A whole new breed

After several false starts, I got Bumpus to wear his little play mei tai baby carrier today. The first couple of times I tried to put it on him, even after carefully explaining what it was and showing him how it worked, he screamed and threw it on the floor. For some reason today he was game, and watching him pat his stuffed animal's back and kiss his head as I do Theo's was the cutest thing ever. Unfortunately though he was unwilling to take it off...ever. We had to get in the car and somehow I managed to get the stuffed dog out of the carrier and let him hold it instead so I could at least strap him into the car seat, but getting him into his pajamas was another thing! Well, can't complain about his enthusiasm, anyway! 

When we were walking to the car a (progressive-looking) guy with a beard drove by and stared at B with his carrier on with a "wow, look at that kid, that's cool!" kind of look. And in that moment I was really proud to be a parent of a whole new, and different, breed of young men coming up in the world.

Turning the corner

I don't know what it is, but the past few days with B have been a lot more pleasant. I think it's a combination of a pernicious diaper rash clearing up (if I had that going on on my girl parts I'd be pretty oppositional too) and maybe the fact that I am encouraging B to do more big kid stuff. As part of my plan to stop underestimating his abilities, I have been asking him to do things, and amazingly, he does them! Here are just a few:

Put unwanted food in garbage

Take sippy cup out of/put into fridge

Give me dishes to put in sink

Open and close gate to yard

Open and close car door

Climb in and out of car seat unassisted

Open packages we get in the mail

Find his sippy cup in the car or in his room 

Pick out which pajamas he wants to wear

All of this may not mean much to you if you're the type who have been doing things like this with your kids since they were babies, but to me this is astonishing. He can do stuff, and he actually listens to me! It's a Festivus miracle. 

As Bumpus grows in his comprehension and abilities, so does young Teddy. Now when I put him on the floor when I shower, when I come out he's wiggled all the way across the room. He is doing his darnedest to flip over. And he requires a lot more time to hang out and look at things - he's starting to hate being in the carrier in the house, which is a major problem for me. I'm not sure what to do instead - if I leave his swing or bouncy seat around, B will get in them and break them (I swear he almost destroyed the swing the one time I made the mistake of  leaving it out), and I'm not too keen on having T in anything on the floor like that with B running around. The other day Bumpus almost took T's eye out with a plastic recorder; I don't trust them being within reach of each other unless I'm right there officiating, and even then...But now more than ever T is screaming and straining against the carrier, and honestly, my back has had it. This morning I was able to leave T on the bed while I made breakfast for Bumpus, but usually he gets fed up and wants to be held. Again, not sure what to do about this. 

Thinking about T getting bigger, heavier, and needing more from me, all while B is still two, scares me a bit. The newborn stuff was easy because he just slept all the time. Now he actually needs attention. This should be interesting. 

Actually got good sleep last night - at the first waking (about 12:30 am) I just brought him to my bed and left him there, then he didn't wake again until four, then a bit around six but we didn't get up for the day until 9:30, which was awesome. But then tonight he woke at 9:45 to be fed. It's so all over the place, I don't know what, if anything, to do to get better sleep. I am going to try this sort of hybrid approach - letting him sleep in my bed the second half of the night, if he sleeps for longer stretches. Some people have recommended putting him to bed later so instead of him sleeping 7-12 he can sleep 10-3 or something like that...but I started putting him down early because he was so tired and cranky, and he always falls asleep right away which tells me he's genuinely ready. But it does suck that the hours he's up and hungry and raring to go are those wee hours of the morning where I count on being able to sleep. It's too bad we don't live on a farm where we could all happily be up for the day at 4 am!

Here are some rare non-selfie shots taken of us at a street fair today. I can't believe that cutie pie is actually my baby! Crazy!

The best of me

Today was a really good day. For whatever reason, Bumpus was just super agreeable to everything, or if he wasn't, he just shook his head rather than screaming. He even stopped screaming in the car when I explained to him that yes, I don't like it when the baby cries in the car, either, but he's just a baby and he doesn't know better. I have been talking to him like a big boy lately and explaining things a lot more - is this what happens when children feel listened to? Or did we just have a fluke of a good day? Either way, thank you, universe, I needed that!

He absolutely gets that he has to be seated before he gets to eat. He's still pretty picky and seems to eat hardly anything, but he might just be in one of those light eating phases. This experience has taught me that, as I suspected, children really do thrive on rules and structure. At least, for now -

So many people have told me how much worse three is than two-years-old that I am quaking in my boots. Right now B's opposition is annoying but not constant - for the most part he just kind of does what I ask, from getting his milk into the fridge or brushing his teeth or picking out some pajamas. What on earth would I do if he just plain defied me - refused to leave the house, refused to let me change his clothes and diaper for bed...what would I do if he got to the place where he would just scream and throw fits over everything, all the time? Not that every three year old does, of course - but I've seen some pretty gnarly three year old behavior out there. God help me.

Well, hopefully by then, a) we'll be in the rhythm of preschool so I will get regular breaks, which I don't get now, and b) the presence of a younger brother he can interact with will be a positive thing.

I've been thinking a lot about B's second year - all that time between ages one and two - and how compromised I was due to pregnancy. I mean, from ages 15 months to two years I was pregnant and mentally and physically not all there for him. It's weird to think Theo won't have that at that age - I won't be all his, either, but I will not be physically or hormonally challenged by pregnancy. So as much as Theo is missing out a bit on his babyhood because I have to devote so much attention to older brother right now, we can catch up later when B is in school and it's just me & T. It's weird to think about that. 

Post Script

Operation Bumpus Sits and Eats is going fairly well. I have been able to convince him that he must sit while eating. He doesn't always eat what I offer him, and the "are you done?" game still goes on longer than I'd like. It's a work in progress. But I think I am definitely onto something - two-year-olds are perfectly capable of sitting at a table and eating nicely. We just have to "train" them the same way we train them to sleep and use the potty. Anyway my frustration level has decreased significantly in this area, and that's excellent!

The Operation Theo Sleeps is kind of falling apart - but that one I can't do much about, since apparently he's too young and little to actually sleep all night yet. He still goes right to sleep when I put him down at 6:30 - but unlike at first when he would sleep until 1 or even 3 AM, now he routinely wakes around 11 PM and is up just about every couple of hours after, meaning I pretty much get no sleep at all since I'm doing about five feeds a night. He's just cranky and inconsolable from about 5 AM on - I try the boob, I try a pacifier, I try burping, but no luck. It could be he just wants to start his day, and I don't want him to. Each night I hope he'll go back to sleeping a little more/longer; it may just be a growth spurt or, again, his body adjusting for how little he gets to eat during the day. Either way I'm pretty worn out. I think when B starts preschool I may use the time to just take some long daytime naps!

Had a pretty stressful visit to friends in Santa Barbara on Memorial Day. I had no plans at all the entire weekend, which normally would send me into a pit of despair, but honestly I was so tired of running around like a maniac that I actually looked forward to a little alone time with no need to be anywhere. I talked friends into planning a bar b q, and it was great to see them, but it's just stressful being out of your comfort zone with a toddler; we sat out in an open area of their complex and Bumpus just ran all over the place and didn't play with their four-year-old as I'd hoped, so I spent the whole time chasing him and dragging him kicking and screaming away from the gated pool area which was all he was really interested in. He also kept pushing their sweet nine-month-old who of course wanted her toys back, making her fall and cry, and making me have to grab him and scold him over and over. It sucked. Thank god parents understand! 

The couple that lost their baby girl days after T was born was there. I can't imagine how awful they felt being around other people's babies. They are far braver than I.

Still, we had a surprisingly good day today even though we were mostly at home. I think B may be as fed up as I am with being out all the time; after lunch I asked him if he wanted to go out to a park but he instead went to the back door. Against my better judgment I let him outside...where the pool is...but amazingly he listened when I told him not to go to that area and instead enjoyed playing in his sand box and with his tricycle. And he was even willing to take a bath after, and I got his scary Howard Hughes-style toenails clipped, and he actually sat and ate most of the little "burger" I made him for dinner. So...good day, right?

In other news, I finally got off my ass and fired my former floor rental guy in favor of a new floor rental guy. It had been hanging over me for months, bugging me every single day, until finally I just pussed out and sent an email rather than calling, since it is true that babies and small children make phone calls pretty near impossible. Thankfully he answered right away and was very gracious about it. This is someone I've paid $12,000 a year for more than a decade. I hate taking business away from people - I'm sure the loss of my contract is going to hurt. But I have to move on to the better deal, you know?

Bad Mothers

I've been haunted by two very disturbing things I saw on TV recently. One was an episode of Louie in which he almost loses his youngest daughter on a New York subway. This spawned a dream I had last night in which I lost Bumpus on the subway and never saw him again. I shudder just thinking about it. 

The other was a scene in Mad Men in which Betty, a horrid narcissistic mother, asks her husband even as her young son clings to her why her children don't love her, and when the husband points out the obviously devoted boy, she says bitterly, "just wait." It makes me think about my friend who will snuggle baby Theo and say how precious he is, and then eye her own rampaging two-year-old and say half-jokingly, "yeah, but then they turn into that." Or my ex-friend with the sullen seven-year-old whose entire relationship seemed to consist of him goading her into buying him video games. I look at my own sons and wonder - is this what it becomes?

I like to think no, of course not, we'll be different, our relationships will always be loving and special, but I'm sure every parent thinks this when their kids are babies, and then peers, divorce, hormones, or just life gets in the way and relationships are strained or irreparably damaged, as is mine with my own mother. 

I often look at Bumpus and wonder if he loves me. It's probably my own narcissism that would even cause me to think such a thing - I mean, why wouldn't he? I adored my mother despite all the times she abandoned me or negated my feelings; but then again, it's those kind of mothers who are adored because we're so desperate for a connection that we want to force one to exist where it otherwise wouldn't. It seems like the craziest women I know have the most polite, perfectionist, perfectly behaved kids, whereas the most stable, normal parents seem to have the kids that are going off the rails (well, some of the time, anyway). But with Bumpus I guess I ask this for the dumbest and most obvious reason - because he doesn't say he loves me, doesn't give me kisses or hugs, doesn't even call me mama. He doesn't seem to need or care about me at all, except when he's hurt or scared and needs a hug. And I cherish those moments. And most of the time I enjoy the fact that he's so not needy and independent and confident, especially when I see other kids being super clingy. But a little part of me worries that I've made a mistake in pushing him to be strong and independent - that I haven't been loving enough. That despite telling him this every day that there is still a distance between us. Is there? Or is it just a toddler thing where he's so on the move all the time that he's got more important things to focus on than mom?

In my dream about losing him on the subway, I was absolutely frantic and shattered, but oddly complacent - my thought was, "I guess that's that - he's just gone." When I woke up all upset I kept telling myself, first of all nothing like that would ever happen because I wouldn't let it, and second of all I would fight like a lunatic to recover him, immediately calling 911 and grabbing every authority figure I could, shutting the whole system down until he was found, like any good mother. Wouldn't I do the same if I watched him grow up and felt like we just didn't have a connection? Wouldn't I get us into therapy or at least sit him down and talk about it? I would never just let him go. That would never happen!

Perhaps all of this is yet another projection of my own mother relationship. She let me and my sister go without so much as a whimper of protest - we were just gone from her life and that seemed to be ok with her. Why didn't she fight for us? We were right there clinging to her and all she could do was wonder why we didn't love her.

I just feel like once B can really express himself things are going to be so different. Right now I don't know how he feels about anything - does he like how I sing him a little song about all the things we did that day every night as I'm putting him to bed? Does he like when I pat his head as I pass him in a room, or kiss his cheek whenever I can? Does he like to hear me tell him that he's smart and special? Does he miss me when I'm gone? Again I feel weird even asking these questions because it's not about me, and I get that. I didn't have these kids so that someone would love me unconditionally - I had them so I could love something unconditionally. I've been known to have thoughts like, if I were to die right now, Bumpus wouldn't even remember me, because he's too little. He'd see pictures of us and maybe read this blog, but I would be a stranger to him. I remember once when I was around six years old and my mother had been gone somewhere and come back, and I remember hiding behind my sister because I was shy around my mother because I felt like I didn't know her anymore. It saddens me how malleable children's affections are at this age. 

I know that just worrying about our relationship is proof enough that I am not one of those bad mothers, that I will always fight for our bond to be strong and special and work through whatever old emotional baggage I'm carrying around to make sure that happens. But I won't lie, I see people struggle with their teenagers or grown sons, and I think all of those boys started out as sweet little loving babies like Theo is now - how did they get there? And how can I prevent it?

Operation Bumpus Sits and Eats

So we're having an eating issue around here (what a shock with a two-year-old). Sometime around when the baby was born Bumpus decided he didn't want to sit in his high chair anymore. He would scream and kick and cry when I would try to lift him into it, and if I was successful in forcing him into it he would just sit there and scream and cry, and/or climb out of it. Which is treacherous enough when it can tip over so easily. He would instead pull out a chair and plant himself at the table, so I thought, ok cool, he wants to sit at the table like a big boy. All right. I support that.

But it's turned into a bit of a nightmare, because he won't sit and eat. He gets up and runs all over the house. Lately I've been closing doors to prevent more greasy fingers rubbed on my bed which at least minimizes the damage, but still - ugh! He used to mess around with toys and run around but at least he'd eat - now he doesn't even eat. And we go through this endless frustrating game of me asking over and over if he's done and his just staring at me, so I start to take the food away and he screams bloody murder, so I tell him he doesn't have to scream like that but instead say, "more, please," which he never does, so I bring it back, and he still doesn't eat it, so I ask if he's done, he ignores me, so I take it away, and he screams, and this just goes on and on and on. It would go on all fucking night if I let it. 

A couple of nights ago I was dancing around trying desperately to ram a piece of sandwhich in his mouth as he lay writhing on the floor, kicking the dishwasher savagely with his heels, and it dawned on me, "you know, I bet my mother, in the 60s and 70s, didn't dangle food over my and my sister's faces while we rolled around on the kitchen floor...and you can bet my grandmother sure didn't in the 40s, or her mother in the teens." This never went on in houses before a couple of decades ago. Why am I tolerating this bullshit? Because I'm surrounded by hippies who tell me it's ok? 

I am going to try an experiment. I have no idea if this will be effective. But I do believe he's old enough to understand. If he gets that he's not allowed to get on my bed with his shoes on and now always sticks his foot up for me to take them off first, I think he can grasp the concept that you have to sit and eat and if I ask you if you're done and you don't say anything, you're done, period. I believe this will result in a very hungry, unhappy boy for a few days...but I need to try. It's kind of like the sleep thing. I let that get way out of hand with him until I had to lay down the law - and it was hard, but when I did, magic! I think I've let him get away with this nonsense way too long, and every day is worse than the last. So starting tomorrow morning we sit and eat in a reasonable amount of time, and if he doesn't eat, the food goes away, period. We'll see how it goes!!!

Oh my aching back

I hate that my blogging has slowed down so much. I always swore I wouldn't let that happen when the baby came, yet here I am. And it's not because I'm frazzled or sleep deprived or busy. It's because I honestly have nothing of interest to talk about. I tend to deal with the same issues over and over - playground crap, constant vigilance required by toddlers, scrambling to keep this child entertained every day. Many days (not today, thankfully, but yesterday for sure) I spend a portion of the day with this mantra in my head: IhatethisIhatethisIhatethis, but then once both kids are in bed and I'm sitting in the living room reflecting, I think, "we had a pretty good day today." Go figure!

Theo's amazing sleep continues. I give him his last feed from 6-6:30, then swaddle him up and put him to bed. He usually fusses around for about a half hour and I have to keep going in to replace his pacifier, but then he'll sleep until anywhere from 11 pm until as late as 3 am! This also gives me the added bonus of having time to pump in the evenings for babysitter bottles. It's only three more pounds until he's physically capable of sleeping straight through (he's 11 lbs now) - which would be so awesome! After suffering through constant wake ups all night with B for a whole year, I am determined to shorten that considerably with T. I'm already sleeping much better with Theo in his crib. Again, when you know better, you do better!

I hired my handyman for a day of random jobs yesterday. I really couldn't afford it because right now is when I have the least amount of money I have all year - but certain things just had to be fixed, like a leaking outside faucet that was probably costing me a fortune in wasted water (and I hate water waste!). I invested in a portable a/c unit for the playroom so I can actually use it this summer, and my sister can be comfortable when she visits. We installed a cheap baby gate on the stairs leading up to the pool in an effort to make a safe outdoor space for B, but of course he scaled it within seconds...in another couple of months I'll have him back to make a real gate. In the meantime - constant vigilance! If I want to use that space this summer so I can settle down and not have to be on the run all the time, I need to make it useable. B actually played in the improvised sand box I made for him last year for more than five minutes, so I'm hopeful that maybe, just maybe, we can hang out at home more.

I am still counting down the days until B starts preschool, which is coming up end of June. I think it's going to change everything around here - not only does it give me two long days in which all I have to do is entertain him in the morning and give him lunch, then pick him up, dinner, and bed, but it also means the remaining days will be more "special". You know, like other people who have childcare at least some of the time - it makes the time you do have with your kids more precious. Or so I hope!

I won't lie - I'm spread pretty thin these days, physically. My back, legs and feet hurt all of the time from the constant baby wearing, bending and squatting I have to do; when I lie in bed at night as I'm doing now, my ankles and feet burn up from being on them all day. It reminds me of when I would dance hard in heels all night - but of course that was considerably more fun than wiping up spilled food off the kitchen floor all day-!