Todd's toddlerhood

As I mentioned, someone in this house turned 2 recently. This little boy is charming, happy and completely adorable. And did I mention charming. There is just something about Todd that makes people smile. Sometimes it is his smile and other times it is his enthusiasm, the cock of his head, his earnestness...it is hard to describe but there is just something about him that is hard for anyone to resist.

Overall, he continues to be the easy-going child that he was as an infant. Which is not to say that he doesn't ever express his will or state his desires. And quite frankly, when he expresses a desire, he is serious about it. He isn't just halfheartedly telling you something to see how you react. He has decided that this request is urgent to his state of happiness. And he will stubbornly defend this need with typical toddler methods.

The positive thing that I have learned about the above stubbornness, is that most of the time he still has the attention span of a toddler. If he doesn't protest strongly, the protest will likely die down in a few minutes. If he does protest strongly, then it is time to move on to something else and come back to the issue in 5-10 minutes. After a break, it is likely that his easy-going and cooperative state will have returned. Who knows how long this technique will continue to work!

His language is really amazing. I don't have specific data points, but my impression is that his language exploded sooner and faster than Heather's, who was no slouch in the words department. At his 2 year check-up, the doctor asked if he had at least 20 words and we had to do our best not to laugh...since he had more than that at the 18 month appointment. By his birthday he was starting to use 3 word phrases pretty regularly and now (2 months later) is using 5-6 word sentences. Tonight: "Thank you [for] making dinner mommy." It is kind of amazing to me that he is talking so much, especially when you consider the chatterbox that he has for a sister. But maybe that is why, so he can get a word in edgewise. ;-)

15-21 months was a tough period. Sleep was tough and so was his level of neediness and separation anxiety. It gradually improved and now it feels like we have come out of the worst of it. Of course, we have also entered the world of toddler tantrums. But in some ways I prefer the occasional tantrum over a toddler velcro-ed to my side nearly 24/7.

Todd's favorite things:
- Doing whatever his big sister is doing. Anything and everything that Heather does is what he wants to do, too.
- Playing with and watching others play with baseballs, footballs, soccer balls, etc. If it is a sport, he is intrigued.
- Swinging at the playground. He enjoys climbing and sliding, too, but he can literally swing for an entire visit to the park.
- Playing in water - at the spray park, the pool, the kiddie pool, a water table, the bathtub, etc.
- Eating fruit. (There are other things he likes, too, but fruit is definitely eaten with the most gusto and quantity)
- Playing with his friends Will and Henry.
- All of the TV and movies that his sister enjoys. He has a pretty long attention span for it, for someone his age...which is both good and bad. :-)
- Anything with animals - books, TV, the zoo and real life visits with dogs and cats. He would be thrilled if our cats would allow regular petting and playing sessions.

For his birthday, we had a small party with his two pals and family. After the party was over, we tested the new bubble wands, colored Easter eggs and rode bikes. It was a lovely day to celebrate the little boy who made our family complete.

Whee!

Time continues to rush by in a whirlwind that is hard to express. I feel like I've been thinking about things I want to post a lot lately, but there always seems to be at least a few higher priority things on my to do list. And next thing you know it is the end of the day or an hour past the time I wanted to go to bed...

To get myself back in the swing of posting, I'm going to try to do quick snippets (kind of like my FB status updates), just to get something up here again. I hate to even suggest this...but when the new iPhones come out, R is getting one and I'm getting his old one, so maybe the ability to do quick posts from my phone will help me develop some new habits. (And bonus, I'm counting the new phone as his Father's Day present! :-) Not sure if he knows that...)

My random list from March is still pretty accurate. But there are a few new tidbits.

- Todd's favorite foods are fruit, meat, pizza and bread. He'll tolerate other stuff, but lately I'm noticing that he is much less willing to try anything that goes on his tray. Sometimes he'll try new things after a few bites of fruit or he'll let some noodles in while he chows down on the meat sauce...but some times he is clearly NOT willing to each some of the food being offered. I tried to enjoy his openness to food while it lasted. Looks like we've got two picky eaters in the house now.

- Todd is all about pointing - this started soon after his birthday. Wait, what? You say. Yes, he had a birthday and I haven't documented it in the least. And here we are more than a month past. Ahem.

Anyway, he's been pointing a ton, which is helping to curb some of his new toddler behavior. We've entertained the frustration territory where he knows.what.he.wants and can't tell us. Some use of pointing and signing "more" helps, but there is definitely some toddler angst brewing in our formerly "always easy going" guy.

- Todd's words: kitty was first and he still calls all animals kitty, but it's a process. :-) Other new words include ball, duck, mama, dada and uh-oh. I get the sense that there are probably a few more, but as a second child you just don't get the same kind of undivided attention and child #1. But you do have a constant source of entertainment and much more TV access than your older sibling did at your age, so I think it all evens out in the end.

- Since we were feeling like things were going smoothly (!) and we had a lot of busy weekends coming up, a few weekends ago we took away Heather's diapers. It was clear from her experiences in underwear that she had the ability to 'hold it' until she got a diaper on and could keep her underwear dry for hours at a time. For fear of significantly embarrassing my future teenage daughter and because I don't want to rehash all of our struggles...I'll just say that Heather is wearing underwear at home and putting all of her pee in the potty when she's with mommy and daddy. Why she refuses to use the potty at daycare or do #2 in the potty is something we can't quite comprehend or bribe her into doing. With busy weekends, we're currently playing the waiting game and hoping that she decides to go the rest of the way on her own. And I'm thankful that there was at least some positive result to our weekend of struggle.

Her tenacity and stubbornness is certainly inherited and will serve her well as an adult. No matter how frustrating it is as a 3 year old.

- We've added a new movie into the obsession rotation - one of my favorites. The Sound of Music. Awesome. And we continue to look forward to taking her to see Toy Story 3 in the theater. Though we still need to figure out who will watch Todd while we go...

- My knitting and crochet mojo has returned full force. I'm trying to use any evening time I have for sewing/mending projects and project finishing to avoid having any more projects that are 95% finished. I need to make some evening time for photography while we still have a little light after the kids go to bed. Or to let Heather help me on the weekend during on of Todd's naps.

- Speaking of Todd sleep, the improvements continue. 3 nights of the past week he has slept the entire (and I mean entire) night in his crib from bedtime to wake-up. And most of the other nights, the wake-ups have been minimal or short-lived. Bedtime has been a little bit of a mixed bag, but since the generally trend is all about improvements, I'm not complaining. I just need to go to bed earlier once we get through the yard sale this weekend.

The pacifier is gone...and a ramble about making changes.

Yes, you read that right. Heather's pacifier is GONE! It's gone for good and its never coming back! We would have a party to celebrate, except that her birthday is next week and two parties in two weeks might be a bit much. We don't want her expecting another one when she potty trains. :-)

I think the majority of my readers know me personally, but there might be a few lurkers out there...and really even for those of you who know me I think there is value in documenting what has gone on and my thoughts about it. Besides, this blog is the closest thing we have to a baby book for either child, so if I'm not going to go into gritty details occasionally then what is the point, right?

Let's go back to the beginning. I still remember viscerally how miserable I was at Heather's 1 week appointment. I'm pretty sure she would have nursed 24-7 if I would have let her. The relief that came when the pediatrician gave a thumbs up to offering her a pacifier swept over my whole body and made me a happy mommy again.

The girl continued to have a HUGE need to suck as a baby and then a strong need for the pacifier to get through teething and also as a lovey. It helped her calm down after every tantrum and often after an injury, too. Probably her best time to ditch it developmentally was this time last year, but we didn't want to risk screwing up her sleep right before having a baby or have her tie the pacifier loss to the baby.

I swear there were a few times over the past 4-6 months that I thought we were NEVER going to get rid of the thing. Even though she was barely using it outside of her bed or the house, we still couldn't make it go away. By Christmas we only had two left (I gradually removed the ones that weren't her favorite ones and a favorite one broke), and we only took one with us to visit family. That one broke right before we left and the paci-free trip was the most miserable 5 hours I've ever spent in a car.

BUT, the past week or two, she seems to be coming out of the 2 1/2 year developmental spurt. I don't know if you've read about this, but I've heard it described as "6 months on, 6 months off". Basically for 6 months they are calmer, more easy going and more even-tempered. And then the next 6 months they are moodier and more prone to tantrums, acting out and testing boundaries. Normally 12-18 mos, 2-2 1/2, and 3-3 1/2 are the "calm" periods and 18-24 mos, 2 1/2-3 and 3 1/2-4 are the "testing" periods. The first few weeks or months of each phase being the worst of it.

So we're one week from her birthday and the calmness seems to have arrived. She is SO pleasant and being more helpful than she has been. When she gets upset it doesn't last as long, she's less prone to bursts of crying, she's testing less and she's more likely to ask nicely without being prompted. (Yesterday was the best Sunday we've had in months!) I'm not trying to imply that she's been a constant terror for the past 6 months. As 2 year olds go, we've definitely got a good one. Especially when it comes to public behavior and general listening. But even the best kids have difficult periods. And there has been many a night the past few months that I was relieved to get her to bed so we could all get a break from each other or frustrated that she seemed to be crying more often than her baby brother...

Back to the pacifier - Thursday night at bedtime we couldn't find it. We looked in all of the usual places and it wasn't anywhere. Bedtime was a little rough and whiny, but nothing compared to when she was without it at Christmastime. And she only woke once overnight! Friday night at bedtime she looked for it briefly and didn't whine for it until my final "check-in" when she was stalling, and she only woke up once overnight.

Saturday night and Sunday night she didn't even ask for it at bedtime, she slept through the night and she only mentioned it once during the day yesterday! We officially have a toddler who is pacifier-free! And Todd doesn't seem to be very dependent on his, so I'm hoping sometime in 2010 we'll be a paci-free house. Yay!

I guess I just wanted to talk about the benefits about making changes during "calm" developmental windows to make them easier on us and our kids. Yes, we are the parents and we could have taken Heather's pacifier away whenever it suited us. (And trust me, we've tested the water on sleeping without the pacifier every few weeks for the past few months.) But by waiting until she was in a good developmental window for change, we made the change less traumatic on her and on us. (FWIW, she moved to a big girl bed a month ago with no problem...so I'm really talking about changes that are a big deal for the child, not just any and every change.)

As parents, we always seem to be second-guessing ourselves about whether we're being too harsh or too lenient. We don't want to be holding fast to rules just so that we can "win", but it is important to set boundaries to prevent the child from running the show and to give them the comfort of knowing that you are in charge. (As independent as they might be, toddlers do actually want us to be in charge and set boundaries...no matter how independent they may act.) Like everything else in parenting, it is a big balancing act, one that we are constantly fine tuning and adjusting. So I suppose I wanted to document a time when I feel like we got one "right". We seemed to strike a good balance between setting gentle boundaries and waiting for the right developmental window for the big change. There were certainly some rough and frustrating moments along the way...but I don't think I've come away from this experience with any big regrets.

And I'm hopeful that this period of calm with bring a Heather who is truly ready to be a big girl and choose to use the potty. :-) She's in a big girl bed, has ditched the booster seat, is drinking from a regular cup at the table and is mostly eating with utensils instead of her fingers. It's just a matter of time....right?

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For the curious, the big developmental spurts (aka 'bad periods' for change) are 3-5.5 mos, 8-11 mos, 18-24 mos, 30-36 mos and 42-48 mos. My primary references for this developmental stuff are these two blogs, and both sites list reading reference material and have good search engines. I know there are people out there who think these spurts are just excuses and there is always something happening with your kids. But I've read enough parenting boards to see that the majority of sleep/behavioral problem posts cluster at the beginning of these spurts. Sure, there are growth spurts, teething, illness and other factors...but there is no doubt in my mind that these developmental spurts are real. They are more obvious in some kids than others...but they are real.

http://www.isabelagranic.com/bed-timing/

http://www.askmoxie.org/