How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Name

TK and I are having trouble thinking of names we like for the new baby. While my brother and SIL had a list of about 15 names they're considering for their son, we can't even come up with one strong contender. It's a problem.

Ethan had been something that has kept popping up on my list of potentials. I've been leaning heavily toward it in the past few days. Until today.

I took the boys to the playground after lunch today. I went to a playground slightly further from our house because it's really a good playground: fully fenced in, relatively small so that I can keep an eye on both of them even when they run in opposite directions, yet still filled with enough fun stuff. Generally, it's worth the 10 or 15 minute car ride, even though there are probably four playgrounds that are closer.

Today, though, someone decided to have their kid's birthday party at the playground. It was an older kid turning 9...kind of old I thought for this pretty small playground! They had both of the tables taken up, so I couldn't sit down. They had all kinds of food kids were carrying around, so I had to be vigilant about no one smearing food on the equipment or getting near B-man with potentially fatal food...I don't know what has nuts in it. But the worst part was that the moms were TOTALLY ignoring their kids.

One kid was especially wild. He was pushing other kids, and throwing wood chips around. A lot. Some of the other kids were yelling about how the "boy in the yellow shirt" was being bad. The moms not part of the party were moving their kids out of the area. N-man strayed too close and got wood chips thrown in his face. Yes, I did tell this boy that it's NOT okay to throw wood chips, then I moved my boys as far away from this kid as was possible in the small playground.

Finally, I don't know what happened, but one of the other moms really yelled at this kid (I guess he'd called her son "stupid"). The mom FINALLY came over and was informed by this awesome mom that she needed to control her son. Probably what I should have done after N-man got wood chips in his face, but to be honest, I'd seen this kid running wild for over 10 minutes by then so I had my doubts about the parenting skills of his mother and the effectiveness of trying to get a mom who obviously didn't care to intervene. I mean, it's a really small playground... she had to have seen the non-stop antics her son was instigating.

So Bad Mom finally comes over. And what does it turn out her son's name is? Ethan. Of course. Ruined the name for me. Bad Mom sucks.

__________________

To be clear, I don't think this was the kid's fault. Well, he was probably eight or nine, so he's certainly old enough to be expected to behave better than he was. However, this was certainly a case where the clueless mom is to blame. If your child has been terrorizing the playground for twenty minutes and other random kids are running around calling your son "the bad kid", it's time for you to step in and remind your child about proper playground behavior.

Yes, I did just get all high-and-mighty about parenting. Nice, huh? I think I'm only half mad at the bad parenting, and half mad at her ruining the only name I had on my name list!

_________________

On a related note, here are recent suggestions from B-man to name the baby. I'm getting worried we might have to go with one of these!

• Dinosaur
• Baby Doll
• B-man 2
• Ginko (what they call their imaginary scape-goat who does all the bad things they "didn't" do.)
• Chocolate Chip
• Four Three Nine
  
• And, in an example of how kids don't know when they're being mean, the name of the boy who cries every day at school (because we've been warning the boys that the new baby will probably cry quite a bit and not to be worried about it).
  

Having twins is a lesson in humility

There's something that is really interesting about having twins: they never let you get too proud of your parenting skills. On the flip side, you never get too down about your parenting skills either.

My boys have always been very different in personality, even before they were born. B-man was the wild child, staying up all night kicking me and doing somersaults in the middle of ultrasounds while N-man quietly got into the proper position and just waited patiently for it to be time to be born.

With sleep issues, I always said it was lucky we didn't just have N-man. He's been such a good sleeper...we never had to do any sleep training with him. He just slept through the night. If he was our only baby, I probably would have been unbearable, bragging how easy it was to get him to sleep through the night. But luckily, we also have B-man, who has NEVER slept well. Ever. Up to and including today, at over 3 years old. He never let me get too much of a big head about my skills at getting kids to sleep. But on the flip side, I never felt too badly that he was so difficult. Since we had N-man, I knew that a lot of it was luck. Some kids either sleep well, or react well to your own parenting styles. They're easy, if you will. While other kids don't sleep well, or need you to try out a parenting style that perhaps isn't as comfortable for you.

We're having the same issue with potty training. We put the boys in underwear on Monday. Today is Friday. B-man has only had one accident in all that time. We said, "It's time to use potties now instead of diapers", and he was like, "sure, great idea." It was so easy. What's the big deal with potty training? That was SIMPLE!

Then we have N-man. He's only used the potty TWICE since Monday, and I'm pretty sure one of those was a mistake since he just couldn't hold it long enough to get up and go on the floor. That's a lot of cleaning up I've done this week. A lot of laundry. A lot of floor scrubbing. A lot of frustration for N-man and me. We put him back in diapers today as he's started crying when we try to make him wear underwear or sit on the potty. He's clearly not ready, and I can't think of anything to entice him to use the potty (we've tried bribing with many things...no luck).

So there we go, once again the boys have made sure I didn't get off too easily; that I didn't mistakenly think I was good at this parenting thing. But don't worry, I don't think I'm that terrible at it either. I guess I'm about 50% good, which isn't all bad :)

Random related thought: Did you guys see GWYNETH PALTROW left a message on my blog? Can you believe it? What? It wasn't the real Gwyneth Paltrow? Are you sure? I'm pretty sure she's taking time out of her busy Apple-raising schedule to give me potty training advice...

Random unrelated thought: Did you notice I changed up my blog list so that it sorts by most recently updated? I'm liking it better than my former alphabetical listing. It just seems more egalitarian. Says the girl who goes by What A Card, and always ends up at the bottom of those alphabetical lists :)

Ideas of recipes my kids can help me make?

I'm writing an article for a twins newsletter, and I'm going to write about cooking with kids**. Anyone have a favorite recipe their kids like to help with? It can be as easy as mixing together a fruit salad to something more complex where they can only help with certain steps.

My kids are almost three, and we're dealing with peanut/tree nut allergies. Those are my only constraints.

Random unrelated thought: N-man climbed out of his crib yesterday at nap time. I heard him over the monitor, with his little feet pitter-pattering around the room. Then I heard B-man ask him, "Can you get me out, too?" Sorry, bucko, you're stuck!

**PS~~Got a better way to phrase it than "cooking with kids"? It sounds like my kids are going to be the main ingredient! A little too To Serve Man-esque for me!

No Thank You's

I could use some parenting advice. Here goes: my boys are 2 and 3/4 years old. They are shy, in fact, they still often don't talk in front of strangers. Sometimes they hardly even talk in front of friends they don't see very often. I'm okay with that. I'm shy too, and there's nothing worse than being forced into being overly sociable.

My problem is what to do when they are given something by a stranger or acquaintance: a lollipop from the bank teller, a cup of milk from a waitress, a sticker from the librarian. N-man and B-man are fairly polite in our house: they often say "please" and "thank you" unprompted, and always do with prompting if they forget. But in public, forget it! I remind them to say "thank you" and they cower behind my leg, or hang their head and stand there mute.

So, here's where I need the parenting advice: how far do I push it? Do I let them get away with not saying thank you? I've been trying to model good behavior by asking them to say thank you once, and if they don't, simply saying thank you myself. But they're getting older, and eventually they're going to have to put those good manners on display in public, not just in our house. But I don't want it to turn into a showdown, where I repeated ask them to say thank you, probably making the person they're supposed to be thanking feel very uncomfortable. And I'm not sure that taking the item away would be appropriate, either, given the fact that I believe their lack of thank you's is a direct result of a hopefully mild case of shyness and social anxiety, which I don't want to make worse by turning every interaction they have with a stranger into a battle of wills.

I realize it's completely normal to be shy and reserved in public at their age (although there are plenty of kids who are the exact opposite as well), but I also think it's reasonable to expect almost three year old kids to say "thank you" when they are given something. So what do you think? How would you handle this?

Random unrelated thought: I cooked with grass-fed organic beef for the first time today. Any vegetarians reading this, close your eyes: when I took the meat out to cut up (I was making stew), it smelled awesome. I'm talking about raw, bloody, uncooked meat. Usually it's all I can do not to get all skeeved out by raw meat. But this actually had a delicious aroma. That was a pretty surprising revelation to me. Maybe I'm one step closer to understanding how anyone could force themselves to eat beef tartare. Hmmm, no I'm not. Anyway, the stew came out incredible. One of the best stews I ever made, if I can be so humble. But who knows if it was due to the beef. I might have just been having a moment of culinary genius today that had nothing to do with the meat. Some day I'm going to have to cook two identical meals side by side, using organic meat in one and conventional in the other and then do a blind taste test to see if there's a real difference.

Because I don't trust my taste buds. I expect there to be a difference, so I'm tasting a difference. But I used to think I could taste the color of M&M's (okay, to be fair, I only thought I could distinguish red from all the other colors. I felt like it had a slightly more bitter taste). TK didn't believe me, but I was so sure I said I'd do a blind taste test. Yeah, it turns out I can't taste M&M colors. Who knew!

The Mathematics of Being Sick

How does a 10 minute ear check turn into 3 hours of hell? Well, let me tell you the math of it:

1 child (B-man)
+ 1 followup appointment
+ 102.6 degree fever that came out of no where
+ No ear infections

==EQUALS==

1 throat swab to test for strep (result tomorrow)
1 vial of bloodwork for a CBC (showed high white blood cell count)
1 vial of bloodwork to check immune system (results tomorrow)
1 vial of bloodwork to do a lead test (just so he doesn't need another blood draw at 3 years.)
1 chest X-Ray to rule out pneumonia (negative)
1 nose swab to test for the flu (negative)
1 catheter to get a urine sample to test for a UTI (negative)
2 shots of antibiotics

Oh, and I was by myself with both kids, because I thought it would just be a ten minutes ear check. And it was right during their nap time so neither of them napped. And it ran well past dinner time and we had no food with us.

Extra bonus: we get to go back tomorrow!

I'm a little worried. That seemed like a lot of testing on a kid who just didn't seem that sick. We met a friend and her daughter for coffee this morning and he was running around and in good spirits. He ate breakfast and lunch. I guess I'll wait until tomorrow.

That's a total lie. Of course I asked Dr. Google, and looked up the immune system deficiency I had as a child. It sounds a lot like what B-man has...a propensity to upper respiratory infections (hmm, just like his mommy). Two researchers have also noted a correlation between this immune system problem and atopic diseases, such as food allergies and asthma (double hmm, he has both of those). Well, I'll see what an actual doctor says tomorrow. Hopefully it'll be "just another cold".

The N-Man checks the calendar

January 1. The first day of the year. What does the little N-man do? Decides to climb out of his crib for the first time.

Yep. I know, they're almost two and a half; we got lucky to make it this long without any crib escapees.

And, as if that wasn't enough, he asked to pee on the potty, too. Totally unprompted.

It's like he looked at a calendar and said, "Well, it's 2008, I guess I'm ready to move to the next stage now."

N-Man also cracked us up today by insulting my cookies. I guess I should start by admitting that my mom makes the best Christmas cookies ever. And my boys ate about a zillion of them while we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas.

So, for New Year's Eve, I made some chocolate chip cookies. I make great chocolate chip cookies. I swear! Well, I offered N-man one of them today, and he said, "where's Grandma's cookies?" Tough noogies, kid, you're stuck with Mommy's cookies! I also asked him if my cookies were as good as Grandma's, and he vehemently said NO while shaking his head for extra emphasis of how inferior my baking is.

Unrelated thought: I'm not big on resolutions, but I think my next blog entry will be goals I'd like to pursue in 2008. Get them in writing, make them concrete and measurable. Or maybe not. If I made resolutions, perhaps my first would be to write down my resolutions.