Archive for the 'ronin' Category

No nap.

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

[Nigel and Batbear go joyriding in the shopping cart.]

If Ronin disliked sleeping before, it is nothing compared to how she feels about sleep now. She ignores, fears, hates, and tries her damnedest to avoid sleep and her loathsome bed. In the past week she has napped twice out of sheer exhaustion and she has been taking upwards of 3+ hours per night to get down. The last hour or so is always a total screaming hysterical meltdown. It’s totally awful and I’ve been meaning to post something more interesting than the horror that is her sleep habits lately, but the scattered handful of brain cells that have managed to survive this beastly past week are too depressed to write blog posts.

The sad part is that we brought it on ourselves. We ‘broke’ the nap (her pacifier). We had hoped that she would slowly let go of her need for the nap but it seems that she has been getting more and more dependent upon it. The entire household would come to a standstill if we couldn’t find it when it was bedtime, she’d get all agitated and amped up trying to find it and it would take a million years to get her down, etc. Plus, she developed this nasty rash around her mouth where the nap touches.

We felt just taking it away from her was too harsh so we cut a hole in the end of it. We went to bed as usual and she popped her nap in her mouth, gave it a couple of sucks, and then pulled it out to inspect. She was utterly perplexed and we had a hard time trying not to laugh at her obvious confusion. We told her that it seemed to have broken and she told us to fix it. Then she wanted to get some tape to fix it. We taped it up and she held it for a while and we told the story of the little Ronin-fish who had a nap once when she was a little baby but then she got older and turned two and the nap broke and it was time to try to sleep without the nap but it was okay because she didn’t need it anymore, etc. And she seemed okay with it really. She was a little upset right at first when we said we couldn’t fix it (though we tried with tape) but she didn’t cry specifically for the nap after that. We put it under her pillow; she takes it out every once and a while and adjusts the tape, then puts it back.

The problem is that she doesn’t know how to sleep without it. Now that the nap is no more, what little interest she had in sleeping vanished. She just can’t figure out how to go to sleep without passing out from exhaustion, usually after screaming herself hoarse. It’s awful and I can’t figure out if we should get her another pacifier or if at this point, she’ll never revert to the far better sleep situation we had previously. It’s funny too because if you had told me then that our sleep situation was ‘far better’ than some other possible sleep situation, I would have laughed incredulously. Or killed myself.

[Toddler whose life is ruined because her cruel cruel parents broke her nap.]


Coffee and naps

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

[Ronin napping*** with her friends. Clockwise from upper left we have Muddy, Bones, Bunny, Punk Rock Girl, Batbear, Ronin of course, Nigel, and Chess.]

Earlier this evening, Ronin managed to get a hold of an old coffee can that still had some coffee bean crumbs. These she merrily dug out and shoved up her nose as far as she could, an alarming habit she has with things that smell interesting (rosemary, pine needles, and oregano are repeat offenders). We picked out what we could but she spent the entirety of dinner sneezing and digging around up there with her finger. During the soup course she managed to eject one of the bigger chunks and we idly wondered how much of the stuff she managed to actually snort down and ingest. I suppose we got our answer around 7ish when she quite suddenly started literally bouncing off the walls. Her cheeks got all flushed and even though she missed her nap (which means she should have passed out dead around 6:30), she spent the next couple of hours running in circles in her bedroom, climbing onto the furniture and jumping off, ferrying her stuffed animals busily from one part of the house to another, etc. We were mildly alarmed but happy that at least she was in a good mood. We just kept asking her if she wanted to go to bed (to which she’d immediately reply “Nope”) until finally there was hesitation in her reply and Joshua seized the opportunity to put her in her bed. He told her the Billy Goats Gruff story (a favorite; it’s the library’s fault) and she was out after only a few minutes. No more coffee for Ronin.

*** NOT today’s nap.


Christmas

Saturday, January 2nd, 2010

[A pretty spider web coated in tiny ice particles. It was freezing cold the majority of our Eugene trip.]

I’m happy to report that Ronin (Ronin’s parents) survived the Christmas holiday without any heads exploding from all the excitement and doting relatives and trees and presents and ornaments and presents.

We have actually managed to somehow avoid Christmas for the past 13 years by either being out of the country or snowed in (that would be last year) but this time, it was nigh on impossible for us to avoid such festivities with such an adorable little munchkin in tow just waiting for sugarplums and santas and grandparents and all that stuff. We drove to Eugene to Joshua’s Mom’s house.

[We got a tree this year because Ronin so clearly loves the tree. Last year she loved Michelle’s tree and this year she loved our tree. She spent (still spends—we have yet to take it down) a lot of time poking around underneath it, manhandling the ornaments, and packing the lower limbs with her flock of stuffed animals. Here she is shoving all the critters she can find into the lower branches of Cheryl and Larry’s tree in Eugene.]

She’s getting huge, no? She has even started selectively eating (cookies, mac n cheese); you can see it in her upper arms. Our little monkey might even crack the 10th percentile someday.

[Ronin loves to show Nigel the park. She calls that hat the “Armadillo Hat” by the way; we have no idea why.]

She’s getting shrewder about checking first to see what we are all eating (pie, lately) before getting into whatever we try to feed her (yogurt and fruit, say). Needless to say, she has eaten her weight in pie and bunny grahams this past week. If I were smart, I could probably sneak some peas in her by burying them in lemon meringue.

[We made cherry jam finally out of all the cherries we harvested from Cheryl and Larry’s tree. We gave Ronin the spoon to lick and she cried for jam jam jam more jam MORE JAM MORE JAM!!!!! for like two hours after.]

[We thought she was pretty willful before but she is far more so now. For that reason we let her take her two precious markers along on a trip to the store. She was basically good with them and only dropped them a few times while shopping. On the way home we quite forgot about them only to turn around and behold this. Mere hours before the rest of the family arrived for some Christmas Eve dinner.]

Ronin does drink plenty of milk, which is great, and curiously has shown an affinity for tea. Joshua made himself a cup of tea one afternoon and she wanted some. He loaded it with milk and put a bit of honey in it and she drank a startling amount. And yes, we only give her decaf because, god I’d hate to even think…

In general, she eats a lot better than she ever did, and her sleeping has improved exponentially. She is still murder to get down though, unless she skips her afternoon nap, which is painful in its own right. I am not exaggerating to say that we (usually I, since she suddenly prefers that I put her down lately) spend between 4 and 6 hours per day laying down with her trying to get her to sleep.

She is sleeping in her own bed these days; no more crib. Right before the Texas trip, way back when…, I was trying to put her to bed and I carried her to her crib and put her in it. When I turned to go fetch her various crib accessories, I heard a loud THUMP thump. She had vaulted over the side, dropped down to her feet and then landed on her butt. She was fine but she so often had violent crib freakouts that the thought of her throwing herself over the side in a blind rage made me nervous that she wouldn’t always land so well. Some friends of ours learned the hard way that it was time to get rid of the crib when their two-year-old climbed out and broke his arm.

The day we got back from Texas, we bought her a twin futon and some bed slats, which we propped up with 2x2s to prevent Warm Toast Syndrome (futons ‘sweat’ underneath if you just put them straight on a wood floor; it’s hideously gross). She was pretty cool with the new bed. She has never shown any extraordinary distress when we’ve changed her sleeping situation (warm belly to swaddle, cradle to crib, our room to the hall room, old apartment to the new house and her own real room); Ronin has always been an equal opportunity sleep hater. Oh, I shouldn’t say that really; she has become much much better at the sleep thing and has at times even asked to take a nap (typically at completely inopportune times like when we’re in the grocery store). The first time she did it though I damn near fell down dead with shock.

So far she has only rolled out of the new bed once. We heard a dull thud and then a tiny moan; she never woke up even as we lifted her back up onto the bed. And she mostly stays under the covers so we don’t feel we need to crank the heat all night long. AND she often sleeps through the night before coming into our room at the crack of dawn demanding yogurt and the Christmas tree lights ON. It’s a pretty ideal situation really considering the first 17 months of sleep hell.

The pacifier (‘nap,’ she calls it) is the next big thing to deal with. Oh, aside from potty training (gak). When she teethes (and she has been growing her canines in bursts and wans for the past four months; so far only the tops have managed to poke through) she wants to suck on the nap all the time. Seriously all the time. We feel like Big Meanies taking it away from her so we made a rule that she could have her nap whenever she wanted it as long as she stayed in her room. She took to this right away and we didn’t see much of her for about three days. Periodically she would emerge to eat some bunny grahams or drink some milk but the vast majority of the time she spent sitting on her bed reading to her animals or whatever. Sometimes she stood at the doorway whining at us and trying to creep slowly out with the nap in her mouth. We were beginning to feel like we made the wrong decision to give her free reign over her nap and wondering if we needed to do something when she just as suddenly abandoned the nap and emerged from her room. She still uses it to sleep but most of the time can deal without it (even when she is in her room). I really can’t decide if it’s worth trying to get rid of or if we should just let her keep it. I am very afraid of what may happen to her sleep if we took it from her. Now the current nap issue is that when Ronin teethes, her saliva turns to a caustic acid that gives her a rash around her mouth; the nap aggravates this. She has had a rash around her mouth for three months straight. Poor little monkey.

[Ronin with some of her Christmas booty. The doll, from Oma Peggy, has already been adopted into Ronin’s inner circle of friends. Other standout gifts include some awesome books and a perfect to-scale metal miniature shopping cart. Sheer brilliance.]


Open The Barn Door

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

In September we made a short trip to LA to see Ronin’s new cousin Damon. I don’t think were any help, but we had a lot of fun playing with Riley and cooing at Damon. We also drove out to Claremont for Maddox’s first birthday party. The country fair theme was great and we ended up with some good pictures that didn’t make on the blog because it was right before our trip to the south. All the kids got copies of Open The Barn Door as party favors. Ronin really liked her’s and yesterday I finally managed to catch her reading it to Nigel.

[flash /images/2009/0912/open_the_barn_door.flv w=400 h=300 f={autostart=false}]

It’s hard to catch these moments because she usually stops by the time I get the camera out.



The bunny was a star attraction.

Ronin finally had a chance to wear her western duds.


Thanksgiving

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

[Mom took this photo of Mt. Hood from Kelley Pt. the Sunday after Thanksgiving.]

[Kelley Pt. in that beautiful glowing light right before the sun set at like noon or some shit.]

My mom finally made it to Portland to soak up some of that rain we get here. Thanksgiving day really dished it out with a steady drizzle from sunup to sundown and then all through the night. Otherwise though it has been clear and even sunny. Kind of amazing since I can’t even remember the last time we had sun. Oh wait I do actually—it was the day I had my face irradiated for skin cancer and I wasn’t allowed outside for 48 hours. It was nice that day.

Ronin is much better for Oma Peggy than she is for us. Typically she shrieks and squirms like mad when I try to put a barrette in her hair. I came trudging out early one morning and Ronin’s hair was pulled back out of her eyes in A BRAID. Braided. With a rubber band. Mom looked innocent and said she sat just fine for her and had so far not even tried to pull it out. I was utterly shocked.

[Punk Rock Girl is a current favorite amongst the stuffed crew. Ronin has been taking her everywhere we go lately and frequently requests to hear her theme song.]

Mom gets up early and so does Ronin so we had a full week of sleeping in; it was awesome. As soon as Ronin popped up out of bed with her little baby agenda (read ‘Sheep and a Jeep’ six or seven times, then maybe a meatball for breakfast) we shooed her out of the room with the promise of grandma attention: Maybe Oma Peggy can nuke you a meatball in the kitchen! She would stomp off in hot pursuit and we wouldn’t hear from her until mid-morning when she pooped her pants. Heaven.

[Pre-turkey caviar and champagne.]

For three days straight we ate nothing but turkey, stuffing, etc. washed down with boutique gin from Ashland. On the fourth day we emerged blinking into the sunlight and drove out to a Sauvie Island for some holiday accouterments.

Ronin had a field day running amongst the trees and we had the satisfaction of picking ours out of thousands. We got a noble fir because I liked the needles and color and the doug firs were all way too shorn (think furry pyramid). We (Joshua) carried our tree up to the front and they put it in a special tree vibrating machine, secured it in a festive net, and we were on our merry way.

[This isn’t our tree; we went to a public ‘tree lighting’ thing and Ronin transformed instantly into a Toddler Obsessed. We’re just lucky we didn’t have to crawl down underneath the tree to retrieve her.]

We chose a smaller tree for our own living room because we have never done this before and own only one ornament (thanks Michelle!) so far. I made some more and plan on making still more. Currently we have it decorated with twinkly lights, Ronin’s finger puppets, and various lightweight toys. Ronin thinks the tree is about the best thing she’s ever seen in her life and spends a great deal of time poking at it, touching the lights (licking them too when we’re not looking), destroying my paper ball, and removing/replacing the nesting bird ornaments I made.

Oma Peggy returned home yesterday and Ronin asks where she is and what she is doing about a hundred million times per day. Hopefully we’ll see you again soon mom!


Cheyenne Weil, Joshua Coxwell