Toddlers Are More Than Their Tantrums – Ep. 98

Laura

Welcome to Big Fat Positive with Shanna and Laura. This week we have our weekly check-ins, we have our special segment, Internet Insanity, where we have some close encounters with home invaders and womb invaders, and we close with our BFPs and BFNs. Let's get to it!

Shanna

Yeah, she's 16 months and one week. And somehow, somewhere, she has learned to knock on doors. That's so cute. And it's the cutest thing I've ever seen. I don't think Elle did this until she was much older and still doesn't even like to knock on doors. She's a barger. She barges right in. But Cece is like this tiny little toddler fist and she just goes knocks on the bathroom doors and stuff. And it's just like, where did you learn that? Because I didn't teach it to her. I don't think anyone taught it to her. I think it's just something she absorbed from observing us.

Laura

We have the exact same situation. My guy figured out knocking and we don't know how or why. It started at dinner times. He would sit at the table in his high chair, and at the end, for whatever reason, he'd lean over and he'd go, knock, knock, knock, and he'd knock his hand. And I was like, where did you learn that from? And now he's moved on to doing it on all kinds of services. And he goes, none, none, none. But he does it. And I'm just like, all right, you pick that up somewhere. I don't know where.

Shanna

Yeah. I don't know where she got it. And I mean, she specifically knocks on doors. I haven't seen her knock on other surfaces. Like if I'm out in the backyard and she's looking out the sliding glass door, you know, she'll knock on it and like try to get my attention or like if Steve's in the bathroom walking by, she'll knock on it. So. The babies and toddlers just never cease to amaze me with their skills. What they absorb. I know, I know. It's so cool. So another thing I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that CeCe has been banging her head like Mad Woman, right? Oh yeah. She's always expressing her frustration by slamming her head, or even when she is playing and dancing, like her big move is slamming her head. And come to find out that is all because she was teething those huge ass molars. Oh. Because I finally googled, like, toddler banging head.

Laura

That's really interesting. I had never thought of that, but yeah. So are her molars in now? Which ones does she have?

Shanna

I don't know.

Laura

I just meant like right or left, top or bottom.

Shanna

Oh, all four of them. All four of them came in at once. Are you serious?

Laura

No wonder she was head banging. Oh my God.

Shanna

Yeah, no wonder she was trying to relieve pressure from her freaking aching head.

Laura

Oh, that must have been really uncomfortable.

Shanna

Yeah. So yes, they're all broken through. Two of them are like fully in. Two of them are like half in.

Laura

I wasn't looking for the Latin names. I was just looking for like geographical locations.

Shanna

Let me see. I'm with you now. Same wavelength. Okay.

Laura

Oh man, four at once. So rough.

Shanna

Yeah, poor thing. And that led me to think about how also I've been talking about how she gets night terrors and cries uncontrollably. It's very cranky and stuff. And all of that, including the headbanging, is cleared up this week. This is a total sunshine week. And she's really happy and lovable and snuggly. And it just makes me remember that she's not defined by her behaviors in the worst times. She's had roseola, so she had fever she had. She was TVing, she was going through so much. So in hindsight, I can always see that there's a reason for all of that like disturbed behavior. And the moment it's just like, oh my God, just like relax. But in hindsight, it's like, yeah, when her body is calm and everything's fine, she is so happy and so playful. And just like she has been giving me like tons of kisses and hugs. And it's cause she feels better and like this is who she is.

Laura

I mean, maybe we don't bang our heads against things, but I mean, we want to. Oh, yeah, definitely. So is she in a leap or anything? Or are she in the middle of like, what are they, a sunny period? Are there any more leaps left? I'm asking all the questions. Yes. I haven't looked ahead.

Shanna

There is one more leap that the Wonder Weeks tracks. It's the 10th leap, and she's about to enter it. She's not in it yet. So we are in a brief sunny phase between the teething, the roseola, and then the next leap. So I'm expecting the sunny phase to last a couple days, and then we'll probably get tough again. But yeah, there is one last leap. Wow. OK. So there's 10 all together.

Laura

I should probably look at my app. I have the app. But as you know, I have a sort of love-hate relationship with it. Like, there are times where I think it's totally accurate and other times where I'm like, this doesn't know my baby.

Shanna

Yeah. I see where you're coming from. I just look at it more as like that's super interesting information about child and baby development and whether or not it tracks on the day that matches her life is like irrelevant to me really. So. Yeah, there's one more leap. It's leap 10, and it's called systems. So I guess they're going to conquer and understand systems now. They've done principles and programs.

Laura

They've done principles and programs, systems. They're going to be a full stack developer by the end of this.

Shanna

I think that's what it's really all about. Going to be building us websites and everything else. But yeah, that's it for us. It's just been a nice, happy week. I've got my snugly adorable dream baby back and I just, yeah, it's wonderful.

Laura

What about you guys? So we're good. My guy is 15 months and one week this week. And this week, I think the real sort of breakthrough is that he's really understanding us in a way that I hadn't noticed before. You know, I feel like we focus on what words they have and stuff and you don't really realize how much they're absorbing until they can sort of repeat things back to you or like indicate that they understand things. So here's an example that blew my mind. So you had talked about how your toddler, when you ask Alexa what the temperature was, she would at the end always go brrr because she was getting used to you guys saying brrr at the end of it, right? So there was like a dreary day this week, like one or two days where it was like cloudy and dreary and rainy. And we were just, you know, talking as a family in the living room. And Corey said to me, I'm not a fan of this weather.

Shanna

So smart. Brrr.

Laura

Yeah.

Shanna

Aw, he wanted to be part of the conversation.

Laura

He really did. And then, of course, it heated up. And now every time I ask Alexa for the weather, it's hot. But he still goes, brrr.

Shanna

I think Cece's really confused why we don't say brrr anymore after that. She's just like looking around, like, what's going on? Well, that's, you know, Cece's doing very similar things. Like the other day, she was in my bedroom and picked up one of my socks. And I said, oh, do you want to put that in the drawer for me? Thinking, she's not going to get this, right? Just like throwing that out there. She stood there and looked at me for a minute, totally processed it, walked over to the dresser, first opened up one of Steve's drawers, looked in it and closed it, and then walked to my side of the dresser, opened the drawer, and put the sock inside and closed the drawer. I was like, what?

Laura

So not only did she understand, but she put it in your drawer. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. We're also getting stuff where it's like, I'll say, okay, do you want to go outside? And he says, yeah, you know, like nods. And I said, okay, what do we do before? Like, I was actually going to say, I was like, what do we do before we go outside? And I was going to say, like, we put on sunscreen. But I said, what do we do before we go outside? And he crouched down and touched his feet and said, shh. I was like, that's right. We put on shoes before we got signed. I was like, whoa, how are you turning into a human? Like an adult human who knows things. It's so weird.

Shanna

It's so weird. That I think is from the leap of programs, right? Because CCs does the same thing. The second anyone mentions outside, it's like, And she runs to the shoe closet. She knows that even if she has shoes on shoes, it's like they put these like systems together, not systems, I guess, programs together. Oh, when you go outside, you do this with your feet and blah, blah, blah. And it's just so cute to see how the little brains put it together.

Laura

Yeah. So the other thing we've got going on this week was I think he is starting to maybe understand colors a little bit. We have this marker set that he likes to play with for three minutes and then tries to bite the tips off of all the markers. So we get very little playtime with it, but you know I point out the colors like you do and he says blue and purple. Somewhat consistently like to blue and purple and not a hundred percent, but I think he's starting to understand the concept of it, you know, like not necessarily getting it right all the time. So that was very exciting to me. So I'm trying to doubling down on labeling things now. So I, you know, saying like this is a red shoe. This is a yellow whatever yellow bus. So he knows. You know, so he just gets exposed to it more because I think I wasn't really focused on that from a learning point of view. Yeah.

Shanna

Cool.

Laura

So in addition to all the fun, like development stuff, we had a first this week, which was it was the first time He ever refused boob before bedtime. What? 15 months.

Shanna

Oh no.

Laura

And I was like, does it taste weird? And so I like switched him to the other boob, and he did the exact same thing. And I was just like, all right, if you don't want boob, that's fine. Like he had nursed 90 minutes before that just to be clear. Like it's not like he hadn't nursed recently, but he always wants it right before. Like it's his comfort thing. And then I was all worried like that he was going to wake up in the middle of the night. but did not happen. He slept through the night. And now we've all been back to normal. Like now it's back to how it's always been. But the next morning he woke up and he was right back to nursing, like wanting to nurse every two hours, like a freaking newborn. I don't always give in to that, but I think it's just because it's available and he's just like, boo-boo. He kind of like will walk over, he'll be like, pull out my shirt and be like, boo-boo.

Shanna

That's so strange. And the fact that he just like jumped back on the next day. So yeah.

Laura

I'm wondering if any of our listeners have experienced the same thing. Yeah, I would love to know. Yeah. So I was for like 12 hours thought, oh, maybe he's going to try to wean. Uh-huh.

Shanna

Did you feel rejected?

Laura

A little bit.

Shanna

Yeah.

Laura

Then I was worried my boobs were going to be all like sore in the morning. They were fine. But, you know, I was just like, but also like, you don't want anyone to like make a face like that. Like a disgusted face. You just say nothing to you. Take it easy, kid. Anyway, that's it for us this week.

Shanna

All right, sounds good. Should we take a break and come back with our special segment? Yeah, I think we should.

Laura

Laura, you got one for us? I do. I do. Okay. Okay. So this is a Facebook group that you can join that I have joined that was recommended by another mom group that I'm in on Facebook. And it was recommended partially for being like a helpful resource and partially for being like an absolutely bonkers thing to follow. Oh, cool. And it's called, ready, Poison's Help, Semi-Colon, Emergency Identification for Mushrooms and Plants.

Shanna

Is this like specifically for parents of small children or just like in general anyone who's worried about poisonous plants?

Laura

Anyone. Okay. So it's very, very strict. So in their banner image, if they say emergency plant and fungus identification, and this is please include geographic location, no non admin comments until the case is closed. and no casual IDs, emergency only. So you have to know or strongly suspect that you're like dog or cat or toddler or whoever has ingested something that you don't know what it is. And then you have to post a picture of it and you have to put like where you are, all this stuff, right? And only admins can comment. It's like- How many admins are there? Good question. There are, well, let's see, it's 127 admins and moderators.

Shanna

That was inside the can of green beans?

Laura

Yes. So there's 41 comments. The first comment is from an admin who says, oh crap. So that's not good.

Laura

Another admin says, looks like a thorn apple from a daetura species, pretty toxic. Another person confirms, everyone saying, all the admins are saying that's definitely a daetura. And they're, like, arguing over, like, you know, one of the admins says, realistically, some of the alkaloids will have dissolved into the canning liquid, blah, blah, blah, like, talking about whether they actually ingested enough alkaloids to make it safe. But the guy, the original poster, says that his six-year-old ate some. And so, like, they're all telling him, like, to get medical attention. And it's really interesting. So they ended up getting medical attention and they all ended up being fine. But then someone posted that there had been a recall on green beans for this exact reason, like a poise's plant had gotten included in it. That's insane. But like just a

Shanna

Yeah, that's a great resource. Does the child or dog or lizard have to eat the item before you're allowed to post in this group? Or could I take a picture of the berries on a plant in the backyard and ask them, are these poisonous? Should I remove this plant or keep my kid away?

Laura

Absolutely not, Shanna, that is completely not allowed in this group. I can't believe you would even ask that. Oh my God, banned, banned, banned for life. That's basically the reaction. This group's stressing me out. It will stress you out. I mean, no, I mean, you just have to know. Just don't ever comment. Just don't comment, unless someone's eaten something. They say at the very beginning, it's pinned, it says, this group is for emergency suspected poisonings, not for casual identifications. There are hundreds of groups for that, Shanna.

Shanna

Oh, wow.

Laura

And then they suggest a few other groups if you want to do that. OK. Yeah.

Shanna

I mean, I could just say that my toddler ate the berries. You could. But then I would go to hell for lying.

Laura

Yeah, that's how it works.

Shanna

It's a lose-lose situation.

Laura

Lying on the internet definitely never happens.

Shanna

Never happens. Never happens. Nope, I won't be the first person to do it.

Laura

But anyway, poisons help semicolon emergency identification for mushrooms and plants. It's a public group, so you can go check it out. That's cool. I'm going to check it out for sure. Definitely fun for lurking. Okay, Shanna, do you have an internet insanity for us?

Shanna

I do. So this is a story about something that happened in the real world, but I came across it on the internet as you do. So there's a couple in Glendale, California, and they're currently suing their fertility clinic. which is in Los Angeles, for a massive embryo mix-up that includes them and two other couples. So this woman, Ani, went for IVF, got an embryo transfer, it didn't work. went through the process again, didn't work, right? So she had two failed IVFs. Meanwhile, there's a couple living in New York who gives birth to twins. Those twins do not match the ethnicity of the parents. The parents are Korean American and the babies are not. One of them's Armenian and I'm not sure what the other one is. So this fertility clinic calls up Ani, and it's like, we need to do a DNA test, blah, blah, blah. And she's like, oh, why? And they're like, oh, just a routine DNA test.

Laura

Just come on in. We didn't perform anything. Didn't do anything wrong. Just come in and give us your DNA.

Shanna

Yeah, this is just quality assurance. So she's skeptical and goes in, does a DNA swab, which allows the clinic to confirm that one of the babies born in New York is Ani's baby. What? So only one of the twins? The other twin is from a completely separate third couple. The New York woman was implanted with two different embryos from two different couples and gave birth to those babies.

Laura

And she thought the woman in New York thought she was having a biological, like her own biological baby, her own embryos.

Shanna

Yes. All these couples did all of this at the same clinic in LA, right? But she's in New York now. Yes. And so the New York woman was like, you know, we got kind of suspicious when we saw on the ultrasound that there were twins. because we thought we were just implanting one single embryo, because we only had one good embryo, right? So that was our first suspicion. She ended up getting pregnant with twins. And then obviously their next big suspicion was when she birthed babies that were not their ethnicities.

Laura

That's a pretty dead giveaway. Yeah. Yeah. It does make me wonder if they would have ever figured it out if the embryos that had been transferred were Korean by coincidence or whatever.

Shanna

Right? Yeah. It's so scary. So this woman, Ani and her husband in LA are suing the clinic for this egregious mix up. Yeah. And they filed for custody of their biological child. which is just like so yeah it's such a mess it's so wild and it's so heartbreaking for everybody right like this mom didn't get the chance to carry and birth her own baby and like you know meet it for the first time it's just like she was robbed of that the woman in New York is like having a baby taken from her, but I get it because it's not her baby. Biologically. And the fact that there's a third couple thrown into all of this chaos is just like, oh my God, that's so scary. And I hate this kind of stuff because I feel like it gives Ivy have a bad name. And you just like go in wondering, oh my God, am I going to end up with my own? Baby, I ended up googling, can I do DNA test on an infinite year?

Laura

She looks like a little carbon copy of you and steep. Like it's not, if that was possible, they found like someone who looked exactly like you guys. I don't think you have to worry about that one. I think you were in the clear on this one. But I get it. It's super scary. It's super scary.

Shanna

Yeah. So she got custody of her biological son, went to New York and like met him for the first time when he was six weeks old in the lobby of a hotel. It's just like, what?

Laura

I hope they all get all the money. I do too. I mean, they deserve it. That's the least that they deserve. And I hope that everyone involved, the mother in New York, is able to have her own children someday.

Shanna

I know. Ugh.

Laura

I just, I can't even imagine the heartbreak on that. It just, it hurts my heart because like no one's happy about any of it. You know what I mean? Exactly. No one is coming out ahead in this situation. No. No. So fuck that. Oh my God.

Shanna

Yeah. Yeah. So sorry, that was kind of a downer, but it's just such a wild, wacky story. It's crazy. Yeah. You can't imagine that something like that is like happens in real life, but

Laura

They just switched it up. They just like mislabeled the shit. It just seems like so hard to do, but whatever.

Shanna

I know, I know. One of the lab workers stayed up too late the night before apparently and like came to work hungover or something. I don't know.

Laura

Or there's just a disgruntled employee who's like, fuck this. I'm getting, they're going to fire me tomorrow. I'm going to, anyway, all these things make you feel bad. It's, I'm sure the exception.

Shanna

Yeah. Oh, definitely. It definitely is. These places can't operate, can't continue to operate if they do business like that for one thing. And then it's just so unethical. So yeah. exception to the rule. Yeah. So anyway, do you have another one? I do. I do. Oh, good.

Laura

I do. I do. This one is much lighter. Okay. Yay. So this was shared in one of my mom's groups and it's like a share of a share of a share. You know, it's like when people screenshot things from Facebook and then they reshare that and then the person screenshots the reshare. It's not through many iterations. The picture was getting very pixelated. But the original, I think it might be a tweet, someone at Queen Jord, Queen J-O-R-D says, this is why I continue to stay in the insane mommy Facebook groups. Okay. And it's like a comment thread. And so there's a comment. I'm assuming it was on a post that was like, my kid is sick. What can I do? Like what should I do? Go to the ER or whatever, right? This happens all the time on Facebook moms groups, right? It's 10 o'clock at night and someone's like, my nine month old has a fever of 102. Like what should I do?

Shanna

Cayenne. I kind of can't even imagine doing that to a goat. Why would you put cayenne on their poor little gums?

Laura

I don't know. Someone who raises goats needs to write in and tell us.

Shanna

Yes, please. We need all the info. That's so funny. I love it.

Laura

I love the internet for me too. Those reasons alone. All right. Should we take a little bit of a break and come back with your last internet insanity?

Shanna

Okay. This is a story about a mom who installed a ring camera, like a security camera in her daughter's room and someone hacked into it and harassed the eight-year-old daughter.

Laura

I heard about this.

Shanna

And there's the video of it. And it is wild. And I feel so bad for this little girl and this mom. And it's just, let me play you. Let me play you a little bit. OK. Actually, I'll send this to you so you can watch it.

Laura

OK. She installed a ring camera in her children's room for peace of mind. A hacker accessed it and harassed her eight-year-old daughter.

Shanna

Great.

Laura

Oh, this little girl's room is so cute.

Shanna

Yeah, she shares it with her two sisters and I guess she went in to check on her sisters or see where they were. No one was in there, but then she heard a voice.

Speaker 1

Come on, girl. Say it with me.

Speaker 2

I'm your best friend. I'm Santa Claus.

Shanna

Uh, so like he could see her too, obviously, because when he mentions the TV, like she had been walking by the TV room, like you can mess up the TV. And I guess it all started the hack when it started live streaming and playing a song called, uh, it's the tiny Tim cover of tip toe through the tulips. which is from the 2010 horror film Insidious. So I guess that's what was playing at first when the girl came in and then that song stopped and then this guy started talking to her.

Laura

this guy I just want to like I don't have a lot of I've never punched anyone but this is like a guy I want to punch oh yes this is a guy I just I just can see him in my mind he's some fucking loser in cell asshole who probably spends all his time just doing bullshit stuff thinking he's some kind of like Vanguard thinking he's messing up society or whatever with the system. Yeah, and I think I had read the story too and the little girl called her mom and the mom shut it off. It's like it didn't work, dude.

Shanna

Yeah, it didn't work. You didn't get what you wanted.

Laura

No, but the takeaway on this is everyone needs to set up two-factor authentication on any smart device. There you go. Needs to happen. I actually made sure that everyone who had access to my Nestcams had that when I saw this, because I was like, oh fuck, this is scary. I don't actually care that much about someone like, someone could watch me sitting in my living room playing with the kid, like whatever. But talking back to the kids is super fucking creepy.

Shanna

My kids can't even handle it when I talk to them through the video monitor. I'll be like, Elle, get in bed. She'll be like, ah, don't talk to me. So could you imagine if some stranger who's purported to be Santa Claus started, she would lose her mind and probably be scarred for life. It's too much.

Laura

Yeah, so two-factor. If you don't know how to do it, Google two-factor authentication, whatever service you use, they all have it. Do it. It's time. Do it. Do it. Okay, so I'm going to run real quick and unplug all my cameras. Then do you want to come back with our BFBs and BFNs?

Shanna

Let's do it.

Laura

OK, so we close every show with our Big Fat positives or Big Fat negatives of the week. Shanna, do you have a BFP or a BFN for us? BFP, baby! Woo-hoo!

Shanna

It's the juvie tricycle. Tricycle? Tricycle, like tricycle, but tricycle. Wait, cool or coo? Yeah, they don't have the L on there, which I think is a mistake. It should be tricycle, right? Yeah. So it's okay. Tricycle. It's tricycle.

Laura

Okay. Tell me more about this thing with a weird name.

Shanna

It's a four and one tricycle. We got it for L when she was two years old. And by that point, she was already pretty much able to use like the full tricycle. Mm-hmm. element of it so we didn't use a lot of the attachments which you can put on and make it usable for a much smaller baby from like 10 months on. There's like a little harness thing, a little arm support, feet rest, an umbrella that goes over the head and you put all these attachments and accessories on and then like your 10 month old can sit in it and securely go for a ride in the tricycle. So I found these accessories to this tricycle and was like, oh my gosh, we could use it for CeCe. Because Ella's pretty much outgrown this tricycle by now.

Laura

Does it have a handle on the back so you can like push it?

Shanna

Yeah, so that's like the number one accessory that's amazing about it. We need something like that. Yeah, we need something like that. It's really cool, too, because with the handle and back, the adult can also use it to steer. It's connected to the steering. So I can steer the tricycle without, you know, having to do any weird wonky movements with the bike or anything.

Laura

That's cool. I'll have to look for that. We will, of course, post a link to it on our website.

Shanna

Yes, indeed. And when she gets a little bit older, we can take off all the safety accessories, and then she can use it as a bike, her first strike.

Laura

I love a thing that grows with them, because I feel like so much baby stuff, it's like useful for four months, you know, and then you're like, oh, crap. And I've just got this plastic thing to store.

Shanna

Mm-hmm. That's so true. So this is cool. Yeah, Juvie Tricerco. Check it out. That's J-O-O-V-Y, right? Yes. Mm-hmm. That's the brand. Cool. Or should I say? Yeah, what about you? Coo.

Shanna

What about you? What do you got?

Laura

I also have a BFP. Cool. So mine is a learning tower. Oh. Do you know about learning towers?

Shanna

Is that that one they stand on in the kitchen?

Laura

Yeah. So it's basically just like a platform with guardrails around it. And there's a million types, right? The brand I got was the guidecraft classic kitchen helper. And it's nice because it has this like mesh thing you can put behind them so they can't like fall out the back basically. It's like, so it's enclosed on three sides. And you put the fourth side up against the table or whatever or the island. So we have an island in the middle of our kitchen. And I just

Shanna

Yeah Yeah, awesome. I wish we had one. I don't think we really have the space for it. And definitely when Elle was little, I really, really, really wanted one. But we had an apartment at the time. And it was like, ah, I don't think so.

Laura

Yeah, your kitchen. I can't think of where you'd put one in your kitchen anyway. No. Yeah.

Shanna

Anyway, Elle would hog it and probably push CECE off of it.

Laura

We are on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook at BFP Podcast. We also have a Facebook community group. Just search for Big Fat Positive Community request to join because it's a closed group, but I will add you right away and you can join in on our really cool conversations we're having in there. You can also send an email or voice memo to contact at bigfatpositivepodcast.com or visit our website, bigfatpositivepodcast.com.

Shanna

Please review and rate us wherever you listen to podcasts and spread the word. Let your friends know about our show. Big Fat Positive is produced by Laura Birek, Shanna Micko, and Steve Yager. See you next week. Bye.