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Mar
3
My least favorite things about one-year-old babies, or more specifically, in case you think I’m slagging on YOUR one-year-old baby, who I’m sure is faultless in every way, MY one-year-old baby:
• They walk, yet they are babies. This is a horrifying combination and should be forbidden by nature. I feel it is a massive Darwinian fail to design babies to be able to heave themselves up on wobbly legs and stagger around like PEOPLE, when they are clearly INFANTS, as evidenced by their total lack of knees/knuckles and their propensity for ferreting out every single choking hazard in the entire house and cramming it in their cry-holes.
• Speaking of, they put everything in their mouths. Here is a partial list of what I have fished out of Dylan’s mouth in the last 24 hours: a Curious George sticker, a Band-Aid, a small rock, fifty thousand pieces of paper, a pen cap, his brother’s shoe, a chunk of what I fervently hope was dried mud, and one mysteriously non-Duplo-sized LEGO that must have manifested itself out of another dimension because I swear to GOD I already got rid of the too-small bricks what the FUCK. This is the same baby, mind you, who gags on RICE CRACKERS and mostly turns his nose up over chunky foods, probably because I didn’t WIPE THEM ON THE FLOOR FIRST.
• Oh, and the gag reflex? COME ON. I am so reluctantly experienced at dealing with a Surprise Cough-Barf I have an entire honed, efficient Tactical Action Plan involving paper towels and Mrs. Meyer’s Lavender Spray and baking soda and simultaneous bath-preparation and laundry-starting activities and frankly, this is not one of those life skills I want to be good at. Dear child: yes, post-nasal drip is gross, but re-enacting the pea soup scene from the Exorcist is infinitely more disgusting for all involved parties.
• It’s been a full year — over a year, at this point — and he’s still waking up more than once per night. I guess I’m mostly resigned, because I don’t seem to be willing to take any steps to make the situation better (lie there wide awake and vibrating with anxiety while he cries, or get up and deal with him then go back to sleep? I go with Door Number 2, every single time) , but I never imagined he wouldn’t be sleeping through the night after twelve long months. And no, I do NOT want to hear about your child who is ten now and still wakes up every half hour, are you trying to KILL me?
• They are emotionally unstable. Whine, whine, whine. I can’t reach that ball, someone took the pen cap out of my mouth, I don’t like these shoes, this diaper change is filling me with rage, I’m riddled with invisible demons and I don’t know what the hell my problem is so I guess I’ll just scream for about a goddamned hour straight. God, it’s like their brains are still forming, or something. Like they have limited communication skills and get easily frustrated and are constantly bonking their heads on things. SO IMMATURE OMG.
And, okay, fine, some of my favorite things:
• They dance. There is nothing, NOTHING like seeing a 12-month-old bopping along with Eninem’s “Crack a Bottle”. Uh-oh uh-oh, bitches hoppin’ in my Tahoe.
• They love to laugh. Like when you get down on your hands and knees and pretend to be a bear and crawl after your baby going RRWAAR!, and their eyebrows shoot up and they go shriiiiiiiiiiek with pure insane joy before they laugh so hard they fall over and hit their head on the entertainment center? That’s pretty rad.
• They talk all the time, about GOD KNOWS WHAT. “Ba blah da doe blmphz da DER DER pah gee DOH,” they say, and you go, I know, right?
• They are in the perfect sweet spot between actively choosing to be cuddled (vs the passive human-represents-food pleasure of the newborn) and figuring out that almost any other activity is more fun than snuggling with Mom. They run full-tilt into your arms. They press their cheek against yours. They sit back to drink you in, then lean forward to sigh happily against your chest.
• Their butts are ridiculous. I defy you to gaze upon a 12-month-old’s naked bottom and not feel certain the world is in fact filled with unicorns and rainbows.
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74 Responses to “Bests and worsts, one year”
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Amen.
I loved this one! My two year old thinks its the funniest thing in the world when I pop my gum. I know right? The most disgusting sound in the world my two year loves. Thats why I keep him : )
Check, check and check. You got it.
I laughed so hard at the hate half and am almost crying after of the love half. My son is 15 months and my daughter is 3 and all I can say is, it just goes by too damned fast…I love my kids *wipe tear from eyes*
Yes! to all your bests. Nothing is funnier and more perfect than a naked toddler … unless maybe it’s a naked toddler running to hug you.
Oh dear. This is great. I am rolling…I about lost it (at work, shhhh) when I got to the dancing bit. I don’t know how you do it but you are so damn funny.
Also eerily accurate…mine had a random bit of small sharp plastic in his mouth in about .001 second yesterday and he wouldn’t open his mouth to let me extract it. And was angry when I took it away.
damn, but you had me almost jealous that you have a one year old little boy, and then i remembered, oh shit, i have three of them.
yeah, the whining can stop right about now. thanks. learn some dang words already!
Cute and cute. I love the little hineys. Hate the middle of the night wake-up calls.
My little one (11m) doesn’t cuddle. At all. Ever. I’m so envious! But she does sleep through the night. So I’ve got that going for me. Otherwise I’m right there with you on the joy/misery rollercoaster!
All of these are dead-on. On the whine one: My hubby has the habit of looking at the baby and saying, “Oh, stop being a baby!”
I hear ya, and I’m only an Aunt :)
Hilarious!
I just spent 20 minutes listening to my 13mo scream his freaking head off for no discernible reason. It’s always right about the time steam starts shooting from my ears and a strange whistle sound fills the room that he stops. Then it’s all kisses and chub running this way and that. Must be his survival instinct kicking in. And just so you know, he still wakes once (sometimes more) every night. At least you aren’t alone in your zombie walk. MUST EAT BRAINS, I MEAN FEED BABY.
Amen to everything on your list!
[...] 3, 2009 · No Comments Good thing Linda added some highlights to her Bests and worsts, one year post. That first part isreally frightening. [...]
All I have to say is- CIO.
Oh my GOD the one year old mood swings. I swear my daughter has PMS already. It’s like her mental checklist for the day includes
1. dump dog water bowl over head
2. howl uncontrollably over being wet
3. climb into dishwasher
4. wail when removed
5. try to grab a knife off of table
6. weep piteously at the injustice of having it taken away
etc.
Aw but fresh from the bathtub toddlers really do suggest unicorns. Especially if you style their hair in a mohawk.
ogling (oogling?) your writing :) perfect description of one year olds…i like the first point best. it is reminicent of zombies: “they walk, yet they are DEAD”. also horrifying!!
Hi-freaking-larious! This blog is going right on my favorites list…
Oh, how I miss my one year olds. Good thing I love two year olds so much… I know you don’t need any sleep advice, so I just wanted to tell you that my youngest was not a good sleeper either, and we got her eartubes and prayed that would be the magic to help her sleep. NOPE. But then, she DID start sleeping, months later, and I don’t even remember exactly when (though I’m sure I blogged plenty about it. Gah.)…
They do sleep. Eventually. Which I know you know, but I always liked to be reminded of that. That YES, sometime in the near(ISH) future, I would sleep all night.
I do love your blog too. If you couldn’t tell. =)
You didn’t mention teething….
As always, you’ve painted a picture that every parent is smiling and nodding along with. Thanks.
My kids are 7 & 10 now. I miss them being little. My 10yo forged a note to her teacher yesterday. When did she get so sneaky? I’m sure I didn’t do that til I was in high school…
God I love your blog! And your daily piffle! And that you are experiencing the exact same thing on the Eastside that I am over here on the west.
I have retrieved out of my daughter’s mouth in the last 24 hours: 2 Polly pocket shoes, a catnip toy, her sister’s shoe (blossoming fetish perhaps), a dryer sheet, a Cars bandaid, and the totlock “key”.
But oh yes, I could gaze at that squishy butt all day long…
My two are 10 and 7 and I still can’t resist the urge to pinch their little bottoms at bathtime. I can’t get my oldest to talk to me and I can’t get my youngest to stop, so there you go.
I’ve only made it 4 months where blowing raspberries on her belly to get the biggest chuckles ever is the highlight of my day. Now if she could only be somewhat pleasant between the hours of 3pm and 8pm, I’d be a much happier camper.
Your list bests & worsts is dead on. I love it. And my gosh, he’s a year old ALREADY?
Duh….forgot the word ‘of’. Your list OF bests and worsts is dead on.
Sorry for the double comment, I hate it when I make stupid mistakes!
Love this. Makes me wish my son was still one. Almost. We liked to refer to his butt as a big pile of peanut butter, which now that I write it out sounds really disgusting, but you would have thought it was cute if you’d been there.
My 13mo doesn’t walk yet – PRAISE BE TO WHOEVER LISTENS TO MY DESPERATE PLEAS.
We curbed that whole putting everything in his mouth thing a month or two ago. Except now, everything goes into mama and dada’s mouths. Like, he’ll crawl on up to us with a football (for pete’s sake) and try and cram it into our pieholes. Oh yeah, and when he doesn’t like something – potato, I am looking at you – he’ll very “generously” hold it out to us instead. And if we don’t take it, drops it on the floor.
But boy, am I glad he’s not walking yet.
BabyButt BabyButt BabyButt!!
That’s the song we sing to our one year old son at bathtime, while pinching that adorable little squishy backside. :)
Love your blog, Linda.
please make a video of D dancing to Eminem!
PLEASE?!?!?
my just recently turned 13 month old HATES cuddling with me, nor lifts her arms when she wants to be picked up. it leaves me to believe she hates me. she only says “mama” when in distress too.
I can’t wait until this bitchy phase ends, but somehow I doubt it ever will. . . 13 mos going on 13 years.
Love it. And yes – those little buts are the best.
I know what you mean about the walking! Pufferfish learned how to walk at ten months old, and it was more of a disaster than a good thing! It was just a new and improved way for her to get into everything! But one is such a FUN age, too, isn’t it? And it just gets better and better! (until about age five… then, apparently, they begin to drive me insane!)
Have you considered actually dropping the chunky foods on the floor for Dylan to find? Oh, wait a minute….I suppose that would give him the impression that everything that he finds on the floor is for eating. Bad idea….never mind.
This list isn’t about YOUR one year old. It’s about MY one year olds. SO TRUE. The baby butts KILL ME.
Aaaawww . . . I sympathize though, my first was up every 2 hours at night STILL at the age of one year . . . aaaagh . . . I still haven’t recovered (and that was 10 years ago)
My 11-month-old will barely ever sit still for cuddling, but when I pick her up and she wraps her arms tight around my neck I think I might die from joy.
We’ve been going through baby photos the past few days and the butt shots SLAY me. The chub! The dimples!
Hey, we found a chip of ceramic in Polly’s poop. Oops.
Double Amen.
I believe that last one requires a visual aid for those of us who are baby deprived.
Love the baby butts! So cute!
My son is 6 and he gets mad at me because I love to pinch his little butt.
Whew. As usual another good post. My 2 faves:
“this diaper change is filling me with rage…”
So true. What is so damn upsetting about having someone put a fresh, dry diaper on you? Isn’t it uncomfortable to sit in a pile of poop?
“I defy you to gaze upon a 12-month-old’s naked bottom and not feel certain the world is in fact filled with unicorns and rainbows.”
I think the world is filled with unicorns & rainbows if we just take a minute to look for them. Sometimes that is hard to do when you are having a tough day with your kids.
I KNOW! Especially 1 yr olds who are walking, yet have older siblings. It’s like, once they become upright, then they are FAIR GAME to other children.
In my experience, the butt thing does not abate with time. Now that my son is three and in underwear instead of a diaper, I’m pinching and patting the poor kid’s butt all the livelong day. And I still chase my 8 and 10 year old girls up the stairs, pinching their little cheeks. I tell them I’ll most likely be doing it into their teens and adult years, so just learn to live with it.
one time i neglected to pick up a huge dead moth from the floor….so the 12 month old decided to chomp it all up…..i felt kinda bad but it was kinda funny at the same time
I. AM. DYING! That was so stinking hilarious and dead on.
LOVE YOUR BLOG!
Oh, you have this right on. There is nothing like a one year old.
The best thing is just as you said – realizing that they can get their round diapered butts over to you and latch on for a big hug. Madeline’s are always complete with the sound effect of “Awwww.”
Best post ever. I am still laughing so hard I can’t speak. My 20 month old STILL WAKES UP every night at 3am yowling for Moulka Mulk!!!! And yes, I am too lazy to end this behavior so I get it. I like my sleep. You have such a talent for capturing the humor in parenthood!
OMG. The last one about the butts is so dead on. My daughter will most likely be traumatized for life because I can’t help but pinch her naked butt!
These are so perfect! Isn’t it funny how adults all say the same things in response to baby talk?
lol so true!
What I’m about to say may make me sound evil, or maybe it will just make me sound like the clueless child-free woman that I am, but . . . have you ever thought about (1) turning off the baby monitor and (2) using earplugs? So he can CIO without causing you to lose your mind?
I know this proposition sounds irredeemably selfish, but think of it this way: your kids need you to be at your best. Your well-rested, non-irritable, patient, kind, loving best. When you make sure you get the fundamental necessitities of life (rest, exercise, adult companionship, some private time), you’re a better mom. So the earplugs & turned-off baby monitor are really for them, too.
And my suggestion is that you do this for only a week. I suppose there’s a risk that Dylan could find a way to injure himself/develop a fever on one of those seven unsupervised nights, but if you try to do a risk/benefit analysis, the upside might be worth the very tiny, remote potential of a downside.
Victoria: good idea, but it doesn’t work. Earplugs help a little (I wear them every night after I do the 3 AM wakeup call, because they help me get back to sleep faster), but our house is small and has wood floors (sound carries LOUDLY throughout the whole place). Even if I went to the living room and slept on the sofa, which is the furthest I can get away, I’d still hear every decibel.
It’s not the best situation, but I think I’m dealing okay. I must get enough sleep, because I manage to do everything in my day that I want to: chase kids, work, exercise, watch crap TV, etc. : )
I love their ridiculous butts too!
I’m with Linda. Moms have this way of hearing everything even when they don’t want/need to. I keep my monitor off and I still wake up to him whining. My husband is amazed.
No, YOU are the best for capturing all of this so expertly. Loving it!!
On another topic? From your Twitter account? Who said it was unmotherly to care about your body? It sounds like a piece of dialog from Big Love.
I love this list! It’s really funny, but also very sweet =)
OMG yes yes!!! From the whining to the cough/gag/barf thing–you have it PEGGED woman!!! And what do they really have to say?? Apparently more than we will ever know! I have twin 2.5 year old daughters and oh the agony!! And yet, the joy! Those tushies, oh how I love those tushies. The full tilt run-hug thing–it is so wonderful.
Wanted also to mention that terrible monitor. My husband keeps the #(*&@#% thing on and I end up turning it off. Yes, I *can* hear them through two sets of closed doors and a hallway. No, I don’t need to hear every single snore. I used to be a good sleeper… now, any little snort wakes me up. Let’s not start in on the dog tag jingles either!
BTW, be sure not to hose off the baby with the Mrs. Meyer’s cleaning spray because ZOMG HE COULD SPROUT BOOBS.
This is the tidbit currently occupying the one neuron of my childfree brain reserved for information about babies. You’re welcome.
I stopped by my sister’s house to visit when my niece was about six months old, and Tayla was fishing CAT POOP out of her mouth. They were in the laundry room where the litter box lives and Lara got a mouthful and then of course she saw me and lifted her arms and squealed (revealing decicedly brown teeth) and wanted to kiss and snuggle and I’m ashamed to admit this but I said, NO. For the love of god, NO.
Oh I so feel your pain about the puke. One of my son’s nicknames is BarfMaster 2000. If catching projectile vomit in my cupped hands was an Olympic sport, I would be a three time gold medal champion. WORD.
You, woman, make me laugh almost every day.
How can you make me laugh until I almost wet myself and still make me want another baby just so that I can experience the madness and sweetness all over again?! *sigh*
I am not sure why now, but I feel compelled to de-lurk after what must be one of the longest lurkings in blogging history. I have been reading your stuff consistently since, um, 2002, back when you were on Diaryland and had that template with the bright red lips. Yours was the first blog I ever read, back when I was waaay too young to be reading the blog of any married woman. Your writing has gotten better and better, and it’s been fun to follow as you’ve expanded your family. Thank you from a fan! Okay, I’ll just let you take that in, then…
Oh. My. God. Dylan and my son are the SAME PERSON. Clones maybe? You and I must have been impregnated by the same alien sadist. The night wakings. The cough barf. The diaper rage. Totally been there.
Bad news: mine is 18mo and STILL DOING THIS. We got the bad parent smackdown at the Peds office the other day and have been ordered to eliminate the night feed asap and get tough on the food variety (he eats what amounts to 6 things and about 30-40oz of milk!). She suggested quitting everything cold turkey in one weekend. I didn’t say but thought “over my dead body” and I think we’ll just try slowly reducing the amount in the night bottle over the period of two weeks and see where it gets us on that front. As for foods, well, my little dude is about to get very hungry. He may be stubborn, but I am stubborner, damn it.
And yes, baby butt wiggle dances are the best! The happies are what keep me going.
I had one of those non-sleeping-baby types, too. I remember when he was about 1 year old, and everyone else I knew with young children said their babies slept through the night at around 6 weeks and I thought I was going to be still getting up a couple of times a night with mine when he was in high school.
But then I read somewhere – where, I don’t remember – that there are a couple of “sweet spots” where babies are a lot more likely to start sleeping through the night. One of those ages was 15 months old. And you know what – mine started sleeping through the night at almost 15 months old exactly! You’re not too far away from that, so maybe Dylan will “sleeping like a baby” soon, too.
See, you have in the past bemoaned not having a second floor to which you can escape should there be a zombie infestation. And yet, you are lucky in that a 12 month old (or 13 month old, in my case) will DEFY YOU to stop them climbing the stairs, which will result in both your heart and your eyes exploding in fear and you’ll blindly grapple at them in an effort to rescue them from the impending doom, and they tempt fate by CRAWLING UPWARD FASTER like it’s a goddamned game! It’s the Tag Where You Fall Backwards and Sustain Brain Damage game! Like Dodgeball with wrenches.
And Graco, Safety 1st, Evenflo, Playtex, Random Baby Gear Maker? I ask you: is it possible to make a baby gate that will stop the child’s progress up said stairs that does not 1.) screw into the wall, leaving a gaping hole and requiring actual man-tools to install, and then the baby decides to eat the resulting drywall dust and 2.) will take into account that there are things called stair rails and bannisters that may in fact not be a perfectly flat surface against which to affix said gate? We found ONE model that has netting as the deterrant part, that attaches to rods at top and bottom which are much like shower curtain rods and can be adjusted in length accordingly, depending on the width of the door/stairwell it blocks, regardless of if those widths differ along different heights up the wall/bannister. And the thing was eleventy one million bucks, and it broke when our dog crashed through it.
The best thing? In the early morning, when she’s having a bottle and she’s drank enough to stop glugging long enough to sit up and scooch her tiny dimpled diaper covered butt close to me and voluntarily lay in my lap and gaze up at me, fluttering her fingers against my shirt like the world’s most content butterfly. Then she realizes her brother is sleeping peacefully next to us and she lets out a warcry and launches at him, only to snuggle with him, too. He wakes up every morning when his sister snuggles him awake. And then I die from sheer happiness.
I think I like you the most when you use Gob Bluth every chance you get. Love it.
Linda I am right there with you! Still getting up twice a night with my ten month old daughter. Hubby is in the Air Force and went through anti terrorist/prisoner of war training years ago. Guess what they played insanely loud over the loudspeakers while they were in their mock cells in order to get them to talk. Whining screaming babies, on an endless loop. They said it is the only thing they found next to headbanger music that will get people to talk after they haven’t had sleep in 24hrs. So don’t feel bad.
Two of my favorite shoes when my son was Dylan’s age:
Pedipeds
Robeez Treadz
OMG,
I don’t have kids but I read your blog every day because you make me laugh so hard I start to cry.
Never stop writing, I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.
Oh my gosh you are too funny!!! I just found your blog and Im definitely subscribing!!! I read half of this page to my husband, who laughed too!!! Our kids are 5 and 8, so we’ve been there, done that… And are trying not to throw them out the window almost everyday!!!
I absolutely love this post. Normally I’m just a quiet stalker :) but this post was so cute and funny I had to say something. My son is now 8 and I miss all the funny stuff he did when he was that little.
it’s like you’re in my head!!! ;)