June: A summary

1. Gardening - After lovingly and laboriously planting, watering, and watching over our garden, it was discovered by the bunnies and completely deforested.  Well, except the cilantro and the basil.  But tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, carrots, dill - all gone.  We were left with two small patches of herbs, two watermelon plants, and some straggly green onions.

We, however, refused to be as decimated as our garden.  We persevered with the help of Lowe's and the farmer's market.  We bought some small plants and built a fence.  The tomatoes are flowering and we seem to be back in business.

2. Health - I have been sick for what is starting to feel like years.  A progression of stubborn colds and a general malaise, and a lymph node in my neck that just wouldn't go away.  Finally, the oncologist within me on red alert, I had a biopsy of the offending node.  The diagnosis is Kikuchi disease, a self-limited autoimmune condition that should resolve within 6 months at the most.  As the name might imply, this is found most commonly among the Japanese.  Since I am decidedly caucasian, this diagnosis confirms my general classification as unusual.  I feel pretty confident that my PCP and I know exactly the same amount about this disease because we read the same E-medicine article.  In any case, I am slowly getting better.  I have had laryngitis for almost two weeks, but even that is getting better and I am loosing my husky, sexy baritone.

3. Running - Because of the above mentioned malaise, I have not been as consistent in my gym attendance as previously, but I am still eking along, genuinely loosing weight and  . . . drumroll please . . . I jogged for a full 20 minutes for the first time since I was in med school.  I went back this morning and it wasn't exactly a skip through the tulips.  More like roses.  Really thorny roses.  But I made it.  And really my biggest problem was this cough so I am confident I'll be back to three times a week this week.

4. Work - Dave started a new job - he is now a trainee in the financial planning program for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.  Starting in November he will be available for all your financial planning needs.  This is a big exciting change for him and one that he has needed to make for a while.  But it is also throwing our household into chaos.  He actually has a schedule and work hours and an immense lack of flexibility.  We're getting up earlier which makes EVERYONE, even the little one, cranky.  But it's good and he's studying like he's back in school.  This will be his "first year of fellowship".

5. Research - July first starts what was going to be my last year at Pitt but that may be changing slightly.  I just found out I won a grant from the St. Baldrick's Foundation - remember the folks Dave shaved his head for? - and it is a two year grant.  So, between Dave's training program and the awe-inspiring fact that someone wants to pay me real money to do what I am loving doing, we may be here a titch longer than originally planned.  Things are going along swimmingly and I even presented my data at a local research symposium.  Seeing that this was my first real research presentation ever and that most of the other presenters had PhD's and had clearly done this before, I was shocked to win an "Outstanding Presentation" Award. (And thrilled by the cash.)

6. School - Nate graduated to the "Toddler" program at school.  Complete with certificate and room change.  He LOVES his new teachers and talks nonstop about all the fun he had at school when he comes home.  I think he had really outgrown the stimulation available in the Tot room which pretty much consisted of looking at picture books and listening to the same CD.  Now there is s train table and a "kitchen" and shopping carts and "babies" to feed.  Plus dress up clothes and playing in the little pool two times a week.  Plus, wait for it, a pretend vacuum cleaner.  He is playing with this almost every time I pick him up.  This morning, clutching a kiss a la "The Kissing Hand" he sat down to eat his breakfast "like a big boy" and did not cry when I dropped him off.  I have all fingers and toes crossed and a braid in my hair in hopes that this will continue.

7. Growth - Nate is firmly over 25 pounds and tall enough to climb whatever he wants and to harvest any item of his choice from all but the very center of the dining table.  I am proud of him, so happy that he feels well, and unabashedly acknowledge that there were advantages to a pee wee boy.

Overall June has been a good month for our family.  I am sorry I was away so long.  I can't promise that it will never happen again, but I have a lot swirling around in my mind to write about so it may be more consistent for a while.

Times Two

Nathan is 2.  Really, really 2.  Frustratingly, charmingly, limit testingly 2.  "What's that?, Right Now, and no" are his favorite words.  Dave and I deal with it the best way we can.  Team work, sharing the exhaustion, and the well placed time-out.  Luckily he makes up for all of it with his charming smile and his hilarious statements.

Yesterday, when Dave picked him up from day care, his teacher lamented that he had not been very obedient all day.  When asked to do or to stop doing something he said "No" and occasionally required physical relocation to get him to pay attention to what he was supposed to be doing.
Dave asked the (to me) obvious question "What did you do?  Did you put him in time out?"
"No," was the answer "we aren't allowed to do that.  We just redirect them."
Soooooo, you have a 2 year old being willfully disobedient and disrespectful and you plop them down in their favorite couch with their favorite book to "redirect" them?  That sounds suspiciously like rewarding bad behavior.
Am I crazy?
Maybe.
I'll admit that I am terribly naive.  I never asked about discipline.  He was 5 months old when he started day care.  I was worried about what they would do with the two swallows of breast milk he left behind in a bottle, not what they would do when he started chucking Legos at other kids.  I mean, I knew they wouldn't beat him.  I just sort of assumed there'd be some form of age appropriate consequence.  Time out, brief loss of a favorite privilege, unplanned toenail trimming.  Something to make it clear he'd crossed the line and it was not OK.
But no.  It seems they are not allowed to do that unless parents specifically OK it.  And I guess you have to independently volunteer your approval because I certainly never got any sort of time out permission form.  I would have signed that in a heart beat.
It seems, after an informal survey of the folks I know with kids, this lack of consequence is the norm for day care.
It really, really bothers me that this is the policy.
More, it bothers me the response I got from another mom.  "Well of course" she said, as if I was some sort of nut case "I don't want someone else disciplining my kid."

I don't think it is the day care's responsibility to teach my baby right from wrong.  Our job as parents is to teach them values and to flog them with wet newspaper until they internalize the rules.  I know that.  I spent a lot of time and energy and waistline in search of the privilege of doing just that.  But the unavoidable fact is that my child, and all the others in his class, spend more time with the day care providers than with us, the parents.  They spend all day with this peer group, these adults, and it does seem reasonable to expect or to at least empower them to set limits and dole out consequences.  It's not a wolf pack.  It's supposedly an environment where children are learning social skills.

The developmental job of a 2 year old is to test limits.  He's learning the rules of the world.  Someone has to teach him those rules.  The worst thing that can happen is for him to grow up thinking the rules don't apply to him (sociopath) or only apply in certain situations when certain people are looking.  No wonder bullying is becoming such a problem in our schools.  Children are coming to schools from day care where when they knocked a kid over to take their cookie the teacher pulled them aside and made them play on the computer to stop them from being mean.

Fine Young Cannibals

I think of myself as a pretty relaxed parent. 
Nathan bounces around on the ground a lot.  He is, after all, perfecting his walking/running/climbing/exploring skills and a few head bumps/pinched fingers/little scrapes are just all part of the process.
I was, however, completely unrelaxed today when my son came home with teeth marks on his baby skin. 
It's not the first time.  On his second day in the toddler room we took off his shirt at bath time and there was a perfect dental imprint written in broken blood vessels in the middle of his back.  Today, apparently the same offender got out of control and bit my little guy's shoulder.
And drew blood.
When Dave arrived to pick him up, our tear-stained boy was surrounded by day care workers, ice packs, and incident reports.  The mother, an attending I have worked with on more than one occasion, was mortified and apologetic.  Nate's teachers were similarly distressed.  They are supposed to keep "the twins"  and their teeth separate from the other kids, but today there was a breakdown in the system.
I'm not OK with this.
I'm not OK with biting.
Nate has spent exactly 3 minutes in time out and all 3 of them were after the first and last 3 times he bit anyone in this house.
I am glad I wasn't there because I am not sure I would have settled for time out if I had actually seen the little boy nearly twice Nathan's size trying to make a meal out of my baby.  Caning is still legal, isn't it?