June 25, 2024
Life with JB
So this is a little awkward. I’m quite friendly with an elderly neighbor whose grandkids go to JB’s school. Unfortunately, though JB tries to be kind and include the same-age kid in their class, they don’t like playing with this Neighbor Kid because that kid is very sensitive, cries a lot at school, and subsequently (probably related to the sensitivity and JB’s proximity?) apparently blames JB for their hurt feelings that JB feels is unfair and inaccurate. JB is just a kid of course and can be oblivious or accidentally hurtful but they are very quick to own up to their mistakes, apologize, and try to offer to make things better. Obviously without any observation of the circumstances, I can’t really tell what’s really going on, but I do know JB’s character well enough to know that even when they mess up, they’ll likely cop to it without pressure. So it’s likely that JB is attempting to be kind but in ways that don’t work for Neighbor Kid. I think it’s unlikely that JB is deliberately hurting their feelings.
For example, JB just spontaneously told me about a really shitty thing that they were involved in peripherally with another friend group where the Older kid was threatening to destroy Youngest’s toy to force them to help with a project. JB thought it was a really shitty thing to do and so was laughing because OBVIOUSLY Older kid must be bluffing. Right?? Wrong. Older kid followed through with the destruction, and JB was horrified. They immediately apologized to Youngest kid, tried to fix it, and felt terrible. I had no idea that any of this had transpired but they confided that they didn’t know how to stick up for Younger kid in that scenario because they didn’t realize until too late how that would play out.
What I DO know from Neighbor Kid’s grandma and mom is that the kid has suffered from severe depression, has sensory issues that probably makes life feel really difficult, and is socially withdrawn. I tell JB that they aren’t responsible for Neighbor Kid’s feelings, nor do they have to accept false accusations or the treatment they don’t like, but we are aware that there are things that make Neighbor Kid’s life difficult enough that it warrants having some compassion for their situation, at least.
Anyway this all comes up because the caregivers asked me if JB is available for playing with or talking to Neighbor Kid over the summer. I don’t want to force JB into anything they won’t enjoy and I also feel for this kid. I was pretty bad at social interactions growing up and can empathize with the kids who doesn’t really have friends. And we are so lucky that JB has many friends, is well loved by a variety of people, and has confidence in knowing they are which helps when they are still struggling with some of the mean kids at school. I think my impulse here is similar to my financial stance: If you’re fortunate (socially or financially), you should share your good fortune. But they’re just kids, and so I’m not sure if that applies in this case, especially given the circumstances where they don’t have an easy relationship with Neighbor Kid. Thoughts? Opinions?
Life with Smol Acrobat
A mom friend has solved the mystery of how the kids’ shoes look like they’re ground down by a dremel some days: the kids are using the tops or sides of their shoes to brake instead of their bike or scooter brakes!
Smol’s potty training clicked very late and very suddenly, just as my dear departed friend assured me it would. The complication, a common one, is their initial refusal to poop anymore. For weeks they would go five, even six days, between poops and that’s not good. They would just shrug and disclaim any familiarity with that bodily function. Nope. Don’t need to. I finally found a bribe that mattered enough to them to be worth trying, just trying, and eventually that got us into the every 2-3 day cycle we’re in now. We’re also reminding them to listen to their body, like when they’re eating etc: have you had enough? Are you still hungry? Are you thirsty? Tired? And so on. One night after some resistance, they sat on the toilet and rambled on their own version of Everyone poops:
“I hear my body, I hear my body saying hey I need to poop! Daddy poops. Mommy poops. Weee poops. Sewa poops. I poop! Everybody doos it. Everyone poops.”
Pupdate
Sigh. We miss Sera. The pain is a dull ache now, and I think I will finally be able to do her laundry in the next month or two, but we sure do miss her.
I was thinking about how she was a pretty quiet dog, overall. She would bark at visitors but otherwise, she was generally not very vocal.
Precious Moments
Smol Acrobat was rummaging through the dog treats while I was searching for something else and says: I want to give doggy a treat.
…. We’d…have to find a doggy….
But we have a doggy.
Um. Well, no, we don’t anymore.
Why?
She got too sick, she couldn’t get better.
Why?
Oh kiddo ….. We’ll come back to this.
(It’s now been more than a month and I think they’re processing that Sera’s not coming back)
Plans: Mommy, after I sleep and then I wake up and then I brush my teeth and then I eat something first, can I pick a sticker for my friends and me?
Gesundheit!
Gahzootateit!
May 21, 2024
Life with JB
Taking a moment to be grateful that JB genuinely enjoys working at the two activities we signed them up for years ago. I don’t have the (strong) urge to yell “do your best!” after them when they leave the house. I already know they will (for varying levels of “best” day to day). I do have to occasionally point out ways they’re needing to improve or commit a bit more, like, taking opportunities to face a challenging exercise even if you’re not going to be good at it at first.
We picked them for safety (swim and self defense) and for health (cardio!), and hoped for the best on the interest front. They would likely have enjoyed anything we picked because they’ve always had a wide array of interests, but it’s still something I am grateful for because we don’t have to fight with them to do the thing.
It offsets my awareness that wants to be guilt that we didn’t actually let them pick their activities. But it occurs to me that we probably will in the future when they’re old enough to make decisions like whether they want to continue with these and on a recreational or competitive level. I hadn’t thought of that before because they don’t have that autonomy yet, but it is striking how many parents here expect their kids, and then push their kids, to be specialists starting from a very young age. I didn’t even start having activities until junior high. But they were the activities that I wanted to do and so I tried my hardest at them.
Talking through the possibility of future sports for Smol Acrobat with a friend, I did feel a twinge of almost guilt? that we will attempt to take one path of least resistance and offer them the same activities as JB in an attempt to streamline life a bit. It’s the same proto-guilt that I feel about not letting them add more than two activities to their schedule: I want to give them more choices BUT my anti-desire to be stuck in the all-consuming trap of life revolving around the kids’ activities is much stronger.
Life with Smol Acrobat
When they’re in a good mood, they’re cute as a bug. They like to flip back and forth between play-emotions: I’m so SAD. *frowns, furrows brow* (I’m sorry you’re sad!) Oh! I’m happpyyyy!!! *big smile* (Yay I’m glad you’re happy!).
I picked up Duolingo again for the first time in several years and Smol Acrobat is surprisingly interested in it so I let them do lessons with me on the condition that they try to learn, too. They are practicing to speak bits and pieces as we work through lessons, and loves pushing the buttons for me (with help since obviously they can’t read). They CAN hear the differences in the spoken words, though, and they’re highly entertained by the whole thing. Both kids are, actually, but Smol Acrobat is the one who has begun to make ME repeat after them purely for their own entertainment: Mom, say: con. duc. tor! Conductor! Is a big word! Mom, say ex. ting. ish! Exting-ish! is a big word!
Pupdate
What a terrible month, in a terrible year. Early in the month, Sera suffered an infection that was really hard on her body, as was fighting it off. We made it through that only for her to relapse, badly. The hospital stay helped get her back on her feet, just enough to establish that the disorder had become so severe, there was nothing else that we could do for her. Nothing humane, anyway. We could take extreme measures and we could whip up a new cocktail of medications but none of them had a high likelihood of disease mitigation and they all had a high likelihood of introducing new complications so in the end, it was a simple (but not easy) decision. We brought her home for whatever time we could share before saying a proper goodbye when her symptoms returned. It was an awful week but I’m grateful we knew that it was our last, unbelievably unbearably hard, days together.
Her balance this year: $11,700.
Precious Moments
Smol Acrobat accidentally headbutted me really hard in the face and exclaimed: sawwy! Sawwy!
Still wincing, I hadn’t responded yet, so they anxiously prodded: I said sawwy! Say “it’s ok little cat”??
*****
JB recounting their impromptu game with their younger friend: I electric shocked him three times, he should be dead!
But, he’s Bowser today, isn’t he? I didn’t think Bowser could be electroshocked?
Yeah he can, I shocked his belly! It’s soft! Zzziiippp! Then I made him barf and then I sliced him up into tiny turtle parts!
*blink* ….. That’s …. that’s a strategy.
*****
Mommy, I want to play jump rope with you.
Ok, how do you want to play with two people?
You hold dis and you do DIS. You’re not enough bigger so I do dis. *flails wildly*
Yes… I see….
*****
We’ve (mostly me) been trying to suss out Smol Acrobat’s understanding of Sera’s passing. At first, they just said “Sewa is at de doctuh’s” thinking that she was hospitalized again. A few days later, they told me “Sewa … went to another pwace …. to stay….” I don’t really expect them to comprehend it yet but I want to keep checking in and keeping her memory alive.
April 16, 2024
Life with JB
Making “friends” for JB (adult friends with the parents because I need to vet them before I let my kid go play with their kid) is exhausting. The good ones keep moving away!
It’s been three families now and I’m starting to feel a little cursed. I can only imagine how JB’s feeling.
What’s good is the families do want to keep in touch at least for the kids’ sake. When they can, they let us know when they’re back in town to visit friends and family, so the kids get to see each other for a bit and they love it so much and it’s like they never separated. But boy do I feel for JB’s feeling of separation and frustration with the kids who remain. Most of them are drama seeking and annoying and fight with JB constantly. That was never an issue with the 3 kids they really liked, who then moved away.
JB had their eye exam this year and their eyesight is officially worse than mine. I know it’s irrational but this makes me feel like a total failure of a parent. You know, for failing to pass on my good eyesight genes. And then not for getting them outside long enough to hold off their worsening eyesight.
Life with Smol Acrobat
Throw the confetti and break out the cake, this kid is suddenly interested in using the toilet!!
All credit to PiC for consistently trying and encouraging, for some reason I have been utterly awful at encouraging them to use the toilet. I didn’t want it to become a stubbornness power struggle so I just stopped. They have gone five days in a row with no wet overnight diaper! They even used the toilet at school! They won’t be the only kindergarten kid in diapers!! Probably!
But having potty training and all the requisite accidents happening at the same time as having to replace the dead washer is not great timing. Also (TMI) not great, as soon as they switched to underwear, they also (coincidentally?) stopped pooping regularly. They’re going 4 days at a stretch. We’re trying to figure that out.
Pupdate
Not good. She’s been very very slowly responding to the combination of meds for her autoimmune problem. We’ve had to add incontinence meds, which work thankfully, so she’s on 3 medications twice a day. A big jump up from last year’s zero medications.
Then we had to do the emergency vet run because she had tons of blood in her urine along with a day of diarrhea and it could have been related to the autoimmune problem OR just a UTI. Thankfully it was just a terrible UTI that can be treated with antibiotics. Then we had a morning of vomiting so I got to worry about whether her mass had grown and caused an obstruction or if it’s some OTHER problem entirely. Luckily the vet tech reminded me that the antibiotics for the UTI are strong enough to upset a stomach that’s already on 3 other medications. We’re still recovering from that week of antibiotics. She’s losing weight, has very little appetite, has been panting with discomfort so I had to add Famotidine to her pharmaceutical regimen. It helped but this is all very rough. And too soon. She’s only 12. She needs at least 5 more years with us, but not if she’s miserable the whole time.
Her balance for this year so far: $5500.
Also, you know what’s a dangerous game to play? Leaving the dog toothpaste next to the human toothpaste. That chicken flavor is going to be a terrible surprise for someone someday. If there’s any justice, it’ll be me. Because I’m the one who keeps forgetting to move it.
Precious Moments
SA: I’m not four! I’m free! When I’m gonna turn five and den four, den I’m gonna be five and four after way-ter (later).
It’s tortured, but the logic still works?
*****
Smol Acrobat: If I eat my banana, den when I get to my home, I will get de spicy chips and I will eat dem ALL. When I get my spicy chips, you can have some ok? You an me will eat da spicy chips ALL. Wee will not have any wif you n me betuz we will eat dem ALL. OTAY mommy?
*****
Me: GRRRR. I’m so annoyed at myself. (For not thinking about ordering dinner for pick up until we were already in the car driving.)
JB: why? You already do so much.
Me: š
*****
Smol Acrobat working through the rules of “only Momma can open that box on the shelf”: Only you can get de box? Not me? I’m not too big anymore? But I’m growing up.
*****
Smol Acrobat to PiC, trying to figure out breakfast: I used my words AND my talking words!
*****
Opposite day
Me after nearly getting my butt stuck on a kid’s stepstool: NOPE I don’t fit on that stool.
Smol Acrobat: you’re too big?
Me: yep, I’m too big to sit there.
Smol Acrobat: it’s ok. You’re still growing up still.
March 19, 2024
Life with JB
Turns out, if I lower my standards to just “do the chores when told without whining (much)”, they’re able to meet that. Progress!
They’ve made a new friend who is much more available than their longtime bestie and equally interested in meeting up for playdates constantly and this combination is explosive.
They have had 4 5 playdates since October, two back to back, and they’re jonesing for as many more as they can possibly manage. I recognize this impulse from when I was younger and oh so lonely and wanted desperately to have a best friend. JB has many more friends than I ever did but is naturally limited in their ability to socialize all day every single day by their fuddy dud parents who have to work and sleep and such.
It’s a weird dynamic for me. We have met the parents and even the grandparent over the past year as we run into each other regularly but we don’t know each other very well. I miss the ease of knowing and liking their longtime bestie’s family. This is new territory in a few ways. We’ve never let JB go off with anyone else’s parents driving. We’ve never let JB go to a playdate without one of us around. Recently, their new friend’s parents allowed New Friend to come play at our house solo one day, and to go on a field trip with us another day. They’ve got more kids than we do and thanked us for the invitations because New Friend doesn’t get out much. They’re quite nice about it which makes me feel like a bit of a jerk wondering but, but why do you trust us? You don’t really know us! And I don’t know you! Not really. We need to give New Friend a nickname. We’ll call them Jay. The kids are getting to an age where it’s more normal for them to go play without their parents but I don’t know what I need to be comfortable with that with new folks. We’d be fine with that sort of playdate at Longtime Bestie’s. We know their family, we know they don’t have weapons in the home, we know they have boundaries and can make the kids mind. But they’re so busy now, we have to let JB branch out and make new friends and socialize. That makes me sad about not being able to hang out with the easy established friends and anxious about having to establish new relationships and rules with new people and navigating all that. For example, Jay asked their mom in front of us: next time can JB come over to our house??? And the look on their mom’s face as she murmured “oh our house is so messy…” I quickly said “look, you’re always welcome here, and this is probably easier to play without your siblings, right? We can keep Smol Acrobat out of your hair.” Jay acknowledged the truth in that. And I sighed inside with relief that I wouldn’t have to navigate THAT for a little longer. But probably will have to figure it out sooner than later. And they’ll keep pressing the issue.
Life with Smol Acrobat
Smol Acrobat is obsessed with transit vehicles which is perfect for their auntie who is also obsessed with transit vehicles. They bond over transit and cats. They’re so obsessed with cats they walk around pretending to be a cat every day. Basically this is the cat I can have so long as I’m living with an allergic PiC.
They’re still toilet training resistant. Sigh.
They’re talking a whole lot more. They’re starting to tell us short stories about their time at daycare, and it’s really cute to finally hear their point of view.
Oh, baby, no:
“Dis a fire hydrant. I open dis and fire coming out! You need to move, it will burn you!”
“S! S is in my name!” (no, it isn’t)
“T! for zipper!”
“L! for mommy!”
Pupdate š¶
Sera has a new Pavlovian response. Every time I take the lid off a new pot of rice, she starts drooling. She’s right, though, most of the time it’s for her.
Her bloodwork is currently the most frustrating teeter totter. One set of values goes down like we want, another set shoots up. We adjust meds, they flip flop. We’re on our fourth panel this week, and they are NOT cheap, and everything is crossed that we finally get a set of readings that show she’s responding to the medication without compromsing her liver. (Please please please.)
Evenings are tough. She’s relatively happy to do her own wandering and sleep routine while I’m working and JB is doing homework but she really doesn’t like it when I’m too mobile getting the kids to bed and all that nighttime stuff.
She follows me from room to room with an increasingly put-upon expression because she can’t lay down, not if I’m going to keep moving. More often than not, I hustle to get all my things in one place just so she can settle in for her snooze, even if it confines me to my desk or my bed. Anything not to disrupt the old and ailing dog. š
Precious Moments
Smol Acrobat, squirming under blanket: Can I sit wif youuuuu?
JB: Siiiiiigh. Stop it, make your own nest.
SA: *continues squirming
JB: Sttttttoooooppp squirming!
SA: Can I SIT WIF YOU!
JB: No, make your own nest. Why are you invading MY nest?
SA: But I wan’ sit NEX to you!
JB: *sigh* Do you want me to make you a nest next to mine?
SA: YES
I wondered if they were going to make it through that without intervention.
SA: Mommy, I want to read Team Spidey.
Me: Ok, go ahead.
SA: Da one wif Trac-E.
Me: … yes…. go ahead?
SA: I can’ find it.
Me: Go check your room, that’s where we read it last.
SA: *Leaves, comes back a few minutes later with a Bluey book* I will read dis instead.
Me: Can you get me the little booklet?
Smol Acrobat: *Blank stare*
Me: Can you get me the book we used yesterday?
Smol Acrobat: *Blank stare*
Me: The little book with the instructions?
*Blank stare*
Me: The one made of paper?
Smol Acrobat: OH YES! I gon get it fast-uh and fast-uh, ok? I go FAS. You stay dere! Stay WIGHT dere, ok?
SA: I’m putting my shoes away but I don’t want to put my socks away.
Me: Ok you can keep your socks on if you want to.
SA: Yah! Dat happens sometimes.
SA: Do you like potato?
Me: Yes
SA: I SAID do you like potato?
Me: I said yes!
SA: Do you hear me? I SAID DO YOU LIKE POTATO!
Me: I already answered you…!
SA: What are you saying to me? Do you like potato yes or NO?
Me: Maybe they’re talking to a ghost ….
JB: No offense to Luigi but he’s kind of a chicken. He cried soooo much when he was in the (unintelligible) lands. Mario is braver.
Me: You think Mario is actually braver or was he hiding that he was afraid?
Smol’s non sequiturs:
– I’m getting so many owanges. I’m not big, I’m smol. I’m not big anymo’!
– A monologue while playing by my feet: I have so many cards so we can go to the store. I will dwive you. I will drive you to Dr. Awin, ok? Vwoom vwoom vwoom vwoom vwoom. Ok, we here! Ok now I take you to anudder doctor. Vwoom vwoom vwoom. I take you to the nurse. I’m a doctor. I will put you down and put a shot on you. Ok waay downnn. Put a shot on you! Ok, all done. We go to our home now. I will dwive you. I have so many cards now. Wemme put dese cards away. I will p’ay different toys.
February 14, 2024
Life with JB
We have a nine year old! š JB got a small party this year.
We booked part of a pizza parlor early in the day so we were the only ones there. 9 kids (5 families) showed up of the 16 kids/8 families we invited. I was very worried about how much energy it’d take and how it’d go, especially because we were just coming off a rough week of illness, but it worked out really well in the end. It was small enough to be just manageable, with one family helping us with Smol Acrobat, and the other families occasionally assisting with stages of cleanup and kid management.
We splurged on the activity and the food, we saved on the cake (Costco: $25, first time we’ve ever had one of their famed sheet cakes) and the decor (Party City: $20). The place provided almost none of the assistance they had promised so I was orchestrating so most of the event unexpectedly. That kept me too busy to socialize but we did each catch up a little with each set of parents. JB was thrilled to see their friends and ran an illicit (temporary) tattoo parlor out of the bathroom for them. Of course they did. Smol Acrobat was briefly put out that they didn’t get one too, but they weren’t willing to wait with the older kid crowd and moved on quickly.
(more…)
January 20, 2024
Life with JB
Life with Smol Acrobat
Just like with a dog that’s not food motivated, I struggled to figure out Smol Acrobat’s motivation. (Sera started out as such a traumatized girl that food meant nothing to her either.)
Food is my natural go to lever for gaining cooperation. What do you do with these food indifferent dogs/kids? Well, I haven’t cracked the dog code yet, I just eventually found treats that were high value enough to break through Sera’s trauma induced anxiety to retrain her but Smol Acrobat doesn’t consistently like anything enough to have it be a high value snack.
Pupdate
Precious Moments
Smol’s reluctance to let me change their diaper sometimes leads to creative excuses:
Here, let me check your diaper.
January 17, 2024
Life with JB
We have this conversation every quarter when the Scholastic book catalog comes home. No, you can’t have another journal or cute thing, you have a large bin full of them!
Also, we just had Christmas and other presents in the past few weeks, most of which still don’t have a home.
I’m not doing this to be mean but even if I didn’t have bag lady syndrome, we have near hoarders in the family. We see them once or twice a year and their homes give me the heebies. There’s almost no place to walk or sit, because of their need to buy their kids everything they wanted as a child but couldn’t have back then. I know I wanted to order from the Scholastic catalog SO BADLY too but JB is not me. They own a bookshelf full of books. They get HUGE stacks of gifts each year and they get to shop at Comic Con when/if we go. They are not deprived, in any sense, of material things.
Life with Smol Acrobat
We’d taken Sera out for a walk together, the morning after their fever broke. On the way out, Sera’s sweater snagged on the bike, so I had to unhook her before we could leave. I didn’t think Smol Acrobat noticed but when we returned, they rushed ahead of us to push the bag that snagged her away and held it so she could pass! They have never been that thoughtful before!
They have been talking a whole lot more now. Stringing together sentences, and then stringing together thoughts to tell me little stories about what happened. They are ALSO using it to rat out JB (they still can’t say JB’s name yet, their close approximation is Wee) a lot. “Don’t kick at birds, that’s not ok.” Retort: “Wee does it!”
Oh yeah. We have a three year old now! That passed with so little fanfare here I forgot to record it. They only recently made a friend and it didn’t seem like it was worth doing a whole party thing when that’s not so much their thing right now. We had my cousin over, we enjoyed some cake. They refused to have candles on the cake because “fire is scary”. Low key was good for all of us.
Pupdate
Sera is sick. We’ve run a slew of diagnostics and still don’t know for sure what it is but we’re trying out a treatment plan to see if she responds.
Precious Moments
JB: Smol Acrobat, come here!
Smol Acrobat: No, I cannot, I have to change my diaper! I be a minute!
To me with a self-satisfied grin: I said I be a minute. I adult.
PiC muttered, “what did you eat last night, squirrel??” while I was changing an especially stinky poop diaper.
Smol Acrobat replies very seriously: no, I didn’ eat a squirrel.
JB has been convincing them to come along and leave me alone by offering “kitty snacks”.
One morning as I usher them out to breakfast: Tan Wee make me a meow meow kitty snack?