Snow Day

Posted on November 25, 2010 by VanDad@Home

Snow days used to be one of my favorite times, usually meaning I would have the day off from school and could stay home and watch TV all day.

Now, that I appear to be fully grown with a child by my side, there is no such thing as a snow day holiday. I can’t stay inside and use the electronic baby-sitter, either. I need to GO GET IT outside.

Okay, the first snow in Vancouver was on her birthday, and Natalie was witness to it strictly indoors. The white stuff never made it into her little mitts. Until today.

We went to our favorite consignment store yesterday MacGillycuddies and bought a whole snow outfit. I went with a pink one-piece just so she could fully enjoy winter days like this one.

Enjoy the images of Natalie posing with her Moomin-inspired friend.

Today takes me back to our days in Lapland.  Even though the snow will be short-lived, I promise to get Natalie out and soak it all up.

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Natalka is walking, 368 days later

Posted on November 24, 2010 by VanDad@Home

After a long wait and countless attempts at bending, stretching and get her muscles ready for it, Natalie is now walking. If you didn’t know, I am the goofy one doing the air-gas-pedal while Natalie motors around.

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Positively pushing our wunderkind

Posted on November 9, 2010 by VanDad@Home

I haven’t written in a while and it is not due to having nothing to write about. Natalie has taken her first steps and has celebrated Halloween and wandered around a pumpkin patch. All noteworthy things, but when does one have the time to write about it.

Her sleep schedule is a bit strange in the morning, where she tends to sleep for only half an hour (don‘t worry, her afternoon naps are usually hour plus). The short morning naps mean we have to play and eat from 1030 onwards, giving me a short window to shave/shower and zero time to write.

Lately, I have been considering behavioural conditioning and how we can help Natalie to be successful. I know, she is only 11.5 months, but life with her has been about short moments of preparation for massive changes in life stages. She is practically a toddler now, and that means her personality is crudely forming its rough edges.

Will she be a kid who is secure in herself and comfortable around others? Will she be a take-charge kind of person, or one who sits back and takes it all in?

She is a very studious person already, knowing words and actions from two languages. Mom speaks Czech exclusively and Dad is all English.

She has a capacity to understand, and I want to make sure she maintains this discipline she already has for learning. I don’t want her to be distracted, but be engaged and focused. Now, this could lead one to think of spare the rod/spoil the child-type thinking. I am more interested in a balance of Natalie being a healthy, self-motivated person who does thing out of joy and not fear of punishment.

The book I am reading, Positive Pushing: How to Successfully Raise a Happy Child emphasizes three basic concepts:

  1. Self-esteem: making sure Natalie feels values and respected help to encourage this self-belief.
  2. Ownership: Natalie’s accomplishments in life must be her own and not me living vicariously through her.
  3. Emotional Mastery: Figuring out how to rationalize and control anger, frustration, and sadness will help Natalie immensely.

I know it seems early, but there are constant situations where I have to think of how to react. Should I continue to encourage or should I pull back and let her explore. Regardless, I know the pushing gets results.

If I encourage her to take some modest risks then she can learn to get out of her comfort zone and go sliding down a slide. Pushing helped her to take her first steps, and go into group situations like Gymboree classes.

In a way, we as parents set a theme for Natalie’s upbringing, and I want it to be a positive one full of experience and acceptance. That way she is a person confident in herself and what she wants to accomplish.

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Super powers are not required, but they would be nice to have

Posted on October 20, 2010 by VanDad@Home

We finally got around to watching the TV show “Heroes” and one character struck a chord with me. The teenage cheerleader who could not be hurt. I would love to have invincibility to tap into once in a while. It would be a super power which Natalie could take advantage of during cold and flu season.

Sadly, she is sick again and there are no healing powers which I could offer her that do not include warm formula and over-the-counter herbal remedies. Note from last week, we have recovered the Saje bottle which remarkably stayed in the pile of leaves we left it in.

Super Mom played her role well this morning when Natalie woke up at 5:00 am. I woke up and knew she would sleep so we played until about 6:45. Super Mom came to the rescue then and continued to play with our sick girl. I went back to regenerate my own super powers with a super nap.

I woke up at 8:45 to our baby crying. We were both kind of out of it, but we knew we could get through it together even if Super Mom wasn’t around. Apparently she had flown off to save the world and left us both to sleep in. How nice.

I got to thinking about super powers that could work for us and like a good blogger, I compiled a list. Here goes it:

  1. Sleep-through-the-night power. I would use this only once per day, but its effect would be enormous on our sleeping lives.
  2. Put-it-back-in place-ability. Imagine Natalie wielding this power for the good of our living room. She has already started to develop it a bit.

  3. Dry-up-finger-lasers. How cool would it be having a laser that came out of your fingers which could dry up tears and snotty noses? I’ll answer: very cool, indeed.
  4. Ctrl-alt-del. I wish I could undue all those times when I thought Natalie fell down and went boom. This would be a dangerous power which could give her a false sense of security.
  5. Incredible weight gaining skills. That would be the penultimate for our little wonder who is currently falling off the growth charts. She eats a lot but she stays the same weight. We’ll probably stick with feeding her ground turkey instead.
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Playing in leaves, Autumn is upon us

Posted on October 12, 2010 by VanDad@Home

This year we were especially thankful to have little Natalie around to enjoy the Fall season. You know, I hadn’t really enjoyed playing in the leaves since I was a kid, and now I have the opportunity to take pleasure in the re-discovery of everything.

We had a blast over the weekend, playing at a park in Shaunnessy much to the chagrin of the uber-rich locals. As an example of the urban ennui, I saw one guy come to the park with his dog. He takes out his golf club and take a few mock swings at some leaves while his dog does his business; then he piles himself back into his BMW and drives around the crescent park while his dog chases along side him.  It was quite the spectacle of laziness.

We did have loads of fun playing together as witnessed in this fun video of Natalie being tossed in a pile of leaves.

During the melee in the leaves we lost the Saje bottle for her cold. We hope to go back next week to rescue it, if it is still around.

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Natalie is sick for the millionth time

Posted on October 7, 2010 by VanDad@Home

Neither the dinosaur or child were harmed

What’s with babies and colds? Natalie has had about a cold every other week since I took over which is a bit trying. She doesn’t sleep at night which means she sleeps later during the days and is a bit more cranky, and the whole perfect schedule thing is thrown out-of-whack. Oh well, life is not to be followed by a script.

In case you are thinking it, yes, I do feel like a slacker for taking a couple days off from blogging. SHAME ON ME. NO EXCUSES.

Yesterday, I learned and experienced some new things.

  1. Natalie knows how to turn off her baby monitor. This of course leads to a horrid beeping sound which makes me think the worst.
  2. I was told by a fellow Mom (yes, I qualify as one now) about Saje, which is an aromatherapy store on Fourth. I am not as into New Age medicine, but this is not invasive and natural stuff, so why not give it a try. Natalie has congestion, and I bought a tincture for head colds which I diluted with Olive oil and it gave Natalie some relief from the never-ending drip monster that is her nose.
  3. After her recovery we went to the Family Place on Tenth and MacDonald. It is a parent resource centre and a cool play area which costs $20 for annual membership and has $2 drop-ins on Wednesday afternoons. It is very community oriented and run by a handful of mothers. They have a great playground with lots of push toys and they have monsters, like the image above.

Well, time for lunch. We are going to the organic bottle of orange goop that is apparently Chicken and Stars. We plan to load up and head to signing class this afternoon.

Natalie with her doppleganger at the Family Place:

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There’s a barbie on the beach. Thank you, Wiggles!

Posted on October 4, 2010 by VanDad@Home

No, this is not going to be a post about a famous, well-endowed doll. It will be in tribute to a lesser known Aussie kid’s show.

Introducing the Wiggles:

Yes, they are very obnoxiously happy, look like they belong on Star Trek, and strangely organized in order of height in their video, but they helped me this past lunch.

They are the Wiggles and I happen to stumble upon them while prepping for lunch. Natalie will get about 10 minutes of TV time during a meal, which is my bad habit, but it can work wonders. Hopefully it won’t be a life-long association between TV and stuffing her yob.

The truly amazing part of this is that just yesterday, Aussie-friend Karen mentioned the Wiggles as the penultimate TV program for kids coming from Down Under. I shrugged, saying never heard of it.

Much like Tim Tams, I have fallen in love with the Wiggles. While they sang Barbie on the Beach, Natalie ate two helpings of pasta and two helpings of veggie-chicken-mush.

I reckon thems good results. Aussies rule!

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September 30 standing video

Posted on October 1, 2010 by VanDad@Home

Natalie best free standing attempt: 18 seconds.

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Friendly tyranny

Posted on October 1, 2010 by VanDad@Home

Communicating with Natalie is challenging, and I can see why so many young mothers are out and about. Sometimes, your kid is pretty quite and to themselves. Even though I am with her the whole day, it is sometimes isolating if we don’t go out and see some other, you know, talking people.

I signed up for Baby Sign Language class at Kitsilano Community Centre. Mom already took this class months ago, but I hadn’t so I thought I would join in. The only catch is that it is supposed to be for kids up to 6 months.

I asked the teacher if it was okay, and she said the ages listed are only a guideline, and that Natalie would be more than welcome.

I secretly thought this would be a great opportunity for Natalie to feel her first bit of dominance. I could picture it now, all these immobile babies under 6 months being attended to by their sleep deprived mothers while Natalie ruled the roost pushing infants out of the way for toys and dictating terms as she crawled around slapping any kid who looked at her funny.

I think it is important for your child to feel like a despot at least once in her life. I think about the Family Guy and Stewie taking charge of the playground. For me, the chronic weakling, this was also my first opportunity to live vicariously through Natalie.

It turned out to be much tamer than I imagined. She made friends with one kid who was a month younger and she crawled over to the mirror and looked at herself for quite a while, completely disinterested in the proceeding.

She did manage to bother the teacher Leanne for a bit, knocking her papers around, but in the end, she took Natalie on her lap and made her the lead pupil for the song/sign activity. It was very cute. Yes, she is a cute little despot.

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I want to ride my bicycle

Posted on September 30, 2010 by VanDad@Home

Biking is one of the biggest things I miss about work. I loved the daily commute over the Burrard bridge and the fact that I got my heart rate up for at least 40 mins per day.

Since I had taken over Natalie responsibilities I have been grounded. We have a great bike trailer from MEC and it was used a total of two times, both ending in my having to carry Natalie in a Baby Bjorn while biking and dragging the trailer. She just hated the experience (I call it the “terror-ride”) because it probably was too fast and at one point on a really steep downhill, fine bits of dirt got through the trailer screen and pelted her face. When we stopped and checked her out we could see a fair bit of grit on her face. She was not pleased.

Fast-forward to this week and a couple more months have lapsed since the bike terror-ride. The weather forecast says it should be sunny for about five days which is ample reason enough for me to take out the trailer for a ride.

At 10.5 months she is older and I am hopefully, a bit wiser. You know, this time with a thicker rain cover – to prevent dirt attacks – the ride was a complete success. I loaded the trailer with loads of sandbox toys, her water, and a good rattle and made sure she was fed and rested right and I have to say, she must have thought it was neat being the lap of luxury at nearly one foot off the ground.

She even managed to fall asleep in the trailer in that contorted way kids can sleep sitting up. Really, I don’t have much to complain about. There are two things car drivers can remember when they are behind us:

A. See the trailer and slow down. B. I wish cars would not try to speed around us to only sit at a traffic light; we (baby and me) have to breathe your exhaust fumes.

We did the ride again today and went to the Kitsilano playground and enjoyed another good play session in the sand. A woman told me about a Child’s Place at Macdonald and 11th which has $2 drop-in and loads of kids and toys to play with.  I hope to check it out soon.

At the playground Natalie was still a bit shy, but I figure she was being exposed to loads of other kids which will later help her to feel more at ease in social situations. The only drawback from today is that she was so wound up by the other kids she missed her nap at 3pm, and had it an hour late. I guess we will have to stay up late tonight because of it. Er, well it was worth it just because we could ride.

Here is a random photo from today of Natalie looking like a ballerina.

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