beanski

twenty-two months

It took five months but I eventually found a way to remind my girl just how much I love her and how much I need her. It has been well documented and witnessed by every relative under the sun that for the first five months after I brought her brother home from the hospital, my girl, my best girl, wanted nothing to do with me. She cried if I tried to read her a story or give her a bath or put her down for a nap. She wanted Daddy. She changed her mind one day this month and now she is demanding Mommy for EVERYTHING again. I'm not complaining.

The first night that she requested that I put her to bed after her bath I laid there on the floor snuggled in close to her on her big pink pillow and wept. I sobbed all the way through Go Dog Go! both times she made me read it. I told her how much I missed her and that I was sorry that I was busy taking care of her brother and didn't get to read her very many stories lately. I vowed that things would change. I promised. I pulled her in as close and I could and I smelled her freshly washed hair and touched her face and studied each and every inch of her. I can't put into words how much I missed her, how I longed for that closeness again and how incredibly happy I am to have it back.

She now knows the routes we take to go to certain places, dictating THAT WAY or NO MOMMY, OTHER WAY when we are driving in the van. When we go through the tunnels she wants to go swimming and she cries when she realizes that's not where we are going. She demands MUFFINS when I'm driving home from daycare because she wants to go to the grocery store and get a free donut hole.

Her bedtime ritual is by far my favorite part of the day and it always follows the EXACT same chain of events. 1. "Renee, are you ready to head upstairs and get ready for bed?" 2. "GLASS OF MILT! GLASS OF MILT!" 3. Get said glass of milt and ask her 47 times if you could please carry it up the stairs so that she doesn't fall on her face. 4. Get to top of stairs, try to shut the gate. "NAE SHUT GATE!" 5. Renee shuts the gate. 6. Renee goes to her room and demands that we move her big pillow from her floor onto Mommy and Daddy's bed. 7. She then demands Mr. Tiger and Mr. Doggie (you can thank my husband for those uber creative names). 8. "BLANTIES, MOMMY!" 9. I get the blankets (she has two matching blankets that was intended to be one for back-up but NO, she wants them both now. At all times.) 10. She lays down on our bed and literally chugs every last drop of her milk. 11. We all go to Cam's room and she tries on all of his various hats and then she cries for a while about wanting to sit in the rocking chair. 12. Bath. 13. Wrestle flailing body into PJs while she tries to run away from us jumping on the bed. 14. Attempt to tame the wild mane (she HATES to have her hair combed or touched) 15. Lay down and read stories. She has to read each book two times. It is the weirdest thing I have ever seen. Not three times or four times, ALWAYS twice. She cries when I turn out the light and then falls asleep within seconds of me laying back down next to her.

She absolutely loves to be outside and throws Category Five fits every time it is time to go in. A-N-N-O-Y-I-N-G. She doesn't like to get her hands dirty and she told me her shoes needed to be cleaned the other day. I wiped off the top but I have to draw the line somewhere. And that line is being drawn at cleaning the BOTTOM of shoes, even if nothing would make Renee happier.

She says Messy or Ishy when she spills something and can NOT relax until it is cleaned up. A girl after my own heart. She doesn't like change of any sort and insists on wearing the exact same coat and the exact same pair of shoes every single day. If I try to put a different jacket on her, she cries and says "NO, OTHER COAT MOMMY!" I LOVE to buy little girl shoes but really it is totally a waste of money because once she decides she likes a pair that is all she will wear.

She started singing this month, totally out of tune with inflection all wrong and it makes me laugh so hard. She sings Happy Birthday and her ABCs and she'll start singing the next Laurie Berkner song on the DVD before it starts. She gets to the Q in her ABCs before she sort of fizzles off like she isn't sure how it goes and she skips the letter E and the letter M EVERY SINGLE TIME.

She counts everything but it is usually out of order. I ask her how many kisses she wants when I'm leaving for work and without fail, every single time, she requests five. So we count each of the five kisses and she whines a bit about me leaving. She talks in sentences. The other day she looked at me and said "Simon puked and Mommy cleaned it up. Ishy." I laughed out loud. Seriously, where did my baby go?

I'm excited to hear all about what she learns next. She's OBVIOUSLY a super genius and she picks up things so fast, is so curious and creative and excited to learn all about the world. I can't wait to show her the flowers and the trees budding (DO YOU HEAR ME, DULUTH? IT IS TIME FOR THE TREES TO BUD). I can't wait to teach her how to water the gardens. I can hardly wait to pick her the first flower out of the garden and give it to her to rip apart. Seeing the world, this great big world, through their eyes is the greatest thing about these children. The excitement and the awe over simple things that we take for granted. The funny thing is that I'm in just as much awe as she is except it is not over the flowers or the squirrels or the robin, I am in awe with her.   

four hundred and sixteen

When I got pregnant with Renee I was naive enough to think that being a stay-at-home-mom was an option. I had apparently not looked closely at our spending habits and had not considered the expense that providing for another life would have on our pocketbook. I held onto that dream for nine months of pregnancy and for twelve weeks of maternity leave.

Just before I was scheduled to go back to work, Ski and I argued a lot about money. I wanted to stay at home and raise my daughter and he kept telling me that we couldn’t afford it. I didn’t want to hear it. He showed me the numbers. The debt-to-income ratio was not something I had looked at regularly because I hate paying bills and one of our agreements when we entered into wedded bliss was that I would never have to pay another bill again. Ever. I was shocked. Flabbergasted. I just couldn’t believe it.

So, I went back to work and we made a commitment to each other to change it. During the last two years we made a lot of progress. Even while preparing for our second baby we were extremely careful with money. We counted pennies. We clipped coupons. We got rid of the credit card debt. We started a college fund for each of the kids and got life insurance policies. We became parents, in practice and fiscally.

With the changes came more flexibility in our budget and lately at the end of the month there has been extra; money to set aside for a new house, for new toys, for retirement.

When I reported back to work a few weeks ago I had hope that maybe they would let me take a pay cut and reduce my work schedule a bit so that I could have more time with the kids.

I asked them and they said yes.

We might not be able to buy a bigger house just yet and we might have to drive that seven year old car just a bit longer. And I might have to be careful about how many dollars a month I spend on etsy.

But starting tomorrow, eight extra hours a week, four hundred and sixteen hours a year will be spent at home with my babies instead of writing code in my dingy cubicle. I will get to spend four hundred and sixteen extra hours being their mom during a time of the day that isn’t the evening hours when we are all tired and hungry and cranky or the weekend hours when we are running around visiting family and stocking up on diapers and toothpaste and groceries.

Don’t think I’m not counting the time. I will count the hours and my blessings and I’ll kiss their little cheeks at least four hundred and sixteen extra times for good measure.

five months

This month wasn't our easiest month but this month Cameron and I became an item. I don't mean that I didn't love him before this month because I totally did but this month he was all about acknowledging who loves him more than anyone else in the world and he made me feel so special. He told me all about how much he loved me all night long for many, many nights in a row and while I would be angry and TIRED (oh the TIRED) there was a part of me that secretly sort of loved that he wanted me and only me. The little mama's boy. I know that someday he'll grow up and glare at me like she does and say "No Mama, DADDY!" so I'm reveling in him wanting only mommy while it lasts.

I have sort of come to the conclusion that the boy has split personalities. There is this sweet little (OK, he's big) boy who laughs and smiles and coos and carries on happily all day long but when the sun goes down and the moon comes out, the crying starts. The crying and the eating and the refusing to sleep. At dinner time when he's happily bouncing up and down in his Jumperoo laughing hysterically I almost can't believe that it's the same baby that cried for six straight hours the night before. So one minute I'm saying that he is the sweetest little baby on the planet and the next I'm talking about how the devil himself manifested himself in my only son. Sort of depends on the day. Or the hour of the day.

He weighed in at just over sixteen pounds at five months (yes I was a MONTH late for his well-baby visit), in the 95th percentile for height and 50th for weight but you'd guess the other way around by looking at him because he looks like a little butterball. He charmed every nurse in the place with his chubby little legs and his big, full face grins.

The baby chunk is in full force and OHMYGOD I just can't get enough of it. I find myself endlessly running my fingers along the dimples in his chunky baby hands and along the creases by his elbows and that second roll in his thighs because I'm not sure that I'll ever get to spend hours obsessing about the cuteness of a baby of mine ever again. Every single surface of his body is the cutest thing on planet earth.
 
He's a little lady's man, my Cameron, easily to laugh and constantly seeking the attention of those around him. He doesn't care if he's never seen you before if you smile and talk to him he is guaranteed to laugh out loud from the depths of his belly. And that laugh? It could cure the sick, I swear it could.

I love how he rolls instantly to his stomach the minute you set him on the floor and how he then proceeds to get all pissed off because he's on his stomach. It's like a nervous twitch, he almost starts rolling before he even hits the floor.

I love how he found his feet this month and how he could spend literally hours and hours and hours starting at them. I love how he studies everything with his wide-eyed look, the look that every single person comments on the first time they meet him. His eyes are always wide open taking everything in.

I love how he burrows his head into my shoulder almost bites when he's hungry, aggressively letting me know that it's time for food. Not in a few minutes, not in a few seconds, RIGHT NOW LADY.

And then an hour after he eats I love how the burrow has turned into a snuggle, him grabbing a fist full of my hair and inhaling my scent, letting me know that it's time for sleep as though I wasn't the one that set the schedule in the first place.

I love how just before he drifts off to sleep he turns his head to the side and looks up into my eyes and not quite smiles but without words somehow acknowledges that he's really glad I'm there. I will never ever EVER forget that look on his face, so content and so pure and so incredibly chalk full of love. It is when they look at me that way that I feel like a mother. And the sleepless nights and the temper tantrums and the never ever getting a spare minute to myself? It's TOTALLY worth it.

welcome to motherhood: sleep deprivation and never knowing for sure what is wrong

It was two weeks ago now that my son, who up until that point was sleeping from 7:30PM until 2-3AM most nights, started waking every hour all night long sporadically, crying, arching his back, screaming in pain. We are not talking about your standard just-checking-in-to-make-sure-you-are-listening-at-my-beck-and-call cry, they are cries for help. Even I can barely calm him and 9 times out of 10 the only way to make him go back to sleep is to nurse him. He won't even let his dad touch him, he LOSES HIS SHIT. 

I have suspected reflux since he was born as the only way I could get him to sleep was to swaddle him up so tight that he couldn't move a muscle and put him in his crib with his mattress elevated. His poop has been violent, stringy, watery since birth. When he wakes up it is always with a clearing-his-throat cough followed by a high-pitched scream. A month or so ago he figured out how to get out of the swaddle and he will not tolerate it any longer. And I suspect that his jerking limbs are aggravating his reflux causing him to cry out in pain. I have tried having him sleep in a swing, propped up on our bed, in my vary arms and he still wakes up once an hour crying. I have thrown out all hopes of establishing good sleeping habits in order to just get an hour or two of sleep for myself and I HATE THAT. I hate knowing I'm creating problems that I'm going to have to deal with later. But what choice do I have? We are currently operating on Survival Mode. Barely Surviving Mode.

I took him to the pediatrician with my suspicions, hoping for a prescription for Prevacid or whatever works for reflux and she told me that it could be a food allergy and that I need to start with cutting dairy out of my diet. If that doesn't work, try gluten and then soy and then corn. I am all for the whole "least invasive first" speech she gave me IN THEORY. What bothers me is that this is the same pediatrician that wrote Renee a prescription for the vary same drug because I told her that she was coughing at night and that she barfed a lot. I never filled the prescription for Renee because honestly I just didn't think she needed it. She was happy enough, gaining weight, SLEEPING THROUGH THE BLESSED NIGHT, why drug her? But now my son is in pain and we are all so sleep deprived that we can barely see straight and instead of writing the prescription so that I could just see if it makes any difference she is forcing me to DRAMATICALLY change my eating habits. I somehow need to find the time to plan and cook now THREE different meals three times a day (one for Renee, one for Ski and now one dairy, gluten, soy, corn-free meal for me). I'm supposed to do all of this planning and cooking while working full-fricking-time and trying to have some sort of relationship with my other child and god forbid, MY HUSBAND. To top it off I was planning on starting solid foods and on supplementing Cameron with formula starting at six months because our nursing relationship has been anything but enjoyable and honestly I miss spending time with my daughter. I miss seeing my friends. I want my son to be able to be fed by his father. I have no intention of quitting all together, I just want SOME freedom. OF COURSE now he's allergic to milk so let's throw that whole getting-my-life-back plan out the window.

This whole trying to decode the intricacies of babies is TORTURE. Like, why can't there just be a test that they can run on their poop or on their blood or something that tells us if they are allergic to dairy or if they have reflux? By the time I get everything phased out of my diet to find out if there is a problem there, he'll have outgrown it. And then I'm living in food allergy fear for the rest of my existence having wished away my son's entire babyhood.

Know anything about reflux or food allergies or pediatrians that seem to think that they know more than you about your own kid when you are the one that is watching them and trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle day in a day out? Or how about how to combat sleep deprivation? Life sucks when you can't even eat pizza and get drunk to fool yourself into temporarily thinking that things are going OK.

dear young son

Dear Young Son,

I'm going to be late on your monthly post BECAUSE YOU REFUSE TO SLEEP FOR MORE THAN 45 MINUTES AT A TIME. If you want to look back and read about your precious babyhood I suggest you get your poop in a group and go to sleep. For the love of Pete, PLEASE GO TO SLEEP.

I love you but CRIPES, figure it out already.
Mommy

P.S. I still think you're cute. See?

i have no idea where she gets her temper, umm well...what?

Now, I could easily open up and actually read one of the books that I have purchased on the subject of disciplining toddlers but that wouldn’t be as fun or as easy as asking for advice here. Besides, the more I read, the more I am convinced that the people that write those books live in a dream land. A land where four month old babies sleep through the night and only eat every four hours. A land where (almost) two year olds have the ability to understand and then act accordingly when their mothers threaten: If you don’t quit with the damn screaming right NOW you are NEVER going outside again.

What should I do when she throws herself into hysteria complete with lying on the ground kicking her feet because her brother woke up from his nap and it really isn’t optional that we have to go inside? Like right now. Not in a few minutes, not in two hours when she’s bored with her outside toys, like RIGHT NOW.

Or how about when she demands chicken nuggets for dinner every single night and when I tell her no, that she needs to eat her pasta instead, she starts screaming and whining and refuses to eat another single bite of food off her plate?

What about those times when she comes over and rips toys out of her brother’s hands so fast that he looks completely terrified and starts screaming?

Ditto for when she purposefully kicks him in the head?

Or when she pushes kids that are smaller than her down at daycare and when I try to talk to her about it and explain to her that it isn’t nice, she laughs, and then during each and every car ride home from daycare from then on when I ask her what she did at daycare she says "pushed Kennedy up” in a very proud-of-herself-for-doing-exactly-the-opposite-of-what-I-told-her-to-do manner.

She responded to the concept of time-outs exactly once, now she laughs at me when I sit her in the time-out spot.

Distraction usually works to stop the screaming but good lord, should I really respond to her kicking her brother in the head with a casual “Renee, do you want to read a book?”

Tell me, people, what works? Besides beating her which I would, like, totally do if I could even handle the idea of letting one of them cry for seven seconds without rushing to their rescue. But I can't so I won't.