The only thing we have to fear is…
I really lost it last night.
Monday afternoon Noah woke up from his nap with a barky cough, which went away after a hot bath/steam experience. Carl bought a humidifier, ’cause we figured that can’t hurt, and we plugged it in to put on at night in our room.
Yesterday he was mostly okay except for every now and then when he’d cough once or twice with that braying inhale at the end of it that means an airway clearing, and I was getting a little concerned although the “every now and then” was like, every two hours.
Then as we headed towards the evening he started getting raspy and a little wheezy (on the exhaling breath, I noticed) and looking like he was getting a cold (his second!). He was pretty tired out, and nursed himself down (something he never does any more) and I laid him down and listened to whether he was breathing too fast and checked his fingers for blueness and generally did a check and then headed out to the kitchen and cranked the monitor up.
I was just settling down to hopefully get my last two articles finished and clean up the first three for this week (I hate that the Xmas season means a lot of ‘list’ articles, but they are faster to write in some ways. Except if you’re me and obsess with which ten things to choose, or when to stop the list, or whatever. But no, still faster in some ways.)
When over the monitor came a high pitched… wheeze? I don’t know. It sounded like stridor, which is the high pitched sound on the inhale. And had I just stopped to listen some more I bet it wouldn’t have repeated itself, or something.
But I leapt over my chair and rushed into the bedroom, accidentally banging the door open and waking Noah up in the process. I was on high, high adrenaline and took Noah for a nurse in the rocking chair but I was tense and then a little shaky. He picked up on that and was a bit wriggly, but probably would have gone down okay if he hadn’t had a coughing fit just as I was transferring him into the crib. Or if Carl hadn’t come in the front door right then.
I’d had time to realize, at least, that I was overreacting, so I passed Noah to Carl but that was a mistake, for Noah’s sake. For mine it was good to be able to do a few jumping jacks and try to knock my body out of its freakout. I talked to Idaho for a few minutes (too short!) and tried to work, but it was clear that it was becoming a two-parent, or at least a boobed-parent, job.
Noah started going through all his signs and fighting to be let down, which normally means “up for four hours” but he was also getting really wheezy and congested and finally we threw him in the car and he went to sleep sitting up and we got over that hurdle. And got a (decaff) coffee at a drive-through.
When we got back (now 9:30, after all this; he went down at 7) I was still really freaked out. It wasn’t hard to connect the dots intellectually - I, and maybe other people in the system, were totally triggered around the whole breathing a little like Emily thing. But it was awfully hard to step my emotions and body back down from the idea that Noah might not breathe! right! and die! like Emily! And he made that NOISE! And maybe we should go sit in emerg!
And in fact I ended up mostly Googling stupid shit and checking on Noah and at 11 pm I went to bed without my work done and setting today up to be really difficult. Noah got up at 11:10, went back down around 11:30, and then woke up at 3:30, down about 15 minutes later, up at 4:15, and never really went back down although I handed him over to Carl at 5:30 so I could get some work done before Carl had to shower & leave at 7.
Years of therapy have given me the capacity to recognize when I’m having a PTSD fight-or-flight reaction, and some skills to walk down from it, but none of that has given me the ability to trust that if I shut my eyes and sleep when my baby’s having minor respiratory issues, that he will still be there when I wake up. My body even was all involved and I was really feeling that bizarre birthing bed I slept on the night Emily was born and the night after when she’d been transferred, and the feel of her body cooling in my arms.
So yeah, didn’t get much sleep at all.
I did take Noah in to the doctor today. He has a cold (by then he had a runny nose and his coughs weren’t making the braying sound any more). It’ll probably be a few rough nights babies colds blah blah blah. I also got my work done through adrenaline, being willing to let something not very polished or done through, and judicious administration of Fancy New Toy to Noah. (Also an email to my editor that said “here are the articles, I’ll probably be rewriting this one if I may before the final pass-through to the site. Something for tomorrow morning.)
Just getting through all that took a lot. Tonight I find myself physically tired but still on alert, and after I write this I’ll probably go try a bath or some yoga, assuming Noah doesn’t wake up. (He’s having a rough road, poor baby, due to copious snot. My MD does not recommend baby cold meds.)
But I also find myself tired-frustrated-angry that once again the mildly difficult (baby, colds, coughs, wheezing) is turned into what emotionally feels like the astronomically difficult (life and death, fear, adrenaline) because of PTSD. And this PTSD was medical system created. It’s frustrating as all get out.
I have to give the backup doctor at my doctor’s practice credit though. He’s basically a walking dead white guy (I know he’s over 60; he may be in his seventies, and not very high tech) and sometimes apt to tut-tut a bit. But he checked Noah out really thoroughly and then he asked me (imagine!) what was worrying me the most. So I said the breathing and talked a tiny bit about why, and so he really walked me through which noises are bad and that if it responds to steam for 30 minutes - not less! - it’s probably not vastly serious and how often to check on the baby and all those things. Which was just the kindness I needed to get on with the day actually.
Noah is largely unfazed, except for the sleep/snot factor. In fact today he figured out that he can pull a chair over to the table (or use the handy bench, until I moved it), climb up on the seat, and then climb up onto the kitchen table and play with my computer! This all took him the time it took me to turn to the coffee pot and pour a cup of (yes, decaff) coffee.
Life!
Shopping with Noah
Noah signs bananas!
I proudly say yes, we’re buying bananas!
Noah signs eat bananas.
I say we have to weigh them and pay for them first
Noah starts to wail.
I offer a cookie instead (graham cracker)
Noah signs cookie back
I give Noah a cookie
He takes a few bites and smiles. Then he throws it on the ground and shrieks ‘nana! nana!’ (Banana again)
I pick the (dirty) cookie off the ground and put it in my pocket
Noah shrieks and signs ‘cookie, cookie’
I tell him it’s dirty now
He signs ‘dirty’ and I say that’s right, it’s dirty now
He signs “eat” and “cookie”
I tell him there are no more cookies
He leans over the edge of the stroller and spies a box of chocolate chip cookies complete with picture on it
He points at the box and wails
I start to come up with an explanation, putting my hand on the cart handle
He stops wailing, pats my hand, and signs “baby”
I say “yes, Noah is mummy’s baby.”
He beams at me.
Then he points to the cookies and wails.
(Surely this was not an actual attempt at manipulation????)
I give him his sippy cup, he throws it on the ground. (Stupid mommy!)
We get through the checkout line despite the High Drama and I give him a piece of banana.
Sunshine breaks through the clouds and choirs of angels sing.
Then, we have to put on his jacket. He freaks out.
I put the jacket behind him, over his shoulders
He immediately starts trying to put it on, incredibly unsuccessfully, dropping the piece of banana on the floor
I pick the banana up using a tissue.
Noah waves his hand at the tissue and makes his “i want it” sign he made up himself
I give him another piece of banana, after putting his jacket on
He throws it on the ground and shrieks mightily.
After much back and forthing, I give him a tissue
He plays with it happily.
Until it’s time to get into the car seat.
But that’s a different story…
Christmas is coming / the goose is getting fat
So, Christmas.
I don’t especially like it as holidays go. I do like the reason/excuse to be nice to people: bring them cookies (this year the cookie bake fest is ON! Yes!) and give gifts and even, maybe, send cards although I find writing the personal notes and putting the stamps on overwhelming as a whole project (individual cards though, when I’m doing them, I like).
But the shadow of abuse falls over it. Well, let’s be frank. Not just that most Christmases of my/our youth was I being abused, I was also almost inevitably sick with pneumonia (not necessarily unrelated events). And then after that was over with, my mother kept having these nightmare celebrations where she’d reminisce on great past holidays (did I mention abuse?!) and forget about The Christmas My Parents Had Kicked My Sister Out Of The House and all those kinds of things.
The whole tree/nativity/gifts thing can send me into a spin. Some people, like Lynn, have very dark memories and spend the time in that tense abuse anniversary fog. Some people, like Lyr and I, get tired out (not necessarily in a bad way) trying to get good stuff to everyone we love (and never succeeding). And some of the kids in the system really want the fairytale Santa Christmas (which Carl has occasionally pulled off, bless him).
Then of course there’s the latest round of memories: Christmas pregnant with Emily and sick with a cold; moving out from our house with all our stuff into storage on Dec 23 of the year she died and then spending Christmas Eve in the IBM parking lot and on the road to Ottawa; and then last year.
Also - and this is terrible from someone who made such a fuss about a gift last year - I am uncomfortable with it being super commercial. I love the exchange of gifts. I hate the idea of consumer debt over it. I’m not really sure what a good way to balance it out is. And Noah’s birthday showed how overwhelming it can get with kids, really quickly (although I think everyone is adhering to my wishes about not going overboard, at least).
The thing is.
It’s not about me any more.
Ohhhh this year we can get away with not observing the full ritual, but this is probably the very last year we can. It’s truly time to start considering what I would like Christmas to be like for Noah and working to make that happen. Have a tree, or not? Santa and stockings? baby Jesus, or just emphasize Rudolph and The Grinch? Or go counter cultural? Lean towards Buy Nothing Christmas, or do something mid-range, or solve a lot of angst by throwing money at it?
Festivus?
One thing I know I want to do is some schmalzy volunteer thing - hand out turkey at a soup kitchen or deliver carols with Meals on Wheels or something. I know, I know, it often seems overdone to do it once a year. But when Carl and I were working together and we did the Meals on Wheels thing, we saw that people really were - glad. Not only that, but it made such a good break in the day to be truly grateful, to get out and serve someone else rather than sit at home counting gifts. Preferably on the day itself, but if not, around then.
Other than that, I’m really not sure. I would like to do a little decorating, but not too much. The baking is really the core of our system’s celebrating, and Noah can join in with that (even this year!). But do I want him to make a wish list for Santa? Do I want to go to church? Do I want to get kids’ books all about it? I really don’t know. I’m going to be interviewing the people behind Buy Nothing Christmas and I’m really seriously thinking of whether our family should go in that direction.
Any thoughts out there?
Gifted children
I don’t feel ready to write about the bad weekend but I do feel ready to tackle the gifted children question. As a life update first, though: Noah has indeed taken to walking - and in quick succession, climbing up on the furniture, and opening doors (the ones with the lever handles). My coffee table has been moved against the wall for the nonce. :)
So - gifted children. Julia over at Here be Hippogriffs has been wrangling with pre-kindergarten testing because her son is testing off the scale on some things, which has made for some really interesting discussion in the comments. The best summary I’ve seen of the whole issue is a phrase someone came up with (I don’t feel up to tackling searching the comments for proper credit; I know, I know) which is: gifted children are gifted learners; gifted adults are gifted doers. As far as single sentences go, that really hits enough truth for me to want to paint it above my bookcase in my office. Jody at Raising WEG also hit on this topic in her post on New Addictions and how easy/early mastery of things can lead one to rely on one’s strengths and not learn how to deal with frustration (to make a really gross general summary).
My experience bears both these ideas out completely. I (using I loosely throughout here) was a gifted child; by IQ probably profoundly gifted, although I will never give out the number and indeed make up ridiculous ones now and then because the whole experience of being a high-IQ-labelled child has made me irrevocably crazy on the subject. And I do mean crazy.
I was also a child who was eager to please and, due to abuse in various forms, at times terrified of failing or displeasing adults.
What that meant in elementary school was that I got the message - intended or not - from everyone around me that my smartness was what mattered. More than anything. Anything. And that because I was smart, I was given responsibility and I had better handle it. And I did, generally speaking.
(My parents were not completely idiotic. They made some choices that were geared towards the whole me, but those were generally overshadowed by the rest of it.)
I was known for being the smartest kid in the school… ever. Where the adults around me got off saying that - teachers coming to my house for lunch (remember when teachers did that?) and telling my parents that it was a rare gift to get to teach me. And other fucking bullshitty crapola. (Err not that I’m bitter or anything.)
In some ways this served me very well - being thrown into a French Immersion (FI) programme, for example, has been one of the joys of my life. Also, although I have a lot of negative things to say about my less-than-ten-percent acceptance rate high school for smart kids, I’m still glad to have gone there and had that experience.
(At high school I was not the smartest kid in the school ever, not by a long shot, and THANK GOD.)
Of all the messages I got about being guilty and having shame, there was a sometimes counterbalancing message that I was smart enough to figure things out, and by and large that has provided a foundation for some paths to self-esteem.
But being an intellectually gifted kid unbalanced my life in profound ways, especially because that’s how other people treated me. As a fluke of nature.
Also, because I was flying through the intellectual hoops at school and elsewhere, I was considered to be doing well when I desperately was not, emotionally and socially and in terms of sports and other things.
My one reprieve, the basis of so much good in my life, was camp. That’s a whole other essay I write over and over, how camp saved my life.
University was where it all really fell apart though. Because my high school was so intensive (and a little fake world bubble where, you know, challenging teachers was good and going on long digressions about Hegel was de rigeur) I hit university ready to run.
My first year I was so fucking bored I actually wrote papers for other students because I was bored (I won’t go into how arrogant and stupid that was, but I will point out that I never got less than a B despite not taking a class or doing any particular research beyond a night’s worth of reading and that just scares me about the whole university system in general).
My second year I got sick. Really, deathly ill sick. I missed 6 weeks of classes. I got a bit behind. And I had no idea how to handle that or what to do; I never asked other people for notes or profs for help because I was, you know, too smart for that.
I still squeaked through.
Then the next year, possibly because my illness rewired my body chemistry, or because the dissociative barriers were breaking down, I was having flashbacks most nights and not sleeping, and then I discovered the Internet and was on PernMUSH too goddamned much, and I squeaked by on intellect, balls, and sass alone. In my usual way I did really well on the advanced seminar stuff and totally blew the easier survey courses, because I didn’t, you know, study.
And then my fourth year. Ah, my fourth year. My family had blown up; my boyfriend fucked around on me and we broke up; I was treated for depression with Prozac but didn’t refill my precription. All that sucked, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was that my thesis topic - nominally approved the year before - was turned down by the head of the English Department due to ‘lack of faculty expertise in the subject matter.’ (It was an undergrad thesis! They couldn’t have pretended??!)
I flipped out. I. flipped. out. Why? Because I was that weird combination of scared out of my mind and fucking arrogant. I had spent the summer tracking down every single Glass family story by J.D. Salinger and reading all kinds of eastern philosophy at Robarts and there was no way - no way - I was going to write a thesis on anything else. (I am aware of the psychological weirdness here; Salinger’s little family of gifted children being the topic, etc. etc.)
I already had enough credits to graduate with a regular four year degree, but not with honours. I could have done that at any time. But I didn’t.
Instead, I stopped attending university, but I didn’t formally drop out until January. You can imagine what my transcripts were starting to look like at this point. And I went home, but I had no identity left as a smart girl. I went home stupid, depressed, and very very bad.
My dad was really kind to me. He had the experience of being a prof and therefore having seen enough kids flip out; he’d also had his own waterloo and switched majors in his fourth year at an Ivy League school. My mother, less so. She got across that she loved me, you know, despite my having wasted everything god and she gave me and not being deserving of room and board.
I’m trying to think how to describe that time in my life, but I find even now I don’t have the words. No matter what happened - incest, illness, rape - I had always had a little voice in my head that said ‘well at least you are smart and do well at school and will have a great career.’ (I don’t mean a multiple personality voice, either.)
That voice kind of died and ended up sounding like this: You suck! SUCK! Suck! And it wasn’t even like “I’m stupid” or “I don’t have the right skills” or “I’ll be okay eventually” or “I will write a great novel about this!” I got a job at a clothing store that was empty for several hours a day during the week and walked around folding sweaters and jeans while that voice played, over and over and over.
I knew I had once had “A Gift” and that I was wasting it, had wasted it, and that I was worse than a waste of skin on the planet; I was nothing.
And I think that period in my life really taught me why child actors might end up on drugs and child musicians never touch the piano again and child intellectuals, like me, might end up essentially exorcising from their lives anything that smacks of school or academia; anything traditionally ’smart’ like discovering a cure for cancer or becoming a brilliant analyst.
I kind of maintain that in fact, I did drop about 40 IQ points during that 6 months of my life, not because of any drinking or drugs - I was doing neither - but out of sheer willpower.
Because - and god this is fucking rambly but here it is - I had to ultimately decide what was more valuable - me, or my giftedness.
I know that most people ought to be able to have both.
But I could not.
The people whose approval mattered to me saw me only in one way, and I was more - I want to scream that one at the universe; I was more than a brain! - and it seems to me like it really came down to a death struggle between them.
It shouldn’t have because there should have been room to screw up; to get back on the horse, so to speak, and work hard and stuff. But there wasn’t. And almost every significant person in my life - except Lynn’s piano teacher and my camp director - had, it seemed to me (and I still think I’m reasonably right about this even though I know really it must have been more complex than that) liked me because I was smart and because I was responsible.
I never got the message from anyone that I was okay just, you know, as a breathing human being. (People may have tried to get this across; I don’t know. I just know that even now trying to look back at it, I still don’t see it.)
All my life I had heard that I was too smart to screw up, and I had screwed up royally. So, at 21 years old, I accepted the screw up and jettisoned the smarts.
I still have the smart kid’s distain for mediocrity, banality, and stupidity, but ultimately - although I too am mediocre, banal, and stupid, I am okay even so.
And I’m glad. Because once I stopped having to be a genius, I got to start to learn how to be a human being. I did learn, at the gym and elsewhere, that even if you’re not gifted at something you can go through steps to get better. I learned at work that actually, even though being smart really does help to learn things and figure things out, there’s a whole whack of other things - getting along with people; being willing to do grunt work; asking for help and support; attitude and contributing to the United Way - that can lead to happiness and success. I learned with my relationships that humility and caring trump ideas a lot of the time.
And I learned there’s a whole me that doesn’t have to save the world - that can stay home with a toddler and make muffins and write stories and be okay. Mostly. I still occasionally try to save the world in case no one’s noticed. :-) And I really would like to win, say, the Governor General’s. But if I do, it won’t be because I was a Gifted Young Thing.
So what’s the point? God, I don’t know. I suppose this is a cautionary tale in some ways. I’m not neurologically normal, being multiple, and my family was not normal and there were just a lot of things at play.
But for me, being labelled gifted was truly a witch’s birth-curse-wish. How much worse would my life have been if I didn’t have the capacity to read literature early, or the “smart girl” label to lean on? I don’t know. How much better would it have been if I had been able to just be myself? I don’t know either.
I’m not sure how I would relate that to parenting. I’m still sort of too messed up about it to have a good handle on it, and fortunately there is some time to just - you know, fingerpaint, and not worry about it in any particular direction.
But if I had to give anyone advice on it, I would say - gifted children are actually just kids. Kid first, smart second. Be a parent. Let the kid figure out the rest.
But really, I don’t know. I don’t have any answers on this one. I’m content to not have the answers on this one.
~~
* So the fast story of the prof I adore.** I took a writing seminar while my head was starting to explode. I can’t remember what I wrote to get into it; I do remember that the first assignment was to “write about a dead bird.” Most of the class wrote something about birds symbolizing innocence and a dead bird symbolizing the end of innocence, and one person wrote an environmental fable about the phoenix rising from the ashes, unlike the wounded Earth.
I wrote a poem that (thankfully) is long lost but its central image was a Glad Kitchen Catcher out for the garbage with a dead parakeet clearly visible inside it, ’cause a boyfriend gave it to his girlfriend and when they broke up she killed the bird. So revenge. :)
It’s important to understand that ’cause that was the only assignment I completed out of the entire course and I think I went to 5 classes total. So I failed the class, or so I thought until I got my grade which was, I think, a B, although it might’ve been a C+, which was mathematically impossible. So I went to see the prof for the first time since writing the bird poem and I said he’d made a mistake about my grade. He was retiring, which I think accounts for a lot, and he was packing up his office at the time.
He handed me a two-volume Norton Anthology (which is one of my prized possessions still) and said “Well I couldn’t give you an A, because you didn’t complete any of the course requirements. But you are the only writer in the class. Goodbye, Miss .” And then he showed me out.
This makes him one of my all time nicest to me ever people and if I were Catholic I might pray daily for him to get out of purgatory or something. Not that this makes him right, although I sort of hope so.
~~~
** I’m aware that at the bottom of a rant on not having to be special, I shared this moment of being so glad for being perceived as special. There’s the gifted child talking, some.
But paradoxically, he appreciated me in a way that I hadn’t heard before - I hadn’t shown off in his class; I’d written this sort of bizarre/light poem that wasn’t intellectual at all, and he saw that as real. Glad garbage bags, not Einstein. You know? Maybe not. It’s late. Goodnight!
~~~
P.S. And a final P.S. to the Longest Post Ever.
As I was about to turn the computer off I felt that dread feeling… the one a lot of kids who had similar experiences would recognize… the one that says this post was showing off and that somewhere there will be someone who before they got to here rolled their eyes and said “Oh God, she’s just bragging about being smart, and she’s not even that smart.”
That’s the thing about talking about this stuff. If you talk about how smart you were as a kid, it sounds like saying “god, I hate how beautiful I am” - in our society, it doesn’t compute. Talking about it is considered showing off. And maybe it is?
I don’t know. I feel more sick like I was talking about something awful, but unlike talking about being abused or losing Emily I know it won’t be seen as awful.
But I add this P.S. partly to say ‘yah, I know it sounds that way,’ and hopefully stave off a few trolls, and also because I think it is a part of the whole experience of being a kid and being unhappy but people not taking that seriously.
So much so that even as an adult, it’s hard to talk about in public.
Anyways, bed for real now!
More quickies
Oh my god Jennifer I had not thought of Carr’s Water Crackers! The hooooorrror!
~~~
People have started to ask me about another child. I tell you it never ends. First they want to know if you’re dating, then getting engaged, then married, then kid, kid, kid, and I presume then the questions start about the kids.
I need to get this one off my chest. I have no idea about it yet; I have thoughts about Noah having a sibling and I have thoughts about how my career probably would not survive two given Carl’s way of working, and a bunch of other thoughts.
Right now though I have one overriding, strange feeling and that is that in my gut I feel like I was “meant” (whatever that means?) to have two children. But I have had two: Emily and Noah. I sort of feel like they were the kids I was meant to have, even though it would have been very unlikely I’d've gone and had them 9 months apart if I’d had druthers about it, that is, if Emily had survived.
And somehow it gets all wrapped up in Emily’s absence rather than the question of more presences. So I really, really wish people would stop asking. Even though most people ask either not knowing about Emily or have no idea that it bothers me.
~~~
I’m babysitting tomorrow night which makes work deadline even rougher. I should have said no, but I didn’t, plus the couple in question were getting quite desperate. It will be character building, I’m sure. (Noah is coming along, so that means two babies and me.)
I need to be the first to take my work seriously if I want other people to. If I were a nurse, it would be understood that I need to work X hours and that I can’t do it with a child in tow and that the laundry will not get done while I’m working. But because I’m a writer people, including me sometimes, think that you can do it in dribs and drabs with a child in tow. But the fact is that unlike this paragraph that has been interrupted 20 times, writing a decent article takes some focus.
I wonder if I can learn to write one without it.
I’m feeling resentful that going out to one play (includes shoe-purchasing) and one night of babysitting makes things impossible because that’s the sum total that Carl can do, child-watching wise. To be fair to my planning skills he was supposed to be able to do Sunday afternoon.
I’m back to the fact that I need a regular babysitter. I might have to take out another ad.
Quickies
Noah went to sleep tonight clutching a Triscuit, ’cause Carl gave him one to hold last night in lieu of… me. I hope he does not end up with a Triscuit addiction and years of therapy.
~~~
Wicked had good songs, an excellent cast, and was overall very well done. I was a bit disappointed with the storyline and Lynn was disgusted (she has been told the novel is better). Since this was Lynn’s night out (although the ticket was a gift from my parents) she felt a bit cheated, I think. I pointed out that she got an outfit and new shoes out of it, so. It was also fun to be out with my sister.
~~~
That was the second time I’ve left Noah alone after dinner time. Since he was born. He did fine. I was a bit of a wreck.
~~~
Part of the park near us is all torn up from the various tow trucks getting in there, etc. I saw the Porsche today on my way to the grocery store: a Porsche that has gone over a cliff is impressively smashed and ruined. It’s odd to think someone died right off that spot. The gawking continues, with tons of people coming to see. I hope it ends soon.
~~~
It was not the Porsche of the guy I’ve seen around, so that’s something.
~~~
Carl worked all night long - literally; I came back from Wicked, was up with Noah a couple of times, slept in ’til 7:30, and left to take my sister to the airport at 10, and he was still working. He got 4 hrs sleep and is working again. I mention this because between all the Wicked prep and visitors and such, plus Noah, I have gotten no time to work this week, so it is going to be a hell of a dash for Wed’s deadline. With no babysitter whatsoever; even my parents are out of town for US Thanksgiving. Aie, but we’ll make it.
~~~
Of course I am finding time to blog a little, so.
Ugh.
A car went over the cliff by my house today, along which Noah and I walk almost every day at least once. It was a Porsche, with a middle aged driver - I have seen him around, I think, if it’s the Porsche that often goes by.
It’s not a huge dramatic thing to me personally, but it was kind of icky. Even ickier is that people are - barely 6 hours later - driving by in droves to peer over the dark night edge of the same cliff. Human beings can sometimes be a little creepy.
P.S. It’s on the City TV website. I’m not linking to it ’cause it shows my street & gives the name of it and I’m not quite comfortable with that, but you Ontario types might be interested. And for the rest if you’re going to figure it all out don’t stalk me. :)
Noah! (and walking, so as to tick a topic off my list!)
I just have to talk about my kid. I apologize in advance and ward off the evil eye about the brag.
So first: walking. Noah still mostly doesn’t. He will a few steps here and there, and occasionally will take as many as 8, especially if he’s holding onto something in both hands. Occasionally he’ll deign to walk around holding onto my hand or finger, but he tends to get frustrated and want to crawl. So if, say, I’m trying to run him around a restaurant lobby, it turns into a “stay standing! — no way mum!” tug of war.
I’m starting to wonder a little bit if there is an actual physical reason he doesn’t like walking. He seems to have the balance down okay but his muscles get kind of tired out (he stands plenty though). One of his hips turns in a little which might affect things. I’m going to ask my doctor at his 15 month shots appointment, but meanwhile I’m kind of in that space like “well… he’s a little late but not really into problem area yet, so I’m feeling a bit of pressure but I don’t really think I have to worry yet.” He has been late with a lot of gross motor stuff and mastered it fine regardless, too, so there is that.
So what has Noah been doing while NOT learning to walk? Well my god, here is where my day has gotten complicated. He’s grown quite a bit so he can reach things like the edge of the kitchen counter, etc. And he has made it his mission to make sure he can get to any spot he wants to go to or explore.
I may have mentioned before that he figured out the safety latches on the cupboard doors a while ago - the ones where you have to press down on them, on the inside, to get the door to pop open. He just slips his baby hand in and pulls down and voila, the keys to the kingdom. I installed a hook and eye on one door and he used a spatula to push it up and open. He can operate all the lever-door-handles in our home and is working on the doorknobs (I know covers are available). Our french doors latch at the bottom with a little sliding bolt. He can operate that too.
He also knows how to lock the indoor doors that have locks. So if you see a putty knife lying around, that is why - it’s faster than anything else for getting them open. Not that he has yet managed to do it with me on the other side, yet, but one day I am sure it will happen.
Worse, he’s learned how to unscrew things. Plastic water bottles? He can unscrew them, if they’re not too tightly screwed in the first place. Today I had to call poison control because he found a sample-sized bottle of shampoo (my bad; it had fallen behind a dresser) and unscrewed it and swallowed a mouthful. He also takes the knobs off the dressers on a regular basis.
He has very little use for toys, now. Why would you play with those when you can be unscrewing shampoo you have retrieved by first taking a drawer out of the dresser? Or perhaps opening the safety latch on the lower cupboard that operates like a pantry and nearly unscrew the olive oil? (Now stored over the fridge; that stuff is baaaaad if aspirated, not to mention messy.)
You would think I am never around. But I am! He’s just fast. And the olive oil was one of those dumb/lazy moments. You know, the “if it’s back here behind the plastic applesauce containers…”
We’ve had to install a toilet lock, a dishwasher lock (he can unlock the dishwaster’s commercial lock), and an oven lock. The fridge he cannot yet manage. Once he learns how to undo those locks, we’re in trouble. And he is working on it, trust me!
My favourite trick so far though is the one where he decides to toss a dish towel up over the edge of the gas stove while mummy is making oatmeal. No, he didn’t quite manage to catch it on fire ’cause I only use the back burners. But I am considering cold food for the next 6 months.
Today I really felt like I was just following him around ensuring he didn’t kill himself. Until I fell on a long bath as a partial solution to the need to explore (I do need that sand and water table). We’re starting beginner crafts too - finger painting, drawing, and playing in ’safe’ dough, all under high-supervision - because that seems to help, as does going outside, although the weather is becoming pretty iffy. But that’s pretty much all I can do, it seems - redirect that energy towards safer stuff.
I ran into some mums at the mall who had been there for 4 hours. Noah will sit still in his stroller without huge protest for about half an hour; having him up in the Ergo adds another half hour to an hour, and if he can play in a shopping cart by reaching out and grabbing the clothes of someone going past, you can get another half hour in there. Although talking to him about everything adds on some time too. If you do a meal in the middle you might be able to restart it; stopping at a park works sometimes too. Still.
(I thought with a baby and being at home, I would get amazing Xmas shopping done. And maybe some handmade stuff too. Ahahahaha. Amazon.ca is my friend.)
He’s also a little bookworm. I got him a picture dictionary and he flips through it on his own and does all the signs he knows, and then he sits with it and points to recognizable things (point to picture of high chair, point to high chair. At this point I must say “high chair.” If I don’t, all hell breaks loose.). Then he puzzles over other things, like - walruses. Or dresses.
He also loves the Dick Bruna books, particularly “I can read” and “I can read more.” He flips to the grandmother and grandfather page if my mother is on the speaker phone, with glee.
As far as fiction goes, he has little use for it. He’s all about the non-fiction. Rhyming games are okay, though. He’s got patty-cake down, and clapping at the end of songs, and a few other things.
There are a few misconceptions going. When I ask him to point to his nose he inevitably touches his ear. He can, however, find my nose just fine. I’m not sure what that all means, but I’m sure he’ll work it out before grade 12 exams. He also is categorizing broadly and oddly sometimes. A horse is a dog (sign for dog), but a zebra is not. Lions are dogs, but tigers are cats. Etc.
The signing is a huge plus, although it leads to arguments. Like at the grocery store:
Me: here’s a cracker
Noah: signs ‘cookie’
Me: I only have crackers sweetie, sorry. Cracker. No cookie. (the last three signed too)
Noah: signs ‘more’ ‘cookie’
Me: only cracker
Noah: wails
Or, see above, but substitute “apple” for crackers and “grapes” for cookies.
He ‘talks’ constantly. His sounds are pretty consistent in some situations. I think he knows what he’s saying, but most of it is not coherent out here yet. (He does have some interesting words down like “doyun” (down) ”uh oh!” and yiiiiiite (light) down just fine.) Carl says he takes after me in this. The talking a lot I mean. Gee this post is a demonstration.
He has a lot of new fears. He’s scared of the vaccuum which is not helpful for keeping the floors clean, but it’s perfectly understandable. He’s scared of any wind-up musical toys, which I find a little odd, especially as he gets into a state with them where if they’re there, he cries, and if you take them away, he screams. I have just hidden them all.
He has a little bit of imagination starting, I think, or at least imitation. He takes sticks and ’stirs’ in anything resembling a pot. He cuddles his dolls and he plays patty cake with the two with plastic hands and heads (the soft doll, he does not, but he does talk to the soft doll and not to the plastic ones). He babbles on his cell phone and makes car noises for anything with wheels.
He is kind to the cats often and brings them crackers to feed to them. Of course then sometimes he tackles them.
He pets me and brushes my teeth and hair and tries to put my socks on.
He has little jokes and laughs a lot. He tries to charm strangers most of the time, but sometimes he gets in that state where if any stranger approaches within two feet he flips out. He dances to some music, even if he doesn’t walk.
It’s still really fun. More tiring than I thought, to be on his time/mood all day. But good.
Posts I want to write
I’m in a bit of a fall spin right now - Xmas gifts, cards (ahahaha) and work, plus Noah has a cold, plus I’m still suffering creative angst. It’s all very silly. Here as a placeholder to myself, posts I want to write:
About the bad weekend Carl & had a week+ ago
About having been a ‘gifted’ child
About writing and my job and balance
About Xmas and Noah
About Noah and walking (he still mostly doesn’t)
Now y’all keep posting, those who have blogs, so I have something read while I am procrastinating. :)
I just have to talk about this
This is a momsequitur, which means it has nothing to do with anything except my! kid! did! it! :)
So today Noah and I had a pretty good/calm day for the most part, although my father came over and played with him a bit while I (coincidentally; he wanted to come in any case) finished up the last bits for my deadline, and that is always exciting. But we went to musical munchkins and he had a nap and we had lunch and played and my dad came and they played and then we went to run a few errands, but calmly and mostly with him in the Ergo.
And then we played in the living room and Nox was there, who is our snuggliest cat and who often does let Noah play with her a bit. Mostly the playing consists of following her around, grabbing her tail, and petting her which escalates into grabbing. So - lots of intervention is usually necessary. She was up on the ottoman.
So Noah stood up next to the ottoman and chatted up a storm in this odd new voice he has (do all babies have like, tiny little voices and great shrieking voices and then this low sort of um - ‘intense/thoughtful’ voice? Because he does, the last being the new one). And he pet her in long loving strokes.
For like, ten minutes. Watching me, too. We pet her together, talking in these low tones and being - gentle. Then he moved away and stamped his feet and shrieked, like he had all this tension to let off. But while it lasted it was just so intense. I felt like I could see down the tunnel of time and experience the possibility of this gentle, kind man.
I love that in my son. I love it all, but today was the first time I saw a kind of deliberate gentleness towards something smaller than him (if that can be, in a baby). It was really nice.