And the winner is ...

Nah, you'll have to keep reading to find out.

So, infants watch too much tv, mothers' health takes a beating when their child doesn't sleep well at night, and in other breaking news, it is more difficult to be poor and sick than rich and in good health.

But seriously. 40 percents of infants under three months of age watching over an hour of tv or dvd's a day? do you know what a three month old can do?

"stretches legs out and kicks when lying on stomach or back,
takes swipes at dangling objects with hands,
begins to develop a social smile"*

And what are they not yet up to?

can't sit on their own,
don't have full color vision yet,
distance vision hasn't matured,
ability to track moving objects needs a lot of improvement,
don't respond to their own name

"The American Academy of Pediatrics is clear in their recommendations for a media-blackout for kids under 2 years of age... Many parents have accepted the guidelines on vaccinations and no spanking. But television and other forms of media are different. Most parents don't believe that TV is potentially dangerous to their children at such a young age."

It wasn't intentional that I would mix this topic in with this post on our next destination, but in fact it's quite appropriate. We're moving back to the emerald city in the next couple of months. And while I know it's the right thing for us to do, I'm alarmed that lil A will be growing up in the US. No offense intended to the perfectly healthy and normal Americans I know and appreciate, but I do think it's a much harder country to be a parent in if you want a grounded happy kid.

* American Academy of Pediatrics' "Caring for your baby and young child"

clippings

When lil A was a few months old (three? six? I already can no longer remember), I mentioned during a visit to the pediatrician that she didn't always want her vitamins, to which our beloved pediatrician casually remarked that indeed I might need to outfox lil A.

outfox? outwit? trick? outsmart? manipulate? (the French word was 'ruser').

I pondered and pondered... was it even ethical? I mean, she was clearly pretty helpless without me in the world. And she trusted me so much, you know. And ... well, did she really need her vitamins so much that I should use my experience and wits to get my way?

The things you pick up on that steep parenting learning curve! Now I 'ruse' to keep her on the changemat long enough to snap a clean diaper on, and I 'ruse' to get her shoes on when we've run out of the 20 minutes allotted in my head to her trying to do it on her own.
And who knows, maybe when she's a mom, brilliant research will have shown that this is really not a healthy basis for a relationship with your child, and that this impairs their trust and judgment, but for now, I know no better, and I know no better way. So the bribery continues: with the ceiling light in the car when she won't sit in her car seat, and with yet another reading of "off to bed, little monster" when it's nighttime.

I was cleaning up the kitchen this morning after a wonderful wonderful visit from our dear friends H&H, and clipped the little one's tiny barrettes onto the piece of cardboard they came with. the barrettes are tiny, and, you may have noticed, the little one doesn't have quite that much hair yet. But in between fashion catwalks, I diligently clip them back onto that silly piece of cardboard. And somewhere deep inside, I truly believe that as long as I can not lose any one of those 4 tiny things, and if they're safely clipped together, that I can also hold it all together in my life!

little miss sunshine

What with all this talk of illness and sleep deprivation, I've probably completely failed to convey the most salient aspect of the little one's personnality: she's happy!

We can spend half an hour on the parking lot of the bakery waving hi and bye to shoppers; she'll smile to them all.
When we go to playgrounds, she notices that the bigger kids don't always return her fervent smiles and admiration, but it doesn't stop her.
When her teeth are giving her the runs and she clenches her teeth on her shoe soles for comfort, she still looks up occasionally to wink.
And when I eat her up with kisses and tickles, she laughs so hard she invariably gets the hiccups.

"Some days you just have to create your own sunshine" proclaims one of the many postcards planted around my office. She's my little sunshine.

grace under pressure

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer - Albert Camus

(Au milieu de l'hiver, j'ai decouvert en moi un invincible ete. )

Pretty cool, uh?

---

Little known fact: it takes 50 psi to 'push' (expel, rocket out) a baby. That's 344 737.865 pascals, and more than you'd fill your car tires with.

potty mouth

Do you want to go peepee? She shakes her head from right to left and back again. I'm not sure but I think this time she means yes. She forgets that no is the same headshake.

She gives me a wide grin - now is that a "let's play I pretend I want to go but instead chase me around the house" grin or a "glad you understand me" grin?
I'm game, we head upstairs to the bathroom. Pants, pull-down diaper, grab the potty-preferred book. She sits.

Intense look of concentration on her face and ... a massive fart is all we get this time!

An hour or so later, she hides underneath the kitchen table, obviously getting ready for a bowel movement. I ask her if she wants the potty. Head shake, head shake, head shake. She looks away, I'm pretty sure she means no. And when she's done with the real thing, she then entertains me with some nice fake grunts. What a hoot.

Up to the tub we go. She refuses to pee before stepping in. Stands up from the potty, and pees on the bathroom floor. I try not to laugh at the absurdity of it all, at her clownliness in this small regression.