Other Blogs

I've left the Circumcision post up long enough as my last post, so I guess it's about time I revisited and posted again.

I've got lots of ideas for things I want to post here, but I'm generally not a quick poster.  I like to think about a subject for a good while before I make a post, to be sure that I say what I really mean.  And also, I just get tired of clutter on the web.  Making a blog post that is just some random picture doesn't really do it for me, and it's like cheating.

Anyway, I also run two other blogs, which you may not know.  One is a literary blog called Becoming Salinger.  I write what I feel like writing, when I feel like writing.  Some of it is fiction, some of it is meta-commentary, some of it is more like a memoir--it refuses to be pigeonholed by me, and I like it that way.

But what I wanted to talk about was the other blog, which we've dubbed Schoolosophy.  This is a group blog that I share with a number of my friends and acquaintances, all of whom are college-educated and many of whom have graduate degrees.  In case it's not obvious by the title of the blog, it's a sort of forum we've generated for the discussion of concepts relating to education.  Some of us are interested in started a school; some of us are keen on home school; all of us are interested in the present and future circumstances of education.  We often post links to educational articles, school websites, or just general talking points related to schooling and education.

Today, I came across a link to a video that really irritated me and spurred me to write a semi-lengthy post at Schoolosophy on the subject.  (To read that post, click the title for this one, and it will redirect you there.  Or you can click here.)

Well, I just wanted to share that and point out that a large part of a parent's job is to help a child to develop mentally.  Hope you like the post, and I'll try not to go so long between writing here; but I make no promises--it's the holiday season, after all!

Circumcision

***Warning!  This post is full of words your boss will not want to see on your screen!  NSFW!  I have, however, not posted any photos in this blog post, so for visuals, you're safe unless you click a link.  Many links in this post contain visuals of male genitalia.  You have been warned!***

***Disclaimer:  I am not a medical professional.  I'm just an educated woman who wants to share some rather important information about penises.

The Grossness of Parenting

People talk about the joy of having a new baby.  They talk about their pride in the child's first steps.  They emphasize cheerfully the good grades and high school and college diplomas.  But there is a dark side to parenting that often goes ignored.

Yes, I'm talking about poop, and its relations in the bodily functions family.  Children, particularly below age 4 years, are horribly disgusting creatures.  We mistake them for being human beings because they look sort of like us.  I assure you it is a ruse.  Children do not really become civilized or human until at least 4 years of age.  Right now, you may be thinking, "Oh, she's full of it.  I know of at least one or two kids who don't fit her overgeneralized statement."  Their parents lied.  If you are the parent, you lied to yourself.  Or your forgot, due to the trauma of the experience.

When first most people learn they are with child, it's usually one of two ways:  through pissing on a stick or excessive vomiting which induces them to piss on a stick.  (I do acknowledge that the first often occurs by a surprising lack of seemingly pointless bloodletting on a lunar basis.  Because of the strangeness of the female body suddenly NOT being gross and unwieldy, women become suspicious and suddenly desire to urinate on their hands to check for alien invaders.)  It's kind of gross, and the vomiting can stick around a long time.  Some moms actually experience morning sickness for the entire duration of a pregnancy.  Isn't that a joy?

As I also outlined, and my darling husband Andrew phrased so eloquently, the female body's pH can alter and cause "cock rot" to result after a man has intercourse with a pregnant woman and does not wash immediately afterward.  (This is not true for all cases.)

And then there's birth:  a gruesomely painful, often deadly experience in which a Cadillac tries to drive into a parking space intended for a motorcycle, metaphorically speaking.  For some of us, that Cadillac is an Escalade.  Anyway, it's a gory, bloody, flesh-tearing, mucous-spewing, sweaty, and sometimes vomitous experience.  And if you're really unlucky, mom and/or baby has a bowel movement in the process, further complicating matters.

Oh, but the little dear is so cute and "tiny" and makes the most adorable little faces.  Ah...wait, he's...oh, yeah, he's just shat in his diaper.  It's your turn to change it.

For the first few months, on a liquid diet, baby poop can rocket out the back of the diaper to shoulder blade level.  (I have photographic evidence.)  In some bouncing bundles of joy, iron-fortified baby formula can cause serious unpleasant side-effects like projectile vomiting and projectile poop.  At least one little boy who shall remain nameless (*cough*mynephew*cough) fell victim to this experience as a baby and fired off some blasts from his changing table that hit the wall over 4 feet away.  But don't worry, whatever didn't hit the wall landed in his crib.

Things start to settle down a bit after baby starts on her solids.  Her poops (while more disgusting in odor and consistency) are seldom spewing out the back of her clothes onto her car safety seat's fabric.  She's just always covered in baby food somehow now.  But look how cute she is trying to walk!  No, don't touch that!  It'll fall and break--

Eventually, parents get tired of changing diapers.  They start to think that maybe it's time the child took matters into his own hands.  Aheh.

And then, the poor fools, they allow children access to their own privates.  We call this "potty training".  Some people affectionately deem it "toilet learning".  At this point in the process, I'm referring to it as the perfect justification for buying that Bissell SpotBot for the carpet.

Do I dare to share with you the experience of potty training thus far?  I think you will have to wait.  I'm still too traumatized after having to inform the restaurant tonight that my son shat on the floor under the table and smeared it on the seat on his way back up.  But don't worry, we got our fair share of clean-up work to do on him in the parking lot afterward.  Maybe someday Bissell will invent the SpotBot for cleaning fecal matter off toddlers in public places.

So, I say to you, children are disgusting, filthy creatures.  In part, I blame the way we raise them.  After all, if we never used diapers, and didn't have to worry about furniture and flooring (and disease), we'd have been more like our ancestors in finding ways to avoid many of the problems modern parents face.  But as it is in our modern society, we are left to muck about in the mire that is child-rearing.







[Seriously, I love my kid.  I just don't believe he's human yet.  I'm hoping he will be by age 5.  Keep your fingers crossed for me, will ya?]

Where have you been?!

So, I know I haven't posted since May.  I'm not dead.  I haven't lost interest in the blog.  But I did lose interest in the stuff I'd been posting to the blog.  Turns out that I'm bored of doing toy reviews.  Much as I'd like to continue to share them, I gotta take a break from them for a bit.

Besides that, life's been pretty crazy here in the Cheerios Garden.  My mother and stepdad were both in hospital since my last post, and we've taken several trips this summer to see them and other family.  My darling husband Andrew has also been trying to do his wonderful best to make use of his newly acquired bachelors degree (Manufacturing Management with an emphasis in Quality).  His search included locales both domestic and abroad, and finally culminated in a promotion at his current company.  This could not have happened at a better time as Andrew begins graduate school at The Johns Hopkins University this fall in an online program for a masters degree in Systems Engineering.  We've also been planning to move at the end of our lease regardless.  (Ironically, I just got called by the office now to schedule a walk through of our current place.)

So, why haven't I been posting?  Surely I'd have some time, right?  Well, back in February, our upstairs neighbors changed out from the previously only moderately irritating couple of young men with stompy feet to a family from South Korea with 2 children and limited skills in English--and no apparent need to sleep EVER.  I gave them a month after they moved in before I said anything to them about the noise.  I wrote a letter which I posted on their door, figuring that they may have an easier time understanding my intentions if they had time to read and process them--or put my words through a translator.  The mother, Sook, acknowledged receipt of it cheerfully and for the next 2 weeks, things were pretty good.  Well, then I guess Spring Break occurred, and after that, they were back to making noise of all kinds at all hours.

About now, I should explain the sleep situation.  We live in a large apartment building, by Florida standards.  I have a neighbor above me, a neighbor below me, and the unit adjacent to ours is the model unit which also rents out as a guest suite for residents' friends and family.  Occasionally, I hear the downstairs neighbors playing piano.  This is beautiful and lovely and not in the least disruptive.  Every once in a while, their young son throws a tantrum and is made to sit outside their open front door while he screams his head off (also in Korean; we have an astonishingly large population of South Koreans and Japanese living here).  But it's rare and during acceptable hours, so no big deal.  We also try to respect them as our downstairs neighbors by being quiet during sleeping hours for children.  Given that we have a child ourselves, this is something we recognize as important.

To help Jackson sleep, we gave him the master suite.  While his window is the one exposed to the sounds of parking lot traffic, it also is the most insulated for sound from any other location.  We have dark curtains on his windows to mitigate the street lamps outside his windows.  We use a white noise generator (a sound machine) on full volume, and when he goes to sleep, we retreat to our bedroom for the evening.  Jackson is a fairly good sleeper, but he's also a light sleeper.  Certain noises wake him readily and cause him to be scared, now that his imagination is fairly active.  He sees faces and turtles and fish in the curtains and claims fears of all sorts of bizarre things.  However he was never afraid of the dark or the curtains, etc. until the upstairs neighbors moved in.

From what I gather, they have a Wii system set up in the living room of their unit upstairs, just outside the master bedroom.  And their 6 year old son likes to jump like any other boy (and many girls) in his age group. When he jumps, not only does our ceiling shake, but our floor shakes as well.  And from what I can tell, he has no enforced bed time, especially not in the summer.

So once school let out for the summer, not only were the children no longer on anything resembling normal hours, but the father, who teaches at the university, did not work this summer, so the entire family was keeping odd hours.  They were often stomping about until after midnight--and up again just after dawn.  Jackson's sleep was so often disturbed by all the noise (and it scared him so much), that we were having to help him fall asleep 3 to 5 times a night, every night, for a couple of months.  I had made other complaints in person to Sook, but nothing really seemed to result from them.  Finally, I knocked on her door at 11pm.  My floor was shaking so much from her family that I was afraid my own downstairs neighbors were going to come knocking.

Sook answered the door looking very confused and offered for me to come in before realizing that I wasn't just there for a visit.  Every light in the apartment was on, and I could clearly see her son and daughter romping playfully about the living room while the husband slinked off into a hiding place.  I calmly but firmly told Sook that her family needed to be quieter.  And then I got my favorite response from them, the one I always get:  "We just got back from out of town!"  The previous time she used this excuse, they had been gone for about 2 weeks.  Jackson had just finally gotten used to being able to sleep uninterrupted again by the time they got back and ruined it.  Apparently they have done a lot of traveling this summer on the same weekends as ourselves.  However I explained to Sook that I didn't care that they just got back, and that I was WELL aware of the fact they had just gotten back because of all the sudden door slamming and luggage dropping, but that it was irrelevant to my interests as someone who did NOT just get back from being out of town and had a family who was desperately in need of sleep.  I explained that my son was losing more than 2 hours of sleep at least each day due to the rudeness of her family.  I told her that they were very loud and inconsiderate at late and early hours--and didn't even bother to bring up naps!

And then I got her response:  "Your son is...how to say...he is too sensitive."  I told her that he is NOT too sensitive when there is that much noise and that he was terrified of going to bed ever since her family moved in (which is completely true:  he became afraid of the dark just after they arrived).  He's not just unwilling to sleep but terrified of being in his room with that scary booming noise.  She reiterated her belief in his oversensitivity, and I informed her that I would be filing a complaint with the office.

The following morning, I called the office, who told me they would "put a note on their door" with the hours of 10pm to 8am being explicitly stated as quiet hours.  Well, something must have gotten through, I judged, because for the next 2 weeks we had very few issues with noise.  I ran into Sook at the stairs and thanked her for her efforts to keep things quieter.  She told me that she had felt so bad the night we had spoken last that she had been unable to sleep.  I informed her that I hadn't slept that night either (though I'm sure my reasons were a bit different, as the injured and angered party).  She said it was very tiring and frustrating because her family was home ALL THE TIME and gave her no peace.  Ironically, my family suffered exhaustion on a continual basis because SHE was too tired to deal with her own.  Of course, she didn't tell me this until after we'd already put in our 60 day move-out notice.

Fast forward a couple of weeks.  Jackson and I had gone to visit my in-laws, just the two of us.  (Apparently Andrew's coworkers think this is weird.  My response back was that with us not owning a television, I don't learn social norms like "you're not supposed to like your in-laws".  My bad?)  He failed to nap for 4 days in a row, at which point I decided to head home.  He zonked in the car, and that night, around 3:30am, he woke up screaming.  There was some kind of music playing that seemed to be coming from above.

The music had a deep bass to it and played all night and all day the next day.  I complained to the office, thinking it was the upstairs neighbors, and they promised to "put a note on the their door".  It wasn't until the evening that Andrew finally determined that the very regular beat was the white noise machine on the baby swing in our outdoor storage unit, which had somehow activated itself.  I went upstairs to apologize for making the false complaint.  However I'm not sure they accepted it because ever since then, the noise has returned.  

At least we move next month!

Second Year Toy Review, Part I

Cons:  Despite that I want to trust Melissa & Doug as a brand, my   really big issue with them is that their stuff is manufactured in China.  Nothing against the Chinese, but they really do not hold their manufacturers to high enough standards, so I put the age here at 18 months+ because "just in case" I'd rather not have recommended to you a toy that may contain toxic chemicals if your child is still at an age where everything goes in the mouth.  (After initially writing this section, I discovered this statement on the Melissa & Doug website regarding the safety of their products.)

Knowing that children are really interested in mobility during the second year, it makes sense that some of their favorite things after turning a year old are things that involve using their newfound ability to get around.  Toddlers are also increasingly fond of doing whatever it is they see older people doing.  Eating big-people food and manually manipulating objects (i.e. using fine motor skills) are two of the biggest things they see us do.  Below are some toys that can help encourage the new toddler in developing these skills.


Lever Box

Price:  Less than $20
Size:  Medium
Age:  9 months+
Durability:  High

This particular version is made by Playskool.  It comes in all different colors depending on where you buy it:  ours is purple.

Pros:  Teaches children how to manipulate various common levers:  turning dials, flipping switches, rocking switches, pushing buttons (though many kids seem born knowing how to push buttons), and sliding switches.  When the child successfully manipulates the lever, a surprise springs up.  The child learns cause and effect this way, and also learns a very basic understanding of having to reset the game by closing the compartment for the surprise (usually an animal figurine).  Makes your child giggle with delight when she is successful.

Cons:  Your child may become a little too adept at things like unlocking the deadbolt or doorknob on your front door, turning off switches on power surge strips, or reprogramming your electronics.  Yet another plastic toy, but it's a very durable one that can handle a fair bit of smacking about.

Educational Value:  Great for developing fine motor skills.  Helps demonstrate cause and effect in a more real and mechanical sense (as compared to electronic toys).


Play Tunnels

Price:  Varies $20 - $40
Size:  Large
Age:  Crawling+ (Manufacturer recommends 3yrs+)
Durability:  Medium

Pros:  Can be used indoors and outdoors.  Helps promote active play.  Flexible and easily positionable.  Stores easily in smaller form.

Cons:  Spring form can lose shape if used too roughly.  In less-rugged brands, metal ends of spring can break through fabric and pose a scratching risk.  (I recommend the brand I have pictured and linked to, as it has held up well despite rough use by older children, though the coils are not fully round.)

Educational Value:  Promotes gross motor skills.  Helps child learn to recognize perspective variances, e.g. Mommy can't see me, but I can see her!


Pretend Food:  Fruits and Veggies (Melissa & Doug)

  

Price:  $20/set

Size:  Medium (set)

Age:  18 months+

Durability:  High

Pros:  Familiarizes kids with foods.  They can play with the fake stuff rather than the stuff you want them to eat.  The Melissa and Doug brand foods are much more durable than most pretend foods and look more realistic in size.  They also feel very similar in texture to the foods they copy.  All pieces are large enough not to be choking hazards.


Educational Value:  Great for initiating pretend play in a way your child can understand.  She can cook for you, feed you, show you how she likes to eat her corn, and clean up afterward.  Helps develop imagination while subtly promoting healthy food choices!


Knob Puzzles

Price:  $10

Size:  Medium

Age:  12 months+

Durability:  Very High

Pros:  This particular puzzle pictured (by Melissa & Doug) is one that I have.  I have seen this same puzzle in the house of every other toddler my son's age.  It's that great a puzzle.  It's made of hard wood, it only has 5 pieces.  The backgrounds behind each piece exactly match the piece.  Each piece can be fitted into its proper spot in more than one orientation, so the child feels more success.  Big wooden knobs on top help the child to control the piece.

Cons:  Not easily stored.  There are puzzle storage racks available, but many already come with puzzles of their own or do not accommodate so large a puzzle, particular with the knobs on top.  The pieces are also rather painful when your child throws them at you.

Educational Value:  Develops fine motor skills.  Helps children learn to sort by shapes and colors.  Promotes focus and concentration on a task.

Toy Review: Toys for the Second Year

We've already covered some great toys for the first year and general attributes of toys that are appropriate for those under 12 months of age.  The second year is full of wonderful amounts of physical and mental development, so of course we can expect all sorts of new toys to correspond to the burgeoning skills of a toddler.

Around the end of the first year or shortly after the start of the second year (i.e. around the first birthday), most children begin walking.  My son wasn't necessarily a prodigy for beginning to walk unassisted at 9 months, nor is any child necessarily deficient for delaying this ability until 15 months.  As children grow and develop, their interests become apparent, and depending on the environments they have experienced and the activities that have captured their foci, different skillsets will appear at different times.  Generally, girls will speak earlier and boys will walk sooner, but there is so much variation here (and over so few months of time is it relevant) that if the roles are reversed there is really nothing abnormal about it.  I did notice in Jackson and many of his friends that a MAJOR mental growth spurt was readily apparent right around the first birthday.  Coincidentally, it was also not until that same span of time until I was even remotely convinced that I might be willing to go through the effort of spawning another human.

So, now that the child is ambulatory and at the early stages of verbal development, as well as having some more neurons firing in her brain, it's time to find something suitable for new forms of play.  After all, a cardboard box and a plastic bottle no longer seem to satisfy her, so to keep her from fishing around in your computer desk for paper clips to gag on, you need to get more creative.  After all, it's far cheaper to buy toys than pay an ER bill.

There are many toys geared toward the 12 months+ crowd.  Many of them are riding toys or musical toys.  In fact, many of the toys I profiled for the first year are still rather relevant, only now instead of gumming them with teething mouths full of drool, your little darling can start to try some of the uses for which the toys were intended.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends the following toys for the Second Year:

• Board books with large pictures, simple stories
• Books and magazines with photographs of babies
• Blocks
• Nesting toys
• Simple shape sorters and pegboards
• Beginner's jigsaw puzzles
• Toys that encourage make-believe play (child lawn mower, kitchen sets, brooms)
• Digging toys (bucket, shovel, rake)
• Dolls of all sizes
• Cars, trucks, trains
• Unbreakable containers of all shapes and sizes
• Bath toys (boats, containers, floating squeak toys)
• Balls of all shapes and sizes
• Push and pull toys
• Outdoor toys (slides, swings, sandbox)
• Beginner's tricycle
• Connecting toys (links, large stringing beads, S-shapes)
• Stuffed animals
• Child keyboard and other musical instruments
• Large crayons
• Toy telephone
• Unbreakable mirrors of all sizes
• Dress-up clothes
• Wooden spoons, old magazines, baskets, cardboard boxes and tubes, other similar safe, unbreakable items she "finds" around the house (i.e. pots and pans)

[Citation]

I agree with much of what is on this list and would also like to point at that there is NO MENTION at all that children should have toys that make electronic sounds or music or have any sort of graphical display.  It's not that it's strictly a bad thing to have those kinds of toys or that your child will not enjoy them.  The problem is that they often teach the wrong lesson:  Children need to learn causal relationships.  If you give a child an electronic keyboard that makes noises not correlated to the action, the child fails to learn how sounds are made.  However if you give a child a piano that plays notes when he pushes the keys, then the connection can be made that the act of depressing the key causes a sound to be made.  Remember:  toys are the learning tools you give to your child to teach him about the world.  This is his first education, and no matter how much YOU know, HE is still unaware of the fundamental laws of the universe.

Check out some toy suggestions next week!  :)

Toy Review: Toys for the Third Year

One of the greatest joys of the third year is the sudden increase in verbal skills.  Kids start yammering away with words you might be surprised they know how to use.  They'll quote movies and songs and familiar phrases used by those around them.  (A personal recent favorite was Jackson's shouts of "Fire in the hole!" as he repeatedly defecated in the bathtub, post-bath.  Classy, eh?)

More fun still, however, she'll be developing her ability to pretend in play.  This faculty begins to gain some small strength in the second year, but by the third year pretend play becomes more important.  Over a gradual period or even perhaps overnight, she will begin to mimic behaviors familiar to her, trying activities that she is used to seeing others do.  Perhaps she will pretend to vacuum or sweep or do dishes.  She might pretend to drive or care for a baby.  And if you encourage this behavior, not only are you taking part in her play, which makes your child very happy, but you are helping to stimulate her mental growth.

For example, if the child has fake food toys that he likes to feign to eat, you can help him expand the imaginative play.  Maybe you set up a fake restaurant area.  One region is the "kitchen", another is the "dining area", and he has to cook and serve the food.  You can help him add seasoning or adjust the cooking temperature.  Perhaps he has chosen some rather unique food combinations:  "Oh, I've never had onions with my bananas before!"  You might also show him how to set a table or hold a pan so he doesn't get burned.  Meanwhile, he learns about the experience of cooking and proper dining behaviors as well as improving his gross and fine motor skills--with the added bonus that he is spending time with one of his absolute most favorite people of all time.

The third year focuses a great deal on skill refinement as well.  Her crayon drawings on your furniture will be more accurate with their circles.  When she knocks her stack of blocks off the table onto your toes, you can bet it was a much higher stack than she used to be able to make; and just look at how much farther those pieces can fly!

Interestingly, the American Academy of Pediatrics does not include a list of toys appropriate to the third year of life in its hallmark volume for parents:  Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age Five.  While it may or may not be present in the Fifth Edition, this is not explicitly indicated in the penultimate "revised" edition, which is the version I have and use.  Instead there is a box detailing ways to help develop your child's burgeoning intellect.

For some more ideas on how to help your child develop his natural drive to learn and improve, check out this list provided in the AAP book (referenced in the paragraph above) on page 330.  To save on space, I have only transcribed the first sentence of most of the bullet points:

• Encourage creative play, building, and drawing. Provide the time and tools for playful learning.
• Be attentive to your child's rhythms and moods.
• Give consistent warm, physical contact--hugging, skin-to-skin, body-to-body contact--to establish your child's sense of security and well-being.
• Talk to or sing to your child during dressing, bathing, feeding, playing, walking, and driving, using adult talk.
• Read to your child every day.
• If you speak a foreign language, use it at home.
• Introduce your child to musical instruments.
• Play calm and melodic music for your child.
• Listen to and answer your child's questions.
• Spend one-on-one personal time with your child each day.
• Offer your child simple choices in appropriate situations throughout the day.
• Help your child use words to describe emotions and to express feelings such as happiness, joy, anger, and fear.
• Limit your child's television viewing and video time; avoid violent cartoons.
• Promote out-of-home social experience such as preschool programs and playgroups in which your child can play and interact with other children.
• Acknowledge desirable behaviors frequently.
• Make sure other people who provide care and supervision for your child understand the importance of forming a loving and comforting relationship with her.
• Spend time on the floor playing with your child every day.
• Choose quality child care that is affectionate, responsive, educational, and safe; visit your child care provider frequently and share your ideas about positive caregiving.

Next week, I'll begin showcasing some of the toys that I've found to be great for the third year.  See you next Wednesday!

First Year Toy Review, Part II

(This post was originally scheduled for April 7, 2010, but I've been having trouble getting my camera to upload photos and kept delaying it.  In the end, I've just decided that you'll have to use your own imagination for a couple of these.  Hope you can handle it!)

Last week, I profiled a few toys that I had acquired for my son when he was just learning to sit upright. While it may seem a little backwards, I'm going to cover some toys today that do not require the ability to sit unassisted. These are toys that a baby can play with during the first year of life at any point, so they are also all good toys for infants in general who are confined to a seat.

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Plastic juice bottle with jingle bells

Price: $2

Size: Small/Medium

Age: 4 months+

Durability: Variable

How it's made: This is a toy you make yourself. Ideally speaking, to create this you would buy (or reuse) some small jingle bells from your local craft store. Put 4 or so into a plastic bottle (preferably Simply Orange, as they use very durable plastic, and OJ is easy to rinse out) and recap. Be sure the cap is on very snugly or use a small amount of superglue to be extra sure the cap will not come off. If you use glue, use your common sense as well: don't overglue so that it drips below the cap; don't let the child come into contact with the glue.

Pros: It's cheap and easy and VERY entertaining. Also, if you lose it, it's easily replaced the next time you empty a bottle of orange juice.

Cons: Kids may fight over who gets to play with it. Guests may mistake it for trash. Can be fairly loud.

Educational Value: There's nothing really easily described about the educational value of a large rattle like this, but I still maintain that a baby learns from playing with it. A child's environment is his first teacher, so this is probably one of his first physics professors. Primarily, the value in this toy is that it allows kids an opportunity to experiment with physical consequences in a fairly safe environment. "When I turn it this way, these things in the middle move over here! And they make noise when they move! Whee!"

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Plastic water bottle, half-scrunched and recapped

Price: $0

Size: Small

Age: 4 months+

Durability: High

How it's made: When you finish a bottle of water, remove the label. Uncap, squeeze about half the air out, and recap tightly. (Be sure that the region near the cap isn't warped so that the cap does not fit properly!) Glue the cap shut as in the above toy, if desired. Some parents like to leave the bottle unscrunched or with some water in it or both. You can try out multiple variations to see which your child prefers.

Pros: This toy is easy to make instantaneously. You can create it anywhere you are, so long as you have a bottle of water with you. GREAT teething toy. When scrunched, the plastic makes fun noises that correspond to your baby's actions. The reflections and remaining water/water droplets inside capture an infant's eye. It's lightweight and fits well in a baby's hand. And of course, it's ridiculously cheap. If you suspect signs of wear or it gets too dirty, you can just toss it in the recycle bin and make a new one.

Cons: Guests may think it's trash.

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Links

Price: Varies, Under $10

Size: Very small

Age: Birth+

Durability: High

Pros: You can do soooo many things with links. You can use them to hold toys in cars (suspended from OSHs or infant carrier handles), strollers (hooked to frame), chairs in restaurants, etc. You can use them as pacifier clips. You can connect two toys together to make a new toy. The kid can chew on them as toys in their own right. Most links come in a variety of colors, textures, and even shapes. They can be used for parent toys, as well, for clipping cell phones, keys, or water bottles (w/carabiners) to diaper bags, purses, or belt loops.

Cons: Many brands of links lose their strength after a couple of years of hard use. They will not always stretch around what you hope they will.

First Year Toy Review, Part I

My husband Andrew has a great mindset that he has shared with me about making purchases: When you buy something, think about the day you will one day have to dispose of it. Children are not babies for very long, though it may seem like it at the time. Because I am keen on helping my family save money, I try to purchase toys with high standards of quality that will last a long while. Because my son is Herculean, I try to ensure that all of his toys are built to withstand something akin to a nuclear blast. And because I recognize that children are in a continual state of development, I try to find toys that will grow and develop with Jackson, rather than be discarded as "too young" before the purchase price of the toy has been validated.

The toys I am highlighting today are ones that I bought for my son when he was 5 or 6 months old. He is now 27 months old, but we still find time to play with some of them. What I like about each of these toys in particular is that they have many developmental stages of play for a child.

Fisher-Price Rock-A-Stack

Price: $10

Size: Small/Medium

Age: 5 months+

Durability: Medium-High

Pros: The simplicity of this toy is what makes it great for babies. They can actually hold the individual rings; they can chew on the support stand; it's "rockable" so it doesn't tip over too easily when an uncoordinated tot bumps it accidentally. They also have modified the top ring so that instead of being strictly a hollow, red donut, it functions as a semi-clear, semi-opaque red rattle.

Cons: The tower of the stack can fit into a child's mouth up to a point. If you have a child with a particular large mouth, she may be able to hit her gag reflex, though I haven't yet seen this become a problem. The tower and stack can be used as a hammer, so your little Bam-Bam may reek havoc on your toes as you walk past.

Educational Value: Standard colors make it easy to identify color names to your child. Helps teach order of operations for stacking, since the base is wider than the top and limits how the rings can be stacked. Helps develop fine motor skills for placing the rings on the stack.

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Fisher-Price Brilliant Basics, Baby's First Blocks

Price: $13

Size: Small/Medium

Age: 5 months+

Durability: High

Pros: There are numerous parts to this, but not so many that a parent can't keep track of them. The toy is a container and is designed to help children put the blocks through the right shape hole. Who doesn't love a toy that encourages kids to be neat? The blocks themselves are very durable and are well-designed to avoid injury: All edges are smooth; the pieces are VERY well structured so that babies can chew on them and slobber on them and not bust them, plus they can hit them on anything without making even a dent. While each shape is hollow, there is a vent hole in the center to prevent the child from accidentally gaining suction and getting the toy stuck on any body part. The pieces all fit easily within the container, which has a convenient carrying handle. The yellow lid is a great attractant (and may be the only part the child wants to play with for a long time), too!

Cons: This is really nit-picky, I know, but one of the shapes is really hard to name. When I play with my son, I like to be able to identify the shape, color, texture, etc. The triangle, star, circle, and square are fairly simple. But the fifth shape could be called a plus, an X, a cross, or whatever other name you might imagine for that shape. Ideally speaking, anyone who plays with this toy with your child will be in agreement as to what shape-name to associate to that piece.

Educational Value: This toy is great for helping a baby learn basic colors and shapes. Each shape will only fit into its own shape hole in one particular orientation, so there's no cheating there. Believe it or not, it's a tough concept for a baby to learn that convex and concave shapes can match one another. (Think about it: you wouldn't give a 4-month-old a puzzle.) Each shape comes with a matching piece that is the same shape and color, so you could help teach matching skills as well. The hole in the middle of each shape matches the exterior shape (e.g. the star shape has a star hole) to help parents and caregivers guide children to learn how to sort shapes.

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Fisher-Price Stack & Roll Cups

Price: $10

Size: Small

Age: 4 months+

Durability: Very high

Pros: This is the most cleverly constructed simple toy I have ever encountered. The Stack & Roll Cups have been a favorite not just with my son and his compatriots in babyhood but also with parents. They are that awesome. Like the old school stacking cups (which I also recommend but am not profiling today), these can stack on top of one another into a tower. They also nest well within one another. But what the normal stacking cups can't do, but these can is to join together to make balls. Each cup has a hole in the end that is about an inch in diameter, and the smaller ones have extra ventilation holes, "just in case". There are 10 cups in all, which can make 5 balls simultaneously, but each "cup" can form a ball with both the next cup larger and the next cup lower. AND you can stack any smaller cup on the back of any larger cup. As if that weren't enough, they included another little ball with a smiley face and a jingle bell inside. (For a while, it seemed like the jingle ball was enough for Jackson and friends while us parents and other adults played with the cups. They really are fun!) Kids can smack them around, fit them together, stack them, and roll them around as balls or even bring them in the bathtub. The favorite, of course, is to stick the jingle ball inside a ball made from the cups and set your child loose chasing it, fingering the ball inside, and shaking it around. WAIT! There's more! I've saved the best for last! Not only can your runt gnaw on these things (and get great little cup-shaped red marks on her face), but they store up really compactly. Because of the way the jingle ball fits into any of the cup-balls, and the way that any cup can form a ball with the next larger and next small size, you can make one big nested ball out of all the pieces. This whole set can be stored neatly together in an area the size of the two largest cups forming a ball.

Cons: The sophistication of the toy is lost on babies. Also, because there are 10 cups, the manufacturers had to use more than the standard set of readily name-able colors, so there can be some awkward moments as you try to encourage your baby to chase down the "ummm...yellow-green cup".

Educational Value: Each of the standard rainbow colors is represented in a cup, plus a couple of extras to show that not all color names are so clearcut. The colors are also ranked in size by rainbow order with the smallest cups being in the purple portion of the spectrum and the largest being red. The cups have numbers on them, as well, concatenating the order in which the cups will stack as a whole. (Of course you could also make a stack with all evens and another with all odds. Or you could nest the evens and nest the odds. Or....) When you make the cups into the 5 simultaneous balls, other patterns are apparent: each in the pair of cups forming it has the same shape (e.g. a star) engraved in a ring on it; each in the pair are of the same or nearest color name (though the red and orange ball gets a bit awkward to explain). There are soooo many educational opportunities with this toy that even through much of elementary school it can be a useful demonstrative tool.

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That's all for today, folks. I've got lots more to review, but I'm tired. I promise they are not all Fisher-Price toys! It just so happens that Fisher-Price has some high quality toys for children for the first year. Playskool and other brands dominated the ranks for many of our toys for the second year, which I'll get around to profiling when I finish up with first year toys. Stay tuned for more baby toy fun!

Toy Review: Toys for the First Year

Many parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings, friends, and guilty-conscience acquaintances want to buy toys for children but have NO IDEA what to get them. At some point, we've all been that person shopping for the kid whom we rarely see and have little to no idea what she'd want for a toy. When the child is a baby, finding the "right toy" can seem even less clear-cut for some people. So, what I've decided the world (heh, I flatter myself) needs is some idea of what to get for children of different ages, based on my experience with my own son and other children in his general age group.

When you plan to purchase a toy for a child, the first consideration needs to be: is the parent going to be happy with this toy? Maybe the toy is a gigantic Tonka truck for your newborn (yes, my MOM did that to me); maybe it's a robotic dinosaur that roars (and terrifies your 2-year-old). In these situations, the toys are not unwanted in and of themselves, but they are really age-inappropriate.

Of course, the gift might be something that is categorized as being for a child's first year and have so many bells and whistles that it annoys the crud out of anyone who is sane enough to like a bit of quiet (including the child). Maybe it's visually overstimulating to the point where your child just avoids it (like this Discovery Elephant from Infantino).

Other considerations are the child's capability to play with the toy and what the child is likely to do with it. Most babies can't even hold things with their hands for about the first 3 months, so anything they use for entertainment before that has to be automatic or parent-controlled. Also, for the first year and often beyond, pretty much anything the child holds has the same destination: the mouth. If you suspect lead paint, barium paint, small parts, sharp edges, easily broken bits, or any other method by which a child could get hurt by breaking something or putting it in his mouth (such as choking!), then DO NOT give it to a child who hasn't reached the 12 month mark yet. Ideally speaking, a child under age 3 years should have NO ACCESS to anything that is dangerous, including pen caps, loose change, Legos, and Barbie shoes.

Also, believe it or not, expensive does not mean good. Yes, generally speaking, higher quality children's products do have a higher price. However, just because you spend $80 on a rocking giraffe, do not expect that the child will necessarily get $80 worth of enjoyment out of it.

When it comes to toys for the first year, simple is ideal. Most children under 12 months are happy most of the time with a half-crumpled water bottle to squeeze and chew. Aim for that mentality. In fact, for the first year there is very little need for toys at all except as a distraction technique. Babies will play with whatever surrounds them in their environment. Give a baby a solid wood drink coaster with concentric grooves in it, and she will chew on it, bang it on furniture, and touch its various textures. To give a child this age a toy that plays 50 digital songs and "teaches" a foreign language that the parents do not speak is overkill--and runs a serious risk of overstimulation.

Overstimulation is the technical term to describe a lot of seemingly different behaviors in young children. An overstimulated child will tend to be crankier and more withdrawn. If a child experiences too much overstimulation (such as excessive television and movies and video games), she will eventually come to expect the world to entertain her instead of finding her own entertainment. A baby is seldom troubled with the feeling of boredom. Everything in life is new and exciting (like that electrical outlet you forgot was under that table and that fork that went missing recently), and the most interesting things to a baby are those that help the child learn about the world she has joined.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has some great guidelines for parents on age-appropriate toys and activities:

One- to Three-Month-Old

• Images or books with high-contrast patterns
• Bright, varied mobile
• Unbreakable mirror attached to inside of crib
• Rattles
• Singing to your baby
• Playing varied music from music boxes, CDs, records, or tapes (and I'll add in mp3s here)

Four- to Seven-Month Old

• Unbreakable mirror attached to inside of crib or playpen
• Soft balls, including some that make soft, pleasant sounds
• Textured toys that make sounds
• Toys that have fingerholds
• Musical toys, such as bells, maracas, tambourines (Make sure none of the parts can become loose.)
• See-through rattles that show the pieces making the noise
• Old magazines with bright pictures for you to show her
• Baby books with board, cloth, or vinyl pages

Eight- To Twelve-Month-Old

• Stacking toys in different sizes, shapes, colors
• Cups, pails, and other unbreakable containers
• Unbreakable mirrors of various sizes
• Bath toys that float, squirt, or hold water
• Large building blocks
• "Busy boxes" that push, open, squeak, and move
• Squeeze toys
• Large dolls and puppets
• Cars, trucks, and other vehicle toys made of flexible plastic, with no sharp edges or removable parts
• Balls of all sizes (but not small enough to fit in the mouth)
• Cardboard books with large pictures
• CDs, tapes, music boxes, and musical toys
• Push-pull toys
• Toy telephones
• Paper tubes, empty boxes, old magazines, egg cartons, empty plastic soda/juice/milk bottles (well rinsed)

[All the above bulleted data was pulled directly from Caring for Your Baby and Young Child, Birth to Age 5, Revised Edition (link goes to 5th Edition, newer than my copy) which is a publication put out by the American Academy of Pediatrics. This book can be obtained free of its $20 price tag by joining the Publix Baby Club, which sends you a free copy just for joining.]

You'll notice that nowhere in all of that was a recommendation that you overload a child with glamorous, flashy toys. Many people have remarked that if you give a child a toy, he will spend a greater amount of time playing with the box it came in. Save yourself the money and just give the kid the box!

Over the next couple of weeks, I'll highlight some toys that have proven to be good all-around buys. I am not affiliated in any way with toy manufacturers or distributors, so I'm completely unbiased (and unfunded, heh). All toys that I will include for recommendations for the first year are durable and will easily tolerate a slobbery, strong, teething baby and "survive" with barely any signs of wear.

Stay-at-home parenting, Part 2

Many people wonder: what do "stay-at-home" parents DO all day? (Some people also like to refer to the practice as "work-at-home" parents, which is excessively vague and confusing, methinks.) For one, I'm rarely home! About 3 or 4 mornings a week, Jackson visits the gym's Kid's Club while I get my exercise or physical therapy time. In the early days when I started taking him to the gym, I would just relax in the hot tub and try to melt away the pain and stress of never having down time. I progressed over time to where I was regularly attending Zumba class and then added in more weight-bearing exercise. Jackson, unawares, merely enjoys time with children in a variety of age groups.

We go to parks a great deal and explore the variety of playgrounds and parks available here in Gainesville, FL. We visit other families with young children and have playdates. On days when we'd rather not be outside, we go to the play area at the local shopping mall or the natural history museum, which has free admission and is well-geared toward children. We have picnics together for our lunches after the gym, sometimes joined by friends. He has also just started a new gymnastics class and has regularly attended a weekly open-play event at a local play-place for kids. (http://www.suncountrygymnastics.com/) We have regularly attended as a fun activity for a Friday morning that gets us around other parents and young children as well as exercise in an environment where Jackson can fairly safely play however he likes.

Jackson is also learning the basics of household management. He likes to pretend to vacuum and has learned most of the ins and outs of vacuum usage, though so far he's too scared to operate it himself. He loves to sweep with brooms and dustpans. He loves to pretend to cook at his kitchenette, custom-built by my step-dad. (Ric is available to build and ship custom-made all-wood kitchenettes and toys: reraddas (at) gmail (dot) com; the man is an awesomely talented journeyman carpenter!)

Jackson knows a good bit of geography, too, so he can often tell me how to get where he wants around town on the days when it's not too pressing that I go where I intend. He likes to walk around the mall, feed the ducks at the pond by the hospital, play with the display toys at Toys R us and Target, and will point out (and demand to visit) when we are passing the home of a good friend of his. Because so much of his life is decided for him, I try to allow him a certain amount of autonomous decision-making. But of course, there are boundaries in all things: we do not go to the playground if it is time for lunch or too close to naptime. We do not watch a movie while after he has his bath and is calming down for bedtime.

At this point, our day is well-regimented. We wake each weekday morning, eat breakfast, and go somewhere by 9 or 9:30. Typically around 10:45 or 11 we're starting our lunch. Afterward, we have some low-key play, brush teeth together, read a story, and Jackson naps at around noon. When the world isn't conspiring against us, 2.5 to 3 hours later Jackson comes out of his room with a big smile and tackles me with a hug and a kiss and tells me he loves me. We spend a little time playing or cuddling while he adjusts to being awake again, then we have a snack. Afterward we typically either go outside to play or run errands or both, if time allows. Andrew gets off work around 5:30pm or 6:pm most days, so we do dinner then as a family. Jackson usually finishes eating first, excuses himself from the table with an "All done!" and plays independently while Andrew tells me in a burst of excitement all about his day. The two of them then go do bath time while I clean up the dishes. Shortly after I finish, Jackson comes tearing out of the bathroom, naked but for his lion towel (which makes him feel like a king). We try to wrangle him into a diaper and some pajamas before he gives us reason to use our Bissell Spot Bot. He gets a little more quiet play time, then we brush teeth and floss as a family. Andrew reads him what seems an interminable number of books while I listen through the baby monitor, then Jackson goes to bed. There's very little different on the weekends, especially since Andrew is still finishing up some college courses to prepare for graduate school.

I'm planning some more posts in the future that will talk about some of the toys and games that we highly recommend, so stay tuned!

Stay-at-home parenting, Part 1

One of the great opportunities afforded me in this life is the chance to spend time in my child's earliest and formative years focused on helping develop his potential as a human being. Many people refer to this as being a stay-at-home parent. Some very wrongly assume that it's only women who fill this role (and are just flat out wrong; women merely dominant the group is all).

In ancient times, before we had running water and electricity and other things that we believe simplify our daily lives, tasks needed to be divided in order to keep our social groups alive and well. Because men are sadly not endowed with the capacity to provide nourishment to babies, women naturally filled the role as caregivers of babies and children. Men went off and did the other fiddling bits such as chasing down food and trying to sort out what makes good plants for eating grow. Somewhere along the line, women got stuck doing the cooking and the cleaning, since clearly they had so much time on their hands, sitting around trying to keep the children from maiming themselves. Then the Industrial Revolution changed things, as people became more interested and more capable of finding ways to make a job simpler and more automated. Suddenly clothes did not all need to be hand-washed. Electric sewing machines replaced the vast amount of time women spent with needle and thread in hand. And over time, more appliances came into being that were designed to lessen the work a woman had to do at home. Even baby formula was created, allowing many women complete freedom from their prior role as a housebound person.

Suddenly even women who previously would not have been financially well-off enough to avoid doing their own chores had time to follow many of their aspirations and indulge in the frolicking larks that many men enjoyed. They demonstrated that they were equally capable (or in some capacities, superior) to men in the workforce. And many of them liked it so much, they stayed there and encouraged other women to follow their lead.

One day, however, things had gone beyond the point of no return. Women were no longer really in a position to choose whether or not they wanted to work outside the home. To afford the rising cost of living (induced in part by the doubling of the workforce), women now formed a staple portion of the workforce market. Instead of being locked in a cage at home, they became locked in a cage at work. (To read more about this, I highly suggest this excellent work by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi: The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle Class Parents are Going Broke.)

So, it's no great surprise that I grew up under the impression that women and men who "stayed at home" were lazy or insufficient contributors to their families. My own mother had a great deal to do with me developing this impression. She's a hardcore work-a-holic, checking in on work email regularly throughout the day even when on paid vacations. My father was also working, but for many years he ran his business out of the house. Being that his income varied seasonally, mom was the primary breadwinner for our household. She was a great role model, and my sister has followed in her tracks as much as possible--even to the point where she works at the same company which has claimed my mother for over 30 years.

Didn't he know that children are best raised in herds of their peers by total strangers?

My brother-out-of-law stayed home with the kids for several years. They were not a rich family by any means, so mentally I judged him negatively for not working full time and putting the kids in preschool to give them more "social interaction." Didn't he know that children are best raised in herds of their peers by total strangers? While he could have done more to help them socially in the early years, I've come to realize that he was taking on a far more challenging task than I could have possibly imagined at the time.

Our society is not set up for families to have daytime custody of their own children. As bizarre as this sounds, it's demonstrably true.

When I finally gave up the dream that I could work from home 20 hours a week and still watch my newborn, I felt like a failure. But I was nursing 12 hours a day, sleeping about 4 or 5, and the other time I spent trying not to be a complete and disgusting slob. Living in a college town, I have found many other parents like Andrew and myself who have no family or social support system in place to help us care for our child. Having been physically "disabled" from a car accident a few months before my surprise pregnancy, working for any duration is very painful, so a full time job is out of the question until I can find a way to stop hurting all the time. Working part time doesn't cover enough to make up the costs of outsourced childcare. So, all things considered, it's been the most ideal option for us for me to stay home with Jackson and drag him to nearly all my medical appointments. (Thankfully my physical therapy sessions are at my gym, so I can pawn him off on the gym's lovely day care girls while I get abused back into feeling human again.)

Many moms I know would have loved to spend more time at home with their children, but by the time they were considering getting pregnant with a second child, they needed to go back to work to make more money for the family in order to pay the bills. Jackson's first playgroup, formed in his first months of life, has been decimated by this effect. All but one of his friends from the original dozen members is now in the care of someone other than Mom or Dad during the day while both parents work. These children who enjoyed special time throughout the day with their mothers (as we all were) have been shunted into a classroom directed by a stranger whose attention is divided among many children with the same abilities and disabilities. Luckily, society has managed to convince these parents that this is the normal order of things, that it's somehow more natural for a child to be kept away from her family all day while surrounded by those who know almost nothing more about the world than herself.

Don't get me wrong: childcare availability outside the home is a great feature of modern society. My son regularly spends time playing in the daycare at my gym while I exercise. There are many single parents in this world who do not have the luxury of staying with their children all day. There are very good benefits to a preschool, such as the ability to teach children a foreign language or let them play with toys and materials that are not likely to be found in a traditional home setting. But I do not believe for a moment that foisting my child off into the world before he can fully communicate is really the natural modus operandi.

I believe in equality. I believe that men should be allowed to stay home with children just as well as women should. I believe that women should be allowed to work just as well as men should. But I will not suggest that a parent is doing a disservice to a child by spending quality time focused on the child himself. The emotional well-being of a family should not be sacrificed because of the selfishness or pig-headed ideology of any one of its members.

I stay at home for my health. I stay at home to focus on my child. I stay at home because my husband is overwhelmed with work and school and has very little free time--that I'd prefer was spent with us as a family, not doing chores. I stay at home because I enjoy the physical and emotional freedom. We don't spend much time at home, but I'm happy and proud to be a Stay at Home Parent.

Oh, wow, he IS big for his age!

If I had a penny for every time I'd heard people exclaim over how large Jackson is, I would have his college savings taken care of by now.

It started when he was born. My midwife had been in doubt that Jackson would be much more than 8 and a half pounds. I insisted otherwise. A few days before birth he was projected to be 9lbs. And then when he arrived (Thank you, Mr. Stork!), it turned out that I had been carrying a watermelon of a child when he weighed in at 9lbs, 15oz.--an ounce shy of 10lbs! For those of you on the metric scale, that's 4.5kg.

He only lost 2 ounces over our time in hospital post partem, and had regained 5 ounces by 2 days later. By 2 weeks old, Jackson weighed in at 12lbs. At 2 months, he was 14lbs. When he was just about 5 months old, we found ourselves scrambling to find a larger car safety seat because he had nearly hit the maximum of 22lbs for his infant car seat. (The legal requirement in Florida for turning a child's car seat so that it faces forward instead of backward is that they child must be a year old and at least 20lbs. We had to wait more than half a year to complete the first requirement after the second was reached.)

Clothing-wise, this translated into him outgrowing 0-3 months apparel by 3 weeks old. A few weeks later, 3-6 months clothing was also too small. He managed to last until about age 7months in his 6-12 months clothing. And then things slowed down somewhat. He was in 18 months clothing until after his first birthday. He spent several months in 24 months accoutrements and then a stint in 2T. Around 20 months of age, we began gradually upsizing his wardrobe to incorporate 3T clothing, which are now the only ones to fit--and some are getting small now that he's hit his second birthday. (This is in part due to the fact that he's still in diapers, whereas it's assumed by clothing manufacturers that no room needs to be left in a 3 year old's apparel for anything more substantial than briefs.)

Jackson was also an early walker. We had never bothered to put anything other than socks on his feet until Andrew and I judged that Jackson was competent enough to try his skills outside. His first pair of shoes were Robeez for children up to 18 months. He was 10 months old. Shortly after his second birthday a few weeks ago, I took him shoe shopping (as I've done about every 2 months for over a year now), and he was sized into 10.5 shoes. He now wears the same size shoes as many 3 and 4 year old children.

Around 20 months old, we also found that (yet again) we were going to need to put Jackson into the next size higher diaper. He was then moved up to a size 6--the largest size available at the regular store for baby diapers that are not training pants. Now that he is 25 months, even those are getting small.

As you can imagine, having a larger than average child can be dramatically more expensive in the early years than a more petite child. He has not been able to wear most of his clothing into oblivion along the way, and his shoes barely show any signs of use by the time he outgrows them. Diapers are progressively fewer in number in the box with each size increase (at the same price), which means that we spend more money on diapers than others with smaller children.

And yet for all that, my son is not fat. I've always felt a little defensive about the accusation of his being fat, I suppose. The fact of the matter is that Jackson is in the 97th percentile for both height and weight (EDIT: Since I originally wrote this post, he has elevated to the 100th percentile for weight; can't get accurate height measurement myself, so that is unknown but still at least 97th percentile). This means that he is taller and heavier than 97 percent of children his age. To me, this also means that he is proportionate. A child who is 50th percentile for height and 97th percentile for weight is certainly worthy of being accused of packing on the pounds. Yet, a child who is 50th percentile for both height and weight would be proportionate. The same is true of my son. Only rather than being built like a waif, he's built more like a gladiator.

From hour 1 in the hospital, we knew he was a strong child. I had my suspicions about what he was getting up to in utero (to the point where I started wondering if my midwife hadn't missed a second child in the making), which were confirmed when he came out with excellent muscle tone and already lifting his own head. By the time he had perfected his ability to grasp objects at a few months old, he was able to inflict some serious injuries to us. His hands could really pinch hard--and he proved it every time he nursed for a while, screaming like a bansidhe if I tried to stop him from injuring me.

His perfect posture as a new sitter confirmed his amazing back strength, which was surprising since he was swaddled for nearly every sleep instance for the first 7 months. (Just TRY to imagine tightly swaddling a 23lb baby. Just try!) He was pulling himself to standing by the end of his 7th month, and a few days before he turned 10 months, he was walking unassisted. Does this sound like a butterball?

When Jackson was at an older friend's birthday party, he was 22 months old while the others were almost all over age 3. He was able to hang suspended by his arms for 15 seconds or more (and then had to be pried down to the ground) while his size-mates who were at least a year older could only manage to hang for a second or two before falling. He also loves to be placed near the top of a pole to slide down in a slow, controlled manner.

Yet for all that my son is practically an Olympian athlete for his age, his chubby baby cheeks have always seemed to give others the impression that he is fat. He never has been excessively fatty for his age. Despite that he's entirely made of thick, lean muscle, a Salvation Army worker collecting donations at the mall still had the gall to sweetly call him "Fatty". That's right. She called him Fatty, like he was some adorable little ball of flab. I was so irritated by this, though I didn't say anything to the inane woman herself. Never mind that he was not the least bit overly fleshy anywhere but the cheeks of his face; never mind that he had just been running around the mall with me, getting all sorts of exercise and climbing and jumping like a wild man at the children's play area. She was determined to judge him as being a fat older child, rather than recognizing him as the chubby cheeked baby that he really is.

I wish I could say she is the only one to misjudge him, but I know it's not true. With his height, Jackson is often judged to be older than he really is. Preschool age children believe him to be a peer of theirs, then get very confused when he speaks like a child who is just learning how to express himself. He follows them around like a happy, oblivious little puppy because he wants so badly to try to make friends. They feel uncomfortable by the disparity between his size and behaviors and often estrange him or berate him for acting so bizarrely.

Even older people who know his age are still confused by him on occasion because it is so easy to forget that he's as young as he is. Often I find him held to a higher level of judgment, intentionally or otherwise, because people expect him to behave like a 3 or 4 year old. Strangers give him looks that clearly show they think his behavior to be wildly inappropriate.

As a result, Andrew and I have developed a habit of outright mentioning his age at every opportunity. We emphasize how tall and strong he is for his age, how accomplished he is for someone so young. We're quite proud of how smart, healthy, beautiful, strong, tall, and socially knowledgeable Jackson is--and feel pained when he is misjudged by others.

By now you may be wondering why I am writing all this. Am I just venting? Am I complaining? Do I have some idea in mind that will fix this? Well, it's actually all three, to be honest. So, now that you've endured my venting and complaining, consider some of these thoughts that I've had as the mother of my mammoth-baby.

One thought I have had is that there ought to be a Big & Tall for babies and toddlers. If one brand were out there making clothing for all the kids who are above the 75th percentile in size, that company could make a lot of parents and their children some very happy customers. I can hear you now: "Why can't bigger kids just wear a large size?" The thing is, kids (like adults) come in all different shapes and sizes. Some children are long and lean. Some are squat and wide. And some have crazy beefcake arms that don't fit the sleeves of shirts that are otherwise the right size. Perhaps no specific Big & Tall line needs to come together as a result of this problem, but our societal expectations are very clearly demonstrated when it's impossible to find pants for a larger than average toddler that don't assume he's a prodigy in toilet training. Other dimensional assumptions are evident as well. By the time Jackson gets to where the waistband is too snug on his pants, he is only just fitting the legs. He's got stubby little baby legs compared to his wide hips, so no matter what stage he's achieved in a set of clothes, he looks goofy. Unless I start sewing all the clothing for my kid, he's going to be stuck in a continuous cycle of looking and feeling exceedingly awkward until he reaches adult clothing sizes.

Another reason I am writing this is because I want to make people aware of larger children. They exist. I married a giant of a man at 6'2" with some broad shoulders and hips that would make him look like Atlas if he deigned to visit the gym. While I may have lost all 50lbs of baby weight, I'm still no tiny slip of a girl at 5'8". Clearly our offspring are not likely to be described as tiny. I've known other children like Jackson, whose parents' combined features resulted in a standard-obliterating child of god-like proportions. The moms and dads of these children all show the same symptoms as Andrew and me, including the defensiveness of the darling little one's age and size.

One mom I know with a son in the 100th percentile (that's right, he's off the charts because he's so tall) and a daughter who is also above average in size, said that she often finds herself asking how old other children are so that the parents will ask the ages of her children. Both her spawn are well above average intelligence, so they are (again, like Jackson) that much more confusing for people's brains to classify. As an example: Jackson and this boy, Dane, were playing together. Dane was 2 and a half; Jackson was 19 months. Dane was frustrated by Jackson's presence and wanted to keep him from playing with certain toys. He fought with him and was angry about having to share, so he was repeatedly getting put into time out. After the third or fourth time he was sent to time out, he climbed up onto his dad's lap and whispered into his ear: "Dane needs to share with all people alike." His verbal skills were sufficient to express this idea that he knew was the truth (though he did refer to himself in the 3rd person). Yet because he really was only 2 and a half, his emotional development and self-restraint were still developing at a reasonable level for his age.

We live in a judgmental society. People naturally have a tendency to try and classify what they see. It's one of the ways in which we file away information we receive from our senses. What I ask is that rather than making a superficial judgment based on the size of a child, the world at large should consider other factors. Far more telling than height is a child's physical development. Does she have teeth? Can she sit unsupported? How skilled is she at walking? Climbing? Running? Jumping? What are her inclinations when surrounded by other children? The answers to these questions help develop a much better picture of the age of a youngster than by an assessment of the distance from head to toes.

Meta-Post

Hello, all!

It's been a while since I really checked in and just spoke without a sort of lecturing feel to my post. I started this blog just over a year ago. At first I really didn't know how the blog would develop and evolve. I'm not entirely sure of the direction it will follow even in the near future.

When I began writing about Life in the Cheerios Garden, my son Jackson had just turned a year old. My plan had been to write something along the lines of a documentary, from conception to childbirth and gradually catching up to the present day. By the time I reached the post-partem discussion, however, I floundered. The things I wanted to discuss were less event-specific and more concept-specific. Eventually I settled into a more pedagogical stance. Last summer and fall seasons were so ripe with things for me to say as I developed a written Parenting Philosophy Toolbox.

One of my goals, it occurred to me, was to share insights that I had as a parent. Some may feel that I couldn't possibly be a valid source for such information when my child wasn't even 2 years old. But as time progresses, the points I enumerated in the PPT are still very much relevant now as they were when my son was a newborn, a new walker, and at every point along the way.

Jackson is now 25 months old. One thing I have not really discussed much is my child in particular. This might seem a bit odd for a "mom blog", don't you think? Perhaps that will change over the course of the next year.

Over the holidays I tried to consider what direction to take the blog, now that the PPT is done. I shared some home-made books, illustrated with the smallest amount of practice and created during Jackson's naptimes. Many blogs include a variety of posting types all under one general concept: some images only, some long rants, some quick commentary or quotes. Part of me believes that I should follow suit, randomizing my entries more and concerning myself less with self-imposed (and lately, scarcely met) deadlines.

I haven't really felt any great epiphanies about what to do next. Part of me believes that I could be reasonably reliable if I were just relating individual stories of experiences in the world of at-home parenting (which is a serious misnomer, as we are seldom truly at home). Part of me feels a sense of guilt in doing so, that I would not be really benefiting anyone by imparting such stories.

For the next while, I imagine I will attempt a hodge podge of ideas as I try to feel out where it is I want to go with the blog. Wherever that path leads, I hope you will follow!

Thank you all for making me feel like my time and effort is valuable. Stay tuned for...whatever may come next!

~Jessica Adams

Books for Babies & Toddlers: Potty Time

The first book I drafted for Jackson was designed to help introduce and/or clarify how to use the toilet. He was a little young for full-scale potty training, but he had begun pre-training him already. I recognized that it would be helpful for him to have some predefined understanding of exactly what was going to be expected of him eventually.

I had recently taken an interest in learning how to improve my drawing skills, but my first sketches were overly complex and not particularly easy to interpret for a toddler, I judged. Then inspiration hit: I could study someone else's drawing technique and try to mimic it. Remembering how much I enjoyed the illustrations by Caroline Jayne Church (CJC) in one of Jackson's books, I used I Love You Through and Through by Bernadette Rosetti Shustak (illustrated by CJC) as a template for practice. The style is very basic, and the young boy character was already a very good model for Jackson. With some moderate amount of fiddling, I managed to determine how best I could get my own hand to create an image that looked passingly similar to CJC's artwork.

My main motivation for drafting my own potty learning book was because I could not find a book online or in stores that modeled exactly what I wanted my son to see. I did not like the flashier books with the flushing sounds which distract from the images and (I imagine) are designed to help children acclimate to the potentially scary sound of a flushing commode. Jackson had been enjoying flushing the toilet since before he could walk, so that was not a concern--and therefore merely an unwanted interference. Another popular book shows a little boy using what looks like a large bowl for a potty. I wasn't planning to teach my son to squat over a bowl, so that one was out. Yet another common book for kids to learn about elimination is entitled Everybody Poops! Well, this was no surprise to my son who was fairly well aware of the fact already, and no other useful information is imparted in the book. Nothing I found beyond that really fit the bill, so it was up to me.

[Some of you may be thinking: But wait, couldn't your husband just as easily be the one to write/draw the book? Not so. I've seen his artwork. I think it might physically kill him to attempt to draw anything that wasn't in perfect rows and columns. Plus as the one most eager to see the goal achieved and most interested in the particulars of the book, as the one to stay home with our child, I was the very obvious candidate of choice for the task.]

And so, without further ado, I present to you The Potty Book, by Mommy Adams.

"Hi, I'm Jackson!"

This first page drawn was before I considered that a cover page would really be a good idea. It scanned reasonably well despite being taped back together.

"I am learning how to use a Big Boy potty."

I was feeling pretty good when Jackson was readily able to identify this as a toilet. I think the tank and the handle helped more than the bowl itself.

"I used to wear diapers when I was a baby."

This page scanned far worse the first go around. Because the potty book was so well loved before I thought to scan it, several pages were a bit curvier than my document scanner approves of them being.

Additionally, this page may have actually caused me some grief due to its comparison to the next page. Jackson had noticed that the Big Boy didn't get a pacifier, and since we are still working on weaning him of the paci, this is a bit of an issue for him.

"Now, I'm learning to wear underwear like a Big Boy!"

Apparently I was still thinking "baby" and not "toddler" because I drew the Big Boy as bowlegged instead of knock-kneed. Regardless, it got the point across.

"When I feel like I am going to make pee or poopy, I say, 'I need to go potty!'"

Another page the scanner didn't like so well. Also, there is an unfortunate (if mild) contrast in terminology here between this page and another. My suggestion to anyone who attempts to do something similar is to consider that changing a phrase even slightly can become confusing for you (and Little Bits) during the reading process. Try to remain consistent.

"Then I go to the bathroom."

Sometimes it's a bit tricky, I've found, trying to decide how to depict an idea. There were a number of ways that I could have illustrated the concept of physically moving to the bathroom, but in the end, drawing a bathroom door partially open was what worked best for my limited artistic development.

"In the bathroom, I take off my pants and underwear. Sometimes I only have time to pull them down to my ankles."

Apologies again for the bad scanning. This book really has seen a fair bit of love since its creation. However, it's paid off. Just today, Jackson knew two of his older friends were going to the bathroom, so he asked to go (which he never does; ordinarily he just shows that he is about to pee). Sure enough, he went like a champion racehorse. (He also really likes to point out the boy's penis in this picture.)

"When I get on the potty fast enough, I can sit on the toilet when I make pee or poopy."

I recently decided to see if Jackson could tell me the story, knowing that he's very familiar with this book by now. He was able to identify all the important aspects of each page, though he was a little less sure with this one. With a little prodding, however, he decided that the boy in this picture was peeing.

"When I pee or make poopy, I clean my privates with toilet paper and wet wipes. Sometimes I need help."

This is another bad scan, yes. This is also where I accidentally changed the grammar order slightly, which has made a small amount of confusion in the reading process. Another point of confusion here I realized was that I used the term "privates", which isn't something we normally say to Jackson, so I find myself continually adding a verbal definition of what privates are.

"When I finish, I flush the potty. That's my favorite part!"

I really had a tricky time deciding how to depict a flushing toilet. I thought about drawing an arrow showing the handle depressing, but I considered that might be difficult for a young toddler to interpret. In the end, I decided to try to show the swirling water, but as you can see, it looks like the water is not alone in the potty.

"Next, I wash my hands in the sink with soap and water until they are clean. Then I dry them with a towel."

Rather than figuring out how to show him washing his hands, I decided that a sketch of hands up close with the sink and towel visible should suffice. This page I consider invaluable to the book, as I am not aware of hygiene being stressed as a part of bathroom usage in most potty training stories. My goal was to capture the entire process, not just the bit with the toilet itself.

"When I put my underwear and pants back on, it's time to play!"

Another thing I felt important was for Jackson to know that just because he needed to take time out to go to the bathroom, he wasn't going to have to stop playing. He could still return to play again once his potty trip was complete (which of course, includes hand-washing). We tend to punctuate this final page with a cheerful, "Hooray!"

I hope that this has been helpful as a demonstration of a home-made potty training book. As you can see, I'm not a skilled or well-practiced artist, but I knew that with a little effort, I could convey exactly what it was that I feel is most important for my child to learn about the toileting experience. By sharing, my fervent wish is that any other parents or childcare providers who attempt this will be able to benefit from the lessons I learned in the process of writing such a book and thereby make their own even better.

I expect to keep writing more books as issues arise. One idea I have in mind at present is to help show the aging process. It occurs to me that very young children are not aware of the fact that they are growing and changing and that someday they will become adults. Another book I have some thoughts about writing one day is about siblings. That one I'll wait to write until we decide to try for another monster-in-training!