I’m trying to replace good job also. It’s hard haha. “Sports casting” isn’t nearly as natural feeling for me.
Eta most of my success so far has been switching to just “look at you!” Because it’s easy to say for me in an excited way and when my brain is on “I’m so tired it’s just elevator music up here” mode.
After having and training pets for a long time I constantly had to check my impulses to pet my kid on the head and say good job when he first became ambulatory and would hand me objects 
It was something I sure did not anticipate!
I say “thank you” pretty automatically when she hands me stuff. I say it approximately a billion times when she helps me unload the dishwasher “hands spoon. Thank you! Hands fork. Thank you!”
I do that to surgeons nearly every time they hand me something back, so I’m Team TooManyThankYous myself
Sportscasting is also just more brain work.
To make it programmer-y, If ChildAction = Good, Then “Good Job!” reponse.
Now it’s If ChildAction = Good, Then see what specifically child did, what values we want to instill (thoughtfulness, cooperation, teamwork) and also screen against values we do not want to instill (housework as women’s work), and figure out how to make that into a sentence. Oh and do all this “in the moment” so you’ve got like 0.5 seconds to figure all that out.
My son’s dad was so good at doing just that. Me, I needed to literally work out the scripts I wanted to use, and then mentally run through them usually while falling asleep at night, and then hope by some miracle they’d pop out when I wanted them to.
I didn’t have the greatest success rate compared to my partner. He certainly never said “oh geez you bastard!” to a 3 year old after being hit in the face and glasses snatched. 
I definitely say “good girl” and “good boy” way too often, and it does make me feel like I’m talking to a pet sometimes. To be fair, I often call our dog by our daughter’s name (both Celtic/Irish, both end in the same vowel sound, same number of syllables) and vice versa.
I try to fall back on “good job” + trying so hard, practicing more, being kind, being helpful, etc., and then occasionally adding more.
“You’re getting a tiny bit better every time you practice, maybe next time you’ll throw it further/straighter/higher.”
“I know it’s hard to be nice to your sister all the time, but I really appreciate you trying, it’s very kind.”
Things like that. That way you can start with your automatic response and then give yourself another second to clarify WHAT they’re doing well.
My takeaway is that I’m okay with saying good girl/boy in parenting, relationship, pet and kink settings and have yet to confuse any of those scenarios
Occasionally I’ll say “Good girl (wrong name)” to either our daughter or our dog, and then I feel REALLY bad, lol.
How do I introduce more dairy to my kid to test if he’s reactive to it?! He’s nearly 4 and knows he’s not allowed dairy but also the only way to test is to have him eat it. He does not eat the kinds of foods that make it easy for me to hide it. This might be a question for an allergy support group or time to visit the GP for a dietitian referral again…
Circling back with an update to this: It is apparently just one of those things! D pushed nap slightly earlier and I’m not sure if there’s causation or just correlation, but he seems to be going to sleep shortly after bedtime now. He still fights naps fairly often, but the nap occurs far more often than it is skipped.
We’ve just started having to pull out the next size clothes so maybe he was gearing up for a growth spurt.
You make lots of pitas & pizzas, right? I wonder if you could spread some yoghurt as a base underneath the mince.
Does he eat muffins? I’ve heard baked goods are a common starting option.
Are you doing/have done the dairy ladder? I was in a fb group called something like dairy free breastfeeding or something like that, and they were a big proponent. The group was helpful for recipe advice and tips on reading labels, but were very much black and white about avoiding dairy completely and following the dairy ladder to a T. Their recommendations were science based as far as referring to literature, but they didn’t really take an “Emily Oster” approach in evaluating the literature critically and looking at sample sizes, etc.
Our allergist indicated that she thought the dairy ladder was useful for allergies, but not necessarily for intolerances. We just introduced milk cold turkey and were fine (but my son had mild intolerance, not allergy). She also told us flat out that the science just isn’t established for pediatric allergies, and the recommendations are constantly evolving. 
Yes, we’ve been working through the dairy ladder, albeit slowly. We got to the point where he would notice it in his food and got stuck because he either doesn’t like the options at that stage or is aware enough to notice it, and of course our only measure of “did he tolerate it?” is whether he has a tummy ache afterwards. We have only seen our GP, a paediatric gastroenterologist once during initial diagnosis, and a paediatric dietitian twice as he was starting solids. I throw my hands up at the intolerance/ allergy distinction at this point. He isn’t the normal kind of allergic, that much I do know.
Maybe we offer him some of Dad’s ice cream and just use desserts to test it.
He eats his pita plain, or at least without sauce. Refuses all yoghurt, even coconut based mixed with jam. Picky eating makes it harder! Other wise a good idea!
Yeah this is the point we’re at that we know he tolerates - quick cooked things like pancakes are now 
, so the next step is more dairy/ less cooked.
Gotcha!
Butter on toast or waffles or pancakes?
Yogurt marinated chicken (cooked but lots more dairy)?
Dips?
Ice cream sandwich?
Cupcake with buttercream frosting?
Cucumber sandwich with cream cheese?
It might just take offering lots of options and see what you can get him to try. Our kiddo has turned his nose up at broccoli and then last night ate 3/4 of our sheet pan of roasted broccoli and then insisted we get out more and ate a bunch raw! (And then he threw up a few times so not all perfect).
Though nature always laughs in my face when I do this, I am trying to plan for my unknowable future anyway. I would like some advice on when is the earliest reasonable date to travel on a business trip (mine would be related to my education and not my work-job) away from a baby after giving birth.
I feel like anything before two months is infeasible, as most people seem to still be getting the hang of breastfeeding and bonding at that point. But, like, 2.5 months? Three? Four?
There is a psychedelic training program that involves 10 days of travel to a foreign country every six months, with the first trip being absolutely required, while subsequent trips can be shuffled around a bit if necessary. On the travel, substance ingestion will occur, so I cannot do it while pregnant. I was accepted and supposed to begin the program next month, with first travel this July, but I got pregnant and would have been due 2 weeks before the trip if I hadn’t miscarried, so I deferred my entry to next year. But this means that I either MUST conceive within a particular window OR have to pull the same shit of asking if I can defer due to pregnancy again, at which point they might tell me just to buzz off, honestly. So I’m just trying to figure out how many cycles I have open to try before accepting that I’m screwed one way or another.
I’m not really worried about childcare; my partner is going to be the main caretaker once I go back to work anyway, and he doesn’t have a regular job, so the idea of leaving a baby alone with him is not an issue. I’m not really worried about milk, either; I figure I can stockpile, supplement, and continue to pump. I guess I’m most worried about, like, emotionally damaging the kid. I’m not sure how much of a concept of time passing and who’s present really young babies have. But I know people must deal with this all the time—lots of people balance families and professional travel, and maternity leave ends sometime!
I don’t think the program punishes anyone. It’s that the point of the travel is to get experiential immersion into the particular psychedelic substance (ayahuasca, peyote, etc.), which is contraindicated in pregnancy. The first trip is required because the cohort establishment is a core part of the way the program works, and one is supposed to meet and bond with cohort members on that first trip. Later trips are more flexible to be skipped and taken later because the cohort has been established. They were actually really flexible and kind about my deferment and even offered me extra wiggle room while I was waiting to see if the pregnancy stuck (it outlasted just past the final date and then fell through, so that didn’t work out, but they were at least nice about it). I don’t know FOR SURE that they would tell me no if I asked to defer again, but I know that most programs of many kinds allow only one year of deferment after acceptance. They could well make an exception, but I don’t want to get my hopes up counting on it, y’know?
16 weeks, oh sigh. That’s a really long time. And so doesn’t give me much of a window at all.
Thanks for the suggestion—I will definitely check this out!