Weekend wrap-up

So I nearly crapped my pants while driving home in the pouring rain tonight. Thankfully I made it home in time to rush up the stairs, leaving the kids in the car. When will I learn I can't drink lattes???

Thanks for all the comments about my last post. It cheers me to hear that other children B's age behave like this from time to time and that it is normal. I really don't think anything is happening at school otherwise he wouldn't be so happy to go and so sad to leave. I think he just thinks it's fun to lord it over this smaller, slightly annoying creature. I tortured my aunt's lovely, gentle cat just because I felt like it when I was a kid - who knows why? Kids can just be little bastards sometimes. Anyway no more scary incidents today just because I kept the baby either in his (my) room with the door closed or on my back. We went to a birthday party, all with younger kids, and I had to stay right on top of B to make sure he didn't victimize them. I'm sure people there thought I was being a helicopter parent - I was, but for the sake of the other kids! Hell hath no fury like a two-year-old being approached by a one-year-old to take his toy. 

Thank God for the return of preschool tomorrow. Thankfully my sister and brother-in-law visiting kept us busy so the four day slog went quickly and was actually quite enjoyable (other than B trying to kill his brother). Christmas will be the same - I intend to use one weekend day at the school's weekend program after Christmas so I don't lose my mind. 

I hope that now that Theo's first little tooth has busted through he'll be a little happier. Poor guy was miserable last week. So he was a Thanksgiving teether and his brother was a Christmas teether. Interesting. Have not felt it while nursing yet but I am dreading that first bite. 

I think like a lot of parents right now I am feeling very drained. Let's hope I get a decent night's sleep tonight and am ready to take on the day tomorrow!

The deep end

Thanksgiving morning started off with Bobby brutalizing his brother repeatedly and me throwing him in his room to listen to him scream hysterically while I calmly prepared our Tofurky roast. This morning started with Bobby brutalizing his brother and me finally snapping and smacking him hard on the head.

Yup. It's happened. I've hit my child. And you know what? I can't promise it's not going to happen again.

What happened today was after Bobby repeatedly pushed his brother on the ground and smacked him, I smacked Bobby on the top of the head. He cried. I put the baby in the other room and drew Bobby on to my lap and explained he has to be nice to his brother, if he doesn't want him touching his toys he needs to just move them, that hitting hurts, doesn't it? That we're a family and we need to do just hugs and kisses and no hitting because it hurts. I asked if he understood and he said yes. I hugged and kissed him and told him I loved him no matter what. And then he went into the other bedroom and smacked his brother on the head. 

I hit him today because after yesterday I was so frustrated that he just didn't get it that I felt like the only thing I hadn't tried was showing him how bad it felt to be hit. But I know this wasn't the right thing to do because how can you teach someone not to hit by hitting? I get it. But nothing is stopping this shitty behavior. Nothing.

It's so maddening because everything was going so well - he liked to play with him, would hug and kiss him, maybe was a little too rough sometimes, but I could let them play together and mostly it was fine. In the last week or so something has taken a very sinister turn and now Bobby just loves to kick, punch, hit, and jump on top of his brother. It's shocking and awful. And he does it all with a big smile on his face, and when I angrily tell him to stop he just laughs at me and does it again. What the fuck do you do when your child acts like this???

I spent all night googling this question and the answers are all things I did (other than the hitting - nobody advocates that!) - the explaining, redirecting to proper behavior, giving more special time together, etc. I bend over backwards, and always have, to make sure Bobby never feels slighted by the arrival of the baby. And yet here we are nine months in and I am seriously worried Bobby is going to kill his baby brother. 

The only thing I'm going to have to do now is keep them separated. No more crawling around together on the floor, no more baby playing in Bobby's room, no more letting Bobby hang out in baby's crib while I cook breakfast. Nope. Baby is going to have to be in the carrier at all times unless Bobby is restricted somehow (he seems to want his high chair again which is awesome) or just put in another room and left to scream there until I can come pick him up. It's all horrible but it's the only way to keep him safe right now. And the only way to keep me from smacking the shit out of his older brother.

How did we get here? He used to be so sweet and kind, giving baby his pacifier and wanting him to be put on the floor so they could "cwawl awound". Then all of a sudden this week pushing his brother onto the floor, stomping on his chest, smacking his head, kicking his head when he's standing up. Awful! I've yelled, I've begged, I've bargained, I've said I understand how he feels, I've modeled proper behavior so he knows what to do instead, and now I've hit him to get his attention and nothing stops the behavior. So for now I just have to separate them. That's all there is to it.

Of course right at this time I had to listen to a podcast about the Uni Bomber and how his brother turned him in and how toxic their relationship was - and now I'm terrified my boys are never going to get along and instead are going to grow up constantly fighting and hating each other. We got off to such a good start and now...I don't know. Let's hope this is just some weird phase. Bobby also hauled off and smacked me across the face the other day, too, which he hadn't done in ages. What gives?

Don't tell me he needs more love and attention and special time from me without the baby. That's all we fucking do. I'm beginning to wonder if all this attention focused on Bobby is what created this monster. 

Right now I am that frazzled, impatient, angry, raggedy single mother I never wanted to be. Regretting everything. Hating my life. It sucks. I am utterly exhausted and worn out and there's no relief in sight. Just more of the same, day after day. Once Theo is too big to be carried or restrained I honestly don't know what I'm going to do. I feel like in a very short time it's going to be like living with a lion and a tiger in my house. 

I hate to say it but I so wish I'd had girls. I am entirely unprepared for this amount of aggressive male energy and I really, really hate it. The constant destruction, climbing the walls, and now this aggression towards me and the helpless sweet baby (who in a few months will morph into a little destruction machine, too) just makes me want to cry. 

Oh yeah - Happy Thanksgiving. 

Whatever gets you through the night

My voyage on the living room couch continues. T has been sleeping twelve hours straight for weeks now, other than the occasional coughing fit. One night last week it was so bad I went in and nursed him, then busted out the nose frida to clear his runny nose, then set up the humidifier. We have all had this cold for what seems like forever, with Theo having it the worst. I keep panicking and googling his symptoms to see if I'm being neglectful in not taking him to the doctor (remember I have zero experience with this) but everything I read tells me he's fine and it's just a cold. All of our noses run every day all day - which says to me we're all allergic to something in or around this house. I don't do anything about it because I have no intention of putting a two year old through an allergy panel just to be told it's something in the air that I could medicate him daily for, which I won't do. I mean, it's annoying but it's just a runny nose. 

So I'm still on the couch even though at this point I don't think T would wake up and see me there and want to be picked up. I haven't decided about moving back into my room. One, I kind of like being sentinel out in the front room - if anyone tries to break in the front door they'd have to deal with me and my mace first before getting to the kids. Two, I get the fireplace and the TV and the ability to listen to podcasts on my phone to go to sleep. Three, T still wakes up way too early for me so I can sleep an hour or two later while he hangs out in the crib (sometimes happily, sometimes not so happily). I can't say that I am getting a full night's sleep although I am probably getting more sleep than I give myself credit for. I still wake up a lot. Call it hormones, anxiety about being away from the baby or anything else going on, or just the weirdness of being in the living room on the couch, but lengthy stretches of sleep still elude me. Is it better than being the open all night milk bar? Heck yeah. 

Last night I had a horrible nightmare that I had a maxed-out credit card (I actually pay my bill in full every month and have for years - I'm what the credit industry calls a "deadbeat" because they can't make any money off me, ha!) and a maxed-out line of credit, and my event lost a couple hundred attendees because of my price hike. Oh, it was awful! And it felt so real because this was my exact scenario in 2001 when I was paying over $1200 a month just to keep up with the minimum payments on all my debts. It sucked. And yet that same year I was somehow able to buy this house with no money down, and a few years later experience a real boom for my event that back then looked like it was on its last legs at only four years old.

You just never know what the future holds. Let's hope it's something good, for all of us!

The secret of how to get toddlers to eat

...is apparently douse everything with ketchup. The last couple of nights B has positively cleaned his plate - a big plate with veggie meatballs, mini popovers I baked, and bought spinach bites - and I'm pretty sure it was because of the ketchup I added as an afterthought. A quick Facebook post on the topic confirms that apparently everyone knows this trick except me. I'm not much of a condiment person (I'm pretty sure this ketchup is from the first Obama administration) so I find this a bit baffling. But hey - if that's what it takes to get B to eat real food and not just yogurt for dinner, bring it on.

Oh, and here is B's first school picture! Ain't he just the cutest?

Food Issues and Other Minefields

Re-wiring one's brain is hard. I did this years ago to combat depression and anxiety (you wouldn't know it reading this blog lately, but trust me, it used to be way worse, and by "it" I mean "me") and am now attempting to do it again to be a better parent. It's hard work. But I'm determined to get there.

I'm proud to announce I've gotten a lot better about not snapping at B when he gets really out of control and tantrum-y. Several times over the last few days when I could see that ol' train a-comin' I would instead take a second to quell my own instinct to either slap him (have never hit him and never would), throw him in his room (did this twice), or just snap at him to knock it off, and instead would go hug him and ask what he needs. It's incredible how quickly this stops the tantrum train! He has enough language to tell me now which makes this approach possible. And I can tell by what he wants that the tantrum started by his perception (often correct) that I'm not listening to him or can't understand him. I've done the what do you need/hug approach enough lately that he now will say "I need a hug, I need a hug!!!" when he feels himself getting upset. It's pretty awesome. Why can't things always be like this??? Well, because my brain still goes to the angry place too easily. When someone is whining at you over something you think is unimportant and stupid you just want them to shut up. But there's a better way to get there. I just need practice!

I appreciated the suggestions about mealtime battles. I love the idea that when it comes to food, we as parents decide the when, what, and where, but the toddler decides whether or how much. This is another area where I seriously have to get out of my own way. I find it absolutely maddening when B doesn't eat, or doesn't eat enough, despite the fact that he's gaining weight and thriving. So...why am I so bothered? I think it's a few reasons. One is just my normal, cave mom instinct that if he doesn't eat he will die, which is a tough one to quiet. Then it's the fact that I love to cook and always fantasized about enjoying meals with my children, but I know this reality is many years away and that depresses me. Finally, to me food is love (you could call it my "love language") so on some level when B rejects food it makes me feel personally rejected. I know that sounds stupid, but it's deep in there, I think. I'll never forget the time I slaved all day to make Thanksgiving dinner for an old boyfriend only to have him make fun of the whole thing and tell me everything that was wrong with it. Talk about feeling rejected!

So I'm trying some new things when it comes to food - things that are so simple that I should have done ages ago but just haven't had the balls to - such as setting a time limit for eating, enforcing the "eat what I give you or forget it", and then trying to not be upset and disappointed by the amount of food waste/rejection that goes on. It's not personal even though it feels personal. Tonight I actually got him to eat this curried rice and lentil dish I'd made for myself. He didn't eat a lot of it, but he did eat some, which is something. I think I'm just going to keep trying adult food and see what happens. I am terrified of becoming one of these moms who only feeds her kids macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets. Seriously, I can do better than that! 

The food thing is a work in progress and is very emotional for me. It reminds me of a clip from one of my favorite This American Life episodes called "Are You Going to Eat That?" in which a father recounts his frustration at his anorexic daughter's refusal of food; he says that as a parent his one job in life is to provide food for his children to keep them alive, so it just killed him inside and made him feel like such a failure when she refused to eat. 

Oh, the things we do to our parents that we can't even fathom! 

Eight months

Hard to believe a mere eight months ago today I was writhing in agony in a hospital bed. Feels like a million years ago.

It's business time

I've been neglecting my business horribly and now it's nearly December. I decided I need to nail down everything - bands, themes, schedules, teachers - by Dec 1 so people can start thinking about signing up Feb 1 and I can think about paying my $@!?! bills.

After two months of lame procrastination about firing this year's dance floor rental guy (I drafted a harsh letter, then tamed it down, then had friends read and edit it, then didn't send it), he finally called today and asked if I could make a decision about next year by January so he wouldn't have to store the floor - he said he planned on recycling it. I told him yes, I had decided not to use it again. He said ok. We said goodbye. That was it. In the end as much as I wanted to stick it to him for how much this floor was a disaster (people are still talking about it on Facebook...ughhhh) and even more so for that awful confrontation we had, I think this way is really best. He knows he screwed up. He took the financial hit way worse than I did. I'm sure he's totally embarrassed by the whole thing. I'm going to have to see him every time I sing or go out dancing from now on. So it's best to just let the petty stuff go and keep it friendly. I'm a true believer that less is more when it comes to stuff like this, so it's probably a good thing I chickened out and didn't send the letter. 

I once wrote a very angry, spiteful letter to my mother and never sent it, too, and boy am I glad I didn't!

The holiday season is upon us and I'm kind of getting into it. I am pinning new candy recipes and planning on upping my game with actual gift boxes and candy molds. I'm also psyched to decorate this house non-pregnant - no more fears of tripping/falling/over-exerting myself. It is truly a pleasure to be once again able to not drink enough water, not eat enough protein, forget to take a vitamin, eat sugar and carbs, and not worry about it affecting a little helpless being in your belly. Of course I'm not really off the clock until I stop breastfeeding, but for now I relish the freedom.