Figuring out Naps and Runaway Toddlers!

I'm sitting at my computer listening to hear if my son will come out of his bedroom again.  He's already lost his television time tomorrow, but his inability to sleep tonight that we need to re-think his afternoon nap again.

We thought he was ready to give up his afternoon nap, but after a few days without, it became apparent that he still needed it.  Actually, what he probably needs is a twenty minute power nap each day, but once he goes to sleep, he sleeps for ninety minutes to two hours.  Trying to wake him earlier than that is such a bad idea I wince to think about it. 

Waking is a big, near impossible transition for my son.  He's better these days than he used to be, but waking him before he's ready is a surefire recipe for a physical throw-down tantrum, the only time he has one.  I have resorted to googling this before now, trying to figure out the why of it, but all I've found are a few other mothers reporting similar issues and saying that their child outgrew it.

Anyway, to avoid the tantrum situation, we don't wake him if we can help it.  Instead, we're trying to figure out how often a week he needs a nap.  If he doesn't get enough sleep, his behaviour deteriorates.  If he gets too much, he can't sleep at night.  So far, we've established that twice a week is too little, every other day, too much.  Onto every three days then?  Obviously, the stimulation he receives during the day makes a difference too, but I think we're just going to be making this up as we go along for a few months until he's genuinely able to give up his nap.

One plus: I followed Confessions of a Montessori Mom's advice and started getting him dressed as soon as he got up in the morning, which has helped mitigate some of the behavioural issues as well as encouraging him to get control of himself when he first wakes up.  It took a few days, but now he is accustomed to it, and it's saved us a bunch of time in the morning (as opposed to getting him dressed right before he goes to school).

Meanwhile, my daughter's behaviour has improved markedly since she started walking.  She's too busy exploring her new horizons to misbehave.  With one notable exception: running away.  My son was never much of a runaway.  He did a bit of it, but mostly he was happy to stick close to me, and considering how clingy my daughter has been all her life, I fondly imagined that she would be the same way.

Yeah, not so much.  One of her favourite games now is to wait until I say: "This way!"  She then proceeds to give me a big beaming smile and run (well, toddle as fast as she can) in another direction.  The best part is apparently when I sprint after her and scoop her up, earning a delighted chuckle.

For now, it's not a problem, because she's still pretty easy to catch, but that won't always be the case, so I'm trying to nip this in the bud now.  Ignoring her is obviously not an issue, so I'm switching back to the consequences without anger style of discipline.  I restrict her movements, but I don't give her a big reaction.

One of the best places for doing this is actually the supermarket.  I've most often heard that shopping is best done without the kids on foot, but I have the luxury of being able to go, just me and my daughter, at midmorning when it's fairly quiet.  In a busy store, with me supervising both children, this isn't really feasible.

But this morning, I took my daughter grocery shopping letting her walk.  Every time she ignored my instructions, I said "No", and put her in the trolley.  After a minute or so, I let her out and we would try again.  One thing I did learn was that she was happier when she could carry something, like a jar of peanut butter, although eventually she'd lose interest and drop it.  I also learned that while I could remain impassive as I bore her back to the trolley, other shoppers would undermine my efforts by cooing over her.  Ah, well.  I can't really blame them when she is clearly the most adorable baby ever.

Anyway, a work in progress, but I'd hate to have to get reins for her.  One thing I am going to have to work on is being closer to her when I can tell she's going to make a break for it, so it doesn't turn into the chase that she loves so much.  I am also trying to dial the tolerance down to zero.  I want to give her the chance to comply, but this kind of thing is too big a risk to let her think she can push the limits.

This evening, I grabbed her as she made a dash for the road, and that got me physically turning her face towards mine and talking seriously to her.  That is giving her a reaction, but I think it might be better to do so for that.  Instilling road safety is another difficult issue...  I've just got to find the balance.

Stairs

So, it's been a week since my (almost 15 month old) daughter embraced walking and in that time, she's taught herself how to walk down stairs.  She also figured out how to stand up independently from a fall, but the stairs took precedence.  I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this.  It's just the standard sidestep down while holding onto the bannister posts, but she looks ridiculously little to be doing it.  On the other hand, it's a great reassurance that she is defaulting to a safe approach. 

We have a lot of stairs in our house, so safe stair-management is important to us.  We also only have one baby gate, because my son was astonishingly good about stairs.  He figured out how to slither down feet-first on his tummy at ten months old and did that until he was eighteen months.  We never needed to worry about him and stairs at all.

Owing to the cost of baby gates, and the numbers of stairs we have, I didn't want to fit every staircase with a baby gate in the new house (we've moved since my son's babyhood).  So once my daughter was crawling, we spent a lot of time on the stairs, just practising.  I taught my daughter the same technique for slithering down them, but she never liked it very much, probably because she couldn't see where she was going.  She understood about edges, but I was always worried that once she learned to walk, she'd just step off them and hope for the best.

Fortunately, she addressed the issue so promptly that I didn't have time to worry about how I was going to block off all the stairs.  As it is, she's unlikely to go up or down a set of stairs without me accompanying her anyway, and now that she's mastered the independent skill, she prefers to hold my hand or be carried than do it by herself.

It makes me wonder about baby gates though...  I only have one set of stairs blocked, and those are the ones leading down from the living area, mostly because I envision wildly playing children forgetting where they are and sailing off the edge on a wheely bug.  While I've been conscientious about getting the children familiar with the stairs, I'm sure this lack of precaution would be considered insanely reckless by some.

Yet are we being oversold on the baby gate issue?  It might be that my children happen to be unusually good at handling stairs, but while we've had a few tumbles, we've never had any injuries.  My parenting style tends towards letting my children be at risk of injury, (e.g. they can climb trees) because I agree that they should be able to test their physical limits and learn that an injury is something they can handle (not that we've had anything worse than scraped knees).  It seems natural for me to extend this philosophy to stairs.

I can't say I have any regrets, but every now and then, when we're out, my daughter might be playing close to some sort of edge and I'll just sit back and watch her--until I get a sudden jolt of paranoia that all the other parents are thinking I'm a cruel, neglectful mother.  Or, on even rarer occasion, somebody else will swoop in and save her from her peril--I usually say: "Oh, it's OK, she's good about edges," and they probably think I'm insane.

Regardless, I'm very impressed with my daughter's determination and she's even more impressed with herself.  The overall novelty of walking has worn off a little for her, and today she wanted to be carried most of the time.  But I do like carrying her on my hip... that's something I'm going to miss when it's over.

From baby to toddler

So, a month back, I posted about how my daughter had taken her first step.  Remembering my son's steady progression from that first step to walking all over the place in two or three weeks, I eagerly anticipated a similar burst of determination from my daughter.

Not so much.  Although she's always been more ambitious than her laid back brother, she has never been pushing to walk.  Simply discovering the ability to take independent steps was not enough to inspire her.

After giving the matter some thought, I came to the conclusion that the big difference in circumstances for the second child is that I wasn't going at her pace.  With her brother, I could arrange my whole day around him, taking things as slowly as I like and letting him crawl alongside me or stagger around holding my hand.  With the second child, I'm rushing to get things done in between the school runs or trying to keep up with the toddler instead of slowing down for the baby.  I've been carrying her a lot more, and she has had absolutely no objection to that.

So starting Monday, I changed my habits, remembering to slow down wherever possible and to do handheld walking as much as possible.  On Thursday, something clicked and she started walking.  Not exclusively, but she's gone from crawling as the default mode to walking (until she falls over) as the default mode.  The change was dramatic enough that my husband noticed the difference between when he left for work in the morning and when he came home that night.

I've also rediscovered just how much of a jump in interaction walking makes--and how much better I am at toddlers than babies.  Also on Thursday, she knocked over her brother's glass of orange juice.  I gave her a paper towel to clean up the mess, and she promptly started wiping at it (with remarkable effectiveness).  I then asked her to throw the used paper towel in the bin and (after a couple of repetitions) she toddled to the kitchen and did so, giving me frequent looks for confirmation and a big grin when she realised she understood what I meant.

One of my mild concerns is that I've not done much in the way of giving directions to her, so I am genuinely delighted she understood me.  And lest anybody think I've got some sort of miracle child, I did have to clean up most of the spill myself--she just did a better job with her paper towel than her brother did at that age.

Speaking of spills, she's recently got the hang of drinking out of her doidy cup so I've started giving her a glass for occasional drinks, in true Montessori style.  I found one at a thrift store a few months ago, that was small but surprisingly heavy.  I'm hoping this means that it can survive a trip to the hardwood floor (so far untested), but the weight encourages her to use both hands to lift it and focus a little more on what she's doing with it.  She's a lot more inclined to just knock things over for fun than her brother ever was, so this is something very intermittent.

But I've moved their table to the window, where it's a little closer to the shelves for carrying practice.  I think I'm going to try and have them eat there more often when we're not having a family meal (i.e.  snacks and lunch).  She's not mastered the art of getting on and off the stools yet, but it'll be a step closer to independence when she does.

Basically, I'm in a wild burst of enthusiasm for having a toddler again, especially since my son's left that behind for the mentally draining 3 year old stage.  For the first time, she's easier than he is!  Yet of course, as much as I've been waiting for this, there's that bittersweet thought: "No more babies, soon she won't crawl around at all...."  I don't do well with babies, and I'm tired of how all her leggings are grey and dingy at the knees, but.... still.  She's been a very cute baby.

Also, she cut three teeth almost simultaneously: two molars and a canine.  That explains the grumpy mood towards the end of our holiday.  I am still waiting on the other canine to poke through, but she's got tired of me poking into her mouth, so for all I know it's there already.

Dampening my burst of wild enthusiasm is the sick day my son's had today.  After a complete lapse in behaviour yesterday, he threw up twice overnight and then again after lunch today.  So far he's kept dinner down, so fingers crossed.  At least he's been much more cheerful today, and I was able to keep him occupied by building a gigantic train track all across the living room rug during his sister's morning nap. 

I probably love that train set more than he does.  I am not looking forward to when they outgrow it....

It's not walking, it's falling with style

My daughter (thirteen and a half months) is on the verge of walking.  Then again, she has been since Christmas, so we're cautious about getting our hopes up.  Cruising, walking while her hands are held, standing unassisted... all those she can do.  She can even walk with just one hand being held, although she tends to start grabbing for the other hand if this keeps up for more than a few steps.

For the past two weeks, she's been faking us out.  She will stand, unassisted, and stare at her destination, poised to take that first step... and then she'll drop down to all fours and crawl.  Alternatively, she will might be just out of reach of her desired support, so she will dive towards it, and as she falls she takes a step to propel herself closer.  Since she's making no attempt to keep her balance, I don't think that counts!

My son walked at fourteen months, which is late-ish, but not remarkably late.  At the time, it seemed like an eternity, because I had a number of friends who had babies within a month of his birth, and all of them were walking by ten months.  I used to joke that he was thrown off-balance by his disproportionately large head... perhaps this is true for my daughter as well!  Her doctor seems to think that her old hip issues might delay her a little, which isn't something I'd thought about.  I forget she ever had hip dysplasia most of the time.

For the most part though, the beauty of the second time around is that I'm less fussed by the wait for those first steps.  She'll get there.  I'm getting impatient, because she weighs over twenty pounds and that's a lot to carry, but on the plus side, I am stronger than I've ever been!  Still, with the warmer weather arriving, it would be great if she could run around and join in the outdoor activities more fully.  And there's a part of me that frets that she might take after me and not walk until she's almost two!

It does, however, look like she's beaten both me and her brother.  Today, she turned away from me and took a definite step towards him.  She then pitched herself forward onto the stair we were sitting on, but she held her balance while taking that step. 

As far as I'm concerned, that counts.  She's not quite a walker yet, but we've had the first step.