Christmas Tree-ing, Baby Teething

So our "deck the halls" in the apartment has consisted of setting up a $10 fiberglass tree that I got at Wal-Mart along with some lights on our balcony and maybe a cinnamon candle. Officially Festive! But it's brought us some Christmas cheer! And we're not even gonna be here on Christmas, since we're flying out to Utah.

I'm just ecstatic to not be cramming for finals right now for the first time in 4 years! (Good luck, Mom, Davey, and Aaron)


However, Eliza's been feeling a little more like this lately:That is one sad girl! Steve just set her down on the ground to see if she'd smile for a picture... and this was the product. I think she's got the frustrating combination of experiencing some major teething pain and being very ready to MOVE but not quite able to crawl yet! Poor girl...

We're looking forward to her getting back to her normal spunky, happy self:


Eliza's discovery of the week this week is...

... she learned how to arch her back! She actually started doing this a couple weeks ago for no apparent reason. Whether happy or sad she's added this skill to her wiggly repertoire!

We were talking with some friends a while back about what evolutionary purpose this arching skill serves infants. It seems like it just makes a still fairly immobile infant more likely to be dropped and that does not seem to be any sort of aid in their survival to adulthood... especially when done in the bathtub, on top of the changing table, in the car while resisting the car seat buckles, and any other precarious situation Eliza might find herself in. Any ideas in your textbook or pediatric expertise to share, Mom?

Well for better or for worse, the arching is here.



My discovery of the week is...

...Mandt Training! I had the opportunity (err... obligation) to become Mandt certified this week at work. It was a 2 day training that I was dreading on how to deal with aggressive clients. I was not looking forward to the intrusion on my very tentatively held together schedule or being away from Eliza and having Steve have to use 2 of his vacation days and miss work.

But the class actually ended up being really fascinating! It felt like I was back in one of my more useful social work classes! The class outlined many different ways of nonphysical interventions with aggressive clients along with physical restraints to be used in the case of imminent danger.

The restraints were kind of weird especially since we had to practice them on the other class participants. There were only 3 of us in the class. One very petite, former ballerina who worked as a middle school counselor and one VERY large Clinical social worker with long stringy gray hair and lots of Native American jewelry and stories using metaphors with coyotes and hunters who thought he should teach the class.

Two points of interest that I gained from this class, though, besides how to do painful hugging were:

"One of the purposes of manipulative behavior is to gain safety and security or basic human needs, when these are not met." This was very interesting for me to consider. Instead of just condemning manipulative people as unfortunate and needing to be avoided like I think I have the tendency to do, I can consider what of their needs are not being met or have not been met for them to be using this behavior.
This also is a very basic help for me to consider why Eliza might be "manipulating." So this week I've been asking her when she starts fussing, "Which of your needs is not being met, Baby?"

The other point I found very interesting was in dealing with conflict and confrontation. Mandt teaches that "Fear drives most confrontation. We wait until the pain of maintaining the relationships is greater than fear of rejection." After you take a minute to digest that sentence and let it sink in, it's really interesting! Lets us see why conflicts or confrontations should be handled so carefully.

It also taught that we should only talk to the person we're having a conflict with while our motivation is to improve the relationship. And instead of using "You" messages such as "You don't think about anybody but yourself," we need to communicate with "I" messages: "When I see the gas tank's empty..." or "I feel anxious..." Good information for building a marriage relationship, I'd say!
Anywayz, hopefully not too boring. If you've made it this far down the post, Congrats and thanks for reading!

Oh, and by the way, here is my life in one picture: