quinn loves his bathrobe from grams.
3-24-09
we had a SUPER mellow day on friday. i saw a couple moments when quinn COULD have gone to a tantrum. i took him to playgroup on friday morning and he was happy to squish playdough through a garlic press and “make anemones” for the first oh 45 minutes or so. then everyone was going to go outside and this one mom started snatching up all the playdough from around the table and i saw him tense up (not ready to stop yet and disturbed by this woman’s abruptness) and i told him (so she could hear) that i would sit with him while he said bye-bye to the playdough, and kind of shielded his paper plate full of playdough so she couldn’t snatch it up, and told him we’d clean ours up ourselves when he was ready, and let’s get ready to say bye-bye to it so we can go outside and play on the slide and go in the little pink playhouse… and i think i handled it well because he un-tensed, and said bye bye to the playdough, then needed another minute to say bye bye to the garlic press, and by the time he was done putting it away the other kids were still at the door getting jackets on- so it wasn’t like he held anyone up, but a tantrum was avoided. then we were outside, and he played in the pink house for a while, and by the time he got to the jungle gym and figured out how to climb up it and go down the slide, he went down once and it was time to go in for snack. and all the other kids went running for the door yay snack! but q had JUST figured out the slide and NEEDED to go down it again. and i said that’s ok, we’ll go one more time, which turned into two more times, the second time he didn’t need to hold my hand at all, and he got up after getting to the bottom of the slide, and without a word from me at all, he went to the door to go in for snack. that time everyone else had already gotten inside and sat down at tables, but it was so not an issue… but again, a tantrum avoided. he NEEDS to decide for himself right now, is the way i see it. i think age 2 is really big on autonomy. at least for Q i see that coming through right now, and i think if you start the day out wrong, it can go really badly. but if he can trust you to not force him into anything, he will ultimately decide to go along with what you had planned, just maybe a minute or two after you would have liked to get started on it.
this morning quinn was just as sweet as pie. super sweet and lovey and cute as can be, spinning and bopping balloons around, and gave me sweet hugs and kisses and “do boop!” (we “boop” noses together, something he and dada invented) just super sweet and i didn’t want to come to work.
the bye bye to playdough thing… i got that out of the dr sears book of attachment parenting. it is basically all about picking your baby up when he cries, etc. it was something i read about helping your kid transition between things- they need more time than an adult needs. and i think my approach is always to try to remember what it was like to be a little kid, and for some reason, i can remember it pretty well. not sure why, because i hardly remember anything from grade school, but i do have some vivid memories, almost like body memories, of what it felt like to be 3 and have to do something i didn’t want to do (stay in my sunday school room instead of hang out with my mom, etc.) so i like to remember to take more time than I need, to take the time HE needs… and to also do things slowly and methodically and give him an explanation at least, even if he doesn’t get the whole meaning, at least he gets the effort on my part TO explain it to him. i’m giving him that much respect, which kids can feel wayyyyy before they understand the words you are saying to them.
i don’t know what to make of the terrible twos thing. me, i think it is AWESOME that he knows what he wants!!! i am so excited because i do not know what i want and struggle so much as an adult because of it. so i feel like this is amazing and wonderful and feel validated that i must be doing something right. i guess it is all about how you look at it. you can decide age 2 is bad, and terrible, or you can see it for the amazingness it really is.
i guess that’s the bottom line for me- if you respect them, you avoid a lot of cliche nonsense. if they are used to you respecting them and answering them when they say mama? they are over it. they don’t need to “test” it because it has always worked… if you DO watch them jump in the pool the first ten times, they know you will watch them, and they don’t NEED to have you do it 90 more times to prove it. but if you ignore them the first time, the need just becomes that much greater and more intense. they become much more sure of themselves if they know you are there for them, and don’t need you to prove they can trust you because, you did it right the first time. i guess that is my whole parenting argument- if you do it right the first time, none of it HAS to be terrible or annoying or a struggle. but you do need to treat them like people. i guess time will tell with all of this stuff, but so far i believe it is working out how i thought it would. i mean quinn is amazingly content to play by himself for a two year old, and i don’t even really ask him to do that. if he wants me to watch him squish another anemone, i come and watch him. then usually he’s fine with it if i leave after the second one to fold some more laundry in the next room, while he squishes 20 more. he figures, oh she’ll be right here if i need her, so… therefore i don’t need her.
we squish lots of anemones in the “made-o pay-dough” garlic press. i can’t figure out if he is calling it tomato playdough or if he’s saying we made it, but he’s making it rhyme.
3-26-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook)
“i saw a baby getting a new dry diaper on the crab dock.” Big sentences! Q’s big event for the day – an even bigger deal than the trip to the aquarium in the morning.
Squirting water on the baby plants/seeds – kale and broccoli sprouting already!
3-27-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook)
Gave dada a hug and said “quinn loves dada.” they went down to the bayfront.
hugged baby bear, “quinn loves baby bear” before going back to bed at 6am (awake at 4:30….)
3-28-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook)
picnic and hike with noah at mike miller trail.
quoting “grizzly” at dinner; two full pages.
3-29-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook)
“winnie the pooh” song; “roly toly silly… bear.”
hummingbird lunch
seal rock and reservoir – first cast.
3-30-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook)
reservoir with dada
heceta head lighthouse – eagle
4-3-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook)
after nap – seal rock with dada.
4-4-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook)
south beach hike with noah in the morning. cheerios in the rock tunnel, spinning around on the trail. after nap – drove north to cape foulweather to try to spot whales. noticed seals on the beach south of CF. Drove the otter rock loop to otter rock beach. AWESOME beach at low tide, great tide pools, seals, birds, urchins, anemones, rocks-in-the-water-splash.
4-5-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook)
cape lookout hike.
4-6-09
i just used my lands end $25 gift card from christmas to buy new hiking shoes. they are green. because i got my every day shoes muddy yesterday hiking out cape lookout to see my two birthday whales. yay! how was your weekend? i cannot wait to get my film developed- i did not get whale pictures,but i took a lot of photos on saturday at a new beach we went to, of seals, birds, sea urchins, sea anemones, quinn being beautiful in evening light, throwing-rocks-in-the-water-splash. i am mailing the film out today (two rolls!) it was a good birthday weekend – the weather was GORGEOUS all weekend, and today too for that matter- i LOVE LIVING HERE.
i saw the whales surface as we were approaching the end of the trail (you end out at the tip of the cape, sticking out over the water and up way, way high above the water- it’s the same hike i did when Q was 6 weeks old for my birthday 2 years ago, which was crazy on a recovering from birth body. but yeah we stopped to look out because there was an opening in the trees, and quinn had just fallen asleep on me in the sling, and we just started to walk again, and out of the corner of my eye i saw one surface. i got to see the body come up to the surface, coming directly towards us, the blow, then it went down, then its friend came up, then their “footprints.”they came up again, one then the other, and then dove, and the second one when it dove, fluked, which is unusual for gray whales. this made me think it could have been a calf, because they can be more likely to fluke when they dive, to get down as deep as mama… but it would be early (we would always see moms and calves on my birthday in california, but they don’t get up here to oregon yet usually- but obviously it varies! so hard to say, you get such a brief glimpse!) we stayed at the point for about an hour to see if more came, and saw a few blows in the far distance but no more came close. quinn woke up and got to see a chipmunk come out of the bushes and scurry around for a bit, which he really liked. i took a picture of it.
quinn using my camera at the lighthouse
quinn in his cute striped sweater on my birthday morning.
hands in his jacket pockets- so cute! on friday, we went to seal rock and quinn flew his kite- the conditions were PERFECT so he could do it all by himself.
otter tracks- we saw a river otter run down the beach and go into the ocean… pretty cool. saw it from a distance then went to see the tracks.
yesterday at the end of the hike quinn was super tired but didn’t want to ride on our backs, and he tripped HARD and his hand pulled out of my hand- he went face first in the mud and cut his lip. here he is with his fat lip, back at home, after he had adorned himself and me with flowers “in” our ears.
4-7-09
it felt so good to blow through 2 rolls of film this weekend…. it has been SOOO long since i did that. and especially long since i did it without filling the entire rolls with Quinn. which of course is wonderful in itself, but i have missed being able to take
outdoor photos.
i got to go to the beach after work yesterday. quinn and i went down to the tidepools because it was low tide. we alternated throwing-rocks-in-the-water-splash, touching anemones, and having milk in the sling. we had SUCH a good time. we walked all the way to the end of the beach where it gets rocky and saw starfish, and blew kisses to one starfish that had a broken arm, and then we found a soccer ball that was abandoned, so we kicked it all the way back.
dada just called…. “quinn’s asking for something on a rice cake- what is it? i can’t tell what he’s saying.”
me: “oh, flax oil.”
dada: “oh! really?!”
hehe. my son requests flax oil on his rice cake!!!!!! i’m so proud. yay for omega 3 fatty acids on organic brown rice cakes! he requests it from me all the time, but i figured it was a “mama snack.” he never asks me for pretzels- that’s a dada snack. unless it’s a yoburp pretzel, those are from me.
i think snowball effect would have been a better title than the secret. i totally think that we all get to choose which type of thinking we snowball with… i really had a hard time with that idea when i was super depressed, because i felt that i did not have a choice… but what saved me is i started choosing one little thing at a time (yoga anyone?) to be positive about, and it snowballed. don uses words like “neural pathways” but basically you reinforce that you are a positive thinker every time you have one positive thought… it gets to be your default way of thinking, when you go down that same neural path enough times…. works both ways, for positive or negative.
4-8-09
nummy-nummean?
translation: know what i mean? i laugh inside whenever quinn says this. he’ll be telling you something, and end with “nummy-nummean?” and i just think it is the cutest thing in the entire world.
he’s sick. he went to bed at 8, then woke up at 8:30 to nurse again, and i laid in bed with him till 10 but he couldn’t go back to sleep and that whole time, i felt like he was getting warmer and warmer. i had JUST gotten in the bathtub when he woke back up, so i got back in for like 5 minutes to warm up (nursing in a towel i got cold) and quinn said “can i come in the baff?” so i cooled it down some and got out, and put him in. in the bath he told me “i’m warm” which is unusual for him- he rarely remembers to take off his jacket, etc., because he seems not to mind being overheated. i know the feeling. then he was ready to go back to bed almost immediately after the bath around 10:30 so i went to bed instead of all the other things i had planned on getting done last night. then at 4:30 he woke up (he slept lightly all night) and needed to get up “can i wake up have bagel with cream cheese on it?” the WORDS. he is now fluent in english. so we ate bagels and played trains for 40 minutes, then he asked to go back to bed so we did. i got up about 10 minutes before dada would arrive so i could go to yoga class… so i actually am not doing too badly as far as sleep goes but could use a TINY bit more.
last night i called my mom because apparently talan is walking, so i wanted to hear the proud grammy. quinn and i were eating chowder for dinner while i talked but then he wanted the phone so he started grabbing it from me, and i told him, we don’t grab things from each other, do we? we use our words to ask for them, can you use your words to ask me for the phone? and he said, “yeah. ummm……. (short pause)….. can i peez hold the phone talk to gammy?” is it just me, or is he the awesomest boy ever?!? feeling like a shameless bragging mama this morning. he is SO articulate it almost scares me a little bit…
i went home at lunch to nurse quinn for naptime, since he’s sick. i got there and this is what i saw:
and quinn said, “mama, look at all the bunny wabbits!” i asked dada if it was fun until the 10th or 12th one. he said, “after i while i think i just got numb.”
4-8-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook)
“what a silly girl, kitty.” “what a silly girl, bunny.”
4-9-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook)
“my tummy’s full of milk.”
4-10-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook)
devil’s punch bowl. “i had a nice time!”
4-13-09
on saturday quinn and i went to the beach with trina and noah but it was windy and therefore brief. so we stopped at salvation army on the way home, and i got a pair of jeans for $3. (size 10 tall from the gap, practically brand new. and let me tell you, this town does NOT have a lot of clothes in its thrift stores, everyone wears their clothes till they fall off, so finding a tall pair on the one tiny rack of jeans is unheard of!) quinn got another garlic press and some cookie cutters, and a bear finger puppet that he named “little tiny bear”. and we got some bowls because i keep breaking them. all for $8.97! because you had to pull a slip of paper out of the basket to get your % off value, and quinn picked the purple one and we got 50% off yay for that. friday was glorious here too… after work i took quinn back to the beach with the seals and anemones. it’s in a town called otter rock, but the state park itself is called “devil’s punch bowl.” it was so awesome, we had a great time. i finished another roll of film. he fell asleep in the car driving home from there.
and i vacuumed yesterday (gasp! not since thanksgiving i think. but i sweep all the time…) quinn is still feeling a little funky. he actually just sat in the rocking chair and watched me vacuum… most of the day he had energy though. we dyed easter eggs in the morning- he LOVED it. i told him that sometimes a bunny comes and hides childrens’ eggs, and they have to go and look for them. quinn smiled at that idea, but then he napped for about a millisecond, and i had no chance to hide them… and then he made me open every single egg by the end of the day so the easter egg hunt never happened. i told him we dye eggs to celebrate spring and that eggs are symbolic of new life.
(added on 8-19-20 from found notebook) also got scissors from salvation army…
counting to 20!
“make the red go away!” (bloody nose.)
“i ride on the bus with dada.”
4-12-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook) easter
“do you like them in a car? eat them eat them here they are. i cannot cannot in a car. i cannot cannot in the dark. i cannot cannot in a tree… sam let me be.”
easter egg dying – duck eggs, including the “little tiny” green egg. which was dyed a deep shade of green. Quinn set that egg aside in a little box and told me to “let that go.”
“i got a lemon pepper.” (an empty plastic lemon juice lemon i added to his play kitchen.)
4-15-09
we went out to mundo, and quinn loved it, and ate pitas and hummus and bopped to the music (jazz trio). “i had a fun good time!” quinn would not fall asleep, could not, i think. and he finally just went to bed with me at 10, but we tried several times, and the last time we came back out, with quinn saying, “want to wake up! i feel happy!”
on sunday night i had andrew, amanda, and becka over for pizza. it was last minute, i just decided um i have all this pizza and all these muffins that quinn and i made… it’s raining and boring…. andrew read books to quinn and ad-libbed them and made them really hilarious for the adults. he also read the book that quinn and i wrote last week about “where does the garbage go?” quinn has been SOOOO into that book and i asked him if he read it with dada, and he said “yeah, and andrew and apanda too!”
wednesday is trash day. last wednesday when i got home, quinn was all in a tizzy that we needed to go put away that trash can (the big ones that you roll to the curb.) only, it was our neighbor’s can that he was pointing to so we obviously weren’t going to go and move it (i hadn’t rolled mine down that week so we had nothing to roll.) anyway…. i explained it to him, that it was someone else’s… and then i just talked all about the subject of garbage, trying to sort of get his mind off of THAT garbage can. and i told the whole story from us putting it in our garbage can, all the way to the landfill. and then he told me “do it again”. about 14 times. so i finally got tired of repeating myself, and suggested we draw pictures of it, and then i realized the card stock we are coloring on lately (fred meyer had a huge stack of card stock for 9.99 on sale 20% off back in the fall and i use his artwork for cards when i need them.) i realized it would fold into a book really well, so i folded 3 of them into a book, and wrote out the story, and drew pictures, which quinn drew on top of. then i sewed it down the middle to attach all 3 pieces together (my sewing machine is “at the ready” lately) so now it is a book in quinn’s book collection. i have no idea why i didn’t think of it before, you know, with like, a topic like whales, or trees or something. nope! our first story was about garbage….
i love “do it again”, and in most cases i find it cute and try to just roll with it (ok let’s make a book!) if it starts to get to be too many “do it again’s.
4-18-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook)
“i took a nap on the pillow yesterday”
“red crab and the black crab go in the water and cold.”
seal rock – kite.
talking about dada and the lollipops.
4-19-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook)
wooden boat show in depoe bay. “Got my gam cacker in my hand ‘case I want it.”
Q got to build a boat! used saw, vice, sandpaper, glue gun. stopped at a new whale watch spot and watched one cruise by. fell asleep in car holding raccoon. extra hour of nap with mama napping too. planted lettuce and arugula.
later – jetty and dunes. “‘case you want to throw it in the water.” communing with the sand (laying belly down, or in child’s pose, putting his face right up close to the sand. sitting up, scooping it endlessly with his hands.)
telling stories, narrating what we do… “and Quinn’s nose on mama’s nose, and then we did a boop!” in a singsongy voice. tons of imaginitive play. (pirates on his new boat – fishing for crabs!)
4-20-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook)
new book – zen ties. “i want to nap later”
one two three four balloons.
4-22-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook)
trash truck and new pirate ship
“i want to go mouse fact[or]y and do the paints. dada come and sit in the blue chair and watch me paint!”
4-23-09 (added on 8-19-20 from found notebook) 26 months!
painted his play table with dada today. the top is now blue, the better for octopuses and whales to swim on and boats to sail on!
“i don’t know” (sounds like “i no no.”)
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