My daughter is tosser/turner/flipper type of sleeper.  She also has pretty much no body fat and gets extremely cold at night, but won’t sleep under covers due to the tossy/turny thing.  My solution so far has been to have her wear footed pajamas at night.  Well, that worked well until we got to size 3T, when the manufacturers apparently made the decision that they could suddenly stop placing the piece of fabric over the top of the zipper which helps to keep the zipper from digging into the neck.  So, her zipper tends to annoy her, which in turn annoys us.

Do you know that in all of the vast Amazon, I could only find ONE  2-piece long sleeve footed pajamas? ONE!  Come on now, I know that there are two year olds that are quite big for their age that could totally still be wearing footed pajamas but are ready to start potty training.  And do you know what will hamper potty training? Yup, a 1  piece footed pajama!

So clothing manufaturers, what is so hard about making a 2 piece pajama set where the pants happen to have feet?  What, I ask?

Also, when my son was about three or four, zip-off pants were everywhere.  And I loved them unconditionally.  There was nothing not to love, and they especially make sense in the climate we live in, which can be warm in the day, but darn cold at night and in the mornings.  But I was only able to buy them for about two years and then, poof! Gone!  Never to return!

Sure, I could buy them at a specialty clothing retailer like REI, but I’m not willing to pay that much.

Why do clothing manufacturers hate me so much?

50% of you are in agreement with California’s recently enacted law that requires schools to teach about the accomplishments of members of the LGBT community. 20% are good with the idea, but not sure how it will be carried out in the classroom. 25% think that it should be up to the parents to introduce the topic to their children. I think the problem lies in how this will be implemented. I am all for it, but are they going to say something like “Harvey Milk, gay legislator…” or just Harvey Milk, yadda yadda yadda. Does including the fact that they are part of the LGBT community make them seem more “other” than if only their achievements were discussed? I don’t know.

As for today, I’m wondering how you react to someone else’s screaming toddler.

Whew, that is a handful of a name, is it not?

I know that the Manolo prefers the Saltwater Sandals for the summertime feets of the children, but I’m going to have to differ with him on this one.

Not that there is anything wrong with the Saltwater, they just aren’t my style.

I bought these Nikes for my 19 month old, and they are fantastic. 

Soft, no rubbing on tender feet, a sturdy yet flexible sole that can tackle almost any terrain, can work in wet or dry conditions, and best of all, adjustable on both the back and front straps.

Love!

Back when I was convinced that I was going to be the parent of only one child, it was easy to look back upon the toddler years with a certain wistfulness. 

Yeah, now that I’ve got another one, I promise I will never look back on the following with any sort of longing whatsoever:

-Diapers.

-The screaming meltdowns.  Not that there aren’t tantrums later on, but at least they aren’t 100% screaming.

-Which leads to the next one, the lack of clear communication.  Because pointing and grunts ain’t cutting it.

-Weaning.

-The whole “learn to feed yourself” ordeal and the ensuing havoc wreaked upon my walls and floors.

-Napping.  Not that I dislike napping per se, but it tends to break up the day into inconvenient chunks, especially with an older sibling in the mix.

-The whole process leading up to the napping, which is anything but restful.

–Teething.  My God, the teething.  The sleeping hours I have lost, with the youngest being the largest offender, have no doubt shaved years off my life.

Dear Fellow Patrons of the Fabulous Little Cuban Restaurant,

I know.

On Saturday night, through no real fault of my own, I became one of THOSE parents.  I’ve never been one of THOSE parents before, and I assure you it was as traumatizing to me as it was to you.

You see, we purposely chose this restaurant because not only does it have fantastic food, but also an open-air dining patio.  This patio enables us to make a quick break for it in case our 18 month old gets squirmy.  We are well aware that the mood swings of a toddler are, shall we say, unpredictable.

Anyhoo, the lovely people at the table next to us, you were being very sweet to her. Especially when she unleashed her version of “hello” on you, which is to basically scream at you until you are forced to acknowledge her.  It’s cute the first time she does it, but gets reeaallly old by the third time.  I’m well aware of this.  You were even playing peek-a-boo with her, which is really above and beyond the call of duty.

And that is why I felt especially bad when, in a fit of pique and knowing that her Dad was distracted, my daughter managed to grab our bread basket and hurl it at you and your table.  She wasn’t trying to be mean, she is merely extremely interested in the laws of physics.

But, I guess I didn’t take into account that even though the open-air thing is good for getaways, it also means the tables are sort of scrunched in closer together than they would be at a normal type of restaurant.

You truly did not deserve to have pieces of French bread all over your table, and I was mortified.

We apologized to you profusely, and you were extremely gracious about it, which sort of made me feel worse.

All I can say is, she doesn’t get it from my side of the family.

Thanks again,

Glinda

When my daughter was an infant, she was a constant babbler. All kinds of consonants, vowels, and syllables came out of her mouth, I even have videotaped proof!  I smugly congratulated myself on my obviously superior parenting skillz.

Everyone, including myself, was CERTAIN that my daughter would be an early talker. Family legend has it that my sister was speaking in sentences by the age of one, and I secretly harbored the belief that my daughter would be right there.

You see, much angst was visited upon us as my son was a late talker.   He was our firstborn, we didn’t know any better. At eighteen months he said “Mama,” “Dada,” and “Uh-oh.” And that was it for quite a while.  I think he began truly stringing words together at around age two, and he completely bypassed the baby talk phase, with every word crisp and enunciated as could be.

So when my daughter’s first birthday passed with nary a word in her speaking arsenal, I didn’t think too much of it.

I mean, she was constantly being spoken to, if not by myself, then by her brother or her father.  Everything was described for her, every action explained, every object given a name.

So I figured the talking was just right around the corner.

Silent Bob, as I call her, had other plans.

Those plans include giving a bloodcurdling shriek when I don’t understand exactly what her grunting means, or what object she is pointing to.  She knows a phone is for talking, as she holds it up to her ear, but anyone foolish enough to try and converse with her is only rewarded with some heavy breathing a la Darth Vader.

So as of nineteen months my daughter has a vocabulary of absolutely zero words.

Not mama, or dada, or brother, or hi or bye or anything at all.

Sure she says things that could possiblby be words, but they are applied in a completely random way and I would be fooling myself if I thought she was really saying anything.

I’ve done some research and it seems that a tendency toward late talking can be genetically influenced, as my husband didn’t talk until he was almost three(!) and so my children apparently come by it honestly.

I know that years down the road I will be standing there, wishing she would stop talking for just a nanosecond so someone else can get a word in edgewise, but damn if it isn’t annoying.

According to this article in the Washington Post, researchers

… found that a lack of sleep led not just to poor performance on tasks that require “innovative thinking, risk analysis, and strategic planning”—though studies have shown all those to be true—but also to increased deviant and unethical behavior in both groups. Examples included rudeness, inappropriate responses and attempts to take more money than they’d earned.

And that is why my friends who are also mothers of young children and I have decided to go ahead and form a posse.  We’re toying with the name “Bad Muthas” but someone else suggested “Bad Mamma Jammas” and I’m sure we’ll have an argument about it before the final decision.

We will go around town with our strollers, terrorizing the locals with our rude behavior.  Why, when we order something at the local Starbucks, we WILL not tip.  

Then when someone asks us about how our day is going, we will point to our “special snowflakes” and ask them how they think it is going when we have to deal with twenty pound dictators all day long.  We will then rough them up and take their wallet.

Membership in the posse will be terminated once your child starts sleeping through the night, no exceptions.

We can’t afford the chance that one of our number might act ethically due to getting enough sleep.

When you see the stroller brigade coming your way, be very afraid.

I did the one thing parents are never supposed to do.

And now I’m paying for it, big time.

Quite a while ago, I made a generalization about parents who use leashes in this post.

Of course, that was before I was pregnant with the Munchkinette and had the smugness of a parent who thinks she is done raising her kids.

I should have known better than to tempt fate like that.

Because I looked at my husband yesterday and said, “If I don’t buy a leash for this child, she is never going to be able to go out in public.”

Stubborn, defiant, and reckless do not even begin to describe her.  When we are out in the front yard playing with big brother and the neighbors, her favorite thing to do is zoom toward the street at full speed, laughing and looking back at my panicked face the entire time.  Thank God we live on a cul de sac that gets little to no traffic.

Never mind that I have told her a bazillion times not to go into the street.  Never mind that I constantly try to hold her hand and she impatiently tries to shake me off every single time. 

And she’s only seventeen months old, so this entire process is only going to get worse. 

I tweaked out my back from having to constantly stoop and chase her around, and that was just for an hour and a half in our own yard.

So after I write this, I am pretty sure I’ll be going online and searching for a kids leash that she hopefully won’t try to pull off.

Now, where’s my fork?