I Am THAT Parent

Emily woke up around 8:30am today. I went in to her room and said good morning and then suggested she play with her toys for awhile. I turned on her stereo so she had some music and went back to bed. (The Girlfriend and I went out last night to see her brother do a show and he was AWESOME but we didn't get home until around two and holy jesus I was tired.) I just woke up again about a half an hour ago. Do you know what this means? My clingy spider monkey is developing SOME sense of independence. It's amazing. I heard that this would begin to happen. I had friends tell me when my face was stained with tears and my voice was raw from crying and my emotions were as thinner all of the hair I was losing in the shower, and it showed. It showed when I would walk up to my baby with crazed eyes and a forced smile, when I would pick her up and pat her back just a little too hard and I would watch TV and cry and cry because I was never going to have a normal life ever ever again. It showed when I would look at her and whisper because I didn't want to yell and I would tell her how much money she would earn me on the black market, what with her blond/copper hair and her bright blue eyes.


Seen here at 4 months, when I still liked having a baby.


Seen here around eight months, before her teeth started coming in and before round two of her health problems kicked in.


And pictured here, at two years old. And I cannot say this early in my day how hard two was for me. Look at how beautiful she is. It's probably the only reason I didn't give her to the gypsies. Or throw her out the window. Needless to say, it was hard. I was also going through a rough time that involved almost EVERYONE I KNOW telling me what a shitty parent I was being. So I changed my methods to fit those standards and you know what? Emily and I suffered for months because of it. So I stopped. And things got better.


And now, now she's three.



Emily has been getting in to the habit of WAKING UP DRY OH MY GOD. The last few days she hasn't been feeling 100%, so I've been more relaxed with watching her fluid intake. And she's still woken up dry. This means one of two things: 1)I am the greatest mom ever for proving that yes, it is possible to go an entire night without peeing, or 2)she's dehydrated, so the fluid that she is taking in is alll being used, and there's nothing to get rid of. I hope it's the former. I suspect it's the latter.

Anyway. I'm a very no-nonsense parent. I took her last pacifier away the 3000th time she spit it out when she was eight months old. She was on the boob for nine or ten months and then I had to switch to formula. I took her bottles away the day after her first birthday, and took her last nighttime bottle away around 15 months. I stopped buying diapers when she turned two. Now, I'm done buying pullups.

A lot of people disagree with this; They suggest tying pacifiers to balloons and having a ceremony, or write novels about the guilt they feel for taking away a bottle, or write about their fears with too-harsh potty-training. I of course experience guilt, and I'll get to that later. As far as these things go though, I am harsh. When I say something I mean it; When I tell her to do something I mean it, and when she's too old for something, it goes away. Now, I know there are children that simply don't potty-train, etc... I however, decided when she was two that I was done changing diapers. I had bought Emily her first potty chair when she was 15 months old. I didn't buy it with any expectation. Rather, I bought it with the hope that my little spider monkey would have something to sit on in the bathroom instead of my lap. (Let me just point out that I never thought I'd take a dump with a child on my lap. I know it's gross.) To my surprise, she pulled off her diaper and reached for me to put her on the seat. So I did. And she peed! It was marvelous.

There are also a tremendous amount of health problems miss Emily had. Among those were a wicked set of allergies, eczema and the resulting GOD AWFUL BLISTERING diaper rashes. We tried everything at the stores, her doctors made special creams, I let her go naked CONSTANTLY, I gave her oatmeal baths and I tried the hippie stuff at the hippie store and no matter what, if any bodily secretion sat on her skin for longer than about five minutes, she would start bleeding.

So when she was two, I bought her a ton of panties, put her in them and told her, hey, do you see these? Look! It's Dora! Dora doesn't like pee-pee, and your pants will get all wet. So if you have to go pee, tell mommy, ok? She looked at me all, yeah, you're insane. And then peed her pants. And cried when her legs got wet. She peed on herself for about a week when she got sick of it, and she started using the toilet. Since then, she would get put in a pullup at night. A few months ago, I got really tired of the ten pounds of pee she would produce in the middle of the night. And again with those rashes. Also, she takes her baths at night. It's been an essential part of her bedtime routine since she was 4 months old. So when she pees all over at night, I have to give her another bath in the morning before rushing her to daycare. Have you read my first post? WE ARE NOT A MORNING PEOPLE.

I began waking her up in the middle of the night. I came to the conclusion after two months of different wake up times that she pees around 3am every day. And she pees a lot. Then I started limiting her liquid intake after 5:30pm. Then I stopped buying the pullups. (and now that I've gotten us all caught up, we're back to the original story). She's averaging about one accident a week. Every morning I go in to her room and say "Good morning my Emmy! How are you! You look like a mad scientist!" And she says "Mmmm hrmphh unnnggggggg mmmmmh OHMYGOD! MOM! I woke up dry! SWEEET!!!!"


And I am so proud of my baby. My three year old baby.