Parenting Fail: Baby in a Box

The purpose of this blog is to be honest, to strip the lies and get down to what we are really about.

Sometimes being a parent means we pretend to be perfect.  Dress the kids up, shove all the dirt under the carpet, unwrap some store bought muffins and toss them in a basket so it looks like you baked them and act like everything is under control.  But come on... we are all just making this up as we go and along the way we make some mistakes.  Some of those mistakes are small, others are large... I am going to stop the pretending, be honest and share some of mine (although the muffins on the counter probably are homemade...). 

July 1, 2014

I put my baby girl (18 months old, whom I shall call Little Bit) down for her nap after lunch.  My son did not want to play in his room and I decided I was not going to argue with him, so he was playing train on the floor while I ate my lunch, worked on the computer and watched a little TV.  This sounds wonderful right? 

Well it was until I thought I heard a noise coming from upstairs, a noise like Little Bit crying.  I paused and listened some more, trying to gauge how serious this was before getting up.  After a few moments or so I could still hear her, but it was pretty muffled.  Mommy alarms started going off, concerned I paused the show and headed upstairs.  The closer I got the more concerned I got as the crying seemed muffled and yet pretty hysterical. 

As I opened the door I started doing a quick survey of the room... Little Bit was not in her bed... I did not see her on the floor... where was my baby...?  And then I saw her, or at least part of her.  Her two little legs, kicking and sticking out of the top of a box I had put in her room to hold some of her toys.  Apparently she had reached inside for a toy on the bottom and had fallen in and gotten stuck.  I rushed over to her and pulled her out... poor crying red faced baby who had also gotten so scared that she had thrown up in this awful upside down state. 

   by  Etolane 

I immediately checked my tiny Little Bit over and she was okay, breathing fine and no longer throwing up.  Quickly I cleaned her up and then just held her, curling up in my bed until I got her to calm back down. 

Response

Once I got Little Bit calmed down and felt certain that everything was going to be okay I realized that I needed to learn from this harrowing experience. 

The first thing was the box she had fallen into.  I had misjudged how tall and narrow it was in comparison to her little body, so when she toppled into it she was unable to push herself back up and out of it.  That box has already made it into the trash pile and is no longer in my house.  Since then I have replaced it with a plastic milk crate, these boxes are lower and wider than the old box.  The toys fill the space better and Little Bit should be able to get herself back out of it if she were to fall in again. 

Second was installing the baby monitor in the room again.  I had thought that I could hear well enough between the floors (the walls are thin here) but again I had misjudged things.  The baby monitor came back out and was put back in the room.  It did not do well with the move, and is pretty full of static, so a new one is on its way from Amazon.  Nothing fancy mind you, but enough to keep me better appraised of what is going on upstairs. 

Crisis solved and hopefully avoided in the future (at least that one... we shall see what new crisis they invent for me tomorrow).

This Mamma Doesn't Mess Around with Bedtime - and the Surprising Reason Why

   by  Andrew Stawarz 
 

I will not start this by saying that bedtime is a smoothly oiled machine in my house.  I have a three and a half year old son and an 18 month old daughter, so there are plenty of antics.  Like any parent of small children I have carried sopping wet, screaming and kicking toddlers from the bath and into their rooms, forced pajama's on them, shut off the light, closed the door and prayed on the other side that they wouldn't come pounding on the door the next moment, and they usually do.  However, bedtime is not a place where I give in easily. 

Other parents have different philosophies when it comes to bedtime.  Their children stay up with them until the wee hours in the morning sometimes.  Hours are spent getting drinks, bathroom breaks, new stuffed animals, one more story, one more show etc... before the kid finally collapses into their bed.  Or the kids never even make it to their own beds and snuggle up with mom and dad in the big bed.  These things don't work for me, but who am I to judge if they work for you? 

For us though, getting those kids to bed at a decent hour is absolutely essential.  The reason it is essential is not for the kids though.  It's for us, for my husband and I.  Sure there are probably benefits to getting kids into a regular sleep schedule, and refusing to give up and let them dictate the situation likely has some good discipline and life lesson benefits as well.  But in the end it comes down to the preservation of our marriage that makes me so determined to win this battle. 

Evenings are family time in our house.  My husband works long hard hours but is home most nights in time for dinner so I always try to make sure that the few hours we have each night go well.  We eat dinner, all of us, at the table.  After dinner everyone chips in on clean up.  If there is time my husband and son will watch some television together then the bedtime routine starts.  Bath's if necessary, brushing teeth, changing diapers and taking potty trips, determining what to wear to bed (here I am ultra flexible, as long as it isn't going to strangle them while they sleep I pretty much allow whatever they want), bedtime stories and songs... then the lights go out and it is officially sleep time.  For the kids that is.

When their evening with dad ends my evening with my husband begins.  This is a special time for my husband and I.  We have a Netflix account and always have a show that we are binging on, luckily we have enough common interest in television shows to make this possible.  So we get something to drink and maybe snack on, grab a blanket and snuggle up on the couch to watch an episode or two of our latest fix (currently we are into the original Star Trek series).  We talk during the show, about the show, about our friends and family, about the kids, about work, about whatever weird thing we read on the internet or heard on the radio... whatever.  We talk, we snuggle, we watch TV.  We have been doing this since before we even started dating.  Back when we were just college friends we did this, and I wanted to make sure we didn't lose it just because we had kids. 

   by  andrewrennie 

It doesn't always work out perfectly, life never allows that.  Just last night Star Trek had to be stopped twice to tend to my son before he finally settled down.  But each time he was redirected to his room and we came back downstairs and picked up where we left off.  The important thing is that we are trying, trying to connect with each other each day and trying to keep alive the memories of when we were young and so much in love we couldn't even fathom being apart.  We need this time, so our children must get to bed. 

Skinny Mommy and Distance Triage

The other night, around midnight, I was working on my blog when I heard a loud thud come from upstairs, followed by my three year old son crying.  I waited a minute, my husband was in the next room (if not for a wall the beds are actually only like 5 feet apart) and I was hoping he would be roused and go see what the problem was.  When I heard nothing, men can sleep through anything it seems, I went upstairs and found my darling little boy trying to pull himself back into bed, with a delightful little trail of blood dotting his sheets to show his progression. 

He had fallen out of bed, which is actually less than a foot from the ground since it is only a twin mattress on the floor, and apparently landed face first on the hard wood floor, busting open both upper and lower lips.  Dad, finally, heard the commotion and I took care of the boy while he changed the sheets.  Maybe fifteen minutes and a failed attempt at getting ice on those already bulging lips he was curled back up in bed fast asleep.  It will be fun to see just how large his little lips get by tomorrow morning, we might have popsicles for breakfast. 

This got me thinking about how I handle the potential 'emergencies' my children get themselves into rather regularly.  I am the mom who sits on the bench at the playground, when my child falls down, even the little 1.5 year old, I bend my head to make visual confirmation and most of the time do little more than talk to them from the bench.  Sometimes I get raised eyebrows at my non-reaction from other moms.  However, despite what they might think my mind is quickly assessing the situation to determine the level of assistance I need to provide.

Photo Education News

1. Are the immediate surroundings safe?  Has my child fallen down in a crosswalk, or at the bottom of the slide with ten other antsy children bounding at the top, or half way down a flight of stairs?  Or have they fallen down in the middle of a sandbox, or a sidewalk that is otherwise empty, or in the middle of my living room?  If they seem to be in a situation where getting up or not moving fast enough might cause further injury to them I get my skinny tush off the bench and collect my child.  Otherwise I let them get up on their own time.
2. Is there blood?  Blood always gets me going.  One drop or a full out gush, it does not matter.  I need to at least wipe the area off and determine just what the wound that decided to leak my babies life blood looks like.  I infect easily and I am not trying to find out if I passed that trait on to my children just yet, so a leaking wound often at least gets a dab of antibiotic ointment and a Band-Aid.  So far nothing has needed stitches... so far... but I am prepared to pack them in the car and head to the nearest medical center when that is needed.  If there is no blood I sit still and continue my observations.
3. How do those limbs look?  Next I will do a quick survey of those precious little arms and legs and such.  Making sure nothing looks outright broken, twisted, swollen, overly red or already showing signs of bruising.  This is also the point when I start looking at the evidence my child is giving me.  Is he/she cradling a specific body part, or perhaps even saying that a specific body part hurts?  If any of these signs seems apparent I will again get involved, and if the baby has taken a really hard hit (I heard the thud from across the house kind of hit) I inspect her decently up close. 
4. Can the kid get up and move around on their own?  So the kid is in a safe place to temporarily recover from the fall, they do not appear to be bleeding, and there is no obvious sign that anything has been broken.  My next step is to coax the kid to stand up.  If they seem reluctant I tell the to stand up and come to me.  They can get hugs and kisses to make them feel better, and I get a chance to make sure all that fussing is because they are scared and not actually hurt by watching how they get up and walk.  If they are very reluctant, and not just being dramatic (my son can really ham it up), I will again get up and go to them. 

Most of the time I do not have to get up.  Kids are pretty rubbery, they can get banged up and keep going. 

I also find my method of assessing from a distance has a few benefits.  First my kids learn how to pick themselves up and go on.  They are not afraid to get hurt a little and try new things.  Second, it saves me from having to get up every. single. time. I spend enough of my day running after them, cleaning up after them, and otherwise on my feet.  If I can sit on the bench at the playground or on my couch for half an hour and everyone is still alive... well that sounds like a perfect way to spend an afternoon.