Category Archives: Jillian
Neglect
Yes, I’ve been neglecting the blog. It’s an occupational hazard, I think. There just isn’t all that much to write about. This isn’t to say that life is boring (it is), because it’s not (no, it really is). It’s just that… well, I mellowed out a bit, I think. And when I’m not angry about something, I don’t need to write.
Who knew happiness would lead to writer’s block?
Things are good. I did just drop $400 getting the refrigerator’s motor replaced, which was making me unhappy. Then I called the cable company about my wonky internet connection and spent a day raging about that…. how boring. Fridge is fixed, cable is fixed, life is fine.
Jillian is officially a Big Girl. She has been in her Big Girl bed since shortly before the new year started. And while I do miss the Baby Cage and the bonus hour of sleeping we would get in the morning, it’s nice to wake up to toddler morning breath right in my face. Sometimes she pokes my eyes and says “Mama’s eyes open! It’s morning!” Yes, it’s morning, but only in the sense that 5AM is after midnight. Sigh.
We still haven’t made much progress with potty training. Please do not call it ‘toilet learning’ because that phrase makes me want to punch you in the face. With my foot. It’s potty training, dammit. And we’re not doing it. We had a couple of weeks when it was The Thing To Do, but now? Not so much. I’m in no rush, and like everything else the kid has figured out how to do, she’ll wake up one day and decide to pee in the potty and that will be that.
Jillian is growing much too fast. Her language skills have exploded, along with her imagination. Her new favorite thing in the whole wide world is the movie Toy Story, so we watch that approximately 32 times a day. While it’s on, we draw pictures of Buzz Lightyear and Sheriff Woody, and Jillian uses her blocks to build action figures of her own. It’s very cute, and because we do all of these other things, I don’t worry too much about the fact that the movie is on repeat pretty much all day.
Of course, that’s not EVERY day here. We have been getting outside to stomp around the neighborhood. Lately it’s been very chilly so we haven’t been out as much as we’d like to be, but most days we bundle up and head out. Jillian is a big fan of snow and her one true heart’s desire is to make a snowman, but we haven’t had enough snow to do that this season. Me? I detest snow. Freddie thinks he’s going to get us all to go skiing either this season or next but he is obviously deranged.
The knitting is going well – I finally figured out socks! I made a pair each for my mom and dad, and I’m currently working on a pair for myself made from Harry Potter-inspired yarn from Opal. I am totally in love with this yarn and when I manage to get pictures, I’ll put some here because it’s amazing stuff. Once these socks are done, I’m not sure what my next project will me. I may make a shawl for Jillian, since I usually have mine on and she wants “a cape like Mama has.” And then… I don’t know. Jillian is getting to a size where she’s not considered a baby anymore but she’s not yet a kid, so the knitting patterns for this size of person are few and far between. Plus I haven’t been looking that hard. Girlfriend does love her hats, so perhaps I’ll make a bunch of them for her.
As for me, I am trying really hard to get into an exercise groove and stick with it. I managed to acquire a Wii Fit, whom I have named Harold. Harold tells me I’m obese, which is laughable but… not terribly far from reality. Ooops. Shut up, it’s baby weight! Yes, she’s two and a half years old. I said shut up.
I’m trying to hit the gym at least 2 times a week. I wish it were more, but the schedule doesn’t really allow. I have a treadmill which I use fairly regularly, so…. it’s a slow process. I feel good about it, though, which is a huge difference from before. I know I won’t ever have the body I had when I was 17 (I tried to sell my soul but couldn’t find a buyer), but I can at least be a little less fluffy, eh?
Oh, and Phish decided to go on tour this summer so I am anxiously checking the credit-card statement to see if I got tickets yet.
Crazy. Stir.
I know it’s bad form to blog about the weather, but this is ridiculous. It is just as dark at 9AM as it is at 5PM and that SUCKS BALLS. It means it’s gross and rainy, which means we can’t go outside (because I’d rather not get pneumonia).
Which means we are both slowly going insane.
There are indoor playspaces that we could go to, but they tend to cost money, which I am reluctant to spend. We could go to playdates, but what I really need is about an hour of Jillian just running around, screaming, and doing that at someone else’s house is usually considered bad form. There is one free playspace in a mall, but that’s 20 miles away and nobody in their right mind is going anywhere near a mall for at least the next month.
We’ll think of something.
In other Jillian news, we are sloooooooooowly working on the potty training. It’s one step forward, two steps back, and now, when given the choice between putting on a diaper and sitting on the potty, she chooses the diaper. That’s fine – I’m in no hurry.
^^That was yesterday’s post. The weather did clear up a bit and we did get outside for a little while which helped us all immensely.
Today is the end of an era. We… no longer put the baby in a cage. When we picked out a crib, we figured since we were having only the one kid, we might as well get a convertible one that changes to a toddler bed and then eventually to a full-size bed that she can take with her to college.
The prevailing wisdom says that when the kid starts trying to climb out of the crib, it’s time to get a big-kid bed. My child? Has never tried this. She looooooooves the crib. Would stay in there all day if I would let her. Sometimes I am tempted to do just that.
But… we can’t do that anymore. While we were out this morning, we stopped at the crib store where we bought the thing originally and ordered the side rails for the full-size version. We figured it would be better to do it now, before we were ready than to wait and find out that the model has been discontinued or something. So that’s what we did.
In six-to-eight weeks, we shall have them.
In the meantime, we converted the bed from a crib to the toddler bed and Jillian is ridiculously pleased with it. She keeps climbing in and out, and so far has refused lunch in favor of hanging out in her “sleeping bed.” I have a feeling she is going to take after me and have every single stuffed animal she owns in the bed with her.
She’s only 28.5 months old! When did she become a big girl?
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Breaking news!
Jillian peed in the potty!
We bought her a potty a few months ago in hopes that we could start potty training and get ourselves out of Diaper Hell. At first, she didn’t even want to be in the same room as the potty, which made me wonder if I was going to have to go with her to Harvard so I could change her diapers.
Eventually, we got her to sit on it. That was huge progress, and due in no small part to Elmo, who received extremely lavish and over-the-top praise for simply sitting on the potty.
After dinner, we have been having Naked Time, wherein The Child gets naked and runs around like a crazy person for about a half-hour before bed. I have had to wipe up two oopsies in the past week, so now, during Naked Time, I try to steer her toward the potty. She’ll sit on it, and demand a book, but until today, nothing happened.
Today, as usual, we were having Naked Time. Freddie and I were sitting on the floor on the other side of the coffee table from where the potty is located. Jillian was sitting on the potty, but then she decided she was done and started running around. She kept running back to the potty and then back to us with her hand in her mouth, going “mmmm!”
Um.
Yeah.
Freddie said “I hope there’s nothing in there!”
Um.
Yeeeeeeeahhhh….
I went over to investigate and sure enough, there was pee in there! My pride in her accomplishment totally cancels out any feeling of being grossed out by her maybe tasting her own pee. Sure, that’s gross. But… I’m a mom! NOTHING grosses me out anymore!
Now all we have to do is get her to realize that when she feels that urge, she needs to tell me or go over to the potty or something.
Recent photos!
Goggles!
Devilment!
I can’t believe you’re making me wear this.
Time for trick or treat!
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Special Skills
Jillian is just over two years old. A lot of the baby books and magazines that cross my eyespace say that this is the age where they start to want to do a lot of things for themselves, such as get dressed, put on shoes, etc.
I’m pretty sure my child will get to Harvard before she dresses herself because her preferred outfit is naked. She loves loves LOVES to be naked, so she hasn’t yet tried to dress herself at all. Undressing, we’ve got that down cold. But dressing? No.
Nor do we have any shoe skills. She seems to be indifferent to the shoes. When they’re on, that’s fine. When they’re off, that’s fine too – she doesn’t care enough either way to try to take them off or put them on.
So… is she lagging behind her age-groupers with regards to development? Sometimes I worry about this.
However, despite these brief flashes of wondering if Jillian measures up to the other kids, I know that in many far more important ways, she’s already far ahead of most of them.
How do I know this?
Jillian can beatbox.
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AIEE!
Here we are in Day Two of The Sniffles. I have no idea where The Jillian caught a cold, but she has one. Sniffles, a slight fever, the sneezing… all good things. Today she is also losing her voice. It’s always hilarious when a toddler sounds like Kathleen Turner.
The thing is, Jillian doesn’t ACT sick. She looks terrible, all pale and whatnot, but she’s still chugging around the house (and the backyard and the park) like it’s no biggie. Meanwile, I haven’t slept in two days and I feel like I’m going to die. Awesome.
If she would just act sick, even a little bit droopy, we could snuggle on the couch and watch Noggin all day while eating Teddy Grahams and juiceboxes. But ohhhhh no. I always suspected she was trying to kill me – now I have proof.
Catnaps suck
Jillian went to the doctor yesterday for her 2-year-old checkup. She is ridiculously healthy, and also gigantic. 31.5 pounds and 35 inches tall! She got her HepA shot, which is fine, but of course getting shots of any kind strikes fear into the heart of a mother with an active imagination. I don’t believe there’s any risk of her having an adverse reaction to any of her vaccines, so I am getting them all on the recommended schedule, but the fear is always there in the back of my mind.
Plus? I AM INSANE. I’m a recovering hypochondriac! I know everything can kill you!
But of course, the info sheet says “adverse reactions can include tiredness, irritability, etc etc etc.”
Well, she’s got a bit of a cold, which meant that she didn’t sleep last night (nor did I): she’s tired. And she’s TWO YEARS OLD – being irritable is her JOB.
So… yeah. I slept in 90-minute increments last night. Every couple of hours, Jillian would get all stuffy and not be able to breathe (hard to breathe when your nose is stuffed with boogers and your thumb is planted firmly in your mouth, I would imagine), so I would go in her room, pick her up, wipe her nose, rock her back down to sleep (except for that one time when she kicked me really hard so I just tossed her back in the crib), and then head back to sleep-ish myself.
I am fully aware that I have it better than almost any mother I know – my kid slept through the night starting at 5 months and has never had any kind of major issues with ANYTHING. So that makes these sleepless nights tough on all of us, even though they are extremely rare.
Today, we’re both tired and one of us is excessively cranky. On top of that, it’s pouring down rain here so we can’t go outside. We just need to make it to naptime and then we’ll be okay. Maybe.
Because it’s Friday and stuff
I know Ms. Prufrock is not a fan of the bulleted-list-of-random-crap-style of blog post. I’m pretty sure she thinks in complete sentences, wheras my brain spews out random words and phrases on a fairly constant basis. So, HERE WE GO!
1. My doctor visit went well. I can breathe again, with the help of a $50 inhaler and a $50 bottle of amazing cough syrup. The bottle has so many warning stickers on it that you KNOW it’s good stuff. Can’t drive, use heavy machinery, or sign contracts while under the influence of this stuff. Also causes blurred vision, dry mouth, extreme sleepiness OR hyperactivity! Yay! I’m supposed to take 1 teaspoonful every 12 hours, but I find if I’m not ready to go to sleep right then, I am useless (well, more than usual) for the entire day. I take it before bed and sleep so soundly that I wake up and whichever arm I happen to be sleeping on is numb. Excellent.
2. The Jillian is talking up a storm lately. She tends to repeat the last three words of whatever I say, so we’re hearing a lot of “Holy shit!” these days. We keep trying to get her to say “President Obama” but have been unsuccessful so far. I think she’s just hedging her bets, but god help us all if she turns out to be one of those close-minded, bigoted right-wingers. I’ll disown her ass.
3. My brother is our long-term houseguest. He’s got a job working for The Man in Homeland Security and needed a place to stay until he finds an apartment or a room or a cardboard box or whatever is in his price range in the NYC area. He found out yesterday that The Man is sending him to Texas or Jupiter or similar for 6 weeks or so of training in How To Be The Man, so he’ll be with us for quite a while. Well, his stuff will, at least. I must say, it’s been nice to have the kid around, plus Jillian loooooooooves him.
4. Something in my fridge died. I just cleaned the fridge out, like a month ago and there’s already some new casualty. Good thing we use those reusable plastic containers instead of the expensive Tupperware crap! I just toss the whole thing in the fridge even if it has arms and calls me by name. In the trash you go, Fridge Alien Baby!
5. Apparently we’re supposed to get smacked around by Tropical Storm Hanna this weekend. To be followed by TS Ike Turner. We need the rain, but I don’t want it all at once. Sheesh. My tomatoes will be unhappy and my basement will flood. Someone needs to schedule these things with me ahead of time.
6. I am knitting The Less-Big, Less-Ugly Sweater and it’s already giving me fits. Apparently, I cannot do math. I’m supposed to increase until I get a certain number of stitches, then decrease until I have a certain number of stitches. I decided to be really smart-like and figure out how many rows it would take to get to the right number of stitches and either they’ve changed the math or I’m extremely stupid and have not counted correctly. Either scenario is equally probable. Math is not one of my strengths, though I used to be really good at it. Anyway, I think I will get it figured out. If not, Freddie will just have to wear it however it gets made.
Well, it depends on what your definition of ‘genius’ is
The child has had a language explosion over this last month. It’s like she turned two and decided all of a sudden to start talking instead of saying random words and phrases.
But the talking? NEVER ENDS.
Nor does the singing.
The funny thing is that we sing the same few songs over and over again with different words, and she has started making up song lyrics on her own. For example, at bedtime we sing a modified version of “Are You Sleeping?” to indicate that it is time to quit building bombs in the living room and go to sleep.
This morning, Jillian and I were in the kitchen making waffles (thank goodness I make them from scratch instead of buying them or we would be homeless) and she started singing “Time for Waffles” to the tune of “Are You Sleeping.”
I was gobsmacked, actually, that she was able to figure out what I was doing and then to sing a song about it. She’s so smart!
Except, maybe not. As I’m typing this, she has a plastic bag on her head that once held blocks and is running into the wall head first. It sounds like this: “stompstompstompstompstomp BLAM! Flhumph! HAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Repeat.
This has been going on for a good fifteen minutes now. I hope she can still get into Harvard with all the head trauma.
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