Biting and banging

Amy continues the difficult task of developing her own person while maintaining intimacy with her parents.

I mean, today Amy tried to bite me twice, and had her first head-banging-on-the-floor tantrum.

The head-banging was in response to my requiring that she not step on her new puzzles. She continued to step on one, and so I removed her from it. Down she fell into a pile on the floor, and thrashed her face against the floor several times. And it was over.

I managed not to laugh. No, the impulse wasn’t because tantrums are funny in general (although they can be, from the outsider’s perspective), but because this is exactly how I threw my own tantrums. Except I don’t think mine were over so quickly.

I again remind myself that tantrums are not funny from the tantrum-thrower’s perspective. It is all serious work, expressing frustration and anger, that sense of being thwarted, the helplessness, the need to lash out, but the forbiddenness of taking it out on the mama. I again remind myself to respect Amy’s feelings and have compassion for her.

The first biting attempt was during an unusual afternoon snack.

We don’t normally do an afternoon snack, but we’d had lunch earlier than usual and I expected dinner to be later than usual. So we each had a small bowl of the black bean stew I made earlier that day, mainly for our lunches this week.

When it was all gone, and I explained that fact, and that it was just a snack, and proceeded to wipe her face and undo her high chair buckles, she started thrashing her arms and legs. I got out of the way of the legs and held her hands, told her that it’s okay to be frustrated but not okay to hit mama, and all the while she’s aiming her open mouth at my hands and arms.

The second biting attempt was after dinner. She came with me to put some clean towels away in the linen closet, and as she closed the door for me I noticed her sleeves were still rolled up from dinner. So I stopped her and started to unroll them, and again the mouth was hurled at my elbows.

I tried a technique I learned about from some other moms here, a kind of time-out for toddlers who aren’t old enough to do a regular time-out. I held her arms to restrict her movement for several seconds, and told her “no biting.”

And so it goes.

And let me continue the fight to be like God, sympathetic and unyielding, each in its appropriate place, to have compassion and respect, without being manipulated by her and without exasperating her.

The Ides of March

Last night we watched a Shakespeare movie, but it was Hamlet, not Julius Caesar (beware the Ides of March…).

This morning Amy Gormaly took me out for tea, just us with no kids — uninterrupted (except by each other) grown-up conversation. Then we visited the thrift shop, where I found a wooden box of wooden puzzles.

Mark and Amy are playing with them in her room right now. She is repeating the names of pieces as Mark tells them to her — shapes for one puzzle (ah ah ah = octagon), now letters for another. Some she remembers the names and announces them herself.

Later I went to a baby shower — just got home a bit ago. Mark picked out some flannel for me while he and Amy were out shopping, and I hemmed it into a square swaddling blanket. He also picked out some links.

I am ready to be home now.

Amy on Thursday

Had breakfast in her room. Her new thing is trying to eat her dry Cheerios with a spoon. She works hard to get one or two on the spoon and keep them there up to her mouth, and she succeeds a fair amount. She gets frustrated sometimes and wants a break, so asks me to help with the spoon. When she makes a mess, with prompting and demonstration, she’ll help me pick up the ones she’s spilled and put them back in the bowl.

Brought books for me to read to her in the living room. After a bunch I said “one more and then Mama is going to do something else.” And she said “exercise” (excise) and waited for me to turn on the tv and my dvd and get to work. So I did.

Started to have a peanut butter sandwich for lunch. Took it apart and started poking in the peanut butter. I put it back together and cut it up into bites. Soon there was screaming. She couldn’t tell me what was wrong, but every time she put one of those bites in her mouth, she got upset. I guess the peanut butter was too thick, or otherwise not what she was expecting. So that went into the compost container, and we had something else.

Went out for a walk after lunch. Yesterday we went outside in the yard for a bit, but her shoes were all still wet from being washed, so she was out barefoot and didn’t like the feel of the grass. Today she had shoes and socks on, and walked between me and the umbrella stroller, holding on to it as if she was the one pushing it. When we got to the end of the driveway, she did NOT like the gravel underfoot. Later when we got to a yard with a dog we know, she did NOT like the grass underfoot between the road and the fence as we went for a closer look. Soon after that yard she wanted to ride instead of walk, and went to bed as soon as we got home. There was much protesting, but it ended very quickly; she was more ready for that nap than she thought she was.

———

Another short nap, grumble, grumble.

Three-syllable utterances are starting. We’ve had kitty doctor (kee doc tuh), Goodnight Moon (I forget how she said that one as she pulled out the book), and peanut butter (pea buh uh; she was playing with a freshly washed (plastic) jar).

We went to Bible study at church, but she howled in the nursery and kept falling down when we brought her down with us, so we gave up and came home.

1. I wore my new pants today, after letting out the hems and notching the curved seams. I love them. They are warm and soft and fit. They are still shorter than I’d like, and I still tug at the back waistband when I sit, but I am mostly very pleased.

2. I dreamed last night that I was doing some work for someone I know from dulcimer festivals. She shows up in my dreams occasionally — it always seems to have something to do with my musical and other ambitions, and with my social awkwardnesses. Anyway, in this dream, she paid me with a margarine tub of cocaine. Which was awkward. I finally had to try to tell her that I didn’t feel right taking it to sell — if I didn’t feel right about using it myself, how could I feel right about selling or even giving it to someone who would use it?

3. I went to the Methodist thrift shop in Culver today, to hunt for more pants. A couple people I know from Culver love this thrift shop, especially compared to the Plymouth Salvation Army which they dislike. It’s nice enough, but I think the Salvation Army, since it’s bigger, is a wiser first choice for me — more selection. The Salvation Army store is not as pretty and tidy, but it’s not bad. Anyway, I did find a pair of dark mossy green corduroys for me and a pink turtleneck for Amy, and spent $1.25, which is nice.

4. I went to the liquor store, too. For a bottle of sherry, for the ginger beef that Mark made for my birthday dinner. The real deal, with real garlic and ginger and fresh veggies. Mmmmm. Anyway, I felt a little funny walking into a liquor store, but it was fine. The two girls working there were much younger than me; perhaps just a few years legal themselves.

5. Amy somehow got hold of the knife Mark was using to cut up her broccoli (brah-kee) and held it up, proclaiming “knife” (nie).

6. A little later she started crying in frustration, saying “help” (hup or hep). Finally we figured out that she was trying to pick up the drops of milk that she had spilled on her tray.

7. She pooped on the potty again (second time) the other night.

8. For a long time she hadn’t peed on her naked time blanket, so I had taken the tarp out from under it — it makes things slippery. But yesterday she let loose buckets three times, so the tarp is back.

Grey eyes again

My most popular posts are two that talk about Amy having grey eyes. Apparently these posts show up in Google image searches.

They might be getting browner. Hard to say, they look so different on different days, in different clothes. Here’s today, at fifteen months (with residual tuna on her face):

Here’s at eight months:

From the camera of…

My mother-in-law got these nice pictures while visiting this weekend:

Accidentally taken with the “night scene” setting, I think; must have been a long exposure and a moving kitty.

Our little family just about ready to leave for church.

Amy at the party

Photo by Andrea.

15 months well visit

Amy went to the doctor yesterday.

She enjoyed playing in the waiting room, where her ability to stand and walk amazed a little boy. (This baby can stand! he said to his brother.)

She cried a little at various points as she got weighed (stood on the scale like a big girl), looked at and poked and prodded, by nurses and then the doctor. But she did not howl continually, and even had some smiles for some of the staff.

She continues in about the 50th percentile for weight and 75th for height and head circumference.

She’s got a ninth tooth, looks like one away from the bottom front row, on the right.

Her right thumb is all hard and chapped, and if we want to we can put a bit of Vaseline on it. It doesn’t seem to bother her, though.

And we got the okay to try peanut butter, since we have no history of nut allergies.

Amy’s swimsuit

Tankini top and swim diaper by Imse Vimse. And, for a back-up, a denim stripe swim diaper by Diaperaps.

Apparently one can take a baby swimming at the Culver Academies gym. I need to get the details before I venture over, though. And, yes, I have a new swimsuit, too. Much as I loved my previous one, it had somehow become much too small.

The flying poop

Amy continues to be aware of and interested in her bodily functions.

Typically, once lunch is done and I’m in the middle of washing the dishes, Amy will approach and announce, “Pee,” which usually means “poop.” I’ll take her to her room, get her pants and diaper off, and let her do some naked time — which usually includes sitting on the potty for a few seconds every once in a while. And every once in a while she’ll start to cry and say “Pee” again, and some of those times I’ll set her on the potty and other times I’ll leave her alone.

Sooner or later, the poop will begin to emerge. Once I got her onto the potty in time for the poop to land completely inside. Once, half fell neatly onto her old comforter / naked time blanket and half landed in the potty. More often, the whole thing falls onto the blanket — neatly. Usually nice and easy to pick up with a (nice thick cloth) wipe.

Today, two things coincided: Amy did NOT want to be placed on the potty, and limbs were flailing — and the poop was rather, erm, soft.

Some landed on the front of the potty.

Some landed on the blanket.

Some landed on her socks, shoes, and legs.

Some flew all the way over into the tea set.

Some stuck to her bottom.

Not one bit ended up IN the potty.

Well, it’s a good excuse to wash the tea set and that old blanket and vacuum the floor and have a bath.