Earlier this year, the kids agreed to cook at least one dinner per week for the family. They have chosen a number of bold recipes, including their first lasagna this week! It was delicious.
Kid Dinner Night
Tag Archives: routines
Mundane details of life.
Amazing Race
I think I may have the perfect example ever of how parenting is so freaking hard with 3 different ages:
I just got all three of my kids to get ready for an outdoor adventure by pretending I was Phil from the Amazing Race, and the winner of getting totally ready (outdoor clothes, snack, water bottle, sunglasses) would get a $5 snack of their choice purchased at a snack bar. AND GO!
This resulted in oldest child minding his own business and doing the assignment, middle and youngest trying to hurt each other and keep the other from finishing, which resulted in tears and fury. Two out of three children in tears, oldest proclaiming: “THAT WAS SO FUN! WE NEED TO DO THIS MORE OFTEN!” and youngest two arguing about who should have won and gotten “penalties” for being mean and/or already partially ready. OMG.
BUT: all three children are ready, and EVERYONE WINS! THIS IS A NON-ELIMINATION ROUND AND EVERYONE GETS A $5 SNACK!
I cannot stop laughing at myself.
Beetling Crags
A highly unusual event occurred last night while reading Treasure Island aloud with Griffin and Maggie. We came across this passage:
Among the fallen rocks the breakers spouted and bellowed; loud reverberations, heavy sprays flying and falling, succeeded one another from second to second; and I saw myself, if I ventured nearer, dashed to death upon the rough shore or spending my strength in vain to scale the beetling crags.
Like many other passages, there were some words here that the kids didn’t know, but I was also perplexed by the adjective, beetling. We guessed from the context that it might mean steep or slippery or only climbable by beetles. I pulled out my phone and looked it up on my trusty Merriam-Webster app:
The example sentence is the very sentence we had read! We were all quite astonished by the coincidence.
Oliver 3.5
Oliver is nearly half way through his fourth year. As such, he is changing even more rapidly than his siblings. This post is a summary of things we have observed recently.
- He talks. A lot. A tsunami of words at all times, often preceded with, “Hey Mama!” or “Hey Daddy!”
- He likes to tell stories that meander from place to place with very little rhyme or reason.
- He says “last night” to mean anytime in the past. For example, when referring to a trip we took in December, he might say, “Last night when we were at Grummy and Grandpa’s house.”
- He prefaces many sentences with “I think so.” For example:
- “I think so, Mama’s at the store.”
- “I think so, tomorrow is a school day.”
- “I think so, we need to buy some more bananas ‘cuz I like bananas.”
- “I think so, we need to buy a new house because we have a hole in the wall.”
- He regularly comes up with linguistic gems that we imagine we’ll remember, but then can’t quite reconstruct. I recall one from this morning when I think he was trying to describe something evaporating: “Maybe it just winded away…”
- He loves it when we set timers. Before bed, he will often ask for a timer so that he can have “five more minutes!” to play. Usually, when the timer goes off he is happy to go upstairs.
- He has ups and downs with emotional regulation. Sometimes he is easygoing and chill with changes of plan. At other times, he is stubborn and gets wildly upset over minor things: “But I wanted to put my toothbrush away MYSELF!!!!”
- He loves to help in the kitchen and is getting better at it. He can often pour things into mixing bowls, stir things, count things out, or chop vegetables with his special chopper.
- He is entirely potty trained except when he isn’t. We have trouble understanding what the key factors are. Sometimes he has no trouble for many days in a row. At other times, he’s on his third pair of pants before lunch. He can’t quite clamber up on the big potty yet, but loves to use his little one.
- He still naps for 1-2 hours in the afternoon. Naptime and bedtime routines are straightforward: read a few books (or chapters from longer books) and then say goodnight. He often asks me to stay for “a little bit.”
Some additions from Griffin and Maggie:
- He’s really annoying.
- Maggie: He hits, kicks, and pinches a lot for no reason. (Griffin adds, “Actually, for a reason, because you do it.”)
- Maggie: “This morning, Oliver was kicking me on the bed while I was doing HouseParty. I didn’t do anything!”
- He interrupts a lot, saying, “But I’m talking!”
- He’s a DUPLO master and is pretty good with regular legos too.
- The Mandalorian was too scary for him. She-Ra is just right.
- He often doesn’t finish his food and says that he wants us to “save it for tomorrow” but then never eats it.
- He always wants to play with you in the least convenient times.
- He always touches the screen when me and Griffin are playing on our iPads.
Washing Assembly Line
Still Life with Children
It feels especially hard these days to find the beauty in everyday moments, but I’m trying harder to look at my world each day and find something to make me smile. These kids, man: they’re pretty great.
Bye Bye Bottle!
Weaning off the bottle is a tough step for us. We embrace lots of other tough parenting moments with gusto, but both Sarah and I love the bottle of milk before bed. Partly, bedtimes are so hard already. Our system is smooth and it’s still hard. I’m tired. Sarah’s tired. There are dishes to do. The kids are exhausted and needy. Being able to snuggle up with Oliver and a bottle is a lovely way to close out the day.Â
But, we’ve been putting it off for six months (maybe more?) and we know it will just get worse once school begins. So, on Monday we told Oliver that the bottles were going bye bye. He said farewell to them. We introduced a sippy cup of milk that we can have downstairs before brushing teeth. Then we took him upstairs, read a few books, and put him to bed.Â
It’s been shockingly painless. He’s had one or two hard ones, but mostly the week has been straightforward. Knock on wood.Â
One weird thing: he’s not interested in the cup of milk. He sorta sipped at it for the first day or two, but by the end of the week he was heartily rejecting it. He just wants some water and maybe a snack. Then he’s ready. Not sure what that’s all about since he was accustomed to guzzling a solid 8-oz bottle at naptime and bedtime.
Mini-humans are weird.
Art Challenges
In the evenings at our house, in those interminable minutes while we try to finish preparing dinner, the two older kids are often “bored” and don’t know what to do with themselves. Recently, Griffin shuffled into the kitchen and asked me forlornly, “Daddy, what can I do right now?” He wasn’t asking, “How can I help?” No, this was a bitter expression of hopelessness in the face of far too few minutes of screen time.
I usually reply with something snarky like, “Go stare at a wall!” (Never very effective, but surprisingly satisfying.) Last week, however, I came up with something new. Perhaps a parenting lesson from ECFEÂ finally sank in. Or maybe it arose from the fact that I was facilitating an immersive “design thinking” week at school. Instead of snark or exasperation, I said, “YES! Quick, get a piece of paper and a pen. Draw a shape that represents you in a color that represents your mood!” (I was riffing off of an icebreaker from a recent workshop.) Startled by my specificity, Griffin immediately went to his desk and did it, coming back with a multicolored blob that included a variety of emotions (including “hungry” and “bored,” but also some positive ones). Then he asked for another “art challenge.” And I heard the distant sound of angels singing.
Art challenges have become a fun new activity to keep the gremlins of our witching hour at bay. Maggie, of course, joined in too. Below are a couple of examples of their responses to my challenges from the last few days.
I’m not deluded enough to imagine that this will work forever, but I’m enjoying it while it lasts. And I do love watching their artwork evolve.
Bedtime Routine
Sarah wrote this up for our first non-family babysitter for Oliver. It sums up where our bedtime routine stands now. We’re loving it–short, simply, and successful.
Oliver
Oliver’s bedtime is anywhere between 6-7:30pm, depending on how tired he seems. Signs that he’s ready for bed include crankiness, rubbing his eyes, heavy eyelids, general discontent, arching his back, etc. Once it’s clear he’s ready for bed, here’s what we do:
- Make a bottle to take upstairs. We usually make a 6 oz bottle, which is 6 oz of water mixed with 3 scoops of formula.
- Change diaper
- Get into PJs (we’ve left some out for you)
- Read him a book (I Like It When is my standby) and give him the bottle, if he’ll take it. We usually lay together on our big bed. If he’s really eating a lot, you can read him more stories. I’m sure Griffin and Maggie can find some to read. Sometimes we skip this part if it’s clear he’s ready and doesn’t need any milk.
- Once he’s done eating and you’re done reading a story, we say goodnight to Maggie and Griffin, and enter their room. We say goodnight to objects in the room (“Night night, clock! Night night closet! Night night, alphabet! Night night, Maggie’s bed! Night night, Griffin’s bed!”)
- Lay him down and give him his lovie.
- Say, “Night night, sleep tight! I’m right outside! I love you!”
- Leave the room, closing the door.
- If he cries, please set a timer for 5 minutes. Crying is continuous crying, not whimpers, moments of silence, whimper for a bit, silence for a bit. If he cries hard for 5 minutes, enter the room again, give him his lovie if it’s out of reach, and repeat, “Night night, sleep tight! I’m right outside! I love you!” Please don’t pick him up. He’s used to this routine now, and we’ve only had one or two times of really hard crying. He’s learning to soothe himself to sleep, and he’s gotten very good at it!
Maggie & Griffin
Bedtime for these guys is 7:30pm, unless Oliver is still falling asleep. We try to put Oliver down before they’re ready for bed, but sometimes it doesn’t work that way. We start them getting ready for bed around 7 or 7:15pm. Their jobs are:
- Get into PJs
- Put dirty clothes down the chute
- Brush teeth for 2 minutes
- Go to bed
Their routine sometimes includes time for read aloud, but if you are busy putting Oliver to bed, I would encourage them to get into their PJs, brush their teeth, and take a little quiet reading time on our bed, if it’s available, or the back bedroom. They are sometimes really amped before bed and goof off in their beds, which sometimes wakes Oliver. Please remind them that it’s silent time once they’re in their room!
That was so last week…
Oliver must have read last week’s post about how we would just put him in his crib and he would magically sleep through the night.
Boring!
This week he’s trying out a new thing: having a harder time falling asleep and waking up crying every 30-minutes or so starting at 3-ish. Fun times.