was too ill for school. I knew he had a belly ache and a little fever, but I didn’t know about the puking.

Mommy didn’t know about it either. We didn’t know because there was no sign of vomit in his bedroom, which meant that he had made it to the toilet. That’s not so amazing; he’s a practiced puker who’s been well-schooled on the drill of running to the bowl.

What is amazing is that he did it without waking anybody up. This boy, who bellows about every little scratch and had already made sure I knew all about his upset tummy and aching head with repeated updates before 8 a.m., had gone about his puking quietly and climbed back into bed without anyone knowing about his midnight troubles.

We would not have been upset if he’d woken us for so worthy a reason, and maybe he should have, but there’s part of me is proud of him for being stoic about his business and not making a big deal of it.

This is a kid who will get out of bed and call for help on the flimsiest of pretexts. Aside from the normal crises of illness, bad dreams, and dire thirst, this child has risen from his bed to complain about the following list of late night circumstances:

  • His nightlight was in the wrong outlet.
  • His blanket was upside down.
  • His blanket was wrong side up.
  • His sheets were kicked all the way to the bottom of the bed and he couldn’t find them under the blankets.
  • He needed a fingernail trimmed.
  • He needed a BAND-AID for an infinitesimal, bloodless scratch.
  • He had needed to examine his scratch by the glow of his nightlight and couldn’t get the BAND-AID to stick anymore; hence he needed a new one.
  • His nose itched.
  • He was too hot, sleeping under three blankets and a comforter.
  • He wanted his radio on.
  • He wanted his radio off.
  • What he really wanted was a kids’ BAND-AID. One with Spiderman on it, which we don’t have.
I want a kids' Band-Aid

“If you don’t have the Spiderman bandages, I’ll take the ones with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on them.” (Image: Keystone View Co.)

After all of these dubious disturbances to our nighttime peace, this boy gets up in the middle of the night, goes to the toilet, pukes, cleans himself up, and goes back to bed without so much as a Guess what I just did.

Remarkable? Responsible? Grown-up? Maybe, but once he’s feeling himself again, I have no doubt he’ll burst forth from his room at night to alert us all to the emergency situation caused by his incorrect arrangement of dirty clothes in his hamper or about how his hair hurts.

Desensitized to parenthood

We’re waiting for our third child to arrive. We’re waiting passively. It will be a great day when he comes, but we aren’t counting down the weeks. We did that once, and it was fun, but by the third kid, the waiting becomes routine. It doesn’t mean we’ll love him less; it means we know what’s in store for us.

During the first pregnancy, the excitement and nervousness kept us invested in every new development. Most things we couldn’t see; luckily, we had a book to tell us all the changes our unborn child was experiencing. We consulted that book for a Baby Development Review every week. My wife read the progress report aloud while I made amazed comments: “Wow! Our baby has a neck now!”

We always knew how many weeks we had invested and how many we had yet to go. If you’d asked me, “When is your wife due?” I’d have answered, “In sixteen weeks and three days; probably around 9 p.m., I figure.”

Things are different now. I couldn’t find that What’d Your Baby Grow This Week? book to save my life. We’re going on faith that if the baby doesn’t have a neck yet, he’ll sprout one by his birthday. We still do the fun stuff, feeling him kick and whatnot, but we’re not pressuring him into growing fingernails by a certain date. He’ll be ready when he’s ready. God willing, so will we.

There’s an edge to parents that gets smoothed down by each successive child. That’s a good thing, because that edge can get between two parents and scrape the thin skin off both of them.

I can see the difference between our first and second boys. With the first, my wife was particular about the routines she developed for him. I was defensive about my ignorance of these routines. I’d be giving the boy a bath and my wife could see I was doing it contrary to accepted practice:

WIFE: “That’s not how I rub soap in his hair.”

ME: “It’s how I do it.” (Thinking:  Everything doesn’t have to be done your way.)

WIFE: “Here. Just let me do it.”

ME: “No. I’m perfectly capable of washing his hair.” (Thinking: You’re not the only competent parent here.)

We’d be disgusted with each other all day.

Now, when I bathe the second child, (Thinking: Oh man, the ball game’s about to come on.) I’ll act clueless about washing his hair:

WIFE: “Is that the way you bathe him now?”

ME: “Yup. Daddy’s running this show.” (Thinking: Go ahead, step in and take over. What kind of mother are you, letting me do this all wrong? Just put one hand on the boy and this bath’s yours. Touch him. Just go ahead and see how fast I run away to the TV.)

WIFE: “Whatever.” Then she claims the TV for the Lifetime Network while I’m stuck washing the kid.

I sure hope there’s nothing on TV when this new one needs a bath.

Shut up kids. Our program's coming on.

“Dang it, Martha, those young’uns can bathe themselves; The Lucky Strike Hit Parade is about to come on the air.” (Image: Russell Lee/US Farm Security Administration)

We don’t need no stinking scarves; we’ve got fun to keep us warm

We’ve had old-school winter weather lately. It’s makes me nostalgic for Seals and Crofts music because it’s just like the ’70s again. Though I don’t hate snow, I don’t have the same high regard for it as I did when I was nine.

My boys love snow; that’s why I can’t dislike it. Shoveling is a pain, especially the re-shoveling after the snow plow has tossed all the street snow into my driveway. But I have two willing helpers, to the extent that they understand the goal of shoveling the driveway, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. There’s plenty else to sneeze at this time of year.

We got more than a foot of snow one day, followed by near-zero daytime temps, which is always a nice cherry on top of your winter woes. I no sooner got out my long underwear than my boys saw their chance to play in the snow. Thus began the ordeal.

The ordeal, if you don’t know the combination of snow and children, is the combination of snow and children. Finding all the pieces of snow attire, collecting them in one place, and getting them around the various edges of a child, is no mean feat. The last part of this circus should be performed with the child sedated, for if the child is conscious, the complaints will be incessant.

In the house, children rightfully complain about being restrained by the overburden of garments and the lack of suitable ingress for oxygen through the holes in their faces. They loathe breathing through scarves and similar impediments:

BOY: “Daddy, I can’t breathe!”

DAD: “You can breathe just fine.”

BOY: “No. I really can’t.”

DAD: “People who can’t breathe are too busy choking to complain.”

BOY: “No they’re not. They always say ‘I can’t breathe!’”

Two-foot drifts waited to be removed from the driveway, but we spent 15 minutes arguing about the habits of highly suffocated people.

His face soon extricated itself from the scarf, at which point he rightfully began to complain about his cold nose. I had no answers for him.

fort building

His nose may be a little cold, but at least he’s breathing again.

By now, Mommy had the little boy bubble wrapped in insulation. He joined us outside and immediately shed his mittens. Three trips back into the house later, he learned that keeping mittens on was prerequisite to staying outside.

Big Brother had given up clearing the concrete and was making a path to his fort beneath the pine tree by moving the excess snow into the driveway. He’d quit complaining; the idea of a fort always warms a kid’s soul.

going to the snow fort

Welcome to my fort. No mittens – no service.

Next, it was time to slide down the snowbanks I’d made with cast-off snow, bringing avalanches flowing back down into the driveway. Then we went back inside to leave a trail of snowy clothes through the house as we boys must do. It helps make it challenging to find all our gear next time, and that’s an integral part of the ordeal.

snowbank slide

There are lots of fun ways to get all this snow back into the driveway.

Later, I snuck out alone to shovel the driveway.

shoveling

Finally made it to the end of the driveway. Now who’s gonna shovel the street?

Life as an interchangeable part

Toddlers have a way with words. Their own way with their own words. They are some of the few people on Earth who say exactly what they mean. Pity we can’t understand any of it.

Our one-year-old has mastered his pronunciation of the words Mama and Dada. This was a happy milestone, until we realized that he was using them interchangeably when addressing his mother and me. I might have been Dada when I left for work in the morning and Mama by the time I got home again. Now, I sometimes forget to bring things home from work, but I’ve never yet left my Dada parts at the office.

Likewise, my wife can go from Mama to Dada without me perceiving a difference in her appearance, and I’m fairly well-informed regarding her anatomy. Buster might bump his knee and cry out for his mother’s loving arms with the plea, “Mama!” After the tears dry, he might tap her on the arm and point out to that very same Dada just exactly where he had hurt his leg.

We recalled Buster’s big brother going through a phase of development where he too threw these terms around without regard to gender, so we bided our time. Still, we took pains to point out which name goes with which parent whenever Buster seemed inclined to listen to our gibberish.

snowball school

Making a snowball with his brother, whose name he always gets right.

This went on until my wife proved again why she is the smart parent. “I don’t think he’s actually referring to us when he says Mama or Dada,” she explained. “I think Mama means help and Dada means look.”

Upon careful reflection, it all fell into place. Whenever he was distraught, he called out “Mama!” When he wanted to point something out, he did so to Dada, regardless of the parent at hand.

It’s nice to imagine that Mama and Dada are baby’s first words, but that doesn’t seem wholly accurate here. He’s been spouting words that don’t mimic adult speech for months, and they all mean something to him. You don’t preach with such fire and brimstone if the words don’t mean anything to you. Are Mama and Dada truly first words because they sound like words we know, even if they don’t mean what we think they should?

When it comes to valid communication, Buster’s first real word is juice. We have it; he wants it. Nothing could be plainer than his demand when he plants himself in front of the fridge and says, “Juice!” He need not be concerned whether it’s Help or Look who’s in the kitchen with him. We both have reached the stage of development where we understand the proper meaning of juice.

Thank God his parents are finally catching on to this language thing. He was beginning to worry about us.

If only we would reach developmental milestones that allowed us to understand more words, he would be much less concerned about our progress as parents.