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Please forgive me if I sound preachy, it's not at all my intention.
I've been seeing a lot of posts in communities and, of course, on my friends' page, about peoples' baffling baby/toddler/preschooler problems. I also listen to my sister struggle to solve her own toddler issues on a pretty regular basis. There's been a higher concentration of this kind of thing than usual, lately, and it made me realize that I don't really do much in the way of kid-centric posting, anymore. I still raise and interact with my kids all day long, of course. I just don't see a lot that's actually baffling. It's a lot of repetition. Which leads me to a conclusion.
The epiphany is that all those problems? Kid won't eat, kid's eating too much, kid won't sleep, kid hates bath, kid suddenly became cripplingly shy, kid no long respects your authority... that's just stuff kids do, man. They're all completely temporary problems that rarely indicate anything serious, and in the vast majority of cases you can research and network until you're blue in the face and NOTHING YOU DO WILL FIX IT. Time fixes it. You ride it out. That's...it. Even when it IS serious or could be something long term...there's not usually much you can do about that. Except love, nurture, watch, wait.
I was trying to come up with a way to phrase this in someone's post without sounding really stuck up or just increasing her frustration. Because I think it can actually be really, really liberating. I remember dissecting infant-Ananda's reactions to pooping and her sleepy-time sighs to the point of being at the pediatrician once a week. FOR NOTHING. I remember losing my mind about how in the world to keep Aaron off the table or get Isaac to stop scaling the counters, I kept going to forums and communities for ANSWERS and HELP. (the answer is to get them down whenever you see them up there, even if it's ten times an hour, for months, sometimes losing your temper and sometimes refusing to react, until eventually...they outgrow the urge to do that and you realize they haven't been up there for awhile)
With Jake and Elise, it's been kind of a relief to really understand and feel how temporary each of these sorts of things are. To know that in a year, it will definitely be some completely different thing baffling me about them than it is now. Some things DO require a lot of care and research...like, you know, diagnosable mental conditions and rare diseases and such. Major nursing problems that will sabotage the ability to breastfeed or clues that your child has been abused. Mostly, though, parenting young kids involves great heaping doses of love and surviving until they're bigger.
I'm really not advocating apathy as a parenting strategy. I continue to note that when I do less one on one time with anyone, it results in poorer behavioral results for that one. And each kid definitely needs their own tailored strategies. I just stopped wondering what in the world I was doing wrong and using every spare second they were occupied or unconscious to comb the web for solutions...for totally normal stuff that is SUPPOSED to make you nuts because that's what parenting IS. I really don't care anymore about the artificial color I can omit from a diet to help my little one with their really late cradle cap/aversion to long car rides/desire to go barefoot outside when they need shoes on. I fight with my three youngest about bedtime despite their highly consistent routine just like I did their older brother and sister. For an hour or more. While doing other stuff and without a lot of angst because, hello, obviously I'm going to fight with them about it but eventually they'll all simultaneously lay still long enough to surrendur. Then I settle in to watch a movie with Grant or veg out on the computer and I wake up without it even crossing my mind, the next day. Because I really don't think that I suddenly stumbled upon The Solution to Ananda and Aaron's bedtime woes. I stuck with the whole bedtime thing, but that's not really a magical cure. They just got older.
Prediction: I am going to do the same thing when latency ends for Ananda and Aaron and we're on adolescence. Then somewhere around the middle of Isaac's teen years I'll snap out of it and learn to roll with it as Jake slams out of the house or Elise screams at us about injustice. We'll still talk about it, there will still be consequences, but I will no longer be reading "How to pick apart and then micromanage your teen's quirks".
All that said, kid updates:
Ananda has lost interest in riding bikes with me, which is sad. She's developed a new love for Greek yogurt and a renewed aversion to brushing her hair. As part of our budgetary downsizing we've started frequenting the library again, which she is OVER THE MOON about. Also, after a talk with Dance Empire today, they can totally keep going whether we can pay in the immediate future or not, which was a huge relief and a lot of excitement for her. I didn't want them to even know this was a concern until we knew one way or the other, but Grant thought he should talk with them about how they might be dropping out soon in case they did and it was apparently weighing on her a lot. She's having another up-shooting growth spurt and this one has noticeably thinned her out for the first time in awhile. She's looking more graceful than I've ever seen her, and really pretty.
Aaron is kind of meh on the dancing at the moment, back on the unicycle and starting to be able to do all of his chores without any struggle. He's constantly trying to be funny, and is just barely successful enough that I don't kill him for how annoying it is the rest of the time. His obsessions for the week are acquiring spitballs from thinkgeek.com and getting the Christmas stuff out of the attic. Because he has 3 or 4 pairs and they're what he dances in 3 times a week, he seems to ALWAYS be in black basketball shorts and either a black or burgundy tank top. This simple, solid-colored getup only enhances his crazy gorgeousness and general athletic hoohaw.
Both of them are looking forward to a friend's birthday party at the skating rink this weekend and tired of me having a sore throat and not reading to them at night.
Isaac has been less whiny and miserable since we started him on daily probiotics several months ago - thank you commonreader. I will always call you commonreader, there's no fighting it! Anyway, his hair is a quarter inch or so longer than it has been in a year and as such, the orange is creeping back in. He cannot get enough of the Abeka handbook for reading or any of his workbook work...I think he will reading very soon, he spends an exorbitant amount of his free time doing things like writing "HAT" with a hat drawn above it, or laboriously printing the entire (all caps) alphabet. He hates PATH at the park, and every other physical thing, and asks for sedentary things (movies, computer time, sugary snacks and board game competition, mostly) all day long. His two biggest recent issues - hysteria when dropped off anywhere and poop complications - seem to be mostly a thing of the past. He's huge on counting down to things, like Christmas and his birthday and church and whatever else, and sleeps with a St Nicholas medal.
Jake is so awesome that I'm not sure any of the rest of us are cool enough to hang out with him. He wakes up in the morning, stretches, smiles and says, "Good morning Mom. This is going to be a great day." He says hi to everyone we see in the grocery store. He wears giant sunglasses and has a huge afro. He hasn't asked to do things like get himself a snack or go out in our fenced side yard to play in so long I can't remember; he's a free agent. When things are funny or outrageous he gives you "The crazy eyes" which means he opens his eyes wider than I physically can manage, myself, with his mouth turned down and tiny. Generally speaking when you suggest an activity to Jake his reply is, "What a good idea!" and he tells me often that we're best friends. Giving him anything is really gratifying; he accepts anything with joyous surprise and "Thank you so much! That's so nice of you!" and a massive hug. And he shares and plays with, cares for and entertains Elise a lot. He is also the one who will snap and slap when he's angry, on his siblings, and everytime this happens I think to myself, "I'm Rick James, bitch!"
Elise is in all 3 and 4t clothes, and size 10 shoes. She is really, REALLY affectionate. I wonder often if she is really that affectionate, or if she's making up some of the deficit that I can't ever lift her. But she co-sleeps with us for the second half of the night, nurses several times a day, gives me countless squeezy hugs and kisses, hugs and is carried by Annie at least hourly, demands that Grant carry her anytime he is around...it's just normal to find her cuddled with Jake under a blanket, to have her stroking your face, to see her wrapped around my brother's calf like a giant ankle weight...it gets overwhelming sometimes, you just can't sit down without her immediately being in your lap and not just in your lap, but stroking your face, squeezing your neck and kissing you. She hugs and kisses every mobile baby she sees at the park or who is over here, and cradles her dolls, and lays on top of the cat saying "Mama's kitty, and me". I think her two favorite things in the world are to lay in bed under a blanket with me, and to get in the kozy carrier with Grant. Either puts this massive loopy grin on her face like her eyes are about to roll back in her head from ecstasy. She is really not interested in our authority AT. ALL. And gets pretty loud about her disinterest, at times. She continues to be at or above average in pretty much everything.
As for me. Lemme tell you about Starbucks. I go to one particular one pretty often, in the Prius, while A and A dance. It is consistently this bizarrely meat-market-y environment. I mean, for Starbucks. I know I'm more aware of this because it's basically the only place I go without kids anymore, and people perceive me really differently when I have five kids with me and am driving the minivan. But...come on.
There is this one barista guy who always flirts and talks a lot with me when I order; he's harmless and I get the impression that is his personality in general. But like I got some nuts once and he seriously stumbled over double entendres about his own nuts for, like, 2 solid minutes while I waited to pay. I got this one salad twice and then didn't come back for a month, and when I did (on Monday) he yelled to me as soon as I walked in the door, "Oh, no, we're out of farmer's market salads!"
There is also a general thing where everytime I go there is some (different) guy in there alone, either also on a laptop, or more creepily just sitting and staring around - and everytime I glance up, I'm looking into whoever it is eyes. This is somewhat amplified because there is also always AT LEAST one couple there on a date. Who goes on a date to Starbucks? Do people really do this? I mean it seems like a date, a guy in business-casual reeking of cologne and acting nervous and a girl dressed up with a ton of makeup laughing loudly and often.
Today, they were packed, like I was going to have to take my laptop to the bar, which I don't really like for a variety of reasons but oh well, first world problems and all that. But even the bar seat that has an outlet was taken. I eventually found a cushy chair near that seat, when the girl who was sitting in it asked if I wanted to sit there - she had only books - and I was like, oh it's ok, and she was like, no really, come on, right now. Uh, ok. So she ended up scooting only one seat over, and staring at me with a huge smile on her face as I set my stuff up. So we're there on a row of 10 empty bar seats, next to each other, and she's like, touching my arm as she talks and looking into my eyes the whole time she's smiling, with her books seemingly forgotten, and I'm like, trying to subtly position my laptop and body so that she won't glance up and see the insanity I'm writing.
I don't know. It's surreal to step into this environment of people who are seeing me regularly and...don't know I'm a married mother of five who is not normally driving a small red car. And can only possibly focus on my writing for hours if I'm far from my house.
Sidenote: at some point college-aged people started looking...like "kids", to me. I'm only 28 here, wtf? It's kind of like how it was the first time I drove past my old high school at dismissal time when I was about 22, and went "...whoa. Those are...kids. How in the hell was I that age and driving, and pregnant?" What I like about this perception of mine, and how it changes, is that at least thus far, I've stopped seeing people more than a couple of years younger than me as really attractive, and started seeing them as, well, kids, basically. Younger people. My own peer group has stayed the one that looks "normal" to me and seems ideal as far as attractiveness goes. I think 30 year olds must have sort of looked old to me when I was a teenager, but now they totally just look like "normal people". I can't really imagine a 30 year old as seeming old. As opposed to kids (22 and under), or older people (45 and over). Likewise when I see pictures of myself at 17, aside from being horrified at how photogenic I am not, I think I look crazily young and can't believe I was becoming a mother, blah blah blah. There is this "little girl"ness. I don't like, look in the mirror now and go whoa I'm looking old. I actually just look like a grownup now. Which is obviously fine. *shrug* I wonder how long this can hold, is it possible to be 50 and think 30 year olds look like kids and 50 is where the real relatable hotness is? 70? What?
Related: I keep seeing old pictures of current hot celebrities and thinking, wow, they look a lot better now than they did in the 80s. Which is a big leap, to say that an adult has gotten more attractive over the course of 20odd years. But, say, Johnny Depp? Gwen Stefani? I am not talking about people like Madonna who are obviously plastic'd up.
I've been seeing a lot of posts in communities and, of course, on my friends' page, about peoples' baffling baby/toddler/preschooler problems. I also listen to my sister struggle to solve her own toddler issues on a pretty regular basis. There's been a higher concentration of this kind of thing than usual, lately, and it made me realize that I don't really do much in the way of kid-centric posting, anymore. I still raise and interact with my kids all day long, of course. I just don't see a lot that's actually baffling. It's a lot of repetition. Which leads me to a conclusion.
The epiphany is that all those problems? Kid won't eat, kid's eating too much, kid won't sleep, kid hates bath, kid suddenly became cripplingly shy, kid no long respects your authority... that's just stuff kids do, man. They're all completely temporary problems that rarely indicate anything serious, and in the vast majority of cases you can research and network until you're blue in the face and NOTHING YOU DO WILL FIX IT. Time fixes it. You ride it out. That's...it. Even when it IS serious or could be something long term...there's not usually much you can do about that. Except love, nurture, watch, wait.
I was trying to come up with a way to phrase this in someone's post without sounding really stuck up or just increasing her frustration. Because I think it can actually be really, really liberating. I remember dissecting infant-Ananda's reactions to pooping and her sleepy-time sighs to the point of being at the pediatrician once a week. FOR NOTHING. I remember losing my mind about how in the world to keep Aaron off the table or get Isaac to stop scaling the counters, I kept going to forums and communities for ANSWERS and HELP. (the answer is to get them down whenever you see them up there, even if it's ten times an hour, for months, sometimes losing your temper and sometimes refusing to react, until eventually...they outgrow the urge to do that and you realize they haven't been up there for awhile)
With Jake and Elise, it's been kind of a relief to really understand and feel how temporary each of these sorts of things are. To know that in a year, it will definitely be some completely different thing baffling me about them than it is now. Some things DO require a lot of care and research...like, you know, diagnosable mental conditions and rare diseases and such. Major nursing problems that will sabotage the ability to breastfeed or clues that your child has been abused. Mostly, though, parenting young kids involves great heaping doses of love and surviving until they're bigger.
I'm really not advocating apathy as a parenting strategy. I continue to note that when I do less one on one time with anyone, it results in poorer behavioral results for that one. And each kid definitely needs their own tailored strategies. I just stopped wondering what in the world I was doing wrong and using every spare second they were occupied or unconscious to comb the web for solutions...for totally normal stuff that is SUPPOSED to make you nuts because that's what parenting IS. I really don't care anymore about the artificial color I can omit from a diet to help my little one with their really late cradle cap/aversion to long car rides/desire to go barefoot outside when they need shoes on. I fight with my three youngest about bedtime despite their highly consistent routine just like I did their older brother and sister. For an hour or more. While doing other stuff and without a lot of angst because, hello, obviously I'm going to fight with them about it but eventually they'll all simultaneously lay still long enough to surrendur. Then I settle in to watch a movie with Grant or veg out on the computer and I wake up without it even crossing my mind, the next day. Because I really don't think that I suddenly stumbled upon The Solution to Ananda and Aaron's bedtime woes. I stuck with the whole bedtime thing, but that's not really a magical cure. They just got older.
Prediction: I am going to do the same thing when latency ends for Ananda and Aaron and we're on adolescence. Then somewhere around the middle of Isaac's teen years I'll snap out of it and learn to roll with it as Jake slams out of the house or Elise screams at us about injustice. We'll still talk about it, there will still be consequences, but I will no longer be reading "How to pick apart and then micromanage your teen's quirks".
All that said, kid updates:
Ananda has lost interest in riding bikes with me, which is sad. She's developed a new love for Greek yogurt and a renewed aversion to brushing her hair. As part of our budgetary downsizing we've started frequenting the library again, which she is OVER THE MOON about. Also, after a talk with Dance Empire today, they can totally keep going whether we can pay in the immediate future or not, which was a huge relief and a lot of excitement for her. I didn't want them to even know this was a concern until we knew one way or the other, but Grant thought he should talk with them about how they might be dropping out soon in case they did and it was apparently weighing on her a lot. She's having another up-shooting growth spurt and this one has noticeably thinned her out for the first time in awhile. She's looking more graceful than I've ever seen her, and really pretty.
Aaron is kind of meh on the dancing at the moment, back on the unicycle and starting to be able to do all of his chores without any struggle. He's constantly trying to be funny, and is just barely successful enough that I don't kill him for how annoying it is the rest of the time. His obsessions for the week are acquiring spitballs from thinkgeek.com and getting the Christmas stuff out of the attic. Because he has 3 or 4 pairs and they're what he dances in 3 times a week, he seems to ALWAYS be in black basketball shorts and either a black or burgundy tank top. This simple, solid-colored getup only enhances his crazy gorgeousness and general athletic hoohaw.
Both of them are looking forward to a friend's birthday party at the skating rink this weekend and tired of me having a sore throat and not reading to them at night.
Isaac has been less whiny and miserable since we started him on daily probiotics several months ago - thank you commonreader. I will always call you commonreader, there's no fighting it! Anyway, his hair is a quarter inch or so longer than it has been in a year and as such, the orange is creeping back in. He cannot get enough of the Abeka handbook for reading or any of his workbook work...I think he will reading very soon, he spends an exorbitant amount of his free time doing things like writing "HAT" with a hat drawn above it, or laboriously printing the entire (all caps) alphabet. He hates PATH at the park, and every other physical thing, and asks for sedentary things (movies, computer time, sugary snacks and board game competition, mostly) all day long. His two biggest recent issues - hysteria when dropped off anywhere and poop complications - seem to be mostly a thing of the past. He's huge on counting down to things, like Christmas and his birthday and church and whatever else, and sleeps with a St Nicholas medal.
Jake is so awesome that I'm not sure any of the rest of us are cool enough to hang out with him. He wakes up in the morning, stretches, smiles and says, "Good morning Mom. This is going to be a great day." He says hi to everyone we see in the grocery store. He wears giant sunglasses and has a huge afro. He hasn't asked to do things like get himself a snack or go out in our fenced side yard to play in so long I can't remember; he's a free agent. When things are funny or outrageous he gives you "The crazy eyes" which means he opens his eyes wider than I physically can manage, myself, with his mouth turned down and tiny. Generally speaking when you suggest an activity to Jake his reply is, "What a good idea!" and he tells me often that we're best friends. Giving him anything is really gratifying; he accepts anything with joyous surprise and "Thank you so much! That's so nice of you!" and a massive hug. And he shares and plays with, cares for and entertains Elise a lot. He is also the one who will snap and slap when he's angry, on his siblings, and everytime this happens I think to myself, "I'm Rick James, bitch!"
Elise is in all 3 and 4t clothes, and size 10 shoes. She is really, REALLY affectionate. I wonder often if she is really that affectionate, or if she's making up some of the deficit that I can't ever lift her. But she co-sleeps with us for the second half of the night, nurses several times a day, gives me countless squeezy hugs and kisses, hugs and is carried by Annie at least hourly, demands that Grant carry her anytime he is around...it's just normal to find her cuddled with Jake under a blanket, to have her stroking your face, to see her wrapped around my brother's calf like a giant ankle weight...it gets overwhelming sometimes, you just can't sit down without her immediately being in your lap and not just in your lap, but stroking your face, squeezing your neck and kissing you. She hugs and kisses every mobile baby she sees at the park or who is over here, and cradles her dolls, and lays on top of the cat saying "Mama's kitty, and me". I think her two favorite things in the world are to lay in bed under a blanket with me, and to get in the kozy carrier with Grant. Either puts this massive loopy grin on her face like her eyes are about to roll back in her head from ecstasy. She is really not interested in our authority AT. ALL. And gets pretty loud about her disinterest, at times. She continues to be at or above average in pretty much everything.
As for me. Lemme tell you about Starbucks. I go to one particular one pretty often, in the Prius, while A and A dance. It is consistently this bizarrely meat-market-y environment. I mean, for Starbucks. I know I'm more aware of this because it's basically the only place I go without kids anymore, and people perceive me really differently when I have five kids with me and am driving the minivan. But...come on.
There is this one barista guy who always flirts and talks a lot with me when I order; he's harmless and I get the impression that is his personality in general. But like I got some nuts once and he seriously stumbled over double entendres about his own nuts for, like, 2 solid minutes while I waited to pay. I got this one salad twice and then didn't come back for a month, and when I did (on Monday) he yelled to me as soon as I walked in the door, "Oh, no, we're out of farmer's market salads!"
There is also a general thing where everytime I go there is some (different) guy in there alone, either also on a laptop, or more creepily just sitting and staring around - and everytime I glance up, I'm looking into whoever it is eyes. This is somewhat amplified because there is also always AT LEAST one couple there on a date. Who goes on a date to Starbucks? Do people really do this? I mean it seems like a date, a guy in business-casual reeking of cologne and acting nervous and a girl dressed up with a ton of makeup laughing loudly and often.
Today, they were packed, like I was going to have to take my laptop to the bar, which I don't really like for a variety of reasons but oh well, first world problems and all that. But even the bar seat that has an outlet was taken. I eventually found a cushy chair near that seat, when the girl who was sitting in it asked if I wanted to sit there - she had only books - and I was like, oh it's ok, and she was like, no really, come on, right now. Uh, ok. So she ended up scooting only one seat over, and staring at me with a huge smile on her face as I set my stuff up. So we're there on a row of 10 empty bar seats, next to each other, and she's like, touching my arm as she talks and looking into my eyes the whole time she's smiling, with her books seemingly forgotten, and I'm like, trying to subtly position my laptop and body so that she won't glance up and see the insanity I'm writing.
I don't know. It's surreal to step into this environment of people who are seeing me regularly and...don't know I'm a married mother of five who is not normally driving a small red car. And can only possibly focus on my writing for hours if I'm far from my house.
Sidenote: at some point college-aged people started looking...like "kids", to me. I'm only 28 here, wtf? It's kind of like how it was the first time I drove past my old high school at dismissal time when I was about 22, and went "...whoa. Those are...kids. How in the hell was I that age and driving, and pregnant?" What I like about this perception of mine, and how it changes, is that at least thus far, I've stopped seeing people more than a couple of years younger than me as really attractive, and started seeing them as, well, kids, basically. Younger people. My own peer group has stayed the one that looks "normal" to me and seems ideal as far as attractiveness goes. I think 30 year olds must have sort of looked old to me when I was a teenager, but now they totally just look like "normal people". I can't really imagine a 30 year old as seeming old. As opposed to kids (22 and under), or older people (45 and over). Likewise when I see pictures of myself at 17, aside from being horrified at how photogenic I am not, I think I look crazily young and can't believe I was becoming a mother, blah blah blah. There is this "little girl"ness. I don't like, look in the mirror now and go whoa I'm looking old. I actually just look like a grownup now. Which is obviously fine. *shrug* I wonder how long this can hold, is it possible to be 50 and think 30 year olds look like kids and 50 is where the real relatable hotness is? 70? What?
Related: I keep seeing old pictures of current hot celebrities and thinking, wow, they look a lot better now than they did in the 80s. Which is a big leap, to say that an adult has gotten more attractive over the course of 20odd years. But, say, Johnny Depp? Gwen Stefani? I am not talking about people like Madonna who are obviously plastic'd up.
