One Thousand Words

I’m on google+ and you can find my profile here if you want to follow me on + or reader or whatever.

One of the current issues with google+ is that google is only allowing profiles with names that are “real” or that sound real. So you can’t, for instance, be assmaster46 or Papa Smurf or William Shatner (they banned Cpt. Kirk for being fake; he took to his authenticated Twitter account to complain). One of the guidelines is that you can use a name you’re commonly called, and they cite examples like a Charles being called Chuck, a William called Bill, a Robert called Rob or Bob.

When we were anguishing over what to name our child, my mother-in-law threw up her hands and said it didn’t matter WHAT we called him, everyone was going to call him something else. So we have Nikola, who is called Niko, Nano, Nilo, Nikac, Bud, Buddy, Nicky, and Boo. And Nano-saggy-britches, but that’s only under certain specific conditions (when his britches are saggy). At this time, almost everyone calls him Nano or Nikac, and he’s been actively rejecting the name Buddy in favor of Shiny (Shiny, Tiny, Don, and Buddy are characters on “Dinosaur Train, you see).

So if he grows up to be called Shiny, say, or Nilo, how would he prove to a place like Google+ that everyone knows him by that name? Because one of their corroborative methods involves sending them a scan of your state-issued ID, something that doesn’t normally include nicknames.

Anyway, my mother-in-law was totally right about him being called something other than his name. And now that we all have, for the most part, settled on a common name for him he’s calling himself by designations he makes up, which include:

Bug Baby
Spider Baby
Water Baby!
Fruit Baby
Pretty Kitty
Roy
Rusty¹
Shiny
Ninuta

Technorati Tags: nicknames, parenting, toddler

Mirrored from Now Showing!.

So, Nikola apparently has an imaginary friend.

His imaginary friend is sometimes named Boy or Roy, and is a Pretty Kitty. He is a RED Pretty Kitty.

He likes the following:

Watching Meerkats
Eating Fruit Snacks
Eating Fruit Snacks With Meerkats
Going In Tunnels
Eating Bananas
Eating Bananas With Too Many Monkeys
Riding Trains
Playing With Trains
Playing With Blocks
Butterflies
Taking a Bath

He also likes playing “Rusty and the Boulder” which, coincidentally (and like everything else on the list) is something that Nikola also likes. “Rusty and the Boulder” is a game based on the Thomas and Friends episode “Rusty and the Boulder,” and consists of Niko making a very long train on his wooden train track (or lining up a bunch of stuff on the floor to make a train) and then saying OH NO! BOULDER! while he rolls a ball toward the train and knocks everything around.

He will do this for hours.

In other news, we thought we had a mattress for Nikola’s “big boy bed” so instead of getting a toddler bed, we bought an actual bed (from IKEA), only to find out that 1) the mattress was extra long (even though more than one person measured it and thought it was normal length!) and 2) someone else (a family member) had “dibs” on it. So now we have a bed and sheets even, but no mattress. We bought one, and it’ll be delivered tomorrow. Niko loves his bed so far, though, especially because he can drop things between the wooden slats that will eventually support the mattress, then open up the storage drawers to retrieve the things dropped through. Fun times!

His sheets are Thomas sheets. He even has a Thomas comforter. Spoiled? What?

In actuality, this is STRATEGY. We’re hoping that the allure of A! New! Bed! (with fun drawers!) and Thomas! Sheets! (we let him pick between those or “red car” (lightning mcqueen) sheets) will make sleeping in his own bed something to look forward to, and maybe I won’t get kicked in the head quite as much all night going forward. Maybe Pretty Kitty can help us out.

Technorati Tags: child care, imaginary friends, parenting, sleep, toddler

Mirrored from Now Showing!.

I’ve been with the same temp agency since 2001, and although I’ve told them that recently the work I’m looking for is part time (8 hours a day for only a few days a week OR partial days for a full week) they’ve only been offering me full time work. Until recently, it was full time work with really, really weird hours. Then my current gig landed in my lap. It’s a 2 month deal at a place I’ve worked before (although a different department) that is relatively easy to get to. I think I’ve mentioned a few times that Nesko is looking to get into a specific work program that would train him in woodworking and has something like a 98% job placement rate after graduation. He qualifies for free tuition, but it’s a 3 month program that’s full time, so he wouldn’t be able to work during it. We banked most of our tax return but were still a few $k short to cover that stretch of him not working. Ideally, me working for 2 months will be enough to fill that gap with a little cushion, so we can spend 3-4 months with no money coming in.

That is… a kind of terrifying thought.

Anyway, Nesko and I are both working full time. We also have a toddler. What does one do with a toddler when one works full time? Some sort of daycare arrangement must be worked out! I leave the house at 7am and don’t get back until after 6pm. Nesko works odd hours, sometimes not getting home until 11pm (we’ve looked into day care near his work, in the past). My in-laws live five minutes away and adore Niko and they are his favorite people in the entire world, but my father in law is straight up disabled (on SSDI after falling off a roof a million stories up and breaking his… well. body.) and my mother in law survived breast cancer twice and doesn’t have the greatest amount of stamina in the world. Can they mind an active toddler for 11 hours a day 5 days a week? No, and it’s super unfair to expect them to.

Although the first week I was working, they did. How lucky are we? Incredibly lucky.

Niko got to spend the entire day every day with his most beloved people, the ones he begs to see every day. I mean, sometimes, he will just bring me his shoes and a hat and tell me that it’s time to go see baba. They indulge him. His baba buys him an entire rotisserie chicken, fresh, so he only has to eat the juicy white meat and not the dark meat. They bought him a little wading pool and let him splash around in it. He is allowed to get into everything and eat whatever he wants. It is like toddler heaven.

But that week? Niko ignored me. He shunned me. Shunned! He wouldn’t look at me, or talk to me, or touch me, or hug me. It was a very complete shunning. He wouldn’t even take food from me. Not even his beloved fruit snacks!

We made up over the weekend and are friends again, and when I came home from work on Tuesday he excitedly announced “mama home!” when I opened the door, but was too busy playing to run over and hug me. He will drop whatever he’s doing when Nesko comes home and SPRINTS over to him to give him hugs. I don’t merit that. But after I’d been home a few minutes he came over and hung all over me and gave me a kiss and demanded a piggy back ride, which I was happy to give him.

We’ll see how he does the rest of the week.

Our current childcare situation is pretty sweet. From here out, baba and djedo are going to take care of Niko at their house Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and a friend of mine (hello, friend!) will mind him Tuesday and Thursday at our house. She’s a CPS teacher who has a free pass to everyplace fun in Chicago so she’s going to take him out and about have adventures with him. He adores her hard core and considers her like a total BFF and even takes naps for her, so this is basically a match made in heaven.

We’re very lucky.

I don’t miss him as much as I thought I would, but I do miss him. I’m really hoping to find permanent part time work after this assignment. Wish me luck!

Mirrored from Now Showing!.