Discipline. (I don't know how it works.)

I have this kid, see? And she is smart. She's adorable and funny and silly, and she's just too smart for her own good. And I don't know what to do with her right now.

Lately, this kid (we'll call her Brigid) has been testing her boundaries with me in ways that I wasn't expecting until she was a teenager, when I assumed she'd start telling me she was going to a friend's house, so she could go somewhere else to meet up with some boy or something. But she's not a teenager, and yet...the other night? She waited until she thought Steve and I were asleep to sneak into our room with her flashlight, hoping to find an iPad to take back to bed with her. You know, so she could stay up all night to watch her shows, even though she's probably seen each one a million and a half times. And when I 'woke up' and caught her?

She pretended that she had come into our room, at 11 o'clock at night, to grab the rubber band that was sitting on my nightstand.

(For those of you keeping track at home, she's smart enough to lie to me, but not smart enough to realize I wasn't born yesterday. When she does realize that I'm smarter than I look? I might be in serious trouble.)

This isn't the first time she's snuck out of her room to find the iPad we've taken with us after letting her play with it for a few minutes before bed. Several times, when I've checked on her before heading to bed myself, I've found her asleep with on next to her.

She talks back to us. She does the opposite of what we tell her to do, every time we tell her to do something. She won't stay in her bed, ever, when she's supposed to be going to sleep. She won't clean up after herself, or help us when we ask for help, or even take herself potty (which she did at school ALL OF THE TIME!!!) without a meltdown of epic proportions. And I can't help but wonder how much of this is just typical toddler behavior and how much of it is OMG WE'RE RAISING DEMON SPAWN DOWN HERE IN GEORGIA SEND HELP NOW!!!

So. Discipline. She needs it. And I need to figure out how it works. I have some vague thoughts of behavior charts and consistent punishments and all sorts of things that I think will make both my husband and my mother-in-law (who will be responsible for enforcing these new rules with me) hate me forever, but that's about as far as I am right now.

BUT THINGS WILL CHANGE! SOON! I GUARANTEE IT!

She doesn't look worried, does she?

Advice

There are big things happening in my world these days, friends. Big, big things.

BIG things, I say!

*drumroll*

Brigid might finally be ready to give potty training another shot!

(Haaaaaa...remember when big things actually meant something that other people, outside of your house, might actually get excited about? Yeah, I don't...)

So, to recap (or maybe to just get it out there in the first place, because I don't remember if I've talked about this before or not): We tried potty training. Brigid freaked out and started holding everything in for hours and hours and hours at a time. We stopped potty training.

THE END.
Well, recently, she's started asking to use the potty on her own. Most of the time, it happens at night, after we read some books and before I put her into her crib. She complains about her diaper, tells me she needs to go potty, then when I put her on the toilet, she goes. Exactly how it should be, right?

But it only happens at night. It's obvious now that she knows how this thing works, so how do I make it a daytime activity, as well, without scaring her into camel mode again?

I'm ready to be done with diapers. I NEED to be done with diapers. HOW DO I MAKE THIS HAPPEN?!?!?!?

Help!

So, we've entered this stage...

I know she doesn't mean anything by it. I know she just wants to see what happens. I know she thinks it's funny when she does see my reaction. 

But that doesn't mean I want it to keep happening.

You see, Brigid is starting to become a hitter. When I'm getting her ready for bed, she thinks it's funny to clap my face between her hands, and she's not exactly gentle about it. She's got a pretty decent slap on her, in fact, which I will celebrate if she needs to use it on some dumb boy in the future, but which isn't too appealing to me right now. The moment she raises her hand, I involuntarily flinch, because I know what's coming...

...and she finds that hilarious.

And yet, I can't stop myself from doing it, because it stings a little when she makes contact. But I have no idea how to get through to her that hitting? It's not ok.

Any advice???

Rant against...

...sippy cups!

Oh, for the love, I hate sippy cups. I will be beyond happy when I can toss all sippy cups, forever. Because sippy cups?

Well, they suck.

For starters, they all leak. All of them. But the ones that leak the least amount? Those are the ones that require 25 pieces that have to be taken apart every time you wash the cup. And of course, since you have to take the cup apart to wash it, you have to put it back together again before you use the darn thing.

And when you're getting ready to spend the weekend away from home, and you don't want to just throw a bunch of pieces into a bag and hope for the best, because your husband still won't let you forget the time you forgot to bring the bottle rings with you when you went on that one weekend away from home? And even if he would let you forget it, the fact that your bottle rings now outnumber your actual bottles 2 to 1 because you had to run out and buy a whole new pack of them to feed your poor kid reminds you as you pack all of that stuff away?

Well, you have to put a ton of cups together, and that's just no fun at all. In fact, I think my thumb is still sore from snapping all of the pieces together, over and over again, and that happened three days ago.

So, short story long (as is my wordy, wordy way), I am on the hunt for a less complicated sippy cup, preferably one that includes a straw. Any thoughts?

Just goes to show, I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about...

There is a guy in my office whose wife just gave birth to a sweet little baby girl two weeks ago.  And like any new parent, he's been walking around the office in a fog this week, as said sweet little baby girl doesn't go to bed until midnight, and follows that up with middle of the night wake-up calls at 2-ish, 4-ish, and 6-ish.  As the most recent new parent on our floor, he stopped by my desk yesterday, looking for reassurance that it does, in fact, get better at some point.

I told him, of course, that it does.  I told him how Brigid started sleeping for six hours at a time before she was six weeks old.  I told him that now, she refuses to be rocked to sleep.  Once we finish her pre-bedtime routine, she starts reaching for her crib, and she is not happy until she can curl up into a little ball, put her thumb into her mouth, and put herself to sleep.  I think he went away knowing that there is a light at the end of the sleepless tunnel, but not feeling any better about the fact that he was currently in that sleepless tunnel.  And I smugly congratulated myself on surviving that time period, as well as birthing the most independently awesome sleeper of a kid that I could have imagined.  Even as I was getting her ready for bed last night, I was idiotically thinking how happy I was to be beyond the point when I had to hope she'd go down for the night without too much fuss because she always went down for the night without too much fuss.

So, it should come as no real shock that last night, things didn't go remotely as well as they normally do.  I'm talking full on screaming coming from that child for absolutely no reason that I could discern.  She does not scream uncontrollably.  She cries sometimes, yes.  She throws a little fit now and then.  But, generally, we know how to calm her down, how to quiet the complaints.  Last night, there was nothing I could do to stop it.  I finally managed to calm her with a lot of walking, a lot of rocking, and a monkey lovey that I actually let her sleep with for the entire night.  Although Steve has been of the mindset that she's old enough to sleep with something in her crib, whether it's a lovey or a blanket,I've been a little hesitant to start something that didn't seem necessary.  Well, desperate times call for desperate measures, and other such cliches, and last night I gave in. 

And once again, I was reminded that I know absolutely nothing about baby sleep habits and that Brigid possesses some kind of super power that dings every time I start getting too confident in my parenting skills.  Other things I  know nothing about?

*How do you stop a one-year old from sticking her finger up her nose and laughing hysterically at your disgust?

*How do you stop a one-year old from grabbing the poopy diaper out from under her while your changing it, leading to smeared poop on every surface of the changing table, as well as up her legs and on her stomach?

*How do you teach a toddler that giggling at her farts is not really something we should be doing?

*How do you convince a toddler's father that Oreos are not something that need to be introduced into her diet at this age?

*How do you ever hope to survive this whole raising a kid thing, and does it ever get any easier?

(If anybody has an answer to that last one, and the answer is no, could you just keep it to yourself?  I'd like to think I'll be a pro at this at some point, just to keep some semblance of sanity in my life.  Thanks!)

Why is it only Wednesday?!?!?

So, I've heard from a couple people with advice on how to manage air travel with a baby, but I'm always open to more suggestions. So, if you haven't weighed in yet, please do! I have had several people suggest something along the lines of baby Benadryl for the flight, but Steve has all of these 'views' on 'parenting', so we probably won't be doing that. Unless she gets really, really fussy before takeoff, that is...

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Brigid is almost a year old. One. Year. Old. So very, very, very weird for me to think about. I am, of course, planning the best first birthday ever...because, why wouldn't I be? Who doesn't want to shell out for $100+ worth of Elmo decorations to be used during a small family/select friends birthday party that the guest of honor won't even understand, let alone remember? Not to mention the Elmo cake that, from the plans I've seen drawn up so far, will take approximately six to eight hours to decorate? Why wouldn't this make sense to everyone?

And if I get a pin the nose on Elmo birthday game that I make everyone play? With blindfolds? And spinning? So much the better.

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I'm tired. Very, very tired. I haven't been this tired since I was pregnant. I was more tired during the newborn days, because waking up every 2-3 hours saps your will to live, but I'm getting close to that point. I'm not really sleeping any less than I have been, so I'm not sure if it's a poor sleep pattern thing or a nutritional deficiency thing. I either need to start sleeping in my own bed, away from dogs that don't understand the meaning of 'personal space' and 'sleeping through the night', or I need to get my iron levels checked. One of those has to be the culprit, no?

In any case, wake me when it's Friday, please.

Flying with a baby for the first time. Oh, dear lord, HELP!

In case the above title didn't quite get my point across, Steve and I will be taking a plane trip in about a week and a half. With a baby. For the first time. And I am just a tad nervous.

Or anxious beyond all imagination.

Or frightened out o' my gourd.

Or something along those lines. Except in reality, my scaredy-ness involves curse words, and I'm really trying to watch that since I read somewhere that babies get close to saying their first words around this time, and honestly? The last thing I need is for Brigid's first word to be of the four letter variety. Could you imagine spelling something like that out for her in the baby book?

Motherhood, FAIL.

Anyway, I'm looking for ideas. Thoughts. Opinions. I am looking for any help anyone who has every flown with any baby can offer. Advice on take-off and landing. Miracle solutions to calm a disturbed baby in-flight. Secret tricks for getting said baby and her massive amount of stuff through security. Quickly. On the Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend.

Oh, yeah. Did I mention that part? All of this will be taking place over Labor Day weekend. Because we like a challenge. And navigating through a billion and a half people in the world's worst airport seemed like the way to go. So, there's that.

The only thing we did do right (besides deciding to do this for the first time on a flight that is only an hour long) was score seats on the two person side of the plane. Short trip = small(er) plane = nobody stuck on the inside of our row, glaring at Steve and I because the screaming baby can't be comforted.

We'll just have the people across the aisle from us glaring because the screaming baby can't be comforted.

Small victories, people. Small victories.