It’s always something…
So today I had booked to work from home, in part because I have to go to the Dreaded Dentist at 3 and this still, even after years of therapy, makes me fuzzy and uncoordinated. It seemed like an almost perfect set up; time to get most of my work done, go, and then pick Noah up.
Except at 4 am this morning: “Mummy, I pooed.”
Err, did he ever. And again at 6:30. Stomach ailment alert! In point of fact it is now 10 and we don’t have more runny poo yet but… one of the rules of daycare to which I wish all parents could adhere is “if you suspect your child has a stomach flu, STAY HOME.”
So now I’m doing the juggling act, aided by Carl who was paged around the 6:30 event and hasn’t yet surfaced from fixing things, but will in time for the dentist. And I am working in front of Signing Time with the boy on my lap as I type this.
I’m not feeling very competent lately, work wise. A lot of this is due to the slow progress over which I have no control. But meanwhile my capacity to be upbeat and on top of things is eroding. I am hoping it comes back as soon as we can actually launch. But the side effect of this feeling of general incompetence is that I feel panicked all the time that I will be revealed as a poseur. It’s like an imposter syndrome.
I don’t think I need to lean on my years of therapy to point out that it taps pretty deeply in the multiple and abuse thing - that my WHOLE LIFE I have largely had to present as someone I am not, going through things I am not, to the point that I really have to work to feel anything else. It has handicapped me in a lot of ways that I still experience and lately I have kind of despaired that it will ever get any better than this. Not that this is terrible. But it is not peaceful, either.
That extra little tip of the scales - dentist, sick toddler - puts me in a tizzy in my head and heart, still.
I wish things could be a little easier sometimes. These are all normal everyday events, but I seem to feel them more than others. And then I think and you want another child in all this?
Any thoughts?
Rollercoaster ride to nowhere
Another mommy/worker paranoia post, sorry. Better posts to come!
So this morning Noah woke up with two massive reddish-purple circles under his eyes, a little puffy, and he was a bit clingy. After some discussion Carl opted to send Noah to school, but work from home so he would be close by. He also asked them if Noah had fallen the day before, because a quick Google search pretty much said “bad concussion” or “allergies.” We eliminated concussion based on Noah’s behaviour, other than the clingy bits, as totally normal (and checked his pupils, etc. etc.) and no headache and stuff but… it stuck in my mind.
I called the daycare a couple of times to check up on Noah and they reported that his eyes were getting puffier and he was pointing to his throat, at which point I panicked on the phone and the director was quick to assure me that they did NOT thing he was having an anaphylactic reaction. But I sent Carl to get him anyway.
Carl reported that the puffiness increase was way overexaggerated but I was not convinced. Sadly all this took place on a very hectic business day and since Carl was there I didn’t leave (otherwise: so would have been there) until a half hour early but then I took off and drove home… to find Carl was right, Noah’s eyes looked about the same to me as they had that morning.
I was so torn at work. I was having nightmarish visions of the school missing an allergic reaction, or that they had shaken him (shaken baby syndrome!!) or that his skull was coming apart. And at the same time I had to trust the people he was with to recognize if something terrible was happening. Which I managed, barely.
I had booked him at the doctor so off we went.
The verdict? Apparently when your nose is stuffy, esp if you are a child, the blood can’t get through the tissue as easily and so it backs up to under the eyes. And you can tell that vs. bruising because if you press gently but firmly on it, it goes white, ’cause the blood is getting pushed back in the vein, whereas with a bruise it would just stay there. Noah’s fine; ears, nose throat, chest all check out.
I am a wreck. Honestly. My work is a very stressful implementation phase and it’s sort of Emily’s season and it just feels like A LOT. And Google does not help with its hits on “parents who missed the signs and their kids DIED” on the topic of ‘black eyes concussion’.
But, all is ultimately well. Phew.
Grateful for: Emily
Today I bought my lunch (decadent and disorganized!) and the fast-lunch-counter-server-person asked me if I wanted to make a $2 donation to the Sick Kids Foundation.
This one charity will always have a hold over my wallet now, and I always say yes and I always sign the little tree-wasting doohickey they plaster all over the walls “Emily Hope.”
For someone who only lived 4 days, she made a lot of change in me. I am a much different parent than I would have been in many ways. I am much firmer about some things (this whole bus thing at Noah’s school, for example) and much more lax about others (sleep in a big boy bed? Sometime before he’s 7 or 8 would be nice). I don’t know if the sum is that I am a better parent, but I am a parent more focused on life and death issues. The times that Noah was up all night she had given me the gift of appreciation that he was just alive and breathing, and I think that truly was a precious thing.
She gave me the present in a way I’d never had it before. I sometimes worry about Noah’s future, but then I freak out a little and shake myself back to today, enjoy TODAY because you simply do not know. This too has its dark side but overall I think it has made me more present, more aware, and more thankful.
Still, I cannot help but stare at little girls about her age, especially if they have brown hair. I find it hard to walk past the rows of cute girls clothes to get to the boys. It is so clicheed but so true: I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t think of her in some way. It still hurts. But I wouldn’t not have had her for the world.
Not grateful: sperm + egg
Not a gratitude post, mostly to shake it up a bit for me. Oh well, ok, because this is what’s going through my head.
(We still have lots of gratitude to get to, don’t you worry.)
I saw Knocked Up on the weekend, although I left before the end - at the point where the monitor goes off and the nurse rushes in and says “we have decels!” and the doctor starts pushing the baby around because the cord is around the baby’s neck. Yah, that scene. I’d thought I was doing really well on the whole pregnancy thing until then!
Pregnancy is on my mind these days. To not be coy about it: Carl and I both feel that there is an empty place at our family table (beyond the mere fact of missing Emily). I still have weird feelings about it, like my ideal biological family has “two” children and we have had “two” children and yet we have “one” child and so there is room for “another” child. The quotes there are trying to convey my internal reluctance and ambivalence about this whole counting thing. Not only can I not count children without stumbling over the question of Emily, but each child is so unique that it’s not really about the numbers. But another works best I think. I think our family here in the reality of where we are has room for another child.
Yeah, even with my ambition and my fears about affording good care for two kids or having to stay home for a while and everything that I’ve learned about myself as the imperfect parent that I am, I still think I would like another baby. The fear of what two mean for my life is pretty present and normal, I think, but it does not feel like a dealbreaker. Lyria would adore another baby. And Lynn’s life is screwed anyway, plus she fiercely adores Noah despite his opacity to her.* And given that a baby would be wanted, I also think it would be nice for Noah to have a sibling. If he doesn’t, that is fine too.
I definitely feel that I have an obligation to my work not to rush into anything, so take that as given. But I am going to be 37 in January. Also it took 7 years to conceive and not miscarry Emily. Still haven’t entirely worked out how and when Noah was conceived either although he was so. fast. in comparison that now I vaguely am back in the mindset of my 20s that you might be able to, you know, vaguely plan these things a little, in the start of them anyway.
But then I think of being pregnant again and I just flip out. First of all, I realize that Noah’s pregnancy happened at a very specific time and place and that it was quick after having Emily, but it was dreadful. I cannot imagine being that sick and having that level of fatigue and being a halfway decent parent to Noah, never mind work and everything else. I know that working out now would help and popping iron pills and all the rest of it, sure. But still, there never was any explanation and every pregnancy is like that - you just don’t know, overall, how it will be.
Except I do know that it will be scary and triggering and that it will be really hard to be present. And that’s not really how I want 9 months of Noah’s young life to be.
Then there’s a whole other layer of fear around what if things go wrong. Losing another baby would be devastating. I think with Noah I was still in a certain degree of shock, and also, I hadn’t had a healthy baby so I wasn’t really wholely, roundly, aware of what I was missing. I had a layer of hardness that I no longer have at all. And I don’t want to lose a baby, be devastated, and have Noah have a parent that’s a worse mess. Or what if something happened to me?
Maybe I should just stick to watching the movies about it for now. Cheaper by the Dozen, anyone?
* This is a good blog post topic to take up later.
Statement of intent!
I intend to do this NaPoBloMo thing, but with a twist of my own: I’m going to try to post every day about something I really enjoy or something gratitude-worthy.
This is a hard time of year for me, and I’m sure there will be other types of posts as well, but that’s my goal: one post, per day, on nice things.
Today is the Hallowe’en rape anniversary for me. Oh right that also is in the d-x archives. No one needs a summary except I will note that it sometimes it is a little shocking what lengths a multiple system will go to to ensure the ’status quo’ is maintained. Even if that includes despositing one’s self/body in the middle of a bunch of drunken university guys.
But today is also a day of quite a lot of good cheer, this year.
When I find the camera cable I will download some Noah pics. He had quite the fancy dinosaur costume that my parents bought last year… that he refused to put on. So I stapled construction paper ears to a hat and drew whiskers on his face: voila! The all-purpose cat costume! He meowed as he left. (ETA: There we go!)
It should be a national holiday
Today Noah had a doughnut for breakfast. Because it is his second birthday! By the time I get home to post this, he will also have had a party at his daycare (cake provided by me, and they took our camera to take pictures in our absence *sniffle*) and this coming weekend he will have a family party. [edit: the pictures are horrible. see below.]
Noah is starting to like this “biffda” thing, what with the playgroup party on the weekend, including cookies with sprinkles on them, the Thomas the Tank Engine book, playdough, Mr. Potato Head, the Melissa & Doug pizza set, and various other loot.
His present from us was supposed to be his train set, but he’s had that for months. So we got him a drum - handcrafted, third world labour supporting, genuine, drum. He likes it a lot. He’s actually pretty good at finding the beat.
He also likes horses (had his first pony ride at montessori yesterday, which I missed, obviously *sniffle*), his friends, and his teachers. He likes the blocks, the drawing, and lunch.
He does NOT, however, like Suk-ooooool, as he says several times a day to any adult who might possibly intervene on this Sukool thing and might make me, his Ommy, stay hooooMUH, which is where he likes to be. With his Ommy and his Daddeeeee. As he says. Several times a day. He likes nurses. He likes beans. He does not like clothing. He does not like raw tomatoes. He does not like people to put their heads on his pillow.
For Noah, at age two, is nothing if not a toddler who knows his own preferences. And what’s his. Today we were flipping through pictures so he could take some to sukool for the montessori birthday traditional look at pictures and walk around the room thing, and he noticed pictures of his Ommy and Daddeeee holding some strange little mutant thing swaddled in blankets. He pointed to Carl and said “Dada,” and he pointed at me and said “Ommy” and then he frowned. He pointed to the mutant and I said on cue, “That’s baby Noah.” “NO!” he said. Then he pointed at me, “MINE!” he said. [Pic is Noah at school and the cake (I made the flag as well!)]
God knows what he will say when he comes across the Emily album.
We are heartily engaged in giving choices to provide a full range of personal expression, of course. They go like this:
[Me, no makeup no coffee; Noah, post-doughnut. The funny smile is because he's learning to smile for the camera, which is - cute and a little weird. The shot above in the kitchen he was actually laughing.] “Would you like your spiderman pyjamas, or the blue pyjamas?”
“No!”
“Would you like daddy to change your bum, or mommy to change your bum?”
“No diaper!”
“Would you like me to put milk in the green cup or the blue cup?”
“I’LL do it.” (Noah uses “I” for “I’ll do it” and “I’ll stir” but third person the rest of the time. Dunno why.)
Noah’s locus of rebellion so far is mostly me. If Carl asks him to do something, he does it. If I ask him to, he runs away, slams the door, comes back, shouts, and then stomps off again. He locked himself in the bathroom yesterday. I said “unlock the door!” and he laughed and said no. I said “Daddy says unlock the door!” and HE DID.
Now I just need to know if it matters whether Carl is physically home or not when I say these things.
Noah also has a wicked sense of humour. He makes tons of jokes. Like putting bowls on his head and proclaiming them hats, or telling me to put his shoes on his elbow. “Shoe, nelbow!” He has some running joke with the cat that I don’t quite get but it involves showing the cat a train and then saying something and laughing.
Ah Noah, you are the best, best, best.
Added later (before posting): the school/cake picture above is bad enough, but in the set there was the one below. This picture is almost enough to make me quit my job, right now. I’m not even joking about it. I’ll think about it over the weekend.
~~~
Edited to add: the rest of the day I would like to record too. Carl picked Noah up early, around 3:30, and I took off at 4, and we met at Chapters to buy Noah a birthday book (this is a tradition, now; last year was Snuggle Puppy and this year was Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus! We sign them and then my mild desire is that Noah will take that set of really good age-appropriate books that first we and later he chose off with him to share with his kids, some day, the birthday set. Anyways. :)). Noah was giddy and happy. Then we had dinner at Mr. Greek, and drove home, and Noah and I had our hour of bedtime cuddles and talks and nursing and he slept.
Characteristics
And, as a side note, I really believe children come with their own personalities that are uniquely theirs. Also a lot of behavioural traits are just developmental stages.
Even so, one of the joys of having children (and I don’t think they have to be biologically yours to play, although that’s a traditional requirement) is to speculate on which aspects are related to you. In our system, even, we play it, so here’s some of our imaginative leaps about Noah’s current personality traits.
Noah continues to be amazingly extroverted; other kids, especially, seem to gladden his heart and bring him deep wonder. I think everyone in the system would turn and point to me for this one and I think that’s true; in that, he is very like me.
Noah’s favourite foods are lima beans (he seems to think they are like candy and when they show up in dishes he digs through the dish to eat them all first), fruit of all kinds, other beans of all kinds, broccoli, and lemon cookies. I would say he pretty much has Lyria’s taste in food. Although he has recently discovered ketchup too.
Noah also has this elephantine memory. An an example: before Carl left on his trip we had to go to the driver’s licence place. Friday we had to go back on Carl’s behalf although Carl couldn’t come along, and Noah hit the door and started getting upset and saying “daddy!” Finally I sorted out that he thought Carl was leaving on a trip. But really just about everything is like this with Noah, and he remembers where everything is in the house - seriously. If I lose something I just ask him and 9/10 of the time he takes me to it. I would say this is very much like Lynn. (And Carl, but we are playing the game in system :))
Also like Lyria &/or Lynn: Noah is pretty sensitive to people’s moods. Now that he’s talking more and more he often will tell me if someone’s hurt, angry, sad, happy, etc. Sometimes I have no idea if he’s right though.
And he loves his body, which again I think is like me… before society got hold of me anyway.
Consistency
So we’re just starting to get into the money-where-your-mouth-is toddler/preschool years. I realized we were hitting them this week when Noah came out with two things.
1. I dropped a milk bag on the weekend and it burst, sending milk into every corner of my newly-de-crumbled kitchen and I said with some emphasis, “crap!” Noah, delighted, said “cwap!” and I said to him, “That’s right, crap!” Then on Tues at DL’s place I dropped Noah’s shoe and he said “cwap!”*
2. Yesterday I put Noah’s sock on and said “there we go!” and he said “drweego!” and then proceeded to “drweego!” every accomplished moment of the day.
In other words, his modelling is getting more sophisticated now and I can see that he’s absorbing a hell of a lot of what I do, every day, and putting it into practice.
So I have been musing a lot on the whole area of discipline, both in its roots (to teach) and in its modern North American practice (to punish/enforce consequences/make rules). And I’ve decided that at this stage, where we don’t have any issues that aren’t directly related to developmental age (that is, Noah throws tantrums now and then, which is wildly appropriate for a toddler), my approach boils down to the idea of consistency.
Now consistency is much-touted in philosophies that I consider kind of punitive. For example, if a child does x bad thing y punishment will happen. Or, for example, that at bedtime you never ever pick them up. Or whatever. That’s fine, if that’s what you want to be consistent about.
But for me consistency is much much broader.
On the one hand there is the consistency of routine, which I am largely a fan of. I think kids operate better if they know that they will be served meals and snacks at regular intervals, and I’ve seen the miracle of not only routine sleep but actually reasonably firm scheduled sleep. Also yes, that if they get out of control they will be consistently corrected, however that is. (This week’s example: Noah started throwing toys at the cats, so I started taking the toys away when he did.)
On the other hand there is the consistency of good things. And this is what I think the hardcore discipline books lack, probably because they are focused on problem-solving. But for me I am finding that this is really important right now. Not just that Noah has consistent opportunities for fun and learning, but that I consistently ask him to help me, that when he asks for help it is consistently given, that his concerns are consistently addressed, and so on. Also, since his verbal and logic skills are expanding, that he is consistently told what’s happening and in some cases why.
Yesterday was a really good example of that for me: in the morning, after getting my work in, I was totally plugged in (just having a good day; it’s not always like that) and could answer his every query (”tat? tat? tat?”) and we were just - in tune. In the afternoon I dragged him through a series of errands that was definitely meltdown area and he did just. fine.
In the way that Noah had to drop toys one million times to learn that gravity works, his next few years will be (among other things) testing me and Carl and everyone else to see how this “relating” thing works. And increasingly I feel that it’s my job to show him that relating is not so much rules-based as it is caring-based.
I think the watershed on this for me as a basic philosophy really has come out of Emily’s death. Not only did that teach me a lot about control and lack thereof, and the difference between an issue with a kid (”he whines and is rude”) and a problem with a kid (”he is paralysed from the waist down ’cause of this fall”).
But also it really made me re-examine my relationship with the universe, as if all the multiplicity and abuse stuff hadn’t already. It is that guy in When Bad Things Happen To Good People who articulated it best for me. He said that after his son died, he could not believe that God was both all-powerful and all-loving. So he chose to believe in an all-loving God who was not all-powerful.
As a parent I guess I have decided that although it is also my job to exercise power - to create rules and reinforce them - that in moments large and small when to be compassionate conflicts with being perceived as the power in the relationship (which admittedly, is not all that often), I would rather come down on the side of love.
So at the very most basic, what I am aiming for is to be consistently caring, compassionate, kind, and present.
Well gee no wonder I feel tired!
* I have no issue with swearing, as evidenced in this blog. I realize this will mean some embarassing moments as Noah learns when and where to swear and when and where not to, and how to exercise self-control, and how to remind me of when I don’t, etc. But I don’t see swearing as any kind of moral issue and I actually think with my writer-brain that profanity has its place in human culture, not just in writing, but in relating. Although many people will disagree with me, I always picture many models of spirituality/holiness/prophets/etc. coming down from the mountain/out of the temple/away from the tree and saying “fuck! what is wrong with everyone???!!!”
Junk food & kids
I’ve been kind of surprised at how quickly the junk food issue has come up with Noah. I suppose in my mind I lived in an idyllic world where Carl’s and my habits would be immediately reformed and not only that, but the whole world of mall food courts and inappropriate snack food would recede in the face of Parenting.
But no, here are the facts: since Emily died we, the system, have struggled to get back to a good relationship with our body, which is always pretty much fought over the ground of food choices. And coupled with new-parent stress, sleep deprivation, and the sudden inability to reward ourselves with say, time, there has been some junk food about.
But until the last three months or so, it was pretty easy to just not give Noah whatever the bad food was. Since then, though, he’s demanded a tithe of whatever we’re eating.
And this is the choice I have made (and Carl too): I have chosen to give it to him. Of course this has meant not eating really awful shit and stepping up on the whole getting back to eating better thing.
What I really want for my child is to almost always eat good, wholesome food, that is not only good for him but also is purchased and prepared (and occasionally grown, but I mostly purchase) in a way that is pretty well in line with our values. And I am armed with a lot of information about what that means and I am lucky to have at least some play in our food budget to make good choices with.
However.
I have also surprised myself by not sweating some of the opposite. I’ve pretty much decided that although it is my job/privilege to keep going on that path towards more wholesome eating, I also value some things as much as clean/healthy eating.
I value appreciation and politeness, for example, and that is how my son came to be eating strawberry flavoured, corn-syrup laden puffs at one of our better playdate-friends’ houses. This friend of mine does not sweat the food stuff. She is an intelligent, kind, and caring person and I think she is really great. She serves fruit and vegetables and does not deep-fry her son’s breakfast. But she missed the (middle class) memo on the evilness of food companies and she has Alphaghetti in her home. And I do not consider it my job to try to change her or disrespect her choices in any way.
And it was out of caring that she offered my son a handful of the puffs his toddler peer was enjoying. And I really wanted to refuse them, except that my little voice (and not a system member, just mine, that conscience one) said that if she were, say, from another country and she was offering my son some delicacy, I would want him to try it, or at least turn it down in grace and style and not in some assholely judgmental way.
And in that moment I chose the rule of hospitality over the rule of good eating which was try a little bit, it won’t kill you. And I’m kind of glad. (He liked them. I will buy him a pack of them when hell freezes over though, just because they are the kind of toddler-marketed food that drives me batty.)
(Okay if he asked for them for Christmas or his birthday I might buy a pack; see below.)
I also value generosity and sharing. And modelling for your kids. And that’s why, when I have fallen down on the job on the latter - as I have not just once but a few times - by ordering or eating something in front of Noah that isn’t optimal food… like french fries… and he has wanted some, I have at least modelled the first, and shared.
Yes, I believe that as a parent it is my job to make sure Noah eats healthy food the vast majority of the time. And ideally I would not have a french fry before me to share. But the fact is that sometimes I will order the french fries. In moderation. Because they are yummy, despite knowing all about how much they suck. And I guess ultimately I don’t think that’s so awful, in the context of a whole, generally healthy lifestyle.
And I think also that I could not really live with myself for too long if I totally refused to share them. Sharing food is such a primal thing, and it’s also how I introduce Noah to things like asparagus and bulgur wheat as well as jerk chicken and roti. It just didn’t at the time and doesn’t in retrospect seem right to hold back the deep fried potato.
So I will continue to occasionally hand over bits to Noah. I sort of hoped he would hate them, but no. He loves them.
Lest the discussion turn to parents who don’t set limits, I have no trouble enforcing the things I think are absolutes: I drink decaff coffee; he doesn’t. No wine or beer. I figure once he learns about pop/soda (we don’t drink it) we will have to make some kind of deal about having a small amount once in a while, but I think it is so awful meantime that it falls in the total no category. If he were to be allergic to something, that would be it too, of course.
It’s just that I believe that a hard limit for me does not include all forms of junk food are forbidden forever. I do believe junk foods really are bad, in a lot of ways. I just don’t think all badness has to be stamped out all the time. Some women have likened this to smoking. Well, okay, I would be a very happy parent if Noah never smoked. I’m not sure I would be like “oh well, as long as you only smoke two cigarettes a month it’s okay.”
I have never smoked anything other than second-hand, because I was asthmatic as a teen and this convinced me not to mess with my lungs. So I will model that. And perhaps junk food is as bad - it certainly is if it replaces a healthy diet. But for me the two are different. Maybe because I know junk food, despite its tendrils, can be limited, and I’m not convinced about smoking.
But I digress - back to values. I value cultural tradition, up to a point. This being the day of chocolate, it’s an especially good day to just come out and say: I would actually rather that Noah participate in some family celebrations and traditions and eat the friggin’ chocolate, even if I think chocolate is not really an age-appropriate food. Of course I would also like it to be fair-trade chocolate and preferably a really good kind rather than Wal-Mart chocolate. But if it is Wal-Mart chocolate that the bunny brought to grandma’s house or whatever, so be it.
So today Noah did wake up to find that the Easter Bunny came and left some toys (plastic eggs strewn about! (they were empty. He loved them anyway!), and the old Playschool counting eggs! He thought those were great too! More egg toys!) and incidently, one chocolate thing, and some crackers. He took a few bites of each, all excited and wriggly. And then we went to the Easter Parade and pointed out the bunny and told him maybe that was the bunny that brought him chocolate!
(He thought that was very… suspect, and a giant bunny was a little bit scary, but he did love the balloons.)
It is kind of crazy, this chocolate toting bunny story. But what it also is is a welcome to spring, a nod to fertility gods, and one of the weirdest cultural combos (Jesus is risen! Pass the marshmellow chickens!) ever known to man. How could we not participate, in our own small way (bought the baskets, nice natural ones, at Value Village and saved them from the garbage; bought the toys at the same and on eBay)? Well actually there are lots of ways ’cause we didn’t really do Valentine’s Day as far as Noah was concerned. But I think we’ll keep this welcome to spring, and maybe add in some more respectful traditions as we go along.
All of which is to say that I think I am finding some middle ground here, where food has its place and spotlight but Super Nutritious Everything All the Time is not the trump card to every situation.
I would still sort of like to move towards Vegan Lunchbox standards. But, not there yet. And that is okay. It might be okay forever. I really admire people who are sure they are dead right that all junk is bad /and/ never eat it /and/ keep their kids away from it. I am just not that person. Not yet anyway.
I find it strange to be arguing for a little junk food. I’m unsure how much of that is self-justification and laziness, and how much is actual balance.
But that’s where I am today. It may well change tomorrow.
The tenor of our days // 19 months, sort of
Thanks everyone for kind comments & emails. I am sucking at answering things lately. April is my month of reform for that, so watch out in your inboxes. :)
Since gathering life up again (and coming to the end of the funerary rites, on that strange other track in my head), Noah and I are back to our intense little pod, broken up by V.’s time.
V. continues to be the best thing since sliced bread, by the way. He was happy to see her, although Monday he did cry after about an hour just ’cause, I think, but today he was just his normal self with her and wasn’t even all that concerned about my reappearance. And the more I hear her interact with Noah the more I like what I hear, even if that deep wounded part of me keeps checking him over for damage or bruises or anything amiss. And she arrives when she says she will and is careful and thoughtful and generally just a complete gift. My main concern is that she’ll dump us.
But after she’s left both days it’s been toddlerville again and wow, that is intense these days. Yesterday Noah was a little clingy and very ambivalent (shall we play trucks? Yes, he says, but if I would touch one he would cry! Well okay then!) and would not, simply not, go to sleep. Instead he told me about the bug I squashed (sign: bug; sign: all gone; say “awwwSHHH” which is squash; lather, rinse, repeat) about 50 times. It made an impression!
We also really cooked together for about the first time. I made a crockpot stew and he was fussy about my attention being on chopping, so after that was done I got out pancake mix (evil, I know, but we keep it for emergencies) and omitted the egg so it would be safe (it works without the egg just fine, by the way) and he stirred the batter up with much glee and sloppiness and then I put him up on the stepstool at the counter where he could see the griddle, and he ate a whole pancake with much excitement after all that. And the stew, later. And after the pancakes we played in the sink to wash up. All that was way better than toys, but then he was really not understanding why he could not then use all the adult toys and the day sort of dissolved at the end into way-too-many-nos.
Today I took him out to tire him and head the bedtime woes off at the pass, despite cold weather and lack of car (parts are still being ordered), so we walked alll the way down to the bus stop (or I should say, I did, since once I decided to forgo both stroller and Ergo, he refused to take a step), and Got On A Bus! Lo! The Excitement! and went to the library. And to the coffee shop for a milk and a cookie. And then we did the Bus! thing again, and then he did indeed walk the two blocks to the house, meandering up several driveways and being picked up as strange dogs came near in between. And it worked. And it was a lot of fun.
His favourite games this week though are all pretty much separation games: various rifts on peekaboo, shutting doors on me to have me open them, hiding from me and jumping out. He seems to go back to these whenever we’ve had a big change, and I guess that makes sense. As long as I’m there when the door opens, we’re good.
His verbal development also picked up again as soon as we walked in the door from vacation… literally. The combination of signing and verbal stuff is weird, because he has pretty much the basic toddler vocabulary down in sign and isn’t all that keen to transition yet, but then he fills in other words like… squash. Drip (’dip’). Straw (’tahhw’). And then with the animals he does the sign and the animal sound concurrently, so he’ll do the sign for dog and go “woof” at the same time. Of course his animal sounds are a little… weird. He knows the following: a cow says “moo” a dog says “woof” a snake says “ssss” and a dolphin says “eeee eee eee” (and a rubber ducky).
Pigs, cats, sheep, goats, chickens, rooster, lions, tigers, bears - no interest in them at all, as far as noises go. Oh except purring. Cats do not go meow, they purr. But he does have those signs down, along with squirrel, monkey, rabbit, turtle, fish, crab, bug, butterfly, shark, whale, deer, hippopotamus, wolf, and a few others I’m forgetting. The zoo’s been good for that, on top of the DVDs.
I’m not sure whether to count signs as sentences or not. But he does use sentences if so, like “cat play peekaboo.”
Gross motor skills: he can pretty much run, and he’s hard, hard at work on stairs. Dangerously so as he likes to try to walk up and walk down them (we’re working on at least going down on his bum now that he won’t go down on his stomach). He’s also trying to jump without a whole lot of success except in his crib. He stands on his head, sort of, with his feet still on the ground and his arms out to the side - not sure what that’s about. And he can kick a soccer-sized ball, which I find impressive. And throw but let’s not get into that, since we’re sort of downplaying the throwing toys bit.
And of course we know he climbs everywhere. Third shelf of the linen closet. Top of the change table. Kitchen counters. Those crash helmets are starting to look good.
Fine motor is where I find him scary though. He can plug my cell phone charger into my cell phone, a move I occasionally miss, and he can thread the shoelace through the firemen’s hands in the Melissa & Doug fireman set. He can unscrew any lid he has the strength in his hands for - water bottles, spice bottles, (empty) Honeybee honey bottles. He can eat with a spoon and a fork, although he can’t always keep the food on them between bowl/plate and mouth (but he can get the food on, no problem). He can draw the letter O although it’s sometimes wobbly and/or spirals in on itself. (He is obsessed with the letter O and finds it everywhere and then says “O” and signs it. It’s not a reading thing, it’s an object thing.) He can open doorknobs (woe is me). And use a key, if the lock is not too stiff and we help him get the key right side up. He can shape sort most of the basic shapes. Stack alphabet-sized blocks 5 high. Take apart almost anything. And zip and unzip Ziploc bags, which he now does for me because that is not one of my top skills. :)
The thing I sort of wish he could do, whether developmentally appropriate or not, is sing. He shows interest in music and he mimics sounds like the alarm clock sound, but so far no singing.
And one thing he sometimes seems to be doing is decoding phonetically? But can that be? I don’t know enough about language acquisition and so I’m assuming it’s more confusion than anything else. But an example is that we were on the bus, and he kept signing “bug.” And I kept saying, no, “bus,” and making a driving sign. But he was pretty insistent, and I’m reasonably sure he wasn’t seeing a bug. Another example is that I said his bum looked “sore” and he signed “sorry.” Now that second one I figure is because usually if he’s getting a rash I say I’m sorry he has a bum rash, but I dunno. This kind of thing is recent. He couldn’t possibly be decoding/encoding at 18 months? And wouldn’t the signing, not being based in sounds (duh) unless you finger spell (which we don’t, double duh), confuse that if so? I dunno.
Emotionally he is definitely volatile, but I wouldn’t say we’re into full out terrible twos yet. But man, is he… persistent. I suppose that’s a given, given his parents. :-) But Noah is also painfully gentle and tender at times. His latest thing is to come up and stroke mine or Carl’s back, tenderly, and then lean against us. It’s to die for.
So things are pretty good on the parenting front. More after deadline on other fronts. :-)