First Tantrum

This is how it happened: Siiri was crawling on the living room floor. She saw the knee-height palm tree, got hold of a leaf and started yanking on it, making the entire plant and it's heavy pot waver. "No, don't!" said Erkki, and carefully took her hand away from the plant. Siiri tried again. Erkki repeated, and I also said, "No, don't pull on it, the plant could fall on you and you'll get hurt!". Neither of us yelled but we did our serious voice. Siiri tried again. And again. And then suddenly started crying VERY LOUDLY without any warning! It didn't escalate from complaining or from sadness. It really just went from quiet to breathless uncontrollable screaming sobbing in less than a second. I thought I had heard all the different kinds of crying but this was completely new. There was nothing that could have triggered her outrage, except for being ordered not to pull on the leaves. Siiri cried uncontrollably for a couple of minutes but soon after, she was smiling and laughing again, being cute towards both me and Erkki. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't been there myself. And here I thought 8 and a half month old babies don't throw tantrums.

A long long time ago when I was still pregnant I thought I would never start to constantly use "we" when talking about the baby. It's almost like losing one's own identity. Mother and child becoming an inseparable unit. When you talk to one you talk to both. I've seen it happen so often and it's always quite disturbing to witness. Now the moment of truth - do I say things like "we are now 8 months old" or "we can crawl now"? ... The answer is: No, I don't. In stead, I do something almost as disturbing but quite different - I say "we" when talking about anything parenting-related, as in I have been replaced with Me and Erkki. Have you noticed? I say things like "we are teaching baby to self-soothe" or "we started giving her finger-foods", when I mean that I started something and advised Erkki to do the same. In nearly all parenting issues I have lost my individuality and Me has become We.

Perhaps it's a necessary shift. When something involves parenting, there is little room for individuality between parents. Good cop and bad cop routine is horrible when you're trying to teach your child that rules are absolute. Some rules are simple: "Thou must not chew on electric chargers", while other rules need to be decided beforehand. It becomes really confusing for the child when parents expect different rules to be followed depending on who is watching. When Siiri had a habit of chewing on everything, I didn't allow her anywhere near remote controls. One time I saw Erkki letting her fiddle with the TV-remote, letting her try out all the buttons, but stopping her whenever she tried to take a bite. Siiri tried a few times but settled into quiet happy fiddling. In the future, I also let her play with the remote and stopped her from tasting it. Worked out fine.

More often I'm the one who initiates new rules, simply because I spend more time with Siiri. I keep Erkki informed of the decisions I make and regularly discuss everyday matters to keep our parenting methods as similar as possible. Earlier I thought it was inevitable that parents have different parenting methods. If mom doesn't allow candy before supper the child immediately goes and asks dad. Ain't it typical? It's seen as a norm that one parent is easy while the other is tough. People rarely stop to ask what it does to the child. It's bad enough to be expected to follow rules, worse still when you can never be sure what the rules are!

So yes, I have become a "we" with my husband even when sometimes it would be much more correct to say "I". And I regularly talk about everyday matters with him. I sometimes even call him in the middle of the day to ask minor questions like, "hey, would you let Siiri pat the window?". Sounds an awful lot like a classic homely housewife... Such behavior has too many positive effects to try to stop myself. It also has a down-side. As a result of such "we"-talk I don't always give myself enough credit, as in, me and Erkki are equally parents but I'm the one who doesn't also have a job.

Not so simple with babysitters. It would take a hundred-page manual to teach how to correctly take care of my baby. To make matters simpler, I usually just encourage them not to worry too much. If they just keep to her nap and feeding schedule and the baby is happy and safe then all is good. What about today's tantrum? Perhaps Siiri's first tantrum was caused by different people allowing different levels of freedom... Perhaps Siiri has been playing with that plant earlier with a babysitter and now couldn't understand this new rule. Just a theory.

By the way, when it comes to teething, we are getting there!!! (later added comment: I mean she! SHE is getting there. A friend had to point this out because I didn't notice. Now I'm worried.) I found the 7th tooth today! One more and we've got the full first set before molars at 13-19 months of age.

Victory!

Our baby has six teeth! Four upper middle teeth and two lower middle teeth. She was unhappy during the night and in the morning but by late afternoon she was glowing and playful again. She is no longer in horrible pain.

So finally - FINALLY - we get to continue with our plans to get baby to fall asleep without cradling. We had been making preparations for a week, introducing a better bedtime routine and figuring out what nap times Siiri likes the best. There's this book that's called, "Sleep sense". It's been a true hype in the baby forum I read. One mother had a lot of success with it and she told others about it. They all lined up to ask questions and to read the book. I wasn't sleeping much (baby teething, as you already know) so I was very curious to find out more. I got the e-book and started reading it.

The first question was: is it a controlled crying method or is it soft and baby-friendly. The author carefully explains that most babies do indeed protest if you try to change their sleep habits but it's okay not to give in to the protesting. I wholeheartedly agreed. Kids protest all the time. Being a good parent doesn't always involve giving in to children's whims and moods. Sometimes a parent has to decide what's best in the long run. Besides, Siiri is already 8 months old. She's not a little baby anymore. A little crying won't hurt her.

Me and Erkki started raising her with a clear vision that a baby shouldn't be left alone to cry. When she's crying, she needs our help. And if we can't help, she needs our consolation and hugs. Now that she's not so little anymore, I worry much less about her crying. If I'm in the middle of something, I'm much more inclined to finish my task before I pick her up for comfort. I've never timed it but it feels like a really long time that she's crying nearby and I tell her, "I'll be there soon. I'll just finish (whatever it is I'm doing)". Also, there have been times that I wake up in the middle of the night, I hear her crying and I think, "I'm on my way." and I just fall asleep! And twenty minutes later I wake up again and she's still crying. My crying-response threshold must really have gone down if Siiri sometimes cries over 20 minutes and I don't even go to pick her up.

Anyway, it shouldn't take much crying because Siiri is occasionally able to fall asleep without assistance. Usually, though, she needs us to cradle her until she's nearly asleep. As she becomes more aware of her surroundings it's harder and harder for her to fall asleep. This means we have to cradle her with great effort. We can't keep cradling her until she goes to kindergarten. Sooner or later she is going to have to learn to fall asleep on her own. I'd rather it be sooner!

This sleep training book gives options for either staying in the room with your crying child or waiting outside the room and simply going in and calming them down once every 5 to 10 minutes. We decided outside is better. When our baby has fallen asleep on her own she has always been alone in there, playing and talking with The Worm. 6 minutes seemed like a nice amount of time to wait. We did her bedtime routine: a brief wash, change of clothes, breastfeeding, read a story while letting her chew on her toothbrush. That's the only way she lets us wash her teeth. She was nearly asleep but then started asking to be breastfed asleep. (That's when she says her version of "mommy" and gives a specific choppy cry.).

We didn't let that bother us much because I had no intention of enforcing this recent habit of being breastfed until asleep. She was unhappy that we didn't respond so she started to cry in a more determined way. Then she cried even louder until I started fidgeting. "A little crying won't hurt her", I said out loud and then added doubtfully, "right?" . People had often told me that it's okay to let the child cry for a little while and that it's even good for the baby. Then Siiri started to cry hysterically. That's a rare occasion. "We should go in there and pick her up!". Erkki reminded me that it won't work unless we stick to the plan. I completely agreed - it had been mostly my idea and I wanted to follow it through. I looked at my watch. Siiri had been crying only 2 minutes!!!

When 6 minutes had passed, I finally went in and calmed baby down, which took LONGER than 6 minutes. I decided this isn't working. I'm usually able to calm her down within seconds and it rarely takes more than a minute. She was so stressed from that brief experience that when Erkki had cradled her to sleep she was still sobbing a little. And to think that some children cry for two hours before they finally fall asleep from exhaustion. It can take weeks for the child to go to sleep without "protesting". Siiri has never cried much. I definitely don't imagine letting her cry like THAT every day for weeks.

So much for quick sleep training programs. I do still recommend the book "Sleep Sense" by Dana Obleman because I got a lot of good advice about preparing a child for nighttime. Too bad this sleep program isn't right for our family. I will simply change Siiri's habits little by little until she's able to fall asleep without my assistance.

Oh, you might have assumed that the title of this post (Victory) was about teaching Siiri to fall asleep. Naaah, it was only about that 6th tooth.

Jaws Five

Do you know what sharks and babies have in common? Teeth! Both keep growing new ones as if there's an endless supply of them.

I didn't mention it last time, but Siiri is now baptized! It was in a church with my family present. I was afraid our heavy metal baby might cry and protest with so many crosses around. She was really quite relaxed. She kept playing with her sound, it seemed, to better understand how echo works. Now she has her very own silver cross by the bedside protecting her from evil spirits and vampires and werewolves and such. Actually against werewolves it would help if the cross was 15 inches long with a sharp serrated edge at the foot of it (also called a silver DAGGER), but her simple-silver-cross-on-a-chain will do for now.

She learned to crawl! Finally REAL crawling, not some one sided commando crawl as slow as an average snail. We had a couple to baby physiotherapy exercising appointments and two weeks later she learned to crawl. I'm not sure if that baby exercising is worth the main praise here. Physiotherapist held on to Siiri and moved her around, while she was stubbornly trying to wriggle away. She was very agitated so we kept distracting her with toys to avoid hysteria and crying. That seemed to frustrate her even further because the toy was kept barely out of arm's reach. It's was for motivational purposes only, almost like the rabbit in a dog race. At home I tried a different variation of exercises which also helped. Eventually I think she was simply ready for it and deserves the full credit for it.

Now she's getting faster every day. I let her crawl around on the floor. There's several toys spread out all over the room and she keeps moving from one to another - centipede... baby book... wires! "No Siiri, don't play with those", I lift her back to the middle of the room. ...baby phone...centipede... media center! "No Siiri, crawl away from that computer. It's not for licking.". It's actually a lot more fun than trying to entertain an immobile infant. There's so many things for her to discover: remote controls, glass table, mobile phone chargers, laundry basket, trash pin, etc. She already managed to reach one of her toy books on top of a glass coffee table. Shall it be a mug of hot tea the next time she tries that trick?

I remember I once had an opinion that 6-month old babies should sleep through the night and if they won't, it's up to the parents not to let the baby ruin everyone's sleep. Well I must say it wasn't a complete failure on my part. I actually have got her to sleep up to 8 hours straight several nights in a row but then there were TEETH! She started waking up all too often. The first rule of any sleep training is that baby must not be ill or in pain so we couldn't really do anything about her bad sleep. She got her long-awaited 4th tooth and I expected her to sleep a whole lot better but then she got a cold. Babies tend to sleep quite poorly with a stuffy nose. A week later she could breathe normally again and her sleep got better... and then got waaaay worse. And then she bit me! And she ate really slowly and just wouldn't let go. As if she's teething AGAIN!

First year of parenting is 3 months of taking care of a fairly clueless infant and 9 months of dealing with a teething baby.

Two days of odd signs and today I got a peek: the next set of upper teeth are on their way, and one of them has already cut through. Our little shark has 5 teeth and more to come. There should be a pause in teething after her 8th tooth but I'm afraid those final three tooth will provide a month of teething each so by the time we're done she'll be a year old. And then it's time for the next pair of tooth.

Fortunately teeth are nocturnal - they only seem to grow during the night. At daytime she's so cute, chasing me on all fours and giggling. She even lets me have breakfast and drink coffee, although I think it's just a trick to find opportunities to try and get a proper taste of those wires when mommy looks distracted...

Gifts for the Lazy

This year Holiday season was very kind to me. Very very very kind! I weighed 0.2 kg LESS on 1st of January than I did on the morning of 24th of December. I survived overeating season with nothing to show for it. How cool is that.

Christmas was just like I imagined it would be, except even better. We even got to skip that annual embarrassing poems & singing tradition. I don't think all countries even have that! All you lucky buggers in USA - you wake up and there's a pile of presents under the Christmas tree. In Estonia, people are clearly very eager because we even have to work for out presents! Santa Claus comes and sits under the Christmas tree. He calls out a name and then that person has to perform something to get that gift. It can be a song or a poem, or perhaps even a short dance. Small children prepare new material every year. I think they just try to prove to Santa they they are Good kids.

This gift giving tradition is not as cute when adults are getting the gifts. Usually people just recite the same poems and sing the same songs year after year and every year we get to watch people painfully singing songs they don't remember the lyrics to. Mhh, now that I think about it, the entire point is see people make a fool of themselves. No one is excitedly looking forward to hearing "Holy night" for the hundredth time , they just want to see if the performer is able to sing it without any major mistakes. But this year... This year we were hosting the Christmas party. This year we simply distributed the presents!

Siiri did not see any fireworks on New Year's Eve. She was sound asleep while I was outside, in front of a suburban house, admiring the pretty lights with a baby monitor in my hand. The bangs were unbelievably loud. I was convinced baby couldn't sleep through those but fortunately I was proven wrong. We spent the evening with two other couples in a child-friendly environment in a new suburban style housing district. Many similar-looking houses occupied by friendly families, many of which launched at least a few fireworks. There were rockets going up all around us. We had delicious dinner and real Champagne. I really enjoyed it and I don't think I would have preferred a loud party with drinks. Maybe I really am starting to settle down!

...or perhaps I just needed the rest. Right after Christmas Eve I suddenly got very edgy. I was talking with - I mean to - Erkki really fast and mostly about things I usually don't even care about. It felt almost as if I was vocally procrastinating to keep myself from thinking some stressful thoughts. I took a moment to think it over and realized I was facing failure. I used to have a real goal of writing the article by the end of the year. Now it was a week until the year ends and I had social plans for the next day and travel plans for the couple of days after that. It seemed inevitable that I will not finish any version of the article, not even a bad and flawed version. How hard could it be to write one flawed version of something that I have been thinking about so much... At least it can't be possible. I had tried to do it in short periods of time but I used up too much of that time to study for exams in stead. Also, it was quite impossible to really concentrate before I was already out of time for the day. It was excellent that I had a babysitter around so I can study for exams but I still had no article to show for it. So learning from past mistakes, for 3 days in a row I had a babysitter for 6 hours straight and in the evening had Erkki take care of the baby as much as possible. At the end of the writing marathon I sent my science advisor THE FIRST DRAFT of the article.

So that's how my holiday season went. This week was quite busy. On Sunday a colleague contacted me, "You did remember you're scheduled to give a presentation on Friday, right?". Well lets just say I'm glad she reminded me early. I had plenty of time to prepare for it, too bad I was sabotaged at the last minute: I got 3.5 hours of sleep lying sideways on the wrong bed. I was working on coffee life-support for the entire duration of my presentation.

Baby Update: 8420g. I think she's lost a little weight. No wonder. She eats very little and she is simply a little ball of activity. She's 69cm. I thought she was 70 cm so apparently she has also shrunk. She still has 3 teeth and she's actively teething (...forever and always). Nearly 8 months old, she can commando crawl back and forward, she swings herself back and forth on all fours but does not crawl for more than 1-2 steps. More like frog-jumping really. She pushes herself to sit and back to stomach position with ease but she leans forward nearly all the time when she sits. I wish she learned to hold her upper body high and straight.