Friday, March 26, 2010

Maintaining my Mommyblogger Cred

After I wrote last night's post, I realized that it has been a long time since I told y'all about how cute and wonderful my kids are.

Pumpkin will be three in a week and a half. She is growing up in so many ways. Santa brought her a scooter for Christmas. She was a little unsure about it for a long time. But recently, she's been riding it more- my parents gave Hubby a scooter of his own for his birthday, and seeing Daddy ride his scooter renewed her interest in riding hers.



There are very few vestiges of baby speak left in her speech. "Bobbin" is long gone, replaced by "bottom". However, she still sometimes says "stank you" instead of "thank you". And the beads my sister brought home from her recent trip to New Orleans are Pumpkin's "neck-uh-lace".

Petunia is still doing great at day care. She is an extremely smiley, laid back little baby. Today, I got to day care when she was 20 minutes into a nap. I woke her up to put her in her car seat. She didn't cry or complain at all about being woken up. She looked around, a little bit confused, and then gave the room a big smile.

I sometimes wonder if she is a bit too laid back, though. She rolled over from her back to her tummy a few weeks ago. Once. She has shown no real interest in doing it again. She can sit up on her own for a little while if we put her in that position, but gives no indication that she is in a hurry to learn how to get there on her own. This is so different from Pumpkin's behavior at this age. Pumpkin was always pushing for the next skill. I don't really think there is anything wrong with Petunia's more laid back approach (and I certainly appreciate the relative rarity of crying), but I do wonder if we should be doing more to encourage her to master new skills. It is becoming clear that the parenting techniques that worked with Pumpkin may not be right for Petunia.

5 comments:

  1. Your cred is intact! Your story about how fast Pumpkin is growing up brought tears to my eyes!

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  2. paola1:01 AM

    I don't think there is much you can do (or should do) to encourage Petunia to try new skills. She will get there in her own good time. I find that when the second kid is more laid back then the first, parents tend to think they have to challenge them more, but kids do exactly whet they want to when they want to and no prodding or stimulating will get them to do it earlier.

    I look at my first who was laid back and did things late-ish. He crawled at 10 months and walked at 15. I think he went down the slide for the first time at around 2.5. I could have encouraged the slide thing, but not anything else. Now at 5, he is the same. He has to be dead sure of succss before trying anything ( like pedaling his bike which he finally accomplished at 3.5. With training wheels that is.) But when he is ready he does everything with such enthusiasm and confidence. It seems as though he has been doing it for years.

    I'd relax and enjoy the fact that you can, with this baby.

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  3. I swear sometimes I think we live parallel lives! At least, perhaps our children do. My boy took his time, but now is a champ at sitting and crawling and is trying to stand (at 9 months now). I didn't do much to encourage it, and he's doing just fine on his own timeline.

    Love the scooter! That's so cute that she's getting used to it and wants to do it like daddy.

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  4. I tend to think a healthy laidback child (who could easily be seen as lazy or unadventuresome) could also have excellent qualities that come in handy when older: the capacity to think, observe, study, analyze...

    It's pretty easy to watch a low motion child and see the gears working. Oddly my son was always "The Observer" and he in fact is VERY prudent, reflective and not rash in his actions which I am loving because all I keep thinking is I will be loving this when he gets older because I don't want him doing crazy shit!

    The dowside is that he is "lazy" in that we really have to drag him out of the house for "adventures." He is active and energetic, but he definitely prefers staying at home inventing creative scenarios with everyone joining in.

    It doesn't hurt to push a child's limits every now and then, but I think if you envision the child 10 years from now with the same personality or qualities they don't always look so bad!

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  5. I think there's nothing wrong with laidback. Our society tends to underappreciate people with the capacity and willingness to be still, to sit and think, to be lost in daydreams. But those are good abilities to have.

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