How to Talk with a 20-month-old (if you must)

The world of the 20-month-old is a confusing one.

The inner lives of children of this age are developing rapidly -- too rapidly, in many cases, for their communication skills to keep pace.

For this reason it can be difficult to understand the needs of your toddler at this delicate time.

But fear not! Having now survived the 20th month with not one, but two children, I am in the rare position to create for you this handy guide to communicating with a child in this age group.

"NO!!!!!!"

You'll be hearing this word a lot from your 20-month-old. 

At first you may think that your child's use of this word "NO" indicates the traditional negative response, but this is not necessarily the case.

Let me give you an example of a  typical conversation between myself and my twenty-month-old son, Crinks.

ME: Hey Crinks are you hungry?

CRINKS: NO!!!!!

ME: Here, how about some waffles?

CRINKS: (while gobbling waffles with alarming ferocity) NO!!!!!

ME: Are you done?

CRINKS: (while slamming about violently in an attempt to get out of his chair) NO!!!!!

ME: Would you like this check for a million dollars?

CRINKS: NO!!!!!

For the 20-month-old, the newly discovered power of the word "NO" is too much to resist. This means you'll be hearing him or her use "NO" repeatedly and at high volumes in a bizarre range of situations. Be prepared for the word "NO" to become akin to the word "SHALOM" in your home. It will take on a whole range of meanings, including, strangely enough, "YES".  

Uncontrolled violence

As your 20-month-old struggles to express his or her needs, he or she will likely resort to bouts of violence to get his or her point acress. Unfortunately, these bouts of violence will likely be aimed directly at you.

The attacks are likely to come on unexpectedly. One night, as you reach to scoop your beloved toddler into his or her highchair, you will find yourself buffeted about the face and neck by a series of punches. At this time you may also find your abdomen assaulted by a frenzy of feisty kicks. 

The violence has begun.

In dealing with this sudden onset of assaults you have the following options:

• Develop enough upper-arm strength to enable you to hold your offspring at arm's length at all times.
• Define a four-foot perimeter around your toddler and then never enter it for any reason.
• Build up your resistance to your toddler's attacks gradually until you become almost immune to them

The full-body fling to the ground

When your 20-month-old flings his or her self to the ground you should take it as an indication that your have done something intensely displeasing. Your cruelty has broken your child's heart, and he or she is letting you know this through the strategic use of operatic gesture. 

If your behavior has been particularly egregious you may find the floor flop accompanied by ear pulling, hair-pulling, and/or the rending of garments.

In my experience, the full-body fling-to-the-ground can be brought on by a range of parental sins including, but not limited to

• asking your 20-month-old to refrain from drinking from the toilet
• attempting to restrain your 20-month-old from eating from the garbage can
• trying to recover a pair of shears that your 20-month-old has swiped from the kitchen counter
• gently endeavoring to convince your toddler to stop drawing on your couch with a green Sharpie 

As long as you continue to displease your 20-month-old you will be on the receiving end of the floor flop.

You've been warned.

The Horse Collar Tackle

Your child is too young to have mastered the phrase,

"Dear brother, I see you are playing with a blue train. I happen to feel that I would greatly enjoy playing with said blue train. Might I have a turn with it?"

Instead he or she has a method for expressing this sentiment, and that method is the horse collar tackle.

According to Wikipedia:

The horse-collar tackle is an American football maneuver in which a defender tackles another player by grabbing the back-inside of an opponent's shoulder pads from behind and yanking the player down.

As your twenty-month-old will tell you, when shoulder pads are not available, the back of a playmate's or sibling's t-shirt works equally well. 

I have seen my two-foot tall 20-month-old bring down kindergartners with a well-timed horse collar.

Beware it.

You are now ready to take your communication with your 20-month-old the next level! 


If you find yourself discouraged at any time when learning all this "toddler speak" I urge you not to fret! Take heart in the simple fact that this stage doesn't last all that long. 


You'll be out of the pre-talking phase and on to the terrible twos before you know it, at which time I will offer you a primer in how to listen to a three-foot-tall person say "MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM!" for an hour straight without developing a nervous condition.


Look forward to it!

37 Weeks and Counting

Exciting breech baby update!

After reluctantly heading to my baby flipping procedure earlier this week I was elated to discover that Doodle Three had already flipped of his/her own accord!

Clearly this baby is some some of foetal genius.

This otherwise stunningly good news has proved to have one unexpected downside, which is that with the worries of a breech birth out of the way, I have been forced to confront the startling impending reality that --- OH MY GOD WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A REAL HUMAN BABY ARRIVING AT OUR HOUSE IN THE EXTREMELY NEAR FUTURE!

*stunned silence*

Now, I acknowledge on some basic level that after 8.5 months of gestation, I should probably not be quite as shocked by this news as I am.

When I was pregnant with my first I was obsessed with my due date. You could ask me at any given moment how pregnant I was and I would respond with an up-to-the-moment count, 

"Thirteen weeks, four days!" 

"Tomorrow will be thirty-one weeks!"

I could detail on a moment's notice the size of my baby as it related to a variety of common produce, 

"It's now about the size of a squash!"

"Picture a length of swiss chard!"

With my second I was significantly less tuned-in. Still, I could usually guess which gestational month I was in and could even occasionally get the week right as well, if pressed.

But now, with my third, I am so busy chasing after two toddlers that I find I pay almost no mind to how this pregnancy is progressing. 

I'm embarrassed to admit how often I've been caught off-guard by the sudden query, "So, how far along are you?" only to stammer in response, 

"Um, let's see, about four months? Or maybe six? What month is this again?"

I finally signed up for one of those, "Your Pregnancy Week by Week" emails in an earnest attempt to avoid being that woman who goes to the bathroom one day only to emerge with an unexpected newborn.

The other significant difference I notice this time around, especially as I get into the late stages of pregnancy, is my complete lack of anticipation as the due date approaches.

With both of my other deliveries, I was close two weeks overdue and it was TORTURE. With the Snood, I was due September 13th and didn't go into labor until the 25th. This meant that for almost two full weeks I did nothing but sitt around WAITING FOR THE BABY TO COME. In this I had help from hoards of visiting relatives whose sole job was to sit on my couch, stare at me intently, and will me to go into labor already.

I would wake up every morning, turn to my husband and cry, 

"I'm going to be pregnant FOREVER!!!!" 

In response David would gently suggest that he believed this to actually be a medical impossibility before slinking off to work as quickly as possible.

Crinks was due on May 7th and was born the 17th. Again, I spent 10 days in the agony of waiting, experiencing frequent violent outbursts towards friends and neighbors who would call to inquire daily, "Have you had that baby yet??"

But now, with Doodle Three's due date fast approaching, I find I've had a change of heart. I look at the calendar this time and think, 

"Really? The baby is due THAT SOON? How is that possible?"

As far as I'm concerned, this baby should stay put just as long as it likes. Two children into this gig I've finally realized that these things are A LOT more work once they emerge from the birth canal.

And so I find myself lying in bed at night, gently rubbing my belly and encouraging him or her to just nestle in and relax. My due date (according to my latest email reminder) is February 1st, but I'm hoping this one stays put for a little while longer...

...I'm thinking sometime after St. Patrick's Day sounds good.

36 Weeks and Counting...

Welcome to 2012 one and all!

David and I rang in the New Year in true parental style by hitting a 5:15pm showing of Mission Impossible 4. (My review: Mission Impossible 4 - the best movie that has ever been made in the history of ever.*)

We then went out for dinner at 7:30 (Did I utter the phrase, "I can't have anything too spicy due to my reflux!" during this meal? I won't say no.) in order to be home and fast asleep by 9:30pm. 

It was all very sexy, what can I say.

Now we find ourselves hunkering down to await the arrival of the baby we are referring to as "Doodle Three".

At 36 weeks I have officially entered into the physically absurd phase of this pregnancy. I am ridiculously clumsy, I make a disturbing series of random moan-like sounds when attempting to move in any direction, and I possess a near-total inability to maneuver in confined spaces without knocking items over with my belly. TRUE STORY! I recently knocked my three-year-old off his feet with an ill-timed turn in the playroom.

Also, there is the near-constant crying.

Of late, David has been subjected to bouts of tears on topics including, but not limited to

• the commercial where Sarah Mclaughlin sings about the abused animals
• the dearth of Heath Bar Crunch ice cream in the fridge
• the commercial where the kid admits that he was the last one to touch the basketball
• WHY ARE OUR CHILDREN GROWING UP SO FAST?????
• that video on Facebook with the cat who makes friends with the squirrel
• how come my toes are SO weird
• it is not fair that I have to pee again!!!
• you think my hair is ugly, I can tell by the way you look at my head

Adding to the comical dopiness of the late-pregnancy era is the fact that the baby is breech...

...which means that I am now spending any and all free time trying to get the baby to flip over using a series of methodologies of suspect origin.

This means that at the end of a long day of toddler-wrangling, meal-preparing, laundry-laundering, and fight-disrupting you will find me doing this:

and this:

and even occasionally this:

(Did you know that the ancient Chinese practice of "moxibustion"- or burning herbs near one's little toe - has been shown to coax breech babies into changing position? I mean, not my baby apparently, but some babies, I guess.)

What I don't spend ANY time doing anymore is bending over to pick up any of the myriad of things I have either dropped due to pregnancy clumsiness or knocked off surfaces due to belly unwieldiness. This means that my home, at all times, appears to have been ransacked by a gang of marauding hooligans.

I'm hoping that maybe the baby will be willing to help me clean up when it gets here.

* Please note this review may be biased due to the fact that the film Mission Impossible 4 involved exactly no one learning to use the potty or driving a tank engine and therefore represented a massive improvement in recent film-watching experiences. 

PLAGUE Part the Third: The Plague Returns

You may have noticed that there is no blog this week.

This is because along with bringing a train set, a new set of slippers for Mommy and some high-alcohol content beer for Daddy (old Santa knows us so well!) trusty St. Nick also brought us a wicked all-family bout of the stomach flu.


We've been dropping like flies one by one and I've been too busy trying to cool my cheeks on the bathroom tiles and praying for the sweet relief of death to do much writing.


I'll be back next week with all new tales of holiday madness.


Until then I will simply wish you a Happy New Year before returning to my regularly scheduled bouts of projectile vomiting.

Please feel free to join me in spirit this Saturday in my own post-motherhood New Year's Eve tradition of eating cereal in front of the TV until 8:45pm, at which time I announce loudly, "It's the New Year somewhere!" before crawling immediately and unapologetically into bed.


Here's hoping you enjoy it as much as I do.

The Parenting Backslide

Parenting is a lot like pushing a boulder up a hill.

It is difficult, it is challenging, and there are bound to be moments where you slip up and the thing just kind of rolls away from you.


With two little ones under four I'm intimately familiar with such backslides. Potty training, which seemed at some point in our recent history so tantalizingly close to completion, is of late back at its poop-strewn starting gate. Bedtime, which for a month or two was happening like clockwork, has devolved into a standoff with one or more of my children yelling, "MAMA!! MAMA!!!" through the crack at the base of the door as I increasingly raise the volume on my Pandora station in an attempt to drown out their cries. 

But I accept that such behavior regression is to be expected from young children.


More disturbing have been my own backslides as a parent, which can take a variety of forms. There are the times when I bail on the pre-meal hand-washing in favor of just cleaning the kids' paws with a baby wipe and calling it a day. There have been days when educational and stimulating outings have been shelved in favor of allowing the children to run wild in the yard while I catch up on DVRed episodes of the Real Housewives.


And it should come as no surprise that December has brought a cavalcade of such parenting backslides. As I mentioned last week, my Holiday season has been a little bit busy. I've been running around like a maniac doing Christmas prep, and in a particularly egregious example of the parenting backslide, I have accidentally found myself relying to a disturbing degree on a technique I call "Cookie Based Bribery".

It started with the simple reality that at Christmastime there are cookies EVERYWHERE. It is also a time of year when I am constantly attempting to prod my offspring through a series of uniquely challenging events, such as the mad dashes through the local mega-store to retrieve last-minute gifts, the outings to procure wrapping paper and decorations, and of course, the always-dreaded line to meet Santa.


For me, the combination of cookies and behavioral challenges only had one possible solution. 


It started one day as I was trying to induce my two children to don adorable Santa caps and help deliver cookies to our neighbors. It wasn't going that well, as they seemed to prefer running around the playroom in circles with only an occasional break to assault one another over a disputed toy.

Then it came out of my mouth, 


"Just come on and I'll give you a cookie."


All movement stopped as the boys looked at me like German Shepherds spotting a passing squirrel. They toddered after me happily as I waved two cookies in front of their eager faces and every last cookie got delivered without incident.


The next day I needed to run into the grocery store after an outing to the park. The kids were reluctant to accompany me -- and there it was again,


"Be good in the store and I'll get you a cookie."


The slide into total cookie reliance was amazingly precipitous. 


By the end of the week, my entire parenting approach resembled nothing more than a trainer at a wild animal park, as I bent my children to my will through judicious use of a pocketful of gingerbread men pieces. 

I'm not going to lie. It is AWESOME.


I've been truly amazed at what my children are capable of on a diet comprised almost entirely of crumbled up baked goods. And while I accept on some basic level that this is not a viable long-term parenting solution, I'm currently accepting it as the only way I'm going to make it through December.


I'll just have to break it to the kids gently that "NO MORE COOKIES, DAMMIT" is our all-family New Year's Resolution.

comic by Gegen Den Strich

It's the Most Craziest Time of the Year

It would seem that I have a case of the Christmas crazies.

This year, as December approached, my husband sat me down for a little talk. 

He shared his opinion that, seeing as I was 8-months-pregnant, had spent November traveling approximately 10,000 miles, have (as a result) been battling a month-long cold, and have two toddlers who are both currently attempting to destroy our house on a full-time basis, that perhaps we might want to dial back a bit on the Christmas happenings this year.

I had to admit the guy had a point. 

Maybe it was time to dial down the Christmas insanity, thus sparing ourselves an entire month of relentless activity that made exactly no one jolly. Rather than spending the weeks leading up to Christmas feeling deeply overwhelmed, perhaps this year we could really cut back on some of the prep and (gasp) actually RELAX and enjoy the holiday.

I sat down at the kitchen table and made a careful list of Christmas-related activities in hopes of identifying those which might be negotiable.

Here's what I came up with:

• Purchase adorable outfits for Christmas Card photos
• Bake 8 dozen Christmas cookies
• Calculate and prepare Christmas envelopes for Christmas envelope recipients
• Take Christmas Card photos
• Decorate 8 dozen Christmas cookies
• Put up Christmas tree
• Take children to have portrait taken with Santa
• Order Christmas Card photos
• Remove Christmas decorations from storeroom without being killed in avalanche of stored debris
• Host Christmas Open House for neighbors
• Attend Messiah Sing-a-Long (arrange babysitting)
• Decorate Christmas tree
• Attend office Christmas party (arrange babysitting)
• Gather addresses for Christmas Cards
• Attend assorted Christmas parties and events (arrange babysitting)
• Place Christmas decorations attractively throughout home
• Create year-end calendar featuring adorable photos of offspring.
• Purchase Christmas gifts for my relatives
• Wrap Christmas gifts for my relatives
• Mail Christmas Cards
• Convey Santa photo to friends and relatives in print or electronic form
• Purchase Christmas gifts for husband's relatives
• Wrap Christmas gifts for husband's relatives
• Ship Christmas gifts to my relatives
• Ship Christmas gifts to husband's relatives
• Purchase gifts for offspring
• Purchase gift for husband
• Wrap gifts for offspring
• Wrap gift for husband
• Write thank-you notes in response to gifts received
• Deliver Christmas cookies to Christmas cookie recipients
• Assemble hundred-plus piece "under the tree" gift for children
• Clean house in advance of arriving relatives
• Prepare Christmas dinner for family
• Prepare day-after-Christmas dinner for visiting relatives
• Clean house in wake of departing relatives

Not appearing on the above list, of course, are any of the day-to-day activities relating to keeping two children fed, clean, and alive throughout the month of December. 

OK, so negotiable items.


I thought maybe we could do without the Christmas cookies, but then I got sad thinking about how much Snoodie loves them and how nice it is to have something to bring the neighbors.


I decided that maybe we could skip doing a Christmas card this time around but then I realized how annoyed I would be if I was subjected all month to adorable photos of friends' children without the opportunity to inflict my own children's cuteness upon them in return.


I considered scaling back on the decorating but, as this will be our first Christmas in California, I considered how important it was to me to have the house look as merry as humanly possible.

And I realized that I was powerless against the list. 

While I'm sure I could make some small tweaks -- a few edits here and there -- nothing is going to change the fact that this month is going to be an all-time ass-kicker wrapped in a green and red bow of exhaustion.


So I've accepted my fate. I'm cranking out cookies, I'm shopping in every spare moment, and I'm wrapping packages. I'm weeping from the pain of paper cuts and gagging from the taste of envelope glue. 

Actual Christmas Card outtake

And while I may not be particularly merry, I will say this for myself -- I'm getting it done. And that's something.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got several dozen tins of nuts to glaze.

Nursemaid's Elbow

Last year, while visiting Texas, I dislocated my son's elbow.

Yes, that's right Child Protective Services, ya nosy bunch of killjoys! I said I dislocated my child's elbow.

It happened during a visit to my husband's Grandparents. On day two of our stay, my husband's Grandmother and I took the Snood to the local park for a little "active time" in hopes of discouraging him from playing another round of, "How much of my Great Grandmother's china collection can I destroy in the course of a single morning?"

The day was off to a good start. Snood was scampering about the play equipment merrily and running to and fro in a way that suggested a faint hope that in the afternoon -- there might be napping.

But alas, when it was time to exit the playground, the trouble began. When I gently suggested that we stroll towards the car, Snoodie came up with an alternate plan that involved rolling about in the woodchips while screaming "NOOOOOOO!!!" at the top of his lungs repeatedly and kicking his feet wildly in my general direction.

After briefly attempting to verbally convince my son to make his way to his feet and follow me peacefully, I began dragging him by the arm towards the car. After a few minutes of bribing him under my breath with offers of candy if he would just SETTLE DOWN AND STOP EMBARRASSING ME IN FRONT OF GRANDMA, the Snood calmed down and we made it the rest of the way towards the parking lot in peace. But, as I went to buckle him in to his carseat, the Snood let out of sharp cry and began holding his arm at an odd angle.

This clutching and crying continued as we arrived back to the house, and after about an hour with no improvement I realized with no small degree of horror that we were headed to the ER. When we arrived, a nurse ushered us in (after exactly 2 minutes of waiting I might add, hooray for small town hospitals) and immediately pronounced, "Looks like nursemaid's elbow."

From Wikipedia:

Nursemaid's elbow, Babysitter's elbow, or Pulled elbow^[1] is a dislocation of the elbow joint caused by a sudden pull on the extended pronated arm, such as by an adult tugging on an uncooperative child, or swinging the child by the arms during play. The technical term for the injury is radial head subluxation.^[2]

Hmmmmm, an adult tugging on an uncooperative child? I had to admit, that sounded about right. 

Two x-rays, multiple blood draws, and a 6-minute interaction with a doctor later and Snoodie's elbow was popped back into place.  For the privilege of this bit of medical intervention, we later received a bill for close to seventeen hundred dollars. 

After that, I never really gave Nursemaid's Elbow another thought. Until last Saturday, when David arrived home from an outing to the park with a whimpering Snood. I had not been on this particular outing because I'd been prepping for a long-planned afternoon of football watching. Both our teams were playing what we call the "naptime game" and David and I were looking forward to using the afternoon to combine two of our favorite activities: cursing loudly at the television and cuddling excessively.

But as soon as I opened the door I could see that our plan was in dire jeopardy. And when I saw poor Snoodie was trailing behind David and holding his arm gingerly, my fears were confirmed.

I examined the offending arm and could tell right away that this was Nursemaid's Elbow Part Two: RISE OF NURSEMAID'S ELBOW! David explained that while at the park, Snoodie had invaded another child's birthday party and leapt into the Cinderella Castle bouncy-bouncy with his shoes on, thus causing great mayhem and consternation to the princess-clad guests.

David had reached in to pull the Snood out of the bouncer by the hands and, he surmised, this is when the injury occurred. I looked forlornly towards the cold beer and guacamole lined up lovingly in front of the TV, realizing that at least one of us was going to spend the afternoon not watching football, but rather moldering in the misery that is our local ER. Desperate, I started thinking about our last experience with nursemaid's elbow. I remembered how that doctor had only spent 5 minutes with Snood and fixed him up good as new.

And then I did what any good mother would do in a time of medical crisis -- I did a search on YouTube.

There I found a veritable cornucopia of video instructions on how to perform a "nursemaid's elbow reduction". After devoting six to seven minutes to watching said videos, I felt fully medically qualified to perform the procedure myself. 

I lifted Snood from my husband's highly dubious grasp explaining urgently, 

"Honey, please step back! I am a YouTube-trained professional!"

And do you know what I did next? I followed my internet-based instructionals, popped that sucker back into place, cured Snoodie entirely, cracked a Miller Lite, and settled down to three hours of absolutely dreamy football viewing.

I plan to start taking appointments for various medical procedures at my home office beginning early next week. I'll start with minor orthopedic manipulations, but I'm sure I'll be up for light surgery by the end of the month at the latest.

 Just call me.....DR. YOUTUBE!