Mihret Plays the Piano

I kind of love this video because it doesn't go quite the way you'd think.

I figured she was going to just kind of bang on the piano - and she does, at first, but then she kinda-sorta starts to play it.

If you look just behind her, you can see her high chair. Because she usually has to eat dinner before Kara and I are ready to sit down to eat, I will sit and play the piano while she has dinner. It seems like she's started to pick up on that, if only a little bit.

-Josh

World of activities awaits young daughter

Mihret at about 10 months old, tickling the ivories with her Abaye

My (Kara's) latest column in The Post-Crescent: (from Aug. 27, 2008)

My 18-month-old daughter, Mihret, and one of her day care teachers love to dance together at day's end, when Mihret's waiting for me or my husband, Josh, to pick her up.

Our energetic toddler loves to make up her own moves. Recently, she figured out how to turn on the CD player to get the music started.

Her day care also offers Musikgarten, an early childhood music and movement class, as an addition to the curriculum.

Mihret loves singing, and she's gone from parroting back sounds on pitch to repeating lyrics. Josh, a Beatles fan, has gotten her to sing "backup" on car rides, echoing him on "Hey Jude."
Even though she's not yet 2, we can't help but wonder what organized activities she'll want to try as she grows.

We both had parents who signed us up early for various types of lessons, some that lasted and some that didn't.

Now we're staring at our daughter's clean slate, wondering what marks she'll make on it first.
We're already thinking of ways we can offer opportunities without racking up the costs. There's Mihret's Grandma's well-preserved violin. Her Uncle Dave can give her drum lessons, and Josh can teach her how to play our home piano. Then there's Josh's company's discount at a local dance studio.

It can be too easy to tire our child out theoretically before she's old enough to protest.

Our job as her parents is to be her first coaches, advisers and teachers. We need to encourage her when we see she may enjoy an activity.

But what she sticks with when she's older, well, we need to remember that that's got to be her move.

By Kara Patterson, Post-Crescent staff writer

http://www.postcrescent.com/

The Toy Duckies Splashed Me... Seriously!

Below, Mihret emerges soaked and satisfied from a water-table battle involving a friend and some plastic ducks at her day care's summer picnic. I (as Mihret's mama) was trying to get a close-up shot without getting our new digital camera wet. This is my favorite shot of the bunch... Kara :)

Kids' Music at the Patterson Household

I'm not sure if I just have an aversion to kids' music - but I didn't listen to a lot of it as a child.

I did have a few children's records, but most of them were - a little off the beaten path. And in some cases, they were just really old.

When I was younger, my dad had set up an old record player in the basement. And he provided my brother and me with a lot of records that he had owned as a kid.

Which is why, to this day, I'm deeply in love with something called The Silly Record, which still hasn't been issued on CD.

And I had my other favorites as well, I suppose, but most of them were stories instead of music. And in the rare cases where the records were musical in nature, they weren't what you would think of as "baby music" - they were Sesame Street records, and Disney Songs (I got college scholarships for my essay about listening to the Mary Poppins soundtrack as a kid) and a few Chipmunk records - which of course took popular songs of the day and gave them really high voices.

(To this day, every time I hear Arthur's Theme, in my head I hear Alvin saying: "Fall in love? Ha! I can think of a hundred things better than falling in love. Like Pac-Man, for instance.")

And so, when it comes time to play music for the kiddo... there are almost no children's CDs getting played in the house.

I would wonder whether this warps my kid or not, but I have a lot of fond memories of being very little, and having my dad play Steve Miller's Greatest Hits, and The Beatles, and any other record he felt like playing.

And so I do the same for my own kid.

Mostly, I've found she likes a loud, thumpy beat, because it says "dancin' time!" to her.

The music we've listened to the most in the last few months:

The Beatles: Number 1s

This is something of a tribute to my own dad, because I grew up hearing these on the stereo, probably when I was as young as Mihret.

Hey Jude is a big favorite, and we sometimes sing the song to Mihret. Often, she kinda-sorta sings with us, echoing the last word or two that we sing.

Except the one time that I swear, and Kara can verify this, that she sang "Remember, to let her in to your heart..." unprompted.

Aqua: Aquarium

Yes, they are the Barbie Girl people. No, we don't listen to that song. We prefer Happy Boys and Happy Girls. Which is how Mihret learned the word happy. Can your eighteen-month-old say happy?

The New Power Generation: New Power Soul

It's tough finding a Prince album with very few bad words and a lot of thumping on it. This is one of them, though we skip some songs.

They Might Be Giants: No

Yes, this is the one kid's record we do, but there are tracks on there that get old after a while. Real old. "Violin" is brutal after a while.

But Where Do They Make Balloons is usually good for a listen or three.

Bobby Brown: Don't Be Cruel

'S loud and thumpy, for the most part.

Soul Coughing: Irresistible Bliss

It's got a great boom-THUMP, boom-boom-THUMP opening. Though, strangely, the song Mihret likes to dance to most is White Girl. Go figure.

Ethiopian Music

We have a couple of CDs worth, and we enjoy putting them on and listening to them, but it's hard to listen to something for more than a few days when you don't know what the words are.

Aimee Mann: Smilers

For some reason, Mihret likes the song Freeway, even though it's pretty mid-tempo.

Michael Jackson: Greatest Hits

We learned that Mihret understood the concept of rhythm when we put on Billie Jean and she started bopping along with it - at six months old.

Other things that have gotten a spin here and there include the African Children's Choir, The Lion King, Julia Nunes' Left Right Wrong, Stereo MCs.

But my dad seems to have gotten it right - The Beatles made the only CD where, at the end of every song, Mihret yells out "Again!"

-Josh

The Columns

Even before we started the blog, Kara started writing for the Post-Crescent, covering the little corners of raising Mihret.

For a long time, we kept saying, "Oh, we'll get the columns up on the blog," and then we'd forget.

But now!

Of course, the problem becomes, after all these months, do we stick all the columns together? Or do we put them where they belong, chronologically?

And if we do that, how do people find them?

This is how.

Kara's name appears at the bottom of each column, but here's the real tip-off that she wrote them, and not me.

Correct spelling.

Correct grammar.

Reasonably sized.

Take it away, Kara:

September 12, 2007:

http://pattersonsofethiopia.blogspot.com/2007/09/nearer-grandparents-are-better.html

October 29, 2007:

http://pattersonsofethiopia.blogspot.com/2007/10/as-time-marches-on-marriage-can-last.html

December 10, 2007

http://pattersonsofethiopia.blogspot.com/2008/08/daughter-on-move-is-bittersweet-for-mom.html

January 21, 2008:

http://pattersonsofethiopia.blogspot.com/2008/01/daughter-as-daddys-girl-is-all-right.html

March 4, 2008:

http://pattersonsofethiopia.blogspot.com/2008/08/first-birthday-can-be-puzzler.html

April 15, 2008:

http://pattersonsofethiopia.blogspot.com/2008/08/choir-concert-made-special-connection.html

May 27, 2008:

http://pattersonsofethiopia.blogspot.com/2008/05/new-words-open-new-world-for-toddler.html

July 9, 2008:

http://pattersonsofethiopia.blogspot.com/2008/08/discipline-for-toddler-calls-for-time.html

So Tired

One of the things that fills me with pride in my kid is her ability to tell me what she wants.

I kind of doubt she's got everything sussed out at 100%, given that she has a limited number of words, but with a little prompting she does okay.

So, for example, if I'm feeding her dinner, and she requires additional whatever, she can now say, cheese, fruit, milk, water, cracker, or pasta.

I'm not saying that's all we ever feed her, but those are the big staples.

She also knows how to ask for a cookie. Which is something she's VERY enthusiastic about, even after she has also let me know that she's "Done!"

Lately, however, we've been having some nighttime trouble.

As usual, I'm forced to concede that on the whole, our nightly issues aren't that bad. My mother, in particular, loves to remind me that my brother didn't sleep through the night until he was three years old.

But Mihret has mostly slept through the night, since about three days after we brought her home.

Things have changed, lately.

The problem is not that Mihret wakes up. The problem is that she wakes up and screams in a high piercing fashion that doesn't say "I'm sad," but rather, "I think something in my room is on fire!"

So we run to her room, and there she is, either standing up or lying on her tummy, screaming her little lungs out. And here's the strange bit:

If we try to put her on her back, and give her back her blanky, she screams and thrashes and makes every attempt to inform us that NO, THIS WILL NOT DO SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG.

But if we pick her up for, oh, say, ten seconds, she passes out in our arms, and allows herself to be lowered back to the mattress for sleepy-time.

What's bothering Kara and I is that we can't figure out the cause of the distress. For all intents and purposes, things seem to be par for the course in our kid's world.

The theories we've tossed around include:

1. Teeth. She's getting at least three, and maybe four of them right now. Previous teeth have come with no troubles, but these are the big bads. On the other hand, she has no problem making it through the day without Tylenol, so unless nighttime growth is just that much more awful, this probably isn't it.

Also, we've done nights with Tylenol, and nights without, and she seems to wake up either way.

2. She's cold. Our house is 85 years old, and like most beings that make it to that age, it has circulation troubles. (That's an awesome bit of writing right there. Please be impressed, readers!) Winter isn't awful, as most of our heat rises and we keep fairly warm.

But summer is a problem, because our A/C isn't all that well distributed upstairs. The baby's room is the first on the pipe, so it gets the most A/C. Then the bathroom (because who doesn't love an icy-cold bathroom?), then the office, then our bedroom.

So while Kara and I roast a little bit, the baby's room has actually caused me to shiver, even while ensconced in my fluffy, fluffy robe.

On a couple of nights, I've noticed that Mihret seems unusually chilly on he exposed skin, and popped her into wintertime jammies. Which seems to have fixed things. But, of course, some nights I haven't done that, and she has still fallen back into a restful slumber.

Also, according to some book or another, the "best" temperature to keep the house at for restful sleep is 68 degrees. So maybe she's too warm?

No idea.

3. Snot problems. This is kinda related to teeth, but maybe not, as I've seen other kids with runny noses at Mihret's day care. Which might have been caused by teeth. Or allergies. Or tiny angry pixies with a little dust to burn off, who have decided that in order to attract our attention, they're going to stuff the dust up the noses of toddlers, encouraging them to awaken, screaming.

Parenting isn't an exact science, ya know?

Anyway, it seems that having too much gunk in their nasal passages can cause children to have something called Night Terrors, which sounds like a great title for a Twilight Zone-style TV show, but in actuality mostly causes kids to wake up screaming.

I should point out that most of the loss of sleep in the household is on my end. I don't fault Kara or Mihret for this. I assume Mihret has a reason for screaming, and that it's a good one as far as her 18-month-old brain can figure.

But even if her screams persist for a full minute, and she falls asleep on my shoulder a minute later, she's out 5 minutes of sleep, tops.

Kara is the same way, because she has powerful sleeping abilities that I have to remind her to use only for good.

This sounds like a joke, but consider:
Kara has fallen asleep during a ten-minute drive across town.

She falls asleep every Sunday on the way back from church while Mihret sleeps in the back seat. (I should add that I do the driving, which, I think we'll all agree, is a Good Thing.)

Kara has sat up in bed when I'm getting dressed for work, asked me a question, gotten an answer, and then fallen asleep while I'm still getting dressed. You might claim this is impossible, but she starts to snore. No lie.

But then there's me, who, after getting up and doing whatever must be done to get the baby to do some of that lying-down-not-screaming thing I prefer at night, have to sit there, kinda-sorta awake, for as long as it takes me to stop grinding my teeth, waiting to hear what appear to be shrieks of pain, but are actually not, coming from the other room.

(The teeth-grinding thing is totally normal for newer parents, according to my doctor. Yes, he really told me that, and yes I really did ask.)

One could argue, I guess, that this is all just part of the process of being a parent, but I gotta say, I'm not jumping up and down about it.

I can't. I'm too tired.

-Josh

Parenting: That Which Is Unspoken

I did a lot to prepare me for being a parent.

I'd wager that I probably did more than 99% of the folks in the United States gearing up to have a baby thrust into my arms like a tiny bundle of easily shattered crystal with the only words screamed at me while it was happening being, "This is yours to take care of for the next 18 years! Don't mess it up!"

Not that it went down that way.

But I was prepared. We had a bunch of stuff, you know? All the stuff that everyone says you need, and some stuff that everyone said we would need but that we did not actually need, which everyone said, "Oh, yeah, you don't really need that," once we had thrown away our money on said item.

And we took classes. We took classes on adoption, and parenting, and despite the fact that I had changed many diapers in my life and my child was going to be too old to swaddle, we took a parenting class that talked about swaddling and diaper-changing.

There was also a bit about cramming a thermometer into your kid if they had a fever.

Lucky us, we haven't had to do that yet.

The problem with these classes is that they mostly cover the "Your Baby is an Immobile Lump" phase of parenting. Which is nice, but kinda useless after a while.

The thing about parenting a child during the lump phase is that it's pretty simple. They're small and easily controlled, and you could set them on the floor, and as long as all sharp objects and firearms are at least a foot away from the child, they will come to no harm.

But then they learn to move, and they want to move all the time.

And they want to move at unexpected times, and in unexpected ways.

Diaper time is the worst of it.

It starts off easy, because they can't move. They might struggle, and sometimes there's the surprise fountain effect, but if you're fast on the draw with the new diaper, this can be controlled most of the time.

Then they learn to roll over, so you gotta kinda lean on the kid to keep them flat while you deal with the results of their bodily functions.

But then... ugh. The thing that no parent will tell you about, that no one will admit to you until you're a parent, and you find yourself crying to to skies, "Why, why, why would you do that?"

I am speaking, of course, about...

... how to put this delicately...

... about...

...

... about when your kid learns to operate their hands. And there's bodily waste. And you're trying to change the diaper.

And your kid tries to check out the "diaper area."

There are a number of horrors there, all of which are the kind of thing that can give you fits.

First, yeah, there's the poo, which no one really wants to be involved in. But anyone who wants to bring a small being into their life accepts pretty early on that there's going to be a lot of wiping and cleaning and A and D-ing in their future.

Then, naturally, there's the squirming. Which is easy to control at first, but as your kid gets bigger there's more of them to squirm, which makes it harder to hold them down, which makes it harder to keep the surface beneath them from becoming, shall we say, soiled.

And then the kid tries to flip over, or stand up, while covered in the remains of their food from 24 hours ago.

Finally, there are the hands - the tiny little lightning-fast hands, the little hands that wait for the moment, the singular moment when the diaper is off and you're trying to grab the wipes, and BAM, faster than any pickpocket they've got their hands racing to check out the food remnants they're coated in.

It's awful.

And what do you do? Do you yell at the kid? Do you grab their hands away, yelling out words like "yucky" and "no" and "look, little one, that's just not right?"

It's a mystery, really.

And you know what else? No one tells you about the sand.

When kids are little, they like to put things in their mouth. There's all sorts of science involved, stuff about how the mouth is how they best experience things, and nerve endings and such, but, yeah, it doesn't really matter, because the problem is there are just things that shouldn't go in anyone's mouth.

Sand is the perfect for instance.

Sand isn't all that dangerous, really. It's dirt, yeah, but dirt that exists away from toxic waste is generally pretty clean and, you know, earthy.

The problem isn't on the mouth end. The problem is, the sand has to come out.

There's a joke that most people make, when they get their hands on toilet paper that's not as soft as the stuff they use at home.

People say it all the time - "It was like wiping with sandpaper."

The thing is, though, that the digestive process? Can make this a total possibility with small children. They empty out, you go to wipe, and there's this, you know, grit. And if we're all honest with ourselves, when we picture taking an actual piece of sandpaper to our lower regions, we all flinch a little.

And yet, there's nothing you can do.

I suppose you could always strip your kid to nothing, stick 'em on the lawn, and spray the grit off with a hose. But I don't think they would enjoy that either.

In my year as a parent, I've probably changed 1,000 diapers. I've cleaned and scrubbed and washed and medicated and, in general, managed to keep my kid healthy and happy and free from long-term suffering in the diaper area.

And so, so I think it's time she met me halfway and stopped eating sand. At the very least, it will help me to help her.

-Josh