18 to 24 Month Lessons Learned

As a dad of 3, I thought I knew what to expect. No surprises this time! We've seen it all once or twice with the first two kids. Boy was I wrong, This little girl has taught us a whole new series of tricks.

1. Hugs are great, but so is sleeping. These last few months, we've learned that she is a daddy's girl. Oh, it's cute. I love her for it, but we've had to break some of it.
   
   It started when she was just weened from nursing around 1 year. I wanted to let my wife sleep, so I would rock her back to sleep. She got a minor cold, and rocking back to sleep became more. Eventually, it became falling asleep on daddy. More than once, I woke up at 6am, with her still sleeping on my chest.
   
   I was exhausted. My wife tried to help, but this little girl wouldn't have it. Daddy or nothing. Now whenever she wakes up, I have to go. Slowly we are retraining this behavior, but it's painful. Both in the fact that she won't fall asleep with my wife, hurting her feelings and that I can't sleep in.
   
2. Leader, Follower, Rebel - At an early age, we could see that my oldest liked being the leader. For her school's 'professional' day (aka we're a school that doesn't celebrate Halloween), she wanted to be a teacher, telling the other kids what to do. My second followed her, doing as she wanted. He's right there with you doing things, but seldom wanted to go off on his own. Number 3 is stubborn, willed and off on her own; our little rebel. After talking with a few other parents of three, I've found this is a common trend. The order may be different, but the mix is almost always the same. The good news being, the rebel grows up to be sound and stable. Having tested all the rules early on, they grow up to be well-adjusted, so I hear.
   
3. To Binkie or Not To Binkie? 
   
   This is our first child that we've tried to not give her a pacifier. It was a bit of a mixed blessing. Yes! We don't have the constant worry about where one is, if it fell on the ground, the ADDICTION. Instead, we have a bottle addiction. She cannot fall asleep with out her bottle. If she wakes up in the middle of the night, it's an hour of rocking her, or 5 minutes with a bottle of milk. Hmmm..
   
   One positive thing we have noticed is that she's much more fluent than (we remember with) the first two. By 24 months she's rather talkative and making complete sentences. Pronunciation isn't bad for her age, especially when comparing her with others at daycare, Comprehension is awesome.
   
   But, could this all be related to her other odd 'teething' behaviors? I've jokingly told my oldest daughter, we don't need a dog, because she has a younger sister. Her crib rail, corners of walls, dining room table, the blanket on our bed! If one didn't know better, they'd think we have a bored puppy in the closet. Though, in all honesty, I think it's more related to her being the rebel, not something more serious like, pica.
   
4. Expect the Unexpected.

   

   ............................squirrel?

   I now think I understand. Having my leader and follower first, lead me to believe that all kids will be well mannered, obedient babies. Those kids on leashes! Ha! Their doing something wrong! See my boy here holding my hand, I am an awesome dad!.
   
   OH MY, Baby three has a mind of her own. I don't own a leash yet, but have considered buying one. Take her to the park, she'll be playing on the slides, then next second, she's running out towards the street. Making dinner, turn around to stir something on the burner and she climbs up on the table dancing to some music.
   
   Tantrums! You've never seen something so cute, until you see a baby tantrum. "i want baba now!" No. "Now!" (pointing to fridge). No. Cry, stomp, run around kitchen, stomp, lay on floor kicking fridge door, stomp, run around. All very cute coming from a 2 year old. We find that it's better to calm her down, then distract her. Often it will pass until later. "Time for a break. Sit down here, help me make dinner." 

I am sure there are more, but darn, this post has been in my queue now for 6 months. We're now 5 months from her third birthday! At 30 months old she potty trained herself. We are still trying to break the bottle addiction, but it's very slow. Sleeping through most nights, so everyone is getting more rest. Overall, our baby is growing into a awesome toddler. 

Daddy Does: Keeping Notes

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Technology has changed so much since the youngest of my two older kids was born. In the last 8 years, smartphone usage has quadrupled. Making Internet access is virtually everywhere and cloud storage of data invisible.

As the dad, one of my duties is to take the kids in for all their appointments (i.e. doctor's, dentist, orthodontics). Sadly, my male genes tend to provide me with rather short term memory loss. The doctor will tell me a bunch of things and in the end I'll only hear "she's doing great".

This never settled well with my wife. She loves the details; more of what the doctor said. To deal with this, I started sending her text messages while in the office with the doctor. Immediately after s/he left the room, I'd take a minute and type her up a quick txt.

With baby 3, I took it a step further. My Lumia phone came with OneNote preinstalled. This application creates a document that is stored on Microsoft's OneDrive and can easily be shared across to other phone platforms (iOS and Android also have OneNote clients. ) In addition, computers running Office 2010-2013 or via the online office on Microsoft's Live website can also open this document and edit it.

After that first 1 month appointment, I started taking regular notes in the app. I've documented every single milestone as it's come along, when she started crawling, when she started eating, even what medications (picture of script, picture of bottle) she took.

As time has gone by, my wife has really come to love this. She's referred to it when filling in her baby book. She asks me to add "did you get those 2 new teeth she's cutting?"

Annual Attack of the Leprechaun!

Starting about 4 years ago, when my son was in pre-school, his teacher did an elaborate hoax for St. Patrick's Day. The leprechaun had made a mess in the kitchen, including foot prints across the counter tops, flour flung all over the floor and all the kid's chairs where stacked into a giant tower in the middle of the classroom.

The following year, my son started asking around the house, what the leprechaun was going to do? My wife took the reins on it and that year he moved toy around the kids room, brought and spilled Lucky Charms all over the kitchen table, even hid chocolate leprechaun coins all over the house. When they wake up, it's like Christmas as they go around the house looking for his shenanigans.

Year 3, the leprechaun sleeps in and doesn't mess up the house. Kids wake up disappointed that they didn't get blessed by his mess. He does make a guest appearance while the kids are at school and similar items happen as year 2. "Must have got caught in someone's leprechaun catcher!"

Last year, I got to help the leprechaun out. Glitter was spread all over the carpet down the hall between our bedrooms. Lucky Charms all over the kitchen table. He even snuck into my daughter's room and CLEANED IT UP! Putting her giant pile of clean clothes into a laundry basket (also in her room). Then went over to my son's room, and threw his toys and stuffed animals all over the place. Extending the mess, downstairs we found Babie stuck inside of a flower vase and a t-ball statuette of my son in a small lantern.

Now it's 2014 what will he do this year?

So You are Planning a Trip to Disneyland?

Disneyland (and probably Disneyworld) are destination trips that are wonderful for taking the entire family. My wife and I have been taking our kids for..., well for as long as I can remember. I could say we are expert Disney visitors, but we learn something new with each visit. This post details all my lessons learned from our last dozen visits.

When should you go? Financially I can't answer this for you. Personally, start early. Why??

Flexible Spending Account = Free Daycare

Now with baby number 3, my wife and I are finally starting to learn some important lessons. Our latest discovery is the company sponsored "flexible spending" account (or FSA). This account allows us to set aside money pre-tax and use it for dependent care. In years passed, we had a hard time with the clause that states "if you don't use it (by date), you will lose it!". There is a whole laundry list of what-ifs that stopped us from setting this up:

• "what if we commit too much"
• "what if we lose our receipts"
• "what if you decide to stay home and we don't need the money.."
• "what if your parents move closer and watch the baby!?

With a new baby in the house and my wife planning on returning to work around January, I took the plunge and signed up for my employer's FSA. I started off only committing about $300 / month to the account. I figured with infant care was about $250/week, this would be quickly spent each pay check. This was with the consideration, that any moneys in the account, not spent before end of fiscal year (7/1/2014) would be forfeited. After consulting my wife, we both agreed that we'd have no issues spending the money each month, therefore we decided to max the deposit out ($5000/year or ~ $416/month). 

Example Flex account, grossly underestimating the tax rate. 

$416 a month, SOUNDS like a lot of money out of my paycheck, but you have to remember that keyword, 401k, by pulling the money out of gross paycheck (i.e. before taxes), I am lowering my taxable income. Lower taxable income = less taken out for taxes; less out in taxes = more back in paycheck. Overall, my January paycheck (first month FSA money was withdrawn), my check was $100 less than December. In essence, we now have $300 of free daycare each month.
"pre-tax". Like investing money in a

Duh-dum, duh-dum, Valentines is coming!!!!

Valentines is one of those Hallmark holidays, that schools absolutely love. This provides the elementary schools something for the kids to work all week towards; building valentine boxes, working on love poems for the parents, and some sort of craft activity. Cap the week, (especially since it's Friday this year), with a party midday, sending the kids home full of snacks and sugar.

My wife and I like to keep this holiday low-key. After all the expense of Christmas not that long ago, we have set a 'spending' limit. Valentine gifts have to be small enough to fit into one of these little (dollar bin) mailboxes. The kids have each decorated their own mailbox. They are put onto the entertainment center with all of the other holiday decor (paper hearts from years before, little cupid mickey mouse I found one year).

On Friday after school, they'll open their mailboxes. Last year, we included candy hearts, a card rolled up inside and either a small token, like a hot wheels for my son or jewelry for my daughter. This year has been a little bit harder to stick with the budget. Both kids are a bit older, so the gifts of previous years will likely seem a bit childish. Maybe just candy?

The Dreaded Doctor's Office Visit

Infants and breastfeeding are great together, when you're the mom. Food is virtually free and instantly available. The baby never fusses about how warm or how cold the mom's milk is.

I work in IT, so it leaves me with a rather flexible schedule. If one of the kids get sick, I can easily work from home and tend to the sick kid between meetings. This lends to me doing the majority of visits to the doctors, dentist, field trips, and other yucky locations kids need to go.

Last weekend, we had a hunch that the baby had an ear infection coming on. Unfortunately, visits to the doctor's office on Monday's are always tedious. Upon entering the office, I found the waiting room completely full; 8 kids and their parents. Get ready for the long wait.

After a little over an hour, we finally made it into the back room. At this time, she just recently has pooped her diaper and is getting hungry. Quick diaper change and happily I planned ahead with a bottle.

I put about 1 cup of fairly hot water into the travel mug. The 5oz baby bottle with nipple cover fit perfectly inside, then closed the mug with the lid. When I needed the warm milk, it was actually a little hot for her and I needed to let it cool before feeding her.

Baby girl does have an ear infection and is now on antibiotics.