Halloween Pt. III: Adventures in Last Minute Costume Design

If you've read any of my previous posts about Joe, you know that he's a pretty timid kid.  He doesn't really love new adventures, or toys, or sounds, or words, or really anything.  It's usually a pretty endearing trait, but there is one time it's just plain annoying (sorry Joe): Halloween.

I ordered Joe's Halloween costume at least two months ago.  Because I'm the kind of person that if I don't do things super early, I will always put them off to the very last minute and make them into a mini-disaster.  I'm especially infamous at this with Halloween costumes, where I virtually always go as something that can be cobbled together at the last minute from stuff in the house.  So it truly was a big win for me that I was so on top of ordering this stupid knight costume.

Anyway.   Costume came on time, we made sure it fit and that Joe didn't hate it (which he didn't, three weeks ago) - everything was dandy.  But, of course, right at go-time this morning, he decided that he wasn't going to wear the costume to school unless he also got to bawl uncontrollably the whole time.  I tried all my awesome parenting tricks - soothing, cajoling, bribing, demanding...all to no avail.  Hate to admit it, but I seriously considered sending him to preschool and making the teachers deal with this situation.  They are the pros, right??  But I guess preschool teachers are right up there with mailmen, trashmen, and the like--they really are people who you really don't want to hate you cause they can truly mess with your life.  I gave up and let Joe win that round.

So we bailed on the knight costume.  John stayed home for an extra hour and a half this morning to help me scavenge the house for a last minute costume that Joe could wear to preschool.  Cause who wants to be the only kid at preschool without a costume!!  Since he won't wear hats or anything on his head, makeup of any kind, or anything at all scratchy, we were severely limited in our scrounging options.   In his infinite wisdom, John thought of a monk costume - so he cut up a brown crib sheet, tied a piece of white fabric cut from one of his shirts around the waist, and voila.  Joe accepted this costume, and eventually even learned to like it, but there was no lack of tears throughout the process.  Needless to say, I was beaten down by Halloween by 9:00 this morning.

Later, when we had more time to discuss, John and I decided that trick-or-treating would be a terrible experience unless we came up with some costume that Joe would be willing to wear.  Which basically meant that we had to fool Joe into thinking he wasn't wearing a costume at all.  More severely limited options.  After some rummaging through our costume stuff (we have a lot), a couple of quick trips to Wal-Mart and Babies R Us,  and a minor breakdown on my part (special thanks to the hubster for talking me off that ledge), we came up with his "rockstar" costume.  Actually, I'll credit John 100% with the idea, and me 100% with the implementation.  Teamwork: the key to somewhat successful parenting without attempting to gouge out your own eyes out in the process.

The best part of the new costume: Ian had a coordinating one!  He played the part of the lazy band member that everyone wants to kick out but doesn't want to hurt his feelings (that basically means that he just hung out in the bjorn while Joe did all the work). 

Can you tell that it's harder to get Ian to STOP smiling than it is to get him to smile?  That kid is gonna be a serious charmer.  

In the end, after all the drama, Halloween 2011 was a pretty big success.  Everyone loved Joe's costume - one lady even singled him out of a crowd to take his picture - and it didn't take Joe too long to realize that this whole trick-or-treating thing might be a pretty good deal for him.  Everyone loved Ian too because, well, he's adorable.  So, first stressful event of the holiday season behind us.  Next stop: Thanksgiving.

Halloween Pt. II: A Trip Down Halloween Memory Lane

Halloween!  Everyone's favorite non-religious, non-day-off-work, not-truly-a-holiday holiday.   Also one of those holidays that separates the grinches from the holiday nerds. 

I think the most lasting lesson that John has taken from college is that the importance of going all-out on Halloween costumes.  Every year, he spends literally months planning his costume, down to the smallest detail.  Being married to him, he, of course, expects me to follow suit in this level of costume design.  I'm no grinch, so I give it the old college try (pun totally intended.  har har.), but his costumes are consistently way better than mine.  And honestly, probably better than yours, too.

You know how dads always have something that they've been desperately waiting to teach their kids?  Like, a lot of guys are so anxious to play catch with their sons that they buy them baseball gloves for their first Christmas even though their little baby hands can't even grab the binky yet?  Well, for John, the thing he's been desperately waiting to teach Joe and Ian is how to truly own a costume.

So, in honor of Ian's first Halloween, Joe's first trick-or-treating Halloween, and John's first true opportunity to impart this lifelong lesson, here is a trip down memory lane for some Halloween's past.

2011

Reverse chronological order makes sense, so let's start with this year's costume.  Nascar fan, complete with a mostly gone six pack of Bud.  Can you see the koozie?  It's a 3D deer koozie.  There is seriously a deer with antlers sticking out of the side.  The mustache was intricately fine-tuned to the perfect level of, eh-hem, trashiness.  All in all, a pretty great costume.  It actually won him $150 and a free happy hour at his work costume contest, so I call that a win.

2010

 I hijacked Joe's outfit last year, which is why this year is John's first teaching opportunity.  Cute, right?  He hated it.  This smile is fake.

2009

The year before Joe was born:  Malibu's Most Wanted.  I wish I could say that the shirt was part of the costume, but that's actually a real live Texas State Fair purchase.  I think he really sells this one with the look on his face. 

Have to say, I don't think I did too that year bad either - I was the pregnant Kardashian.  Thrown together, but the actual baby in there helped.

2008

 Halloween 2008: Larry Byrd.  The "mustache" is real, or as real as John will ever be able to grow it.  Too bad this picture doesn't capture the socks that had been hand-colored with green permanent marker to look like basketball socks, and a pair of old school Converse.

2007

This time, the mustache is supplemented with marker, or makeup, or something.  Anyway, he's that guy from The Big Lebowski, you know, the Vietnam one?  His name escapes me at this moment...Walter Sobchak, John tells me.  Either way, I think Daniel steals the show here, because that is a true blue sweater straight from his dad's closet.

Not a Halloween picture.

Those are as far back as my Halloween pictures go, but here's one more random costume for good measure.  Law school 80s party.  Why?  I don't remember, but there was probably a good reason at the time.  

So there you go.  Joe and Ian will learn from the master.

Halloween Pt. I: Pumpkin Carving!

Pumpkin carving: awesomely classic Halloween activity, maybe not so classic toddler and infant activity.  But we gave it the old college try.  Special thanks to Meghan and Per for helping us wrangle and feeding us dinner too.

My Kids Are Saints

So.  Have you ever had one of those days where nothing truly bad happens, but you definitely, definitely should have stayed in bed with the covers pulled over your head?  The kind of day that will be funny in 10 years, but today just makes you want to cry?  That's my last Tuesday.  And in another example of "I had to live it, so you can at least read it," here you go. 

Approximately 2:15am:  You know it's bad when your first "incident" happens less than three hours into the day.  Ian's still getting up for a super-early morning feeding -- he sleeps six or so hours straight, but he goes to bed really early (like 7:00).  So, every morning at about 2:00, I sleepwalk over to Ian's room, feed him for about 20 minutes.  Then I then walk (honestly, I run.  I dare you to calmly walk around your dark-ass house in the middle of the night with no protection from ghosts or creepers before you judge me.) back to our room, get into bed, and mess around on my phone for a few more minutes while I make sure Ian is asleep and settled.  Last Tuesday night was no different from normal; Ian wakes up hungry, I feed Ian, I come back to bed, I continue to mess around on my phone to ensure baby restfulness before I pass out again.  But this time, as I'm lying there checking my phone, a three-quarters-asleep John out of nowhere, all of a sudden sits up in bed, pump-fakes at me as hard as he can, and yells (YELLS, at the top of his lungs, no joke) "RAAAAAAWR" while clawing at me with his hands.  Seriously.  It was so terrifying that I literally screamed at the top of my lungs.  Why would he do such a thing?  Why, you ask??  Good question.  As soon as I could compose myself enough to talk, I repeatedly asked him "WHY??  I just want to know why you did that??" -- but he was still so asleep that he couldn't even answer.  He just kept mumbling and laughing (which freaked me out almost as much as the initial attack!).  Whatever, no excuses.  Horribly traumatizing. 

After that lovely start, things actually went well for much of the rest of the day.  Joe went to school, Ian and I went shopping with my mom and helped her do some unpacking.  I headed home around 3:00pm to make sure I was home in time to take Joe to speech therapy - he had a rescheduled appointment at 5:30pm that evening, which isn't our normal time.  That matters for later.

3:30pm:  I get home and need to pump a bottle for Ian so he can stay with the nanny while we go to speech therapy.  After thirty minutes of pumping, I have about half a feeding's worth of noms.  Getting enough for Ian to eat has never been a problem for me -- in fact, I've always had the opposite problem... -- but, as you can tell from last week's post, I was sick as a dog last week.  And I learned the hard way (last Tuesday at about 3:30pm) that sickness will screw with your milk supply.  So, change of plans.  Ian will have to ride with me up to speech therapy, so that I can feed him there if the half-feeding doesn't tide him over.  3 month old + rush hour traffic.  See where this is going?

4:10pm:  So Joe, Ian, and I pack ourselves and all of our baby crap into the car to head to speech therapy.  The office is about 15 miles away from our house, not even, but it's down a road that is under massive construction, so we usually leave ourselves about 45 minutes to get there in time.  Since this appointment was smack-dab in the middle of rush hour, we weren't messing around.  My goal was to leave by 4:15, and we did.  Success.

4:20pm: As I'm entering the ramp to Terrible Highway, I hear on the radio that there are accidents going both ways on Terrible Highway, each at the exact exit we need to take for speech therapy.  So traffic is a disaster.  No problem, there are some back roads we can take.

4:35pm: I'm patting myself on the back as we exit from Terrible Highway.  We turn onto Forest Lane, which runs parallel.   A few stoplights in and I'm very pleased with my resourcefulness in avoiding the traffic apocalypse on Terrible Highway.  We still have about an hour to go 6 miles.  Easy.

4:50pm:  Sitting through the fifth light cycle at the fifth light on Forest.  Oh no.

4:58pm:  As I'm finally speeding through that same stoplight (on a red), I hear on the radio that there is a huge accident at Forest Lane on the street directly after the turn we need to make.  Awesome.  But, we still have thirty minutes to go 6 miles.  We could all WALK there faster than that, so still, easy.

5:10pm:  I've turned off of Forest onto some other lame parallel road.  Which is even more completely stopped than Forest OR Terrible Highway.  I call the speech therapy office three or four times to let them know the situation, but no answer.  On the last call I leave a voicemail, kind of pissed that no one is there to answer, right?  But I'm the late one I guess, so I have to be tolerant. Anyway, Ian's regular time to eat is about 5:00 (another reason I wanted to get there early) and today is no different, so he's in the back screaming his lungs out for food.  Joe is being a complete saint.  But still, as anyone who's been trapped in the car with a screaming infant knows, this is horribly stressful.  Mom tears ensue. 

5:27pm:  We haven't even moved through one stoplight since we turned onto this other road.  The speech therapist office calls me back finally and apologizes that their phones aren't working, but will  I be able to make it in time? I tell them that there's no way I can make it by 5:30, but we are one block away from our turn, which is 5 blocks away from the office, so there's no way it can THAT much longer to get there.  They tell me that Kristen will work with him for as much time as she can, so I decide to keep trying to get there.  Ian's screams have chilled out because I was able to get in the backseat and replace the binky at one of the stoplights.

5:45pm:  We are just turning onto the road that the therapy office is on, and the traffic is even more stopped on this road than the other road.  Great.  I finally realize that there's no way we can make the appointment (no idea why this took me so long.  I was out of my right mind.), so I call and cancel.  Ian's screaming has resumed at full throttle.  I decide it would be terrible parenting to make him wait any longer, so, decision made.  I pull over onto some random side street and give him his bottle. 

5:52pm:  Ian finished his half-feeding and, of course, is still hungry.  So, out comes the boob.  On a random side street in Dallas.  Maybe not so weird for some nursing moms, but this "in public" thing is not my M.O.  At this point my tears are flowing freely.  John is on the phone making sympathetic noises.  Joe is still being a saint in his carseat.

6:05pm:  Everyone gets back strapped into their respective seats, and we head back into the traffic to get home.  Repeat steps above re: horrible traffic. 

6:50pm: I get home.   Finally.  In the end, we were all in the car for over two and a half hours.  And we didn't even go anywhere.  The whole trip was less than 30 miles.

If you stuck through this story up to this point, you can hang on for some bragging.  I can honestly say that I shed more tears throughout this ordeal than my kids did.  Joe was happy and funny the whole trip.  Seriously, the whole trip, not an upset peep from him.  He just talked to me and looked out the window and hung out.  Ian cried, of course, but he is three months old and it was for food -- totally justified.  And the minute I got the bottle near his mouth, he had a smile so big he couldn't even eat it.  How great is that, he went from bawling for food to smiling and laughing the minute he was up with me getting his bottle?  Love that kid.

My kids definitely have their moments, but in this horribly trying situation where I lost my cool on so many occasions I'm embarrassed to admit it, neither of my kids lost their cool once.  Love that they are already better than me.  Doesn't that mean my job is basically done??

To Speak or Not to Speak

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Joe starting speech therapy.  In a nutshell: Joe wasn't making any noise at all; doctors and teachers kept commenting on how silent he was; John and I got nervous; John and I decided to start Joe in private speech therapy lessons.  For whatever reason, realizing that Joe needed some help was a big "AHA!" moment for us about our kids sometimes needing a little extra push.

So, it's been about six weeks since Joe started speech therapy classes.  And we have seen some seriously impressive results (videos below!).  Part of the reason we were so hesitant to put Joe in speech therapy originally is that I had always thought that there couldn't possibly be an effective way to speech-therapize a one and a half year old.  I mean, I can't get Joe to pay attention to anything for more than 15 seconds, and even though he does follow directions sometimes, how do you try to direct him how to talk?  What could they possibly do to that would teach him or explain to him how to make certain sounds?  Definitely couldn't have been more wrong about all that, though.   Turns out there are lots of things you can do to teach a toddler to talk. 

Here's what they do in Joe's speech therapy.  Phase I: narrating and labeling.  As far as Joe knows, he and his speech therapist (a super sweet, patient girl named Kristen) just play together for the whole half hour.  The whole time they're playing, though, Kristen narrates everything he does.  Everything.  She gives a constant play-by-play, so to speak, of everything Joe does with the toys ("Oh, you see the horsey!  Horsey runs to the barn.  Horsey plays in the barn.  You're done with horsey, bye bye horsey!").  Truly, it's enough to make you want to stab out your own eyeballs with a dull pencil -- I have so much respect for all you speech therapists who are able to keep that up all day.  Seriously.  But narrating is a big part of teaching him to talk because it gives him an opportunity to hear and label every single thing and every action he sees.  It's shocking how much this worked in getting him to just start attempting to talk and make some vocalizations.

Phase II: Breaking routines to encourage him to speak.  Sounds complicated, but actually simple.  The best example is "Ready, Set, GO!".  Kristen and Joe would play with, say, those car toys that spiral down a big roadway (the ones you let go of at the top), but before Kristen would let go of the car from the top so it could come down, she'd say "Ready, set" over and over, until Joe said the "GO!" part.  At first, all we were wanting from Joe was some kind of vocalization at all; any sound would have satisfied because the idea is to get him to understand that language can get you what you want.  The way I think about it, the idea was to teach him to communicate more than to teach him to speak.  (By the way, this concept is exactly why I am now officially a huge supporter of baby sign language.  Speech and communication are really two separate beasts that kids have to learn at the same time, unless you give them a head start by teaching them that they can get what they want with hand signals.  Huge apologies to all you baby-sign-language moms for thinking you were crazy and over-involved.)

Phase III: Hold out what he wants until he actually says the word.  This is the classic "You want your milk?  Say MILK.  MILK."  "On" and "off" are another good example; get out a toy that he really wants to turn on, but make him say "on" before you'll turn it on for him.  This one is a little more touchy because you definitely don't want to frustrate him -- frustration would go against the whole "language gets you want you want" thing.  But Joe has always been incredibly patient with Kristen on this one, and he's starting to get more patient with me, too.

So there's a quick and dirty breakdown of Joe's speech therapy sessions.

As for his six week progress report: totally. different.  kid.  He talks so much and makes so much noise that you wouldn't even recognize him.  When we went to our first speech therapy session, the only noise he'd ever make were whining noises and sometimes vowel sounds.  He never talked to himself, never babbled, and definitely never said any words.  I cannot stress enough how completely and utterly silent he was, and had been since he was about 4 months old.  But boy, what a huge change a few weeks can make.  He babbles to himself all day, says a bunch of words pretty clearly, and (the absolute best part for me and John) he actually tries to say words all the time.  I'll be walking through the grocery store narrating everything like a good speech therapy mom, and when I start talking about onions, he'll get very serious and look me right in the eye and say, clear as day and out of nowhere, "ONION!"  Then he gets all giggly and happy with himself.  It's so fun to see him excited and proud of himself when he tries to talk instead of frustrated and pissed at himself.  [Insert guilty feelings about not getting him started with a speech therapist earlier here.]

Anyway, great, fantastic, fabulous, unexpectedly huge progress in just six weeks.  But we still have a ways to go before we're on track -- according to the ENT who did Joe's hearing test, Joe should have at least 200 words in his speaking vocabulary by the time he's 2 (which is January 17), despite his speech delay, so we're sort of working on a time crunch here.  So far, Joe's pulling his weight like a champ.  I think I can venture a safe guess that we're at about 30 words, all of which have sprouted up in the last two or three weeks.  Definitely on track for our 200 word goal.

I can't resist putting up a couple videos to show you all the new words he can "say."  (Give him a break on pronunciation, we're trying to crunch a year's worth of talking into a month or so.)  Here's one from a few weeks ago when he started seriously babbling.  You may have to jack up your volume to hear.

Notice how he stopped as soon as he saw me watching him?  He's definitely super shy about the whole talking thing still.  He still won't make a peep at school, or in front of anyone he's not comfortable with.  Clearly, he doesn't even like getting caught by me! 

Here's a little later when he first started saying actual words.  He struggles with hard consonants, but you can clearly tell that he's got the right idea.

And finally, here are a couple of pretty clear words!  "Mine" (side note: don't ever teach a toddler this word.  ever.) and "bubbles."  You're going to have to give me a break on this one - I have a terrible cold and lost my voice a bit today, so I sound like a 75-year-old leather-faced, oxygen tank-using smoker who just got let out of the pen.

That's Ian in the background, by the way.  Don't think he'll have talking issues, since he's always got something to say.

So there you have it.  Moral of the story: there's no point in waiting to get your kid help with something they struggle with.  Sometimes all they need is a little push and the floodgates will open.  Joe, your dad and I are so ridiculously proud of you for achieving so much in such a short period of time.  We love you.

Cheap Thrills

Big furniture boxes.  More fun than toys that mom and dad paid for since [forever, I think].

 

  Add in a $4.99 grocery store bouncy ball....

...and a little game of "WHERE'S JOE!"...

["THERE HE IS!"]

...and you have one happy toddler.  Even if the roofers across the street didn't let him nap, like, at all.  Happy Friday, peeps.

 

The One About the Toddler Poop

Warning: this entire post is about toddler poop.  Stories about blowout toddler poop are nowhere near as cute as stories about blowout newborn poops.  There are photos, but I promise that none of them are of the poop itself.  Except maybe one.  But you can't tell there's poop in it, I promise, it just happens to be there.  And if you stick this one out you will definitely appreciate however you spent your own evening, and you may just get a laugh or two out of it (or you may call your doctor immediately to schedule an appointment to get your tubes tied).

Well, if the title of this post and that disclaimer didn't turn you away, I guess nothing will.  Bravo!  Just remember, I had to live this, so the least you can do is read about it.

To dive right in - Joe has had some lovely and intense diarrhea for over a week. No fever, no sickness, nothing else.  Just liquid poo, multiple times a day and sometimes overnight.  And always when he wakes up in the morning.  Super fun, sexy, and glamorous.  Poor Joe.

So have you heard about the big cantaloupe/listeria problems that have been going on lately around these parts?  Since my mom listens to NPR religiously and may actually have a crush on Diane Rehm, I am always very up to date on newsworthy national issues like cantaloupe virus outbreaks.  Turns out that people are actually dying of this one, though, so it matters, and is scary.  One of the symptoms of cantaloupe-related listeria is frequent, eh hem, liquid poo -- and the symptoms can take up to 70 days to show themselves.  Of course, a few weeks ago, Joe had some cantaloupe at my mom's house.  Add NPR melodrama to paranoid grandma, sprinkle in a few drops of actual symptoms, and you have a kind of freaked out mama.

Since today marked the eighth straight day of liquidity, and in light of my aforementioned freaked-outedness (and since I could practically hear my mother wringing her hands through the phone every time we talked), I figured it was about time to get him into the doctor to get this output issue checked out.  Fortunately, the doctor found no obvious issues, and the lack of other side effects means it's safe to say that he doesn't have any of the really scary stuff (including listeria. phew.).

Unfortunately, because there are no obvious issues, they have to test for non-obvious issues.  And how, you ask, do they test for non-obvious poop-related issues?  Why, stool samples, of course!  The doctor sent me home with a whole goody bag full of stuff to collect the next burst of poo in.

Because timing on stuff like this is always perfect, John's got trial tomorrow morning and is working late tonight.  So I'm home alone with the kiddos.  Perfect night to have to collect poop, wouldn't you say?  Right around bathtime, the evening burst I'd been waiting for reared its ugly head.  It was time to gird my loins and go poop hunting. 

Here are the tools of my poop-hunting trade:

Six vials in which I am supposed to trap the poop.  Only three are pictured, but please be clear, there are six of these that I had to fill.  I guess Joe had some part in filling them too, but I intend to take as much credit here as I can.

Three tongue depressors with which to scoop the poop.  Seriously.  I had to scoop the poop into those tiny vials with these tongue depressors.  Let that one soak in.  So to speak.

Thank goodness for gloves.  But why do they make these medical gloves thin enough that you can feel everything you're touching and doing?  I would have preferred some seriously industrial construction worker gloves or something.  I mean come on, this wasn't exactly precision work.  But they got the job done.

So, I captured the poop.  I won't go into the details of that unforgettable 10 minutes of my life, but let's just say that it was, for lack of a better term, gut-wrenching.  Especially with a fussy 3 month old and a hyper 21 month old hanging about.  Unfortunately, despite my somewhat heroic efforts, the evening burst wasn't prolific enough to fill all six vials.  Still got four to go tomorrow.

Final question I will pose to you: What do you do with a poo sample that you capture in the evening, after the doctor's office has closed?  Poo is already mucho bacteria-laden, but it doesn't seem right to just leave it sitting on the bathroom counter overnight.  But does it seem more right to put it in the fridge with all the food the entire family eats every day?  A thinker, isn't it.  Kind of like a weird law school hypo, but for med students.  (Remember when I said this post would at least make you glad you weren't me?  This is that moment.  Enjoy.) 

John and I debated the merits of each approach and ultimately settled on putting the poo in the fridge and throwing out just about everything else in there tomorrow.  Because that's what parents do.  We make sure our kid's poo is safely maintained in the fridge overnight so that we don't screw up the sample.  If fridge-poo isn't love, I don't know what is.

(This is the picture with the poop in it.  But see, you can't see it, can you!)

Needless to say, I think I may be getting the Mom of the Week award for the second week in a row.  I can say with certainty that I definitely earned this beer.

And two cookies.  And a few bites of cookie dough.  And a massage.

*Update: I'm sure you're dying to know what happened with the three remaining vials, right?  Well, you'll be happy to know that all were successfully filled the day after I posted.  My saint of a husband filled two of them at 5:30 in the morning (after he got home from work after 1:00am and got up to start working again at 6:30am), and I filled the last one later that day.  Of course, since then, Joe's poop has been normal.  Why wouldn't it be??  Sigh.