It is 7pm and dinner has been made, but not eaten. I'm astonished at how relaxing it is around here when A takes Nina to the park. It's sunny, and about 10C, out there. I am trying to adopt the attitude that this is SUMMER. 16C at midday, and sunny: about as good as it gets around here, or at least, as good as it's been for the last 2 years. It does occasionally reach 20+, but only for a few isolated, unpredictable days. Our Augusts have been so rainy that our luggage (!) and our shoes (!) and our coats (!) went moldy. Yep, mold is NOT just for fruit, or things left too long in the fridge, around here. According to google, mold doesn't have a natural predator. Can this be true? Anything that ate mold in this country would take the place over. I'll have to go on Ask A Biologist and find out. Meanwhile, in line with the pretense that it is in fact summer, we're taking Nina to the park a lot, eating lunch in the gardens on campus, and generally making an effort to be outside. So he went out and I turned on BBC3 and made a simple dinner.
Every time I try to re-involve my life with music I can't imagine it not being there. At home I used to be an avid CBC2 listener, and I particularly loved Disc Drive with Jurgen Gothe, and Music for a While with Danielle Charbonneau. They've changed it all now - Shelagh Rogers doesn't do the morning one any more since they got rid of Take 5 (which I liked), in favour of Studio Sparks or whatever ... but that was all ages ago and now a lot of it is jazz/world/rock. I like jazz, and "world" (is that like "ethnic"? meaning, not white? or what? aren't we in the "world", and wasn't Beethoven, too?) Anyway, it's all different and I'm all gone, and all that. And I haven't gotten familiar enough with BBC3's programming to listen regularly, but I've just re-read An Equal Music by Vikram Seth, and have again decided that I have to reconnect with music somehow ... Lately BBC3 has been just the thing. I imagine, like in Seth's book, that children across the UK who otherwise might not hear classical music are out there somewhere, in villages, in cities, listening to Piazzolla, to Lieder, hearing the sound of voices joining and thinking: I have to be part of that. So tonight I might finally make it to my Irish music jam. And I've been slowly and sporadically working on a few projects: teaching myself basic harmony (much progress has been made and I can now harmonise simple Christmas carols and folk songs pretty quickly, not that the resulting arrangements are terribly interesting), practicing scales and arpeggios with my eyes closed (really helpful! and not as boring as with eyes open), planning to start transcribing music I hear (I got as far as printing out blank sheet music pages) ... And of course I want to work out how to best expose Nina to music. She can play around on the piano, saying "bam! bam!" as she hits the keys hard, and "pling pling pling" as she plays them softly. She can mimic simple rhythms. She can try dance and sway her arms, sort-of in time (so cute). She can sing "twinkle twinkle" in tune, with a mish-mash of words from abc's to twinkles to yes sir yes sir three bags full. She sings a few other little phrases, life is but a dream ...
Any advice? How do I bring music into her life in a fun way? I wish I'd had music lessons much earlier, not that I want to force it on her.
Oh, and another thing: on Saturday, A and I and a friend started this program. Just so you know, I'm not doing the full ones, but they are. So far, so good - and I'm surprised by how many different muscles got just that bit sore. The goal is to be able to do 100 by Nina's 2nd birthday, approximately 8 weeks away. I will add healthy eating, regular running, developing upper body strength, transcribing music, learning more classical harmony, learning introductory jazz harmony (after probably some simple blues), music games with Nina ... baking bread ... and a million work-related things ... to my ever-growing list of projects. Hmmmm...
Monday 26 April 2010
Monday 19 April 2010
Journey of 1000 colds
Some stats on the common cold: The average adult gets 2-4 colds a year, according to the NHS, while children get 3-8 colds a year. This year, I've had about 12 colds. I don't even know how many Nina's had. No doubt some of mine were just me not quite recovering from one and getting symptoms again, so virologically speaking they were probably not distinct colds, not that I care. The NHS doesn't provide me with a detailed breakdown: how many colds does the average young academic parent of a toddler have if said adult has moved recently from another continent? Hm? And do they really fall in a statistically significant pattern after I go for a nice long run on a Sunday? I think they do. Other parents either say "nope, that hasn't happened to me at all!" (and happily, they say it, with clear voices and clear noses, and without tissue at hand; these lucky folks are more likely to be men, or to be natives of this island that stay home with their kids), or "oh yeah, I was sick for 6 months once!" or "yep. I've been sick since December" (more likely women, more likely other young working parents who have moved around a lot). Hmmmmm. And it's Monday, which is the night of my usual Irish music gig that I try to go to, but I hardly ever do now because it's moved farther away and there's always a reason, usually to do with a cold, or being tired, or being about to get a cold... Hmph. Someone should do a study. Someone else.
Well, it's 8:30 pm. Atypically for us, dinner has already been created and consumed, lunch for tomorrow has been packed. A. has arrived home from work and the child is on her way to bed. Because she's now 22 months old, this (finally!) doesn't involve 45 minutes of carefully singing Baby Beluga, tiptoeing out of the room hoping she doesn't notice we are leaving, or 90 minutes of breastfeeding followed by 30 minutes of attempting to put her down and then breastfeeding again ... I had this book that said "you may have to do this 4 or 5 times but your baby will learn to sleep away from the breast". HAHAHAHA! Try, 40 or 50 times. A day. For a week or two. But yes, she did learn to sleep, and then eventually she didn't even want to breastfeed any more. This involved a very cute week when she needed to go to sleep with the breast *just* a centimeter or two away. I sure miss those baby days, and one day, we'll have another one, or at least, we'll try. But THEN how many colds will I get? Maybe I'll have some immunity by then, or I'll give up on the running, or something.
Well, it's 8:30 pm. Atypically for us, dinner has already been created and consumed, lunch for tomorrow has been packed. A. has arrived home from work and the child is on her way to bed. Because she's now 22 months old, this (finally!) doesn't involve 45 minutes of carefully singing Baby Beluga, tiptoeing out of the room hoping she doesn't notice we are leaving, or 90 minutes of breastfeeding followed by 30 minutes of attempting to put her down and then breastfeeding again ... I had this book that said "you may have to do this 4 or 5 times but your baby will learn to sleep away from the breast". HAHAHAHA! Try, 40 or 50 times. A day. For a week or two. But yes, she did learn to sleep, and then eventually she didn't even want to breastfeed any more. This involved a very cute week when she needed to go to sleep with the breast *just* a centimeter or two away. I sure miss those baby days, and one day, we'll have another one, or at least, we'll try. But THEN how many colds will I get? Maybe I'll have some immunity by then, or I'll give up on the running, or something.
Tuesday 13 April 2010
Pizza
I forgot one thing yesterday when I was writing that long post about all the ways Nina's like my brother: pizza. She's not too fussy about food, certainly nothing like the stories you hear about toddlers needing their peas not to have touched any other foods, or anything like that. I know one guy whose child only wanted fish sticks and chicken fingers, although I suspect he was exaggerating. (I wanted to say: just don't BUY those! but I didn't). But she's not exactly going to eat whatever we make, either, and until now we haven't ever been sure if it was her teeth bothering her, so we haven't insisted on it, and maybe that's been a mistake. But ... I don't like the idea of forcing or coercing children to eat. She'll survive if she skips meals now and then. And frankly, if she doesn't love food *quite* as much as we do, it's probably just as well.
Anyway, we've been trying to introduce her to the idea of cooking. We both like to cook (and we like to eat). So a few weeks ago when we were making pizza, we got her to help roll out her own dough, and spread sauce, olives, tomatoes and cheese on it. She loves olives, tomatoes and cheese, so much so that she kept just taking them off the uncooked pizza and eating them. Anyway, she was a bit worried when we took the whole thing away and put it in the oven, and then I'm sure she wondered why we put it in there if it just got too hot to eat anyway. But then: she loved it. Can a 21-month-old eat an entire 12" pizza? Yep, pretty much.
Oh, the bliss! And then she said "I LOVE pizza" for about 3 days.
Anyway, we've been trying to introduce her to the idea of cooking. We both like to cook (and we like to eat). So a few weeks ago when we were making pizza, we got her to help roll out her own dough, and spread sauce, olives, tomatoes and cheese on it. She loves olives, tomatoes and cheese, so much so that she kept just taking them off the uncooked pizza and eating them. Anyway, she was a bit worried when we took the whole thing away and put it in the oven, and then I'm sure she wondered why we put it in there if it just got too hot to eat anyway. But then: she loved it. Can a 21-month-old eat an entire 12" pizza? Yep, pretty much.
Oh, the bliss! And then she said "I LOVE pizza" for about 3 days.
Monday 12 April 2010
Just like my brother
Most of you out there reading this are my family and friends, and so most of you know my (younger) brother. Some of you even knew him when he was Nina's age. Well, there are some similarities, eerily so, as I don't think I've taught her any of these things. Can toddlers' daily likes and dislikes be genetic? As far as I understand it, when people find a human gene that is "linked with" something, it accounts for maybe a 2% change in risk of that thing, or accounts for 2% differences between groups, or something. My point is that it's complicated. There are confounding factors in people's environments, upbringings; there are other genes too, and other physiological factors, and genes (and other things) can interact. How can it be that my daughter doesn't like to paint with her fingers, but instead holds her hands up, and says "Haaaand. Dirty! Washa hand! I washa hand. Mummy wash a hand...?" It's the same when she gets bits of food on her hand, and she doesn't play in the dirt. Both my Dad and my brother really just don't like having sticky hands, and neither does my baby girl. Amazing.
And there are other things. For example, apparently when I was little, I was very sensitive to faces in books, and could tell if they were just a teeny bit sad. I still can't watch any film rated above about 15 for violence, and I'm even more sensitive to cruelty in film. Nina's favourite book right now is called "Woobie discovers music". My aunt got it for her at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Little Woobie tries to clean his uncle's tuba, but he uses soap and water, and bubbles come out everywhere at the concert. My point is that on the next page, little Woobie is worried and crying. Nina says "woobie crying. woobie sad. Woobie CAR! Red car!". Woobie is pulling a red car on a little string. And she's a bit concerned about the crying but wow, look at that car. MY car. Woobie car. SHARE car. She also really likes buses, so much so that we took her to city centre on the bus last weekend and she is still talking about it. The wheels, you know, they go 'round and 'round. I was showing her pictures of buses on the internet and she loved them. We came to a school bus and she said "Goo bus! GOO BUS!" and she's never even seen one before but my brother just loved them and also called them goo buses. She loves gadgets, any kind of buttons to press, latches to figure out, little things to manipulate and to turn. She can figure out how to get my digital piano to do this amazing demo arpeggio thing that I have never heard before, despite having owned the thing for 12 years. And when she does it, it's an astonishing sound to hear a 1-year-old playing on a piano.
Nina is, as babies go, pretty good about sleeping in. She's unfortunately got me trained now and I wake up at 7:30 with various work issues boiling around in my head, unable to get back to sleep. Often, like today, she's up shortly after 7 singing to herself. But often she's not, and doesn't wake up until 8 or so. I guess when she goes to school it'll be different, but I am very glad not to have to get up at 6:30 like my friends do.
Well, congratulations to the brother in question, who is now ... married! Thanks for the pics, you both look really happy and we are looking forward to the party even if Nina will probably not be a flower girl after all :)
Meanwhile the bedtime thing brings me to another topic: picking battles. As in, we pick some battles, and we let others lie. If you try to fight all the battles, you are always fighting with your toddler and telling them 'no, no no no no' all day long and in the end, how can they take it seriously? and they can never please you, which presumably would be frustrating for them, and wouldn't they stop trying eventually? and that'd be sad. So here are some battles we have picked:
- we brush her teeth. And wow, that IS a battle. But I don't want her "brushing" her own teeth. I don't want her to end up with teeth like mine.
- the carseat. Everyone's got this one. It has taken a while but the carseat is now referred to, by Nina herself, as the "no crying seat". Has she realized that there is no amount of noise she can make, no amount of frantic skyward pushing of the hips, no amount of redness in the face, of desperate tears streaming down her cheeks, that will convince us that it's ok to drive to the pool without her in the carseat? Could it be?
- we do not carry her home from places, especially when we have the stroller with us. It undermines our childminder, who has other children to care for, and who just can't carry her; besides she is almost 13kg now. But that can be a real battle because sometimes we *do* carry her, for stretches, like across a busy street or if she isn't feeling well.
- shoes in the pub. We live in England and pubs are probably our favourite thing about that. But Nina needs to have shoes on to walk around in the pub, even if the shoes come off for her to jump on the couches. More on pubs some other time. They are truly a happy part of our lives.
- bedtime: come whatever, barring SEVERE illness, that kid goes to bed AFTER 7:30. Like I said I do NOT want to start getting up at any time that starts with a 6. Ever.
No doubt there are more battles that we have picked, things like not eating Organix cheese puffs for breakfast, not standing on the furniture, not throwing books (that's a big one, it turns out), not throwing hard things at Mummy, etc etc etc. Those ones just jumped out at me. Here are some we haven't picked:
- eating out of the yogurt container. This is now standard practice for those under 1m tall in our household.
- crayons. The big fat non-toxic ones just don't work. There is a reason that crayons aren't edible or whatever. The little ones may break into chokable pieces, but they draw. Nina never eats them anyway. Come to think of it there are loads of things she plays with that probably aren't technically safe for under-3's. Whatever. We all survived it, and she's not playing alone, and she really never puts things in her mouth anyway.
- "please" and "thank you". We may be updating this policy, but we don't insist on it to the degree that our childminder would like, or that my friends do, although Nina does say them and we encourage it, if gently.
- Routines. Enough said. We don't like them and we don't insist on a set dinner time, although of course there are patterns and we do the same thing before bedtime, etc, so we have some routine. But if we feel like going to the park at 7pm, we go.
Battles I wish I had picked:
- eating some of what we make, not a variety of other stuff like olives, cheese, a cracker and 4 bites of apple. That would be really nice.
- teeth (earlier) so she would let us brush them already, drat it.
... no doubt there are more.
What about you? Are there battles you wish you'd picked or wish you hadn't?
And there are other things. For example, apparently when I was little, I was very sensitive to faces in books, and could tell if they were just a teeny bit sad. I still can't watch any film rated above about 15 for violence, and I'm even more sensitive to cruelty in film. Nina's favourite book right now is called "Woobie discovers music". My aunt got it for her at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Little Woobie tries to clean his uncle's tuba, but he uses soap and water, and bubbles come out everywhere at the concert. My point is that on the next page, little Woobie is worried and crying. Nina says "woobie crying. woobie sad. Woobie CAR! Red car!". Woobie is pulling a red car on a little string. And she's a bit concerned about the crying but wow, look at that car. MY car. Woobie car. SHARE car. She also really likes buses, so much so that we took her to city centre on the bus last weekend and she is still talking about it. The wheels, you know, they go 'round and 'round. I was showing her pictures of buses on the internet and she loved them. We came to a school bus and she said "Goo bus! GOO BUS!" and she's never even seen one before but my brother just loved them and also called them goo buses. She loves gadgets, any kind of buttons to press, latches to figure out, little things to manipulate and to turn. She can figure out how to get my digital piano to do this amazing demo arpeggio thing that I have never heard before, despite having owned the thing for 12 years. And when she does it, it's an astonishing sound to hear a 1-year-old playing on a piano.
Nina is, as babies go, pretty good about sleeping in. She's unfortunately got me trained now and I wake up at 7:30 with various work issues boiling around in my head, unable to get back to sleep. Often, like today, she's up shortly after 7 singing to herself. But often she's not, and doesn't wake up until 8 or so. I guess when she goes to school it'll be different, but I am very glad not to have to get up at 6:30 like my friends do.
Well, congratulations to the brother in question, who is now ... married! Thanks for the pics, you both look really happy and we are looking forward to the party even if Nina will probably not be a flower girl after all :)
Meanwhile the bedtime thing brings me to another topic: picking battles. As in, we pick some battles, and we let others lie. If you try to fight all the battles, you are always fighting with your toddler and telling them 'no, no no no no' all day long and in the end, how can they take it seriously? and they can never please you, which presumably would be frustrating for them, and wouldn't they stop trying eventually? and that'd be sad. So here are some battles we have picked:
- we brush her teeth. And wow, that IS a battle. But I don't want her "brushing" her own teeth. I don't want her to end up with teeth like mine.
- the carseat. Everyone's got this one. It has taken a while but the carseat is now referred to, by Nina herself, as the "no crying seat". Has she realized that there is no amount of noise she can make, no amount of frantic skyward pushing of the hips, no amount of redness in the face, of desperate tears streaming down her cheeks, that will convince us that it's ok to drive to the pool without her in the carseat? Could it be?
- we do not carry her home from places, especially when we have the stroller with us. It undermines our childminder, who has other children to care for, and who just can't carry her; besides she is almost 13kg now. But that can be a real battle because sometimes we *do* carry her, for stretches, like across a busy street or if she isn't feeling well.
- shoes in the pub. We live in England and pubs are probably our favourite thing about that. But Nina needs to have shoes on to walk around in the pub, even if the shoes come off for her to jump on the couches. More on pubs some other time. They are truly a happy part of our lives.
- bedtime: come whatever, barring SEVERE illness, that kid goes to bed AFTER 7:30. Like I said I do NOT want to start getting up at any time that starts with a 6. Ever.
No doubt there are more battles that we have picked, things like not eating Organix cheese puffs for breakfast, not standing on the furniture, not throwing books (that's a big one, it turns out), not throwing hard things at Mummy, etc etc etc. Those ones just jumped out at me. Here are some we haven't picked:
- eating out of the yogurt container. This is now standard practice for those under 1m tall in our household.
- crayons. The big fat non-toxic ones just don't work. There is a reason that crayons aren't edible or whatever. The little ones may break into chokable pieces, but they draw. Nina never eats them anyway. Come to think of it there are loads of things she plays with that probably aren't technically safe for under-3's. Whatever. We all survived it, and she's not playing alone, and she really never puts things in her mouth anyway.
- "please" and "thank you". We may be updating this policy, but we don't insist on it to the degree that our childminder would like, or that my friends do, although Nina does say them and we encourage it, if gently.
- Routines. Enough said. We don't like them and we don't insist on a set dinner time, although of course there are patterns and we do the same thing before bedtime, etc, so we have some routine. But if we feel like going to the park at 7pm, we go.
Battles I wish I had picked:
- eating some of what we make, not a variety of other stuff like olives, cheese, a cracker and 4 bites of apple. That would be really nice.
- teeth (earlier) so she would let us brush them already, drat it.
... no doubt there are more.
What about you? Are there battles you wish you'd picked or wish you hadn't?
Saturday 3 April 2010
Teeth!
There's BIG news today: Nina has now got all of her baby teeth! Every single one! (At least, she's got the 19 that we expect her to get; she only appears to have 3 of 4 lower incisors but the dentist said that some kids just don't get exactly all of them. But that's not the news.) The news is that the second set of molars has come through over the past 10 days, and the upper right one has just come through today.
I can't believe it. No more being up at night with a screaming child, wondering if it's teeth. Now it's sure to be something else! And hopefully, with one less cause, screaming will be correspondingly less frequent. We've had a couple of great nights lately, as a matter of fact. No more Nina refusing to eat because her mouth hurts, only to wake up screaming for milk at 3am. No more Nina INSISTING on sleeping with her face ON my face. Not next to, not nearby, not in the same bed, not in a cuddle, she meant ON TOP of my FACE. That was the first set of molars. She hasn't been breastfeeding since 14 or 15 months when one particular week she just stopped. But when she was, teeth were often ushered in by one or more of those nights. Those nights when every 40 minutes or so there'd be crying, then suckling. Then a bit more dozing, then crying, then suckling. This prompted me to walk around for 2 weeks humming
'when you wake up in the morning, and it's quarter to 1, and you just want to have a little bit of fun, you ....
.... suck the nip! suckle suckle, suckle suckle suck suck.
And when you wake up in the morning and it's quarter to 2, and you feel like you know what you should do: you suck the nip, suckle suckle, suckle suckle suck suck.
And when you wake up in the morning and it's quarter to 3, and you realize that you're a little hungry: you suck the nip, suckle suckle, suckle suckle suck suck.
And when you wake up in the morning and it's quarter to 4, and you think to yourself: "HEY! I want some MORE": you suck the nip, suckle suckle, suckle suckle suck suck.
My point is that teething made us all a little off. I remember when Barbara, our health visitor, solved the problem of Nina not eating. She hadn't eaten "solids" (this was at about 7 or 8 months, I think, back when babies "eat" "solids", rather than eating solids, as it were) for days. Barbara suggested giving Nina teetha (this herbal powder stuff) about 10 minutes before meals, and it totally worked. We had to give it to Hannah for Nina during the day, along with orajel, which we had to import, and calpol (baby tylenol).
I also remember telling myself, and a number of other people, that we couldn't have a second child until these teeth were through. All of them. Because I just couldn't take it. And now they are done! And I DO want another child. I want one soon.
In the meantime, I bought a bottle of bubbly and we had a romantic late dinner reminiscing about all those teeth, and wondering whether parents of children who have teething pain have less children than other parents, and if so, how long it will be until teething problems have been virtually elimated from the human genome. Ages, no doubt. And we'll have more children if we can, anyway.
I can't believe it. No more being up at night with a screaming child, wondering if it's teeth. Now it's sure to be something else! And hopefully, with one less cause, screaming will be correspondingly less frequent. We've had a couple of great nights lately, as a matter of fact. No more Nina refusing to eat because her mouth hurts, only to wake up screaming for milk at 3am. No more Nina INSISTING on sleeping with her face ON my face. Not next to, not nearby, not in the same bed, not in a cuddle, she meant ON TOP of my FACE. That was the first set of molars. She hasn't been breastfeeding since 14 or 15 months when one particular week she just stopped. But when she was, teeth were often ushered in by one or more of those nights. Those nights when every 40 minutes or so there'd be crying, then suckling. Then a bit more dozing, then crying, then suckling. This prompted me to walk around for 2 weeks humming
'when you wake up in the morning, and it's quarter to 1, and you just want to have a little bit of fun, you ....
.... suck the nip! suckle suckle, suckle suckle suck suck.
And when you wake up in the morning and it's quarter to 2, and you feel like you know what you should do: you suck the nip, suckle suckle, suckle suckle suck suck.
And when you wake up in the morning and it's quarter to 3, and you realize that you're a little hungry: you suck the nip, suckle suckle, suckle suckle suck suck.
And when you wake up in the morning and it's quarter to 4, and you think to yourself: "HEY! I want some MORE": you suck the nip, suckle suckle, suckle suckle suck suck.
My point is that teething made us all a little off. I remember when Barbara, our health visitor, solved the problem of Nina not eating. She hadn't eaten "solids" (this was at about 7 or 8 months, I think, back when babies "eat" "solids", rather than eating solids, as it were) for days. Barbara suggested giving Nina teetha (this herbal powder stuff) about 10 minutes before meals, and it totally worked. We had to give it to Hannah for Nina during the day, along with orajel, which we had to import, and calpol (baby tylenol).
I also remember telling myself, and a number of other people, that we couldn't have a second child until these teeth were through. All of them. Because I just couldn't take it. And now they are done! And I DO want another child. I want one soon.
In the meantime, I bought a bottle of bubbly and we had a romantic late dinner reminiscing about all those teeth, and wondering whether parents of children who have teething pain have less children than other parents, and if so, how long it will be until teething problems have been virtually elimated from the human genome. Ages, no doubt. And we'll have more children if we can, anyway.
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