girlfiend

So you know, it has happened. All week long, F has been a relative angel. He’s been sweet and mostly agreeable and there hasn’t been a giant tantrum in days. He’s getting dressed, eating breakfast and going to school without argument and sleeping in his own bed. He’s been giving me hugs and kisses regularly and telling me how much he loves me several times a day. He hasn’t run away from me in public in weeks. Yes, he’s still been working my nerves. He still jumps on (and off of) the furniture and runs in the house and helps himself to handfuls of the chocolate chips I use for baking without permission. He still steals toys from his brother and has to be reminded about acceptable behavior several times a day. He still tests me and is still a pain in the ass. But his behavior has been so much better that the small transgressions, while irritating, aren’t even memorable at the end of the day.

The baby on the other hand? My sweet, darling boy? He has been possessed by the demon that has left F. For the last 3 days, from morning until night, T has been torturing me and his brother. He refuses to eat, he hits and pulls hair with little provocation, he has been throwing everything. The puzzle F is working on? T rips it apart, screaming like a banshee, and throws the pieces down the steps. The cereal he asked for? Dumped on the floor. Anything within reach on a surface? Thrown to the floor or down the steps or both. The eggs that need to come to room temperature before adding to the cake? Smashed on the kitchen floor. My coffee this morning? Spilled everywhere. The entire kitchen floor has been spot cleaned in the past 2 days. His pants? Keep disappearing. He has taken to removing his pants and diaper several times a day. And he’s fast, too. I’ll turn my back for less than a minute and when I turn around he is pantsless.

I just don’t get a break.

F’s birthday is on Monday. Four years ago today, March 5th, was his due date. He is going to be four. Four. How is it even possible? I have to make a Triceratops cake today. The Thomas Era seems to have come to an end thanks to the marketing geniuses behind Dinosaur Train.

T is up to about 20 words now including animal sounds.

Mama
dada
hi
howard (haya)
more
moo
baaaa
meow
woof
oink (unh)
oooo (cock o doodle doo)
vroom
beep
roar
up
thank you (ank)
milk (sounds like more or moo)
night night
bye bye (sounds like night night)
baby
Joshua (ha e ah)

He sings all day long, to himself and to us. He sings two Raffi songs, Baby Beluga and Joshua Giraffe, Twinkle Twinkle (though sometimes he’s singing the Alphabet song or Baa Baa Black Sheep), Lovin You and the mama or dada song which he just made up a few days ago.

He is fast and athletic, often getting himself into precarious situations. He loves to climb and jump.

He is very focused when he plays. Without his brother torturing him he can play on his own for an hour or more. He loves to put train tracks together, drive cars up and down his parking garage, and play with blocks.

I know nothing about middle child syndrome since I was an only child. All I know of it I’ve learned from The Brady Bunch. I imagine that T will not be affected in all the same ways as poor Jan was once this third child arrives, but he’s sure to experience some trauma and I want to record this easy time while it’s happening. I also feel like I should take some time to fill you in on the baby, lest you think I’ve forgotten him in the midst of all the asshole drama.

T, at 20 months, is awesome. He does have his fair share of toddler tantrums, and will scratch at my face and pull my hair if I forcibly remove him from whatever activity he should not be engaged in or take him away from the playground before he is ready to leave, but for the most part he is wonderful.

He still isn’t talking. He has a few words- mama, dada, haya (Howard), hi, yay (usually accompanied by a clap), and makes some animal and vehicle sounds, but that’s about it. And his animal sounds are just plain lazy. He says “mmmmm” for moo and “unh unh” for oink. At least he says them with enthusiasm. We finally had his hearing checked last week and as I suspected, it is fine. So we can rule out hearing issues. I still think he is just slow to talk and that when he is ready he will surprise us all with complete sentences.

His comprehension is fine- he follows multi-step directions with pleasure- and he is still relatively successful at communicating his wants and needs. He knows what he wants and if you don’t he will show you. He has long since mastered the art of pushing a step stool, chair, or any object he can move over to the cabinets (or window sill, or bed, or whatever) so he can help himself to a snack (or toy, or forbidden object) if you don’t move quickly enough. He points with such enthusiasm and nods his head yes when I get it right so earnestly that I don’t even have the heart to try to get him to speak. He is just plain bashful about attempting to repeat words. He’ll shake his head no and avert his eyes.

He’s not great at staying with me when I try to get him to walk instead of ride in a stroller or shopping cart, but he is getting better. He loves to push a shopping cart, and though every trip takes three times as long when I let him, it is worth it to see how much fun it is for him.

Finally, after many long months of wondering if this kid was just not a reader, T has fallen in love with books. He wants to read them before his nap and before bed, he wants to read when he wakes up and every time he sees a book he likes throughout the day. He’ll pick up the book of choice. Hold it extended in one hand and say “Eh,” which I assume means, “now, woman,” then turn around and back his butt up until it lands in my lap. Like most toddlers he has favorites and wants me to read the same book repeatedly. And by repeatedly I mean shoot me now, if I have to read that stupid motherfucking Cheerios Play Book one more time my head may explode, but I then I read it again because I’m just so damn grateful he is loving books. At least he switches them up every few days.

He is still a really good sleeper. He takes a two or three hour nap every day and sleeps through most nights. There are exceptions- molars, illness, sleep regression, moving bedrooms, brother screaming and waking him up in the night, but 90% of the time he is dependable. I can bring him up to his room, read him a story, put him in his crib and he’ll go to sleep. Sometimes he cries for a bit when I leave, but he usually realizes just how exhausted he is and goes to sleep pretty quickly. On rare occasions I’ll have to go back upstairs and hold him for a bit. He hasn’t nursed in a few days now. He seems pretty content for me to hold him. I’m hoping he’s done for good. F weaned right around the same age.

He loves to play with trains and cars and trucks. Unlike his brother he is not solely a railway enthusiast. He plays with his parking garage and with the race track and the train tracks contentedly, right up until his brother decides that other 7000 vehicles in the house aren’t good enough and he needs to take whatever T is playing with right out of his hand. T has caught on to F’s shenanigans, and at times he will preemptively run away from him, clutching whatever toy he is playing with at the moment. If he doesn’t see the attack coming he sometimes strikes back. And though I feel badly about cheering him on at his brother’s expense, F really does deserve to have his hair pulled, face scratched and legs bitten some times.

T loves to tackle and he loves to be tickled. He also loves when I play Criss Cross Applesauce with him, which is a back tickle that is a little more G-rated than the summer camp version we used to play that involved stabbing someone in the back with a knife.

He sings. Not words, but he hums the tune of several songs. At night when I sing to him before he goes to sleep he’ll often hum requests. Joshua Giraffe, Baa Baa Black Sheep (which he always requests over the other songs with the same tune), and Lovin’ You are his favorites right now.

I’m forgetting so many of the things I wanted to write about when I started this yesterday. I’m sure I’ll remember more and want to add it later. He is a good, sweet boy. He is such a good time. I love him so much.

First, I’d like to thank you for indulging me on my recent comment whore post. It’s nice to know my lack of posting/lack of anything funny or interesting to write about hasn’t scared everyone off.

Second, my friend/cousin’s wife just bought her daughter a big girl bed and asked us to take the crib off out of their house right now thank you very much. Since I have no interest in moving a kid who sleeps well in a crib out of one, and we will in the next 6 months need another crib, we were happy to oblige. We went over yesterday and the kids played while B dismantled their crib and loaded it in our car and I went through her maternity clothes, finding some things I’d been missing. I also scored a bunch of soft, cuddly PBK crib sheets, a snuggle nest and some girlish bedding they forced upon us in the hopes that we’ll have a girl, keep it for while and they can unload all of the rest of their girly baby stuff on us.

We got home and started to rearrange the upstairs. By we I mean Boyfiend. I hung out with my friend and her super cute, squishy baby who has not yet learned about free will, disobedience, and hair pulling. B dismantled the double bed in the guest room and F’s twin bed and switched them. We then (and by we I mean we) somehow maneuvered the twin sleeper sofa from F’s room into the guest room. Today we set up the crib in F’s room and rearranged the furniture to accommodate the double bed, crib, train table, bureau and bookshelf.

F has been saying that he only likes to sleep in big beds, so hopefully the larger bed will be incentive for him to sleep in his own goddamn room. He’s also suggested that he’d like to share a room with his brother, so again, we’re hoping. The other room now has a twin bed and the twin sleeper in it so we can always move the boys in there if we do ever actually have a guest that requires a double bed.

I am fearful, but tonight I’m going to put both of the boys to bed up there together. The odds are that F will end up in our bed 5 minutes later. Either that or he’ll keep the poor, tired baby awake. The timing is pretty much shit since T is getting his two year molars and I am cranky and pregnant, but there’s no time like the present. The worst that can happen is that we give it a couple of weeks and it doesn’t work. T will be comfortably sleeping upstairs alone and we’ll still be sleeping with a pain in the ass preschooler for the rest of our lives, ensuring that this baby-to-be is our last without the need for surgical interventions.

I’m so tired. I’m not even halfway through this pregnancy and I’m done. My standards keep getting lower and lower. My house is a mess, we’re pulling wrinkled clothes out of the clean laundry baskets, and we’re eating fewer vegetables in a week than I used to eat in a day. My temper is short, my kids aren’t getting enough of my good attentions, and I just want to get into bed. My refrigerator is nearly empty, we’ve run out of all of the breakfast cereals my kids will eat and I think they both had bread and butter followed by cheese crackers for lunch today. After we stopped for cookies at the bakery.

The Fiendling is still sleeping in our room. He manages to stay in his “bed” on the floor one night out of five. The rest of the nights he ends up in our bed and keeps me awake most of the night. He’s still being a bit of an asshole, but I think, and I hope I’m not getting ahead of myself or jinxing myself here, but I think he’s snapping out of it. When I give him specific instructions with definite consequences in advance he tends to be cooperative and not throw a complete shitfit when it’s time to leave someplace that he’d like to stay. That’s not always the case. Yesterday he ran away from me twice when it was time to leave the (cold, deserted) playground and I nearly fucking killed him after I had to drag him kicking and screaming to the car, but that was the first time it happened this week, not the fourth.

When he’s not yelling at me, refusing to eat, making unreasonable demands, fucking with his brother, or otherwise being 3, the Fiendling has been awesome. He’s taken to snuggling with me sometimes in the afternoons while T naps.  He likes to sit on my lap while I watch Friday Night Lights on Netflix. He also likes to play with flour when I can bring myself to bake. He drives his engines through it, narrating stories about crashes at the flour mill, snow storms and other disasters. I think he’s pretty close to reading too. He’s been sounding out words and has been even more interested in letters and their sounds than he was before. He likes to take the scrabble letters and spell the words he knows and the names of his engines.  And 9 times out of 10 he wipes his own ass without asking for assistance.

The baby, who is in the middle of the 18 month sleep regression, is mostly sleeping through the night again, but refuses to go to sleep and screams for an hour most nights before bed. He’s taken to throwing tantrums too, biting, hair-pulling, pushing and screaming when he doesn’t get his way, and I can’t tell if it’s because of his age or because he’s not talking at all and his inability to communicate is frustrating him. I’m sure his brother isn’t helping matters much, snatching toys away from him and yelling at him for playing. When T pulls F’s hair, pushes him or scratches his face I have to remove him from the situation, but secretly I like that my baby is fighting back a little. I hate to say it, but F deserves it a good portion of the time.

Tantrums or not, T is the sweetest kid.  He has finally (and I say finally because I feel like F started much earlier) started to bring me books and sit on my lap so I can read them to him.  He’s been so snuggly and sweet and generous with kisses that it almost makes up for the scratches on my face. And he can blow his own nose. I appreciate that in a child.

The night before was awful. F, who has insisted upon sleeping in our bed for the last several weeks (sneaking down in the middle of the night, or before we get into bed), was unable to fall asleep until 10.30, tossing and turning and keeping me awake. Thankfully the baby slept through the night, not awakening until just before 6 when I was able to nurse him and get him (and me) back to sleep for another hour, until F woke me up telling me he was ready to get dressed.  His loud demands for me to get out of bed right this minute woke the baby, so we all got up together.

F wanted pancakes for breakfast, and thanks to the ingenious spray can* I was able to make exactly two. Two pancakes that he did not eat. The baby ate two eggs with cheese. I ate one on a sandwich. F ate wheat thins.

I dropped F off at preschool and T and I headed back to the house. Freaking out over the morning’s guest I quickly folded 4 loads of laundry and vacuumed. T’s case manager, his service coordinator, was right on time.  It took an hour to schedule the multidisciplinary evaluation with the provider and go through the paperwork and description of Early Intervention. As soon as he left I loaded T back into the car to pick up F from preschool.

T fell asleep in the car. I left him in the car (window open, doors locked) and signed F out for the day. F, of course, wanted to play on the playground, so I let him while his brother slept. The baby woke up after about 45 minutes, sweaty from his nap in the car. He drank some water, ate some pretzels and played on the playground with the other kids for a while before we headed home.

I made farfalle with butter and cheese for lunch, which the baby ate and the Fiendling did not even though he was the one who requested it. While T ate I mixed the dough for two loaves of oatmeal bread and set them out to rise. I took pork and beef and chicken stock out of the freezer to defrost for dinner.

The baby was exhausted but he refused to take a nap. He played nicely with his brother while I started a load of laundry and sorted through some paperwork for my library meeting. I went out to the garden and cut some chives, thyme, and oregano for dinner. I scrubbed the thick dirt off of a pint of fingerling potatoes. I read The Way Back Home about thirty times, then read The Runaway Bunny about ten times.

I shaped the dough into loaves and put it in loaf pans for the second rise then looked through my cookbooks  for a meatloaf recipe that doesn’t use three eggs, because I only had three eggs and don’t get new eggs until CSA pickup on Thursday (I did not want to leave the baby without the option of an egg for breakfast.) I rediscovered my New York Times Cookbook, the first cookbook I ever bought for myself.  I decided that I need to refer to it more often, as it’s a classic and posted about it on Facebook before getting back to work. I used up all of the oatmeal in the bread and never have dried breadcrumbs in the house (unless they are panko, which I wouldn’t use in meatloaf) so I dug through the freezer looking for some bread heels. I found two and supplemented with a frozen hamburger bun and ground them into crumbs in the food processor.

While the oven preheated I mixed up the meatloaf, using only two eggs. I compromised on the oven temperature, figuring the bread would be fine baking at 350 instead of 375. It was. The baby, still exhausted, needed a snack. I made him half of a peanut butter and jelly with some sliced pear. I ate some pear too. B got home from work and took the boys for a little to drop off keys at his aunt’s office. While they were out I started the potatoes, cooking them on the stovetop in the chicken stock with garlic and thyme. (The recipe sounded good, but it wasn’t really, so I won’t link to it.) The site where I found the recipe had an ad for these Mummy Dogs. I think I may need to use some of my 10,000 pillsbury coupons and make them. I posted the recipe to facebook.

I washed dishes. The boys came home as the bread came out of the oven. The temperature did not affect it. B’s aunt loaded F up with an envelope of candy. We shared a box of Dots while I washed and chopped a bunch of swiss chard. B came in the kitchen with the baby and asked what was for dinner, looking at the pot with the potatoes, which looked clearly like potatoes to me, but then again I am not a man. I told him they were potatoes. He seemed to think that was okay.

He went upstairs to change out of his work clothes. F and I shared another box of Dots. I washed more dishes. The meatloaf came out of the oven and I drained the fat. I sauteed the chard in some olive oil. B came back into the kitchen and said, “Meatloaf! Oh, you were joking with me. I love you.” I realized immediately that he asked what I was cooking for dinner, not because he didn’t recognize the potatoes, but because he was hoping for something more. But I played along like I had been joking with him. I washed a few more dishes. We sat down to eat.

F ate cold, leftover noodles and swiss chard. The baby ate cold, leftover noodles and meatloaf. B and I did not eat cold, leftover noodles. We did eat the rest of the meal I prepared.

I gathered my bags and went to my library meeting. We made a little less than $500 on the bus trip we ran in September. It was the first bus trip in the two years since I’ve been the treasurer of the organization that we did not lose money. It was our last trip. No one in the group has any interest in organizing. The children’s librarian, goodhearted as she is, seems to think our funds should be spent on providing her with candy to distribute to the children at events. The executive committee feels we should be distributing books to the children at events. She has decided to ask the local markets for donations.

The meeting ended and I went to Starbucks for my weekly knitting group. I realized that I’d forgotten my wallet. I ran into a woman who had attended the group once before. She told me no one else was there and bought me a coffee. We chatted about schools and our kids while I knitted and she made jewelry.  I walked home and checked my email to learn the group had been canceled for the evening.  B was cleaning up. I washed more dishes. I dicked around online for an hour. I brushed my teeth and went to bed where F was asleep on my pillow again. I read for a while even though the book I’m reading sucks.  I fell asleep.

I woke up to the sound of the baby crying. It was 11.30. B was in bed next to me reading. He asked, “Do you want me to go in there?” I had to go to the bathroom so I got up and rocked the baby back to sleep. For future reference, if your wife is asleep in bed and you are awake reading while the baby cries there is no need to ask if she wants you to go in there. The answer is yes. In fact, if your wife is sleeping and you are awake you should get up before she wakes up to get the baby back to sleep and tell her about it in the morning.

*I had a coupon and the store had a promotion where they came with a free carton of 18 eggs. I couldn’t resist.

At sixteen months my baby can:

point to his belly and head and occasionally his feet and nose

bring me things he needs help with, like an empty cup of water or a broken toy

eat with a fork and spoon

brush his own teeth (better than his brother!)

throw a ball pretty well for a baby

kick a ball pretty well for a baby

move a stool around so he can reach things he wants on countertops

walk pretty well, despite some initial concerns

take off his shirt and (unfortunately) his diaper

point to things he wants to eat

climb up on the couch, chairs, tables and everything else I don’t want him climbing on

crouch from a standing position to pick up something on the floor then stand again

use the shape sorter

complete simple puzzles

stack several blocks (or soda cans, if left within reach)

obey simple commands, like bring me the toy, when he wants to

imitate a simple tune- he loves to sing

But he doesn’t talk. He says mama and dada and points and babbles, but that’s it. No other words. Not cat or ball or hat or dog or hi or any of the other words his brother said by the time he was a year old.  All of his other developmental milestones are right on track, but his language deficit is great enough that the city is sending someone out to our house for a full assessment to see which, if any, early intervention services he needs.

My instinct tells me that with or without Early Intervention he’ll catch up. I think he’s just slow to talk and will talk when he’s ready. But then I fear that maybe I’m missing something. Maybe I’m so distracted with everything else that I just never noticed there’s something wrong. I did once take him in for a well visit only to learn that he had an ear infection. Could I be missing something bigger?

Let me be honest for a minute. The baby is my favorite. I know that I shouldn’t play favorites, or at least I shouldn’t admit to playing favorites, but in this case I can only assume that this is temporary. The baby is my favorite because he isn’t three. There will come a time, in just a few short years, when he will be three, and I’m almost positive that when he turns three he will cease to be my favorite. Why? Because three-year-olds suck. They are assholes, I tell you. Assholes.

Yesterday the Fiendling was not happy. I don’t know what the fuck his problem was, but he woke up in the morning and was just an absolute terror. He was whiny and mean, and made one unreasonable demand after another. He absolutely refused to pee telling me that he was going to pee on the floor instead. He would not pee in the potty and when I tried to put him in a diaper he ripped it off. He threatened to pee in the trashcan, in the sink, on the rug, on the kitchen floor and on the bathroom floor. There were strong words, threats and tears. Eventually he chilled out and peed in the goddamn potty for what seemed like 20 minutes. The kid clearly had to pee and was just refusing because of his three year old control issues. Last night, after I read him his stories, I was cuddling with him in bed. I warned him that I would be leaving his bed and his room in ten minutes. He said, and this is a direct quote, “I’m going to be mad when you leave. I’m going to take off my clothes and pee on the rug.” What a little fucker.

In comparison, here’s an example of a one-year-old tantrum. Last week we were cell phone shopping. The baby was not happy. To show us he was not happy he threw himself to the floor, cried, kicked and screamed. We gave him a snack and he threw it. We gave him a sippy cup and he threw it. We gave him a dummy, floor model cell phone and he immediately stopped screaming and was an absolute pleasure for the rest of the shopping experience. The tantrum lasted all of two minutes. One-year-olds are easy. They want things and stop crying when they get them. Or they want things that they cannot have and can usually be bought off with something else. They may arch their backs and scream and fuss, but they are easily appeased and do not threaten to pee on things to express their rage.

Some day the baby will be three. He, by nature of his age, will probably be an asshole. He will have wants and needs that I am unable to meet because he will be totally unwilling to express them. Instead of telling me what he wants he will hold his pee and tell me he is going to pee on the kitchen floor and make a big puddle. He will probably throw tantrums and be willful and mean and tell me no when I tell him that I love him. He will probably hit and kick and make me want to throttle him.

F, at that point in time, will be five. I cannot speak from experience with my own child, but I’ve taught kindergarten and five-year-olds are fairly reasonable. They might think talking about pee is funny, but they’d rather pee in the toilet than soil themselves. They also like to please adults. In addition, by the time he is five F will be in school full time. He will no longer be trying my nerves all day long. Instead, he will have hours out of my presence and may even want to please me. Instead of making me carry him screaming to the car when it is time to leave someplace he may follow willingly. Instead of refusing to eat until bedtime he may actually realize that food isn’t that bad and eat at meal times.

Truly, I cannot accurately predict what he will be like at five. While I’m sure he will still be stubborn and willful I know for a fact that he will not be three. His brother will be. And his brother will have ceased to be my favorite.

The baby finally started cruising a little bit. He doesn’t appear to have any interest in actually walking yet, but he seems to enjoy standing and moving to get to toys. Like his older brother when he was a baby, one of his favorite activities is standing at a table and throwing anything on it to the floor. Then he likes to bang on the table for good measure.

He has started to embrace baby (well, ASL)  signs. At his one year appointment when the doctor asked if he had at least two words I said yes, but really I meant he’d said mama and dada a few times when he may or may not have been talking about us. But now he has eat, more, all done, and milk in his repertoire. I’m trying to add in drink, yes, no, please and thank you. Any suggestions for signs you found useful?

He’s pretty damn funny too. One of his favorite activities is crawling away from me full speed, looking back to make sure I’m chasing him. He laughs uproariously the whole time. It’s not as funny when I’m trying  to change his diaper.

I fear that he’s going to be quite the handful when he does start walking. He’s already a bit of a daredevil, and will go down single steps head first. He’s attempted (and failed) to climb a ladder at the playground and spends most of his playground time climbing up the slide.  He’s no dummy though- he got a little too big for his britches when it came to going up stairs, and after falling backwards once or twice he’s left the big staircases for the big people, and only tackles 3 steps at a time.

He’s surprisingly good at playing ball. He got the hang of it a few months ago and his skills have improved. He’s not so great with the catching, but he throws well and with some accuracy.

Eating isn’t going as well as it had been. He’s been pickier about what he wants and will sometimes throw things to the floor in a rage if I choose the wrong one. But the baby signs are helping me figure out what he wants, and when I do get it wrong,  he’s beginning to push my hand away instead of waiting until it hits the tray. He’s pretty vocal about his preferences and points for emphasis. He is a very good pointer. He’ll point to the box of cheerios then point to his tray, letting me know exactly where he wants them.

When he’s not sick or teething he is a very good sleeper. He naps well and sleeps through the night most of the time. I love him so.

He’s standing up for himself more. When his brother harasses him he’ll often shove him out of the way. He also likes his brother more. They play nicely together sometimes, which gives me a bit of a break.

He loves to have his teeth brushed. Loves it. He cries when I take the toothbrush away.

He looks like me. I appreciate that.

He continues to be the best baby ever. People constantly tell me how easy going and pleasant he is and ask if he ever cries. (The answer is sometimes.) He is a flirt and a cuddlebug and he is almost always content. He is the baby that makes me want another one, but I am not foolish and understand that I will never have a baby as wonderful as this one. I also understand that his baby perfection will probably not grow with him into toddlerhood and I will most likely be stuck with another cranky, stubborn three year old in the future. But I will love him just the same, and at least I’ll have his idyllic babyhood to remember him by.

La la Loush left a comment on my housewife’s lament post that pretty much summed everything up.  You can read the whole comment in its entirety here, but the part that got me was this: People, mostly men will try to find solutions for you because that’s what they think you want. You know there isn’t much of a solution, but I sympathise and know what you are going through.

After reading my post Boyfiend was pretty upset. Despite the fact that I tried to make it clear in the post that Boyfiend was not to blame for how disconnected I felt, he took the post personally and offered solutions. There are no solutions. I have been breastfeeding and/or pregnant for four years and mothering full time. My interactions with the adult world are pretty limited. It is what it is. He can help with the kids and give me time to myself (which he’s done quite generously this past week) but it still doesn’t make the situation different.

This weekend we went to my mom’s house at the beach. It is never restful or relaxing for me to be at her house, but Boyfiend has a great time there,  the Fiendling loves it, and I always enjoy the time spent on the beach. My mother wants to be helpful, but she always fall short. She wants to give me a break but she doesn’t know how and usually ends up creating more work for me. And the insults, my god, the barrage of insults. They never end.

The first evening wasn’t too bad. But sometime in the middle of the night the baby woke up coughing. And it wasn’t just a normal baby cough it was the bark of a seal. Each cough made him cry and the more he cried the louder the coughs became. He was wheezing and crying and barking and clutching his throat and shoving his fingers in his mouth and distressed and it was awful. I suspected he had Croup and went down to use my mother’s computer to comfirm.

She was passed out on the couch with her bitey little dog with the TV on volume 7000. It was deafening, but I was afraid to turn it down for fear she’d wake up and I’d have to involve her. Google told me I was right and I went back upstairs prepared to spend the rest of the night in a steamy shower. But B had T asleep on his chest when I returned and the rest of the night was bad, but not as bad as I was expecting. T woke coughing and crying regularly throughout the night, but each time he was easily settled.

The next morning my mother watched the kids so B and I could sleep in a little. I came down around 9 and immediately called our pediatrician’s office. I left a message with the on-call operator. In the interim T was ready for a nap and F was ready for the beach so I prepared both of the kids and got our stuff ready our walk to the beach. A trip across the street to my mom’s neighbor’s house to use a pump for the stroller tires was necessary and through a series of events that Mix jokes sounded like a drug deal, later that afternoon we ended up getting the baby a prescription for steroids from my mom’s neighbor’s girlfriend’s cousin’s husband rather than taking him to the city to our pediatrician or to the emergency room. The neighbor’s girlfriend’s cousin’s husband is an ER doctor with three kids of his own. He told us that the steroids should help the cough but that it might get worse before it gets better and that we should expect a high fever.

After helping us with our sick baby the neighbor and his girlfriend  invited us over for dinner that night. After the kids were in bed we went across the street to join them and their other guests. It was nice to be in adult company enjoying adult beverages without small children running or crawling about, but I wasn’t completely there. I knew that across the street my baby was sleeping, but he probably wouldn’t be sleeping for long. I knew that I would have another night of interrupted sleep and that it might be worse than the night before.

The reason for the story is that it’s yet another example of me not getting a break. Even though in theory I had a break while my mom was at the house with two sleeping children so B and I could have drinks with friends, I couldn’t fully engage. I was on edge, waiting for the phone call that the baby was awake. I was on edge, anticipating the restless night ahead. My time, even when I have it, isn’t really my own.

It is what it is and I don’t expect or want anything different. I am completely wrapped up in my children and right now that’s the way it has to be. They are little. They need me. They need us.  I don’t want a different life than the one I have. I don’t need solutions. There are no solutions. I’m sad right now, overwhelmed by motherhood and the weight of staying home with two small children. I love my children and I enjoy my children.  But  children get sick and need attention. They pull and tug at me and cry for things they want. They need to be occupied and active and sometimes need my undivided attention. They don’t always listen and they don’t always sleep. When it was a two year old and a baby it was easier. But my baby isn’t  a baby anymore. He’s become a tiny little person with wants and needs and preferences. Newborns are easy. One year olds are work. This stage is more difficult than the last and it can be suffocating sometimes.