The Small Family   

Hope you all had a wonderful, restful Thanksgiving! I’m not sure how exciting our blog write-up will be this week, as the Small household has been one of colds this week. Theo had his H1N1 booster vaccine over a week ago, and he developed a mild cold afterward--just as he did with the original vaccine last month. Only this cold hung around and turned into croup, so our poor boy sounded like a barking seal on Friday and Saturday. He’s still relatively cheery and has only slowed down from 90mph to maybe 85mph, but he’s not quite himself. He’s also very irate at the injustice of having his nose wiped multiple times a day. The nerve of us! But he got even--as he did with last month’s cold, he managed to pass this month’s cold onto Chris and I, too. I felt pretty good on Thanksgiving Day, but by the time I went to bed that night, my head had turned into a giant ball of pressure. I felt pretty nasty on Friday and considerably better (but very tired) on Saturday. Chris says the worst day for him was Thursday--he didn’t feel awful, but he just felt really worn out and stuffy. Hopefully we didn’t infect my sister and her family, several of whom joined us for Thanksgiving, though Charles was already sick, so I think he may have the same bug we do.

If the croup isn’t bad enough, poor Theo has been suffering through a bout of eczema for over a week as well…and with it, a nasty, painful diaper rash of sorts. Actually, I don’t think it’s diaper rash because it only appears when he has messed his diaper--and then, if he goes several hours between movements, it clears up. Grandma Diane’s take is that something he’s eating is not agreeing with him and is burning his skin when it comes out (apparently this was the case with me as a baby, too), and I suspect she may be onto something, since he has no signs of diaper rash when he hasn’t made a movement…yet the moment he makes a movement, his poor bottom turns all inflamed and he screams pitifully. Poor guy! The trick is finding out what’s bugging him, which we have been unable to do. He eats such a varied diet now (pretty much anything that isn’t dairy) that finding the culprit is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Anyway, with all this discomfort, I’m surprised the poor guy has been as cheery as he has!

But on to happier subjects that don’t involve baby bottoms…. We hosted Thanksgiving dinner for Grandma Diane, Auntie Lynnanne, Uncle Charles, cousin Stevie, and of course the three of us. I got in my head that I wanted to try doing a whole turkey (we usually just do a turkey breast and all the sides and pies), so we bought a roasting pan and gave it a whirl. Success!! Our turkey was cooked through and pretty tasty…and only slightly dry. I was pretty proud of our success, it being our first turkey attempt!

I made all the usual sides and pies, with a few new things in the mix: streuseled sweet potato casserole with fresh sweet potatoes, sourdough dressing from scratch, sour beans (an old family favorite), pretzel Jell-o (thanks for the recipe, Aunt Laurel--yum!!!), cheesy potato casserole, cranberry-apricot sauce from scratch, gravy (from a jar--I’m not ambitious enough to deal with giblets), and three pies: apple-cranberry, pumpkin, and pecan Nutella. We have a ridiculous amount of leftovers, some of which we sent home with Grandma Diane, and some of which we are devouring as quickly as we can.

For some weird reason, I actually LOVE cooking large holiday meals. I think I just enjoy the challenge, really. Anyway, Grandma Diane came over Wednesday to entertain Theo while I chopped veggies and prepared several of the items, and then Chris, Theo, and I treated her to lunch at Boudin (sandwich/soup/salad place) as payment for her much-appreciated services. She came back over Thursday, along with Auntie Lynnanne and co., to enjoy the fruits of my labors. And I must give kudos to Chris, who did a lot of the turkey work. He was in charge of pulling all the gnarly stuff out of the inside of the bird (ewww!), and he also helped me prep it, and he did a great job carving it after it was ready. Woohoo--good job, honey!

Friday turned out to be a rather gloomy, rainy day around here, and I felt lousy anyway, so we just stayed home, for the most part. I did brave one Black Friday sale, and I was sorry I did! I waited until almost 10am, thinking the crowds would’ve died down, but it was still madness. I went to the Kohl’s across the street from our house to attempt to buy two comforters that were on super sale ($29 each, marked down from $150 each). I found the comforters and grabbed them and found the line…only to be told that the wait to pay was about an hour. No way! I was hungry (hadn’t eaten breakfast yet) and just not feeling well enough to fight that, so I put the comforters back and went back home. We went back on Sunday and got them, though they weren’t on as good of sale. But it was worth it to avoid the torture of standing in line for an hour!

Auntie Jeanette came over for a visit on Friday, which was fun. She brought a Sprinkles cupcake to share, which Theo and I very much enjoyed…and in return, we shared a piece of the delicious pecan Nutella pie with her. Theo warmed right up to Auntie Jeanette, which was very cool. He hasn’t seen her in awhile, so I thought he might be a little standoffish at first. But she had a nifty purse that he was quite interested in, and he warmed right up.

Funny thing about Theo--he never does things like we might expect. When I noticed his barking-seal cough on Friday, I looked up croup and discovered that it’s usually worst at night. So, we prepared ourselves for a long night of being up with him coughing. But no--he slept better than usual (12 straight hours with no fussing!), and instead, he woke up Saturday morning with a nastier cough than the day before. Go figure. Anyway, I think the sleep did all of us good, so I’m glad he didn’t follow the trend on that one!  He coughed a fair amount in his sleep on Saturday night, but never woke up. Come Sunday, his cough had changed from a croupy cough to just a nasty-sounding regular cough, so I think that’s improvement. (He’s also coughing less frequently, so I suspect he’s on the mend.)

Since Theo seemed quite a bit better on Sunday and it was a beautiful, warm day, we decided to get out and go to the zoo. We’re members, so we can get in free whenever we want, which is great--any time the weather permits and we don’t have other plans, we can go visit the animals. It’s particularly fun because Theo now actually sees the animals in their enclosures and gets very excited, rather than just staring blankly at them, as babies do. It’s so much fun to watch him turning into more of a little boy by the day!

The zoo was virtually empty on Sunday, despite the gorgeous weather, so Theo had the run of the place. He was at about 75% of his normal crazy capacity and very sweet and loving, so it was a lot of fun for us. (Normally he races around like crazy, but today he would stop for hugs and would let us pick him up sometimes.) He really enjoyed the lemurs and giraffes this time, but I think his favorite part of our time at the zoo was spent picking up leaves and sticks and carefully throwing them in the garbage. He’s very much of a fan of throwing things in the garbage, though we’re not sure why!

Our other big event of the weekend was decorating the house for Christmas and putting up the tree, which we did on Saturday evening. We pondered this long and hard--how do we put a tree up when we have a toddler who LOVES to climb and isn’t really old enough to understand why he can’t climb that tree? I did a little research online and found three possible solutions: 1) a gated baby “play yard” that you can set up in the house; 2) putting the Christmas tree in a playpen; 3) telling the child “no” about touching the tree and decorations. Well, the play yard was a good idea, but pricey--they run about $50, and we really didn’t have space for it anyway. (Our living room is quite small.) And Option #3 just made me smile. Before I had a kid, I would’ve thought Option #3 was the obvious answer: Of course you can enforce “no” with a toddler! And then we had a child and realized that is not as easy as it sounds…

Let me digress for a moment on parenting and reflect on something we’ve learned in the past 20 months. You go into parenting with all these ideas of what type of parent you’ll be…and then reality hits. Now, in reality, I have no doubt that there are some toddlers who respond well to a simple “no” and parents for whom that works. However, I have come to realize that most toddlers I know are a lot more like Theo--they see “no” as both a challenge and a fun invitation to “try it again--a thousand times!” I think it’s just their nature--toddlers are curious creatures who like to explore, and “no” isn’t something they respond to very well.

So, in discovering this, Chris and I evaluated our parenting and thought about what type of parents we wanted to be. Did we want to be constantly telling Theo “no” and refusing to let him explore, which comes naturally to him? No, we didn’t. For one thing, if we used “no” all the time, he’d just tune us out. And for another, we like that he’s curious and wants to explore new things. And so, we decided to reserve “no” for things that are really important to us--mostly safety issues, like no jumping on the couch, no hitting, no touching electrical plugs and sockets, etc., and for enforcing good behavior at other people's houses (no touching breakables, etc).

And so, did we want to be using “no” every thirty seconds for the Christmas tree, with its nifty lights and decorations, which is sure to draw a curious toddler like a moth to a flame? Nope. We want Christmas to be fun and special--not something that just repeatedly gets Theo a scolding.

And so, I chuckled at Option #3, and we decided on Option #2: the playpen. A trip to the consignment store and $20 later, and we were in business! You’ll see pictures of our “babyproofed” Christmas décor in this week’s album.

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and a great start to the holiday season!