Baby sign language

Children learn so much in the first 3 years.  I also find it interesting how much they forget.  For example, watch a two-year-old crawl.  So awkward and uncoordinated, hard to believe that was ever their primary means of locomotion.

Yesterday, I was sorting through old videos of the twins and came across one of Becca using baby sign language.  I had totally forgotten we used to do that.  And so have the twins.  I quizzed them and they don't remember a single sign.   But from 12 to 18 months, signing was huge part of our communication with them.

Before I had kids, I had a long list of all the enriching activities we would do together (mommy and me yoga, baby music classes, rhythm gym, flash cards etc).   The realities of twins forced me to scale back my grand plans.  I was mostly just concentrating on getting through each day, ideally with no emergency room visits.

Baby sign language was one of those things that sounded really cool, but probably too much work.  I thought you had to take a class or buy books.  I was intimidated by blogs where the toddlers were signing 300 to 500 ASL words.  Whoa!  I'm not sure I want to learn a whole new language.  So I forgot about it.  Until the twins started dayhome and my sister (and totally awesome dayhome provider) started teaching them signs.  

Turns out it wasn't a big commitment.  There's lots of signing videos on Youtube or you can just make up our own signs.  The twins really wanted to communicate.  Using a few simple signs helped to ease frustration.

We really only used about 10 signs:

1) More
2) All done
3) Drink (water)
4) Milk
5) Diaper
6) Apple
7) Yogurt
8) Cracker (which they also used for cheerios or any crunchy snack)
9) Nurse
10) Gentle

As you can see, it was mostly food related (my kids love to eat.) But it helped outside the kitchen too.

The two most useful signs were "More" and "All done".   With those, the twins could tell us whenever they liked or disliked something (songs, books, people, activities etc.).   If Charles wanted to be tickled again, he would sign "more" but when he signed "all done" we knew he wanted to stop - even if he was still laughing.   Becca was very hard to read at that age.  She would stare straight ahead with wide eyes and mouth hanging open which meant she was either completely fascinated or completely overwelmed. Before baby signs, we wouldn't know for sure which it was until it was too late.  The "all done" sign avoided many meltdowns.

The twins talked relatively early but it was often difficult to understand them, especially if they were upset.  The signs were much clearer.  For kids who start talking at age 2 or 3, signing would be awesome.    It must be so frustrating for an older toddler not to be able to communicate.  I can totally understand now why some moms would go through the effort of teaching their kids hundreds of signs.

In hindsight I really wish I'd taken some videos of the twins signing before they outgrew it.   This little clip is the only one I could find.  They were about 17 mths and just starting to transition from signs to spoken words. Becca uses the word diaper ("biper") instead of the sign but she is still signing "more" to mooch Cheerios from her dad.

Persistence

2011 has been a truly dismal year for our garden.  Most of the veggies drowned and the rest are stunted and late.  The flowers did better but still not great.  Strangely, one thing that has survived are the watermelons. 

Watermelons do not naturally grow this far north.  I bought the seeds on a whim with vague plans of creating a makeshift greenhouse for them.  It didn't happen so I just popped the seeds in a sunny spot against the house and let them be.  Somehow, these tender vines managed to survive the late frost, wind storms, torrential downpours, hail, aphids and hungry deer that have tortured the rest of the garden. 

When summer finally arrived ...about mid-august, the vines grew like crazy and set fruit.  Now it's Sept-15th and I have about 6 melons.  I picked one last night to check if it's close to maturity.  I figure it would take at least another 2 weeks of +20 weather for them to ripen.  This is a pipe dream.  I live in Edmonton and it's late September.  Yet every day I water them and each night we carefully cover the vines with a sheet to protect against frost (we've already 3 nights below freezing)  



My test fruit - it LOOKS like a watermelon.



But not ripe yet!

If I were a better writer, this is the point in my blog where I would draw some profound parallel about how this persistent plant relates to some aspect of my life.

But I got nothing.  I just think it would be really cool if I could grow watermelons.

Perspective

Last Friday, I had a very bad morning.  It started out so promising.  I woke up bright and early (at 4 am) ambitious to put the house in some semblance of order before the weekend.  I even washed the kitchen and great room floors after picking up all the random items that mysteriously accumulate there each week.

An actual sample from today's floor: assorted small toys, crackers, ball of dryer lint, rocks, wooden spoon, nail clippers, Birds's custard powder,  outlet cover (that's not good),  IPOD earphones and marker with no cap (better check the walls).

I even had time to give the twins a morning bath and wash their hair (no easy feat - they really hate getting their heads wet). 

And then....chaos.

For reasons unknown, the twins exited the bath, made an immediate beeline to the pantry and climbed up to raid the brown sugar container.  They rubbed handfuls all over their naked bodies and into their still-wet hair.  Then they worked in tandem to dump the rest of the sugar onto the ground.  I was running this way and that to gather brooms and dustpans and stop B from licking the sugar off the floor when C opened the fridge to grab a 4L carton of milk.  It fell to the floor, split open and turned the entire kitchen into a wet sticky mess.  

I will admit that there was some yelling.  And some empty threats.  And some not-so-empty threats.

I got them re-washed, dressed and out the door when they managed to foil me yet again by deliberately locking themselves in my car (with the keys inside...of course).  While I searched for the spare set, they alternated between wailing on the horn and pulling every single card and piece of paper out of my wallet, ripping up some and scattering the rest all over my car.  

When I arrived at dayhome (1 hour late), I was fuming.  My sister (and totally awesome dayhome provider) joked that this would make a great blog post. 

I stared at her blankly.  "But it's not funny.  All I feel is rage."  White. Hot. Rage.

I have been waiting 4 days now for perspective to set in.  But nope, it's still not funny.  Not at all.   It drives me absolutely nuts when they are bad just for the sake of being bad.   And it's not just me, google 'twin escalation syndrome" sometime.   

Did I mention that while they were dumping the sugar, they were singing the song from the Wonderpets..... "What's going to work? Team work."  

Or that when I got the car door open, B was clutching my Visa card and explaining to C that she would use it to buy him a pony for his birthday.

Or that when my sister encouraged them to apologize to me, they dropped to the floor and started kissing my feet. 

Ok, perhaps it was a tiny, little bit funny. 

Successes and failures

First some updates...

Potty-training: 

It seems the freezer incident foreshadowed a breakthrough for Charles.  We tried him diaper free at camping and there was progress!  The attractive young ladies suntanning on the beach may have disagreed though when C calmly dropped his pants and peed on the sand right in front of their towels.  I expect most people would classify that as a potty training fail but I'll take what I can get. 

The bad news is that Becca regressed all the way and is now back in diapers full-time.  And also she still really, REALLY misses her piglet pants. 

Still the biggest parenting fail of the year.

If you ever come across the matching pants for this shirt (like at a garage sale or whatever) I will pay ANY amount of money for them.

Potty-mouth:  

It’s been 3 weeks without an F-bomb.  I claim parenting success!!

The terror index: 

On Monday, the TV was playing in the background when Jurassic Park III came on.   I jumped to turn it off explaining that it was too scary.   “No mama! PLEASE!!!!  We wanna see the dinosaurs.”  They proceeded to watch the entire film, laughing uproariously throughout and rewinding the spinosaurus and raptor attacks over and over again.  You just can’t predict what small children will be scared of.  T-Rex stepping on a guy’s back and biting his head off is the funniest thing they have ever seen.  But Hindi Baa Baa Black Sheep sends them running for cover.  

Look at those teeth!  How were they not afraid of that?!

For this one, I would probably get a parenting fail because clearly that movie wasn't at all suitable for toddlers.  I know that.  I admit it.  I'm just sooo tired of watching Wonder Pets.

Now some new stuff:

I consider it "taking a break" whenever I get to go somewhere with only one toddler.  When separated from their partner-in-crime,  the twins are unusually subdued and almost compliant.  This is why I agreed to take Charles with me to the campground shower house this past weekend while Becca stayed with daddy.  And he was great.  Waited patiently in line for 40 minutes and then sat quietly while I took a blissful 2 ½ minute shower (yes, that's how low my standards for bliss have fallen).  He did start to get restless while I was drying my hair though.  It was hot and crowded and loud from all the blow dryers.  He asked if he could wait for me on the bench outside. 

Me: “No, you have to stay with me.   There’s a parking lot out there and the cars drive really fast.  It’s too dangerous ” [seems I say those words a lot]

Charles:  “But I will stay on the sidewalk….or on the grass.  And I won’t go into the forest.  And I won’t leave with anyone but you.  And if someone tries to take me, I’ll scream really loud and run back here.”     

I opened my mouth and then closed it again.  He had already anticipated and countered all of my arguments.   (Note to self: start saving money for law school.)   So I let him wait alone outside for me (although I did sneak occasional peeks out the door to check up on him).  He was so proud of himself and talked about it the whole way back to our campsite.

I was in the middle of writing this post yesterday when I first heard about the heart-wrenching story of little Kienan Hebert -- the 3-year old boy who police believe has been abducted, possibly right out of his own bedroom.  It's every parent's nightmare and it makes me want to hold the twins very tight and never let either of them out of my sight again. 

Recently, I've been reading the Free-range parenting blog and I do agree with the idea in principal that sheltering our kids too much might actually impair their development.  And I understand the statistics too.  Stranger abductions ARE very rare.  So much so that each incident makes headline news right across North America.   I know that my kids are FAR more likely to be injured or killed in a car accident, or from drowning, or in the playground etc.  But in practice it's not that easy.  I can't imagine anything worse than what Kienan's parents are going through right now.  It makes me sick to think about it.  I don't know if I ever will feel truly comfortable letting the twins walk to school by themselves or ride their bikes alone to the playground like I did when I was a kid.  Or if I would let Charles wait by himself on that bench again.

Tonight I'm praying that little Kienan is found safe.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(9/11/11) Edited to add:

I was crying big sloppy tears this morning when the news broke that Kienan was returned safe by his abductor.  What a miracle!  Just imagine the joy his dad felt to open that door and see his little boy on the couch holding his blankie.  The world seems like a much brighter place today :-)

It's a good thing that urine is sterile

Attention parents:  I will pay $5,000 to anyone who can come to my house and potty-train my kids.  I don’t want advice or encouragement.  Please just come here and do it for me.  Because I am a dismal failure.

The stats as of Aug-31-11:

• 8+ mths of potty training
• 6 potty training bootcamp week-ends
• 1 kid still in diapers
• 1 kid in undies…mostly
• 2 pee accidents per  day… minimum
• 0 poops in the potty for Charles…not once… in 8 months.

C and B have hit all their other milestones without much effort, which is unusual for twins and we know that we've been fortunate.   But it makes this potty training thing all the more frustrating.  To paraphrase Go the F*ck to Sleep:  How come you can do all this other great shit but you can’t walk to the freaking bathroom and pee?

A childhood friend had an uncaged pet rabbit.  I was pretty disgusted at how Mr. Flopsy would hop around the house pooping little rabbit pellets randomly on the carpet.   Well, that's pretty much where Charles is at right now.  Until very recently, he didn't even notice that he had to go, much less could he hold it long enough to make it to the potty.  This I can understand though - he can't help it.  It's just taking a little longer for his bladder to mature.

Becca on the on other hand, I can't figure out.  She was doing great back in June but now... regression city.  She's fine as long as she's bare-bummed.  But put pants on her and she has an accident about 50% of the time.  It's hard to motivate her. She'll tells me she WANTS to wear diapers and be "a tiny little baby."  I've tried all the usual things like stickers, candies, potty dances etc.  Even warnings that she can't go to preschool until she's trained.  Nada.

Logically I know they aren’t tormenting me intentionally.  Every child develops at their own pace and you can’t force it until they're ready. Blah blah blah.  But lately I'm starting to suspect they ARE doing it on purpose. 

Things hit a new low last night.  I was walking past the pantry and found Charles standing on a stool in front of the freezer with the door open.  He had a huge grin on his face, his pants were around his ankles and he was PEEING INTO THE FREEZER!!!

WTF!?!  What would possess him to do such a thing?  And more importantly, how do I get him to do it in the toilet??   Perhaps I should be happy.  He did recognize that he had to go and he pulled down his pants first.  That's a big step forward....right?

Greg had to step in to deal with the aftermath and talk to Charles about it.   I was too busy hiding in the bedroom so C wouldn't see me doubled over with laughter.

Sadly, I didn't get a photo of Charles caught in the act.  Instead here is another pic of him at the freezer (recklessly helping himself to a freezie).    You'll just have to use your imagination to picture the peeing part.


Scissors + wobbly stool.  What could go wrong with that?

Have a good long-week end everyone.  The weather here looks great for one last trip to the beach for the kids and maybe some binge drinking for mommy and daddy.


Cheers!


PS: I did throw out most of the food from the freezer....but not all of it.  Do keep that in mind if you ever drop by for dinner. 

How I taught my kids the 2nd most offensive swear word in the English language.

I'm sad to report an unfortunate escalation in the level of profanity in our household.

The twins' foray into salty language started innocently enough.   If they tripped or dropped something, they’ll pipe up with an “oh darn!” or “oh crap”.   We let it slide because frankly, it was adorable.

Adorable turned to hilarious in June with the douchebag incident. One morning Charles was resisting getting dressed and I jokingly warned him that “only a douchebag walks around with no shirt when it’s 17 degrees out. You don’t want to be a douchebag do you?” Fast forward 2 days. We’re at the grocery store and in walk a couple of Jersey Shore rejects....

Kinda like this only less cut and more orange.

Charles shouts with unrestrained delight “LOOK MAMA!  IT'S A DOUCHEBAG!”  And just in case anyone missed it the first time, B chimes in with “No Mommy, ITS TWO DOUCHEBAGS!”   Yeah, I should have been embarrassed but I  was laughing WAY too hard.  Just the idea of these two yahoos being called out by a couple of two-year olds.   It was priceless.

Where does my tolerance for bad language end you may ask?  I found out last week-end.   I do make some effort not to swear in front of the kids but occasionally something slips past the filter.   At breakfast I burned myself badly on a hot pan and let out an emphatic  “Mother f#cker!”  The kids didn’t seem to notice and I forgot about it. 

Later that day, I was investigating a suspicious silence and found them out in the garage playing in the tent trailer.  They were taking turns mimicking my transgression and giggling like mad.   Conventional wisdom in these situations is don't make a big deal about it.   If you scold them or worse start laughing, they may use the word even more, just to get a reaction.    So I ignored it… but it didn’t go away.  

They found many opportunities to break out their new word.  In the car, in the house, while at camping....  We were walking in the woods and came to a fork in the trail.  Charles didn't know which path to choose so he throws up his arms and shouts "MOTHER F#CKER!!"  Greg and I just about peed our pants.  Is there some kind of parenting medal for not laughing in situations like that? 

It’s typical really.  They never pick up any of my fake curse words like “Firetruck!” or “Son of a Biscuit!”  or  “Mother of Pearl!” or "Jeebus Crispies"  But the one time I slip up, it’s burned on their brains forever. 

So we had a long talk and I think I’ve convinced them to edit it from their vocabulary.   The big stumbling block was that Charles wanted to know WHY it was such a bad word.  WHY would it make people sad if he said it?   Would it be ok he said it when he was alone?   I had trouble coming up with a good response.  I'm certainly not going to explain the definition of the word to a 2 year-old. 

I will probably explain when they're older though as an additional deterent.   I recall an incident from my junior high days.  My dad and I were arguing about whether I was allowed to use the word ‘bugger’.   It was a popular insult among my peers and I didn’t see the harm in it.  Finally my Dad asked if I even knew what the word meant.  Turns out I didn't.   Having my Dad explain it to me was probably the single most mortifying incident of my teenage years.   I have never uttered the word since.  Even now just typing it makes me shudder.

Unfortunately, it will be years before I can pull something like that with the twins.   In the mean-time, we’ve added #6 to our whiteboard.

The scariest freaking thing on the internet.

So it turns out that having a blog is just another thing for me to procrastinate.  There’s so much that I’ve wanted to write about these last two months but I keep getting bogged down with the notion  that I have to catch-up first.  Well, clearly that’s not going to happen so I’m going to take the advice of Flylady and not even try, just jump in where I am.

So here it goes....

I recently discovered something even more terrifying for the twins than coyotes.

It's always a struggle to find activities to occupy B and C during the “witching hour”.  That's the stretch of time right after I pick them up from dayhome when I try to cook supper and they try to  destroy the house and/or inflict serious injury on each other.  They used to watch cartoons but now it seems they're too cool for Treehouse.   As B puts it “But it never stops, Mama.  It just never stops.”  I can't argue with you there.

They do, however, love watching You-tube videos.  I’ve created a few playlists of nursery rhymes and kids songs but they kept asking me to replay or skip videos which defeats the whole purpose.  So I taught them how use the mouse to select and play videos on their own.  This worked great.  I was amazed at how well they cooperated, deciding which which video to watch next and taking turns with the mouse.   I kept an eye over their shoulders so I could jump in quickly if they clicked onto something inappropriate. 


But it turned out that danger lurked in an unexpected place.    One day they stumbled onto this video. 

On the surface it seemed harmless.   Then the screaming started.  Full-on blood-chilling screams.   Incoherent wailing, tears pouring down their faces.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  I ran over and scooped them up trying to figure out what calamity had caused such an extreme reaction.  Crushed fingers? Electric shock from the computer?  Razor blades in their cereal bars?   I had no idea it was the video.  They finally calmed down enough to explain.  “The sheep said “Baa”, Mommy.  It was so scary.  Don’t play that Baa Baa Black Sheep EVER AGAIN!!!” 

I am ashamed to admit that I briefly considered recreating the incident so I could capture their reaction on video, but that would be evil... bordering on child abuse... so you’ll have to take my word for it. 

I still can’t put my finger on what exactly was so terrifying about poor Baa Baa Black Sheep.  Sure the animation is lame and dialogue stilted.  But the twins love all the other nursery rhyme videos from Rajshri.com which are just as weird.  

So they don’t go on Youtube by themselves anymore.   And I'm still looking for a new distraction for witching hour.