It's me

On Sunday my parents and Ivan were at the front door knocking and waiting for me to come down the stairs to let them in.

Mariposa, of course, was barking at the door.

On the other side of the door, Ivan was yelling "Popo, it's me. It's me, Popo."

I though this was endearing.

Allen

Allen was born last tuesday at 11:46pm. His weight was 7 lbs 12 oz and height 21 inches.

As soon as he was born and Andy cut the cord, the nurse wiped the baby a bit and handed him to me. So I got to hold him as soon as he was born ( I didn't get to do that with Ivan as the NICU teamhad to examine him first because he was blue with the cord wrapped around his neck.)

Unlike Ivan, who immeadiately looked plump and mature, Allen looks like a little newborn. He's also very wrinkly and flaky like most newborns . Apparently, overdue babies are more flaky than those born on time or before. He is a very loud baby. He makes all these little noises and grunts both asleep and awake that are really endearing.

Those first few days I felt confused how to think about ivan and Allen. I immediately started comparing Allen to Ivan, which I realized wasn't right or fair . I kept looking at Allen, this new little stranger, wondering how I'll love him as much as Ivan. Then when I'd think about Allen , I felt guilty like I was betraying ivan because I wasn't thinking about him. And vice versa. But now a few days later all these thoughs seem silly. I have bonded with Allen and it's the most natural feeling to love them both.

Labor lasted some 6 plus hours, which was a fraction of time spent in labor with Ivan. Pushing lasted some 16 minutes and then Allen was born. I was completely coherent and present for the entire event. Both Andy and I were shocked how quickly everything unrolled.

At 10:45 I was some 6 cm dilated so, believing that we still had hours to birth, i tried to talk Andy into coming home to check on mariposa who had been home alone for some 12 hours. The nurse wisely suggested to wait until the doctor checks me again. At 11:10-15 the doctor said I was fully dilated and that it was time to push. I was surprised. With Ivan I felt a strong urge , a need, to push unlike this time. I guess the epidural was working better.

Ambivalent to the end, I acquiesced to be induced. I basically gave in. It was a voluntary induction and the nurses, resident doctor and attending doctor gave me time to decide how to proceed because as soon as we arrived to the hospital I was rather vocal about my ambivalence. But the proceeded with the admittance process, hooked me up to monitors to check mine and baby's vitals, did a sonogram to check the status of placenta and amniotic fluid etc. Then they said that the amount of fluid is borderline at 7.6 of some units, while 8-15 is healthy and below 5 is bad. So then they recommended to have the induction. The baby's heart rate also apparently dropped or fluttered at some point which got them concerned.
Andy was for the induction--saying it's controlled and there are fewer wild cards to deal with, considering the weather, season, etc and the fact that I'm a week overdue-- and eventually got upset with me saying that we shouldve not come to the hospital in the first place if I didn't want to proceed. He also thought I shouldve stood up for myself more if I felt so strongly. In retrospect had dr. Bowles assistant not called on Friday to confirm the induction, I probably wouldve backed out. But her phone call kind of startled me and considering that weekend's approaching snowstorm it was easy to say yes. It turns out, according to dr Bowles that she told the assistant that I may call to confirm or cancel not to have her call me. Who knows what the truth is. However, Ive more or less made my peace with the induction only because the entire process ended reasonably well . Had it ended in a c-section I'd feel very differently now. Also I am pretty sure i had started getting a few natural contractions before they hooked me up to pitocin so I'd like to think that labor was about to start anyway.
It's true that pitocin induced contractions are stronger and come on closer together than the natural ones. Also they strarted turning up the pitocin to mimic natural labor, which I wasn't thrilled with. At one point, the nurse said I wasn't responding to pitocin as well as other women so they had to turn it up.
I finally gave in to an epidural around 10pm because the pain was getting unbearable. Contractions were so strong, long and close together that I couldn't take it any more, especially since I feared that I had hours of labor ahead of me and since the nurse kept jacking up the pitocin saying that contractions aren't as strong eNough as they ought to be for me to continue dilating. Now in retrospect I wonder whether I couldve endured without the epidural had I known it was going to be over in another hour and a half.

A few days ago, I exchanged emails with angela. She was also late and delivered a day before I did, naturally with a midwife. I can't wait to talk to her to get more details. A part of me is a tad envious because she stood up for herself, switched to a midwife and got the birth she wanted. It makes me wonder should I have stuck it out longer and waited for labor to come naturally.

Eight Days Overdue

It's Tuesday, December 22. The baby was due last Tuesday. But no sign of labor yet. After those two initial bouts of contractions, nothing, despite walking, squatting and sex. He's been doing some serious baby calisthenics and acrobatics in the womb, my lower back has been hurting a lot and I can feel things moving and spreading in my pelvic floor for the last few weeks, but no contractions.

Today, I'm scheduled to go to the hospital for an induction. I had mixed feelings about it when we scheduled it last Tuesday at the last doctor's visit, and still have mixed feelings about it. I've been skirting them under the rug this entire week because I truly believed that the baby would initiate labor on his own so I didn't trully have to address them head on. The prospect of the actual induction wasn't really real, until now. It's about two hours before we need to head to the hospital and no signs of labor yet.

I'm ambivalent about the induction for several reasons:

-I don't like the idea of this birth being a scheduled, predetermined event. It feels like a forced extraction, almost akin to scheduling a tooth extraction, not a natural process.

-I don't like the idea of me arbitrarily deciding on the baby's date of birth. (Although at least I picked 22, which is one of my favorite numbers, ever since Maca and I started playing the lucky 22 and unlucky 33 game in our childhood.)

-By controling the course of events now, I feel like I've actually lost control.

-If it's ultimately the baby who sets the birthing process in motion when he's ready, is this baby ready? What if he's not?

-Is it really needed? Or should I wait a few more days for the baby to arrive on his own? The entire "yoga" midwife-y crowd from my yoga class would be aghast that I'm having an induction after only being one week over due. A big part of me agrees with them. But another part of me is beginning to freak out why this baby isn't coming yet. Is everything OK with him? They would say that it's not unusual for a baby to be a week or two weeks late.

-If the baby isn't ready, will this induction end up in a C-section? It's not that I'm afraid of a C-section in a case of emergency, but I would really like not to have to end up needing one. And according to information I've read and heard, the incidence of needing a C-section as a result of an induction is higher because the baby and the body aren't ready for the process yet. (I'm not sure what the stats are with overdue babies.) But if I don't have this induction, and the baby continues to grow inside my womb, what if he gets too big for me to push him out and I end up needing a C-section anyway? It's apparently a possibility. Two weeks ago, the doctor said the baby is probably in the high 7 lbs range, whereas last week she said he's probably in the mid-7 lbs range. In other words, she wasn't 100 percent sure. So it's possible that the baby is larger or smaller. Since Ivan was 8.5 lbs when he was born, and this pregnancy has been pretty much similar to Ivan's and I've gained the same amount of weight, I assume that the baby's weight will be close to Ivan's. I've also been more relaxed in terms of food this time and have been eating a much more fatty and sugary dessert-laden diet, so I fear the baby is bigger than Ivan was.

-If this were my first baby, maybe I would feel more open to the need for induction. But since Ivan's birth, no matter how long and painful, proceeded relatively naturally and was set in motion on his due date, I really haven't been mentally prepared for this.

I'm beginning to understand all those women, including Angela, who feel that they were cheated out of birthing. This is not how I wanted this process to go, nor did I think this would happen in a million years.

It also shows me that no matter how and how much one prepares for the pregnancy and birth, being pregnant and giving birth is still a wild card.

I was glad, however, that I didn't go into labor over the weekend during the snow storm. That would've been awful.

Two days over the due date

It's been two days over my due date and this baby is showing no signs of being ready to come out. I haven't had any contractions since Tuesday morning. However, he does seem to be moving less these last two days so maybe he's getting ready for his birth journey.

We went for some nonstress test sonogram today where the technician thoroughly checked out the baby. All looked good

I'm slowly getting over my anticipation stage. It's like I'm surrendering to a thought that labor will never start. Odd thought. We've scheduled an induction for tuesday although I'm not fully sure that I want to be induced. I really want it to happen naturally. I'll see where things will stand on Monday.

Since this birth seems to be imminent any day now, Ivan has been staying with my parents since Tuesday . We're trying to keep up his routine so he's been going to daycare this week. It's really hard not to see him for two days. And it's very empty and quiet in the house.

My dad and he stopped by the house for about one hour this evening so we could see him and also because they had to go and pick up my mom from some holiday party.

Every time I see Ivan after not being with him for a few days, it feels like he's a little stranger who at first reluctant to come to me. Like this evening, he wanted to eat so we first went to wash hands, except he didn't want to. He went to the bathroom but didn't want to wash hands. I had to take his hands and force him to wash them. That was so unlike him.
Eventually, he warms up to me and things are like before. But every time he comes back from spending a few days at my parents house he's like that. I feel estranged from him at first. Andy said the same thing-- that he feels like a little stranger at first .

One on hand, I'm glad that he's so comfortable being with my parents and that, if we need to, he can stay with them without being fussy. But on the other hand, it's so hard to feel like at first he rejects me when he sees me again. Especially now, when for the last few months he's been on a huge "mama, my mama" fest where everything seems to revolve around me.

Everyone has also warned me that he'll probably act cold and estranged from me when the baby arrives because he'll be mad at me. I hope that's not the case.

Pregnancy: where's the baby

My due date is today. It's almost the end of the day and this baby is showing no signs of wanting to be born yet.

I had some contractions last Friday afternoon while Ivan, my dad and I were at Ikea so that Ivan can run around. They lasted for about one hour and then dissipated. (this was good because I was afraid that we'd end up driving to Georgetown in rush hour traffic, which would've been dreadful).

Then contractions returned for about one hour this morning at 4 am, which was about the time contractions with Ivan started. I got excited, but then they went away as well. And nothing since. Otherwise, for the last week I've been feeling like things are slowly shifting. It's like the tectonic plates are coming apart. I'm also almost 3 cm dilated and 75 percent effaced, as per today's ob appointment. So I much further along than I was with Ivan when contractions started.

The ob thinks the baby could come tonight. But she also thought that I would've delivered by now. So did I. I was convinced the baby would be here by now. I've been ready since last Monday , after I finished the last big thing at work. I worked until thursday ( the last two days from home) and even signed off early on Thursday because I started gettting a bad headache in early afternoon, which I though was the first sign of imminent labor since that was how it started with Ivan. But no.

So I've been waiting, which is really hard for me to do since patience is not my virtue. Good thing I've learned how to knit. It's a perfect activity to keep an idle and impatient person busy. I feel like a character from a quirky movie, where I keep knitting and knitting and end up knitting a scarf so long it goes on for miles.

And this baby is rather active. His feet are at the very top of my uterus and keep kicking my diaphragm while the head is low in the pelvic cavity, pressing on the bladder and the pelvic floor. He's been inthis position for weeks now. And the nonstop baby calisthenics are getting to be really uncomfortable, at times painful, and more vigorous.

Who knows maybe he's buying his time coming out because we really hadn't settled on a name until yesterday. We're still not 100% sure but we're closer than we were. That's at least a theory I could see the yoga teacher saying
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IPhone blogging

Just downloaded an iPhone app to be able to write posts from the phone. Now i'm testing whether it's working.

Heigh hos

When my mom takes Ivan for a walk around their neighborhood, they encounter numerous tacky front yard decorations, including some standard garden gnomes.

This prompted my mother to start singing the "Heigh, Ho" song from Snowwhite and the Seven Dwarfs and to She couldn't remember the lyrics or anything beyond the Heigh, Ho refrain.

But Ivan started singing Heigh Hos, so I decided to try to find that song on that treasure trove called Youtube from my iphone.

And there it was. Not just the Heigh Ho song which the dwarves sing while they're working in a mine, but also the song where they sing/dance with Snowwhite, and the one where they wash their faces.

Now, Ivan loves to watch these three videos on my phone.

"Heigh Hos, mama, find Heigh Hos," he asks me. He's particularly fond of the "Dancing Heigh Hos."

"Dancing Heigh Ho, find dancing Heigh Hos, mamma," he asks repeatedly.

I'm not sure whether he likes that video because the dwarves are dancing or because they play different instruments. It's probably a bit of both. I just recall him being fascinated with the instruments on that Josh Groban concert we watched on PBS a few months back. We need to take him to a live music performance, preferably a free one, a performance that's part of some outdoor festival, or maybe some high school production. I think he would enjoy it.


We've been listening to Heigh Hos for a while now. I've been using these videos to divert attention from from doing something he's not supposed to, and, more importantly, to get him to calm down and rest, and, cross my fingers, fall asleep when it's nap time. Since this summer it's been virtually impossible for me to get Ivan to go down for a nap. But when we sit on the leather couch and watch Heigh Hos, he occasionally does relax and fall asleep for a two+ hour nap.

The only problem with Heigh Hos is that occasionally the Youtube app doesn't work, which can be a major problem and disappointment for Ivan.

Buggies

I think that definitely my favorite recent mommy moment happened on Friday evening.

Ivan's nose has been slighly snotty over the last few days with an ocassional rivulet of clear snot protruding from his right nostril. Not the most appealing sight, but still definitely far from the excessively and continuously snotty noses many other toddlers are accessorized with year round. This used to gross me out before I had kids, and still continues to gross me out today. (Snotty noses are right up there with sticky hands and food smeared mounths.)

Eventually, the snot in question coagulated into a buggy which I could see in his nose. I tried all day Friday to get him to blow his nose, which he adamantly refused to do.

He was trying to pick the nose himself to get the buggy out. (This is something new he's been doing for the last few weeks. And when he succeeds, he triumphantly hands me the buggy. "Buggy, mama.")

But the Friday buggy was unpickable. So I attempted to pick the buggy out of his nose. It became my obession for the day. "No touc ma buggy," was the response I got every time.

This futile buggy picking went on the entire day.

That evening we went out to eat to a local Thai restaurant. The small, narrow, mom and pop restaurant was packed. The crowd was probably heavier than usual because the place had just been named the best Thai food in town.

Also, it was a bit later in the evening than would have been optimal for taking Ivan out to eat, but we hedged our bets. He was more or less cooperative, not on his best behavior but definitely far from a full tempter tantrum.

And then Ivan decided to get the buggy out. With no success.

"Ma buggy, mama, my buggy mama."

He wanted my help.

By now, the thing was humungous and crusty and well implanted in his nostril. But I was thrilled to finally be able to get this buggy picking mission accomplished.

So, in the middle of this small packed restaurant with people enjoying their Friday evening dinner, here's a mom picking her toddler's nose.

I tried being discreet, shielding his face and nose with my body and one hand, while doing the picking with the other.

It wasn't a smooth operation. The buggy was huge and well encrusted.

It took me a few tries to get a good grip on it to yank it out of Ivan's nose. It must have hurt as he got vocal about it, which probably attracted additional unwanted eyes to us.

But finally the mission was accomplished. The buggy was out and Ivan's nose was clear. And it a few Friday night dinners got spoiled in the meantime, oh well.

Recent Conversations with Ivan

Over the weekend I jotted down some of the current growing repertoire within Ivan's vocabulary.

He's increasingly stringing words together into sentences, both in English and Croatian, is trying to hold conversations with us, and likes to asks questions, or more precisely, ask the same question over and over and over again. He also promptly repeats, and misprononouces, everything we say:


Counting:
"4, 5, go" (which seems to have replaced the "ready, 4, 10")
"4, 5, 6, 'leven"

Conversation and question sample:
"Pour me jos sok."
"You need jos sok, mama?"
(Pour me more juice. YOu need more juice, mama?)
Sometimes he says "more juice" instead of "jos sok"; he uses Croatian and English interchangeably.

"Dat one not yours. Dat mines."
(This one is not yours. This one is mine.)

"Dat dadas."
(That's dadda's.)

"Ladies ciste ma kucu."
(Ladies are cleaning my house.)

"You have aqilo bite?"
(Do you have a mosquito bite?)

"You have a socks."
(You have socks.)


"Mama, open dat light."
"Mama, offed dat light."
(Turn the light on. Turn the light off)

"You cooking, mama?"
"Yes, I'm cooking."
"You cooking, mama?" he repeats the question, over and over again, as he's watching me cook.

Or the newest acquisition from yesterday when he woke up cranky.

"NO! Don't look me."

This pregnancy

is definitely harder on my body than Ivan's was. And it's so true that all the aches, pains, ailments and a multitude of previously not experienced issues is hitting me sooner.

First, the entire sneeze/pee combo, otherwise known as stress incontinence, is really getting old. It hit me much sooner than last time. Hopefully, it will go away after birth.

Then, two Fridays ago, I failed the 1-hour glucose test, which meant I then had to take the 3-hour test. This included fasting the night before, and getting poked with a needle four times in three hours. For the last week, I've looked like a beaten up junkie with black and blue bruises up and down my arms. However, no one has called me to tell me I failed that test, so I assume that my sugar levels are OK.

Then, for the last month or so, I've been experiencing this increasingly painful pelvic pain. I first heard it mentioned by a yoga teacher. Then I mentioned it to the obgyn. They both dismissed it with a wave of their hand. Oh, it must be pubic synthesis, or the stretching of the pubic bones....or something similar. Wikipedia had a nice long medical entry on it. Well, this pubic synthesis is slowly but progressively getting unbearably painful, especially after I sit for long periods of time or get up in the morning.

And according to wikipedia and babycenter.com there doesn't really seem to be much I can do about it, but just weight it out. It may get worse before it gets better. And it may takes months after delivery for the pain to go away. Basically, I need to try to move my legs together as one unit. And apparently, yoga or swimming may help, which I don't understand how because most yoga poses and swimming are all about spreading legs apart to create space for the baby.

I hope it stabilizes because this evening, I can barely walk.

Who knows maybe all this pain and stretching now will make the actual birth easier, which, after 56 1/2 hours of labor, definitely wasn't the scenario with Ivan.

You know it's bad

that the house is in disarray when your two and a half year-old spontaneously declares one evening, "yucky house," as Ivan did last night.

I was floored.

He, of course, repeated it first thing this morning. "Yucky house."

Now, the term "yucky" has entered his vocabulary in the last few weeks, and everything he doesn't want to eat (or he half ate) or things that he thinks are dirty, he declares "yucky."

However, this was the first time he used it to describe the house. And the house was truly yucky. It was very messy and it hadn't been cleaned in two weeks. The cleaning ladies were supposed to come on Friday but I had to cancel them. Andy and I were so busy with work this past week that we (or shall I say I) had really let the house go.

I just never expected Ivan to care and to declare "yucky house."

However, he is much more observant and aware of things that we give him credit for. As I guess all toddlers do, he notices and stores information to retrieve it at a much later date. It's happened several times now that he's shocked me with something that I didn't expect him to know or understand.

The First Why and Where?

"Why did Posa eat her din, dins?" Ivan asked pointing to Mariposa's food dish, while we were getting ready for work/daycare this morning.

His first why question.

This was followed by a "Where is box?" a some time later, while he was holding the key to the black jewelry box, which I don't use, and which is one of his toys instead. He wanted to practice locking and locking it. (The locking fascination runs close to the wires, plugs and general "boops" fascination)

His first where question.

In general, since last night, I noticed a huge leap in Ivan's speech. I was astonished. Overnight, he's become so much more verbal and articulate. He no longer says words, but attempts full sentences and narrates things. We can actually hold a conversation.

His attempted sentences are half in English, half in Croatian, sometimes all in English, other times all in Croatian. But nevertheless, full sentences.


I didn't see him for about 24 hours on Sunday-Monday, because he spent Sunday night and Monday day at my parents house. When I saw him again on Monday night, and especially again when he woke up this morning, he was a completely new kid.

For example, on Monday evening when we were at the Silver Spring water fountain, he pointed to a stroller and said "baby sleeping, baby has no shoes."

This morning, he woke up at 5:40 and proceeded to talk to himself and Medic in his crib. Some 15 minutes later, he was done with the crib and wanted to come to our bed. Since it was still pitch black outside, I convinced him that he should continue sleeping (because the crickets, which come out at night, were still singing). He laid still, more or less, but continued whispering to himself and Medic. He was practicing talking. It was too low for me to discern any actual words, although he was right by my ear, but still I could tell he was practicing talking.

Then around 6:10 he declared: "No more sleeping." It was time to get up and go "dole."

(Also, when we were at the pool on Saturday, after 30 minutes of class time, he declared, "I finished," and insisted on getting out of the pool).

Mr. Social

This past Sunday we went to the playground. We missed the last few playground Sundays because we were either away (like the previous Sunday at the beach) or other moms weren't there. So we hadn't seen our neighborhood friends for a few weeks.

As always, we was excited to go to the playground. Since I expected the same scenario that had been playing itself over the summer where we get to the playground and then he sits in his stroller, observing kids and crying "kuci, mamma, kuci," I didn't think about it too much.

Except this time, he actually got out of the stroller and sat next to me on the playground edge for a few minutes before wandering off to play and interact with kids.

I was thrilled. The shy spell must be over. I actually read on BabyCenter recently that the wanting to go home behavior could be a sign that a child is stressed-out about a situation. I don't know why he could've been unconfortable at the playground but I'm glad I didn't push him over the summer.

On our way home from the playground, we swung by the other smaller playground that's closer to our house. He wanted to go down the slides. He first went down the little slides a few times, like he's done numerous time before. Then he climbed up to the big, twisty slide. The one I always have to come down with him. So down we went. But then, he climbed up again to go by himself. Several times. Again, I was thrilled. He had been slide-averse for the last few months and had never wanted to go down the twisty slides by himself. And now he did it.

All it its own time.

Latest Ivanisms

Ivan has become quite a little chatterbox.

He practices talking to himself, talking to his toys, talking to Medic. It becomes a random hodge-podge of words and phrases he's heard us use, and he repeats things he heard a while back. He also practices things he's heard in daycare. He practices his interaction with other kids or teachers. It's really cute. And so obvious that that's what he's doing.

It's also clear that in daycare they're teaching them colors and numbers. And he obviously has absolutely no concept of either. They must be working on the color "green." According to Ivan, everything is green, including all the things that are not.

The same goes for numbers. For a while now, he'll count "one, three, nine," or some other number combination.

This week's favorite has been "Didi, leady, four, ten," as he'd try to tell my dad, "ready, one, two, three," when they were playing with the ball.

He's still mixing up English and Croatian in the same sentence. He understand both and can "talk" in both. However, lately I'm noticing that English is becoming a bit more dominant. It makes sense. The pool of English speakers around him is much wider and during the week he's more exposed to English than to Croatian. But that's OK.

A selection of recent random Ivan phrases:

"Didi sjekao notkici"

"Yucky cips."

"Drinking a voda."

"Do dat, dadda"

"No bones, Popo."

"Move grass."

"No touc it"

"No go kuci," as he kept insisting today as we were driving home from daycare.

And the all time favorite: "My do dat."

Swim Lesson

I signed up Ivan for swim lessons. Our first lesson was last Saturday at Maryland. Since the indoor pool was undergoing some serious cleaning, the first lesson was scheduled at the outside pool. This probably sounded like a swell idea when they were preparing the schedule. However, last week the weather turned cold.

(It was actually kind of perfect timing. Labor Day weekend Sunday, the weather was perfect and we went to the beach. More on that later. But Monday turned cold and rainy. As if on cue, it signalled the unofficial end of summer and the beginning of another year--school year, professional year, fall, etc.)

So the Saturday in question was cloudy. The temperature barely rose to 64 degrees by 9:30 a.m. when the lesson started. Luckily, the pool was nicely heated to a comfortable 83 degrees.

Based on Ivan and Andy's previous pool excursions and his delight at being at the beach the weekend before, I hoped he'll love the swim lesson, but I wasn't sure.

There were several classes taking place simultaneously--parent and tot (our class), three year-olds, four year-olds, etc. swim lessons.

Our tot class had some 8 parent-tot couples.

Instructors wanted the kids to walk into the pool themselves, instead of being carried. Ivan, of course, refused. He insisted I "dingut, dingut," him. Our instructor came to help to lure him into the pool, but he basically shooed her off. So I releted and carried him in.

Once in the pool, he loved it. We had a wonderful time. He was beaming with joy. The instructor had us do all sort of get your-kid-accustomed-to-the-water games. They included the wheels on the bus, where we walked in circle spashing water around, lifting the child up and down in the water, etc. We also played Humpy Dumpy Sat, where we sat the child on the pool edge and then let him fall back into the water int our arms. We also got little watering buckets to dump water on the child, or let the child dump the water on the parent. Then the instructor gave us foam letter to throw in front of us in the water and have the child reach for them. This idea was swell, except that all kids, including Ivan, held tight onto those letter and would let them go. "Mine, mine."

Then everyone started getting cold. Being in the water was a bit less fun. So after half an hour, the lesson ended. But we had a great time. I can't wait to take him back on Saturday.

I, however, felt like a humongous duck. My bathing suit, which fit OK the week before, was suddenly snug. I felt like boobs were flying everywhere and the tankini top kept riding up my belly. At first I was self-conscious but then I hoped that no one really cared nor paid attention to me. Everyone was engrossed in their own kid.

My parents came along for the lesson as Andy was working. I was glad they came. They also had a blast watching Ivan enjoy himself so much in the pool.

Is Medic a Girl?

Over the last month or so, Ivan has rechristened Medic into Mimi. Actually, he refers to the stuffed bear as both, sometimes it's Medic, other times it's Mimi.

I'm stumped. When and why did the change occur? I'm not sure.

However, Ivan and Medic continue to be inseparable, although Medic is, once again, stinky. He's due for another spa treatment, e.g. a cold water, gentle spin in the washer, and a thorough drying in the dryer.

Now Ivan talks to Medic ("no cry, Mimi, no cry") or talks about Medic ("Medic crying, change diapers Medic"....)

He also plays with him, this often means he also inadvertently sweeps the floor him.

Medic also gets pretend-fed and gets his diapers changed, for real. He even sometimes gets "everywhere," otherwise known as underwear.

Falling

Yesterday, while crossing the street, I apparently didn't raise my foot high enough to get on the sidewalk so I tripped and fell flat on my face.

Did I fall of my belly, someone asked. Of course, how could I avoid it! I badly bruised my knees; one just got scraped, but the other one is rather skinned, with a big red bloody mark on it. No bleeding however.

Ivan, the bandaids king was very excited to see that mamma has a bubu and a bandaid.

I blame heat, as well as my huge tights, which don't let me make big strides any more for the fall. And of course, there is the stomach itself. And there is just my natural clutziness. Last time I tripped and fell walking down the street 10 years ago in Boston, I broke two fingers. This time I just scraped the knees.

However, I was badly shaken. But since I wasn't bleeding or experiencing any out-of-ordinary aches and pains, I decided there was on point on going for a doctor check up.

That's what the amniotic sack is for, as several people, including my mom said, to cushion the baby.

I hope this baby is OK. Between Mariposa and Ivan inadvertently jumping and sitting on my stomach all these months, and now this fall, this baby has been in for one rough belly ride.

Potty Training Bootcamp, Take 2, 3

Yesterday, the potty training sergeant was Andy. The pattern basically repeated itself:

Andy and Ivan got up around 6:30. They went downstairs to eat. They returned upstairs to change for the day. After some back and forth, Andy got Ivan to put on a pair of underwear.

They went to the basement to play. Ivan peed and pooped in the pants but didn't say anything. They came back upstairs to change. He sat on the potty when we took his pants off, but there was nothing to pee or squeeze out. All had been done. Lots of pee and the same bean paste as the day before. Andy offered to wash it off (yeah!).
I cleaned Ivan in the meantime.

We haggled over underwear. Ivan didn't want to put them on. Andy convinced him to. Then he left to walk Mariposa. Not even five minutes later, wearing a new pair of underwear and shorts, Ivan peed on the bedroom floor.

"Ah," he said when he saw the pee puddle at his legs.

I changed him into a fresh pair of underwear. Since we were down to one pair of clean shorts, I let him just wear underwear. I also figured he may be more likely to say something, if he needs to go potty. We played in the room for a while and then went to the basement to put a load of wash to dry and another one to wash.

In the time that it took me to put a load in the dryer and another in the washer, Ivan peed again. Another floor puddle. "Ah," he said again.

So off to the bedrooms we returned. I changed him and cleaned him. He wouldn't let me put another pair of underpants on, so I let him run around naked. An half an hour later, when he had to pee again, he went to the potty and peed.

So, basically, if he's naked he'll use the potty, but if he's wearing underpants, he will just go in his pants.

Some time later, while I tried to on another pair of underpants, he insisted "mamma, cange diaper, cange diaper, cream, wipes." He then brought me a diaper, his butt cream and wipes.

It was 11 a.m. again and I capitulated. I put him in diapers for the rest of the day. I also really had no more clean underpants and shorts.

Today:
More or less, the same scenario. Ivan peed in his clothes. Andy brought him up to change him. While we were in the process of changing him and he was naked, he ran to the potty to poppy and pee. (A nice hard turd. Why couldn't he have pooped them yesterday and Friday!) We ceremoniously flushed the poop in the toilet.

We dressed him in clean clothes, and he basically peed his pants two more times. On our 4th pair of clean clothes for the morning, I took a gamble to take him to the playground, wearing underwear. Just in case, I brought a clean pair of shorts and a diaper along.

We were at the playground for one and a half hours. No wet spots. I was pleased. I put him in the stroller and went home. When we got home, some 5-10 minutes later, there was a bit wet spot on his butt. He had peed in the stroller without saying anything.

"No wewe," he said when I changed him.

I aborted the potty training mission and put diapers on since we were driving to my parents' house. I didn't want to risk a big pee stain on the car seat.

I also took this morning's assortment of soiled shorts and underpants to my mom's to wash, since he was out of clean shorts again. Ivan's spending the night at their house and the day with my dad. I gave him thorough instructions of how to attempt potty training, however, knowing my dad, I doubt he'll follow through. No, he'll have a better way, his way of doing it because, of course, my way is probably inadequate.

Ivan's art

When I picked up Ivan from daycare on Wednesday, he insisted I lift him up near his basket (where all his belogings are). On the wall above it, was a collage. He wanted to show me. He was very proud of it.

"Should we take it home," I asked. "No, no, leave it," he said. So we did.

Andy said he did the same thing last week. Every day, he'd point to his artwork, which was hanging on some mobile in the classroom. (I assume it was drying out.)

On Thursday, both of us picked him up. He insisted Andy lifts him up to where his basket was. He wanted to show dadda the collage as well.

Andy said it was the same piece he was pointing out last week.

This is a new development -- Ivan being so proud of his creation and wanting to show it to us.

Our first baby conversation

Yesterday, when we went to pick up Ivan from daycare, Emma, a cute talkative three-year old in Ivan's class, was showing us her "baby." A doll she had put under her shirt. I don't know if she has a younger sibling or not.

Today, Ivan got his stuffed dolphin and stuck it under his shirt. "My baby, my baby," he told me. Had I not seen Emma do this yesterday, I would've been concerned where he got it from. But it made sense.

"Mamma has a baby in her belly, too," I took the opportunity to tell him. It was our first baby conversation. I'm sure he has no clue what it actually means, but he did show interest in my growing stomach and the baby that's inside.

Maybe this makes more sense to him now, than our elusive "don't hit mamma on the belly, gentle with mamma, etc" warnings.

I suspect that he's been aware for at least a month now that something is going on with mamma. Ever since the sonogram to which both he and Andy came, he's been acting more clingy around me. When I hold him, he doesn't just relax and lay limp in my arms, but rather hugs me back with all this toddler plump might.

I especially noticed it this week at daycare. Each morning when we dropped him off, he really didn't want to let go of me. When he saw me in the afternoon, he'd rush to me and hug me real tight. He'd rush to me past Andy, even though in the past he'd always primarily go to him not me, since he's the primary daycare drop-offer and picker-upper. And Ivan, like all toddlers, is all about a routine.

Potty Training Bootcamp, Take 1

It lasted all of four hours this morning.

Knowing that Ivan will refuse to wear underwear, I asked Andy to make a big deal out of wearing underwear when he was getting dressed this morning.

Ivan finally relented. He allowed Andy to put a pair of underpants on. However, not the red Elmo pair that I was trying to put on him. He had to go and choose his own pair. Fine. He returned with a blue Grover pair. Maybe it's Elmo on the underwear that he doesn't want to wear, not the underwear itself, I thought.

We dressed him in a pair of pants and then Andy left for work.

I repeatedly told Ivan to let me know when he needed to go potty and pooppy so we can go on the potty. He didn't acknowledge any of my heedings. He was too busy playing.

Some two hours later, while he was engrossed in play, I noticed a big wet stain on the front of his pants. He didn't say anything, nor acknowledged it when I said his pants were wet and let's go to change.

Nothing.

I got concerned that maybe he doesn't feel the wetness or that maybe it doesn't bother him. Either one, of course, would be bad from the potty training perspective. I found it weird though because every time his pajamas get wet, because his diaper is too full or somehow wasn't positioned properly, he loudly complains to change him. "Change diaper."

We attempted to go upstairs to the bedroom several times to put on some new clothes, but somehow we'd always end up back downstairs playing. Eventually, half an hour later, we made it upstairs. He proceeded to play, completely ignoring me.

Meanwhile, Andy's mother called and I told her about my dilemma. Should I change him or should I wait for him to acknowledge that his pants are wet? She didn't know. But Ivan heard me talk to her about underwear, and quickly ran to his room to bring a pair. So he's been listening all along.

Still, he wouldn't let me change him. I let him play in his room, where he was busy neatly spreading out on the floor his various bedspreads, while I stayed in our bedroom. A few minutes later, he rushed in crying. A bean-infused aroma, or shall I say stench, enveloped his little frame, like some sensory aura. He had popped his pants.

He still refused to get changed, but engrossed himself in play in the bedroom.

OK, this is some sort of potty training resistance, I thought.

Eventually, off to the bathroom we went to get cleaned up.

Instead of popping a few nice firm nuggets that I could just toss in the toilet ("bye, bye poppy, we always tell the poop when he clean diapers and flush its contents into the toilet), the poop was of bean paste consistency that was stuck to his underwear and butt, and smeared all over his legs.

Great! Underwear isn't disposable diapers, so I was thrilled to have to clean that up.

We lingered in the bathroom. He sat on the potty a few times to pee, which he did. (Always requesting gobs of toilet paper to dry himself off, to the point that the toilet got stuck.)

Then he played in the bedroom butt-naked. When he had to pee, he rushed to the potty. So he knows when he needs to go, I confirmed.

But he absolutely refused to let me put underwear back on. I got out the entire Sesame Street collection to let him choose. He picked the orange one. I forget which character that was.

"Too tight, too tight," he protested when I pulled up the pants. They're the right size and fit fine. But the underpants feel different than diapers, and he doesn't like it. I would say more comfortable, but then I haven't spent my whole life in diapers, like he has. His safety blanket.

Then, he brought me diapers, pleading with me, "change diapers, change diapers, mamma." I acquiesced.

So by 11 a.m. with one peed and pooped underpants, he was back in his diapers.

Tomorrow's bootcamp sergeant will be Andy (he doesn't know it yet). I hope he fares better.

Dancing, Singing Ivan

Back in spring, Ms. Yvonne told us that Ivan likes to dance at daycare. We were shocked. He never wanted to dance at home, and if I tried to dance, I'd get a big, "no, mamma, no," in return. He also absolutely hated the music class we took him to last fall. He kept wanting to leave the room.

Then a month ago, when Ivan and I drove my mother, who had just returned from Croatia, back to her house, the first thing Ivan did at the house was to run to the radio to turn it on. Then he disappeared into the kitchen. He returned with mardi gras beads strung around his neck (they hang on the pantry door). He went up to my mom to dance with her. Apparently, that's what the two of them do when he sleeps at their house. They get the newspaper "nonine, nonine," he watches my mom make coffee (who puts "secer" in the coffee) and then they dance.

Over the summer, I have noticed that he'll sometimes kind of bounce around to the music, but didn't make much of it. But the last few days, he's been holding Medic by its arms, jumping around, singing "dance, dance, dance, dance." It's hysterical.

He's also apparently really taken by music. There was the time at my parents' house when he was mesmerized by the Josh Groban concert.

Then about a month ago, at Andy's parents house, while Andy took of for his float-down-the-river-drinking-beer trip to Maine and I went to a quilt show with Andy's mother, Andy's dad and Ivan had quite a nice little morning to themselves. They got some crackers, sat in Pappi's den, and listened to nine tracks of Enya's Christmas album. Ivan was apparently mesmerized.

My parents said that the other week when we woke up at their house, he first turned on the radio to listen to some Dalmatian klapa music. He sat quietly on the sofa, with his hands crossed in his lap, enjoying the music for some 10-15 minutes, my mother reported.

Today, he insisted we put on some children's music. The spent the whole morning singing "people, up and down, up and down" while we was trying to stand up and squat down. Finally, I realized he was singing "the Wheels on the Bus."

I, however, am not really allowed to sing. He says "no, mamma, no." Now, I'm not sure whether it's because my voice is so bad that even toddler's ears are jarred by the sound of my off-singing, or whether he just doesn't like it because it's not something that mamma does.

The Nap Boycotter

This past month, Ivan has become anti-nap. He still needs a nap but he absolutely refuses to be put down.

It all started the week of July 20, when daycare was closed for the week, and I was home with him. He'd wake up at his regular time, between 5:30 a.m. and 6 a.m. and would be dead tired by the time lunch rolled around. However, he started resisting his naptime. First, he'd try to stave off the nap, but by 2:30 or so he'd give in. "Sleepy, sleepy" and I'd put him down in his crib.

Then he started refusing to nap in his crib, preferring either our bed (drugi krevet) or the spare bedroom (before it got dismantled, but that's another story, loosely related to resting bed time).

Then he started refusing to go and take a nap at all.

After a week of this, he returned to daycare. Ms. Yvonne said that he goes down for a nap during the regular nap time between 1-3 p.m. There is nothing else to do, as all kids must take a nap. He doesn't have to fall asleep but he has to rest, she explained. However, he always willingly goes down and easily falls asleep, unlike some other kids who put on a show. He just watched them from his cot. At 3, she said, when it's time to wake up, she actually has to wake him up from slumber.

Well, that definitely has not been his behavior at home. As the month progressed, the nap boycott became more pronounced to the point that we've just given up.

So last Friday, when we came home from the pediatrician's, he was about to fall asleep in the car but we got home before that. He was sleepy and limp in my arms as I carried him into the house. But as soon as we got to the bedrooms, he threw a fit that he wanted to go "dole." So, dole we returned. I sat him on the couch and went to the bathroom. He looked positively groggy, almost drunk. By the time I returned a few minutes later, he was fast asleep. He slept for two hours.



Two Sundays ago, neither Andy nor I could get him to lay down. So we let him be. Kris and Olexa were coming over for a BBQ around 5:30. While Kris and I were chatting in the living room, Ivan suddenly quited down and disappeared. He fell a sleep in the dining room on the floor. He basically slept through the night.

Today, even thought he had been up since 5:30 and I could tell he started getting tired as early as 11 (as did I), he started adamantly proclaiming, "No nap, mamma, no nap." By 2 p.m. or so, these proclamations escalated into downright yells.

I wasn't allowed to take a nap either. I laid down on the couch while he was playing but he would come over to hoist me up.

So I let him be. I was too exhausted to keep fighting him.

Around 3 p.m., I went to the kitchen to eat some mac and cheese. A few minutes later, I realized that the ruckus in the living room had quited down. I got concerned. But when I turned the corner into the living room, I found this:


I scooped him up and took him to his crib. The "no nap, mamma" boycotter slept until 6:30.

Some toddlers drop naptime all together because they no longer don't need it. But Ivan does.

Ivan, I think, is doing the other typical toddler thing: he doesn't want to take a nap for the fear of missing out on things.

Just another morning

There is nothing like abruptly being woken up from deep slumber before 5:30 a.m. by a screeching toddler who's desperately crying out "mamma, mamma," with an urgency of someone being tortured. I rush into his room, concerned about what's going on. He is desperately trying to take off his pajama pants and diapers, asking for "meme." I tumble down the stairs, more by feel and touch than by sight, praying that I won't miscalculate the number of stairs and twist my ankle, and aiming not to step on the sleeping dog, who's sprawled on the stairs landing, all to the not-so distant background music of a toddler screeching.

It's pitch black outside. I waddle into the kitchen, open the fridge door, shielding my eyes from the bright fridge light (squinting my eyes again, oh no more wrinkles, I think someplace deep in my subconsciousness), pour the milk, and waddle back up the stairs into Ivan's room to deliver the milk. He no longer wants the milk, but is still trying to take off his pants. I take off the pajama. He cries louder, I give him the pants back, "wan that," he says, and throws them across the room.

I pick him up in an attempt to console him. He cries even louder and wants to be put down. He rushes to the gate, pulling on it, like a monkey behind bars, "dole, dole." Downstairs he wants to go.

So, unwillingly I open the gate again, really wishing this episode would end and he'd go back to bed, because that's where I want to be, but no, he sits on the step to say hi to Mariposa, who's wide awake now, wagging her tail.

We go down the stairs into the kitchen. At least he walks, and doesn't insist I carry him, which is good because at his hour I'm still unsure of my balance on the stairs.

I'm ordered to open the fridge door. He wants "senvich." I get the bread and cream cheese. He takes it to the table and orders me to "mamma, mamma, sit there". He tells me to cut the bread in half. I oblige. I spread cream cheese on it. "No mess, mamma," he advises. I give him the sandwich. "Wan it," he says and he pushes it away. I didn't really think he was going to eat it anyway.

But he goes back to the fridge. "Ccc butter," he asks. So I pull out the pbj ingredients. Again, I cut the bread in half. He wants peanut butter on one half and jelly on the other. Usually, we combine the two sandwich halves into one. But no, he wants them apart. He bites into the peanut butter, "wan it," he says and lays on the bench in protest. I didn't think he'd like it either. Peanut butter by itself is too thick to eat. In a second, he comes around the table to spit the contents of his mouth into my hand.

Then he's back at the fridge. I follow him to open the door. Beans, is what is wants. He pulls out the beans tupperware container. I get the spoon. We sit back at the table. I twist the jar open. The pungent smell of Cuban style beans hits my nostrils. The smell is a bit too much at 5:40 a.m. But Ivan eats them with gusto. I want to gag, but instead I turn on this computer, in an effort to distract myself and not to fall asleep while trying to block out the offensive the beans smell. Luckily, a pregnancy side-effect is my constantly stuffy nose, "it's the extra mucus" as pregnacy books helpfully explain, but right now, the extra snot blocking my nasal passages is a rather welcoming buffer to the super olefactory beans molecules that are desperately trying to chisel their way up my nasal cavity.

Seeing me turn on the computer, Ivan declares "ma turn," and I think "great, now I won't be able to peel him of my computer holes into which he'll try to plug and unplug the mouse." But instead, Ivan runs over to get his toy computer. He sets it on the table and turns it on.

"Bunnies, bunnies," he says pointing to the computer. "Bunnies dole." Apparently, bunnies live in the body of computer. He's very concerned about them. Then he points to my computer. Bunnies apparently live in my computer as well. "Bunnies tu, bunnies tu," he says, pointing to the disk drive. Who knew?

These imaginary bunnies keeep cropping up everywhere these last few weeks. Bunnies are everywhere, according to him, even though the only bunnies in the house are a few of his stuffed toys. But no, those don't seem to be the bunnies he refers to.

Like the other day, when he dolefully declared "no more bunnies," as if there were ever bunnies in our back yard. Or the time a few weeks back, when he starred at the window telling me that there are bunnies in the back yard, while Mariposa was vigorously barking at someone/something through the porch door, facing that same direction. I spent a good half an hour looking for this invisible bunny. I have never seen a bunny in our yard. Still it creeped me out, as I thoroughly tried to examine the empty back yard. Nothing but grass back there. Still Ivan was talking about a bunny and Mariposa was barking. I kept thinking, is it a white rabbit from the Jefferson Airplane's song, or maybe an Alice in Wonderland character.

(There are a bunch of bunnies in Andy's parents backyard but not our yard.)

By 6:14 a.m., Ivan has long finished eating his beans, making a big mess in the process both on the table and his shirt, and is demanding "affle." "You want a waffle," I ask. "Affle," he affirmatively nods. So I pull out a frozen French toast from the freezer and plop it in the microwave. "Affle, affle," the screaming continues. A toddler absolutely has to have that instant gratification, and even a two minute delay to warm up the bread is a wailing eternity. Finally, the toast is done. I cut it in into little squares and pour maple syrup on it. He eats it.

It's 6:30 by this time. Everyone is wide awake. Andy is up. Mariposa was let out to pee. I'm wide awake as well, no chance of going back to sleep, now. And Ivan, in his diapers and the beans-smeared pajama top, is busy playing on the kitchen floor with his assortment of plugs, wires and his radio.

The sun has not even come up yet.

And I still have no clue what was so offending about his pajama bottoms an hour earlier.

Just another ordinary morning.

Food update--mo laisins

A few weeks ago, it appears that Ivan's appetite has kind of returned. So after two full months on subsiding on milk, yogurt and air, Ivan has started to eat again.

He's still picky and doesn't eat that much, but it's definitely an improvement from before.

Raisins now rule. "More laisins, more laisins," he yells all the time. I started buying raising about a month ago, in an effort to get him to eat something that at least used to be a fruit.

He's still on a fruit boycott. All fruit, except bananas, which he willingly eats and goes to get himself, are a no go. He did put a blueberry in his mouth a few weeks ago, as if to dare me, but he promptly took it out. And blueberries were last year's one and only food item.

He even backed of yogurt for a few weeks, but that was short lived. However, he's now very peculiar about his yogurts. He wants to pick the one he wants to eat from the fridge. He opens it. Sometimes he eats it, but other times, he declared "no want it." And that's it. The yogurt goes back into the fridge. I try to give it to him later, but he refuses to eat an open container. He wants to open a new yogurt. As a results, lots of yogurt got wasted in the last few weeks.

The veggie boycott also continues. Although a few weeks ago, at a birthday party, I did manage to feed him a few carrot sticks dipped in hummus. After that, I optimistically bought carrot sticks to serve with hummus, but he caught my gimmick. No carrots have been eaten since the original birthday party tasting.

He regularly refuses to eat dinner with us. We've been making a big deal about dinner lately. We all sit down as a family to eat a nice square homemade meal. While Andy and I eat ours, Ivan plays with his food, or pushes it away declaring "no want it."

Yesterday, he did take a couple of bites of his corn on the cob, which was a major improvement over the previous time we served corn last week, when he systematically pierced every kernel, as if it were bubble wrap.

But today, he positively shocked us. We ate burgers with boiled potatoes and green beans. He pushed his plate away, even though "kepops" was generously doled out on the meat. We didn't expect him to eat the green beans and potatoes, since he's never touched them before. On his plate, there were served more as a decoration than a part of the meal.

Then Ivan got off his bench and wanted to sit in my lap. Once on my lap, he actually picked up a green bean and ate it. Then he helped himself to several more. Andy and I were too afraid to say anything, lest we'd break the grean bean eating spell, so we just looked at each other in shock. Then Ivan actually got a few potatoes pieces of his plate and ate them. Again, we were speechless.

This entire spell lasted only a few minutes. And soon Ivan was back at the fridge, demanding we open it, so he can peak in. He wanted hummus and "cips," which we let him eat.

And later he wanted yogurt.

(On Sunday at my parents house, while we all ate stuffed peppers and mashed potatoes for lunch, he refused to eat. But once we were done, my mother continued hanging out with him in the kitchen. Somehow she got him to eat. He ended up eating three small plates of stuffed peppers-stuffed with ground meat and rice--and mashed potatoes. We're still talking about this eating spree four days later because it was so unusual.)

Pregnancy Yoga

I signed up for pregnancy yoga over the summer. I debated whether to do it or not, citing the lack of time (and disposable resources) as the main obstacle. But I'm glad I did. Once the summer session ends in two weeks, I'll sign up again for the fall so that yoga gets me through the entire pregnancy.

Since I've basically thrown exercise to the wind two years ago when Ivan was born, I have progressively gotten rather out of shape (except for unstructured daily lifting of a human free weight, e.g. the toddler, whose weight keeps increasing and is now up to some 30 pounds.)

I've had the best intentions of going to the pool for regular swims, like I did the summer I was pregnant with Ivan. But so far, we've been to the pool once, and I didn't even get in the water. I was the mom guard, in charge of guarding our stuff, while Ivan and Andy soaked in the water. (Not that it mattered, there were so many people in the pool that any attempt at swimming would've been futile.)

But yoga was been wonderful, even more therapeutic than I remember it with Ivan. It's amazing how a few isometric stretches and poses, which look impossible to do but actually feel really good, make me feel like I’m in control of my body. I stand taller and straighter, and feel more graceful, even comfortable in my gigantic waddling body, after each session. The slightly sore muscle pain actually makes me feel fit. The practice is also very calming. And the shavanasana (sp) pose that each practice ends with, is simply to die for, no pun intended. It's the most relaxing experience, more restful than an undisturbed night of sleep.

Even on hot and humid days, like this past Saturday and today, when doing anything other than laying down felt like an uncomfortable exertion on my growing girth and when I had second thoughts about going to the practice, an hour and a half of yoga makes me feel light, fit and able.

This morning, my shoulders were killing me. The area between my shoulder blades was so tight and sore that I all I wanted to do was lay down. Coincidentally, the focus of this evening’s practice was on body twists. These twists do wonders for shoulder and back stretching. The pain I felt all day today, has simply dissipated.

Yoga teachers and other yoga aficionados, especially the earthly mother types and those into natural mid-wifey homebirths, advocate for yoga for helping in childbirth. The mantra that yoga teachers give throughout each class is geared toward natural homebirths.

I like to hear that view. In principle, I’m all for it. I tried to espouse it with Ivan—the natural birth part, not the homebirth part. But I’m not sure whether it worked. I would like to think that yoga did help me birth him, although after having endured 56 ½ hours of labor, of which the last 10 hours were spend under the relaxing drip of an epidural, I wonder. On the other hand, how closed would’ve my hips been had it not been for yoga.

It did however help me labor. All labor techniques that I employed I remembered from the semester worth of yoga, not from a six-hour hasty hospital-sponsored Lamaze class.

So this time, I’m doing yoga for myself and my physical well-being rather than for the supposed childbirth benefits, even if I still like to hear the holistic and earthly messages yoga teachers imbue each class with. However, I still plan to birth this child as naturally as I can possibly endure it. Hopefully, Ivan’s 56 hours journey through the birth canal has paved the way.

(Lack of) Potty Training

It has been my summer goal to potty train Ivan. I can't say I've been successful. Well, I haven't gone all bootcamp on him, like I've been advised to do, to just do it one weekend.

I've had the best intention of doing so, but it's just been difficult to find a few days when we can be home, without going anywhere, to accomplish this training period. And I'd really like to fully train him over a long weekend, so he doesn't have too many accidents at daycare. It just seems like that would be unnecessarily embarrasing.

So potty training has been more of a gradual process, which started a few months ago when we bought the potty.

He knows when he needs to go--he's aware of the sensation to pee and poop. And if he's diaper-less, he'll tell us when he needs to go. Before bath time, he likes to sit on the potty and, occasionally, pee. Otherwise, if he's wearing diapers, he tells us (most of the time) after he poops. And he wants us to change the diapers then because he's obviously uncomfortable then.

The problem has been that he's absolutely adamant about not wanting to wear underwear. I've tried everything. I bought Elmo underwear. I keep talking about how both mamma and dadda wear underwear... But to no avail. He won't let me put them on. He asks for diapers.

I could let him run naked and have a few accidents, but I'd rather not. I want him to embrace underwear instead.

But since the summer is almost over, I'm thinking that Labor Day weekend is my last chance to do a bootcamp potty training session and get it over with.

Ivan and Milk

The separation of milk and the bottle successfully continues.

He still gets his bedtime milk in the least spillable bottle, but otherwise he prefers to drink his milk from a cup. He actually asks us to unscrew the bottle top so he can drink the milk from the bottle itself, like it's a glass, not the sippy part.

So now he differentiates when he actually wants to drink milk because he wants milk, or when he wants the bottle for comfort and soothing.

He's also gotten quite interested in drinking from straws. Straws are fun. Not only can he drink from them but he can also gnaw on them, or even blow bubbles with them.

Weight Gain

Last Friday, I went for my monthly ob-gyn appointment. I gained 11 pounds in the last month. Wow! No wonder that lately I've been feeling like a big fat cow that can barely move, especially last week during that super humid spell.

And no wonder that going up the stairs has suddenly become more tiresome.

I know I've popped in the last few weeks, but I didn't realize I had gained so much weight. The doctor wasn't concerned. Apparently, I hadn't gained any weight the month before. So it all evens out. Overall, I've gained some 18 pounds or so.

I feel huge and fleshy, but I know I'm only half way there in terms of expansion.

Last week, I put on a shirt I had nicely worn a week earlier. Last week, it no longer fit. It was stretched tight over my stomach. So off into the storage pile the shirt went. I've slowly outgrown all my loose non-pregnancy clothes, except for a summer dress, sweat-pants shorts, and another loose shirt. It's finally time to give in to pregnancy wear.

Mad at Ivan for Him Being Himself

This morning we went for our usual Sunday morning playground tour. It was too hot outside and we were a bit late getting there. There was no one else on the playground. None of the other playgroup moms, no other people. Just Ivan and I. We had the playground to ourselves.

He immediately went to play, as opposed to hanging out around his stroller for one hour whining "kuci" before warming up and deciding to go and join kids in play. After walking around the edge of the mulch, he climbed up the slides and wanted me to join him. I did. He insisted I sit in this one specific spot between him and the slide, which I couldn't do because there wasn't enough space. After a few minutes of going back and forth on this, and of me not understanding what he wanted from me, he melted into crying. Crying followed by "kuci, kuci." So we went home. It was too hot to be out anyway, and since no one else was there, there was no point in staying.

So I got mad at him for him being himself--for not being as physical, extroverted, loud and "forceful" as I see other kids his age to be, for not immediately rushing in to join a group of kids to play but for standing back, observing, taking it all in and then joining them when he's comfortable.

Yesterday we went to a birthday party. We came late. There were 5-6 other boys of whom he knew three from the playground. They were spashing in a kiddie pool. He didn't want to play with them. He sat on my lap the entire time. Then after some time, he got up and led me inside to the table where the food was laid out, to look for cake. He was actually circling the table looking for cake. (Because at birthdays that's what one does: I say, "we're going to a birthday party. He replies, "happy birthday, cake!") When the ice cream cake did come out, all kids had one piece and then proceeded to chase each other around the house to work off the sugar. Ivan wanted another piece, which he ate on the steps with me. Then he kind of got up to observe the kids more closely and participate "remotely." Eventually, he led me back outside, where there was no one left, but where he discovered the hose. His favorite. So he played with the hose for a while and actually showed Ethan how fun spraying water from the hose is. And then Seger showed up. So the three of them took turns playing with the hose. And then Ivan played with the hose with Gavin's, the birthday boy's, father. Then, it was time to leave.

On Friday, we went to daycare for a school picking. My mom came along. Granted, when we got there, it was around noon, and Ivan had just fallen asleep in the car. So he was groggy and sleepy and didn't want to play. He sat limp in my lap for a long time. Then he sat in my mom's lap. He observed the mayhem around him, but didn't join in. And these are the kids he sees all the time. They had rented a moonbounce, but he absolutely refused to go in. He did, however, eventually cheer up and went to interact with Ms. Yvonne. I was happy to see that he has a good rapport with her and that he willingly goes to her. She's also very good with him and with other kids.

So all these instances, along with the recent playground instances where he sits in the stroller for an hour and whines that he wants to go home instead of playing, got to me today. (On the playground, he does eventually warm up. But it take him an hour or two. At yesterday's birthday party, Beth and I were joking that Ethan and Ivan need to have a pre-party party, where they could warm up. Ethan has a similar quiet, gentle personality, like Ivan's. They "discovered" each other a few Sundays ago, when it was just the four us of on the playground. They ran off the playground and found sticks. Sticks, a bonding point. They acted like two little cavemen, running around with these branches, wielding them around, screaming and squeeling, like Bella and other girls do. They had so much fun. Both Beth and I were astonished. The following Sunday, they rediscovered the sticks. This time, even Seger joined in their little cavemen game. It was hysterical.)

And then after I got mad at Ivan, I felt awful for being mad at him, because he can't be any sweeter, cuter, more lovable and loving than he is, as well as cheerful, happy, engaged and playful, when he's in comfortable situations. Our little sunshine.

I should really do more one-on-one playdates, since he doesn't seem to be shy in such situations. It's just in bigger groups of kids.

But then as my mom reminded me today, I apparently used to even cry when I'd see new people, like when we'd have visitors or go to visit people, whereas Ivan is perfectly fine in such situations. (For example, when Donna and Ron came over to my parents' house for dinner last weekend. Ivan had seen Ron, once back in February/March. But apparently he remembered him. Both Ivan and Mariposa wanted to play with him. They were actually fighting over him. Poor Ron was on the floor tackled by both of them, who were laughing and barking on the top of their lungs, because they had so much fun playing).

Sippy Cup Continued III

Ivan may have reached the stage where he doesn't care that much which cup he gets him milk in. Last week he wan't picky. I kept giving him the bottle with the big sippy cup top, and he didn't protest.

Then earlier this week, he spent two nights at my parents' house. They forgot to take any bottles with him. My mom feared that at sleep time, he throw a fit, asking for the bottle. But they gave him milk in a small Trade Joe's water bottle, which he accepted without a fuss. Amazing.

He's also been increasingly going to bed without the bottle. Actually, without drinking milk. He wants the milk and the bottle, but not necessarily to gnaw on it but rather to hug the bottle in the crook of his elbow. Medic in one arm, bottle in the other. It's part of his safety blanket.

No Pink Tutus for Me

The sonogram two weeks ago proved Andy right. It's another boy. Deep down inside I wasn't shocked. But I was still hoping.

The most logical old wives tale about predicting a child's sex was told to me by two acquintances who each recently had two children of both sexes. If the second pregnancy is very different from the first one in terms of first trimester woes that then the child is of the opposite sex.

This pregnancy so far has been a carbon copy of the first one: same cravings, same issues, same hormonal patterns.

So deep down inside I wasn't surprised that it's another boy. And while I genunienly thought and felt that this time around it truly wouldn't matter who it is, my heart did sink when the sonogram technical confirmed the sex.

It's the sense of finality. This is it. There will be no more opportunities. (At least that's how we're planning it and how we've always thought about it.) So no pink tutus for me and no tea parties.

Although over the last two weeks I've told countless people that it's a boy and I was perfectly happy about it, last night when I told a friend over the phone I started breaking down. Except the conversation was about her not me, so I composed myself and carried on. Besides, she was one person who probably wouldn't get it.

Now that I'm writing this, tears are swelling in my eyes again. I know it's stupid, but I can't help it. I didn't expect this delayed reaction.

Also, for a day or two after the sonogram, all this wacky unexpected thoughts kept bursting into my brain. What if I can't bond with this baby? What it this baby somehow sucks life out of Ivan? Already at this sonogram he measured in the 50 percentile, whereas Ivan measured at 10 but was then born in the 50 percentile, only to fall into a 25 percentile pattern of growth. What if this baby will be a difficult, loud, rough, aggressive child who will overshadow Ivan's gentle personality? When they grow up, they won't be as close to me as I am to my parents but we'll hear from them sporadically and won't be part of their lives.....

On a pragmatic, economical side, at least this will be a bit cheaper. No need to buy new clothes for the baby. Also, if we remain in this house, they can eventually share a room, which will still give us a spare bedroom.

For now, our next goal/dilemma is deciding the baby's name. With Ivan we settled on his name combination two days after his birth, right before we left the hospital. And we kind of used up our good names. Now, we're back to square one.

On the Eve of Sonogram

It's the eve of the big sonogram tomorrow and I still have no sense whether it's a boy or a girl.
I also still don't care one way or another. Still I can't wait to find out.

However, this week I have caught myself referring to this baby as a she. But I've chalked it up to semantics. In Croatian the word for baby is feminine so it's natural I'd think of the baby as a she.
I have a tendency to refer as she all English nouns that Croatian are feminine, even if it makes no sense in English. (Like turtle, squirrel, bird are all female nouns for me, although in English they have no gender.)

More importantly, I just hope everything checks out fine.

Sippy Cup Continued II

My sippy cup victory may have been premature. Last night, Andy put Ivan to bed. When I went to check on him, I saw he had the old bottle (Avent bottle) with the super soft sippy cup top. Those were the tops/bottles I "discontinued" months ago.

"He insisted on that bottle," Andy said.

During the night Ivan woke up. He wanted milk. I gave him the first years cup. But even at 2 a.m. he protested bitterly. He wanted another one. So I went back to the kitchen to get the born freen one (with the super big opening). That wasn't what he wanted. As the third choice, because I really wasn't going to fight with him at 2 a.m., was the Avent one. He took it.

The same thing this morning. He wanted the Avent bottle with the soft top. How does he even remember those?

This week, he's woken up three nights so far, insisting to go to sleep in our bed. Since we're repainting the spare bedroom, we had to give in.

On Sunday, he wanted to fall asleep in our bed. But then he didn't. He wanted to come down stairs and fall asleep on the couch. This was very strange as he had never done it before. But I let him do it. I think he was spooked because we had disassembled the spare bedroom, which Andy was painting that evening, so we can turn it into his bedroom.

Tuesday he was fine. Then yesterday evening, our electricity went out around 7:30. It can back half an hour later, but Ivan was fascinated with the fact that there was no light. Not even in the refrigerator and the freezer. When he went to bed one hour later, I tucked him away in our bed. But then got up and insisted to come down. I refused and eventually he settled in our bed. Sunday, Monday and Wednesday nights, he woke up in the middle of the night, in his crib where we transfer him when he's asleep, and insisted to come to our bed.

On those nights, unfortunately, Andy sleeps well as does Ivan. But I get the short end of the stick because Ivan really sleeps close to me, which pushes me to the edge of the bed.

Unsolicited sales pitching to moms with toddlers

Ivan and I went to Columbia Mall today. We were in the area (a dentist visit), it was too hot and humid to play outside and, besides, I've been on a quest for a new eye cream.

(After several years of not following what I preach, that is investing in a good eye cream before it gets too late--it's possible it's already gotten a bit late--I decided it's time to do department store research, pick up a few eye cream samples and try to get the upper hand against those emerging wrinkles and crow feet.)

Ivan patiently stood by me as I negotiated samples with a Clinique sales lady at Macy's. Then he explored a fountain before I dragged him away. Then we spotted a crowd of toddlers and moms listening to a duo singing and dancing for kids. Ivan refused to join in, clinging to me instead, insisting that I "nosi, nosi." So we walked away to the nearby Origin store. He patiently stood by as I explored the store, observing the toddler crowd outside.

But then he was done. My grace period was running out, and I still wasn't done with my search.

So we continued walking through the mall a bit. Walking with him is like walking Mariposa. One has to walk relatively fast and steady without stopping; otherwise, if he senses ambivalence, it's gawk at this, get distracted by that or, my favorite, the whiny "nosi, nosi." And carrying him is getting to be a bit hard.

Distractions at a mall are plenty, especially in the form of kiosks where non-store entities peddle their wares.

"Hi mam, what do you use to style your hair," one peddler hollered at me, trying to interupt my determined stride. "Do you have 15 seconds...."

"Sorry, no," I answered pointing to Ivan, plugging ahead without pausing.

I really wanted to confront the guy:

"What do you think I use on my hair? Does my day-old unwashed and unbrushed ponytail with the still visible bedhead parting and 6 month-old roots peppered with gray look that good?"

"And what makes you think that a woman with a toddler, who's about to have a meltdown, really has 15 seconds to spare on your sales pitch?"

"Am I really the best sucker you can pick out from the crowd who you think would give you undivided 15 seconds of attention to listen to your sales pitch, buy the product and really care two days later what my hair looks like?"

I didn't say any of this. But this has been brewing in me for some time now.

Last year, I got suckered into it. I was with my mom and Ivan, who, luckily, was in the stroller. We had been at Montgomery Mall for a while (which really meant we went to two stores), when he started to lose it. But we still hadn't accomplished our intended goal, which was to buy Ivan shoes.

We were almost at Strideride. It was a spitting distance away, when a nice young man peddling some nail buffing/hand cream "secret" stuff spied us from his kiosk. Since it was Christmas time, our guard was down and we got lured in. But the 15-second pitch turned into a good 10-15 minute monologue during which he buffed several of our nails (and neither I nor my mother really care for manicures or like others handling our hands. Too sensitive. Pedicures are another story.) Meanwhile, Ivan started bawling, screaming, throwing a fit in his stroller.

But the young sales guy was apparently oblivious to the screaming toddler and couldn't take a hint that it was time for us to leave. Eventually, we wrestled ourselves from his pitch grip and strolled the tempter tantrumy Ivan into Strideride, where measuring his feet and buying shoes was impossible at that point.

I was livid. I wanted to go back out and yell at the guy, "shouldn't they teach you not to stop mothers with young children. These mothers usually have specific goals to accomplish in a short period of time before the kid melts. So you're wasting your time and their time."

Well, at least he was wasting my time. I don't know, maybe stay at home moms, who, I imagine, have more time to peruse the malls and do other leisurely things are good targets, but not me.

And it's not only young sales guys who are oblivious. Girls are no better.

Like the time I was stopped in Silver Spring by a Greenepeace activist with Ivan in the stroller. "No, I don't have a minute for the environment. Yes, I already recycle. And no, sorry, I'm not giving up my diaposable huggies," I blurted out at her without slowing down. Yet, she persisted and persisted in talking. I just had to ignore her and walk away.

Sippy Cup Continued

So Ivan has started drinking milk from the cheap first years sippy cup. He didn't protest when I gave him his crib/morning milk in that sippy cup, nor has he complained about it at any subsequent nap or bed time.

He hasn't wanted the born free sippy cup since yesterday. (This does make me a bit sad because this development, while a significant milestone, also means that he's slowly outgrowing his babyhood. I felt a similar but much more amplified tinge of loss when he stopped breast feeding)

The cup doesn't leak, unless he holds it upside down and then the milk freely flows, which, of course, happens when he's falling asleep hugging his Medic in one arm and the bottle in the other. It's often impossible to pry the bottle out unless he's fully asleep, by when the undrank milk has leaked out onto the sheets. Rancid milk smell.

It cracks me up that I was pondering the best sippy cup choice the same day that Slate ran an actual article about the leak-proof sippy cups. The journalist was trying to solve the same rancid milk smell.

Some of the cups he tested, like The Safe Sippy and Foogo, I saw and considered buying. But since I had decided to splurge 15 bucks on the stainless steel born free water bottle, I couldn't get myself to spend another 15 or so bucks on a similar looking product, especially since I wasn't sure whether Ivan would go for the stainless steel container.

But the two other cups Dr. Brown's Natural Flow Training Cup and Nalgene Grip-n-Gulp Bottle , which the journo rated highly, I don't recall seeing at the store. I just may have to go back to further research and explore and buy.

The rancid milk issue is really getting stale, no pun intended.

Talking; and First Full Sentence

"Look, look, I have a bubu," Ivan announced yesterday morning while laying between us in bed and pointing to his shin, which has an assortment of bubus in all shades of blue and brown.

I think this was his first full grammatically correct sentence.

(The last few days I've been bringing him to our bed when he wakes up in the morning. Unlike before when he would be ready to get up and start running, now he actually lays still, drinks his meme, cuddles or plays with Medic while laying/sitting between us in bed. I remember I used to do the same thing. I guess I was a bit older, since I remember it. I would get up and go to my parents' bed and sit and play in the bed while they were still sleeping.)

Today when he woke up cranky from his nap, he told me all concerned "mokra kosa." His room was hot so he was sweaty and his hair was wet.

He watched me put his laundry away. "Daycare bed," he said as I folded his daycare sheets.

All in all, he's becoming a little chatter box. I was surprised how verbal and chatty he was when he woke up from the nap today.

Other new phrases he picked up recently from daycare include, "Okeey, mama, okeey dadda? Okeey? Okeey?" He keeps saying OK to us and while he pretends play with his animals. I don't think he's really mastered the meaning of OK and the inflection with which he says it is weird. He says it the way I picture a 4-year old girl saying it. In other words, he picked up this phrase from someone in daycare.

Along the same lines, at dinner the other day he asked Andy very seriously "how's your food?" I was floored. We don't really use that phrase regularly. It must be small talke that Ms. Yvonne conducts with them during lunch at daycare.

His bossiness has also increased. "Come mama, come dadda," have really become imperatives not invitations, especially when he grabs us by the hand and leads us to whereever we need to be directed to go.


"Look, look," is another favorite, as is "rade," the all encompassing Croatian verb for any sort of construction site or equipment.

Milk and Bottle vs. Sippy Cup

While I haven't written about bedtime bottle vs. sippy cup conundrum in a very long time, the issue hasn't really gone away. I still neurotic and anxious that because Ivan goes to bed with a bottle and doesn't let us really brush his teeth, that his teeth will be black, rotten and falling out by the ripe old age of four.

However, I've made some incremental progresss in the last two weeks.

Ivan still goes to bed with his born free bottle. But lately (maybe even the last few months) he increasingly finishes drinking "meme" while I'm drying him off and attempting to put "jammas" and diapers on him (there is a lot post-bath going to to bed resistance constisting of jumping on the bed and sheer refusal to allow me to dress him). Once it's time to go to bed, he sometimes asks for more meme, sometimes he doesn't.

(He's also been doing a lot of bed hopping lately, sometimes wanting to fall a sleep in his crib, "drugi krevet" meaning the spare bedroom, or our bed. I haven't been able to decipher whether there is a pattern to his bed preference.)

The incremental progress of the last few months consist of:

1. Getting him to drink from the hard-plastic born-free sippy cup nipple, after some serious refusal and crying. The soft kind used to be preferable because he'd have to suck the milk out and it was softer to chew on.

2. Not promply replacing the hard-plastic nipple once the hole gets too big and too much milk starts flowing. He used to complain but not anymore. So now, he really just drinks from it and uses the nipple to chew on.

3. Getting him to finish the milk before he actually is put to bed. Sometime he asks for more milk, sometimes he doesn't. This still doesn't fix the problem of brushing his teeth after milk and before bed time, but we're getting closer. (We brush his teeth before he gets into the bathtub. And in the two weeks or so, he actually willingly opens his mouth and lets us brush the teeth. It didn't used to be so; he'd insist of brushing his own teeth, which really meant sucking the toothpaste of the brush and then wanting to put more paste on the toothbrush. All by himself of course.

4. Last week, while we were at Whole Foods buying milk and kupit yogurt, I bought a small tetrapack of milk. The kind that looks like juice and comes with a straw. I know he likes to drink from a straw, and he likes those juice boxes, when he sees them at birthday parties. The boxed milk was my experiment. Would he drink milk out of something other than his born free bottle? When I tried this experiment in the past, he'd throw a fit, as he did two weeks ago when I tried giving him milk from another bottle that had a big sippy cup spout.

But this time at Whole Foods, he grabbed the box, "ma box," and attempted to put the straw in. I helped. As he took his first sip, I crossed my fingers. Would he be shocked to taste milk instead of juice and reject it? Nope, he drank the milk. As he repeatedly told the cashier from his perch on the cart, "ma milk, ma milk."

5. Yesterday, we went to Babies'R Us. I was on a mission to find another sippy cup contraption from which he could drink milk and water without the liquid getting spilled everywhere. Spilled milk--all over his clothes and his sheets--has been the unfortunate side effect of not replacing the hard born free nipples. Since the nipples now basically have a huge hole in them, the milk just spills out, especially when Ivan drinks from it laying down or tilts his head back and the cup all the way up to drink it. (Stale and sour milk smell smells really rancid, as poor Medic knows.)

For water, I settled on the stainless steel born free water bottle. It had the best spill-proof lid when not in use and since it's made of steel not plastic, it won't get dingy or stinky.

For milk, I couldn't find what I had envisioned, which was frustrating. All these bottle and sippy cup companies proclaim their complicated and spill-proof designs and technology to be superior to one another. But I found fault with most of them. They either have some commercial characters, ala Dora, Thomas, etc on them. Why do they have to be all girly and pink or macho and blue? They don't have a lid, which is a problem for his lunch box. They're a bottle nipple, while I'm after a sippy cup. They use a flippable straw, which I think is hard to clean (and Ivan will gnaw on it, destroying it in a second.)

I realize I'm spoiled and petty with all these options in front of them. They are options. (Most are ridiculous and unnecessary but still, they're options.) I wonder what moms in poor countries use. I wonder what did my mom use to teach to me drink. I'm sure that despite our latest and greatest Chicco imports, the bottle and sippy cup selection in communist Yugoslavia 36 years ago was quite inferior to the Babies'R Us wall options available to me now.

While I was pondering this wall of options, Ivan insisted of getting something. Finally, I picked up the "right" sippy cup he was pointing at. A munchin two bottle package with straws. Since he wanted it so badly, I bought it. Heh, it didn't seem like a bad choice after all.

Today, he drank milk from it. Except the milk spills out when he lays down or tilts the bottle. Also, he can't get all the milk out of the bottle because the straw doesn't pick it up. So today, I had to keep unscrewing the bottle so he can drink the milk from the cup itself.

I finally put milk in one of those cheap First Years disposable sippy cups with hard, non-chew sippy cup lids. It was worth a try, since he's been so open to drinking milk from a variety of cups in the last few days. He drank from it as well. And oddly enough, the milk didn't spill when he tilted the bottle.

Maybe that was the answer after all. The cheap non-engineered First Years sippy cups. I didn't have a chance to put it to the bedtime test.

Since we were late putting him to bed, Ivan actually couldn't wait for me to put him in his crib. I could barely dry him off and put diapers on him, he was soooo tired. He didn't even wait for "meme."

Eye Infection Continued (Penicillin Allergy)

By last Monday, Ivan was fine--fever free and with good looking eyes and ears--so we send him to daycare (I think this was the day when he got scolded).

But when we came home that evening, I noticed the nape of his neck was red--full of welts and red dots. If it hadn't been for the welts, I would've thought it was a heat rash. But the welts made me wonder, did he get into some poison ivy and where? Then I thought, well maybe they forgot to put sunscreen on him. But then why would he have welts, it's the middle of the summer.

His entire body was covered in red dots. They were bigger and further apart than the heat rash ones I've seen in the past. Chicken pox, I freaked out.

We called the doctor. Luckily, doctor Madden was on call, so there was some continuity with this entire two-week sick saga. She advised us to give him benadryl, take photos of the spots and come in in the morning.

Ivan was reluctant to take a bath that evening--the spots must have itched--by he eagerly posed for photos as we tried to get good shots of his neck, back and legs.

The spots were still there in the morning, despite the benadryl. Andy took him in.
Allergy to amoxicillin, Dr. Madden said. She had suspected as such when we called her the night before. We stopped givig him amoxicillin, as per doctor's instructions, although we were four days short of completing the course. Amoxicillin is a penicillin antibiotic, which kind of sucks because penicillin is still the first and most widely used antibiotic.

But if Ivan's allergic to penicillin, this was good way to find out because the allergy wasn't severe. I called Andy's mom later to chat (in the absence of my mom). Apparently, Andy's dad and one sister are allergic as well. I deduce it's genetic.

I talked to Beth, one of the playgroup moms about it over the weekend. Ethan, her son's allergic as well. She didn't seem that phased about it. It may be an allergic reaction they will grow out. Who knows.

By Thursday, the spots were gone and we stopped giving Ivan benadryl, which was much easier to administer to him, with the syringe, than the amoxicillin. I guess cherry flavored syrup does taste better than the white caramel-raspberry-orange amoxicillin concoction. Why would anything think that would taste good, when just the plain pairing of those flavors sounds gross.

All seemed good until Saturday when Ivan's eyes got all red and gooey again. This time it was the left eye that was oozing goo, while the right eye looked bruised. We called the doctor and went in yesterday, Sunday morning.

Dr. Madden was off and we saw another doctor in the practice. I hoped she'd be the one to see us but oh well.

The eyes and ears and throat all looked good, Dr. Gitterman said. No infection anywhere. He said that Ivan's probably having allergies (his nose is a bit stuffy and he does sneeze occasionally), and that the undereye bruising may be a bit of eczema. He gave us some eye drops and said to put Eucerin under his eyes.

I hope the doctor's right because now, a day later, Ivan's eyes look as bad as they did yesterday.

It's kind of ironic that all these doctors trips happened now when my parents are away. Ivan's been sick a couple of times in the last two and a half years, which, compared to other kids who seem constantly to be fighting off something, is really remarkable.

And now that my parents, who do help us a lot, are away, we had to take him to the doctor's three times. Logistically, it's been a nightmare. Everything falls onto Andy since he's the one with the car, and since my work commute is so long. The problem is that we need to wait until 8:30, which is really closer to 9 a.m., to get a hold of the doctor's office to make an appointment for later that day. So real takes up the entire work day. If my parents were here, then I and my dad could've taken him to the doctor's, instead of Andy having to do everything.

These last two weeks really made me appreciate my parents' help even more. It also made me appreciate my relatively flexible work set up, where I am able to work from home, if I need to say home with a sick child.

Got scolded today

Ms. Yvonne asked Ivan four times today to stop peeling the paint of the walls. He disobeyed. She scolded him. He got time out.

But then Ivan gave them the slowmotion quivering lip, followed by a "protest" (laying flat on the floor). Ms. Yvonne said Ms. Azeb couldn't take it and had to hug him.

Ms. Yvonne told Andy all of this, who told me.

This was the first time that they saw the lip and the protest. We know, the lip is especially hard to resist. One just has to hug him.

I'm sure that of all the kids, they never expected Ivan to give them trouble and disobey them. The lip definitely disarmed them.

It's funny this happened. Over the last few weeks Andy and I have been discussing the need to start disciplining Ivan. My strategy for doing so it to say "no," accompanied by the pointed finger. But as Andy remarked, "no" should be used sparingly for chosen occasions, so not to dilute its meaning.

Most of the time, it's hard to scold him because whatever he's doing is really funny and I have to try hard not to burst out laughing. This is especially true when I try to stop him from doing something or try to take something out of his hands and starts yelling these quick high-pitched "nos" as he's trying to run away from me. It's too funny. I just want to pick him up and squeeze him, not scold him.

He's also learned to give me this disarming, twinkly look, that just makes me want to giggle.

I've also tried the "stop doing that. If I come over, I'll...[fill in the blank] take it out of your mouth, etc." It doesn't really work. Instead he tries to test the waters and limits, to see how far he can push something. For example, I tell him not to put a wire in his teeth (or mouth) and I can tell he does it on purpose, looking at me daringly, as if what are you going to do. So I go to him. He takes the wire out of his mouth, only to put it back in as soon as I return to my original place.

And for temper tantrums, including the floor protests, we do our best to ignore them. I only intervene if the protest is happening in a spot where I don't think he should be laying in, such as the cold porch floor, or the disgusting obgyn's office.

This weekend, Daria and I were discussing discipline options. Then the following day, Jo talked about disciplining Seger. I guess this is the age when this starts.

Daria told me that she heard through the (Russian) grape wine that one of the mom's has a policy of never saying no to her child (and the nanny has to obey.) Instead she tries to redirect the child toward doing something that's allowed and positive, without ever explicitly telling the child no for the negative action the child did (such as running away from the playground down a trail).

Daria and I pondered whether that tactic could work. We were not so sure. We agreed that we think it depends on an individual child's temperament.

Apparently, the culture of not saying no is how Japanese parents raise their children. The theory is, according to Daria, that if parents constantly tell a child no that then the child will never feel confident enough to try things and be daring. Except I don't think that one can compare American culture where our kids will grow up in with the homogeneous Japanese culture where the culture itself puts on various breaks on children, indirectly forcing them to fit in and obey the wider society and elders. There is nothing comparable to that in this crazy everything goes society. So I find parental controls a bit more necessary.

(Well, I was definitely told no all the time as a kid, and who knows maybe I'm not as daring as I could've been, maybe I'm too malleable to authority, and maybe I'm just a chicken overall as a result of this. Who knows?)

Then the following day at the playground, completely unrelated to Daria and my conversation from the evening before, Jo said that she's been trying the 123 rule with Seger. If she can't get him to do something (like get ready to leave the house), she tells him she'll count 1 2 3. If he doesn't obey by 3 that then the window of opportunity for doing whatever was at stake has passed. Apparently by now, Seger asks her if she will count. Again, she doesn't the word no.

Apparently, some parenting book about the 123 principle exists, as Melissa from work told me, but Jo had no clue about it when I mentioned it.

Daria has been using the time out approach with Bella, who is a bit more wild than Ivan. She picked up the technique from the Super Nanny show. A child gets put in a time out for as many minutes as his age. So the two year-old Bella has to sit still for two minutes on a bench in their foyer. When she gets up, Daria puts her back repeatedly, until the two minutes are up. And when the time out time is done, she gets to her eye level, explains to her why she was put in time out, then hugs her to reconcile and that's it.

I remember this technique from the Super Nanny as well, but not in so much detail. But next time Ivan's naughty, I'll try it, especially, since he got his first time out in daycare.

Except I know that the quivering lip will get me. It always does.