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Sam's Story: Week 143 October 23, 2006
I'm not normally the kind of father to pay a lot of attention to milestones relative to other children, but I do tend to notice when Sam starts or stops doing things. Recently she's made great leaps in her communication skills, what with her ability to imagine conditional situations ("I could watch a DVD if we didn't need to go [out to run errands].") or outcomes ("I can go outside after Mommy finishes dinner. Are finished now, Mommy? Are you finished now?"). She's even starting to properly enunciate her F and S sounds. Sometimes, though, we still have a failure to communicate.
Take the other night, for example. All three of us were in the playroom, I on the floor with Sam and Ger sitting nearby doing some virtual errands on the computer. Sam had her Winnie The Pooh Megablocks out and was busily snapping them together. Her favorite piece of the set is a little swing that you can snap characters into (see the bottom of this picture), but she sometimes has trouble working it by herself. After a moment of arranging Tigger, Piglet, and their comrades, Sam looked at me and said "I think poo needs to come out."
Now, we're still hoping to get Sam potty trained by the time the new baby arrives, so this is exactly the kind of statement that will make me jump to action. I leapt up and held out my hand. "Oh, thank you for telling me. Let's go to the bathroom!"
Sam gave my outstretched hand an annoyed look. "Poo needs to come out, Daddy," she repeated without making a move to get up.
"I know. So let's go sit on the potty!"
She shook her head. "No! Get poo out!"
My shoulders slumped and I just stood there, looking down at her. "Sammy, we have to go to the bathroom to get it out."
"No, here!" she said, thumping the floor with her palm.
"Sammy, if you want to get the poo out--"
"You get it out!" she shouted. She was starting to get pissed.
"Me? I don't need to go!"
"I think," Geralyn broke in with the voice of well formed reason, "that she wants you to get Winnie the Pooh out of the swing." She pointed to the piece of the Winnie the Bear Megablocks, which had the titular bear firmly set in the swing where little hands often had trouble dislodging it.
"Ooooh, get the Pooh out."
"Yeah," said Sam, looking at me like I was the Chief Engineer on the express train to Stupidville. "Get it out."
Here's a few pictures.
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Nothing too exciting up there, as we spent most of our weekend shopping for furniture. Which, by the way, is something I recommend you not do with a toddler. Not only did Sam want to sit in every chair we saw, but she insisted on molesting every breakable nicknack the store had set out on its displays. I tried to adapt to the danger by trying to play the "Do you see something red?" game, but that just propelled her into the act of trying to break red things, which seemed to be even more expensive.
Speaking of expensive, Ger's prenatal yoga instructor seems like a very nice lady from all I've heard, but she's a bit dippy. Ger was telling me how at her last class the instructor was reminding everyone that her "natural childbirth pain management" class still had slots open. Like all of them. For just $160, she could coach you and your partner on how to employ "body centered hypnosis, in which imagery and suggestion guide the pregnant mother through the journey of labor and birth." The flyer she handed out further promised to help you "integrate the coping skills necessary for dealing with pain."
Now, no offense to those who choose to practice more natural childbirth, but Geralyn isn't one of you and she doesn't need this class for $160. She already knows all the coping mechanisms related to very naturally and organically using her facial muscles and larynx to say "I want an epidural." When she went into labor with Sam it was like the first thing Ger said, even to the receptionist at the information desk in the hospital lobby. She then calmly repeated this hypnotic mantra over and over again until men came and threaded a flexible catheter into her spinal cord and injected a steady trickle of medicine.
The best part of the whole flyer, though is that it promises to give you "a tape of the hypnosis exercise" to play during labor. A TAPE. I mean, woah that's too high tech. If it's not on a metal cylindar that I can take it back to my drawing room and insert into my hand-cranked gramophone, it's beyond me. This is 2006, after all.
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Samantha
Tags: Pregnancy, Sam's Story, Samantha
Comments
Posted by Marie on October 23, 2006 11:50 AM:
Very funny, but you were hearing what you wanted to hear, don't feel too bad.
We had a very upsetting failure to communicate a few months ago. DD (3.5 years old now) was looking at pictures of my grandparents, all of whom passed away years before she was born. She asked me about them, and I told them my grandparents died. Suddenly, she looked very sad. Because we would sometimes distinguish between her 2 sets of grandparents by calling them "Mommy grandparents" or "Daddy grandparents," she thought my parents had died.
She was so upset, I called my Mom so DD could speak with her. Her first words to my Mom were, "are you done dying?"
I think my Mom took it kinda badly when I referred to the misunderstanding as funny.
Posted by Marla on October 27, 2006 4:59 PM:
Geralyn- Do you enjoy the yoga class? That's something I didn't get the opportunity to do with either Emma and Henry, but would HAVE to do if we decide on having a 3rd.
Posted by Ger on October 31, 2006 11:04 AM:
I have found that it really helps with lower back pain, maintaining flexibility, not to mention give me at least a couple hours a week to myself! All critical in maintaining my sanity and health. Aside from the instructor being a bit of a flake and a BIG advocate of natural childbirth, the class is good. It's always good to have a chance to chat with other expectant moms, too!