The Queen's Rambles

I have seen so many friends having trouble with their toddler boys that I have to tell you: It gets better! It really, really does.

Believe me, my dear toddler son was a challenge in every way. Stubborn, spastic, wild. He had it all.

And now that he’s five and three months he is the nicest boy you could ever meet. He tries so hard to be polite and use nice words. He cracks me up with his “I’m so sorry I broke that mommy, I didn’t realize it was fragile.” Or his “I would deserve some water with dinner, mommy.” He has deserve mixed up with want, so that leads to giggles for me.

He tries so very hard to be helpful and often succeeds. He is five, of course, so his idea of helpful is not always my idea, but at this point it really is the thought that counts. He FREAKS out when Elsa has a piece of paper or is getting close to something she shouldn’t have. I’m trying to teach him not to panic.

It was a long, long haul getting to this point. I posted a link on FB that sums up raising toddler boys perfectly. The blogger, someone I’ve been reading since BlogExplosion if you can remember that far back, is a mom of two boys and a former teacher. She knows what she’s talking about.

I so often post the negative because I have a hard time with bragging, but I want you to know: IT GETS BETTER. Is Erik perfect 100% of the time? Of course not. But he’s very civilized and knows how to act and can be lured into good behavior most of the time. He is so eager to please and so bright and shining and just a lovely, lovely human being.

Then we have dear Elsa. She is my delightful baby, but now she’s got a cold. She was up most of the night with a stuffy nose that we just couldn’t help her with. She wanted to nurse but couldn’t nurse and breathe at the same time. It worked a lot better when Mike comforted her since she wasn’t expecting milk from him, but he had to get up early to go to work so we try not to have him stay up all night.

Today I’m going out and buying one of those battery operated snot suckers. I hope it really works. I was so desperate last night that I almost did as Penelope Leach advises and sucked it out with my mouth. But ewwww. I would do just about anything for my baby or for my sleep, but unless she’s dying I’m not going to be sucking the snot out with my mouth.

Guess what? I found something she likes to eat (other than applesauce!). Polenta! Really, really bad polenta.

I’ve had polenta exactly once in my life, way back in 2004 before we moved to DC. At the time I’d never heard of it and didn’t know what it was, but it came on my plate at a fancy restaurant in Half Moon Bay. I didn’t want to try it, but gosh darnit, I was at a fancy restaurant in Half Moon Bay. I couldn’t turn my nose up at it just because I didn’t know what it was. And it was totally delicious.

I’ve been dreaming about polenta ever since, but it seemed beyond the scope of my cooking skills because I didn’t even know what it was. Then I saw Anne Burrell make it on Secrets of Restaurant Chef. I love Anne Burrell. I decided to give it a try, but made the rookie mistake of buying “instant” instead of long cooking. It was the only polenta I could find in the grocery store, so I don’t blame myself too much.

Anyway, it was disgusting. Flavorless (because it didn’t boil long enough I guess), goopy, lumpy. GROSS.

Elsa loved it. I put some on her tray because I figured she couldn’t choke on it and she ate it up.

Here’s a record of foods Elsa has swallowed in her life :
Banana slices
wide variety of apple based baby food
frozen peas
apple flavored Puffs
polenta

There’s a book Erik sometimes likes called The Seven Silly Eaters about this lady who has seven kids and each kid will only eat one type of food. One kid will only eat homemade applesauce. I always thought it was just a silly joke, but DUDE. I have that child.

The other day I thought it would be a good idea to turn her little car/pusher thing into a pusher so she could practice walking. She loves it. She is so proud of herself as she zooms all over the house, not paying a lick of attention to where she’s going. It’s only a matter of time before she walks. I give it days, if not hours.

The only problem? Erik steals it from her and zooms all over, forcing her to crawl after him. It’s fine and everyone is happy so it’s not a “problem.” Everyone is right–it’s nice to have two so they can entertain each other.

And now I have to wake a napping baby so I can get some clothes on so I can get boy from school. He has homework this week and we have been instructed not to do it for them. The teacher even gave me the stink eye.

Last time they had homework I did part of Erik’s. I know. Bad! But it’s preschool.

Last time the homework was a picture of a ball cap that they were supposed to decorate. Then they were supposed to write one word describing where they would wear the ball cap.

Erik wanted his cap to be solid green. Oh. My. Lord. Trying to get that boy to focus to color something a solid green was nearly impossible. Plus, he isn’t really great at figuring out how to color something that large a solid color (there were lots of white spaces) and he was getting really upset.

He trashed the first one. I made a copy of the cap. He trashed the second one. He was getting hysterical because he couldn’t get it how he wanted, even though I showed him how to use the marker sort of sideways to fill it in nicely.

In the end I colored the cap. So sue me. I didn’t see the point in having a hysterical five year old color in a big block of white. They were allowed to use stickers, glitter, basically whatever they wanted. So why couldn’t he have his mommy color it? I did make him write the word himself. In the end he wrote a whole sentence “I will wear the cap when I ride my scooter.” (I wrote it on a paper and he copied, which is what the teacher suggested).

Now he is supposed to think of a community service worker and draw on the uniform and write what the community service worker wears and uses. He wants to do a trash man. He was really mad that I didn’t know what kind of uniform a trash man wears. I know gloves, but that’s about it. I guess I should look that up before he comes home this afternoon.

Does it go without saying that I think homework for preschool is absolutely ridiculous? Kindergarten is going to be interesting next year. I don’t know how the teacher do it in this district, there is such a disparity between the haves and have nots.