Laundry

Elena is learning to do her own laundry today. She has had her own laundry basket for a while now, but today after she said, "Mama needs to wash my laundry," my mother suggested she learn to wash it herself. She took to this with enthusiasm and managed to get her load washing in the machine very minimally assisted by me. The reason I was motivated to write a not about this wasn't so much that her accomplishment was so amazing; it's what I noticed in myself. Walking her through how to do laundry without jumping in to help requires more patience than I often have. It's painfully slow. It was very tempting to jump in and do some of it for her (though she wasn't asking me to help). I did better, though, when I thought of it as a school activity. And, of course, reminding myself that even though it takes more of my time now to help her learn this task, it will mean less time for me in the future when she masters it.

And being able to put it into her school log really helps my mind, which tends to like to check things off of lists (I can write it under the "developmental activities" section of her Sonlight book).

They're growing up so fast!

Cosleeping:

I knew that this day would happen, but I thought it was several years in the future: Elena now requests to sleep in her own bed. I know that different kids reach this point at different times, but I really didn't expect that Elena would get to this point for a good while. We haven't encouraged this at all because Erich actually prefers to sleep in the bunk beds when she's not there. I wonder whether part of it is getting disturbed by Dmitri in the middle of the night. Last night, for example, she chose to sleep in the big bed, but moved out to the couch in the middle of the night.

Bathing:

Elena washed (and conditioned!) her hair herself today. She said Papa taught her how. I observed just to make sure and found that her technique was effective. But I didn't really expect her to start being independent in this realm so soon. Especially not with long hair.

Solid food:

Dmitri is now taking in some solid foods. Little bits of bread, banana, and nectarine so far. He enjoys it. I'm reminded that the major downside to solids is the drastic change in poop smell. Sigh. At least much of his poop just goes straight in the toilet.

Toileting/EC:

Dmitri now often makes it through the night without wetting his diaper. He wakes to pee two or three times a night, but since I have a chamber pot next to the bed and spare diapers (the kind I can literally do with my eyes closed), I don't have to get out of bed or turn on a light to help him out. If he wakes because he needs to pee, he refuses to nurse, so I can't mollify him into peeing in his diaper (though he will eventually if I just ignore his fusses).

Swim Lessons:

Elena is now in her fourth month of the most basic swim lessons. In her third month, she got a new teacher who was significantly less nurturing. During that month, she actually regressed as far as her fear of water was concerned. She became VERY resistant to participating in lessons at all and screamed and cried in fear through them. She's now back with her old teacher and is doing much better. She tells me that she's no longer scared and she enjoys swimming again. Phew. Can't wait until she builds enough skill to actually SWIM.

That's all for now! Maybe later I'll make a note about Elena's progress in reading.

Go Club

Erich has been frustrated at the lack of a Go Club here in the Inland Empire, so he decided to start his own. For a while, he was the only person in attendance. More recently, Elena has been going with him. She begged him to let her go. He explained the required standards of behaviour, and from his report, she has been able to comply. Her first time at the club, she spent over two hours doing nothing but Go problems. Her skills are improving, but she has some difficulty with not always being the winner. I sometimes overhear her say, "I want to play you again, but this time you need to not go in the places that *I* want to go." This is actually a good sign--it shows that she recognizes moves that her opponent makes that are detrimental to her position. I think it's also useful for her to learn how to lose. Her games here at home are played with her gang of imaginary friends (the same ones that attend her "classes" with her). No huge surprise, somehow she manages to win all the games. So it takes some adjustment when she interacts with real children who can beat her at footraces or other games. She sometimes comes to us crying and says, "But at home, I am the fastest kid!" I can't really argue with her logic there.

I would be interested to hear a description of Erich's experiences with her at Go Club; I only over hear her playing Go at home. She seems to enjoy it, though as I think I've mentioned before, she'll happily do just about anything if it means she'll get direct interaction with an adult. Still, I think it's probably good for the development of her analytical, spatial, and sportsmanship skills.

Mary on Horseback

We've been reading "Mary on Horseback" as part of Elena's Sonlight curriculum. It's a book about Mary Breckenridge and her team of mounted nurses that go through the backwoods of Kentucky doing medical work. Overall, very good stories (and, of course, it helps that they're true). We mark key points in Elena's Book of Time, and we note locations on her Markable Map. But that's not what prompted me to write. It's the food! It's not just the chicken gizzard sandwich. Here's the meal that really stopped me in my tracks: "Their mother mixes old coffee with hot bacon grease and pours it over biscuits and fatback." Wow.

Developmental Milestones

My mother reminds me that I should note some of these things: Dmitri started rolling over back to front at about 3mos; he now does it frequently and comfortably. He CAN roll front to back, but he's not as comfortable with it. He also started laughing (not just squealing) about a week ago (he's almost four months old now).

I have been pleased to discover some of the cause of Elena's difficult behaviour lately. I almost made a post with something like "Who stole my sweet child and replaced her with this hellion??" but refrained because I hate to call names. But she had been being VERY difficult. Turns out she was probably hungry. We'd been waiting to hear from her that she wanted to eat, but, unfortunately, this is often too late for her. She doesn't want to stop and eat (or go to the bathroom) if she's doing things she enjoys. Her behaviour has been MUCH improved since we've been more proactively trying to feed her more frequently. We've been trying to feed her BEFORE her behaviour deteriorates (like we try to get her to sleep before she's gone wild in her tiredness) and it's been very helpful. It is still difficult to get her to sit down and eat. And it sometimes tries my patience because she eats so much more slowly than all the adults in the house. But it's worth it.

"Diaper Free Baby"

As most of you already know (as I suspect that our only readers are family and a few friends), we are using "Elimination Communication" (AKA "Infant potty training," AKA "Diaper-free baby") with our now 9-week-old son, Dmitri. We don't do this in a super-intense way (which, I guess, might be leaving Dmitri bare-bummed much of the time), but we've still been rather pleased with the results. We started by just trying to potty him (in a Baby Bjorn Little Potty or a potty bowl) whenever we changed his diaper. We use a "psss" signal to cue him to pee (though I wonder whether it's the position we hold him in that serves as more of a cue). We also work to understand his signals. This is the part that I think baffles most people--how can we tell when he needs to pee? Since the people asking this are often people who breastfeed on demand or are at least familiar with that concept, we find that to be a good way to understand what we do. You know when your kid needs to nurse, right? Well before they're crying? There are all these subtle signs that you pick up on (fist in mouth, trying to suckle on any bare skin, etc). Well, it's the same sort of thing with pottying.

I've been mentally putting together insights about this experience (one in particular prompting this post) and wanted to compile them. One of the most helpful tips that I read was that when the baby fusses, assume first that he needs to pee rather than assuming he needs to nurse. In reality, a baby pees far more frequently than he nurses, so it's a better bet that that's the problem. So we always try to pee the baby before I nurse him. It was also helpful to realize that Dmitri fusses BEFORE he actually pees, not because he has a wet diaper (as we had previously assumed was the case with babies fussing because they "need to be changed"). When he's asleep and starts stirring or squirming, it's actually often because he has to pee. In the past, I would have nursed him back to sleep without thinking about him needing to pee (fitting with our general idea of "Nursing is the solution even when hunger is not the problem"). But my new philosophy is to check to see if he needs to pee. I have been very pleasantly surprised with the results of this experiment. I have many times now found that if I pop him on the pot when he fusses or squirms while sleeping, he'll pee and go straight back to sleep (no nursing necessary).

The other very reliable sign that he needs to eliminate is when he stops nursing. Often, he'll be nursing (when hungry, not just to calm down or for whatever other reason) and he'll just stop, popping off the breast. This almost always means he needs to go (often to poop, actually). I assume that this is at least partially due to the gastro-colic reflex. Poops are, I think, easier to catch because the signs are so much more obvious (grunting, farting) and because we make the practice of always trying to have him "finish" a poop on the toilet even if he's started in his diaper. We actually don't have to deal with poopy diapers very often anymore.

By far the most helpful thing we've done, though, is leaving Dmitri without a diaper cover. I have noted for a while now that leaving him without a cover greatly increases the percentage of pees that I catch (from catching a minority of pees--maybe 30%--to a majority--sometimes as many as 75-80%). We still catch pees when he wears a cover, but the diaper is almost always wet when we go to catch a pee. (Any catch is fun, but the most fun is when you catch a pee and get to put back on the same dry diaper.) I've been trying to figure out why this seems to make such a difference. My first suspicion was that I'm simply more vigilant when Dmitri isn't wearing a cover because I don't want to get peed on. Also, I think it's helpful to know right away when he's peed because it's useful in terms of timing (if he's just peed, I know he probably won't go again for at least 20 minutes if not an hour). I know it's also helpful to have the get-the-diaper-off, get-him-on-the-pot process be quicker, and forgoing the cover helps with that (as does having a pot right where I'm sitting, rather than having to walk him to the bathroom). But I think that there's something on his end, too, that makes having no cover helpful. Observing his sleeping has led me to this conclusion. I have now tried several times to leave him without a cover for naps (and, more recently, at night as well). I figured that the coverless diaper (MotherEase one-size's, by far our favourites for a variety of reasons) would keep a fountain from occurring. I also laid him down on a square of thick wool blanket that is inside a pillowcase. This serves as a moisture barrier between him and the bed, just in case (because I hate changing sheets). I was surprised when, several times, after sleeping for 2-3 hours, I would find him dry. When he fussed as he was waking, I'd pee him and just put his dry diaper back on. Sometimes he would go right back to sleep. Sometimes the nap was over (but 2-3 hours is long enough for a nap, I think). Last night, I tried this at night and found it to work similarly. He slept from 10pm to 3am, completely dry. I actually woke him up to pee and nurse at three even though he wasn't stirring. I have almost never found him to have a dry diaper after that many hours of sleep when he wears a cover, only when he's coverless. Which makes me think that he somehow experiences it differently.

Another small insight (this is maybe too obvious, but I'll say it anyway): he doesn't pee when crying. If we're trying to pee him when he's all upset, it's crucial to calm him down first. Peeing requires relaxation.

Also, to address a common misconception: we are not doing this to get him to be potty trained super early. We just don't want him to get used to eliminating in his clothing in the first place, and we want to reduce the amount of time that he spends sitting in a wet diaper (given how often infants pee, I've realized that they sit in wet diapers the majority of the time. This must be why so many people want diapers that "feel dry" to the kid).

Feel free to ask questions in the comments.

"Mama, is there school today?"

This is what I've been hearing multiple times a day since I've been home on maternity leave with our new son, Dmitri. What's interesting is what she means by it. Lately, we have been spending much of our days in imaginary play revolving around being in a school. This was all Elena's doing. She insisted that I ask the students to raise their hands in order to talk, for example. She calls me "teacher" and loves it when I call her "student" and when I pretend to not be sure what her name is. The other students in the class are named Sammy, Frederick, Apple, Pear, and Banana. It's fascinating to see how much more happily and successfully she participates in daily chores as well as obviously schoolish activities (like me writing words on a dry erase board and having the "students" figure out what they say) when she's in pretend-mode. So doing the watering outside and feeding the animals becomes part of a "class field trip." One of the students (Sammy) often needs some help with things (I think he's a bit younger than Elena), and she loves showing him how to do things and helping him out. For example, she showed Sammy how to use the Graduated Cylinders, explaining the process out loud the whole time. Also, if I notice that Elena needs to pee, sometimes I'll make a whole-class potty break (in which all the students go to the bathroom; Elena's usually in the middle of the line to go) or I'll say that Sammy has to go the the bathroom and could she please help him out since he gets a little scared to go alone. She happily complies. (Going to the bathroom has sometimes been a power struggle with her.)

I'm amazed at how easy it is to get Elena to do something by saying, "Okay, class: raise your hand if you want to be the person who picks up the toys and puts them in this box" instead of just asking her to pick up the toys. This whole things reminds me of this article http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/magazine/27tools-t.html that cited research showing that kids could stand still for some four times longer if they were pretending to be a guard than if they were just asked to stand still. The same article emphasized imaginary play as possibly being the most important thing that kids do in kindergarten, particularly in the development of executive functioning (you should check out the article; it's really interesting).

We are, generally, very opportunistic schoolers. For example, Elena's recent watching of Wallace and Gromit's "A Grand Day Out" led to quite an extended investigation into the moon and the planets. Now, for a couple of days, Erich and Elena have been discussing and reading about the planets. Elena has many interesting questions and we work to answer them. I have been enjoying the Sonlight curriculum because Elena frequently wants to be read to and the Sonlight stuff provides a lot of interesting quality books that spark good discussions. She especially loves Usborne's Living Long Ago. After we cover each module (Vikings, Middle Ages, Reformation-era Europe, etc), we find something to put onto the timeline (a great "Book of Time" that came with the Sonlight package) and something to write on the Markable Map (another sonlight thing). These are activities that Elena really enjoys, though she's not always in the mood for them. And when she's not in the mood, I don't worry about it. She will come back to it later. Part of me really wants to be quizzing her to make sure that she's actually retaining some of the material, but I am comforted by hearing her ask good questions about it and hearing her incorporate things from past "lessons" into current discussions (little things like when reading about the Vikings taking slaves she jumped in with, "Just like Saint Patrick was a slave!" I hadn't been sure that anything from the story of Patrick had sunk in).

One of our challenges lately has been coming to realize that Elena has a greater need for social interaction than either Erich or I had when we were children. Both Erich and I were more loners in school and loved learning stuff on our own. Elena seldom wants to do things (for example, work with her Montessori materials) on her own, but she is willing to do just about anything if it means she gets to do it WITH someone. We're trying to take this as actually being part of her "learning style" and going with it rather than trying to fight it so much. Though creating a "classroom" full of other "students" has helped, giving her some imaginary social interaction. This way, I don't have to sit there with her doing the activity, but I can be working on something else and just pipe in with things that "Sammy" might say.

My last highlight from this pretend world is from yesterday: Elena managed to have a rousing game of tag with the other "students" on the lawn. Highly enjoyable for Elena. Hilarious to watch.

Look Inside >> January/February 2010