They say that all babies want is to be held...all the time.  Well, the same could be said for toddlers as well.  All day, every day.  I spend a lot of time wearing, carrying, holding, and lifting my toddler.  After 22 months, it has given me quite a sore, achy back and shoulders (it's also given me a lot of experience in what not to do, which I'll share with you soon).

I've wanted to start a stretching routine for a while to help with the accumulated tension, but... Okay, so none of my "buts" are that good.  But (I know, I know) I do prefer to stretch alone so I can actually relax and not worry about getting jumped on or pushed over.  Last week I came up with the perfect solution: stretch after bedtime.  So, after getting Goen to sleep, I creep out of bed and, by the red glow of the heater's on/off switch, I stretch for a few minutes in the almost-darkness.  My routine is short, simple, and very basic.  Here's what I do:

 - Big circles with my arms, first one way and then the other
 - Arch and curve my back
 - Reach for the sky
 - Bend down, clasping my hands behind my back and stretching them towards my head

I do this a couple times through, breathing deeply the whole time, and then finish off with an all-body wiggle to shake it all out.  Even though I try to keep my stretching silent, every once in a while there is a popping sound as something loosens up.  Luckily, the sounds haven't woken Goen up (at least not yet).  The stretches are more satisfying than I thought they would be given how little time it takes.  I get to relieve a little stress and still be by my little guy in case he wakes.

Do you have a routine for dealing with tight muscles and tension?  Anything that works especially well for you?

My husband occasionally notices, and makes comments about, the fact that I don't often lay on the floor to play with my little one.  I run around with him and get down on my knees, but laying down on the floor often results in me walking away with bruises.  Being on the floor means I can be walked on and jumped on.  Things Goen loves to do, but I don't particularly care for.  Another thing I don't as often anymore is give him kisses.  I used to do it all the time.  But once he started getting real power behind his movements, a kiss could end with his head rammed into my teeth.  Ouch.  The last time David mentioned it I said, "It would be safer to kiss a wrecking ball."  A slight exaggeration, yes, but you get the idea. 

Of course, I have found safer ways to play on the floor with him that don't paint me black and blue.  Here are some tactics I use:

• Observe and Protect: If I'm on the floor, I constantly monitor his location so that I can put an arm up to protect my face or prevent him from jumping on my leg.

• Handy Dandy Pillow: Keeping a pillow close at hand can help to deflect strong movements.  The pillow will protect sensitive spots, as well as arms if the move is too much for "observe and protect."

Play Offense: Rather than waiting for him to make a move, I can take the initiative to control the game.  Lifting him parallel to the floor, rolling him on the rug, and playing chase on hands and knees are just a few ways to keep control or change the pace of his play.

Bath time is one of Goen's favorite events of the day.  As soon as David or I say "It's time for your bath," he perks up and heads straight for the gate by the stairs.  When the gate is opened, he bounds up the stairs as fast as he can.  His bath toys are always placed on the edge of the counter nearest the bathroom so he can reach them himself.  He gets so much joy from grabbing them one at a time and throwing them in the tub.  The process of removing his clothes never goes fast enough for him and he tries to get in the water before his diaper is off.

David is usually the one to sit with him during his bath so I can get everything ready for bed (or steal a few minutes to write a few more lines in a blog post).  He always moves the crocheted rug (which I made from a couple bed sheets and is very cushy) from in front of the vanity sink to kneel on by the tub.  I listen to them while I straighten the blankets on the bed.  Perhaps it is because my husband has done all this before with his first son, but he always makes the bath seem like a fun game.  When I do it, I can't help getting annoyed at my glasses getting splashed for the umpteenth time or getting my nightshirt wet just before bed.

Goen has always enjoyed baths.  When he was small enough to fit in the extra-wide sink in our cabin, I would hold him with my hands under his head and shoulders and let him float in the water.  When he outgrew that, I would do the same thing in the claw foot tub (one of the many things I miss about our little cabin in the woods).  And I'll never forget the time a couple months ago when he ran so fast through the hallway to the bathroom that he flipped right over the side of the tub.  It happened so fast that David, who was sitting on the edge of the tub, wasn't able to act fast enough to stop him from tumbling in.  Luckily there was only an inch of water in there so he didn't go under.  And the non-slip mat padded his fall so he didn't get any bruises.  He cried briefly, but then took his bath like usual.

The bath time routine has also made getting him to sleep much easier.  David dries him and then hands him off to me.  We try not to let his feet touch the ground once he is out of the bath, otherwise he tends to get a second wind and start running around again.  I snap his diaper on and then crawl into bed.  And that is one routine I can really get into.

As every parent surely knows, keeping food on the table is a difficult task.  Not only because of the expense (although that is an ever-increasing problem) and preparation time, but also because of children's tendency to drop it on the floor.  I have met parents who allow their toddler to drop food; I have watched parents feed their child themselves to avoid the mess; and I have seen parents who opt for "neater" food options such as crackers and cheese that are easier to clean up.  But all of these seemed to me to sacrifice long-term learning and socialization.  Putting together a couple ideas from books I read, I formed my own way of approaching and handling the food-on-the-floor problem.

Several months ago I read Your Self-Confident Baby by Magda Gerber, which, among other things, talks about respecting a baby's autonomy and personhood and including them in situations that concern them.  From this book, I took away a greater understanding of the ways adults try to intervene with and control their young child's life (with good intentions, of course), as well as a better idea of what children are capable of when given the chance to grow and learn. 

A second book that has formed my method of keeping food on the table is Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication.  Rosenberg's approach requires that conversants speak in terms of their own needs and desires rather than someone else's.  For example, if a dad wants his son to speak quietly in the house, he would say "I need you to stop yelling in the house" rather than "You need to stop yelling in the house."  The idea is that we can only know our own needs and should not assume that others have the same ones. 

Putting these ideas together helped me find a way of communicating my wants that would be respectful yet authoritative.  This is what I came up with.  At mealtime, when Goen tries to throw food on the floor, I hold out my hand palm up and say, "I don't want you to throw food on the floor.  Food stays on the table.  If you don't want it you can give it to me."  When I first started doing this, I would gently take the food out of his hand before he could drop it (if he had already dropped it, I would pick it up and put it back on the table out of reach).  After many weeks of this, when he began to realize that I didn't want him to drop food on the floor, he would pause before dropping it.  At that point, I would hold my hand under his and let him decide whether to put it in my hand or put it back on the table or move his hand to the other side and drop it there (something he rarely does).  Within a few months of starting this routine, food dropping became more of the exception than the rule and now he will push food away from himself and towards me if he does not want to eat it.

Making known my desire for keeping food on the table does not always result in it being met; we still end up with food on the floor at many meals.  But I can tell that Goen is beginning to internalize the idea that food belongs on the table.  I think that if I just let him drop it without intervening so that he could "get the experience of dropping food on the floor" (as one mom I talked to put it), I would be left with the problem of deciding arbitrarily when he had enough of the experience and of implementing the rule after the habit was set.  If I fed him myself, I would never get to eat my own food at the same time as my family.  And if I always fed him less messy foods, he wouldn't develop a palate for the many other delicious foods out there (like curry and avocado and squash).  Instead, I decided that it would be better to set the rule from the beginning.  Although there are no consequences (other than reducing the amount of food available to throw on the floor) or traditional enforcement measures for when he does not follow what I want, I continue to let him know what is acceptable and what I expect from him.  My hope is that he will begin to adopt social conventions that will make it easier (or as least less embarrassing) to eat out at restaurants or at the houses of friends and family.  And, so far, it seems to be working.

What about you?  How do you keep food on the table?  Leave a comment to share techniques that have worked for your family.

Goen loves to collect leaves.  When we go for walks, he will stop to pick up a fallen leaf.  At the park, he will run to the bushes and pull leaves from the branches.  On visits to Muir Woods he will find a leaf and hand it to a stranger.  On our back deck he will gather, dump, and gather again.  I love to watch him as he interacts with nature and enjoys the world around him.  He becomes engrossed in the activity of finding and collecting and my part becomes merely to watch (and, of course, clean up the leaves when he dumps them out in the kitchen).  Yet this seemingly easy part of parenting is, for me at least, sometimes the hardest.  When all that is expected (or demanded) of me is to sit in a chair or on a bench and hold all the leaves my little one can collect, I have a tendency to go a little crazy from boredom.  I have to remind myself that this time does not last forever, that there will come a point when I would give anything to just sit and collect leaves with him.  So, I push all worries out of my head (as much as is possible) and clear my thoughts of crafting, sewing, stitching, and reading.  Because, while he is collecting leaves, I am collecting memories.   Many years from now I want to be able to look back and re-collect these moments.  These moments that are as fleeting as autumn leaves.