Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Biting and Strollers

En route to the daycare today I started to write a blog entry in my head. This frightens me slightly. The topic being strollers and then biting factored into my morning, so herewith is a double entry all rolled into one. (fully inspired by Nine Pound Dictator's "I love you and Needles" which is 2 seemingly unlikely topics rolled into one. And, if Rebecca can do it I can surely copy - though she is a professional writer and I am not).

Anyway ...

Back to the stroller issue.

My husband and I are currently in discussions about the purchase of a new stroller. There are a couple of things at issue here. First is that Matty-Matt is two and does not need a stroller for mobility. Second is that we have a couple of strollers already.

My argument for the stroller is this. I'm completely and utterly frustrated by the stroller we use. It's great because it is small. It was pretty cheap (about $25) and does a good job. Except I use it all the time and the wheels are slowly breaking on me. Plus, we are always carrying things to and fro on the stroller and if Matt climbs out the think topples. It drives me crazy.

And, on the topic of age. I agree that he is old enough to walk. But that is also my problem with it. He is old enough to run away from me. And, when we are constantly around buses, cars, subways and busy streets I want him contained as much as possible. Don't get me wrong. The child runs a lot. He plays outside a couple of hours a day and is non stop most of the time. So sitting in a stroller to commute I think is smart. I just need a good stroller with extra strong harnesses.

So we will see.

And on to the topic of biting ...

This one gets me pretty upset.

Matthew is biting at daycare. I'm not totally sure how to handle it. I really really feel like is teacher is putting some of the blame on Mike and I. And that's not fair. The cruxt of her problem is that Matthew laughs when he bites. Why? She wanted to know.

I don't know. It's not like Mike and I laugh when Matt bites us. Nor do we play games and run around biting each other and laughing. (well ... not around Matty anyway. Ha ha.) But, seriously.
I don't really know what to do about it. We talk to Matt about biting. We tell him no and we tell him that it is mean. He even is now saying "No biting."

But it continues.

Ahhh ... the terrible twos.

3 comments:

ninepounddictator said...

Hey Laurel,
I'm kind of in the same situation. We bought the bugaloo stroller (too much money) TWICE, because the first one broke...

My fav stroller is the McLaren brand. Not overly expensive, and now they make them really light and the handle bars are higher up, so you're not bending over with the cheapy ones...look at their website. They're really good now. And also really easy to fold...

As for the biting? Well, one of my friends who has her daughter in daycare came home three times because there was a biter in the day care. And she, of course, yelled at them. And what they did was have one of the day care workers actually follower "The biter" around for a couple of days and it worked. He no longer is a biter.

I think you should actually talk to them about it. And make that suggestion. Because there are a lot of biters and no, the parents are not to blame (it's such a common problem!) In fact, when he is at daycare, I believe it's up to the daycare workers to watch him, right?

The Girl Who Loves to Knit said...

Winston, my beloved pet lion, bites. And it hurts, because he has overgrown fangs which is why he's constantly grinning like the town drunkard. However - I'm only saying this so that you are thankful humans have piddly non-threatening teeth (in comparison...unless you watch CSI)

Kate said...

My fav stroller is the McLaren brand. Not overly expensive, and now they make them really light and the handle bars are higher up, so you're not bending over with the cheapy ones...look at their website. They're really good now. And also really easy to fold.