Holy Bitemarks, Batman!

This has been a week of emotional highs and lows where Evie is concerned.  I'll start with the low lights to get it out of the way.  And I'll also note that this is where I have a hard time with the balance between honesty and privacy.  The purpose of this blog is multifold in that it should a) be a way for me to capture important moments in Evie's development to preserve them for myself and for Evie in the future (I have the blog printed annually so she can have sort of the ultimate baby book experience), and b) be a way for friends and family to keep up with the goings-on of their granddaughter/niece/friends' really cute kid.  So, on the one hand, I want to be as honest as possible so that I can remember things as they really were and not just the good things and so that if Evie wonders about what she was doing at a certain age she'll know the whole picture.  On the other hand, with this blog being on the internet so that it can be shared with others, I worry about saying too much.  I'm going to lean towards honesty, trusting in the privacy features I've enabled, and trusting readers to keep information confidential.

Right. So. The low light of the week was last Friday when Evie's daycare called me to tell me that she had bitten another child hard enough and long enough to break the skin and draw blood, and that if it happened again she would be unenrolled at their daycare.  Biting has been an ongoing issue for Evie, just like it is for many children and like it was for me, apparently.  She gets a bite slip almost every week and the times of day and situations vary.  Sometimes it's because someone has taken something from her, sometimes because they get in her way.  This incident on Friday, according to the teacher, was one in which Evie was unprovoked or at least the teacher didn't see any reason for the biting.  Evie and the other child were sitting on the couch together and "suddenly" Evie is biting the kid.  Now, I have my own guesses about what happened.

1. Evie is getting her 2 year molars, I suspect, and that always hurts and biting on something feels good.
2. The kid may have actually done something to Evie that the teacher didn't witness.  I have been in the room with the kids and teacher before where one of the kids does something to another that the teacher doesn't see and then when the other kid cries, the teacher asks why they're crying for no reason.  I get it - there are 6 kids and you can't possibly keep your eye on all 6 of them at the same time while you're preparing for or cleaning up snack or some art activity.
3. Evie's bored.  If she really was just sitting on the couch with this other kid and bit him seemingly for no reason, then maybe she just needed something else to do.  She's a toddler; they need to stay busy, and they use their mouths to explore things.  

Regardless of the reason or lack thereof, I won't pretend that I wasn't upset at being told she'd be unenrolled if she bit again.  Fortunately the director clarified that they would have to let her go only if she bit again hard enough to draw blood, and put a one-month timeframe on her "probation" status.  And fortunately during that one month time frame, the daycare is closed for Christmas week and we will be going out of town for a while after that, so she'll actually only be at daycare for a total of 10 days within that 1 month time.  I understand that the daycare has the liability for injuries to the children, and I understand that as a parent whose child is bitten that badly there would be a lot of concern.  However, I honestly think I'd rather be the parent of the bitee than the biter because, as I told the director, there's nothing more I can do about the situation.

We read a book every day called Teeth Are Not for Biting; if she bites at home, we tell her that biting hurts and we separate her from us.  But she's 18 months old.  I can't bring her home and sit her down for a lecture on the moral wrongs of biting in hopes to develop her sense of empathy.  And I'm not there in the classroom to correct her.  So I really feel like my hands are tied here...  So the director agreed to the plan of having the classroom teacher shadow her which, supposedly, means that the teacher would keep Evie near her at all times and be on watch for any biting attempts and intervene as necessary.  And we agreed we'd administer ibuprofen before school and then before naptime to relieve any tooth pain.

I felt like that was a good plan until Wednesday when I picked Evie up and she had a bite slip.  Fortunately she didn't bite hard enough to break skin, so she didn't get kicked out, but I don't understand how the shadowing thing isn't working out.  Her afternoon teacher agreed and said she didn't understand how Evie keeps biting in the morning because she hardly ever gets one in in the afternoons.  And the afternoon teacher was really upset because she had promised me when I picked Evie up on Friday that she would do absolutely everything she could to intervene because she loves having Evie in the class.  She said she just didn't understand how the morning teacher couldn't keep Evie from biting because Evie always stops whenever the afternoon teacher calls her name.

Anyway, I'm sure this is not the last parent/teacher/child/school issue that we'll face together and I know it won't be the last moment in my parenting career where I throw my hands up and say, "There's nothing else I can do."  I just hope Evie keeps her teeth to herself and works on getting her communication skills to a point where she can express herself with words.

Segue into the highlights of the week which are pretty much about Evie's speech developments.  Evie's just exploding with new words and sounds now and it's so, so much fun!  She tries words out when prompted and I love hearing her little voice speaking actual English.  Since last Thursday Evie's learned how to say baby, bib, boot, book, banana (nana), cookie, foot, and I'm sure there are many others I'm forgetting.  Her new favorite animal noise is a seal, which is basically said the exact same way she says "woof" for doggies, except she also adds whole arm clapping while she does it.  I tried to get some video but she's also caught on to the fact that my phone is really fun to play with so any time I try to use it she wants to have it.

Another highlight is how much Evie is loving playing with our dogs these days.  She's finally taller than all of them (even though Herbie still weighs twice as much as Evie does), so I think she feels less intimidated.  Of course, there are now only 3 instead of 4, so that probably helps her feel more secure too.  And Winston was the lickiest of the bunch, so maybe not having him trying to lick her face off helps too.  We've been letting them all spend a little more time together, both downstairs in the living room and upstairs in the dogs' room.  I was really impressed yesterday when Evie was taking pieces of dog food out of the bowl and feeding them to ChuuChu.  If you know dogs, you know that they are most likely to get territorial over their food.  But none of the three of them went anywhere near Evie while she was at their food bowl which means they recognize that she is higher in the pecking order than they are.  Of course, I'll never let her be unsupervised with them because even the best trained dogs can have their moments, and that's all it takes to get hurt, but it is reassuring to me that they understand that Evie's still got higher rank than they do.

Here's Evie giving Herbie a hug.  I'm not so sure how Herbie feels about it.

We may be going through some rough patches at school, but she is certainly a joyful kid, and a joy to be around.