The Small Family   

Oh, what a week it has been in the Small household! The Great Plague of 2010 struck us! Okay, maybe that’s a bit overly dramatic, but we did all get hit with the stomach flu, which made for a very trying few days. Let me start at the beginning…but before I forget, we have a new video posted to the Videos page! It’s called Work and Play with Theo. Hope you enjoy it… I had a little fun with iMovie this time.

Our week began with Theo’s Little Gym demo day--this is where the class is opened up to people other than parents/caregivers, and the tots demonstrate all the fun skills they’ve learned throughout the semester. We were allowed to bring cameras into class to document all this excitement, but since I had no one else with me to help with Theo, I just relied on my iPhone camera (which is much less cumbersome than my Canon). Grandma Diane was supposed to attend, but she’s still recovering from that nasty bout of diverticulitis, so she was still housebound. Thus, the pictures of demo day aren’t of the highest quality…but I thought you might enjoy them anyway. It was a fun morning, and Theo enjoyed himself immensely. The one bummer was that he finally decided he wanted to participate in the parachute activity, but bully child Wyatt wouldn’t let him. Thus, you’ll see pictures of Theo running around the parachute, but not under it like the rest of the kids. Nevertheless, I was pleased that he finally showed some interest in joining a group activity. (I have to restrain myself from taking on these bully kids. Most kids are good kids at heart and try very hard to share even while struggling with that concept as toddlers, but in any group, there’s always a bully. In this particular class, twins Wyatt and Teagan tend to be the bullies. This comes as no surprise to me, as I find their mother to be quite aggressive, so I think they probably pick it up from her. I zip my lip and don’t say anything, but one of these days when Theo is older, we will have to have the talk about bullies and how to live with them. Ahhh…in the meantime, I don’t exactly encourage him to play with Wyatt and Teagan. There are many nicer little kids in the class. Particularly Miss Allie, who this week decided that she really needed to tickle Theo. I think she has a bit of a crush on him! He’s got another little buddy named Caden, who unfortunately probably won’t be in the class next semester. Too bad, as he’s a nice little boy just about Theo’s age.)

Anyway, all was well and good on Monday, but on Tuesday morning, Theo refused to eat. Chris tried to get him to, and Theo got very upset and threw up. We figured he threw up from being upset, since feeding Theo can be quite a challenge, and tantrums are not unusual. He’s a stubborn guy, and a lot of times he’ll refuse to eat out of principle, but if you can finally get him to eat, he’ll then devour mass quantities of food and be much happier. Chris and I figure he’s kind of like us…when he gets low blood sugar from not eating, he gets crabby and insistent that he does not need to eat, dammit! But really he does, and if you can get a bit of food into him, he’s a much more pleasant chap.

This, however, was apparently not the case on Tuesday. After Theo threw up, Chris gave up trying to feed him, and we decided we’d try again later. He was fussy and crabby, so for a change of scenery, I took him over to my Mom’s house. She was finally feeling up for a visit from the boy, and she had been missing her grandson like crazy. We had a good time, and I took Theo home after an hour or so for a nap. And then the madness began…

In the afternoon, he threw up repeatedly (eight times in all, I believe). Poor kid couldn’t even keep a sip of juice down, and he certainly didn’t want to eat. Clearly, something was very wrong. At first I thought it was food poisoning from some chicken I had given him, since he had virtually no fever and didn’t show any signs of illness other than not being able to keep any food in. We were really worried about him getting dehydrated, since he couldn’t even keep a sip of liquid in. We tried Pedialyte, but he refused to drink it, and the Kaiser advice nurse told us we couldn’t even give him plain water for at least four hours, since his stomach obviously couldn’t handle a thing. (The idea is that even if he threw up the Pedialyte, it’d be in his system long enough to at least replace some of the electrolytes he was losing by throwing up.) The poor boy kept asking and asking for juice, but we had to refuse him…and he was getting so upset that we finally put him to bed, hoping he’d sleep for at least four hours, when we could give him a bit of water.

And so he did. I slept in his room because, frankly, I was terrified that he’d get dehydrated or would vomit while on his back and aspirate it into his windpipe. I wanted to be right there if something happened. (And, indeed, he did throw up while on his back…and I was able to flip him over onto his side. I’m sure he probably would’ve done this on his own, but nevertheless, I was glad that I was there to make sure he did turn over.) He woke up after about four hours, begging for water, and I was able to give him some. He slurped a ton of it and then went back to sleep, albeit restlessly. All told, I got three hours of sleep that night, but it was worth it for my peace of mind. I was being a Nervous Nellie, I know, but I’d never seen him that sick. He spit up all the time as a baby, but that was baby spitup…this was a much different animal, obviously.

Wednesday, Theo didn’t want to eat a thing and he slept a lot, but his spirits were pretty good for a sick kid. He actually crawled into Chris’s lap on Wednesday morning and fell asleep…something he never does. And he was able to keep down watered-down juice, which is all he was interested in having. We crossed our fingers that he was on the mend, despite still having diarrhea.

I woke up in the middle of the night Wednesday/Thursday feeling horrible. Around 4am, I asked Chris, “Are you feeling okay?” He said he was, and I said, “I think Theo’s thing might be stomach flu. I’m feeling awful.” And I thought to myself, “Well, if Chris is okay, he can care for Theo when he gets up, and I can just stay in bed and try to get over this quickly so I can resume Theo care.” At 5am, Theo started fussing and I asked Chris to get him, as I was pretty sure I was going to get sick--and indeed I did. When Chris came back in the bedroom about 45 minutes later, he said he had gotten sick, too. Uh oh…all three of us down with stomach flu in one day. This was not going to be fun.

Thankfully, once Theo went back to sleep, he slept until 8am, which gave Chris and I plenty of time to be sick many, many times between the two of us before Theo awoke for the day. We seriously wondered how we were going to care for Theo all day, given that both of us were sicker than we could remember being in years. After all, even in a pretty well baby-proofed house, you can’t just lie on the couch all day with a toddler…they require a lot of care! How were we going to manage? (In retrospect, I should’ve known it would all be fine. My friend Janeane and her husband Jason recently had to care for a sick toddler and a two-month-old while all three--everyone except baby Jamie--was down with the stomach flu. And somehow they managed…though I’m not sure how!)

We devised a game plan--both of us would stick close to Theo all day so that if one had to race for the bathroom, the other was there to care for Theo. And it worked. We collapsed on the couch in the living room and took turns getting up whenever Theo needed something. And Theo cooperated by still being sick himself, and thus being relatively docile by his standards. He actually crawled onto our laps and slept for a total of three hours in the morning (unheard of!), and although he was awake all afternoon, he was relatively content to have us read to him (which in itself was exhausting…I had no idea how tiring just reading could be when you have the stomach flu!) and watch a couple Baby Einstein videos. (Yes, we allowed two on Thursday instead of the usual one per day. We were desperate!)

7:30 (Theo’s bedtime) finally came, after what felt like the Longest Day Ever (aside from the day I gave birth to him…that felt even longer!). We put Theo down, and Chris crawled into bed almost immediately. I took a hot bath to try to warm up (I had a bad case of the chills) and then crawled into bed at 8:30. (Ha ha--the last time I went to bed that early was, in fact, the day I gave birth to Theo!) We both slept for 11+ hours, and thankfully, we felt much, much better on Friday.

Lucky for Chris and me, we were only terribly sick for about 24 hours…we felt a lot better by the next day. Poor Theo seems to have gotten the worst case of the flu, but he is on the road to recovery, too. He hasn’t thrown up since Tuesday, but let’s just say that his diapers still prove that his stomach is definitely not in working order yet! I’m told this can last a week or so, so I expect at least a few more days of it.

We are not looking forward to getting the stomach flu again anytime soon. (On the plus side, if you want to look for a silver lining, Chris and I both had New Year’s resolutions to lose 10 pounds that we’ve acquired since Theo was born. Our bout with the stomach flu shaved off three pounds overnight for each of us…ha! However, I definitely do not recommend this as a diet strategy!)

But let’s move on to something more pleasant than gastrointestinal distress, shall we? Well, after one more quick thing. Theo learned a fun new word on Thursday: poop! Chris taught him a sign for poop a few weeks ago, figuring that if he can tell us when he has a poopy diaper, that’s one more step on the road to potty training. And because Theo is still sick, it’s pretty darn obvious when he goes poop. So obvious that even he knows it (whereas before, I think it was sort of an involuntary action). So on Thursday, he had a very loud bowel movement, and he immediately ran up to me, used his sign for “poop,” and exclaimed, “Poop!!” Woohoo--I was pretty excited! If he starts recognizing when he’s making a bowel movement, I can’t help but think that’s one more step toward potty training.

Speaking of potty training, we’ve started the very early stages. He has a potty downstairs and one upstairs, but he refuses to sit on them. However, he points to them frequently, and I always explain what they’re for and ask if he’d like to sit on them. (He always says no.) And when I go to the bathroom, I tell him what I’m doing and tell him that soon he’ll be doing that in his very own potty. I have long since learned that my son does things when he wants to, not when I want him to, so we’re sort of going with the “Pottying is fun! Mommy and Daddy do it--someday you’ll get to do it!” approach to try to pique his interest. We’ll see how that goes.

We have a few friends who have used elimination communication with their children, and if we ever have another child, I’m interested in trying it, because my friends have had great success. Full-blown elimination communication involves helping the baby use a potty from day one, no diapers other than just in case of emergency. Unless you’re prepared to hold a baby over a potty 24 hours a day for the first several months, I don’t see that as a very likely solution. However, our friends have used a modified approach with great success. The idea is that they teach their babies from the beginning that it’s okay to go potty in the potty or in diapers. Whenever possible, when they know the baby is going to eliminate, they hold the baby over a potty or receptacle. But, the baby still wears diapers for accidents and such. As the baby gets older and goes less frequently, it becomes easier for the parent to predict when the baby will go and get the baby to a potty. And as the baby becomes more and more cognizant, they realize that the potty is the preferred location…but they are not punished if they go in the diaper. And so, the baby sort of naturally grows into understanding what the potty is and what it’s used for, and then it’s not a great shock to them to be told, at age two or three or whatever, “You’ve been going in diapers for years, but now you need to change that and go in a potty instead.” I like the philosophy behind it…it seems a smoother transition into pottying than just using diapers and then arbitrarily deciding, “Nope, no more diapers.” And my friends who’ve used this method have had their children pretty much fully potty trained by about 16 to 18 months. Ah, imagine that!

The downside to this method, of course, is that it requires a lot of time and attention from the parent. But if Chris and I decide to have a second child, I’ll likely take a break from work this time, and that will give me more time to experiment with this. It’s an interesting idea, I think…

But enough about pottying. What got me started on that tangent (other than the fact that my week has been full of potty and bathroom grossness) is that I wanted to share something really neat: Theo is becoming so much more aware of concepts lately. We’ve noticed that if we ask him to go get something for us, it no longer has to be right in front of him for him to find it. We can say, “It’s over by the chair, next to the table,” and he will toddle over to the chair, next to the table, and find whatever we asked for. Very cool!

But he’s even understanding abstract concepts, which amazes me. It really shouldn’t, though, because when I think back, he’s been doing so for a while now. When he was an infant, one of the first signs we taught him was “more.” We also taught him “food” and “drink.” And within a relatively short time, he had, all on his own, put together the signs for “more food.” We were amazed that he understood the concept of “more” enough to know to put it with “food” and express what he wanted. I think he was just under a year old at that point….

And then, when he was maybe 14 or 15 months old, we read that book Happiest Toddler on the Block, which I’ve mentioned in previous posts. It suggested as a strategy for calming temper tantrums that you “connect with respect” to the toddler and tell them why they were mad, such as, “Theo’s mad! He wanted a cookie, but Mama said no cookie until after you eat your apples!” I read this and thought to myself, “Yeah, right. The kid is 14 months old…he’s not going to understand this.” But I tried it…and was amazed to see that he did understand it, and, in fact, it would almost immediately calm a tantrum as long as he wasn’t overtired and as long as I had a way to redirect his attention immediately after letting him know that I understood why he was upset. Wow!

And so now, here we are at 21 months, and I’m wondering why I’m amazed that my son understands the concept of “sorry.” He’s been showing me for months that he understands things I didn’t think he was capable of, and yet still I’m amazed. One of these days, I’ll wise up and realize that he’s a sharp cookie! :-)

So one of our behavior-correction strategies with Theo is that if he hits, he gets put on a timeout after one warning. And to get off the timeout, he has to calm down and then say “sorry” to whomever he hit. He can’t say “sorry” verbally yet, but he can sign it, so that works.  We didn’t really think he understood the concept of “sorry,” but we figured it was a good habit to get him into. Well, surprise, surprise…he seems to understand the concept of “sorry.” Several times lately, I’ve told him to be gentle when he’s being too rough with something, and each time he has signed “sorry” of his own accord. One day he threw a sippy cup that hit Luna (poor pug!), and I told him that throwing the cup wasn’t nice, and that he could hurt Luna if he did that. He signed “sorry.” Go figure! We only use taught him to use “sorry” as an apology for hitting, but somehow he has figured out that you use “sorry” when you hurt something or are too rough with it.

Next step: Thank you! He knows “please” and he knows “sorry,” but we need to teach him “thank you.” Problem is, the sign-language reference I consulted to learn the sign for “please” actually taught me the sign for “thank you.” So when Theo signs “please,” he’s actually using the “thank you” sign. And thus we don’t know what to use for “thank you.” Ah well, we’ll think of something. We’re big fans of teaching him manners…we’ve found that politeness makes up for all manner of sins. He can be a turkey all day, fussing and whining and generally being persnickety, but if he throws in an unprompted “please” or “sorry,” it somehow makes it all so much more pleasant!

In non-Theo-related news, my Photojournalism class starts this week. I’m excited about it, but I’m also pretty nervous. We got the syllabus emailed to us, and the class requires a lot of work that may be difficult for me to do. We have to submit images in a number of different categories…and we are not to use images of friends or family. So, I have to find time to attend, for example, a sporting event without Theo so I can take pictures. Ditto a cultural event and a newsworthy event. Or I can do that with Theo…but with Chris there to help. Theo is not the type of kid to sit quietly in his stroller while I take pictures--he wants to be on the move at all times. So I either A) take him with me and let him squall, which is very distracting and unpleasant (for both of us!); B) leave him with Chris; or C) drag Chris along so he can handle Theo while I take pictures. It’s doable…but challenging. I hadn’t expected such a rigid format for the photos we’d be taking, and I’m not entirely sure I’ll be able to get to all the specific categories in the allotted timeframes, between caring for Theo and working. But we’ll see. It sounds like a good class, and frankly, it’d probably be good for me to take because you’re required to get the names of people you shoot (ha--that sounds terrible!), so that forces me to go talk to people I don’t know. I’m not very good at that, and it’d probably be a good exercise for me. It does, however, terrify me a bit. I’m not the most outgoing person on the planet when I don’t know the people around me. But, I guess I will just go to the first night of class and see whether it seems manageable. I’d hate to miss a good opportunity…but I’d also hate to put too much pressure on myself when caring for Theo and working full-time is already a pretty full load.

Anyway, I’ve rambled long enough. Hope you all have had a more relaxing week than us. On the bright side, next week has to be better here in the Small household! Until then…enjoy the pictures and our new Theo video!