girlfiend

When someone sneezes the Fiendling says, “Bless you, mama (or dada, or grandmom, or pop, or whoever’s name he knows.)

He refers to himself in pictures as “Baby Fiendling.” Only, you know, his real name. And labels all of his friends, pointing excitedly.

He does the hokey pokey. (see youtube- my user name is sireia)

He thinks Sandra Boynton’s hilarious. (see youtube)

He repeats and names just about everything. Example- I said, “Mama’s going to the bathroom to get a tissue.” Minutes later he looked at my tissue and said, “mama tissue bathroom.” He pronounces bathroom as bapoom.

He labels things by owner- mama’s phone, dada’s car, etc.

He’ll pretend to get stuck to my face when I kiss him and I have to try to push away, screaming in “protest” all the while.

Every time the phone rings he says dada or grandmom.

Yesterday he spent all morning wearing his cousin’s garter-like headband around his neck. Every so often he’d give it a tug and say Aya heband. (her name is not Aya, but that’s how he prounounces it.)

He orders me around, which isn’t always so cute, but sometimes when he says stand up so I can hug him better it’s utterly charming.

He hugs and kisses other kids on the playground, whether they like it or not. Sometimes he’ll follow them around with his head jutted out in kiss position until they submit.

Boyfiend taught him to say, “mama’s pretty.”

In the morning when he wakes up too early and all I want to do is sleep he’ll sometimes sit on my lap and watch cartoons and snuggle.

He knows a ton of animal names and sounds now. We’re working on hee-haw.

He can get a tissue, wipe his nose (we’re working on blowing his nose, but that may take a while) and throw the tissue out.

He often remembers to say please without prompting. Thank you is tougher, but the other day, every time I gave him a sip of my juice he said, “thank you, mama.”

This is not always so cute, but it’s notable. He’s started to get picky about what he wears. When I pull out a shirt for him he’ll shake his head no and tell me “plane” because his favorite shirt is his plane shirt. He’ll settle for the train sweater with button wheels (he loves to say button. It’s one of the words he enunciates perfectly), either of his motorcycle shirts, or his shirt with the car filled with surfboards. Everything else is a struggle. Though he loves to wear jackets- another word he says quite well. Oh, and jeans.He often asks to wear jeans. Such a fashion plate.

He’s obsessed with the alphabet and sometimes follows the words with his fingers when we read a book that’s not an alphabet book. He’ll sing the ABC song (badly, he’s not a genius or anything) several times a day and repeat each letter (pretty well, actually) after me. He can recognize A and O and occasionally C and D though he tends to confuse them. The other day he shocked me by singing “now I know my abcs” after we’d gone through the alphabet in call and repeat fashion.

Can you tell he’s sleeping better these days? He’s not 100%, but it’s good enough that I’m back to gushing about him.

I remember once when I was in grade school my mom dropped me off at Radnor Rolls (a roller skating rink) for a birthday party. But it was the wrong day, or the wrong weekend or something and I didn’t know anyone there. I decided I had to call home to get someone to pick me up only I didn’t have any change to use the pay phone. Of course now, as an adult, I’m sure I just could have asked to use the phone and they would have called my parents for me, but at the time it didn’t even occur to me to ask.

I was only seven or eight and I read constantly. My world view was influenced and confused by the sheer volume of kids and young adult novels I read. In my pocket I had a dollar bill and needed change. I thought for sure the price of a pay phone call was a dime, probably because that was the cost of a phone call in a book. The guy who gave me change looked at me like I was nuts for needing a dime. Every single game and machine in the place ran on quarters. I went to make my phone call and was surprised that a dime wasn’t enough.

Eventually my mom came back and picked me up. I think I was there alone for a couple of hours, too afraid to do anything but get change for the phone and call home, clutching the birthday present all the while.

Night one of the big boy bed was a mess. I fell asleep around 8 while rocking him in the glider and he took off and got Boyfiend who sent me to bed. The Fiendling wanted me though, not Boyfiend and cried and fussed until Boyfiend yelled at him sharply. I don’t know how long it took to get him down. Boyfiend was in bed by 10 with the Fiendling asleep in his crib.

At 11.30 the Fiendling was up crying. I got him out of the crib and tried to get him back to sleep in his bed. He wanted nothing to do with it. He sat up, pointed, and cried, “chair, chair.” We rocked in the chair until he fell asleep and I transferred him to the bed without incident, about 45 minutes total. Then a stupid car alarm went off and he woke up again. Tired and annoyed I stomped back in, picked him up, rocked him in the glider, then transferred him to bed. Again, the whole process took about 45 minutes. So far it seems the only good thing is that since you can cuddle him with the transfer he doesn’t wake up immediately.

Then he woke up at 6.30, a totally unreasonable time for a Sunday morning. My clock had automatically adjusted itself for daylight savings time so I thought it was 5.30. I sent Boyfiend out of bed to get him. Later in the day he complained about being up at 6.30. Still thinking it 5.30 I didn’t want to tell him how early he was really up. It was when I got into bed last night that I realized the clock was off by an hour. Then it made sense that it seemed so late when I started the pancakes at 10

Last night was better. I started the bedtime routine early and had him in his room before 8. He wanted to sleep in his bed, but after I turned out the light he started crying for his chair again. We got into the glider but he wanted nothing to do with me, pushing and screaming. I put him in the crib and let him cry for 10 minutes before trying again. After crying for a bit he was amenable to rocking with me. We rocked in the glider for a while until he pointed to the bed. We got in and he tried to fall asleep for a while. After about 20 minutes he sat up, and said “chair” again so we went back to the glider. We rocked for maybe a song and he was asleep. We got back into bed and I got up after one more song. Eyes closed and mostly asleep, he said mama and I replied “Shhhh.” I made a move to the door and the whole mama- shhhh thing went on for another song. At this point I was outside the room and I had to pee so I called Boyfiend over to the door to continue shushing for me. An hour had passed. When I was out of the bathroom the Fiendling had stopped calling for me and was asleep.
He slept until just before 8 this morning when I heard him saying the cats names. I guess the cats were in his room. He followed them out to the parlor and ran into Boyfiend who was getting ready to leave for a doctor’s appointment then work. Now we know that once he’s up, he’s not afraid to climb out of bed by himself. At least the second floor is pretty well childproofed as long as we keep the stair gates closed. Last night was awesome. Aside from waking up 4 or 5 times in the night I slept for about 9 hours straight and feel pretty well rested now. Let’s hope tonight is a good one too.

The bed is just a regular twin bed with storage boxes we picked up at Ikea. It’s the Brekke with the Barnslig Djur bedding.

Things are a little bit better. A combination of Motrin and teething tablets for the molar that’s coming in resulted in one really good night and two okay nights of sleep. Last night he was up at 4.30 but back to sleep by 5. It sucks that he’s waking, but at least it didn’t take too long to get him back down. We bought him a big boy bed to see if that helps at all. We’re hoping that at the very least it will eliminate the step of transferring him from glider to crib. I don’t know if he’ll sleep any longer or go down any easier, but it’s worth a try. I’m still tired and run down but I’m not quite as miserable.

Last night was awful. At 4.30 in the morning I’d been up with the Fiendling for two and half hours and I was sobbing big, gulpy, hysterical sobs and couldn’t stop. Boyfiend took the Fiendling and slept with him in the floor in his room but it still took me more than an hour to stop crying and fall asleep.

I don’t know what the problem is. I just made an appointment to rule out any illnesses and started crying on the phone with the receptionist. Things are awful. I am so depressed.  After more than a year and half I’ve got PPD and I’ve got it bad.

The Fiendling’s been going through yet another fucking sleep regression where he won’t go to sleep and he wakes in the night and every time he falls asleep on me or Boyfiend he wakes up as soon as we try to put him down, either on the crib or on our bed. How does anyone ever have more than one kid? Seriously, this is awful. I know there’s an 18 month sleep regression, but he’s 19 and a half months old and the last sleep regression, the 16 month sleep regression no one told me about, lasted more than month.

For the past hour and a half I’ve been trying to get him to sleep and all I want to do is go back to Boyfiend’s birthday party, which was supposed to be a happy hour because I didn’t want to feel bad when I had to go at 8 to put the Fiendling to bed. I knew we couldn’t have a party here because of the stupid sleep thing, so Mix had it at his house and now everyone’s there having fun and I’m here listening to the Fiendling cry. He’s been asleep, snoring even, three times already.

On top of it, there are ants in my kitchen. We went to the pumpkin patch this morning for a hayride and lunch and I got rear-ended on the way home. The Fiendling fell asleep in the car but woke up as soon as the car stopped 25 minutes later and of course, because of this stupid 19 and half month sleep regression he wouldn’t go back to sleep. So I tried to make icing for the birthday cake (I’m not currently enjoying at the party) with a fussy, tired toddler climbing on the fucking window sills. I had chocolate and butter melting in the double boiler when he took off upstairs. I was too far gone to stop what I was doing so I had to wait about three minutes to finish stirring and take it off the heat. When I got upstairs he’d figured out how to unlatch the laptop and had ripped off three keys. One, the up arrow, is still missing. When I got downstairs I realized the kitchen sink was covered in ants. I think they’re coming in through the window.

I called Boyfiend because I was downstairs, didn’t want to go upstairs to get on the up arrow-less laptop to see if it was baking powder or baking soda that’s supposed to keep them out. I got an answer, baking soda, and poured it all over the cracks of the window, killed every ant in sight, washed my hands and the surfaces thoroughly and iced the cake which was a whole other nightmare with a still miserable tired kid.

Hours later, the ants are back in full force. The baking soda didn’t do shit. They’re everywhere. On the stove, in the sink, everywhere, and I’m so grossed out. Of course we don’t have any chemicals in the house because of the fucking environment and baby-proofing, but I did manage to find a small bit of Fantastik near the cat litter so I sprayed the shit out of every ant in sight, hoping any new ones would see their kin dying painfully in a puddle of all-purpose spray.

I suppose it’s time to try to get the Fiendling to sleep again. Wish me luck.

My mom came in to visit with the Fiendling and take us out to lunch. I suggested that she come in early so she and the Fiendling could play on the playground for an hour while I take my super-awesome water aerobics class (in which I am one of two people under the age of 60. Except for the special needs people with their aid. But they’re all in their 40s or 50s). Anyway, she stayed at her sister’s last night since she didn’t want to impose her new $200 rescue dog upon us and the cats.

Her rescue dog, Stuart, was originally named Dylan only her sister’s bitchy gay friend has a dog named Dylan so she changed his name. The dog seems okay, but he’s terrified of everything, so scared that my cats don’t even care that he’s in the house. She’s only had him for a week or two and the second night she had him he got spooked when she was putting out the trash and bolted down the street. She and her neighbors looked for him for hours and he finally turned up about 5 blocks away under a bush. I’d feel sorry for him but he growled at the Fiendling. Twice. And the Fiendling was just trying to pet him nicely, not even abusively the way he pets the cats. I don’t like dogs who growl at my kid.

This morning she came in, put the dog in my bedroom and I dropped them off at the playground on my way to class. I got back an hour later and the Fiendling didn’t want to get in the car. He wanted to walk so my mom said she’d walk home with him while I dropped off the car and grabbed the dog to go for a walk before we went out to lunch. I got home and started back towards my mom and my son. I walked an awfully long time before I finally caught up to them, just a block away from where I left them. My mom had to stop at the fucking dollar store to buy the Fiendling a rubber turtle and one of those stupid luggage type backpacks with wheels that all the kids are dragging around these days. Seriously, the kid’s 19 months old. He doesn’t need a backpack.

So she took the dog leaving me to walk the kid home with his backpack. And of course he wanted to stop and play with the handle every three seconds and zip and unzip the pocket and push it in front of him which caused the handle to push in and we went about a block before I wanted to kill her and rip my hair out. After 15 minutes the Fiendling got tired and wanted to sit so I pushed him home in the stroller and carried his stupid, crappy, dollar store backpack for him. At this point my mom and the dog had been gone for about 20 minutes. I brought the Fiendling in the house, changed his diaper, opened the windows, checked my email, got the Fiendling a snack, drank some water, loaded the dishwasher and my mom still wasn’t back.

When she’d been gone for more than 45 minutes I started to get really angry. I was starving, the Fiendling needed to eat lunch, and we were going to a restaurant for lunch which meant we probably wouldn’t actually be eating for at least another half hour. I called Boyfiend pissed. He told me to feed myself and the baby and tell my mom lunch was off. Of course she didn’t have her stupid cell phone so I couldn’t tell her. I packed the baby into the car and drove around the neighborhood for another 10 minutes looking for her.

She was nowhere to be found and I was furious. The Fiendling was hungry and ready for a nap so I fed him lunch cursing my mother all the while. She finally showed up, frantic. The dog had gotten spooked, wriggled out of his collar and taken off. She’d been looking for him the entire time she was missing. This meant that after she reported him missing I had to put the cranky, tired Fiendling in the stroller and wander the neighborhood looking for her dog. We looked for more than an hour, at which point my mom said, “I’m done. I’m going home.”

I asked her if she was sure. She lives 60 miles away. I told her she should stay to see if the dog turned up. She said no and said she’d look around for a few more minutes then be on her way. I brought the whining and eye-rubbing Fiendling into the house and tried to get him settled for nap. Of course she forgot her stupid keys and called me to let her in the house. Then she wanted to read him a story and try to get him down for a nap herself. After 15 minutes it was obvious she wasn’t going to get him to sleep. I told her to give him to me. She said goodbye and left.

The Fiendling freaked out and cried for her for about 10 minutes. I brought him into my bed in the hopes that he’d fall asleep there. Instead he started pinching me so I put him in his crib where he cried for half an hour before I took him out. Boyfiend made lost dog signs at work and now he and the Fiendling are posting them around the neighborhood. I am so fucking annoyed that my day was shot, my baby didn’t take a nap, and now if someone finds her dog I’m going to have to take care of it until she gets here. On top of that I feel guilty because it’s not her fault the dog took off, it’s just typical. And the poor dog’s probably cowering under a bush somewhere terrified.

Last night I was checking my various blog stats and my page views here were way higher than usual. This is not an especially popular blog. I can’t speak for the number of people who read the RSS feeds, but I generally have between 30 and 50 visitors a day and a slightly higher number of page views. On the weekends the numbers tend to drop. The same is true for the other updated blogs I write, though the numbers are definitely lower. My most popular blog of the others is the breastfeeding blog and I only tend to average 15 visits a day during the week and maybe 5 or 6 during the weekend.

But back to this blog. Yesterday I had an average number of unique visits but the page views were nuts. 36 visitors and more than 300 page views. I checked out the details and saw that someone local who got here from my never updated 50 Books blog and read at least three years worth of posts in order. And they were still reading! As I refreshed the page I could see what time period they were up to. It was fascinating. I was intrigued and horrified. They’d been reading for an hour and a half when I first started obsessing and kept going for another hour.

I know it’s not unusual to read through someone’s archives. I’ve found bloggers I liked and started back at the beginning to catch up. And I’ve noticed people reading through all my archives in the past.  But most of those people lived in other places. It’s weird when that person lives in the same city. I hope that if it’s someone I know they leave a comment or send an email to say hi.

We spent the weekend in New Hampshire, our first weekend away from the Fiendling.

My friends and I got together for alumni and family weekend to do a reading in honor of our friend who died last summer. I had nothing to do with organizing, but as soon as I was asked if I’d want to participate I knew I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Seven of us performed several scenes and poems that we’d either performed with Jesse or seen Jesse perform. In between scenes our former professor who has since left the college told stories about Jesse, focusing primarily on the funny ones. And there were many funny stories. We did two shows, one at four and one at eight. After the first show a large group of us went out for dinner along with two of our other professors and a few of our fellow theatre majors who didn’t participate in the reading.

Boyfiend spent Saturday hiking Mt. Kearsarge and watched the evening performance. After the show we went up to the town’s ski mountain for a school sponsored party with a cash bar. I was able to catch up with a bunch of people I haven’t seen in years while Boyfiend got to catch up with the Phillies game at the bar.

Sunday we met friends for breakfast at my favorite pancake house and spent the morning hiking the trails on campus. After lunch we went to a nearby state park and hiked some more before heading back into town where I showed Boyfiend the farm where I used to live (they’ve since razed the uninsulated shack that caused my return to Philadelphia) and the pond where I swam almost every day in the summer. Aside from the name of the pizza place the town hasn’t changed a bit.
It was good to be back. I never really planned on staying there for all four years, I didn’t even apply- I just interviewed after swimming in Pleasant Pond and they accepted me on the spot. But if I hadn’t ended up there who knows how things would have gone. I was so damaged from my years in high school and a small New England town with a campus of only 800 students was exactly what I needed.

It was also good to get back home. I missed my Fiendling more than I thought and kept sneaking looks at the pictures I had with me all weekend long. He missed me too. After an initial round of hugs and kisses he tackled me, kissed me and smooshed his face into mine for a good minute not letting me turn way as he laughed and repeated, “stuck. stuck.” I love when he gets stuck to me.

The Fiendling still sucks at going to sleep. For naps I have to either drive him around  or walk him in the stroller until he passes out. Once he’s asleep he’ll nap for a good hour or two, but getting him to sleep is a pain in the ass. Nighttime is only slightly better. He’ll fall asleep in the house but it takes a great deal of rocking, singing, soothing, crying and coaxing. Boyfiend puts him down most nights because he seems to have better luck, but he’s getting sick of the trauma so I’ve been stepping in.

Last weekend we were at my mom’s place at the shore. My dad joined us, his first ever visit to my mom’s house. We went out for Chinese food and after dinner it fell to me to put the baby toddler down.  He wanted nothing to do with me. As soon as I turned down the lights he started shaking his head no. He called for dada repeatedly and started to wail when dada, who was watching the Phillies game, did not materialize. After several minutes of me getting nowhere with putting the kid to bed I said to him, “If you don’t stop crying I’m going to put you in your crib. You can either stop crying and stay with me, or cry in your crib.” He pushed me and said, “Dada!”  I put him in his crib. I asked, “Are you sure you want me to go?” He shook his head and said, “Dadadadadada.” So I left.

I went downstairs and my mom and Boyfiend were both in the kitchen. Boyfiend asked how it went and I told him the Fiendling was crying for him. My mother said, “Good. I’m glad you left him there to cry. He should go to sleep on his own.” Boyfiend and I went into the other room and he said he’d go up in a few minutes if he was still crying.

Maybe ten minutes later, during the third inning my mom came in and announced, “He’s stopped crying.” She settled in at her computer trying to track down the identity and address of someone who ripped her off on ebay. While trying to get her money back she was all over the internet putting her personal information into “reputable” websites like some internet fraud site that’s probably run by the same Nigerian  who’s going to transfer $1,000,000 into my bank account as soon as I give him the account number, my mother’s maiden name and my social security number.

The Phils were well into the sixth inning when my mother who hadn’t left the room asked, “Aren’t you going to go up and check on him?”

“Why would we check on him, you told us he was asleep and had stopped crying?”

“Well he started again. He’s been crying for a while.”

Thanks. Once again my mother proved herself useless.

I feel that I should mention that my mother, who alternately insists that a. it’s good to let a baby cry himself to sleep and b. she never let em cry, has revealed that when she brought me home from the hospital she had a live-in nurse for months. She also had a full time babysitter. And as though that wasn’t enough help she also had a house cleaner come twice a week.