Zimmer Children's Museum

Last Friday my husband and I took Baby M to the Zimmer Children's Museum. The goal of the museum is to teach people about global citizenship, community responsibility, and cultural sensitivity through interactive exhibits, some of which have Jewish cultural themes. However the message is pretty subtle. This is not a junior version of the Museum of Tolerance. There are no genocides to ponder or Holocaust victims to mourn, you will have fun at the Zimmer.

In fact we had such a great time at the museum we can't wait to go back. There is a giant pinball machine, an airplane cockpit with working navigational tools, a Main Street area with shops to play in, a dress up theater, a full sized ambulance and a very cool water table. Everything is perfectly scaled to 15 month old Baby M, there is even a bounce room that is restricted to children under 2 years old. Baby M was so happy runnning around the oak tree and looking at the light-up bugs at the entrance to the Main Street exhibit that we literally had to drag him down the street into Bubbie's Bookstore and the Blue Bagel Cafe. Once we had made it through Main Street we ran into more trouble getting him out of the ambulance and away from the water table. (Okay, maybe I was the one who didn't wan't to leave the water table. It's heated and kids can use plastic dams and gates to explore how currents flow. If only they'd had one of these in my Fluid Dynamics class I wouldn't have needed all those cups of coffee to stay awake!)

It 's nice to find a place that is welcoming for younger toddlers. At 15 months Baby M is a pretty good walker, but he still topples over once in awhile and he's short enough that older kids sometimes don't see him. The Zimmer exhibits are safe and interesting for a wide range of kids and seem to be organized in such a way that the older kids don't end up trampling the younger ones. Oh, and one last plus for the Zimmer-- Free Parking!

Sick Baby

A really nasty stomach virus is going around Los Angeles, and a few weeks ago Baby M caught it. Friday night he threw up and then he threw up again Saturday morning. Unwisely, my husband and I decided to head to The Wood, a new neighborhood cafe, for Saturday brunch. Baby M threw up all over me shortly after placing our order. More vomit came out of him than seemed possible given what he had eaten that day and all I could do was hold him and grimace until it subsided. A very nice employee saw me with handfulls of soiled napkins and offered to take them off my hands. "No, no," I replied, "it's digusting." He persisted. "It's barf." That stopped him in his tracks and he brought over a garbage pail for me. After cleaning up a bit we actually stayed and ate our breakfast which was quite tasty.

We had plans to see Q-tip perform on Saturday night and ever hopeful for a night out alone we packed up Baby M and headed over to the in-laws house. We planned to eat dinner with my husbands parents and then go to the show while they watched Baby M. Baby M seemed fine, he even ate some spaghetti and peas for dinner. As we were finishing up dessert Baby M started fussing and then-- blamo! Torrents of vomit spewed out of him. This wasn't normal puking, this was the infamous projectile vomiting that you hear so much about. It was as if my son was auditioning for the remake of The Exorcist. Needless to say, we ended up skipping the concert.

The next day I came down with the bug and spent most of the day shuffling back and forth between my bed and the toilet. Thank goodness for my husband-- I can't imagine being that sick and having to care for a baby. Baby M still couldn't keep anything down and more distressing he was refusing to drink anything-- no water, no juice, no Pedialyte, not even more than a few sips breast milk. He hadn't urinated for over 12 hours. I called our pediatrician who suggested trying popsicles and said we'd need to go to the ER if he didn't start taking in liquids soon. Baby M, stubborn boy that he is, refused the popsicles too (although he was still pointing eagerly at the box of Cheerios) and so we headed off to St. John's in Santa Monica later that evening.

The St. John's staff was great, they even apologized for the 20 minutes we spent in the ER waiting room. Baby M needed IV fluids which was traumatic for everyone involved. It took my husband, myself and 2 nurses to hold Baby M down while the IV was inserted. After the IV was in he screamed at the top of his lungs for 30 minutes straight until he finally fell asleep. Even so every time he woke up he would resume screaming. We kept checking his diaper for urine and he just wasn't peeing. After 3 bags of fluids and several hours the staff sent us home telling us to come back if he hadn't peed by 6AM. Thankfully, by the time we got home his diaper was wet. He stopped vomiting and finally started taking in fluids again. A few days later he was all better. It was a rough week. A friend told me that true love is holding someone while they barf all over you without flinching. I repeatedly held Baby M while he barfed all over me, but I think I might have flinched a little. I don't think he noticed.

You've Got Mail

We have an older home with one of those mail slots that drop the mail into a box in the wall. From inside the house you lift a small door to retrieve the mail. This is a pretty nice set up because mail ends up inside the house, but not all over the entryway floor.

The mailbox has also become Baby M's favorite toys. He lifts the door, he closes the door. He takes the mail out. He puts things that aren't mail in. In the past week I have found nail clippers, a pink hippopotamus, a mini-pumpkin and some coasters in the mail box. The anticipation of mail is a big part of our day. When we hear the ca-chunk sound of letters dropping into the box we both perk up. "Should we check the mail?" I ask Baby M. He bounces up and down with glee and trots over to the mailbox. He lifts the door and happily pulls out all the letters. On cranky days I will drop in some old letters and ask him to check the mail. Sometimes we check the mail 3 or 4 times a day. Perhaps Baby M has found his calling.

Preschool Panic

I am one of the last moms in my playgroup to start looking into preschools. Many of them began touring preschools when their babies were 4 months old, and a few before the child was even born! Despite the conventional wisdom that in West LA you need to start looking at preschools before your baby's umbilical stump falls off, I told myself that I would not even start thinking about preschool until Baby M made it to the one year mark. But now Baby M is one, so its time to start figuring out the preschool process.

Women around here can get pretty crazy when it comes to preschools. I know one woman who toured 20 preschools trying to find the best fit for her son. Another woman sent a panicked email to our neighborhood mailing list when she discovered that the tours for her preschool of choice were already booked for the year. Angelenos can buy books, attend seminars and hire private consultants to help guide them through the preschool selection process. All I really wanted was a fun place not too far from home where Baby M could get used to being in a group and following directions from an adult other than myself. Of course I want the school to be safe and the teachers to be nurturing and most importantly for Baby M to enjoy his introduction to school. It seemed simple enough, but now my head is spinning-- should I go with Montessori or Waldorf? RIE or Reggio? Academic or Developmental? I know that you're supposed to pick the model that is the best fit for your child's personality, but Baby M's personality is just beginning to become evident. I have no idea what he's going to be like at 3.

My best guess at this point is that he's going to be a typical boy. Already he prefers cars to stuffed animals, points excitedly at trucks, chases balls and runs through the library screeching. I recently finished The Trouble with Boys by Peg Tyre. This excellent book explores the achievement gap between school age girls and boys and traces the problem back to boys earliest exposure to school -- preschool. The author convinced me that for the average preschool boy the following are key requirements:

1. Play based curriculum
2. Acceptance of noisy play
3. Acceptance of aggressive play, as long as not dangerous
4. Big classroom with room for running around
5. Blocks, balls, building toys
6. Plenty of free play in addition to instruction
7. Teachers help students with transitions between activities

I am still just beginning my preschool search, but I will definitely look for a school with these traits. Stay tuned, I'm sure there will be many more blog posts about preschool over the next year. Apparently if I don't get my name on a waiting list by the time he is 2, Baby M will end up being taught in a dungeon by a monkey.

Mall Rats

If we don't get out of the house at least once a day Baby M gets very cranky. We generally go to the park or library but I am always looking for interesting places to take Baby M, preferably places that are nearby and free. Last week we did a free trial class at Gymboree. Baby M had a blast climbing over the mats, chasing after balls and blowing bubbles. He especially liked climbing headfirst into an inner tube and then curling up like a bug in the middle. I considered signing him up for their program, but it is $74 a month plus a one time $50 membership fee which is a little more than I wanted to spend. However, once the weather gets bad $74 a month to avoid seeing Mr. Crankypants might be worth it. In addition to the weekly class the Gymboree membership also includes "free play" times so we could visit a couple of times a week.

Another fun excursion we had recently was to Westside Pavilion. This mall is often overrun with stroller pushing moms and nannies, but now that school and pre-school has started up it is a little less crazy. I think mall activity is in a lull before the holiday madness starts up. Anyway, we started out at the Three Cheeky Monkeys toy store where we bought some stomp rockets for a friend's upcoming 4th birthday and Baby M got to play with some wooden trains, ride a Rody and laugh at a wacky puppet. Next we headed over to the food court so Baby M could toddle around on a giant banana and crawl through an enormous soda cup. This was his first time in the mall play area; up until now I've felt that he was to little to hold his own against sugar crazed 2 year olds, but he did fine, screaming with joy and cautiously avoiding the high traffic areas. Then we walked by the pet store to watch the puppies tumbling around in the shredded newspaper and finally ducked into Barnes and Noble to read a few stories. Baby M happily fell asleep on the way home. Sucessful outing!

Baby M is 1 Year Old -- That's WILD!

Baby M is 1 year old. I know I am supposed to say, "I can't believe it's been a year already" but it really does seem like it has been a year since we brought him home from the hospital. Yes the last few months have flown by, but I remember back to last year when we measured Baby M's age in days and looked forward to weekly milestones that seemed to take forever to arrive. We waited for his colic to "peak" and eagerly counted up to week 8, week 10, week 12 , until finally (week 16?) he started crying a little less and smiling a little more. There were long days when I would look at the clock and think, "only 5 more hours until bedtime." Actually, there are still days that I do that.

We celebrated Baby M's first birthday last weekend with a simple party at Lindberg Park in Culver City. In Los Angeles kid birthday parties can quickly go overboard with bounce houses, petting zoos, ice sculptures, etc. I certainly had no intention of throwing that kind of party, but I did want to do something more than my typical party which consists of burgers on the grill in the back yard. Every party planning guide instructs you to start with a theme so that's where I started. Initially I proposed a theme of Asian Pop Culture. I had this crazy idea that I could somehow re-create MOCA's Murakami opening party on a 1 year old scale by shopping at Giant Robot and Mitsuwa. My husband gently suggested that this might be a little overly ambitious. So I considered a variety of other themes including Ugly Dolls (discarded after they were featured too prominently in Cookie Magazine) and Robots (discarded after a friend had a robot themed party for her toddler which included her husband dressed up as a robot in a costume that, no kidding, took him 20 hours to make) and finally settled on Where the Wild Things Are. I love this classic children's book and the mischievous little boy in the story has always reminded me of Baby M. Despite the facts that this year is author Maurice Sendak's 80th birthday and Spike Jonze is currently working on a live-action version of Where the Wild Things Are, there was very little available in the way of party decorations, favors, etc. I ended up making custom invitations and bubble labels using my computer and found an ornament from Hallmark to use as a cake topper. It wasn't a ton of work, but my tip to other slacker moms out there is to look through the party themes available at your local party store and then just choose from those. Of course, as my husband repeatedly pointed out the party was really about Baby M and our friends and family probably would have had just as much fun if the party had been themeless. Still, I am pleased that we ushered in his first year with a bit of fun and originality.

Sleep Training Wimp

So I have a confession to make. My almost one year old baby does not sleep through the night. He wakes crying 2-3 times a night and I grudgingly make my way down the hall and nurse him back to sleep. He does not nap willingly and in fact must be nursed to sleep on my queen sized bed. If I try to get up after he falls asleep or even detach his greedy little mouth from my breast he will wake, sit up, scream and refuse to go back to sleep. I don't like to admit any of this and try not to bring up the topic of sleep, although after a year of not sleeping I suspect the bags under my eyes and a tendency to sound like George W might be tipping people off to the fact that I have failed at teaching my child to sleep. (Today I told an acquaintance that I was afraid of Baby M getting "strampled" on the playground, my own little Bushism combining "stampeded" and "trampled").

It's not that I don't know what needs to be done; I've read plenty of sleep books and gotten all sorts of advice from well meaning friends and strangers. Part of the problem is that there is always a good reason to postpone the sleep training-- we're leaving on a trip, or just got back from a trip or Baby M is sick or teething, etc. etc. Another part of the problem is that Baby M is a particularly stubborn baby who really doesn't like the idea of going to sleep. And the final part of the problem is that I am a wimp who can't let my baby cry. Yes I have read The No Cry Sleep Solution and the Baby Whisperer's "Pick Up Put Down" method and they do not work for us. Baby M does not care if I am in the room, rubbing his back or singing him a lullaby, he will jump up and down shaking his crib rail and screaming until he chokes. Perhaps the old PUPD method would have worked when Baby M was smaller, but I cannot repeatedly lift a 23 lb baby up and down without throwing my back out. I really wanted to believe Jodi Mindell's claim that after breaking the nurse to sleep connection my baby would be sleeping through the night within 2 weeks, but after months of reading Goodnight Moon and putting my baby into the crib awake, he still is up a few hours after he goes to sleep. So I'm left with Weissbluth's "Extinction / Graduated Extinction" or the Sleepeasy Solution both of which require some crying.

I know a bit of crying is not going to hurt Baby M, and if it helps all of us get some sleep it may be worth it. I admit that I am more often grouchy and short tempered because I am tired. And since I have to nap with Baby M that means when he is awake I spend time doing chores instead of interacting with him. As plenty of people have pointed out he used to cry when I put him in his carseat and I still just gave him a kiss, turned up the radio and went on my way. But somehow the idea of him alone in the dark, crying out for me and not getting an answer just kills me. I remember being a young child and calling out for my mother, if she hadn't come I would have been devastated. Plus, as someone who was prone to histrionics as a teenager I know how lousy you feel after sobbing uncontrollably for an hour-- puffy eyes, snotty nose, your whole face hurts.

But even with these mixed feelings, every few weeks I tell my husband, "okay, this weekend we're doing sleep training" but every week I wimp out. I wonder what this means for my parenting skills? Am I already a bad parent? Am I going to be one of those mothers who can't discipline her kid? Am I going to end up with a bratty Baby M? I mean if I can't teach my baby to sleep, which is a biological imperative, how am I ever going teach him to share on the playground or say thank you or stand up for the funny looking weird kid that everyone else teases?