A Boy and His Blog

Archive for the ‘Owen's Health and Development’ Category

Owen turned four-and-a-half this past weekend! It just so happened that, the week before, we were at a store looking for a card to buy for Owen’s friend’s birthday, when Owen spotted a card he liked very much. The card had a robot on the cover and a big “4″ written on it. Owen came over to us nearly in tears, because he said he would like to get that card for his birthday, but since he already turned 4, it was too late. (We had forgotten to buy Owen a card back on his actual birthday) We secretly bought the card for him and sent it to him, along with $2 inside. When the card came in the mail, coincidentally on his half birthday, he said: “It’s kind of like it’s my birthday!” We took him to the store and let him spend his money on candy.

Owen is back in preschool and doing really well this year. He still goes Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and on Monday and Wednesday morning he goes to a friend’s house to play with their little girl while Mama is at class. We also often go to the play/study room at Mama’s college and Owen plays with other kids there. He is doing very well playing with others and learning to make friends.

Owen was a robot for Halloween this year. We made his costume out of a cardboard box, painted it silver, and glued several things onto it to make it look robot-like. We gave him ducts for arms too. He looked for cute, and very uncomfortable. He was a trooper though and wore his costume to a Halloween party at Mama’s college, to a Halloween party at his preschool, to the mall to trick-or-treat and then at home through the hallways of our apartment to trick-or-treat. He even won the costume contest for his age group at his school! He was much bolder this year about getting candy, and wanted to keep knocking at doors at our apartment when we got home.

Owen decided to get his hair cut short recently by Aunt Diane, and it is shorter than it has been since he was one years old. He is also getting really tall! We measured him on the board we keep track of his height on and he has shot up a couple inches since he turned 4. He has started doing simple addition, like 1 + 2 or 2 + 2, and I’m not sure where he learned it. He just tells me, “Mama, 2 and add another 2 is 4. He also has finally figured out that letters all have sounds, and he can match the sound to the letter by hearing the sound first. Before, he could only match sounds when hearing the letter first. But now, he will say, “ca – ca – ca is c”, instead if “c goes ca”. It took him awhile to get that down, but I noticed him saying the sound and then matching a letter to it recently. I think that is probably a pre-reading skill. It is interesting watching him learn these things on his own with hardly any instruction. He is also still loving board games. He likes Push Over, Sorry, Candy Land, I Can Do That (Dr. Suess), Hi-Ho Cherry-Oh, Mancala, Master Mind, Dominoes, Pacheesi, Go Fish and Uno.

A few and cute and funny recent things he has said:

One day I left to go class and Owen shouted out, “Mama! where is your homing device?” I told him I had it on me and it would lead me right home to him in just a couple hours

A couple of weeks ago, Mama was in one bathroom getting ready for a wedding reception, and Daddy was in the other one. Owen had to go to the bathroom and, seeing that both bathrooms were occupied, decided to pee off the balcony. He was very proud of himself and told us about it immediately after we got out of the bathrooms. He showed us how he leaned against the railings and just peed from three floors up. “It was like a sprinkler,” he said.

On Friday and Saturday nights, Owen gets to watch his favorite show (Inspector Gadget) on the laptop before going to bed. He sits at the dining room table, and he usually has his stuffed bear, Hop-hop, sitting next to him. The other day, as Daddy loaded the show for him, Daddy asked: “Where is Hop-hop, did you forget him?” But Owen explained that the little Rubik’s cube he had sitting near the laptop (a trinket he got at his friend’s birthday party) and that that cube is, in fact, a machine that makes it so that Hop-hop can watch the show from Owen’s bedroom (via some kind of satellite hook-up, I guess).

The other day we were in the car and Owen and said, “I know about electronics, and robots, and planets and their rocky core, but there is one tricky thing I don’t know about… how can all the planets stay up in space and not fall down?”

He has also come up with a theory that when you get to the last number it loops back around and starts at zero again. When he was three, at the grocery store one day he looked at me with this perplexed look and said, “Mama, do the numbers just keep going?” I told him they do indeed, and he has struggled with the concept in infinity ever since.

He asked Daddy the other day, “Do mosquitos have a heart?” Daddy said, “yes, I think so”. And then Owen said, “then why do they have to drink peoples blood?”

He also recently asked, “how did the first person get borned if he was the first person?”

Owen also really loves geography. He does the United States puzzle on his own now. He has a special nickname for just two of the states; North Carolina and South Carolina. He calls North Carolina mosquito because it tapers off to the west and I guess he thinks this looks like a mosquito. He calls South Carolina chocolate chip, because it looks like a chocolate chip.

And finally, here is our annual trip to the apple orchard and to the renaissance festival this year:

Lately, Owen has gotten really attached to Hop-Hop, his teddy bear that he got on his birthday in May. He calls Hop-Hop “my baby”. He feeds him, pretends to put clothes on him, puts him to sleep, potty trains him, takes him with us when we go somewhere and buckles him into our spare carseat, and is constantly saying things like, “my baby likes going there” or “I had to tell my baby about that, because he didn’t know.” I’m really pleased to see this kind of imaginative play from him that isn’t about robots! To actually be pretending that this bear is a living baby, and not a robotic machine, is huge social progress for him. It means he’s starting to connect with the humans, and learn empathy and compassion for other living things, not just robots. I’m really thrilled with the mega-progress he is making lately. And it is just in time for pre-school!

It is just so cute to see a child who has only had very mild attachments to stuffed animals or dolls, to be toting around  a teddy bear everywhere he goes. He cuddles up and sleeps with him, he remembers to take him when we go somewhere, and he talks about him like he is a real person that he must take care of and protect. I wonder if this partially due to James and I talking a lot about planning to have another baby soon. Owen has started to take an interest in that subject and will periodically suggest names for the baby (he’s recommended Finn, Sofia, and Kiki). He also talks about how he will help dress the baby, or play with the baby. He tells me to have 2 or 3 babies at one time sometimes.  He even said that if I have three, he can take care of one, I can take of one, and Daddy can take care of one. But a few times he has come to me almost in a panic and says, “I don’t want another baby, I changed my mind, so don’t have another baby, okay, cause I changed my mind, I don’t want a baby…”

I think Owen’s new “baby” may be a way for him to get used to the idea of having a new baby in the house. For some kids it may be way too soon to discuss a new baby, you know, because the Mama isn’t even pregnant yet. But for Owen I find the longer he has to get used to an idea and incorporate it into his life, the easier it is for him to adjust to. I’ve already seen a huge change in his attitudes since first mentioning anything about a baby, and this new development is a huge social step for him and I am so happy to see him doing it. It is always a little odd to me how late he hits some of these social steps, when he hits a lot cognitive or intellectual steps really early. And it is kind of neat how he works through them in his own time, even though he missed them a couple years ago when all the other toddlers were toting around blankies, teddy bears, and dolls. He has so much to learn socially, but I am really happy to see so much progress recently in his pretend play, and in his play with peers his age.

Today is a very good day! Owen went potty in the toilet four times. This is just a huge break through for him, and I am so happy and proud of him!

I dug this old post up from October 9th, 2006. It was the first time Owen had gone potty on the toilet. He was 17 months old. We were working toward learning how to potty, and things were going very well, and it was almost entirely directed by him. I am sure you are thinking, “so, what happened?” and I take the entire blame on this one. He was physically ready at 17 months, but he didn’t talk at all. I frantically tried teaching him some signs for potty, but he didn’t pick them up, or seem to understand what I was getting at. I just didn’t know how to potty train a child who couldn’t tell me in any way that he had to go to the bathroom. I was having a hard time communicating with him at that point, as he was blossoming intellectually, but held back in what he could communicate with me because of his speech delay. We were both frustrated, and I had not yet embraced the idea that there was anything wrong, or that I should teach sign language to allow us to communicate better. So, potty learning took a back seat to the immediate issue of communication. Not that we dropped it altogether. I remember the day he figured out he could go standing up, and he went in his potty chair and then signed “more” because he wanted to go again he was so proud of himself. But eventually potty learning took a back seat to so many other things going on in our life at that time. It was a very stressful time in our lives, and little Owen both added to it (because it took literally hours to get him to sleep for naps or at night), and absorbed our stress. He started to develop anxiety issues, and sensory issues, and soon the toilet was just a fear producing thing that was too intense of a sensory experience for him to want to have any part of.

Over the next few years we dealt with sleep issues, anxiety issues, sensory issues, and speech issues. In between all that, I tried on and off to teach potty training. I tried everything, and nothing seemed to work with him. The only time we saw progress was when we changed our goal from teaching him to go potty, to simply desensitizing him to the toilet. But even then, he never actually went potty, he just learned to sit on the toilet for longer periods of time. I knew he was close to finally getting it, and doing it, but every time I said “okay, this is it” and made him wear underwear or go naked, I would just end up cleaning up various types of accidents all day and becoming so frustrated and angry it just wasn’t worth it. I tried everything. Every tip that anyone gave us. I had videos, books, an anatomically correct doll with it’s own potty chair, charts and stickers, candy, fruit snacks, and a prize basket. Nothing worked. He simply would not go.

The other day, I brought him to his developmental movement therapist and an associate of hers. They gave me new exercises and tips on what to do for potty learning. One thing they gave me was a type of massage I do before bedtime. I started that right away, but didn’t get to the other exercises they gave me. But they did give me a good piece of advice; they told me that Dad has to be more involved in this process. They said that this is a little boy and he needs to see how boys go potty. He needs to see the same sex parent using the bathroom and being open about it and not acting embarrassed or private, as if there is something wrong with the process. So, I informed Daddy of this news. It took a while for Daddy to embrace this concept, because he is a very modest and private person, but he eventually came around, and when he did it payed off big time.

But before that happened, I tried one more time to teach him. He flatly refused, and I lost my temper a bit, as I have done in the past with this issue. But this time, I did something I never had done before. When I apologized to him for losing my temper, instead of saying, “but I just really want you to go potty in the toilet because I know you can do it…”, instead I said, “it isn’t your fault that you aren’t going potty in the toilet yet, it is my fault. Mama should have helped you better when you were littler and you were almost ready to do it. Now you are so much bigger and it got to be harder for you.” He seemed to really respond well to me taking the blame, and he wanted to know all about why it was harder for him now and it wasn’t when he was little. We discussed it for a long time, and he seemed relieved afterward. I think he was internalizing my frustration over this as his fault, and honestly, I was blaming him for being so stubborn and not using the toilet when I knew he could. But that day, I realized it was my fault that he didn’t learn sooner. Had things been going better, and had there not been so much to deal with at that time in my life, and had I realized the wonders of sign language earlier, there is no doubt in my mind I could have, and should have, trained him then. Once we both accepted who was really to blame, we both were able to put this chapter behind us and move forward into big boy territory.

And so, that brings me to the grand finale of this post. The events of this very wonderful day! We went to the beach today and for a picnic barbecue dinner. After the beach, and the dinner, we went for a walk in the woods. I realized that I had forgotten diapers, and so we told Owen that he would have to go potty in the woods with Daddy if he had to go. Instead of this making him nervous, Owen was intrigued by this idea. About four times on our walk, he told us he had to go to the potty. Him and Daddy would stand in the woods and Owen would try to go. He wanted to see Daddy go once, and Daddy did. Owen said, “oh, I see what to do.” He never did go outside, but it was huge for him to be telling us when he had to go – something he has never done before ever. He told us that he thought he had to go, but that the urine was going back into his small intestine when he would try. We talked about relaxing the muscles so it could come out. On the drive home, we told him not to go in his seat, and he didn’t. It also occurred to Daddy and I that we may be able to segue this and continue it at home. So I said, “you know what Owen? When we get home, you should try to go potty on Daddy’s toilet. Because maybe you can’t go on Mama’s because that is the girl bathroom. Maybe you just need to go in the boy bathroom because you are a boy.” He said okay, and he wanted Daddy to help him and show him how. He wanted them both to go at the same time. It seemed to be really helpful for him to have Daddy suddenly taking an active role in this whole thing. He was excited and seemed to grasp on to this idea that it just didn’t work in my bathroom because my bathroom was for girls. I think it helped him feel like there was an excuse as to why it had never worked before, it hadn’t been his fault after all, and this gave him a new beginning and a new opportunity to change things. He could start fresh in a different bathroom with a different parent helping him out. So, him and Daddy disappeared into their bathroom for quite some time. When they came back out, Owen had still not gone. A few minutes later though, Owen said he thought he had to go. So again, they left and went into Daddy’s bathroom. A few minutes later they came back and Owen said, “I went potty”. I asked Daddy if this was true and he casually said, “oh yeah, he went” (as if this was just a normal everyday event). I was very happy, but tried not to be too over the top because I didn’t want to stifle any future progress. We were so happy, we all walked to the store for ice cream treats and M&M’s. Owen got to pick out a prize from his prize bucket. Later he told us again he had to go and then he wen when Daddy brought him in, and then again he went later, and then he went before bed as well. Just as I suspected, he has no problems knowing when he has to go or holding it, his only problem was overcoming the anxiety of actually doing it. Once he did that, he was pretty much instantly trained. Not that I don’t expect some accidents, and I am sure the pooping issue will take some time to get down, but overall I think he is pretty much trained, as long as I remind him that he doesn’t have a diaper on and needs to let me know. We’ll have to see how tomorrow goes.

I am a little bummed that after all these years of work I have put into this, Daddy just steps in for one day and trains him no problem. Had I known this, I would have called Daddy in a long time ago. However, it is probably my own fault. If I had simply resisted showing so much frustration with the issue, then Owen would not have had to turn to Daddy to learn with. Or, maybe it is true that the same sex parent is a more appropriate model for a child learning to go potty. However it happened, it finally happened, and I am so thrilled!

I’m going through photos today and was reminded of this fluke occurrence.  This photo was taken on January 25th.  That day I walked by Owen’s room a few times as he was scribbling on his chalk board.  He eventually told me he was drawing a dolphin.  I said, “oh, okay” because it didn’t look much like a dolphin, but then none of his pictures look much like anything at this point but scribbles.  He’s actually not very great at representational drawing and will only do the classic circle with a face and lines coming out for arms and legs with a lot of prompting.  He is much better at abstract paintings.  But, when I came back in the room, his dolphin was complete and here is what appeared on the chalkboard:

I was very surpised, because I thought this looked exactly like a dolphin.  Even the line going up to the top is exactly where the water spout should be.  I am pretty sure this was a fluke because he has not drawn anything like it since.  I am not even sure if he intended to draw a dolphin or if that is just what he saw in the drawing at a certain point.  Either way, I think it’s pretty neat.

Owen has been growing and learning and changing, as usual.

Preschool

Owen has been doing alright in preschool.  A couple times he has cried when I left and not wanted me to leave, but usually he just goes into total denial mode and wont even say goodbye to me.  He has been “protesting” by not doing the art projects or eating the snacks at times.  When he does do the art projects, they put them in his back back to take home.  One day around Valentines Day, I opened up his backpack to find a colored blue heart on pink paper, and it was folded into a card.  The cover of the card said “Mom & Dad” and the inside had the heart and said “Love, Owen”.  As soon as I took it out of his bag he started beaming, and I said, “oh, did you make this for Mama and Daddy?”  And he said “yes” and he was smiling so wide and so proud of himself.  It was so adorable.  He rarely plays with the other kids though, but last week they told me he was playing with another child for awhile in the “big” room which is sort of like a little gym.  He doesn’t like to sing songs or do the hand motions while sitting in circle time either.  I have watched him through the glass window sometimes when I come and pick him up, he sits in circle time silently and completely still while everyone else does things around him.  That is why this is so important for him, he needs to learn how to interact with his peers.

Owen and Lyric

I have been babysitting Lyric for a couple months now.  At first Owen was very upset by this change and it was really difficult for all of us to help him learn to play with another child.  He finally has learned for the most part, and Lyric and him generally play together happily for most of the day.  They demolish the house together, and through every toy he owns into a corner of his room, ever single day.  They dump out his three bins, which are three different colors and sizes, and they build stairs with them to run up and jump on the couch.  Then they make “jump stairs” by rearranging the bins into an uneven pattern, which forces them to jump up and down and then onto the couch.  They play with Owen’s play silks a lot, which are baby blanket sized pieces of dyed silk fabric.  They tie them around their necks and they become “capes” or we hang them up around chairs and they become a fort.  When they have the capes on they ask me to put on a record so they can run around and dance.  Owen’s favorite record is the “Annie” soundtrack, while Lyric is partial to “Free to Be You and Me”.  When they want to dance they ask for “Cha Cha” which is a Fred Astair inspired album of instrumental Cha Cha music meant to help teach people to dance.

Our Big Kid

Owen is approaching four, and lately he sounds like a big kid with some of the things he says.  Like he will declare “that’s boring”, and I don’t even know where he learned what “boring” was.  Sometimes when I ask him what he did at school he says “I-n-know” and shrugs his shoulders.  He always says “that why”, meaning “so that”, for example they are building a new building on the way to his preschool and he said “it’s good they are building a building there, that why I know where my preschool is”.  Or we’ll say “why are you doing that?” and he will say “that why I can get this”.  He’s talking and moving and playing and interacting like a bigger kid now.  He is even doing better with going to bed at night, and he will even ask for us to put him to sleep now.

He’s officially weaned now. I went on a four day vacation and when I returned and put him to bed he asked for refrigerator milk. At first I didn’t think we had any, so I told him that, and only then did he cry for “boobops”. But he didn’t cry in a way were he thought he would get them, it was more of an under his breath way, like he knew it was fruitless to even ask. I ended up finding some milk and after he guzzled down his glass, he happily crawled into my arms for hugs and then into his bed for the night.

Before I left for vacation, the last time he had nursed was over a week ago. It ceased being sad or sentimental to me soon after his birthday, and I felt like just getting it over with. Yet, I allowed him to nurse every so often, which amounted to every other day or two, just to let him have some control over the process. He wouldn’t hang around long, and only nursed for about a second on each side, disappointed there was no milk left. I thought the last time we nursed should be special, or significant, but it wasn’t. He had been having a particularly cranky day and when he asked for boobops he was already lying down in bed. I snuggled in next to him and let him nurse on each side for a second or two, while keeping him lying in bed.

His last nursing session was not special, or significant, which is a bit sad, but I have lots of fond nursing memories to look back on that are much better. Like the day he turned three and I snuggled him up to me and he nursed for a long time on each side. He gazed into my eyes like he used to as a little baby and payed close attention as I told him the story of how he was born. I told him only the good parts, and left processing for another day. It was a tender moment, one which was scarcely replicated after that day in our short nursing sessions, which shows it truly was time to end our nursing relationship.

A few months ago I was nursing Owen during the day, at night, and all morning from his first waking at about 3:00 – 5:00 am on until we got out of bed. It was making me feel emotionally and physically drained and I realized that not doing it would be much better for us both. After all, a two and half year old needs his sleep and so does his mother. He also needs his mother to not be burned out before she even gets out of bed in the morning.

Once I made the decision to wean, the first nursings to leave were the daytime nursings as these were totally unnecessary and I was just allowing them because it was easier than redirecting. He got used to this quick with a minimum of tears, and I kept us busy and avoided sitting in his nursing spot in order to keep his mind off of it. The next to go was the early morning nursings. I eliminated those, after a few weeks, with a few tears shed. I still allowed morning nursing, but I wouldn’t do it until it was light outside, and I kept it to only once. I got rid of the 3:00 – 5:00 am variety that kept us both from sinking into a deep sleep.

So, we were down to one morning and one night nursing. I even had Owen in his own bed for most of the night! Then we moved. For the first two weeks he was in bed with us again and I gave into a few more morning nursings than I should have. Suddenly, I realized how far we had slipped back and I very quickly put him back into his own bed at night, which was not very appreciated by him. Before he would sleep in his own bed he demanded a new pink bed. So, we bought him a new pink fitted sheet for over his mattress and I removed the side rail on his bed to change it up a bit. He fell for this and with a little protesting took to sleeping in his own bed again. It is in our bedroom right next to our bed, but he spends most of the night in it.

I then got more strict with those morning nursings. I decided to par it back down to one nursing, and there were some tears, but it was okay. He would sometimes crawl into bed with us and then cry for “boobops”, and we would offer water, and he would drink and then cry, and we would offer hugs, and he would say no and cry for “boobops”, and finally I would say, “you know what, if your just going to cry in Mama’s bed then why don’t you go back in Owen’s bed”. Somehow that felt kind of mean, but it also worked, and at 5:00 am you just do what works so you can go back to sleep. The crying was always just that protesting kind of annoying crying where he is trying to get his way, not the painful or heartbroken variety. We started holding hands a lot too. I had read that some kind of physical skin to skin contact is really comforting, so I always offered him my hand and he usually would take it. He would often squish it up against his face and fall fast asleep that way. Sometimes we would just fall right back to sleep holding hands with no tears at all. He would just crawl into bed and say, “hold Owen’s hand” and then the next thing I new he was sleeping again.

One day recently I was observing how big he had grown, and how old he was getting and I started to realize he was now ready for the next step with some things. I thought about weaning and how when I was pregnant I had never intended to nurse past age two, because that would just be weird. Then once my child was born I decided he could nurse until he weaned himself, as long as he weaned himself before age three. I no longer thought it would be weird to nurse a three year old, but, I just felt that age three was the right time. It is the right time for weaning, for potty training, for moving into his own room, for accepting a sibling. Age three to me is the age that babies turns into children, an age of reasoning and understanding, an age where the world becomes bigger than yourself and you begin to learn empathy. Age three was also the age that I had read that most kids wean themselves. Age three, to me, was the perfect age to stop nursing, and Owen will be three on May 14th.

I have since read that most kids wont wean themselves at age three. They will go to four, five, or six if given the opportunity. I know that in the natural family living community child led weaning is the ultimate ideal with nursing. However, I personally don’t think it is the most “natural” way of weaning. If you look at nature, animals don’t just let their young nurse until they get sick of it. You can see mama cats who give their kittens a little sip, then walk away, then allow another sip, then cut them off again. It is a gradual process, and one that is not done until the kittens are between 6 and 8 weeks old, but it is done. Kittens are weaned by their mothers, not by themselves. I’m not sure if any species allows their young to wean in it’s own time, and therefore, mother led weaning, in my opinion, is totally natural. Not that I am trying to live up some ideal of what natural is, but, we do believe in The Continuum Concept and I try to be respectful of what our species evolutionary expectations are. For example, six month olds don’t expect to be weaned, so this is not natural. This is why you have to wean them to a bottle as a substitute for the breast. A child who needs a bottle is a child who was too young to be weaned in my opinion.

Even though I am confident in my choice to wean him and I believe it is for the best and that we are both ready for this, it is still sad for us both. There is little to no milk left and it hurts now to nurse him. He gets no milk, so he barely nurses at all, but he gets sad if I hold him close and don’t nurse him. He’s asked me to get the milk out of my “boobops” with a machine, and some nights he wants a glass of milk too before he goes to bed. He doesn’t always ask for boobops, but I keep offering because it makes me sad to think the last time will have passed without me taking note of it and without recognizing that this was the last time I will ever nurse my little baby boy. Tonight, I nursed him, and then I laid him down in my arms and sang him two songs as he requested. His eyes started to tear up and his lips started to pout and he started to sniffle a bit. I asked him what was wrong and he said, “nufin”. I tried getting him to tell me what was the matter, but he gets really embarrassed by emotions and it was a lost cause. I think it was because I had pointed out that there was no milk left during our nursing session, and I had cut it short because it hurt. I had reminded him that we would soon be stopping, and he asked me to get the milk out with a machine. Then I put him into the nursing position by laying him across my arm to sing him a song and I think it made him sad that he wasn’t nursing right then and that our nursing days would soon be completely over. I felt so sad for him. He’s such a sweet little guy and he’s really been through a tough couple years with me since being born. I really wanted to give him an extra year of nursing to make up for that, but now I feel guilty, like I should be giving him even more. I feel sad knowing that it’s already too late to turn back, and also, that I don’t really want to. I want to wean him, even though it’s sad for me and sad for him, it also feels like it’s time, and I feel we’re both ready for this. We’ve done it very gradually and I really don’t think it will be that hard on him. It is going to be a year of milestones for him and this will be the first one.

If we haven’t done it sooner, I plan for his last day of nursing to be the day before his birthday. The day of his birthday will be a special day with lots of fun and excitement and he is getting one of his gifts that day too. James will have to put him to bed that night, and I will have to avoid holding him in the nursing position for quite awhile after that. I am not sure if we will make it until then though. I feel like I shouldn’t offer anymore, and his not asking sometimes is probably his way of avoiding the disappointment that there is no milk left. Even when he nurses, he spends most of the short time breaking away to talk to me, and he seems very disinterested in what he is doing. I think he may be weaning before his birthday, and that makes me a bit sad too for some reason. It’s all so complicated. I didn’t realize there would be so many emotions involved in the whole process.