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).
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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!
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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.
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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!
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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!
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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.
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I hate hiring.
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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.
JB has been on a real joke telling kick but they have zero idea of what makes a joke funny or how to replicate joke patterns.
Why do quesadillas need so much water?
Because they hate water!
Why do sandwiches need to work so much?
So they can get killed!
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Apple.
Apple who?
Apple head!
That’s not really a joke, you’re just calling someone a name.
It is for a six year old.
Reading jokes from a book:
Why did Cinderella get kicked off the softball team?
JB: because she cheated!?
JB revels in being Smol’s favorite person
They rub it in actually. Reasons they are the favorite: Where mom and dad bat Smol’s hands away from computers, JB helps Smol touch the touchscreen. JB makes the most ridiculous faces. JB will shadowbox Smol and they will laugh so hard at this they fall on their face. And keep laughing.
A hero’s heartbreak. Smol was going through a bout of sickness AND teething. Normally JB swoops in whenever Smol is sobbing their baby heart out and two seconds of Big Sibling cuddles, rocking and soothing, produces a gummy smile and chortles. They usually sing a variation on “everyone is here, everyone loves you, Big Sib is here and I love you, momma is here and she loves you, daddy is here and he loves you, you’re safe and loved…”
This time, Smol paused for breath… Looked at me…and their face absolutely collapsed. JB was both horrified and betrayed. “I’m the Magic Person!! I make everything better! WHAT HAPPENED?!?” said their appalled face.
They brushed their hands off and gave me the baby back, singing, “Mama can handle youuuuu”.
Later we talked about how that was a sign of just how uncomfortable Smol just have been and a good lesson / reminder that we can’t make anyone feel anything different from what they’re feeling. We can’t take away their pain or their experience and we shouldn’t try. We should be there for them. We should support them and show our love, to help them get through, but they’ll ultimately have to get through on their own. (more…)
Year 2, Day 218: Huzzah!! Smol made it through the night to 6 am! A painful hour but so much better than 3 and 4 and 5. The combination of overnight diapers and a touch of sleep training the first night they woke automatically predawn without real cause, no leaks!, and we’re back to square two with their sleep. Thank goodness. Zero (1-4 wake ups every night) really sucked. Hard as it was to crawl out into the dark cold to fetch Smol, they were so HAPPY, babbling and chatting away to their little plushie friends, it was hard not to be infected by their mood.
For my part, the flu shot we got over the weekend is kicking my behind up and down the corridors. I was fatigue-aching from head to toe, not unlike a pain flare tbh, yesterday and today my whole left side aches in a different way. Like it’s inflamed and angry. Here’s hoping this is actually producing an immune response and not just torturing me.
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It feels like I blinked and here we are deep into fall and Halloween just around the corner. I’m glad that I thought ahead enough that JB and Smol already their costumes for whatever small activity we do with their little friends, and I’m trying to use this time to get equally prepared for Turkey Holiday and the winter holidays. I’d rather put in the hard work early so I can enjoy what I feel like enjoying come the time. Half the winter presents are done but there are some I forgot to put on the list or haven’t been able to come up with yet.
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Yesterday I’d tackled the problem of all the kids’ clothes in too small (to give away) and too big (store sensibly for future use). Today I tackled the problem of boxes of uncurated hand me downs from friends clearing out their old stuff and figuring JB would probably like it all. They would, they are a budding pack rat, but I went through to sort things to keep, donate, or recycle. It was spiritually freeing to clear up the post-hurricane-looking closet and floor. This was during my long childminding break from work and it was deeply satisfying to get most of the way through.
Year 2, Day 211: Smol woke up at 245 needing a diaper change, overfull and leaking diapers has been the problem this week. After a change and patting, they went back into the crib. Except that was insufficient service and they demanded my presence for another rocking on the shoulder song before they’d go to sleep peacefully. Terrorist. (Which is weird BTW, when they are being settled for a nap, they just want to be put down, they don’t want any cuddling.)
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I hit my tipping point on clutter and had to do some real tidying today: I put away all the baby veggies and cleared out JB’s now 2-3 year old Halloween, Christmas and Easter candy stash. I left a few pieces that weren’t too old. I ate their Oreos. Best by Jan 2021? Eh they were fine.
Took out an armload of recycling: plastic and paper containers that had been lingering and almost finished packing up a care package I’ve been working on for a friend’s little one. That one can go soon.
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We had my Hainan chicken and rice batch cooking failure turned porridge for dinner. It works great as a porridge so I guess we can call it a transformed meal rather than a failed one. Even Smol likes it!
Speaking of Smol, this little smudge decided they have a top tooth and a bottom tooth, they can bite food now! And they can! We learned this when they snatched a quesadilla from me and took the tiniest little chunk out of it. They glowed with pride and satisfaction.
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We’ve had another loss and I’m at a loss for what to say.
It feels like we have barely had time to cope with any one of the losses in the year. The cumulative weight of all of them together is simply too much.
Year 2, Day 204: I don’t know why but I notice that I’m irritated by effusive reactions over how terribly I feel from relatives who choose not to vaccinate (not to be confused with folks who cannot, like our kids and immunocompromised folks). It’s not my choice to make for them but these days, with the pandemic raging on and killing and hurting so many, it feels like the latter is such a selfish and politically driven choice that I can’t help but feel reactive to it. I think my core self rejects sympathy from them because it doesn’t feel like it could be real? I don’t know. I suppose it doesn’t matter, I’m just noticing the feelings and now hopefully releasing them to the winds.
Actually. Before I release them, I think I do get it. Because if I want to see them, their refusal to get vaccinated feels a whole lot more personal now. Because they know how vulnerable I am, even more so than Smol because it’s quite possible that Smol has a working immune system but I don’t. And while they’re not obligated to care enough about me to get vaccinated and help a sister out, it’s clear they don’t care enough about me to get vaccinated and help a sister out. Whatever their personal wants are, they’re more important than my needs.
That’s why it feels insincere. There’s nothing I can do or say about it since that call is their own, but it feels wrong.
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On a commercial for a university, the narrator says: “The world equally distributes talent, but it doesn’t equally distribute opportunity.” It made me think of this post I’d just read from Jim at Route to Retire: “Many times folks want to attribute financial success to one’s background. …. I don’t buy into that. I’ve already said that you need to play the hand you’re dealt to live the life you dream and I meant that.”
Later in the comments he agrees with me that what you do matters, so does where you start from, and so does luck. So he and I agree. But initially it made me flash back to all the PF bloggers who argued that it’s ONLY down to what you do with what you have, and that your background has nothing to do with your successes. That group overlaps with the group that thinks everything in this world is merit based, microaggressions don’t exist, and that diversity is pandering to the masses rather than leveling a heavily tilted playing field. It’s weird.
Year 2, Day 205: I was struck by a realization today. Yesterday, a friend played sounding board for a family holiday communication and scheduling dilemma. Basically a part of my family that I miss and wanted to see, but has been adamantly anti COVID vax, and only masks when required, hasn’t been answering my messages for months. The last time was when I asked a direct question about gifts they’d sent for the kids. So I messaged a direct question about holiday plans and it’s been crickets for weeks. In the interim, I’ve seen other parts of the family and I didn’t think we had an issue since they readily agreed to all staying masked for both my sake and the baby’s sake. I’m immunocompromised enough that I truly can’t take risks and they all know that. (more…)
Year 2, Day 197: What a day. Up three times to the piercing screams of a Very Sad Baby with a low grade fever, even though PiC was going to cover, because I can’t sleep through that ruckus and it’s really hard for one of us to medicate an uncooperative baby at night. He took the last call alone because I couldn’t move anymore but I couldn’t stop myself propelling my body out of bed automatically the first two times. Unintentional, but still. The damage was done.
Whatever it is that started the fever in Smol also left them with general fussiness (so many tears, soooo many tears) and a red nose. I can’t see any other obvious symptoms – no coughing or sneezing but they have cried so hard they’ve thrown up on me, twice. This is NOT our deal, child. Vomit –> PiC. Not Me. Sigh. At least it’s not sick vomit, and yes, there is a difference. And somehow it matters to my brain.
Of course the virus also took out my ability to function. Every millimeter aches, breathing hurts, my brain can only zero in on faults (that floor is filthy and needs to be scrubbed!), I’m feeling sad and angry and lonely and isolated. But I don’t want to talk to anyone because I’m angry and tired and hurting.
I’m sad that when this happens, the load all falls on PiC. I’m sad that I have a million dishes to keep spinning and when I’m sick, I cannot spin but half of them, if that. I hate feeling this way. I hate feeling physically crappy and feeling emotionally like a scooped out husk of a fruit rind. I’m also mad that my body still cannot handle viruses.
Turns out, of course, Smol Acrobat does not like taking medicine, and found that alternating a few CCs of meds with a scoop of yogurt helps that medicine go down. I had to take the morning part since he had meetings he couldn’t cancel but thankfully PiC quickly took the rest of the day and tomorrow off so that he can be primary childminder and I can get some rest.
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.