Easter hijinks

I have survived my first spring break. I ended up caving and registering Bobby for a spring camp at his local rec center - which he only attended for three days due to developing pink eye. Still, it kept me sane for what will be ten days of (nearly) non-stop child care. One more day off school tomorrow and then normal schedules resume Tuesday. Can’t wait to get back to focusing on work and other non-child centric concerns.

We went to two super fun neighborhood egg hunts on Sat, then did an at home one today, then did our usuals playground-drive around so Theo can nap-play at home-dinner-bedtime thing. 

The other thing I’ve been attempting this week, since we don’t have to get up and go anywhere important, is getting Bobby out of pull-ups at night. I have very mixed feelings about it. Most people who commented on a post where I asked about this “night training” process said to leave it alone and wait until he just stays dry of his own accord; but one person said she felt like keeping pull-ups on her kid kept him peeing all night and once she took them off and woke him at night to pee that it worked. I know that with daytime potty training B would have been happy to stay in diapers forever - I remember one day putting a diaper on my tall, skinny almost four-year-old and thinking, “what the hell am I doing? This is ridiculous!” and just cold-turkeying it from there (although to be fair he was already potty trained at school). When we were kids nobody was in pull-ups until seven or eight years old. What the hell is going on? So, with mixed results I’ve been having him sleep in underwear and the BF wakes him to pee in the middle of the night when he gets home from work. Some nights he’s dry, some he wakes up a little wet. I haven’t had to change sheets yet. But now that this is what we’re doing, I am loath to regress back to pull-ups, even though I don’t think he’s “getting it”; I think it’s just been pure luck on the nights he’s been dry. Maybe I’m entirely wrong and I should just keep him in pull-ups until something just clicks and he starts staying dry all night. But I seriously wonder if that will ever happen - even now he’s so used to just peeing while lying in bed, if I ask him what he’s supposed to do when he feels like he needs to pee, he says, “just pee!” I feel like I need to keep trying this method and just take it day by day. I cannot tell you how I long to be free of all diapers once and for all! 

Bobby is 6

My first born is six. This age is significant for me because it’s the first of my real, detailed memories, so I can only guess that his memories have now begun, too. I think about how my tumultuous childhood was just starting around this age - my newly divorced mother repeatedly moving us from town to town, causing me to attend five different schools before fifth grade; my father vanishing to Brazil and only reappearing once when I was eight. I look at Bobby’s life - same comfortable home, a little brother, a mother with him all the time, even a benign father figure now a part of the picture - and can’t help but pat myself on the back a bit. At least up until now, Bobby has had a good, secure, happy life. Now to just keep that up for twelve more years!

Bobby at six is smart, funny, emotional, sweet and sarcastic. I posited to my mom’s group: “are all six-year-olds smart alecks?” and the answer was a resounding YES. So apparently a certain amount of snark is par for the course at this age. Not a huge fan, but I’m oddly gratified that at least he’s developmentally on track! 

After a whirlwind visit, my sister left for NY today. It will be the last time she visits from New York. This week she and her husband put their South Bronx apartment on the market and leave the northeast forever for sunnier climes in Florida. Which leaves me with one living relative left in Massachusetts, my cousin. It’s odd to think that hundreds of years of our gene pool in and around the tri-state area comes to an end now, with everyone either dying off or leaving for warmer temperatures in the south or west. Other than the odd band gig, I wonder if I’ll ever have cause to visit New York again. 

The boys’ crazy bounce house emporium birthday party went well - although as usual tons of people never read the invitation, rsvp’d no at the last minute, or canceled the morning of, it was still packed between my dance friends (who mostly average 2-4 kids), Bobby’s school friends (all boys and two brave girls), and a lone Theo preschool friend. I’m torn about the combined birthday party idea going forward. What may be the best plan as of next year is to have Bobby do an activity with a few select friends and then do a big party for both kids combining everyone. I would just hate to have one kid get screwed because everyone went to one party and not the other. But Bobby is sounding like he wants to do his own thing. I will have to think on it.

With my sister and a close friend paying off their homes, closing up their businesses and planning for the final (or penultimate) act of their lives, it makes me think about these things, too. I’ve already had this in mind, as I’ve written here. In a bit more than a decade, these children will be on their own. My sister’s husband is already 65; my boyfriend is 50 and was a lifetime heavy smoker. We hope they live forever, but odds are we will find ourselves single again at some point in the next 20 years. What then? My sister already plans to move here to California; I still dream of the plot of land with a few tiny homes containing my favorite people, she of course being number one on the list.

For years in the 80s my sister and I lived together in tiny studio apartments in the east village. Is it possible our lives will end as they began, just the two of us sharing a space (of sorts)? I have to admit, I find the symmetry of that highly appealing. 

Easter, birthdays and kitchens

I’m preparing for a bit of a marathon coming up. We have one more week of school, then a week off (I’ve decided to put my big girl pants on and not book a “spring camp” for Bobby and instead keep him home all week...I may come to regret this decision...), sister comes to visit, the boys’ big dual birthday party on the 24th, and then Easter the weekend after. 

I’m glad I kept the boys’ party for them both and didn’t rely on Bobby’s kindergarten friends to fill out his party; only six kids are coming out of his 25 kid class. Now that I know what the returns are on these whole-class invites, it will help me to plan in future years. It will be a big party between Theo’s preschool friends, Bobby’s friends, and all our dance friends. I only just this week got a chance to sit down and do some party planning/designing; it makes me sad when I think of how much time and effort I used to be able to devote to their parties in past years. I think it goes to show how, despite technically having more hours in the day to myself these days, my days are so full and my brain so crowded with complex, emotional “older kid” stuff, that extras like party planning end up lost in the shuffle. I do the best I can, but yeah...some things just don’t get the attention they used to. 

In other news, I’ve decided to forge ahead with my kitchen remodel, whether I can technically afford it or not. A little creative debt management and I should be able to do it without depriving myself of much needed cash in the bank (read: use of lines of credit). I also finally developed a concept for the room. As much as I was tempted to break down walls and go modern, I’ve decided to go the exact opposite route and go WAY back...to the 1920s. I live in a 1906 house, and the 20s was the first time kitchens began to resemble modern ones, with the advent of gas stoves, built in cabinets, and sinks similar to ones in use today. So I think the 20s is a good decade to focus on that would meld seamlessly with the rest of the house while still being functional. I’ve come to realize that the kitchen is my command station - it is my favorite room in the house - and I want it to be my private, pretty, functional space. So rather than opening it up to the rest of the house I may very well close it off even more by getting a swinging door for the doorway that’s currently open. 

I’ve been researching vintage stoves and am planning on getting one like this (technically 1930s, but who’s counting?) and having it reconditioned by local antique stove experts (I went to their shop and they said there’s no problem modernizing these stoves on the inside and making them safe and easy to use). It will serve as my design muse for the rest of the space as well. So - new kitchen, here we go! 

Theo is 4

Today, my youngest turns four. On his birthday, I always run over the details of his birth - how I drove to the hospital alone late at night, leaving my sister home with almost two-year-old Bobby; how I almost got sent home as being “not in labor” but thankfully labor kicked in enough to allow me to stay, the agony of it all and me clamping my eyes shut and begging for it to be over, my doula saying, “open your eyes, your baby is being born!” and seeing little Theo emerge, cranky and dark haired and so different from his brother. 

Those were such different times. We are officially out of babyland - and that all feels like a thousand years ago. If not for this blog I doubt I would retain any of it; the breastfeeding woes, the house vibrating with new life energy with a new baby in it, Bobby peering over his car seat to check out this new little person that had joined our lives.

Now, I have a new four-year-old and a kindergartener. I would say the time has flown by, but it doesn’t feel like that to me. It has felt like four years. I think that’s fair.

Theo is easy going, funny, a good sharer, a true cuddle bug. How much of his personality is informed by being the baby of the family and my being a second time mother will remain a mystery - but personally I think both of those things are huge. Theo has one year and two and a half more months of his preschool life and then I am officially a school ager mother. But for now I can still say, Happy birthday, baby boy!

Hormones

Theo started speech therapy today. It’s been a long road - about six months of phone interviews and paperwork and evaluations just to get my almost four-year-old to make a “k” sound. Still, it’s convenient - takes place at B’s school, in a converted bathroom (ah, LAUSD at its finest), and the therapist was very nice. Oh, and it’s free, and hopefully will get Theo enunciating properly (his issue is he is “fronting” - saying T and D for G and K sounds) and easier to understand going forward. He could outgrow this on his own, but the extra help doesn’t hurt. I’m grateful for it. 

We had a pretty horrendous parenting week last week. The kids just never seemed to recover from their chaotic weekend in the mountains, and by a week later were so out of control with the whining and competing and complaining that I snapped and started yelling and throwing things. Which then left me feeling horribly guilty for days, long after the kids forgot all about it (I hope). 

In my defense, they were awful. And I gave them a big speech about no more racing or trying to be first all the time to the point that it ends up in fights and crying (this is about 99% Bobby’s issue, I might add). I laid down the law and they seem to be getting it. But I also noticed, as I’ve noticed for months now, that without fail the day after I ovulate I want to strangle every male that lives with me. I think what happens is I suffer such an intense hormone drop all at once that it’s really unbearable - it doesn’t make me anxious or depressed; it makes me fly into rages. Which is not good. I am currently looking into medication - of the newly legalized variety - to help chill me the fuck out in the few days a month that I become impossible to live with. Not sure how that’ll go but I’m doing some research. I have to do something because I can’t go on like this. Peri menopause is a bitch. 

Snow daze

Last weekend was my much anticipated weekend in Lake Arrowhead with two other families - eight kids in total. Unfortunately the oldest boy of the family of six got sick the first night and so the family went home; we got another family with two kids to come up the next day. I knocked wood that whatever made the boy sick would not touch any of us and that it was just a fluke. 

There was no snow, so we were mostly just cold and a little bored the first of our three days up in the mountains. We walked around, cooked, ate...walked around...went to a shitty arcade in which Bobby played a bunch of broken games and we let Theo think he was playing games...walked around.

Our final night my luck ran out and I woke up sick in the middle of the night. I was on my 10th frantic trip to the bathroom when, as the dawn’s cold fingers crept into the cabin, I heard the patter of six children jumping out of bed and joyously exclaiming, “Snow! Snow!!!” 

“Fuck!!!” I thought, as ungodly amounts of foul liquid spilled from my anus.

The BF and I got the kids bundled up and then I collapsed back into bed while he took over. Ah, the ecstatic sound of six California kids enjoying their first snowfall...it was almost enough to cover the sound of my retching from the one (of course) centrally located bathroom. 

I was miserable, but like a good mommy, still delighted the kids were having fun. And yes, these are precisely the moments you thank god there’s another adult present. Being sick as a single parent is a fucking nightmare. I don’t know how I would have managed the day - especially the packing up and long drive down the mountain home, in that state, by myself. But hey, I’m sure I would have just muscled through, as you do!

I learned a lot on my first family trip to share a cabin with other families. On a trip such as this, where you’re off your schedule and there’s no structure and too much excitement and strange food and chaos, your small children may experience any of the following:

Pants wetting

Pants pooping

Unexplained fits and tears

Over-explained fits and tears

Focused whining and complaining

Unfocused whining and complaining

Night terrors

Unbrushed teeth

Toy hoarding

Cruelty to younger sibling(s)

Irrationality (more than usual)

You may experience:

Dizziness

Vomiting

Anal leakage

Aren’t family trips the best?!? Actually, we had a really good time and I would totally do it again. As of this date, I’m the only one who got sick. Lucky me!

Plans, long and short term

Money is currently showing up as “pending” in my bank account, but it is included in my balance, and Stripe is not withholding anything. See? Sometimes it pays to wait a minute before going all aggro. Like I used to tell myself when I was pregnant, there’s nothing to worry about until there’s something to worry about.

The hurdle of opening night behind me has freed me up to think about the future. I’ve started asking myself if, various contingencies aside, I might actually be able to sell this place and have a kick-ass house in my golden years. I always sort of imagined I would die here; and I may still. But at the moment I’m on track to pay the house off in eight years. A couple more years after that and my old Katrina debt could be paid off. If I saved some for a couple of years after that, the kids would be grown and I could sell this place and buy an awesome place in the hills behind me with no mortgage (or hardly any). And I wouldn’t even be 60 yet. I had thought this would be impossible due to property taxes, but a friend told me here in CA as long as you are 55 or older you can keep your old property tax rates in a newly bought home. That was a huge game changer. So I may just get that dream home in the hills after all!

Of course, this is all dependent on many things. That I continue to make this kind of money. That I don’t get sued, nobody gets sick or injured or addicted, don’t end up in a spiteful divorce, or, most likely, end up on the hook for kids’ higher education costs. There are so many things that have to go right for this to work. But it’s nice to have a dream, even if it never comes true (or gets delayed).

Short term, I have plotted and paid for a week long trip to the Big Island of Hawaii for the week of my birthday in July. I found an Air BnB in a crazy hippie compound in the jungle that can accommodate us and hopefully my sister and her husband and maybe another friend. It’s going to be a total adventure. I am so excited about it I can hardly stand it. The idea of watching my little sunburned boys running around wild and barefoot makes my heart sing with joy. The thought that they could grow up with memories of unfettered Hawaiian summer vacations - a luxury unthinkable in my cash-strapped family growing up - makes me almost want to cry.

Oh, but we remember their first trip to Hawaii, don’t we? ((Shudder)). We’ve come a long way from those days-!