Being Sara

I think every kid develops their own set of entertaining and interesting quirks. Xander seems to come up with new ones every few weeks. One of his more recent and rather entertaining quirks is his fascination with trees. Sure, most kids probably find trees interesting at various points of development, that’s not out of the ordinary. Xander’s quirky little personality has decided that it is necessary to pet every tree and say “nice tree”. I’d like to be clear - we live in New Hampshire. We do not live in a city. There are plenty of trees in our back yard, there are trees surrounding our parks. There are trees at day care, and pretty much every spot that Xander inhabits has a backdrop of trees. So trees are not a new phenomena in Xander’s life. However, petting each tree, and telling it that it’s a “nice tree” is new.

I think he discovered this most recent trick when our friend’s daughter (about 9 months younger) was examining a pine tree during a recent visit. Someone said, that’s a nice tree, isn’t it? And suddenly, Xander discovered the joys of petting bark.

This becomes particularly entertaining when there is a row of trees, say in a parking lot, and Xander must pet each and every one. Of course, the entertainment value wears off quickly when suddenly you’re running late and arguing with a 2 year old why you simply don’t have time to pet each tree three times today, but maybe tomorrow we can come back and pet them again… Somehow that “tomorrow” reasoning just isn’t good enough yet

Anyway, this is one of those quirks that I expect he’ll outgrow relatively quickly, and someday I may want to look back here and be able to tease him about his desire to pet trees.

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I stumbled across an interesting blog post a few days ago, and it’s been on my mind ever since. So, first, please check out the post here, and then you’ll be able to follow along with my thoughts (don’t worry - it’ll open in a new window).

So, to sum up what Jesse was saying, essentially, we are being too soft on our kids, and teaching them to blame others for their problems. Some of the points that Jesse makes are good ones. I always felt that the movement to use purple pens for correction instead of red was insane. I don’t think it helps kids to make them feel less stressed about red pen markings. Same goes for everyone getting a trophy in little league, or no one having to sit down during a spelling bee.

However, I think that it’s easy to go too far with this as well. I think there must be a happy medium. Jesse talks about raising their 4 month old daughter. He makes reference to her almost being able to roll over, and someday trying to walk. These are things that I can easily relate to. I thought back to our experiences with Xander rolling over. It took him a long time to get this figured out. We could have left him screaming on his stomach for longer I’m sure. On the other hand, when he was flipping out, he wasn’t being productive. It wasn’t like he was trying to move himself, he was just crying, red-faced and miserable, so we didn’t leave him like that for lengthy periods of time. The same when Xander learned to walk. We held his hand when he asked, and let him attempt on his own when he didn’t.

Now, Xander is very clear with us when he wants to do things on his own. Two examples that come to mind immediately are the stairs, and food. Xander rarely wants help going up or down the stairs these days. We still play spotter when he’s walking down, but we let him go on his own for the most part. Xander also will refuse to eat if he can’t hold his own utensil. He doesn’t want to be spoon fed, and he doesn’t want help getting his food from the plate to his mouth. Regardless of how much he spills, he wants to do it on his own, and we let him as much as possible.

According to Jesse’s theory, Zach and I are raising a member of the “Y-Me?” generation. We help him when he asks for it, and sometimes when he doesn’t. On the other hand, we have an extremely self confident child. He adapts easily to change, isn’t afraid to try things on his own, and is confident that if he goes running around on the playground, Mom or Dad will be around somewhere to catch him if he slips.

We haven’t reached an age where we can start teaching things like fiscal responsibility, or familial responsibility in terms of chores, etc. Before I was a parent, I probably would have had some strong opinions about what we would and wouldn’t do in terms of these decisions. Now, I’m taking a “wait and see” attitude. I can’t tell you that we will definitely require Xander to do chores around the house or that we’ll give him an allowance or not. I just don’t know right now. I do know that when we need to make the decisions, we’ll make them based on what is best for Xander - what will help him to learn and develop in a manner that we are comfortable with.

I don’t think that anyone wants a child to grow up blaming the rest of the world for his or her difficulties, but I also don’t think that raising a 2 year old to understand that life is hard and you’re just going to have to get used to it is the only way to get there. I read through some of the comments on Jesse’s site, and everyone seemed to think that his ideas were right on the money, and this was definitely the way to go. It makes me wonder how many of those commenters actually have kids… Anyway, it was an interesting article and definitely thought provoking.

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I try very hard not to be one of those parents who brags about their kid all the time. I don’t think I’ve ever said “Xander said/did the cutest thing…” Zach and I of course agree that our son is the cutest, most adorable, smartest kid in the universe, but we don’t ever push this theory onto others.

That being said, I’ve been so impressed with his speech lately! At our last doctor visit, he said that as long as Xander could string 2 words together by the time he is two, then they won’t be worried about his speech. Well Xander is already stringing 3 or 4 words together. Granted, it is in Xander-ese, so for people who don’t live with the little native, it sometimes takes a little interpretation. For example, “a squirrel go?” really means “where did the squirrel go?” or “a Grandpa no working” really means “Grandpa, no more working!” He has the two word commands down though - “Dada, sit!” “Momma, eat!” “Ready, go!” For the most part, the words that he does say are pretty intelligible. Though there are times when we just have no clue what he’s trying to tell us, and we can see that it frustrates him.

He’s also quite good at identifying animals (and the noises each animal makes) - not with any detail, he couldn’t tell you the difference between a Sperm Whale and a Killer Whale, but he can tell you that they are both whales. What impressed my mother-in-law (the third grade teacher in the family) the most is that he is starting to identify emotions in books. When he sees a character looking sad, he gets upset, says uh oh, and seems to want us to “fix” the sad person. I’m not sure when that empathy thing is supposed to start, but Xander is well on his way.

The only drawback at this point is that he sometimes still uses a pacifier. Mostly when he sleeps, and sometimes if we’re watching a cartoon (he’s only got three available to him - Curious George, Little Einsteins or Phineas and Ferb). However, once the new baby arrives, if he or she also uses a pacifier, I can imagine that Xander might regress a bit with his pacifier use, which would bother me a little bit, as at that point it may actually start to interfere with his speech development. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it goes… So that’s it for bragging, but every parent has to brag once in a while, right?

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Xander is a wonderful first child. He is relatively easy going, he’s happy to follow a schedule, but he’s flexible when we need him to be. He sleeps pretty well and eats pretty well, and he loves us completely. He also very much enjoys his role as the “baby” of the family. He can have Zach’s or my undivided attention anytime he requests it. Both my family and Zach’s family dotes on him - they love to visit with him, play with him, and care for him at any opportunity.

I worry about how Xander’s personality will change once his baby brother or sister arrives. I hope that it will change for the better - he will learn patience, and empathy and sibling love. However, I think that the transition will be difficult for him. One article I was reading on Babycenter compared bringing a new sibling home to a husband or wife bringing a new spouse home. Not quite the same of course, but kids experience similar feelings of being replaced or not being needed/wanted anymore. At nearly two, I’m not quite sure how to prepare Xander for this. We’ve bought books, and talked about the baby in Mommy’s tummy, but he never seems to understand the concept, and even if he did, I don’t think he could grasp the big picture of how much his life is going to change.

I love my little guy, and I have always wanted him to have a brother or sister - not only because I wanted two kids but because I didn’t want Xander to be an only child. I want him to have a sibling to play with, who will sympathize with him when Mom and Dad are being “mean”, who will help him convince his parents that getting a gerbil really is a good idea, etc. I just wish there was a way to help him understand some of this stuff before we walk in the door with a squirming, crying infant who absorbs so much of our time…

I’m sure some of you out there have had similar experiences. How did you ease the transition for your oldest children? I’ve read lots of articles, but I haven’t seen anything that sounds like a good solid plan yet…

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I ran out of time to write a blog post about Xander last week, and I felt bad about it. Luckily, I have lots of great stories from our mini-vacation, so I’ll make up for it with a few posts this week For several years Zach and I have been spending July 4th weekend at my family’s cottage on a small pond. We visit with friends and family while we are there, and just generally relax. This year we got 5 days there - Friday through Thursday. Xander was old enough to appreciate the outdoors and the water this year, and we spent most of our time chasing him around, but we had lots of fun.

One of the days Zach’s family came by to visit. His brother’s kids always have a great time playing in the water, and Xander just loves them. We had lots of fun with all of them. Zach’s mother often brings treats for the kids (she does a great job in that “grandmother” role). This time it was tiny tubs of snacks - Oreos for one kid, Vienna Fingers for another, etc. She got Xander Teddy Grahams. Xander didn’t end up eating them that day. However, a few days later he discovered them just before dinner. He of course asked Zach “Dada, have more?” Zach told him he could have as many as he wanted if he ate enough for dinner. So once we had finished up dinner (Xander actually ate pretty well), Xander pulled down the Teddy Grahams and asked for some. While I cleaned the kitchen, Xander snacked on 6 or 7 Teddy Grahams. We didn’t think much of it - continued with our bedtime routine, reading books, settling down, etc. About 7:45, the Teddy Grahams kicked in. Xander dragged us to bed and made us lay down. I thought “ok, if this is how we get him to sleep tonight, that’s fine.” Boy, was I mistaken! Xander spent the next half hour running - not walking, not pausing, running around the cabin. His route was generally to jump on the bed with us, roll around for a few seconds, roll down, run into the living room, grab something (my water bottle, a book, a pamphlet on a life jacket, pretty much anything he could find) then run back to the bedroom to give it to us, jump on the bed for a second, and start over again.

This may not seem like unusual behavior, but let me stress that Xander COULD NOT sit still, not even for a second. When I say he was running, he was running, not walking everywhere. Since dinner was macaroni and cheese with a side of tomato and cucumber, and the only other thing he ate was Teddy Grahams, we’re blaming the Teddy Grahams. Xander has had sugar before - he doesn’t really like much sweet stuff, but he enjoys an occasional chocolate or sweetie candy. We’d never seen this type of reaction out of him before. It baffled us, and we decided that we will wait a loooong time before giving him Teddy Grahams again. However, since Zach’s mother bought the Teddy Grahams, and Xander is staying with her for a few days while day care is closed (annual vacation week for them), we made sure to send the Teddy Grahams to her house - hopefully she doesn’t give him too many

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