The red-eye sucks

I'm back from the West Coast. Jet-lagged, cranky, and happier to be in New York than I thought I could be.

Halloween is upon me, and I'm trying to dig out from being gone for so long.

But! Monday I resume Ask Moxie posting. Questions, questions, questions. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Comments

[paola]

Thanks Charisse and Lisa F. DD is much chirpier today and had a bit more of an appetite so I hope she is on the mend. Now this is what Moxie's blog is all about. If a short deviation from the main thread can put someone's mind at ease, I can't see any harm in it. I certainly think don't think Moxie would mind.

[Michelle]

Thanks everyone! I found the Gerber training pants at big box baby store. Said toddler now has 6 pairs of Gerber underpants and 6 regular character underpants. Hopefully this will be enough to get us through a few days!

[CaliBoo]

Update - they didn't actually take the table, it got shoved over in the yard, we found it later. So, silver lining.
Anybody got any funny halloween stories? I liked Lisa's one about the last-minute costume change. There's got to be some good stuff from last night.

[bobeesah]

Cute Halloween tableau:
My 13 month old son was a green, fuzzy dinosaur, complete with red spikes and a tail. When we visited my husband's office for their Halloween Trick-or-Treating a friend gave him a purple baton, which he then started to use, tapping on the ground, table, and people as he walked by. And by walked, picture more of a waddle. With his tail swishing back and forth.

And he discovered M&Ms. His first candy ever. And he LOVES them. Kept signing "more" and "please" over and over. Drooling.

[mom2boys]

The bean and his cousin who is the same age went on their first trick or treating adventure. Bean would take a piece of candy...and then put it back. He's very into empty/fill up right now. :) (Big boy was with his dad for the weekend)

And wonder of wonders, he slept through the night to his normal wake up time of six thirty...only that's five thirty now. Oh well.

Oh and he knows the sign for more!!!! We practiced it all weekend (so freaking cute) and thank you to all the posters who said to stick with it and he'd get it eventually!!

[Jac]

We didn't take DS trick or treating this year. But he was so excited by all the kids at the door. It made it easy for him to stay up well past his bedtime and this morning he slept in until 6:45 - and that's with DST. So yay!! We'll see how the next few days go but hopefully DST won't cause his sleep to be as disrupted as I thought it would.

@mom2boys - my son is same age as your eldest and he just had a signing breakthrough too! "More" and "milk" both in the last week. Am so pleased we kept at it as well.

[hush]

Verrry late to the dance but just wanted to chime in. Barely survived Halloween. We were going to stay home. At the last minute, DH got really wistful & wanted to have the experience of taking our 1-yr-old trick or treating. Which was kind of sweet, but at like 8pm, it sucked big time, as we were all exhausted by the end of the night. Now we have a crapload o' candy sitting around the house that I have been eating. Is it unethical to eat one's child's Halloween candy? Hope not (she said with a ring of chocolate all around her mouth)! ;)

Oh my! Shannon, chin up dear girl! Your "tangents" are always a welcome addition. I agree with the phrasing feedback &BabyMakes75 shared with you. Please don't go away!

Anon et.al., wow. It's an exceptionally "out-there" comment that gets our level-headed commenters fired up like your words did. That really ought to tell you something. Knowing you "have issues" is only the beginning. I agree with hedra et.al. & would encourage you to think deeply about your true motivations. This is a place where people can & should feel free to be vulnerable.

May I have a turn on the tangent bus? My question: "Is this normal behavior?" Here goes. DH and I went to a Halloween costume party last night. We're relatively new in town & knew about a third of the people there. A hour into it, DH said he felt anxious and asked if we could go home. So we did. We talked about it today, and he said he "gets anxious about costume parties," "felt like his costume wasn't elaborate enough" and "just hates adult Halloween stuff." I'm a little concerned because this is so out of character for him (excuse the pun). Any idea what to make of it?

[Charisse]

@hush, no idea whether it's normal or not, but I feel much the same as your DH about grown-up costume parties. Wild horses pretty much couldn't drag me (but I love halloween for kids).

[Lisa F.]

@hush, ditto not knowing if "normal" but dh and I both have social anxiety & feeling "less than" issues, add a new town, not knowing people & costumes & I'd be a wreck!

paola glad your dd's on the mend.

++TANGENT WARNING++
our current stress is moving ds to a new preschool in Dec. not impressed w/current teacher's lack of response to another child pushing DS every time they attend together. I reviewed hedra's suggestions posted somewhat recently around being "That Parent" & advocating for your kid.

And teacher didn't address problem at all, she "didn't see it happening." and wasn't it great that other child is so "fiesty." wtf? Third conversation where I told her DS doesn't want to go to school because of it, she says "some kids tend to hyperfocus at this age."

I can't be in a spot where when my kid is upset & doesn't want to go to school because someone is pushing him, there's Nothing for me to say but Well Miss V doesn't see it, so, sorry! or YOU need to tell Miss V & YOU need to yell No Pushing. Yes, he needs to learn those skills, but it's not appropriate for it to all be on his little shoulders.

new preschool seems awesome(larger, cleaner, brighter, kids his age, cooler play area) & teacher seems better fit for us but I'm nervous about transition which will occur at dh's busiest time of year (unless of course he gets job offer in which case he'll be changing CAREERS.oy) AND new teacher wanted to let us know that she has a boy who is "rambunctious." (is that the male "fiesty?") so will we be going from frying pan into fire? New teacher communicates Significantly Better than current one, and has an action plan.

I feel like we've sat with this, given teacher a chance, and are making a thoughtful decision. I'm nervous about telling her we're moving him (right now he's still there & we've switched days so he's not w/pusher.) and very nervous that he'll be stressed out by new place (more kids, his own age & older, rambunctious boy.)

And his stutter has been back for a while, and there are times when it worries me so it's on my last nerve. My mantra is "Disequilibrium will pass."

[hedra]

@hush, that seems normal for a mild social anxiety that has some 'situational' aspects - I have the same thing, only I overcompensate by going WAAAAAAY overboard on costumes. I couldn't focus much on how much Miss R was having fun, because, er, her costume was her regular clothes (see blog - it was funny and cool and totally her, and I still couldn't quite cope in the moment). And when Miss M took hers off due to discomfort, I had to make sure everyone knew she HAD a costume, really, and it was a cool one, and ... sigh.

@Lisa F., the communication and action plan thing are totally your Happy Signs here. Keep up the communication. Rambunctious means 'low physical control especially when emotionally charged up' IMHO. Careening into people, pushing to be first, that sort of thing tends to land in there. BUT, the teacher is on it, doesn't think it is necessarily bad per se but has a plan to help the other kids as well as that one, etc. That's a good learning situation - where ALL the kids will be supported in learning how to function as a group as well as individuals. I'd be quite hopeful about that one. It won't be perfect, and there will likely be incidents, but they'll be dealt with rather than swept under the carpet. And that's what it's all about at this point.

I bet the previous teacher is still dealing with her own childhood on the 'feisty' girl - she likely wasn't permitted to be feisty, herself. I know I just to get a visceral thrill from watching a friend's daughter be just tough and rough-and-tumble and fearless and a risk taker. It took me a few years to get used to the idea that I was actually like that in many ways, and that it had both upside and downside. I had to integrate it, and it sounds like the 'old' teacher hasn't.

[&BabyMakes75]

Lisa F. re: daycare switching mid-year: as I'm sure Hedra said much more eloquently, you're doing the right thing trusting your gut. I say go with that as your starting point. I've been through the daycare switching, too; once mid-year and once during summer. I realized that both switchings weren't to a perfect place but they certainly were leaving an imperfect place. That it, it was the right decision based on child's -- and MY -- developmental needs as a child and as a parent. (When I say as a parent, communication was one of the issues. One of the reasons I switched from one place was due to many staff members' attitudes about child development being remarkably different than mine. I think all children should be valued even if they aren't the loudest or even kind all the time. I also think children deserve to see their helping role in the world and learn gratitude at age/developmental appropriate levels. Silly me ha ha.)

But. As for the main reason I responded to your post -- I was surprised how much my child remembered the old place vs. the new place. DH and I discussed a lot to check-in that our parental instincts were right about switching when our son would ask when he was going back to old place or see old friends etc. I did go through a bit of a guilt roller-coaster but vowed to wait it out. The guilt also came surprisingly *from* my DH directed at me as when DH discovered that new place wasn't perfect, he vented his frustration at me instead of us working together to work to change or adapt to new place. We got through it though.

So - just a data point of my experience, congratulations for going with your gut. But, if your experience is similar to mine, expect a longer transition time to the new place which may manifest itself as regression or a behavior that needs to be addressed. (Our son started hitting me at home and pick-ups were a nightmare in terms of him running away from me, taking 20 minutes to beg him to get into car seat, crying, etc.)

Silver lining - this school year -- a complete breeze. Drop off is delightful, (he simply gives me a kiss and waves goodbye), behavior to be addressed is completely normal for his age group, (mostly sharing issues etc which we practice at home with role-playing), and pick up is so much better including, most of the time, he'll get into his car seat by himself.

eek, sorry for the long post.

Am I the only one who likes DST because instead of taking the extra hour of sleep I wake up at 5am to have some quiet time to myself? (Remarkably my son adjusted fairly well to new time.)

[hush]

Thanks everyone for sharing your perspectives on social anxiety. The plan DH and I came up with for next Halloween is that he gets to pick out the costumes for us (this year he asked me to do it and wasn't happy with the lame-o ones I chose), OR we will just skip adult festivities entirely. I think part of the reason I'm so concerned about this is because I'm an introvert who sometimes is able to act like an extrovert by hanging out with DH. So that part of me needs him to be an extrovert all the time, which is a totally unfair expectation.

[Lisa F.]

thanks hedra and &babymakes75!
I appreciate the support & heads up.

[discount coach]

We don’t always get our hopes and dreams, and we don’t always get our own way.
But don’t give up hope, because you can make a difference one situation and one person at a time. Did you agree with me？

[rixannoni]

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