Keep up with the Breedorfs

Today, April 20th, at 6:42am we welcomed our new baby girl into the world. She weighs in at 7.5lbs, is 18 inches long, and has her mom’s good looks.

We’ve decided to name Polly Josephine, which seems to fit her very well.

Jen started having contractions at around 11:30pm. Around 4:10am or so we made the decision to head in. Jen was able to walk and talk through the contractions but they had become more regular and we decided that it was better to be safe than sorry. I don’t think that any of the nurses believed that she was ready to give birth given her calm exterior but we explained Theo’s rapid ascent to the on call doc, she performed an exam, and 15min later we were on our way to a delivery room. We made the choice to have them break Jen’s water at around 5:30am, labor came strong and furious after that, and after 2 hard pushing sessions our daughter emerged into the bright lights and happy faces of the hospital room. They actually had to rush our delivery doctor in to keep up with the record pace of Jen’s delivery. The nurses and doctors were all great and were blown away by how quickly it happened and how effortlessly Jen made it all look. I’d like to think that this effortless birth experience is a commentary on how easy this child is going to be to raise but even I am not foolish enough to make that leap.

Mom and kiddo are curled up in bed, getting to know one another. Dad got a nap in earlier today and is filling his time between baby visits with various errands and announcements to the outside world of our amazing progress. Per hospital policy we’re here until tomorrow morning but should be discharged at that time if things keep on track.

We miss little T and are anxious to get home to see him. I’m looking forward to seeing how Theo reacts to his new sis. It’s going to be a big change for him but he is a very loving kid and is going to make a great big brother.

We celebrated Theo’s 2nd birthday this past weekend. Grandma Keiko (”Kiko”), Grandpa (”Gandpa”), and Aunt Jessica came to visit so it was very special indeed. Theo enjoyed all the extra attention but especially adored his Grandpa. “Ganpa SIT!” he’d say, patting the seat next to him. Or “Ganpa do it!” handing my dad his Thomas the Tank Engine toothbrush and enthusiastically holding his mouth open (which he NEVER EVER does for us). Grandpa got here a few days before Aunt Jessica and Grandma Keiko, so we had some nice days at the park, lots of play sessions, and a trip to Goodwill where Grandpa scored Theo a riding dump truck and a pile of great new books.

Theo’s birthday was on Sunday but we celebrated a day early and got lucky with some gorgeous weather. The day was all about Theo’s favorite things: after a waffle breakfast, we spent the morning at the zoo where Theo got to ride the carousel not once, not twice, but three times. Then a picnic lunch. Then we came home and after Theo took his nap, we opened presents: Duplo blocks from me and Matt, a pounding toy from Grandma and Grandpa, a stuffed toy cat from Aunt Jessica. Theo got a little weird about the cat, holding it up against his cheek and saying “kitty ka! kitty ka!” in a strange high pitched voice. Then Jessica, Grandma, Theo, and I made a huge mess in the kitchen rolling out and assembling pizzas for dinner. We devoured all six of them. Matt got stuck doing dishes. Then we had strawberry shortcake. Theo didn’t have much of the cake, just a ton of his beloved strawberries.

The next day on his actual birthday we did a video call with Nana and Pops while he opened his presents from them. He got a fun DVD called I Love Big Machines which is now officially his favorite thing to watch, some new clothes, a toy digger, and some kids music that we’ve been enjoying in the car. Thank you, Nana and Pops!

Theo ran in his first race the weekend before. He was one of the older kids in the 1-2 year old event we entered him in and he’s a pretty fast runner so Matt and I were all “Oh, he’s TOTALLY going to win.” He did not. He didn’t even come close. He came in last. (His pal Maggie came in first. Go, Maggie!) It wasn’t an issue of being outrun, more an issue of not understanding the concept. Theo did not get that on “GO!” one is supposed to leave the starting line and head towards the finish line, preferably with some velocity. He stood at the starting line watching all the other kids make their meandering way towards the finish, which in this case was about 30 feet away. All the parents were screaming like maniacs, of course, which probably added his confusion. Eventually, he started a slow stroll towards the finish with a bemused expression on his face. Luckily they don’t heckle 2 year olds who come in last but instead gave him a medal, too. Everyone’s a winner! After that, Theo was more interested in the races and tried to join in one of the older kid events. He and Maggie took off after the big kids, trailing them around the track and doing pretty darn well until they got distracted by a puddle about three-quarters of the way around and stopped to stomp in it.

Oh! So, hey! I just realized I never announced here that I’m pregnant! Of course, everyone who reads this blog already knows anyway, but for the record: I’m pregnant! Quite pregnant, actually. I’m due in, uh, 3 weeks, so I’m in the whale-like, heartburn-ridden, had-to-get-some-satin-pjs-so-I-can-roll-over-in-bed-without-grunting-like-a-walrus final stages of this bun baking project. That means I’ve spared you stories from all the other stages. Like the green-gilled beginning. Or when I’d make a quick run to the store for a can of enchilada sauce and completely forget that one item but instead emerge with my arms full of strawberries, kettle corn, Oreos, and cheese tortellini. Or when I’d find myself salivating while reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Theo, especially the part where the caterpillar eats one piece of chocolate cake, one ice-cream cone, one pickle, one slice of swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon. (Okay, truth be told, that part still makes me drool a little.)

While I’m here let me give you an update on Operation Toddler Bed. Basically, we gave up on going into his room every time he got out of bed. Wait, first we went through a crazy phase lasting several days where we sat IN his room next to his bed and laid him back down every single time he got up. This would go on for, oh, an hour or two, with Theo having a blast the entire time. So, one night we were just sick and tired of the whole thing and said, “Screw it. We’re too tired to deal with this tonight. So, tonight, if he wants to run amok in his room then fall asleep on the floor at midnight, FINE. We’re going to sit on the couch, eat snacks, and watch HBO.” On the monitor we saw him get out of bed and stand in the middle of the room waiting for one of us to make our dramatic appearance. When we didn’t, he pretty much just shrugged, climbed into bed, and went to sleep. It isn’t always super easy, but on a typical night he wanders around the room or does some bed gymnastics but eventually settles down and goes to sleep on his own after 10 minutes or so. We pay him a visit before we go to bed to tuck him in, since he invariably falls asleep atop the covers or occasionally on the rug on the floor next to the bed.

There is still the occasional difficult nap or bedtime, like a few weeks ago when for an hour or so after I put him down for a nap I could hear him fussing and running around in his room but didn’t know why he wasn’t settling down. I eventually went to check on him and when I opened the door was hit by a blast of heat: he’d discovered the control knob on the baseboard heater. It must have been pushing 90 degrees in his room and he was quite uncomfortable. “Watah, watah,” he croaked, waving an empty cup at me. I made the mistake of impressing him with a rather dramatic reaction featuring my Very Stern Face, much finger wagging, and emphatic repetition of “Do NOT touch the heater, NO TOUCH! NO TOUCH HEATER!”, thus ensuring his endless fascination with doing it every time I left the room. Eventually I gave up and removed him from his room. He didn’t get a nap that day.

We’ve since placed a large and heavy armchair to block access to the knob but he occasionally tries to move it out of the way or climb over it. We go in to intervene if we see him trying anything like that and when we open the door he wags his finger towards the heater and scolds, “NO TATCH HETO!” just to let us know he knows the rules.

More new photos on our Flickr page

The two nights following that last post required ZERO parental visits to Theo’s room to return him to the toddler bed. Theo stayed put, humming along to his bedtime CD before falling asleep, while Matt and I sat around watching HBO and feeling smug.

The next night, however, we must have gone in there 100 times. Maybe 200. Maybe more. Seriously, we lost count. Theo seemed to think it was HILARIOUS that we’d come busting in if he left the bed and would grin broadly at us when we made our increasingly irritated appearances. Since then, we have not had a night as bad as that Night of A Thousand Visits, but we have definitely had to go into his room at least several times — and sometimes several dozen times — every night (and at nap time, if we’re at home).

We want to train him to stay in the bed when it is night night time, and the method that makes sense to me is to return him to it (gently, and without drama or any social interaction with him) each time he gets out of it so that he eventually learns that it does him no good to leave it. It is turning out to be a lot of work, though. We have talked about whether we should just let him get out of bed and do whatever it is he wants to do in his room until he gets tired and crawls back into bed on his own (or conks out on the floor) but I want to stick with what we’re doing for a little while longer and see if it works out. I guess my worry is that he won’t go to sleep early enough if he is playing and, since we can’t let him sleep in on the mornings that I have to get to work, he won’t get enough sleep. We’ll see, though. It’s been just over a week now…shall we give it, say, two? Anyway, it has become a game to Theo, I think. Several different games, actually.

Game #1: How Far is Too Far?

Child performs the following steps while Parent watches Child on video monitor.

1. Child sticks one foot over the edge of the bed.
2. Child pauses, listens for approaching footsteps.
3. Child places foot on the floor.
4. Child pauses and listens.

(At this point, Parent engages Other Parent in discussion about whether this technically constitutes leaving the bed and they decide the child must actually lose all contact with the bed.)

5. Child places two feet on the floor but keeps whole upper half of body on the bed.
6. Child pauses and listens.
7. Child raises upper half of body but leaves hands on the bed.
8. Child pauses and listens.
9. Child stands next to the bed with only one hand touching it.
10. Child pauses and listens.
11. Child sits next to the bed with only one hand touching it.
12. Child pauses and listens.
13. Child scoots away from the bed on bottom until his hand loses contact with bed.

(Parent says “Gaddammit” and heaves self off couch.)

14. Child hears rapidly approaching footsteps and leaps back into bed.
15. Child says “Hi mama!”, all innocence and charm, when Parent opens the door.

We also played variations on this game where:

• Child leaves the bed starting with his head rather than a foot.
• Parent comes in as soon as any body part touches the floor.
• Child does not scamper back into bed when he hears footsteps approach but instead cackles merrily as he is returned to bed by Parent.

Game #2: Creating Excuses

Child deliberately drops all dozen stuffed toys from his bed onto the floor then clambers out. When Parent makes his/her appearance, Child conveys through actions and facial expressions of innocence that he is only out of bed because the stuffed toys accidentally fell out and need to be put back into the bed, see?

Game #3: Play it Oh So Casual

Child nonchalantly gets out of bed and gets a book off the bookshelf, sits on the floor, and IN THE PITCH DARK, starts “reading” the book. When Parent makes his/her appearance, Child looks up with an “Oh, hello there! I’m just doing a little reading, see?” expression.

If the book is Pat the Bunny, Child raises it to his nose to smell the flowers.

Game #5: Bed Olympics

Child performs various acrobatic feats on the bed without actually leaving it, including:

• Headstands using the headboard of the bed for support
• Lying on back and kicking the wall
• Lying on back and walking feet up the wall
• Jumping
• Running from one end of the bed to the other
• Flinging body from standing position onto the mattress
• Climbing up onto the headboard of the bed

It was actually this last game that gave us the break we needed on that one awful night. It was coming up on 3 hours of barging into Theo’s room every few minutes. Theo was straddling the headboard when he fell the two feet from his perch to the floor with a resounding THONK. There was a pause and then the wailing started. I went in and gave him kisses and held him for a while and when I laid him down, he went right to sleep.

Anyway. We’ll stick with this a little longer, I think. Tonight it took, oh, maybe a half-dozen visits over the course of 40 minutes, maybe? We’ll keep you posted.

Not long after putting Theo to bed a couple of nights ago, we checked the video monitor and were surprised to discover that all we could see of him was a dangling foot at the top of the screen. When we went into the room, we found him straddling the highest rail of the crib, happy as a lemur perched atop a branch. Beneath him was a four foot drop to the hardwood floor with the arm of the glider and humidifier in between. It didn’t take much for my overactive imagination to picture A Very Unfortunate Fall that could result in bruises! Broken teeth! Uh, possible drowning in the humidifier reservoir! Or electrocution!

So, the next day I went in frantic search of one of these “crib tents” but could not lay my hands on one. Just a side note here: I’ve never actually seen one of those in person, but doesn’t it look so very flimsy? It reminds me of one of those gauzy canopies you’d put over a picnic lunch to keep the flies off the potato salad. Or a mosquito net. I have a hard time imagining that Theo, being somewhat stronger than a fly or a mosquito, couldn’t just bust through it reminiscent of that giant pitcher in the Kool-Aid commercials, but, hey, supposedly it keeps toddlers in the crib. Or cats out, which seems to be the other big reason people get them. (I can speak from experience that it would likely not, however, keep raccoons out of the crib. I once had all my trail mix stolen by a gang of raccoons who unzipped my tent then my backpack with their dexterous little paws.)

Anyway, unable to acquire a crib tent and unwilling to keep Theo in the crib another night without one in place, we purchased a toddler bed. It’s the same size as a crib but is low to the ground. It has guard rails on both sides to keep him from rolling out when asleep, but unfortunately the rails don’t serve to confine him should he desire to climb out and roam about his room. And, really, what self-respecting toddler stays put in bed when there’s roaming to be had?

Oh, how I miss the crib and its prison-like confinement! We’ve been trying to train Theo to stay in the bed by keeping a close eye on the monitor and responding every time we see him out of bed. Initially this meant gently but firmly returning him to it. We’re at the point now where he’ll scramble back into the bed when he hears us coming, then when we open the door he greets us with an innocent “Hi Mama!” or “Hi Daddy!” in a tone that suggests that, why, he is just so DELIGHTED we stopped by to visit, and to what does he owe this pleasure? The first two nights we went in maybe four or five times before he finally stayed in bed and went to sleep. We’re on night #3 now, and I’ve had to go in twice so far…He isn’t asleep yet but it has been 20 minutes since I last went in, so maybe we’re done for the night. We shall see!

Bedtime seems to be a little easier than nap time, perhaps because it is so dark in his room that he isn’t as tempted to explore its many pleasures. I kept running notes during nap time yesterday:

11:45 AM: When I put T down in his bed, he curled up happily with his blanket and got right into sleeping position with butt up in the air. Easy peasy!


12:01 PM: Argh, spoke too soon. He’s not sleeping. He is using the headboard to perform headstands…but he is still in the bed!


12:06 PM: More gymnastics involving the guard rail…he’s half out of the bed but not completely…but I’m going in.


12:10 PM: He is up again, playing with the night light. I’m going in.


12:15 PM: He has fetched a book from his bookshelf and is reading it out loud in his bed. Not sure what to do…technically he is in his bed so I guess I’ll let it go.


12:20 PM: He is pulling on the door stop and making the door bang in its frame. I’m going in.


12:24 PM: He is pushing his chair around the room. I’m going in.


12:27 PM: I can’t tell where he is in the room but he sure as heck isn’t in the bed. I can hear him talking talking talking to someone/something about, what, robots? Not sure. I’m going in.


12:32 PM: He is taking all the stuffed toys out of the bed and putting them on his armchair. I’m going in.


12:45 PM: Seems to be asleep?


1:15 PM: Yes, asleep!

———————–

You know, I do believe he’s down for the night. Hopefully, it just keeps getting better and eventually he doesn’t get out of bed at all once we say night-night. It really hasn’t been bad at all, but I sure miss when we could just lay him down in the crib and that was that. One very nice thing about the toddler bed, though, is that in the mornings he can climb out and play by himself for a while, especially since we’ve been going through a phase where he has been waking up earlier than usual — an ungodly 6 AM instead of 7. Waking up the sound of toys being dumped all over the floor is much better than being awakened by the sound of him rattling the crib rail and hollering for us to come and entertain him.

I took the week of between Christmas and the New Year to spend with the family. We started out with a sledding excursion. An hour drive up to the summit, 30 minutes bundling Theo up, a brief moment of culpability where I was forced to admit that “yes, I was wrong about not needing open the inflatable tube before we use it” (luckily we had a backup saucer), a short hike through the snow, and we were good to go. Our mistake was in visiting the large sledding hill before making up our minds where to start, it resulted in having to drag Theo kicking and screaming over to the bunny hill.

We quickly loaded him up and flung him down the hill and all was forgotten.

Before he even got down the hill he was signing for more and saying “mo, mo sledding” over and over again. This set the tone for the rest of the day. Theo sliding down the hill, signing for more, daddy or mommy carrying him back up the hill, rinse and repeat. After roughly 20min we gave up on the carrying part. It was now Theo’s job to get himself back up the hill.

Saturday- I had to go into work to pick up some software and took Theo in with me. It was raining and crappy out but we had a blast. We saw a sea lion swimming next to the Edgewater. He was having a blast, every time he came out of the water he had another fish in his mouth. Theo marveled at the trains and buses and was amazed that he could look out my office window and see a big digger.

Sunday- A little shopping- we took the bus downtown, road the carousel:

survived a Theo meltdown trying to pull him off, and made it back alive. Some more eating, and sleeping and we were ready for Christmas.

Our Christmas morning was a white one. He had roughly a half inch of snow following a cold, cold night. Theo had most of the presents under the tree. Our mistake was allowing him to open the garbage truck first.

It thoroughly distracted him from the rest of the work and resulted in a 3 hour present opening marathon, paced by 1omin breaks between each unwrapping for Theo to drive his new truck around.

In the end the booty was rich: big blocks, little blocks, a bruder garbage truck, a fuzzy jacket, puzzles, books, lights, and much much more.

We wrapped up the year by purchasing a new minivan, a Honda Odyssey, which Theo refers to as “New Car, New Car!” Many know that I have been dreaming of a minivan for several years, a dream that has now been realized. It is technically Jen’s car, although I drive it every chance I get, despite the protests of “I’m going to have to reset the mirror and seat again!” (the one option we didn’t get). It’s decked out with heated leather seats, a DVD player in the back, a night-vision camera for backing up, and enough room for a basketball team, coach, and 2 subs. All that said, its most impressive feature is the dual power sliding doors. Theo cheers every time we approach the “New Car, New Car!” and it opens it doors to let us in.

Hope everyone had a great holiday.

-Mr. Breedorf