Adventures Abroad: Electron Parenting

Ryan and I have adopted a new parenting style which we call electron parenting. Why? Because we, like electrons, follow the path of least resistance. Some examples:

#1: The Binky

I took away Madeline's pacifier when she was 4 months old. As a new mom I was neurotic about everything...It will mess up her teeth! She'll become dependent on it! It will lead to ear infections! So every month after the boys turned 6 months I swore the next month I would take away the pacifier. But we just couldn't do it. They fell asleep better with it, and it kept them quiet in the morning while everyone else was trying to sleep. There was always another milestone that they'd just gotten over and we couldn't possibly risk messing with any progress. And the boys absolutely loved their "papas":

We only took it away only about a month ago because we really did think it was starting to interfere with their speech. Plus they were starting to ask for it a lot during the day and would get downright ornery if we didn't give it to them right away. How'd they take it? They were pissed off. Owen cried when he went to sleep for a week afterwards, but usually settled down after a few minutes. Tyler walked up to me the day I took it away and smacked me on the head. Overall, I think it went pretty well.

#2 Night Wakings

The boys just started sleeping through the night two months ago. I'm sure there are more together, more disciplined parents who wouldn't stand for that night waking nonsense after 6 months. But we could never be consistent enough in our handling of the boys at night. Why? Because when two babies wake you up multiple times a night, you're just tired. You're tired, and you'll do anything to get those babies quiet so you can get back to sleep. When the boys were around 8 months old I asked our paediatrician about night wakings, and he just threw his hands up in the air and said, "You know, they'll just do it when they're ready, so it kind of doesn't matter what you do." Not a fighter, that one.

Owen was a super star and started sleeping quite well around a year old. But Tyler kept waking him up! For a while Tyler became pretty manipulative, and I knew it was bad when Ryan tried to give me advice on what to do with him at night: "Ok, when Tyler wakes up he wants to go to the kitchen. He'll point to the kitchen. Just take him there, let him look out the window, and then bring him back to bed." I promptly ignored the advice, but I'm sure Tyler's still laughing about that one to this day.

But my path-of-least-resistance paediatrician was right. One day, they just stopped waking up. Thankfully, that day came sometime in late August of this year and Ryan and I are back to being normal humans again.

They looked all sweet and innocent when they
got ready for bed, but you never knew what they'd have
in store in the middle of the night!

#3 No thunk, no problem

We used to be a bit more vigilant about, like, everything in the house. Now if a kids falls or we hear crying we don't bother to get up unless we hear a loud thunk of a head hitting a hard surface.

Thunk. Mads tripped and fell at home and needed stitches.

She was so brave.

#4 Screen time, schmeen time

We've really tried to stick to the "no screen time until 2" rule, but overall we're much more lax about this than we were with Madeline. Ryan is more likely to throw sports on the TV when the kids are around than he was with Mads. Live sports don't count, right?! Luckily the boys get bored after two minutes and walk away.

But the only way we can get those boys to sit still while we change their soiled diapers is with videos of themselves and our families on our phones. Wrestling one baby to sit still while you change them is one thing, but wrestling two is downright exhausting. And those boys each poop like 3 times a day, which could mean up to 6 wrestling sessions before 7:30pm. Not fun. Now they are trained. When they have a poop they bring us a diaper and say "video." And the one who hasn't pooped is super stoked because they get to watch the video too.

#5 Know your limits

One of Ryan's pet peeves is taking kids who throw food out to dinner. I persuaded him to throw caution to the wind a couple of weeks ago and bring the boys out to our local dumplings place. To be fair, it's a huge, noisy restaurant full of families and little kids. Also, our boys have gotten much more civilised at the dinner table, but they are still a hot mess. The boys actually did quite well, but as you can imagine the whole experience was fun for exactly two people in this family: