Today I got to search the house for half an hour for my husband’s keys. They’d been missing since Friday evening, when he let Kate play with them. We kept thinking they’d turn up, but they didn’t. I kept thinking to myself, “If I were a one-year-old, where would I put something?” Laundry bins? No. Toy bins? No. Bathroom? Bedroom? Under kitchen cabinets? No. Garbage can? Well, I left that until very last.

I finally found them stuffed in the couch cushions. I was relieved that I found them, very relieved I hadn’t yet gotten to searching through garbage, and annoyed that I wasted a good 30 minutes (plus all the previous times we had poked around).

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I am not adjusting well to having a child who is up early-ish. (To me early is any time before 8am. This morning it was 5:30am. 5-fuckin-30. And she wouldn’t go back to sleep no matter how much I nursed her. Gah, toddlers.) It’s closing on midnight and my body is having a little war inside my head. I’m soooo tired, please for the love of everything go to friggin’ sleep. You know she’ll be up early if you don’t sleep. But then the other side of me, the real side of me that I’ve been living with for the past 28 years, it’s all But it’s not even midnight yet!! I don’t know how to re-train myself. I figure if I collapse of exhaustion maybe that will do the trick. Or maybe I’ll just buy duct tape and aluminum foil for her windows. I am so not above cheating.

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Breastfeeding a baby is wonderful, comforting, sweet, and calming. We used to fall asleep frequently while nursing. It was our special little time-out.

Breastfeeding a toddler is much of the above, plus acrobatic, exasperating, and somewhat annoying. I came across this symbol posted on Facebook and laughed out loud. Literally. And then dragged Den over to show him. (He didn’t seem nearly as amused as I was, but then again he doesn’t have the boobs.)

My supply has naturally decreased over time, as Kate is a very good eater and is nursing in general about three good times a day. The supply isn’t the issue so much as the slower letdown. Kate is not happy by this. I put her on the left, she sucks for 5 seconds then wiggles and kicks and squawks. I pick her up and swing her to the other side (the is usually when I notice that she’s been putting on weight). She sucks for 5 seconds then wiggles and kicks and squawks. Since she won’t just stay on one side until the milk starts flowing it takes for-ev-er and my arms get a bit sore (as does my patience). I have discovered that it is easier for me to just sit her on my lap facing me, straddling me, with my shirt up so she can access both sides at once. She bobs back and forth like a dog running through weave poles. When the milk finally gets flowing all is right in her world and she settles in to nurse happily. Unless she’s distracted by the TV… or cat… or noise. Then she flips off my lap and tries crawling off (only to melt down 5 minutes later when she realizes she is still, in fact, hungry).

I am thankful, however, for two main reasons. One: As acrobatic as she likes to be (she’s nursed standing in the tub, leaning over me as I layed down, laying on her belly across my lap, and so on), she’s never tried to take the boobie with her. She seems to have a pretty good understanding that it is stationary and it is she who must move to accommodate. So she just lets go. And two: She has never bitten me. She does scrape sometimes when she’s frustrated by the slow letdown, and she will sometimes tug a bit with a grin when she’s not really hungry, but she’s never chomped. I hope it stays that way.

None of that really sounds like a big endorsement to nursing a toddler, I know. But all that stuff at the beginning about how good it is? That’s all there too. Toddler nursing just a crazy, fun, eventful journey… just like anything else with toddlers, apparently.

It was drilled into my head as a kid to always always have my seat belt on in the car. I was the kid who would chastise adults if they forgot to put on their seat belt. So it’s no surprise that I’m very careful with Kate’s car seat. It shouldn’t surprise me that not everyone is as anal as I am! So I figured I’d throw out a bunch of info. If you know it, ignore me. If you don’t, well maybe it can help you out. I’m not an expert, but I know where to find answers so if you are confused about anything just send me an email and I’ll try to find what you need.

Make sure you have a car seat that is properly installed. It needs to be in securely using either LATCH or seat belt, with less than 1″ of give along the belt path. I like mine to be in very securely, I literally lay across the seat or kneel in it to push it into the seat cushion as I fasten the seat belt. You can get your seats checked for free by a certified inspector, find one at seatcheck.org. Rear-facing seats need to be at a 45 degree angle for a newborn, but most (not all!) convertable seats can be installed more upright for older babies/toddlers. I have Kate’s installed at about a 35 degree angle, which is still well within the green zone on her seat indicator. (Not all seats have a nice little bubble like hers, some just have a level line.) Check your manual!

The harness needs to be snug! So many parents I see are nervous about this. You don’t need to hurt the child, but it does need to be firmly snug against their body with no slack – you shouldn’t be able to pinch any extra harness between your fingers. I pull the strap to tighten it first, then pull upwards at the shoulders to pull slack out from the hip area, then pull the strap again to make it nice and snug. If a harness is too loose it might not hold in the child in an accident. The straps should not be twisted at all, and never submerge them in water – spot-clean only.

That chest clip? It goes up at the level of their nipples/armpits. Not so high that it’s at their neck, but it does need to be high up on their chest. That clip holds the straps together, again so that the straps don’t slide apart in an accident, letting your child fly out.

When rear-facing the shoulder straps must be in a harness slot that is at or below their shoulders (as measured perpendicular to the seat back). (The reason for this is that when in an accident rear-facing the child’s body will slide up the seat back, so you want it snug to keep them from ramping up too far.) When forward facing the shoulder straps must be in a harness slot that is at or above their shoulders (as measured perpendicular to the seat back).

Nothing should be between your child and the car seat, or between your child and the harness. No aftermarket products (blankets, headrests, harness covers), no thick coats, no pillows. Only what came with your seat. In the winter take the heavy coat off before putting your kid in the seat. I dressed Kate in a fleece jacket and then put a blanket on her once she was strapped in.

Kids need to be rear-facing in a car seat to a bare minimum of 1 year old and 20lbs. That’s the law in every state, it is illegal to forward face them until then. The new recommendations from the AAP is to keep a child rear-facing until 2 years and 30lbs minimum, but to rear-face as long as you can to the extent of the seat’s height and weight limits. The reason for this is that most crashes – and the worst crashes – occur when you are in forward motion coming to a complete stop. When you are forward-facing you are thrown forward against the restraints. In a rear-facing seat the child’s movement is absorbed by the seat. A young child’s spine is not fully fused yet and their head size is much larger in proportion to their body than an adult, which puts them at a greatly increased risk of neck injuries. It is five times safer to be rear-facing. (Their feet can touch the seat back, their legs can be bent, it’s okay, they’re probably just as comfortable. No, seriously, kids have their legs folded all the time.)

Once they move to a forward-facing seat they need to stay in a five-point harness until a minimum of 4 years and 40lbs. They should not be moved to a booster until they are mature enough to stay seated in position every car ride – no falling asleep, moving the seat belt, etc – which typically is between 5 and 6 years old.

Kids need to be in a booster seat until they are 4’9″ (tall enough that the seat belt hits them properly across the shoulder, not the neck). This may not happen until they are 12! It has nothing to do with age and everything to do with height. Also childrens’ hips are not fully developed yet and the booster seat helps properly position the lap belt so it does not go across their belly. Not all boosters will properly position the belt for your child, make sure you try them out so that the fit is right.

Car seats expire! Check your seat for the stamped-on date. Some are 6 years, some 8, etc… depends on the manufacturer. The plastics in the seat start to break down over time and become brittle – not a good thing. Also, if your vehicle is in an accident the car seats need to be replaced. Insurance may cover it (but they may not want to), so check. This is why you should never get a used car seat, you don’t know its history.

And you? Make sure you wear your seat belt! If the shoulder is adjustable, make sure it crosses your shoulder for a good fit. Your kids need you to be safe, too.

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Kate’s still in her Graco MyRide 65 and I have to say, we love that seat! Now we have two different MyRides, one in my SUV and one in Den’s car; mine is the older model, Den’s is newer. Apparently they changed the buckle and harness straps. Plus of course a seat can behave a bit different in different vehicles. Well the one in my SUV I love love love. It is really easy to pull tight and release the buckle, it’s just been a great seat for us. The one in Den’s car I am less thrilled with. The buckle is much harder to snap together and it’s a bitch to pull tight enough! I’m going to uninstall it to see if there’s anything messing with it.

As for Kate, she is such an excellent car traveler! Every time I put her in it and strap her in she reaches for her car toys, giggles at herself in the mirror, and chills out. Not that I think the seat is solely responsible for that, but she clearly enjoys her time in the seat. What a change from when she was an infant… soon as she reached the point of being interested in what’s going on around her the car has been a much different experience.

Ever since Kate started sleeping through the night a month ago she’s been waking up between 6 and 7am and refusing to go back to sleep. This is apparently now when her day starts. I realize this is a normal time for kids to wake up in the morning but after a year of a 9am wake-up I am less than thrilled. I tend to not go to bed until midnight, so getting up at 6am makes me Cranky. (I need 8-9 hours of sleep a night. Even broken sleep is okay, but don’t give me less or I’m just sulky.) Even now that Kate is back to waking up two or three times a night (thanks, teeth!) she’s still waking up at 7am. Yippee, the worst of both worlds!

Thankfully she is still very predictable about going down for a nap 2 hours after waking up. Whether we’re up at 6 or 9 she always goes down 2 hours later. Sometimes less, if she’s up super early or had a rough night. She goes down pretty easy and sleeps for 2-3 hours. I often go down with her to get those extra few hours of sleep.

The problem is that she’s been refusing to take a second nap. There was a stretch that she would only fit one nap in per day, when she started taking a 3 hour nap but was still getting up at 9am. Up at 9, down at 11, up at 2. The next time she could have taken a nap was 5, but that would totally fuck with bedtime and she seemed fine without it. Unfortunately now she’s getting up at 6, taking a nap from 8-11, and then refusing to nap the entire rest of the day. By evening she is a cranky, whiny mess and I’m highly irritable myself, having had no time to myself all day (since I took a nap with her, because of the whole 6am thing). She clearly needs 2 naps a day, but I am stymied as to how to get her to go to sleep in the afternoon. I’ve never had this problem before. Today she was looking a little tired, and it had been 2-3 hours since her nap so I tried putting her down. I even was able to nurse her well (she doesn’t always tolerate that during the day), cuddled her, put her in her crib, layed down. Well I fell asleep. I woke with a start 45 minutes later to find Kate sitting in her crib, babbling away and bouncing on her butt. She was apparently having a great time playing in her crib. She was not, however, sleeping. So of course after that failed attempt at a nap an hour later she fell asleep in the truck on the way to my appointment (which is why i was trying to get her to take a nap before my appointment). I will mention that between 3 and 4 she will fall asleep in the truck if we happen to be out… it’s the one way I can actually get her to take a nap in the afternoon, even when she won’t sleep in her crib during that time. I do all the same things as I do for her other nap time, I’ve timed it right (and tried different times), she’s giving me the “ready for nap” signals, all of it. I think she’s just firmly convinced that she doesn’t need a second nap. She almost never gives me a hard time at her first nap.

Needless to say she’s now going to bed at 7pm instead of 8:30. and at least bedtimes are quick and usually painless. (Except when teething. Then they sometimes suck…. and usually on nights when Den isn’t around to give me help.)

Where did my little baby go? How does she look so big and sassy and smart and ohmygosh she’s a toddler!

She loves her water table and new slide (both birthday presents), not so fond of her toddler pool though. And look at how tall she looks, WTF!

And proof we actually do have dogs! Here’s the big guy, Zeeke (who apparently has no problems with Kate out in the yard).

And here’s my little girl, Zoe.

This I learned this week from a roadtrip with a friend and our two kids to Ikea:

* I love Ikea. If I could I would drive there and buy myself a new kitchen right this second… in addition to shelves and closet organizers for throughout my house.

* Ikea’s showroom is all child-proof! Obviously not in a “let your child loose and ignore them” kind of way, but there’s no breakable objects, and they can climb on the toddler bed and open the dresser drawers and play at the toddler-size kitchen. Kate found a child push-wagon that she was pushing around for a little while, pleased as punch.

* Being stuck in a vehicle for over half an hour with two screaming children is kind of funny, if you can look past the “my eardrums may shatter soon” part.

* Screaming kids feed off of each other. (One would finally calm down, the other would give a cry, and then they’d both be screaming again. Kate normally just chills out in the car so it was weird! But they were tired and I guess she didn’t like her friend crying.)

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We’re having to baby-proof again. Or should I say, now we have to toddler-proof. My friend said that I should baby-proof everything at once, not scramble every month when she does something new… but what can I say, we do things piecemeal around here.

We can no longer use our end table since not only does she grab everything off of it (remotes, plates, cups of water…) but she’s started pushing it and flipping it over! She likes to stand on the underside and play with the legs. Talk about an unexpected problem to have… when I would try to picture what trouble we’d have with the side table I figured her hitting the corner and grabbing things were going to be the extent of it. Hahaha.

Also she has apparently grown another inch or two, as she can now reach the top of the table and desk. She can’t see, but she sticks her little hands up and grabs whatever her fingers touch, usually stacks of papers waiting to be filed. Agghhh. So I bought some shelves to put above my desk. As it is everything is piled on the desk and table to get it off the floor, and now that she can reach that too. As I told Den, we need to start using the vertical space in this house or we’re sunk.

It’s kind of strange most days, looking at myself in the mirror. I stare and tilt my head. There have been so many changes in the past few years; not just physical growing-older changes, but emotional hits that changed the person who looks out through my eyes. I look so much the same, but I feel 10 years older. It’s strange, too, to look in the mirror and realize that I’m a mother. Not just a ‘Oh my god, I have a baby!’ kind of new mother, but a tired because the child woke up at 5am, packing lunch-and-sippy, toddler slung on my hip mom. The kind I used to see all the time, the kind that seems to have their shit all together (but I realize that no one actually does, it just becomes second nature to do the best you can almost-but-not-quite-together). I don’t take it for granted, but it has become my life in a comfortable, feels like it’s always been here kind of way. I am happy. Tired, sometimes annoyed, most of the time laughing, but happy. Even though my kitchen is a mess and my laundry is always two loads behind. This is the easy stuff.

I find myself getting back to me. Not in a my-child-doesn’t-need-me-anymore kind of way, but more of a natural, ebbing, evolving kind of way. I have entire evenings all to myself, every night – something I didn’t even think was possible a few months back. I’m able to read books, work on a scrapbook, watch TV, or plan my dream house – uninterrupted. It’s kind of weird remembering how I used to have all this free time to myself before Kate arrived, how I used to spend hours upon hours just doing one thing for fun. Now I choose carefully or end up wasting two hours and feeling irritated with myself.

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Last week Kate got those two teeth she was working on, so now she has 4 on the top and two on the bottom! The bottom teeth are so small and adorably baby-ish, but the top teeth are so big and really make her look like a toddler now! She also thinks it’s kind of funny to slurp my nipple and nibble… not good with teeth. She doesn’t do it when she’s really hungry, but it’s all the in-between times during the day when she just wants to comfort nurse, isn’t really hungry, and is fooling around… those are the ones that I get annoyed and tell her boobies have gone away now. She doesn’t like it when I put them away, but tough, mommy doesn’t like getting chewed on, thanks.

She is pointing at everything now. She just loves it when we pick her up so she can point around the room. “Da. Da. Dsh.” She also has great fun sitting on our lap in front of the window so she can watch the dogs. She leans against the screen and bobs excitedly, pointing. It’s too bad they’re not better behaved indoors, because she really likes them!

The toys she is really into right now: pushing her shopping cart all over the house, pulling her snail all over, putting the magnets in this farm fridge set, and playing with the musical instruments of the b. parum drum set. Also a favorite is dumping her blocks out of the various bins I keep putting them in. I finally bought a small bookshelf for the living room to get all her little toys off the floor and into baskets, which works beautifully for the evenings. But of course she loves to empty them all so 10 minutes later it’s a trainwreck again. Life with a toddler.