Lack of Supervision

Last Saturday, I was on my own with a sick Elliot and Scarlett while Brian was in bed still sick with the flu. Fortunately, Scarlett has gotten better at entertaining herself most of the time. Ever since she was a toddler, she was never capable of playing by herself. In the course of the last six months, she's gradually started being able to play by herself in small pockets of time, which I really appreciate. So last Saturday morning, I had to soothe Elliot to sleep for his morning nap. The whole time, I wondered what Scarlett was doing because she didn't come into the room to bug me, as she always does. After Elliot went down for his nap, I went to check on her. Much to my surprise and delight, she was coloring her cardboard store front that we got her for Christmas. So I went to the dining room to (breast)pump. While I was pumping, she went off to her table to cut some paper. Then five minutes later, she came by the table to get a diaper wipe (which we also use to wipe Elliot off when he's fed rice cereal). I asked her why she needed one. She wouldn't answer me and just told me to stay in my seat. So I stood up and peaked through the wall opening into the living room to see what she was doing. She told me to "sit back down." I knew she must be up to something so I stopped pumping and went into the living room: she's standing by her chair trying to wipe up the 2-inch long strands of her hair that she has cut off. I couldn't tell if her expression was one of guilt or surprise or embarrassment. I knew that many kids try this at some point but I never thought that she would do it. I almost had to laugh because my husband had tried to cut his own hair too when he was little.
I guess no more unsupervised use of the scissors from now on.

The House of Germs

2011 did not get off to a good start for us. We've spent the majority of Jan. dealing with sicknesses. Both Scarlett and Elliot were sick right before the holidays and didn't get well until the week between Christmas and New Year's, when daycare was shut down. Then the new year started, they went back to daycare, and boom, they're sick again. It's definitely not fun having two sick kids to deal with. Scarlett came down with a cold (which is normally not a big deal) but she also had a fever that lasted 4 days. Elliot caught a cold and around the same time, he had his 6-month check-up and slew of vaccines, including the flu vaccine. The result was fever, crying baby all day and night, and lack of sleep for us. Scarlett recovered after two weeks. Elliot was recovering when he caught something else, probably Respiratory Syncytial Virus, which led to bronchiolitis and an ear infection. It was so heartbreaking to see him suffer, coughing his lungs out and drifting in and out of fevers. At the same time, my husband came down with the flu and was in bed for three whole days. All that culminated in the decision to pull Elliot out of daycare for the month of Feb. so that he can get completely healthy again. Last Sat. night, I was up at 4am (after putting Elliot back down at 2:30am) thinking about it. It was so frustrating to see Elliot so sick so much and when he's too sick to go to daycare, I have to keep him home, which means I can't work. Since I'm self-employed now, I don't get vacation/sick days. So it makes no sense that I have to pay daycare on days that he has to stay home due to an illness he caught there and I'm not making money on those days.

Of course that decision turned my work world upside down in an instant. With client meetings, conferences, and such already scheduled, I can't turn into a stay-at-home mom instantly (plus, I can't give up my career). So we interviewed a part-time nanny last Monday but when that fell through, I just felt my stomach sink. Luckily, on Thursday, I found a place that provides onsite drop-in childcare and an office space for professionals to work. What a great idea! I wish daycare was like this - just pay for the hours when I need childcare and not pay for the extra hours that I don't need. So my husband and I decided that we would try and hobble through the month Feb. and hope that in a month, Elliot would be much healthier and much better at fighting off new viruses (and hopefully, not get so sick again). Through the course of the last month, I think we've gotten better at barely getting by. I feel like I'm just surviving on a daily basis.

A big thank you to the MIL who came down last Sunday to help out. Our house is truly the house of germs, as she got food poisoning on Monday night!

On the Move

Parents generally get excited and look forward to when their baby starts to move around and show signs of crawling, and eventually, walking. But I think with the second child (as I've also seen with my mommy friends), crawling is something that we want to delay as long as possible. We don't want another child on the move and have to chase after. The discouragement ranges from not encouraging them to crawl to pushing their butt down when they try to. I guess I haven't been discouraging Elliot enough. He started to scoot backwards a little bit when he was 5 1/2 months and now that he's almost 6 1/2 months old, he's really starting to crawl backwards. Crawling is not always the classic image of a baby on all fours moving forward. Some babies get from point A to point B by rolling continuously. Some army-crawl by dragging their bodies. Elliot pushes himself backwards. I guess he won't have control of where he's going for now, but just the fact that he can move around.

Scarlett didn't crawl until she was 10 months old. And I think she started by scooting backwards too. We were worried that she didn't crawl for the longest time and while that wasn't developmentally delayed to be crawling at 10 months, it was definitely on the later side. Now Elliot is on the early side. I guess I'm in trouble.

Scarlett the Big Sister

I'm kind of glad that we had a girl first, then a boy (not that we could've planned it). I know I'm generalizing but girls tend to be more nurturing, which makes it nice to have them as the older sibling. Even though at this age, Scarlett is very self-centered (normal for 3-year-olds), I cherish the cute moments when she interacts with her little brother. One morning last week, I was getting ready in the bathroom when I heard Scarlett reading a baby book to her brother. It was really cute to hear her tell him to touch the fuzzy parts of the book: "touch it, Elliot, isn't it soft?" Unfortunately, I only caught the tail-end of it on video.

Here's another interaction from our recent car trip back from LA. She alternated between trying to placate her brother and telling him what to do (she imitates what we say to her when she gets too rambunctious).

Keeping up with the Joneses

I subscribe to a parents group in my area: this parents group does social events, has a classified listing for people to buy/sell stuff, and hosts an online forum for people to pose questions (which range from "where should I take my 2-year-old for fun" to "recommendations for gardeners in the XX area"). Recently, I saw an anonymous posting that I had to forward to my husband because it was so similar to our discussions of late:

"I've been struggling with this question for a while, and now must ask - how do people budget living in the Bay Area. We are a two income household averaging about $300k year pre-tax, with two children in fulltime preschool. We leave work "early" at 5 to pick up the kids, then rush to prepare some form of dinner in about 20 minutes so the kids can eat by 630, then bath and bed. We rent a modest single family home in Palo Alto that could use lots of upgrades. We rarely go on extravagant dinners or date nights, and have dramatically cut down on extraneous spending like clothes and trips. Yet I feel like we are living paycheck to paycheck, which seems completely ridiculous in most other parts of the country given our income. I look around the neighborhood and can't fathom purchasing a $1.5 million fixer upper (most of the homes around us for sale seem really outdated and lacking in modern amenities). Is there something that everyone else is doing that we aren't? Often times I wonder if everyone around us has family money, or just much, much larger salaries? Made out big during the dot.com days? Public kindergarten will help when we reach that stage, but that seems far away. Unless I am totally off base, I feel like we make a decent income for the Silicon Valley, and yet I have no idea why we are struggling. Daycare costs alone are extraordinary, and would be more so if we had a private nanny. Plenty of families here seem to have 2 or more children, and not everyone appears to be an investment banker, so I'm not sure what gives. And this is not a topic one generally broaches with coworkers or friends, hence my anon posting. So how do families manage financially here?"

We've been saying similar things to ourselves about how we both have really well-paying careers (well, I was pretty close to making six-figures myself when I decided to take a step down financially to work part-time and spend more time with my child) and we don't buy too many expensive things and don't travel or eat out much. Our house, which unfortunately, was bought around the peak of the housing market, isn't too extravagant. Yet, we can't even afford to add on to our 2-bedroom, 1 bath house to accomodate our growing family when we know so many people with bigger houses in pricier neighborhoods that have similar types of professional careers that we have. We really don't care to be the richest amongst our friends or to sport the biggest house/most expensive car but what is it that we're not doing when we can't even afford to add on to our house?

Eating Solids, Take Two

Elliot turns 6 months this Saturday. That's a major milestone for babies in that it's the generally recommended age for babies to start solids. I have not been in a hurry or terribly excited to start Elliot on solids since we've gone through it before with Scarlett. This time around, it just means more work that can be postponed for as long as possible and it's not as exciting since all my baby-food efforts with Scarlett went by the wayside with her super-pickiness and only wanting to eat jarred foods. Most parents make their own baby foods because it's cheaper than buying jarred baby food and it's also more "pure". Well, it wasn't the case for me since I ended up throwing almost all of those home-made foods away. I was so disappointed because I had wanted my children to be wordly eaters (since my husband and I are some-what foodies and love most ethnic foods). I figured that if I ate diverse kinds of food while pregnant and breastfeeding with Scarlett (well, that's how I eat normally anyway), she would be more inclined to try different foods since she's been exposed to different flavors and tastes. Apparently, that was not so. I still remember eating dinner in a sushi restaurant with my brother one time back in my college days and hearing a four/five-year-old sitting next to me tell his parents what he wanted to order (and he ordered different sushi pieces by their name!). I had thought to myself back then that I wanted my children to be like that.

Now that Elliot's 6-month day is approaching, I'm actually contemplating making baby-foods again. After all, my husband and I have convinced ourselves this time around that we deserve a kid who eats almost everything. In Elliot's defense, he's not Scarlett so maybe he will love the food I make him. I owe it to him to try, I guess.

Malapropism

It's funny sometimes to hear Scarlett learn new words. She usually grasps the meaning or purpose for a word from hearing us say it but she doesn't quite pronounce the word right. Right before the holidays, she started using the word "ginormous." Except, maybe the word was too big for her to say. So for a while, she would say "ginus," which always made us laugh. It's not a word but it just sounds like a word that she shouldn't be saying. Maybe it sounded dirty. So we would get her to say it again and again and laugh at it. After we had our fun, we're back to doing what parents are supposed to do, which is to use the word correctly in our response back to her and not bring attention to it.