Toddler tears?

My son cries as much as any other toddler, but the weird thing is he never cries with tears. You know the big alligator tears you see on so many kids when they fall down or throw a tantrum or someone looks at them the wrong way, not my son.

I was struck by this the other day when we were playing with a neighbor and her two year old and in the span of 10 seconds this little boy went from happy to crying with great big globs of tears sliding down his face. Now my son is perfectly capable of going from happy to sad in 10 seconds, but there are never tears.

I feel really lucky to have been spared this aspect of drama with my son. I know you would probably get used to it if your kid did it, but tears on a little guy make me so so sad. I think I have seen my son's eyes get teary once, one of the times he fell and really hurt himself, but I don't think I ever saw a teardrop slide down his cheeks.

So my question is... how common is this? I know most children do cry with tears, will my son eventually develop this trait or is it something he will learn? Do any other parents have young children that do not cry with tears. My son is 20 months now and still no tears.

Eye-Fi cards uploading photos without cords!

So if you are a parent like me who takes tons of photos of your child and is annoyed by the process of transferring those files onto your computer then you need to put the Eye-Fi card on your wish list.

It looks like a regular SD memory card (the kind of memory that most point and shoot digital cameras use these days). But instead of plugging your camera into your computer, or taking out the SD card and putting it into a card reader the Eye-Fi cards stays in your camera and all you do is bring your camera close to your computer and the images transfer wirelessly to your computer.

The advantage of not having to find and use yet another cord to transfer photos is a surprisingly big deal. This is a better, faster, way of getting those photos onto your computer so you can share them with family and friends even faster.

They now even have a version of the card to be used for smart phones or the iPad. The list price for the basic 4GB card is $50 and the 8GB version is $100. Perfect to put on your holiday or birthday wish list :)

Netflix for Kids

Not sure when Netflix made this addition to their website, but I noticed it today. There is a new tab at the top called "Just for Kids". Love it!

You can sort through videos by looking at a list of characters, such as one of my son's favorites: Shaun the Sheep...

The character list is full of big thumbnail photos of the characters so that, presumably, even non-reading little tykes can navigate to what they want to watch on their own.

The first haircut photo

So my son had his first professional hair cut at 18 months so he looked presentable for his Aunt's wedding. I have seen photos of other kids about his age getting their hair cut on Facebook and in other places. They are happy kids sitting calmly in a chair, or even if they are not happy they are not trying to claw their way out of the chair. I knew that my son was never going to be one of those kids.

Sad, pathetic, miserable boy

Now I am going to show you something most people do not post online - a photo of their child being extremely unhappy and crying while trying to escape a haircut. I think I am doing other parents a favor by showing the dark side of hair cuts. Not every toddler sits placidly while a stranger takes sharp objects and buzzing machines and touches their head with them.

The stylist who cut my son's hair was a saint with superhuman patience and courage. The whole salon was entertained by his crying and frantic attempts to escape my arms. One good samaritan told me that I really needed a photo of this event for posterity, and so I gave him my cell phone and voila: the moment is frozen in time.

When I look through photos of my son, in about 99% of them he is calm and very happy. But other parents know this is not exactly representative of toddler behavior. I tend to grab the camera when he is being irresistibly adorable or silly. But I rarely have an impulse to grab the camera when he is kicking and screaming. Maybe we should take more photos of the bad times and post them on the internet. At the very least it will make other parents realize that they are not alone!

After the haircut - happy once again

Sesame Street - Letter B

In the last three months my son has started being really excited about TV. I know this is a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because this gives me a few minutes to wash dishes or clean up without him clinging to my legs or begging to be picked up or play. It is a curse because now when he wants to watch TV he gets up on the couch and starts pointing furiously at the TV and saying "dat" (which his generic word for everything he wants). Or he goes and gets me the remote and brings it to me. Nothing will deter this boy when he wants to watch TV (except of course his all time favorite activity going outside to play).

He has two favorite shows: Pingu and Sesame Street. Both fortunately have lots of episodes available on  Netflix watch instantly. He adores Pingu and I will write about it another time. But it is watching Sesame Street with my son that is the most fun for me. It is making me nostalgic for memorable Sesame Street moments from my childhood, here is one of the best:

"When I find I can't remember what comes after A and before C, my mother always whispers letter B" can this be any cuter?

One website I visited in my quest to find this "Letter B" episode claimed that the company that owned the Beatles music tried to sue Sesame Street because of this spoof - heartless bastards! Apparently this episode first aired in 1983, in the prime of my Sesame Street watching years.

So today friends I have not thought about for 25 years like Count von Count, Grover, Big Bird, Snuffleupagus, Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch have come back into my life. I am not (so far) as big of a fan of the new characters like Elmo, but maybe they will grow on me. Other additions since my childhood, like Mr. Noodle, sort of creep me out.

But nothing beats watching your kid get excited about something, even if it is TV. The other day there was an episode for the letter J showing kids jumping in all different places all over the world and my 19 month old son got off the couch and started jumping around on the floor with a giant smile on his face. It doesn't get any better than that :)

Medication dosage chart

At a recent visit to our nurse-practitioner when my son was we got into a discussion about how tracking the correct dosages of medications can be confusing. The nurse-practitioner gave us a chart of the dosages for Acetaminophen (Tylenol), Ibuprofen (Advil), and Diphenhydramine (Benadryl) by weight.

I wish we had received this chart earlier. It would be nice if it were mandatory that doctors give it to parents at their first well-baby check-up. I am sure it is easy to find all this information online, but it is nice to have it in one document that is doctor-approved.

Here it is for anyone who wants to use it. I know it is not very pretty since it is a scanned photocopy, but at least the information is there.

"No", "Careful", and "Gentle": top 3 words of toddlerdom

So my son is 19 months old and I talk to him a lot, but the three words that I seem to say the most these days are:

1. "No" as in "no hitting", "no biting", "no throwing"
2.  "Careful" as in "careful when you climb onto very high pieces of furniture and start jumping you are probably going to fall and hurt yourself"
3. "Gentle" as in "gentle with the cat, if you pull his tail really hard he is going to get mad"

These are just examples of the countless ways in which I use these words each day. Is it just me or do all parents of toddlers find these words coming out of their mouths way too often?

So my question for parents of other active toddlers is when do these three words start to fade from your vocabulary?

Travel tips - use an overnight diaper

I just got back from a trip to Chicago with my 18 month old son and consequently have a long list of travel tips, some of which I knew in advance and some of which I learned the hard way.

Not sure where I first heard this tip about overnight diapers, but it works beautifully so I want to share it. If you are traveling with your baby/toddler instead of using a regular diaper on the airplane, put them in one of those special ultra absorbent overnight diapers right before you get on the plane.

My son sleeps in these types of diapers at night and they can hold a lot of pee without getting uncomfortable or leaking. We use the Pampers brand and they advertise that they last for 12 hours and I would say that is about right.

I will do anything to avoid changing my son in those tiny smelly airplane bathrooms!

Nusery University - warning do not watch if you live in NYC

So if anyone is in a mood to procrastinate, has a toddler, and a netflix streaming account then check out this documentary about parents trying to get their kids into "elite" preschools in NYC "Nursery University"

Either it will make you feel good about the price and options for  pre-school in your neck of the woods or if you live in New York and are a Type-A personality it might make you start to freak out about your child's chances of getting in to an Ivy League university. In fact if you live in NYC I would not advice watching this movie at all, it is a little too disturbing.

The impression I got from watching most of the parents in this documentary is that even two year olds are old enough to enter the rat race.

Some of the parents come across as pretty scary. They seem convinced that a good pre-school would feed into a good elementary school, then acceptance into an elite private high school and then a spot at an Ivy League university, a good job and then ultimately a chance to shepherd their own children through the crazy school admissions game.

However, the pre-school staff and other parents seem to realize that this much hype about pre-school is crazy and that nursery does not seal your fate! Chalk this one up as one more reason not to live in NYC.

The Fourth Trimester theory

I wholeheartedly agree with the idea that newborns really need a "fourth trimester" of pregnancy, hence their first three months of life they are essentially not ready for life on the outside. Pregnancy.org has an article written by Dr. Karp explaining his theory about the "fourth trimester" and its relationship to colic. ParentMap has a shorter explanation of this fourth trimester phenomenon.

For a while we tried to follow the advice from the book Happiest Baby on the Block, by Dr. Karp. While his theory of the "fourth trimester" makes perfect sense, his advice on getting babies to calm down only helped us sporadically and it was a lot more work than simply putting baby in a baby carrier and walking around - which had a 99% success rate. I am sure if we were more studious and serious about his methods we would have had better luck. Basically his advice calls for using five techniques to calm your newborn - the 5 S's:

1. swaddling
2. side/stomach position
3. shushing
4. swinging
5. sucking

The thing that seemed to help my son most was being held stomach down, we got the most bang for our buck out of that technique. Other things, like sucking, were pretty unhelpful. He did sometimes suck on a finger but he never was interested in pacifiers.

Any feedback from readers on this theory and whether using the 5 S's made a big difference to them?