Year 2, Day 295: What’d we do last year for Christmas? PiC asked. I don’t remember but I was a lot less stressed and anxious since we did no socializing. Though we also had a tiny baby so … Probably not less stressed but certainly less anxious than this year.
Today I had childcare coverage all day in the form of PiC still being off work one more day and it was both amazing and a grind because then I really really really had to make the most of that focused work time. I got caught up on a lot of important or overdue stuff with some intense effort to stay on task, so that’s something. I was sad to have missed out on midday baby snuffles and snuggles but that’s the trade off, isn’t it?
PiC took care of everything today: dog walks, feedings, kids, lunch, and dinner. I’ve got a great partner.
I’m still decompressing from a remarkably tough holiday season. We socialized much more than usual. We were super careful everywhere (vaxxed, masked, no indoor dining, running an air purifier wherever we could) and the anxiety that it still wouldn’t be enough was ever present. There was a lot of internal conflict when I met with conservative family members who did respect my needs (masked and outdoors meeting) but still clearly expressed their views which are in direct opposition to mine. We were able to say our goodbyes to a longtime friend and carried a lot of sadness back with us. My fatigue was always so bad that I felt sick most of the time – it expresses itself as cold symptoms when I’ve gone too far. Of course I rapid tested to be sure it was just my body sending up alarms and not COVID. Naturally that was another source of anxiety: we didn’t have enough rapid tests for the serial testing that I’d prefer considering omicron was taking off in the days after we’d hit the road. I was also trying to get all of us an appointment for PCR tests so we could be reasonably certain we were all COVID free before returning to school and that was an inordinate amount of effort. Of course I was working the entire time we traveled. Basically I now don’t want to leave my house for a month. Maybe two. (more…)
JB has a cousin with terrible manners (ignores people talking to them, snatches things out of people’s hands, whines and pouts and shouts to get their own way as a first resort, makes themselves out to be the victim when they’ve accidentally hurt someone in the course of play, etc). Lots of small bullying behaviors, PiC says. Personally I don’t enjoy this kid’s company at all. I know they’re not at heart a bad kid. This is still on the parents who are totally permissive and let the kid get away with being a complete jerk. We see them ignoring the behaviors all the time.
Meanwhile, JB cherishes all their cousins and still enthusiastically plays with them even though there is a guaranteed conflict every 2-30 minutes. I’m not sure what to make of their willingness to keep playing with such an obnoxious kid but that’s not my issue. (Though truly I am puzzled by it.)
PiC and I had a long talk about our responsibility here as parents and adults because we want JB to learn to navigate conflict but we also do not want stand by and let certain behaviors pass, nor do we want JB to think that they have to accept these kinds of behaviors. Not least because it grates our very souls. We have no solid answers but we were ruminating on the good ways to deal with this. PiC commented that his enforcement of our rules across the board and being strict with the nibling is between us and the nibling, it doesn’t help JB navigate the issues. That got me thinking. Maybe it does. It’s our responsibility to enforce house rules: we don’t snatch things out of people’s hands, we respond when we are spoken to, we use our words.
And when we do our job, a job our relatives dismally fail to do, I theorize that it empowers JB to stand up for themselves and hold firm when they want to, when the cousin is being a jerk. I could be totally wrong but this is a working theory and this is a long term situation so we have way more time than I like to think about to keep navigating.
Creative work
JB has assignments to use their class assigned words in complete sentences and I think they’re a real hoot.
I will send a big package and it will have ghosts in it.
I will go around the poop so I won’t step in it.
A fish is going to eat me on Monday.
Life with Smol Acrobat
New tricks: they have mastered the M and B sounds. MAAAAAAMMMM MAMMM. BA BA BA BA! Bao bao bao! Ah BA!
We’re also playing games. They’ll pretend to feed me, or pretend to pick stuff up and give it to me and laugh when I play along.
It’s so interesting how they communicate at this age with no words. My friend wondered what they’re thinking at this age and I can’t get that question out of my head.
Clapping: is a huge source of entertainment. They rip off their bib with dramatic flourish and then clap for themselves so proudly.
I’m less proud because we’re usually not done with the meal, their hands, face, bib and now their shirt are a mess and now half that mess is on the floor. But they’re so happy.
Watching Smol go to sleep on a hard day is still a journey:
Insert a squalling or whiny or impatient Smol into the crib. Upon touchdown, I hand them their bear friend whose ears are suspiciously still wet even though no one has touched it for a couple hours. Gross.
They grin like they know what I’m thinking.
I wave and leave to watch on the monitor. They hold the bear by the ears and roll around for ten minutes, cuddling and snuggling. Just when you think, prematurely, they might be slowing up, up they pop. One hand in mouth, one hand petting bear friend, then they fold in half at the waist over the bear. Up again, then folded over again. And again. Soon they look like a tilting toy, a round bottomed baby, that keeps rocking forward and back and back and forward. Hand always in mouth.
Then they move over to another plushie friend, hello hedgehog. Hi hedgie friend. Nuzzle nuzzle. Hedgie goes on the head. Hedgie goes under the chin. Hedgie goes over the shoulder because hedgie isn’t big enough for a proper squish squash. Back to the bear friend. Pet pet pet bear face. Squish bear friend. Whack dog friend on the head with flailing hand. Intentional? No idea.
Fall over on face hugging bear friend. Pass out.
Reading buddy. They’ve always been reasonably attentive to their bedtime reading books but are usually too active after a nap to sit for a book. That seems to be changing a bit this month: they’ll sit and listen to two short books after naps too. Not always, but it’s a nice start.
Skills(ish): they JUST got motivated enough to hold their own bottle. Great. Just in time for me to start needing to plan to transition them off bottles in a couple months! Awesome. Also awesome, they don’t think milk should be in anything but a bottle. Water they’ll drink out of anything. Milk? No.
Pupdate
I spotted a flea on Sera the other day. You know I am deeply interested in taking good care of my dogs, so the first time that happened with Seamus, I had the screaming heebies and felt horrible about it, like I was a collosal mom dog failure. Since then I’ve learned that we have a surprising amount of wildlife here: pumas, skunks, raccoons, feral cats, all kinds of critters running around.
Even the most well kept dogs are going to catch the occasional hitchhiker. And generally that’s all it is. I check them thoroughly after every time I catch the odd one, it only happens once every year or so, and make sure they’re up to date on their flea meds and go on. Sera seems unnerved by the thorough flea checks. I assure her that she didn’t do anything wrong but I don’t think she gets it.
Precious Moments
JB singing a song from a toy, questioning the lyrics: I’ve been working on a bulldozer, all the livelong day. Wait. Maybe it’s hard to live all day? I’ve been working on a bulldozer living all day? I’ve been working on a bulldozer, it’s been a long day?
1. Is there anything more satisfying than bringing your dog fresh blankets out of the dryer?
2. Saturdays feel like days where I get to choose everything I want to do in whatever order I want, in whatever increment I want.
Sundays feel like days where I have to do what I have to do.
I would like more days like Saturday.
Which is not to say I don’t appreciate the value of Sundays. Even if I wanted to be doing something else, the things I am doing are things I wanted to get done so there’s satisfaction there: cooking a meal, teaching JB a little about food, letting the kids be together and playing and feeding each other so they build their bond absent parental involvement, cleaning and vacuuming. Making arrangements for people’s birthdays.
Challenges this week: Another nasty cold landed and got the whole clan done to Super Sneezy Sera. Bad times y’all.
I was asked privately to help organize for a PF friend in need but it’s hard for them to ask for help, so they wanted to stay anon for this. This is someone from our own community who has been going through some rough times.
Hey y’all, I’m pretty sick but a PF friend of ours is having financial difficulties+needs help w/temporary housing. They asked if I could organize a bit of help to tide them over anonymously. If you can, (giftso they don’t take out fees, paypal, admin@agaishanlife.com) I’ll get it to them ASAP.
Year 2, Day 260: Shifting back to normal school and work mode after a long holiday weekend and having a helpful person around is, in my professional opinion, YUCK.
*****
I’ve been rotating through four pairs of sweatpants for a solid year, day and night, because they’re so warm and comfy why would I wear anything else? I only put on real pants to take JB to school. Sometimes. Sweats are real.
We’re going to see people for the holidays and I’m not looking forward to the need to look like I give two hoots about how I look but I should probably get a pair of jeans that aren’t ripped clear across the leg? The last pair I bought was seven years ago and they’re in a pretty shabby state. I do have a smart looking pair of grey corduroy pants that I’d just get a duplicate of in another color but these dandy things are even older than my jeans and aren’t available anymore. Alas. (PiC thinks my pants being older than JB makes them OLD. I say they’re still young until we hit the 20s.)
I spent all day with a vague sense of missing sales but the few things we need weren’t available (pants for me, though I didn’t bother searching more than two stores) or aren’t on sale (the Le Crueset enameled cast iron frying pan because we’re sick of the waste of nonstick pans that don’t last) anyway.
On principle, I was tempted to shop more small businesses but that would be gratuitous right now. We just spent a small fortune at a small business for our anniversary gift.
I’ve been working on gifting and visiting logistics for the upcoming holidays and have a three page checklist in play now. Before any of that socializing can happen, though, JB has to get their second vaccine, PiC and I will need to get our boosters, and even Sera will need a flu booster since there’s dog flu outbreak going on. Only Smol Acrobat may dodge the needles this month, though I can’t be certain whether they’re due for anything routine soon.
I’m crossing my entire body like a pretzel hoping large vaccine trials for the under 5 and under 2 sets (they’re being tested separately) yield solid data SOON.
Year 2, Day 261: Smol miraculously slept 11 hours! But my brain fog, oohhh my brain fog today, so thick, it felt impossible to think around.
My first sign it wasn’t going to be a great day was when I started making breakfast and stopped a split second before I cracked all the eggs into the compost bin. At least it was before. I’ve done this before and only caught myself after a few eggs.
I’ve been holding on to a prescription of meds to take as needed, intermittently, for fatigue. Through the fog, I reasoned that this inability to think, this feeling like my brain is stuffed full of cotton, MAY be related to fatigue? Hell, it’s worth a shot. I tried my first, very low, dose. I didn’t notice much change in the first half hour but it seemed to lift a bit of the fog enough so I could clear a few things off my desk.
1. With some trustworthy help with the kids, I feel the hardened shell of my soul softening some and swelling with a trickle of much missed patience for JB. I hate that I’ve been so closed off but under this much constant duress it’s been impossible to unclench my emotional grip.
It’s not going to last, this is a very temporary help, but I’m observing and taking some heart that maybe the frozen feeling of despair we’d been existing in can and will pass when we have more balance in our lives, when we aren’t holding on for dear life or fighting back to back just to survive.
Challenges this week: suffering from the lesser plague. Not happy about this.
2) I had intended to be done with all our Lakota Giving for this year two weeks ago but we had a huge outpouring of donations and I’d been steadily working through fulfilling needs for families. Last night I took a last look at the list and ran across an individual whose situation really wrung me out. This young man, at the age of 30, is a paraplegic with limited use of his hands. He lives alone and it sounds like he lacks any mobility aids as he lives mostly in the dark, being unable to reach the wall switch. I’m inquiring into what he has and what he needs. I strongly empathized because my chronic pain threatened to leave me alone and immobile at a very young age but even if you didn’t have that experience, I’d think that would sound like a miserable way to live. JB sure thought so. I very much hope we can help set him up with sufficient aids to function reasonably well. Ideally I would love to be able to outfit him with a wheelchair if he could use one. If you’re able to pitch in, a gift (since donations and payments are charged fees) to admin@agaishanlife.com through PayPal would be going to a really good cause.
Over breakfast one day, we talked about the coveted Mr. Sketch scented markers they would sniff all day if I’d let them and why I didn’t let them sniff markers, even harmless ones, until we had a chat about it. I don’t think I had even heard about whip-its until watching The Good Place but kids inhaling things for a euphoric high, or eating things that aren’t food on a dare (hi, Tide pods?), or inhaling and ingesting things that really shouldn’t be isn’t new in the world. We talked about how, often, kids will make foolish decisions and pressure other kids to do the same or to follow them into trouble. It can be harmless (we cousins used to follow each other into mischief all the time) but it can also be really harmful (when it gets to ingesting non foods or inhaling anything).
*****
We also talked about scammers. They asked what a scam call was, so I explained that some people try to call and trick you out of your money. How??
Well, sometimes they say they’re from your bank, and they need your password because something is broken and they need to fix it so that you can get to your money. Or they might say oh, give me your info so I can send you money. Do you think they ever send that money?
JB: noooooo!
Me: Nope. Who is going to give you free money if they don’t know you??
We discussed how scammers use fear or greed or both to push people into doing what they want. We even lightly touched on how my dad was a scammer, he lied to me playing on my desires to help my family, and took my money and ran.
JB: He’s the worst!
Me: Yep. That’s true.
Portion control
We typically tell JB how much of something they’re allowed to eat because given free rein, they’d likely gobble up everything in sight like a host of locusts. We want them to have balance in their nutrition sources and to be mindful and conscious of the food they take in so they have a solid foundation for a good relationship with food. We also want them to remember that other people exist!
It’s a work in progress of course, and we have to slowly take off the brakes to give them chances to exercise their judgement and get it right or wrong. So when faced with a platter of 8 deviled eggs, I turned the question around. How many do YOU think is reasonable?
JB: Four. I can eat four.
Me: Yeah? How does that work?
JB: I can eat four and then there’s four left!
Me: There are four left. How many does that leave for each other person who might want some eggs?
JB: Four! Everyone can have one!
Me: So you get four and then everyone else gets one?
JB: Yep! That seems reasonable.
Me: Ok, so you think that’s reasonable for you. I see. How would you feel about it if someone else got four and you got one?
JB: Oh..no. I wouldn’t like that.
Me: Ok so maybe that’s not fair to everyone? How should you divide them then?
JB: Ok I will stop eating now because I’ve already had two, and that leaves two for everyone!
Me: That’s probably more fair, though you can have one half of one of Smol’s since they might not want two.
Struggling
Gotta be honest, I’m really struggling to connect as a parent. It may partially be a function of depression and the pandemic, but I am struggling so much to connect to JB as a young kid. They’re not that “easy” (super active/angry/ cheerful/demanding/hilarious) baby anymore. Babies are physically chaotic and emotionally super easy for me. Young kids have opinions and desires and are trying to figure out everything through their little kid lens that I just don’t understand. And as their personality develops, little things that remind me of terrible family set off all my alarms and it’s harder to shut those alarms down. When they refuse to engage with their schoolwork as we work on homework together, and instead just throw out random guesses, my back goes up and I get angry. When they try to make me laugh, I stiffen up. That was my brother’s MO; I hated how manipulative he was. It’s not that JB is him, it’s just these little targets they keep hitting that viscerally remind me of people I can’t stand. Habits that I had grown to loathe decades ago. I keep looking for my little kid but they’re not that little kid anymore. Emotionally, I missed a whole year of bonding because I was so exhausted and prickly during pregnancy, I mentally checked out and PiC did almost all the fun hands on parenting. I was just trying to survive. It’s hard right now.
Life with Smol Acrobat
Hilariously, but inconveniently for us, Smol has realized they can use the nice door stoppers we have on our doors as a door handle. If any door isn’t latched shut and they want to leave the room, they just grab hold of the handy baby level “handle” and open ‘er up. 🤣
In the same category, they’ve learned how to climb and every box is now a stepstool. Talk about motivation to get my decluttering act together again!
*****
My favorite developments this month: While Smol isn’t that fun to feed with their finickiness sometimes, they are mimicking us when eating. They like to pretend to offer ME food after they take a first bite, much like how I often take a first bite to demonstrate that this is a thing we’re going to eat, or to check the temperature, before I offer them their food.
New game: they just started this flopping thing. They’ll sit on a bed and just flop on their face spread eagle. Get up, crawl a step and flop again. Rinse and repeat for ten minutes, sometimes giggling, sometimes being really really quiet and then POP surprise! Still awake! Annnnnnnd PLOP down again. It’s cute as heck.
*****
Overnight diapers have really saved our sleep this month. Smol has been back loading their bottles in the latter half of the day and so they were overfilling their normal diapers overnight. I kept waking up to a 3 or 4 am baby with a soaking wet diaper that had leaked. Thank goodness for the super absorbency of the overnights!
*****
My least favorite developments: the whining and the refusal to eat what I put in their mouth. They’ll open, accept the bite, then PLOP push it back out. Rinse and repeat. Arghhhhh. Just eat it.
They also have a need to chew on my sleeve or hoodie every meal and get so so angry when I deny this demand. Look, sometimes mama needs her hoodie to stay clean for a whole 12 hours!
*****
It’s startling to me that Smol asks for me.
They’re in a stranger danger sort of moment right now when looking at people makes them worried or vulnerable and, even when PiC is holding them, they might reach for me in that moment of scrunched up face cry. JB never did that. I mean, they never had that vulnerability fear thing which is probably odd but more specifically they also never reached for me. It was always the other way around. If they were in my arms, they wanted dad. If they were perched in dad’s arms, they were staying put. Being wanted is still unusual.
Pupdate
Sera had a bad ear infection this month, pup was hiding it well until she couldn’t any longer, so I’m grateful that a course of meds cleared her right up after 10 days. She did NOT enjoy the applications but … had to be done!
I continue to be impressed at how patient she is with Smol. She is always allowed to walk away from any interaction but even though she doesn’t love their heavy-handedness, she clearly genuinely wants to engage with him. We always caution them to use gentle hands and show them but babies will pound away with their drumming hands.
She lets them hang out next to her and she just wants to lick them in exchange for the giant pats that look like hitting. She isn’t startled or stressed, maybe in part because we don’t allow that to happen unsupervised and so she’s always getting positive reinforcement for her tolerance as well, but I would expect some stress if she didn’t like it. She most certainly doesn’t hesitate to get up and leave when they are heading for her and she doesn’t want to deal.
Precious Moments
JB’s attempts at jokes continue….
What does the banana say when the apple bumps it?
Hey, watch where you’re going, apple!
JB: The joke is that bananas don’t talk! And apples don’t have EYES.
JB: Knock-knock.
Me: Who’s there?
JB: Door handle.
Me: Door handle who?
JB: Door handle the knob is crooked!
…. I don’t get it.
JB: why did a bunny eat a turtle marshmallow?
Because it wanted a turtle but it couldn’t get one so it ate a Turtle Marshmallow!!
Year 2, Day 246: Smol slept in! Which was both nice for us and also disruptive because when they get up early, their first nap works well with the school dropoff and work start routine. Ah well. After dropoff, I took the prenap hour with them: a bottle, some time to wreak havoc and pull everything out of baskets several times, then a game of chase around the playmat. Cackles galore!
We got almost two hours of work in, during which I tested out an anti-anxiety exercise of writing out all the things plaguing my brain right now and separating the stuff I cannot control from the list of things I can control. The latter list is so short. The former list, so long.
*****
I hate hiring.
*****
I came pretty close to finishing my day’s work by 8 pm at which point I just needed to take another break (having taken one for dinner). Unfortunately almost wasn’t good enough and since PiC has a massive day of meetings tomorrow, I went back to finish up and try to make some headway into tomorrow’s work since I’ll be primary caretaker for half the day. Upon crawling into bed, I contemplated how profound a difference it is between being in pain and not being in pain. Pain meds rarely work well for me but on the rare occasions that they do, I feel that absence of pain so intensely. My doctor refers to me as “not a drugs person” but if pain meds were that effective every time? I’d be on them in a heartbeat. It also makes me marvel about how people who don’t live in pain every waking and most sleeping moments must take that for granted.
Year 2, Day 247: I’d forgotten how terrible it feels when my pain meds work on the physical pain and simultaneously block my brain from falling asleep. I got three hours of sleep last night. 😭 By 10 am, my muscles were on fire and my brain had gone all spinny. I took a short “break”, set myself up on the bed with a huge stack of pillows for about 5 minutes before Smol woke up and thank goodness for that reset. I wish I’d thought to do that sooner. I was forcing myself to power through because there’s too much to do in too little time, of course.
