My kids and notes from Year 6.6
July 20, 2021
Growth
How is this child about 3/5 my height????
My parenting growth: I caught myself saying “see? Wasn’t that much easier than you made it out to be??” to Smol and stopped before I committed to it. It reminded me of all the similar sounding comments people make when you come out of your shell and try something, which just makes me never want to try again. I changed it to “well, look at that. I’m glad you tried it!”
Responsibility
JB is on this kick where they are trying to stay up until midnight. WHY. (“Because I’m a vampire!” Great. Just great.) I guess it doesn’t matter much during the summer, and it’s fine if it’s just a phase, but I definitely don’t want to be dealing with this when school starts up again. I did enjoy siccing a happy Smol on their sleeping sibling early one morning though. Revenge for all those early morning wake ups when they divebombed me! Muahahahah.
*****
Being back in the real world is hard. We walked through an unexpected craft fair, and JB saw some really cool things. This would have been fine but their friend also saw the really cool things and their parents bought some for them. We did not. JB was JEALOUS. AND MAD. I sympathized but we weren’t paying $50+ for an unbudgeted impulse buy. We’ve had many talks about picking and choosing where we spend our money, and accepting that we’re going to feel disappointed from time to time while we focus on our bigger goals, and they do remember those principles. But we’re all going to learn to live with feeling the actual disappointment as we actually experience this in real life.
They were able to set it aside and go play with their friend but I know we’ll have a lot more of these kinds of talks and incidents as we ease back into being around other people and seeing what other kids and parents do that we don’t do.
Life with Smol Acrobat
Eating: Smol is getting deep into solids. They looooooove peanut butter toast! They had a week where they also insisted on eating off my plate (Hello, return of JB) and eating off the same utensils. If I’m using chopsticks, they want food off chopsticks. This is not at all convenient when you’re trying to offer the kid soft foods!
Foods they love: peas, carrots, spinach, green beans, blueberry/carrot crackers, french bread with a smear of pate, avocados, broccoli, wheat bread, tofu. They aren’t very into food, not like JB’s intense food focus, but they are very into specific foods at specific times in a specific order. They will happily eat whatever I’m spooning into their face while playing with a spare utensil right up until they want a different food. Then the mouth clamps down and they yell through the closed mouth: Mmmmmm!!!!!! That means to switch. So I’ll change to another food and they’ll happily eat while playing until they closed mouth holler for a change again. But they won’t pay an ounce of active attention to the actual food. Or so it seems. Clearly they pay enough attention to have a very strong opinion.
Moving to solids has made it challenging to get enough formula into them, though. They now just want to have what we’re having and will reject their milk if we’re at the table together. We have to leave the table to do their bottle of milk, then come back to hang out with the adults and solids.
Sleeping: *Quiet squeeing* Smol starting sleeping 9 hour stretches some nights this month! Rae, NicoleandMaggie, Bethany, Crystal, NZ Muse, SP, Alice, Caro, Hawaii Planner, Bethh, Maria, Miser Mom: Thanks to y’all for the encouragement, sharing your own stories, and reminding me that the sleeplessness hell would eventually end. That really helped me pull through.
Play: they can be very self absorbed and focused on what’s in front of their face. They can sit up now. If recently fed, they can spend long minutes chewing on a toy, or kneading a bag of wipes, or petting and chewing a soft blanket and utterly ignore everything else around them. But they also love it when they’re hoisted by JB and hauled off to another room to play, and they love all the nonsense that JB comes up with to entertain them. There is no one on this earth as funny as their elder sibling, in Smol’s book.
Pupdate
JB and Sera are working on their relationship. JB was always Seamus’s puppy, and was utterly spoiled by that as a result. Sera is a normal dog who is learning how to have manners and she’s trying but she doesn’t have the preternatural empathy and intelligence that Seamus did and that’s a tough adjustment for all of us. It’s hardest for JB who doesn’t know what normal dogs are like.
It’s the season of fireworks again here. They start in early June and bleed well into August which is infuriating for Sera’s sake. She normally likes to sleep on her own but during fireworks season, she comes seeking us for safety. She spent the night of the Fourth hiding in our closet. We’d set up her bed in there after three other spots in our room weren’t cozy and protected enough. I thought it made sense to have her close by me but she kept retreating to the closet so I conceded the point and made a nest for her in the closet.
Precious Moments
JB playing a racing game with their friend: Awwww!! I was the LAST to win!
JB interrupting even after they were told to ONLY interrupt for emergencies: Ok I don’t need this to SURVIVE but can I have a piece of paper?
JB: you should buy a new house!
Me: When we can travel again, for summers, would you rather me and Daddy have to work all summer and you keep going to school? Or would you like to be able to travel?
JB: TRAVEL!
Me: If we buy a new house, we will have to work all the time to pay for it. We won’t have money to pay for anything but the house.
JB: We won’t have money to buy our passports!!!
Me: Yup. Passports, plane tickets, hotels. We’ll just have to stay home all the time. And even if we could buy those things, we still have to pay for our home even when we’re not here. So I don’t want to work forever. I want to keep this house that we can afford so we can afford fun stuff too.
JB: Too bad we can’t do both.
Me: Yeah.
JB: Dad is the funnest person to have a bath with.
Me: Yep.
JB: But you’re fun too!
Me: Am I.
JB: Yeah you’re second best.
Me: That’s totally complimentary.
JB: What?
Me: What?
JB clearly watches too much TV, thanks pandemic. PiC and I cracked a joke late at night and JB came out of their room: “Dad would you mind turning the volume down? It’s hard for me to sleep with the volume up.”
JB: I think we should paint our house yellow, purple, and pink. Because Dad likes bright colors and purple is Mom’s favorite color and …
PiC: 💀
Hurrah for stretches of sleep!!!!! You must feel like new humans.
I may have mentioned this before – my niece (a few months behind JB) now asks her parents to take a picture of something she thinks is neat – that seems to scratch the acquisitive itch for her. It typically works really well (and you’re safe to delete the pics later, I checked) but it would be tough if she was with a friend who got to keep the item. Well, I guess that’s another way to build character even if it’s not fun.
Poor Sera. I’m so grateful my neighbors have turned down the fireworks this year, it’s way too dry up here for them.
YES, we feel like actual humans again! It’s amazing. I haven’t built up any reserves yet but to not be losing more ground every single night is just absurdly wonderful.
You might have mentioned it but this was a good reminder! We used to do that and fell out of the habit when we stopped going anyway!
You’d think that Californians would be less reckless with fireworks considering we’re constantly in a drought or on fire but noooooope.