I was pretty excited when I got the new issue of my monthly Parenting magazine. The cover read “Toddler discipline that works (really!).”

I was excited, not because I’m a militant mom; it’s just that I have always heard that toddler discipline before two years-old really doesn’t exist. It’s more a series of distractions and illusions, much like the way David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear in the 80s. Its still there, you just can’t see it for awhile.

Its not that Zach is a bad boy, he’s just developed some ways to express himself that I’d like to change. For instance, if he is mad and grunting towards something and you give him the wrong something, he’ll throw it, 67 mph fast-ball style, straight the other direction. He’ll also, the exact second he is done eating, start feeding his food to the dogs. He has selective hearing while walking alone and won’t respond when called and likes to poke your eyes and pull your ears if you lay near him.

I’d like to know some methods to correct these things because my instinctual yelling of “Stop it! Stop it! God help us! Stop it now!” would make me sound like a crazy woman. (Or more so than I do already.)

The tips were in a Q and A format so that was sort of limiting. It did say if your toddler screams to whisper, set aside a room where they can scream, don’t yell back, put on music and try to get them to dance.  I tried the whisper. It seemed to work.

How to stop a tantrum: keep your cool, hold them tightly, distract them with a books, toys or music, be silly, don’t give them the “attention” they crave, or a time out. I tried a lot of these in the car to no avail. There is probably no cure for the toddler car seat meltdown.

The last was the kid that doesn’t sit in his high chair and throws his food. Now this sound familiar. Their suggestions: only let him sit for five or ten minutes, try a snap on the table chair, let him feed himself, keep him company and as soon as the food is thrown stop meal time. Then if a snack is wanted later, make him sit at the high chair to eat.I have been letting him feed himself, I keep him company, he probably only sits for ten minutes, but I’m hesitant about stopping the eating, but I’ll give it a shot. I usually step in, try and get him to eat a few more big bites with my help and call it good.

This is toddler discipline? It sounds a lot like pushing the desired activity until you child throws a fit, then letting them win. And if those are really the ways to deal with toddler tantrums why does everyone look at me like I’m not controlling my child if I don’t whisk him away if he acts out or ban him from touching everything?

Yesterday I was at Pappa Murphy’s and we had to wait ten or so minutes. That means that he is not going to want to sit on my lap. So he played with this cardboard wet floor sign piece of advertisement. He didn’t wreck it he was just messing with it. Then he started shaking this metal sign, while I watched to make sure he didn’t knock it on himself. He had toys to play with, he just didn’t want them. Besides confining him to my lap and causing a melt down or taking him out of the store, this was the only option.

Women that had children of their own were giving me the “control your child” look. Question, how do you control your child? Seriously, I’d like to know how that really happens before the age of three.

Please, please leave some tips.

This month my husband and I put ourselves on a budget. One of the excessive expenses was coffee.

Not the black, home-brewed stuff, the steeply-priced drinks found at Carabou Coffee and Starbucks.

I am guilty of drinking too much Starbucks. Then I read an article about the psycology behind Starbucks (which is probably close to a lot of marketing schemes today) that made me think twice about why I buy and drink the expensive stuff, anyway.

I am old enough to remember life before Starbucks. As a freshman in college I would frequent a place called Java Joes where my friends and I would smoke clove cigarettes and listen to accoustical music or poetry and drink mocha lattes out of huge cups with a little chocolate mint on the side plate. I would dreamily sip my coffee pretending I was Ricky Lee Jones or Joni Mitchell, again, fulfilling my anti-establishment aura.

I didn’t even see the inside of a Starbuck until I moved to Denver, CO in 1998. That coffee scene was much, much different than my little off-beat coffee shop experiences. Paper cups, burnt tasting coffee, mochas loaded with whipped cream.  It was as if Java Joe had grown up, left college and became a yuppie laywer.

But as I outgrew my need for vintage clothing, cigarettes and pseudo poverty, I did grow into a bit of a Starbucks love.

In the article “Star bucked” it talks about how Starbucks charges a premium for all its coffee. There will never be coupons, there will never be discounts and you will always have to pay full price. It also talks about how they encourage you to use only their lingo to describe the coffee drinks. The whole operation is focused more on atmosphere and image than on the actual coffee you drink. Kind of like flipped image of my old stomping grounds, Java Joes. Java Joes had atmospher because they had good coffee.

Starbucks researches the upcomming seasons popular colors to determine the flavors of their Frappachinos. Seriously. One season the color white was all the rage so they came up with a drink that was white: vanilla and cocount. 

It’s not just Starbucks that is guilty of zapping our money on small excesses. One of the other budget woes, the tollway, had an advertisment that read “It saved me money because I was able to get to the sale faster.” Uh, what does that mean? I’m going to blow a wad of cash anyway so I might as well spend $3 bucks to get there faster.

I guess it comes down to the fact of how much of what we spend is mindless and just for a simple satisfaction of something we can’t even pin point? Can we get the same satisfaction from something cheaper but have been conditioned to believe that a certain brand is better?

I still remember those mocha lattes from Java Joes…so good. Maybe there are things that savvy marketing can never, truly reproduce.

The actual Java Joes in Des Moines, IA.

Man, this is one crabby-faced day for me. There is no reason for my hump day foul mood. I do feel a little tired and my work load is steady, but this is my job. All the more reason to go on a little tirade against my daycare provider (which, I normally find lovely, by the way.)

Yesterday they sent out a long letter letting us know about staff changes in the Bear Cub room (for 1 year-olds) and to remind us for about the eighth time in two months to “make drop offs quick” and to not visit your child at the daycare center unless you plan to pick them up. It goes on to say that blah, blah, blah your toddler is very adaptable and quickly forgets about your sorry butt the minute he finds a shiney toy, so save us the grief, quickly drop off your child and “move along.”

Whatevers.

My research shows that you need to drop your child off at a calm pace. I’ve read you should be taking up to five minutes, ditching the rush hour mentality and making sure that you clearly say “goodbye” and “I’ll be back later.” Is my son still one of the only ones who cry when dropped off? Yes. Does he cry when picked up? Yes. Will I hurry my butt along faster than five minutes for a drop off? No.

My bond with my child is more important than their quick drop-offs. Even if the second I’m gone his memory of me fades at the site of a bag full of rubber balls.
There.

I vented.

Now, back to a long life of over-coddling my only son and being the type of mother that no woman will ever want as a mother-in-law. Ta, ta.

Our friends little 2 year-old fell in the living room and broke his arm. This seems highly unlikely until you’ve actually had a child of your own. Here’s a picture. I feel so sorry for him.

I found this super funny test. Since I finally finshed all the episodes of Twin Peaks I thought I’d find out which character I am.

Which Twin Peaks character are you?

You’re Special Agent Dale Cooper. You’re often too brilliant for people to really follow, but your infectious enthusiasm makes up for the fact that you’re frequently incomprehensible. You are smart, intuitive, clear-headed, compassionate, and cute as hell — about your only flaw is your insane coffee consumption.
Take this quiz!

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I’ve had about two tickets worth of travel through a frequent flier program.  The problem is I hate this carrrier since they screwed me over at Christmas time and almost left me stranded at DIA with my husband and a four month old.

Last weekend I redeemed the miles for a ticket to Minneapolis. The way out, went without a hitch, until we were on the runway, about to take off. The captin announced we’d have an hour and fifteen minute delay. That’s right, I had to sit there an hour and fifteen minutes, on the runway, alone with a 13 month-old, not-sleepy-at-all, toddler.

The guy next to me was in his early 20s and wearing aviator sunglasses in the plane, and presumably trying to sleep off a hang over. As soon as he saw us he got the “Oh crap, why me?” grimmace.

(Later in the airport I saw a advertisement probably geared toward him. It was a young man, wearing Bose headphones and blissfully relaxing, while sitting next to a woman with a young child on her lap with MEGAPHONES for heads. Lovely, I wasn’t offended by that add at all.)

After I climbed over the young man about three times to do things like, change a diaper, get water, etc., we switched seats so he could pass out on the window. It seemed like he was able to do this somewhat successfully for the rest of the layover and flight.

Fortunatly, during the on-board layover there were two other moms with little girls, both 11-months old. We had a make-shift playdate, sharing toys and letting them cruise down the isle. All the other passengers were fine with this, admitting they preferred it to the screaming of a restrained child.

The flight back was much different. I thought I had chosen the flight that left at 12:30 p.m. On Saturday night, my sister checked her email only to find out that it really left at 6:30 A.M.! That meant that we needed to leave her house at 3:30 a.m.! Since my sister gets up at an ungodly hour for her job, she was good to go.

I checked my bag, went through security and boarded without a hitch. The flight was packed and it was hot and muggy. My son had fallen asleep and all seemed fine until take off.

I tried some gum.

 I tried sniffing the peppermint wrapper, but it was no use. I was going to experience, for the first time in my life, motion sickness on a plane. Luckily I quickly grabbed my sleeping neighbor’s bag and barfed. And barfed again. Great.

My son stayed asleep through the whole thing and the bag, surprisingly, was an engineering marvel. The woman on the aisle seat asked me if I was okay. I told her I just got sick. She then told me she’d hold my, still sleeping, son while I quietly disposed of the bag.

He slept until we were about to land and then went into full-fledged hyper energy mode, opening and closing the plane window, clapping about his success at that, and jumping on my lap. I dozed in and out and when we landed, I did not repeat the take off sickness.

The trip itself was really nice and fun, but I wonder if it was really worth $5? It probably was, but if someone offered me a flight for $5 and I knew I’d have to go through that again, I’d probably just pass. 

I’m off for Minnesota this morning.

[By the way, my nephew’s middle name is Ole. It’s after my sister-in-law’s grandfather. My grandfather went by the nickname Heine (pronounced high-knee.) I safely avoided that as a middle name and opted for my husband’s grandfather’s name: Joseph. There is only so much cruelty you can inflict on one child.]

Here goes.

“Oh no, Ole!”

The night progresses. On the way to the car, Ole lights up a smoke and asks

“Oh no, Ole!”

They get in the car and begin to drive home. On the way home, they pass a motel. Ole asks

“Sure!” She says.

“But what will ya tell your students?” Ole asks. (Apparently, not to concerned about being shut down again.)

“Same ting I always say, ‘You don’t need to smoke and drink to have a good time!”

I’ll just show these three pictures and not get too sappy.

He’s done been growin’!

A good friend of mine sent me this very interesting article. It is so well written, informed and true.

http://babble.com/content/articles/features/personalessays/fisher/littleboypink/

It really made me think. My son is not to the dress up stage yet, but he has a strong curiosity towards boas and shiny clothing. This article does a good job of showing that children look at the world through androgynous eyes. They see adults wearing a series of costume and society, a game of dress up. Honestly, in reality, that’s kind of what it is.

My friend sent me a picture of her 20 month-old son dressed to the nines, in princess clothing. She confessed that they are genderless at this age, but it drives her husband a little nuts.

Why are we so pressured to assure our children, no matter what age, conform to society’s dress expectations? It makes me wonder, 50 years ago, if a little girl wanted to dress up like a fire fighter, would they say she was insisting on dressing as a boy? I suppose they did, they called them “Tomboys.” But everyone knows that being a “Tomboy” isn’t nearly as bad as being called “a girl.”

In order for the sexes to be truly equal we need to let our children embrace both sides of their sexuality freely and not confine them the sexual restraints of society. This culture sexualizes children way too early anyway, why not embrace their lack of sexuality or gender preference as a sign of, God forbid, being a curious child.

Prince Charming dresses up flashy too in the story books, last time I checked. Maybe enlightenment will lead to better dress up choices for boys. All kids like shiny fabrics, fuzzy bits and poofy stuff. Dress up is fun! That’s why we have theater.

Hey, I know how to sew. Maybe I’ll come up with my own line of dress up stuff with lots of pizzazz for boys and girls, no rules on who dresses up as what. Until then, there’s always Halloween.

I am a test nerd.

I loved Psychology in college but could never excel in the upper level classes.

The site Tickle.com is perfect in that way. Not too much seriousness, it’s more like Pop Psychology. Which, I also get my fix of, by reading Psychology Today magazine. It’s full of lots of interesting facts about the human mind, but in a cocktail conversation kind of way. 

On Tickle a lot of the tests are non-sense but some are what they call “PhD-Certified.” I like those the best.

I did this one today on memory and scored 82%. pretty good. My highest scores were on the short story blurbs. You should check it out. http://web.tickle.com/tests/memory/flash.jsp