Lessons in Discipline

So disciplining a toddler is interesting to say the least. You're basically trying to teach someone whose mind is so taken over by learning words and animals and colors and climbing that there is just no room left to learn appropriate behavior.

Unfortunately for us parental units, there is plenty of room left in our brains for frustration the millionth time a sippy cup gets tossed to the floor or a toy gets thrown in Marti's direction. We don't need to pay for mental hospital bills when the sippy-tossing makes us insane or neurosurgery for the pug's damaged brain, thus discipline must happen.

Discipline with a toddler is not always effective, but we're at least trying not to let our daughter run around like a heathen. This means stern talking-tos and sort-of timeouts.

The other day, Alan and I were hanging out in Avery's room. She was terrorizing Marti, and toys were getting a little too close to the pug for our comfort. So we were redirecting her attention and telling her not to throw.

A note on Marti: She's gotten her tail pulled and gotten bonked by books a time or two, but we've avoided real harm. And she's an equal player. She hassles Avery and steals crackers. She is also more than able to go elsewhere to save herself but most often is right in our faces and right in the path of destruction. I mean, Avery was lying down, kicking her feet the other day and Marti was close enough to the feet that she had to flinch during each kick but refused to move farther away.

But back to our discipline. As Toddzilla Avery is being a menace, Alan is barely able to contain his laughter. Seeing him trying not to laugh only makes me want to laugh, so I was doomed from the beginning. But the hilariously bad behavior necessitated a timeout.

I pull Avery to the side. She's standing in front of her bedroom door. This face is standing in front of the bedroom door.

The stern talking-to goes like this.

Me: Avery. You cannot throw things at Marti. You sit here—[cue my inner monologue: "Crap. She's standing. I don't want her to get sitting and standing confused."]—or stand—until I say you can play. That was not nice. You don't want to hurt Marti. So you just sit here—[ah! I did it again!]—or stand—for a minute.

Cue laughter from the backseat parent, and I just couldn't keep it together. Needless to say, Avery did not exactly have the most difficult 10-second timeout in the world. It's truly so hard to be tough when you're being a moron and the kiddo is just so darn funny.

She's really picking up on the things she shouldn't be doing. It just doesn't stop her from doing them. Hence, she knows how to correctly respond to my seriously stern Mommy voice:





As Avery would say, "Oh boy." It's going to take some practice to be tough when we're up against this sweet little face.

Weapons of Choice

Remember how I told you about Avery's violent streak? We're working on it. She's really not trying to hurt people or pugs, she has just figured out that she can get people and pugs to react to her actions and she thinks it's the funniest thing ever.

The kitchen drawers I have refused to baby-proof are the ones that hold utensils. I don't use all of the utensils all the time, but I like having access to them should I choose to go all Betty Crocker. (It could happen.)

But Avery is using the utensils as pug-chasing weapons.

First, a strainer. On a scale of I to V(iolent), it ranks low.


Once I took that away, she opted for a spatula, the better to scoop Marti up. How cute.


Then? Well, then she really went for it.


I hope she's still interested in it in a few years when I want her to help me tenderize some non-Marti meat.

Some Days, Some Weeks

In the parenting world, some days and weeks are more challenging than others. Tuesday, my first day "back to work" as a solo full-time toddler caregiver was one of those days I wanted to crawl in bed at 5 pm.


On Tuesday, after having two weeks of Alan off work and extended family around, I was back on my own. Avery grabbed a bag of tortilla chips off the kitchen table—by the wrong end—dumping the entire contents. She thought she struck it rich, Marti scrambled to get some and I had to corral both of the under-3-foot terrors, Marti outside and Aves in her playpen.

That day, Avery discovered the reaction-getting fun that is hitting, pinching and head-butting. Then she opened the warming drawer on the oven and smashed my foot. Then a plate shattered while Avery was barefoot and hungry and dinner was on the stove. This was after an entire day of running after the Tasmanian Devil with ADD that Avery now is. It was one of those days you want to do a Zack Morris-style timeout and stop everyone but you in their tracks.

Desperate for a minute to unload the dishwasher, I encouraged her to chase Marti with her dino, a la this:



Poor Marti.

On Wednesday, Avery added biting into her bag of tricks. Hilarious too, she thinks. We have this heavy-duty musical stacker and after trying to slap me, she grabbed it like a bat and looked at Marti. Like, "What will happen if I bash Marti over the head with this?" Luckily for Marti's small head, I stopped this train of thought in its tracks.

None of this madness is helped by the fact that my pelvis feels like it's breaking in half and my stomach is making putting on my shoes a chore. Thank goodness for the thumps and bumps that remind me that a real person is in there.


All of that's not to say that Avery isn't just the cutest thing in the world. We're finally getting back into the groove today. Her vocab is exploding and I can't even keep up with a list. Despite her violent streak, she's learning manners and now says thank you when she gives or receives anything. She says a version of "airplane," "da-dat" is very specific to cat and anything round or clock-like is a clock, without the L. Her "eye bow" discovery is really cute when it doesn't turn into her pinching your eye lid or gouging your eye out. She's also started climbing up and down stairs on two feet, although she thinks she's way better than she really is. Gotta love confidence in a kiddo.



First haircut was Wednesday and she was a champ. Not her favorite life experience but it was over pretty quickly and she only cried a bit. It wasn't nearly as traumatizing as the pictures make it seem. I was sad to see those baby locks go, but the time had come to get rid of her "party in the front, party in the back" baby mullet. She looks like such a big girl now, and now it can all come in evenly instead of scraggly city.


These are the weeks when I don't know how it will be adding number two into our world. These are the weeks that scare me. But then Avery will practice her "I I ooh" (I love you), Alan shows up home an hour early and Avery runs back and forth between us at bedtime giving out drooly open-mouthed kisses and I remember why we're doing it all again.

Tornadic Activity

Now that Avery is 16 months old, I can see where the term toddler tornado comes from. Toddlers carve a path of destruction wherever they go. Debris flies. Animals get tossed. Recovery is a long process. And just when you think everything is put back together, another massive gust comes through and shakes your house.


Avery's curiosity is off the charts. She's into everything, and I've stopped trying to keep up with the trail of toys. She also gets funnier by the day. Her ability to communicate is growing by leaps and bounds. She can repeat after us if it's just the right word, but once she starts saying it, it sticks. Puppy is her favorite word of the moment (puppeeee exclamation point), and "mommy" is finally sticking although she still calls me daddy just as often.

Recent vocabulary additions include Elmo, uffs (for puffs), apple, bubble, eye and green bean. Just today she started "ho ho ho" and she's been saying "owie" dramatically about a teeny tiny scratch on her foot. Avery loves herself a magazine and the First Lady is on the cover of Reader's Digest, so now she'll say "ah-ma." She can also sign hat and shoes and can sign and say "eat eat," so she lets us know when she wants food or milk, often by going to the fridge and trying to open it or sneaking the pack of raisins out when I'm grabbing food.

She knows how a lot of animals go, and for a dog she'll whine, "brp brp" and snort like Marti. When Marti licks, Avery does the same. Pigs snort, cats "meee," lions roar and donkeys go ee-ah.

She's getting so smart and often blows our minds. She'll do something or respond to us with her actions and we're just floored—where did she pick that up? She can follow simple directions, which may be totally handy here in a few months.

Kisses, hugs and affection are becoming more frequent, and she'll come running over for a hug or give a doll a kiss. It's so sweet. She "kisses" Alan by pretending to feed him. Not sure why, but it's pretty adorable.


She's also increasingly aware of her bathroom business so we bought a potty chair, which she thinks is the best toy ever. We're not really potty training in earnest (we're of the mindset that having to go to public restrooms all the time will be just as much work as diapers), but we figured if she's telling us, we'll listen. If we pay really close attention we can get not-even-half of a poop experience to hit the pot, thus getting to deal with the diaper and the toilet. The best of both poop worlds, truly.

Figuring it out.

I finally moved the dog bowls into the bathroom, so now I have to try to balance Marti's perpetual thirst with Avery's perpetual desire to splash in the water and play with the dog food. Now Avery has figured out how to open the bathroom door, so my days are numbered for that defense. And of course Avery is almost never far from my side, so when I'm in the bathroom, I'm stuck trying to pee while stretching out to keep Aves from the dog dishes. It's a glamorous life.

Planning their escape, I'm sure.

Most of the house is fairly well baby-proofed but there are certain baby-proofing difficulties, like the cabinet with the lazy susan. The door shifts, so while there is a latch, the door moves enough so that Avery can still easily open it. I don't mind her playing with cans and such, and sometimes it's easier to let her stay occupied in the cabinet while I get five minutes of cooking done. The other day though I heard a noise so loud that I thought I would look over and see her arm caught in a blender. Luckily she had just overturned a box of very loud pasta.


I even play defensive dish-washing. I can usually only get one or two dishes loaded or unloaded before she's on her way, attempting to play in food grime or stand on the door.

She's definitely formed attachments recently to her blanket, a doll and Goodnight Moon. She loves all three and will grab her blanket out of her crib to roll around with it. The book is an all out addiction, and Alan and I have it memorized. I hated the book at first but have come to love it as it's both simple and has so much going on to look at and middle finger point to.

Her middle finger is her favorite. For pointing and flipping people off.

She doesn't yet like anything in her hair, and I need to get her a little trim because her hair is always in her face. She does like to brush hair though, and if you're lucky you can get through a whole hairbrushing session without her smacking you upside the head with the brush.

Her first ponytail.

Our sweet little girl just gets sweeter by the day. We still go in and check on her each night. And now she's such a good sleeper that we don't worry so much about waking her. Our little Stinkerbell, Puffy Pillow Cheeks, sweet little miss Avery is always sleeping soundly, gearing up for a new day of tornadic activity.

The Half-Baked Bun

What, you don't come here for scary stories about bugs? Alright, alright. I'll offset my last post with something a little cuter. How about pictures of baby No. 2?



Unfortunately we didn't get the 3D pictures like last time because the baby wasn't cooperating. He/she decided that being good and healthy was the job for the day, not cooperating so we could get a sneak peek at a cute little face. Oh well. I go back in another four weeks, so maybe then!

I'm again opting to not find out the gender. I just don't care and like the surprise of it all. I like to speculate, convince myself one way or the other, and then change my mind. I'm definitely not one of those moms who has any instincts when it comes to gender. These are my theories so far:

1) It'll be a girl. This pregnancy has been the complete opposite of my pregnancy with Avery complete with vomiting, bone-crushing fatigue, food aversions well past the first trimester, more doctor visits, and a much, much larger belly much earlier on. My theory is that it'll be the complete opposite experience, except for the end result. Avery gets a little sister!



2) It'll be a boy. The pregnancy is the total opposite of my first, so testosterone must be making me sick. I'm also RAVENOUS, so some say that means boy. Alan started feeling the baby kick several days ago, a couple of weeks ahead of when he could feel it with Avery, so it must be a strong-legged boy. Avery gets a little brother!


So those are my gender theories. One of them is bound to be right. And I love being right.

Phobia

To say I'm bug-phobic is putting it mildly. I remember calling my mom as a kid (teen?) so she could walk me through picking up a dead bug that was in a kitchen drawer. I'm almost certain now that the "bug" in question was actually a dried spaghetti noodle. It didn't matter. Even a worm-like resemblance was enough to send me into a panic.

But there is a certain bug that I've only seen since we've moved to New Jersey that, when seen, takes all rational thought out of my brain and makes me a totally crazy person. I break into a sweat, my blood pressure rises, my heart beats out of my chest.

I saw a few of the demon bugs when we lived in our apartment before we moved into our house. Our apartment was by a river, and when asked, the apartment manager said they were simply water bugs, which is way too harmless a name for these suckers. I knew he was just placating me, so I tried to look them up. With nothing to go on, I've been calling them bazillipedes because while they don't have thick bodies like centipedes, they do have a bazillion feathery legs.

Over the summer, I was working in the office when I heard a kerfuffle in the living room. Alan was racing about, knocking things over. It sounded like a fight had broken out. When questioned from afar, he told me not to come in the living room. Which led to this Facebook status update:

Erin Whitehead

Oh dear. Alan won't even let me in the room to see the bug beast he is killing.

· · July 20 at 10:33pm

He later told me it was the toughest, biggest bazillipede he'd ever seen. I freaked out even knowing it had been in the house.

So, of course, the other night, I saw a freaking bazillipede in our dining room. It was up near the molding, way out of my reach. I immediately called Alan to see when he'd be home. He answered his work phone, meaning he was at least 30 minutes out of reach. A dilemma. I'd be stuck in the dining room for the next half an hour, in a cold sweat, watching the bug, waiting for Alan to come save the day. I realize this is ridiculous, but phobias aren't rational, people.

However, the bazillipede decided he had places to be. And boy, all of those bazillion legs help those jerks move fast. Shockingly fast. He was moving so fast that I knew I had to do something or I'd have a bazillipede leaping out at me from behind doors or worse, in Avery's room.

So what do I do? With Alan on the phone, I grab the fly-swatter and run, screaming like a banshee, to bust the hell out of the bug. He went behind our TV trays. Alan asked if I'd gotten him, and I reported that I thought I did because he'd lost a lot of legs in the fight. Sure enough, after a quick inspection, the little jerk was dead.

Have you ever seen Nothing to Lose with Tim Robbins and Martin Lawrence? And they get in a fight and Tim Robbins' move is to go running at Martin Lawrence with his elbow? That's totally how I fought the bug. While screaming.

So tonight, I decided to Google "bug with lots of legs" to settle this bug mystery once and for all. And lo and behold, Google must have improved over the last couple of years because the first link was a winner. Apparently, it's a house centipede. At least, I'm not going to go looking around any more, as this picture was enough to make me jump, cover my eyes, tear up and start to laugh hysterically. CLICK AT YOUR OWN RISK, PEOPLE.

Dining With Daddy

Dining with Daddy, with an ocean view, on our cruise in September. That look up at Alan is just too much. In the words of Rachel Zoe, I die.