My kids and notes: Year 9.1
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.
I wonder if being raised by neglectful or abusive parents makes it really hard to trust others. My mother literally never once hired a babysitter, but I once let my then 8 year old wander off for a morning at the pool with a mom i had just met (important note, kid could swim like a fish by then). And I also live in a small town so there’s more accountability. But anyhow, the point is that my mom, who was raised by wolves, could barely make herself let us go to school.
Jenny F Scientist recently posted…Five Minute Blogging
That is a really good observation.
My mom was the overprotective one and she passed that paranoia down to me. My dad, well, you know about him already. He REALLY reinforced the “don’t trust anyone” mantra long before I was conscious of why I operated that way.
I assumed it was all the “Stranger danger” that Gen X got hammered into us as (latchkey) kids.
nicoleandmaggie recently posted…RBOC
I missed out on a lot of it because my mom never let us come home to an empty house!
I did realize as an adult that my mother’s extreme anxiety about our safety was in part an attempt to give us the security she never had as a child. But it’s still completely unhinged to worry deeply about botulism in the dust on your canned goods that have been in a pantry.
Jenny F Scientist recently posted…One Chicken Too Many
And my parents were immigrants so they never experienced the stranger danger phenomenon, but my mom already knew from her childhood that the biggest threats are the people you already know. So that was an awareness I grew up with deeply embedded in my psyche. I paired that with my “don’t trust strangers” and “also don’t trust people” things I learned which made for quite the package.
Nearly always being the host-parent weirds me out a little too, so I decided to interpret it as an honor that other kids’ parents are comfortable trusting me for unsupervised playdates even when they barely know me. After all, I AM a safe person! So their judgement is objectively correct… even if it’s based on less evidence than my worrywart brain would have demanded. š
That’s what I keep telling myself š I don’t mind at all, the kids love it and it’s exhausting but I’m spared anxiety. I just don’t understand it! š