parenting

A few mornings ago, while I was staying overnight at my parents house, Liam woke me up by giving me a sloppy messy kiss on the lips. Putting Liam to bed at my parents is always tricky and more often than not, he ends up in bed with me, usually caddy-corner with both feet tucked tightly between my ribs. In any case, there was something special about this good morning kiss, something different. It occurred to me later what it was. My son was learning to show affection without encouragement, all on his own, without being goaded by some annoying adult.

Oddly enough, however, that same weekend there was another change in my son. Being displaced at my parents for a weekend is both enjoyable and stressful. Enjoyable because I get pampered and fed but stressful because Liam and I have to live out of duffle bags. Food has to be meticulously chosen and packed. A little of this in case he doesn’t like that, a little of that in case he isn’t in the mood for this…you get the picture. On this particular weekend I had to pack stuff twice. By Sunday I was in one of my “when will my life stop sucking so much” moods so I decided to lighten my spirits by taking my little one to the pond in his Rider wagon to feed the ducks. He loves his Rider wagon, calls it his “vroom vroom”. His grandpa decided to come with so off the three of us go to the pond. On the way Liam is pointing at the cars driving by, at the trees and the mailboxes, making his little ewok sounds, smiling, happy.

Unfortunately, during the trip back, Liam decided he didn’t want to ride in his wagon but wanted to walk. So we walked. Understandable. I mean, he’s just acquired the motor skills to be able to walk and run after spending the first year of his life sitting in contraptions with wheels so who can blame him for wanting to walk through a park. On the way, while getting a little over excited about something he saw, he accidently threw his sippy cup on the concrete pathway, popping it open so all the water spilled out. He had hardly drunk a drop of water from the sippy cup since leaving the house that day so I didn’t think this was a big deal but apparently, once he saw that the water from the cup was indeed gone, he decided he was thirsty. So thirsty in fact, that he started to cry and stomp away from the path in the opposite direction we needed to go. My father and I stared at him as he went, a little perplexed by his reaction, since Liam has usually been a pretty calm child, only throwing mild tantrums that were easily dealt with by simple diversion (look Liam, look at the birdies!). However, in this instance it seemed clear that it was going to take more than a makeshift noise maker to convince my child to walk the two mile hike back towards his grandparents house so my dad tried the ever reliable trusty pick child up, console child, place child on shoulders and say “Look! Liam is taller than everyone”.

Liam’s reaction to this was to vigorously shake his head and scream louder so we tried the wagon again. All of a sudden, out of nowhere my child started to grow additional limbs, possibly two heads, I’m not sure, all of them kicking, swinging and punching the air. It was around this time that a runner passed us by. I looked up and smiled trying my best “Happens all the time, just a spirited child, got it totally under control, completely know what I’m doing here. Really” look.

Then a thought crossed my mind, all this tantrum throwing must be making him hot so I took off his jacket and stood him up to see if he would walk again. Instead, he fell back on his butt and continued to cry so my dad picked him up and tried to hold on to him the best he could as we walked back to the house.

I breathed a sigh of relief when we finally made it back into the neighborhood and Liam was again walking, a crooked path, but walking and not crying anymore thankfully. We passed by a couple working in their yard and had a neighborly chat, got the usual coos and awes when Liam flashed his smile at them. We got to the corner of that street and things started to go down hill again. I don’ t recall exactly what got him started but it had something to do with not being able to go in the direction he wanted to, so, again with the extra limbs and heads flipping back and forth. My dad suggested I run back to the nice couple in the yard and ask them to fill up his sippy cup with water. So I sprint back and ask, trying not to sound like a desperate panicked mother, however, any attempt at this point seemed fruitless since I noticed my shirt was on inside out (navy shirt, white tag in the back…nice) and I think, not entirely sure, but I think my eye was starting to twitch. The nice couple quickly filled the sippy cup to the top and even include ice to make it nice and cool. I walked back towards Liam and Dad feeling proud. I felt like a hero. I had water. Things would be fine now. He drank a couple of sips but then something else upset him. Dad and I just kind of looked at each other, took a deep breath, picked him up and carried him the rest of the way home. A walk that normally would take about forty minutes tops ended up taking us nearly two hours.

And that’s kind of how it’s been for the past few weeks. Liam has entered a new phase. Mike and I have struggled a little with the adjustment, lost our tempers a little more than we would wish, however we’re taking it with stride. We’re delighted that he’s enjoying ball games and has gained the necessary motor skills to throw and kick balls, however, we’re not so delighted that he throws everything else he gets his hands on like, food, toys, phones and shoes. It’s complicated to explain to a eighteen month old that you can throw this but not that. He obviously finds throwing to be some kind of stress reliever because he also does it whenever he’s mad and is told he can’t do something. When my cousin, Jill, came to visit this morning with her two sons I took the opportunity to ask her advice on the throwing situation but the best she could give me was “duck”. She recalled that her son had gone through a similar stage but that, luckily, it was short-lived, so we’ll cross our fingers to that.

Mike will email me every so often at work with little updates. It’s nice because it helps me feel like I’m able to participate in some of his and Liam’s daily activities and I don’t miss Liam so much as a result. They’re usually short “Everything’s good, went down for his nap just fine” type stuff. Last night however, I got this:

Email Subject: Dogs….Grrr

Next time Turbo gets himself stuck in the compost bin I’m leaving him there overnight, and MAYBE it’ll teach him a lesson. How he got in, I don’t know, I’ll have to check it out when it’s light tomorrow.

Liam’s fine, he’s head-banging on the couch.

I’m happy to say I finally have the chaotic family I always hoped for.

Puke. That’s pretty much all I’ve done for the last six hours. I’ve often wondered why some people are more susceptible to stomach viruses than others. I can think of several cases where I’ve had to endure violent vomiting. I was put in the hospital when I was fifteen for violent vomiting and when I was college, I was in the emergency room twice for violent vomiting and severe abdominal pain. Apparently Mike can’t even remember the last time he had a stomach virus. Before he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease he hadn’t ralphed since he was in elementary school. I think it must be a genetic thing because his mom has only puked once in her life. Apparently she was so horrified by the experience that she simply decided never to puke again. I envy these people. If there’s a stomach virus floating around, you’d be darn sure I’ll get. If there is food poisoned with salmonella somewhere in a restaurant, it will probably land on my plate first.

So, I’m home sick from work today. The worst of it seems to be over, although I still can’t seem to drink water without feeling quezzy so I’m holding back on all food and liquid intake for now. My stomach muscles hurt to much from last night, I really don’t want to puke again. To make things worse, Liam has had the sniffles since returning from New York. Damn those airplane cabins. Maybe that’s where I caught this, wouldn’t surprise me. Last night he hardly slept at all and Mike had to stay up with him while I was in the bathroom hugging the toilet bowl. But what is a slight sniffle for Liam is now a full blown head cold for Mike. I don’t want to go near Liam right now so I’m feeling pretty helpless. Mike just tried to get him down for a nap but it was a no go. We thought for sure, after the lack of sleep last night, he would surely go down for his morning nap. Surprisingly it’s just the opposite, he’s quite perky. Mike just took him for a walk in hopes that he might settle a little.

Sick days really aren’t real sick days when you have a kid. If it wasn’t for the fear of spreading germs, I would be at work right now because adults can at least understand that you’re not feeling well, whereas Liam has no clue why I won’t kiss his booboo better or play vroom vroom with the truck. Not only that, but it’s Friday. Who the hell wants to be home sick on a Friday.

This sucks. Seriously.

Mike and I have always talked about how we would like to settle in the country. Most of the places I’ve lived growing up were in the suburbs. Still my brother and I always managed to find some hidden path somewhere that would take us to some place more remote, open and wooded. I had a rotten habit of following my brother and his friends around. I know they didn’t want me there but I guess they figured out early that it was easier to just let me come with them then it was to tell me to leave since I would surely storm off whining “I’m tellin’ Mom” and that would just ruin everything. Sometimes we didn’t have to go far to find these places. They were usually easy to find in Norway. In fact, my grandmother’s house had a great yard with this really neat area of pine bushes where we would build little huts out of branches and stuff and run around pretending we were elves or warriors or something. In Scotland there was an area behind one of the schools in our neighborhood that we used to go to. I remember we picked blueberries there once.

I often think about my childhood and compare it to what I imagine Liam’s will be like. Like all parents, I want Liam to have a childhood filled with happy memories similar to the ones that I have of my own. But having said that, I can not imagine every letting him roam as far away as we were allowed to roam when we were kids. All I can think about is all the sex offenders and nut jobs out there. I get so upset when I see all the young kids who come to the library after school, just waiting around for their parents to get off work. If you’re fourteen or fifteen, ok, maybe. But we had a kid who was ten at the library the other night. He was there until closing time. He had ridden his bike there. We close at nine. It’s dark outside. This kid was going to bike home. At the age of ten. Downtown. In the dark. Am I wrong to think that’s insane? I’ll get Liam a bike. Bikes are good, exercise, fresh air. Good. But until he’s about fifteen, I’m biking everywhere with him. What about all the crazy drivers out there, what if he gets hit by a car? I’m going with him, that’s all there is too it. That’s not crazy, is it?

Ok, it is crazy. In fact, there are plenty of studies out there indicating that “hyperprotective parenting” could leave children at risk for more anxiety. I mean, Liam will never want to go outside or go anywhere on his own if I’m constantly scaring him about the potential “boogy man” lingering on the street corner or all the crazed drivers behind the wheel. I really have no idea how I’m going to balance this because there are so many legitimate reasons to be scared to let my son out of my sight yet, I’m going to have to eventually. Then there’s the whole nature thing. Part of the reason I don’t like living in suburban neighborhoods is the whole “pretty garden” stuff. I mean, I like pretty gardens. I want some prettyness to my garden but I also want a yard where my child can play without having to worry about accidently trampling the petunias. I want a garden of potted plants. The rest just needs to be open space with green grass and trees. With a rocking chair on the front porch and a picket fence in front. Wait a minute, nevermind. I’m thinking of that country song.

I think I’m going to designate Mondays as my official blogging day. I never blog anymore, I just can’t seem to find the time. It doesn’t help that I spend eight hours a day staring at a computer screen. The last thing I want to do when I get home is stare at one some more. On a similar note, I think to help with the whole techno stress thing, I’m gonna designate Sunday’s No Technology Day. That is, no computer, no t.v. and no car. If I need something at the store, I’ll walk to Wal-Mart. Chances are I’ll be too lazy to do that so whatever I need will have to wait. I may, however, make an exception with the t.v. thing in case Mike wants to watch a movie. I’ll claim that as me and Mike time.

Now that I’ve gotten myself all organized I guess I should blog about something interesting for once, and what could possibly be more interesting then my son. I’ve had some time to reflect on this past year, which has been full of changes both personal and professional. So far, I think Mike and I have it pretty good when it comes to finding the balance between work and home life. We’ve been doing the mom work full time, dad stay at home thing for about two months now. We’ve worked out a flexible schedule (note the emphasis on flexible). Liam still wakes up at night. I have a feeling this probably won’t change until he’s finally got all of his teeth. There are dozens of different schools of thought on this. Most people say he’s supposed to be sleeping through the night by now and that we shouldn’t respond to his crying/whines because this will help teach him to self-soothe and put himself back to sleep. Although there are times when Liam will wake-up and fuss himself back to sleep without any assistance, there are other nights when he simply won’t and needs help. Sometimes he just needs some rocking and a sip of water. Other times he needs a full bottle, especially here lately since he hasn’t been eating to well (probably a combination of teething and growth spurt). When nothing else works, we bring him into bed and co-sleep with him. Those nights are cozy, sometimes too cozy…for some reason he likes to sleep sideways so I usually end up with a foot in my ribs by morning. To help each other out, we rotate the night time responsibilities every two nights. That way we can ensure a few nights a week where one of us can sleep through the night without interruption.

I always come home for my lunches. Depending on how Liam’s nap schedule is, I’ll get at least forty minutes to see him before heading back to work. Mike will often email me throughout the day with short little updates. This helps since it makes me feel like I’m still participating in his daily routine even if I am at work. Most nights I get off at 5:30, drop my stuff at the door, change clothes and eat dinner. I have about three hours with Liam before his bed time routine starts. Most people might consider this a tiring task after eight hours on the job but it is honest to God the best way to unwind from work for me. I love it. I miss him so much throughout the day, I can hardly wait to get home and see him.

I think, maybe, the only time I have difficulty is on the weekends. Because I work all week, I feel a little guilty about taking time to do things for myself. I feel like I should be spending every waking moment I have with Liam. Not only that, but Mike has Liam all week. He needs his breaks too. Then of course, Mike and I need time together. There’s only two days in a weekend, it’s hard to fit all of that in. But all in all, I think we’re doing pretty darn good. If we could just keep our house from falling apart, we’d be in really good shape. I’m still trying to work on Mike with the whole yurt idea. I have a feeling I can swing him when he finds out that plumbing is completely optional.

The last few days have been a little brutal for Mike and I. Yesterday was our five year anniversary. After paying for our car insurance ($300), paying to fix our car ($500), our plane ticket to New York in October ($500) and various other medical bills ($150, give or take), we have practically no money other than what we need for food right now so we weren’t able to celebrate in the way we had planned. This will likely be the last anniversary we have in Oklahoma so we had planned to spend the night at Jarret Farm, the same ranch hotel we we stayed at the night of our wedding. No way we could afford that now. Instead we were just going to do a casual dinner and a movie thing. I took Liam over to my parents house while Mike worked on installing our new tub in the guest bathroom (a topic which requires a entire post for itself). We were to meet up around dinner and finish watching Rome series 2, only nothing seemed to be going right for either one of us yesterday. Liam seems to be teething all of his teeth at once and has some sort of strange allergy/cold thing, probably cold since it would appear that I’m coming down with it too. His moods alternate from wild and happy to cranky, hold me/don’t hold me go away wait don’t move, I don’t know what the hell I want. Mike had his own issues with the bathroom. We ended up being too exhausted by the end of the day to even care that we had made it to our fifth year of marriage. With a cold coming on I decided to sleep in a seperate bed last night. I downed some Benedryl and Tylenol and fell into a coma like sleep only to be startled by Mike at around 4am in the morning. “@*#%! We’re flooding!” We were in the middle of a major thunder/rain storm and water had seeped in through the bathroom wall into Liams’ room, down the hall into our bedroom, soaking the carpet (not a big deal) and our new laminate floors (very bid deal). Our sunroom roof was also leaking, which it does persistantly no matter how often we try to fix it.

I think Mike is about fed up with house stuff and I don’t blame him. If you’re on his Facebook you’ll note his status has been updated to “Mike is cursing his house to Hades”. When I was home for lunch he expressed the hope our house would catch on fire and burn down so we could collect on the insurance and be done with it, but then he realized how bloated the house was and that it would likely not even stay lit. So goes his luck.

This would be my husband at his wits end. If you know and care about my darling Mike, please send him some positive karma in the comments below or give him a sympathetic smile when you see him. My efforts are appreciated but I think he could do with a couple of more “hang in there’s” from friends. Meanwhile, I’m going to fantasize about living in a yurt and cross my fingers that my cold is gone by Monday.

Liam’s Birthday is coming up and we have a request by anyone considering getting him a gift. 1 million toys have been recalled by Fisher Price that were made in China and found to have excessive amounts of lead in their paint. Due to the many recent Chinese recalls, we’re simply not going to buy anything made in China anymore (which could prove rather difficult, but I think we just want to be more aware of of where our stuff is coming from - especially things for Liam.

My friend Diama just sent me a really funny blog written by a stay at home dad. I really cracked up when I read his post called My Daughter, the Nazi. It was definitely the kind of laugh I needed today.

When Emmeline did a Nazi salute in the middle of the Jewish Community Center and then strode goose-stepping under a wall-sized quote by Anne Frank, I sensed my penchant for teaching her random, silly parlor tricks had taken a turn for the worse. The alphabet, numbers, real animal sounds — I think we’ll be doing a lot more of those from now on.

I guess this just proves that you can have the best of intentions as a parent and things will still go awry.

I brought Mike back a book called Daddy Needs Drink after he emailed me at work with another frustrating experience trying to get Liam down for his afternoon nap. He’s reading it as I write this and I’m relieved to hear him chuckle every once and awhile. There is something cathartic about reading blogs/books about parents who are having similar experiences with their kids, especially when they manage to put a humorous twist to things.

This week starts my first full week as a Stay At Home Dad. Whoo Hoo! It’s been great so far, if a bit awkward for me and Carleen - we have, like, time to do stuff together. Liam has been a bit rough over the past few days, not eating so great, only eating certain foods and being generally difficult to put down to sleep. He doesn’t go down with a bottle anymore, he only goes down (for me) with a walk in his stroller. Carleen is able to get him to go down with a little rocking, but she also generally puts him down at night, where I have taken over days. We’re hoping it’s just teething. It’s kind of upsetting to me, since he’s so squirmy and fidgety it’s hard to rock him, that’s something I miss from when he was younger - rocking him to sleep. He doesn’t even like to be in bed with us anymore, he is squirmy, wakes up often and starts crawling around half-asleep, banging his head into the wall. Carleen brought this great book home called Good Nights which discusses co-sleeping with your child(ren); it talks about how great co-sleeping is for children and how it develops this great bond between parent and child and how much better children sleep in bed with mom & dad. And our boy wants nothing to do with it. To be fair, it could just be a phase of independence, maybe when he’s older he’ll be more interested in co-sleeping.

It’s good, in any case, to be away from Central States. My hands haven’t been this clean since I started working there. I don’t think I’m completely acclimated to daytime hours yet, but it should be very soon. I’m a bit overwhelmed at all the various things I can do, now that I’m back on daylight hours. I really want to have a barbeque, I think I may have to set that up soon.

I didn’t go with Mike to New York this time. Plane tickets are outrageous right now. His friend Jamie is also getting married in the Fall and Mike is best man so we plan to save for that trip instead. It’ll be interesting flying on a plane with Liam. I’m already having horrible nightmares of him screaming because of ear pain. I used to have problems with that. The flight attendents would give me plastic cups filled with steaming hot wash cloths to cup over my ears as we descended. I never could understand why that was supposed to help, but it did.

Even though I didn’t go, I did schedule vacation leave for the time that Mike is away. So, these last few days have been interesting, having Liam all day long. Yesterday, my friend Cindy and I went to Tulsa for the day. Liam’s nap schedule was off. He didn’t have his morning nap but slept on the drive down, although I don’t think it was enough since he got pretty cranky towards the end. My friend Jennifer had invited me out that night but I ended up not going. I dropped Liam off at my mom’s where he spent the night. I went back home, ate fried chicken from the deli at Wal-mart, and watched re-runs of Columbo for most of the night. It was strange not having Liam around after having had him around twenty-four seven for the past two days.

Liam has started pulling himself up and can walk along the sides of things. It’s so much fun to watch him think things through and problem solve his movements. Today he finally figured out how to pick something up once he had dropped it from a standing position. Previously he would just get annoyed and start to cry. He’s confident enough now with his standing that he buckles and let’s himself fall, then grabs the toy he’s dropped. Of course, the next thing he has to figure out is how to lift the toy in one hand and pull himself back up with the other. The toy always presents a problem since it prevents him from being able to use that hand to grab onto things and steady himself. My brother, mom and I sat on the couch for almost half an hour today watching him work things through. I wish I had some video clips to show on here but we’ve started using a regular video camera and I haven’t figured out how to transfer it to the computer and downsize it into a quicktime video. That kinda goes beyond my computer expertise.

Being able to pull himself has, however, presented some problems when it comes to putting Liam to sleep. Everybody who takes care of Liam pretty much has a different method for putting him to sleep. It will change often, according to his own development. My mom strolls him around in the stroller and talks and sings to him. I’m not entirely sure what method Mike is using at the moment. I’ve always been able to just feed him his bottle and stick him in his crib. He’ll fuss a little when a lay him down but quickly starts to play and sing to himself until he eventually tires himself out and starts to make a specific lulling moan sound. When you hear that sound you know he’s on his way out. But now that he can stand up, he get’s distracted by all things he can see outside his crib. I’ll rock him for awhile, kiss and hug him then tell him “nite nite”. The minute I stick him in his crib he pulls himself up and starts looking at things, the fan, the window, the mobile on his crib. He never cries and eventually, in most cases, he does fall asleep. When he doesn’t he’ll just start yelling really loud “mam, mam, ma”, “babbabba”. If that goes on for five minutes or so you know you’ve lost him. Give it up, strap him in his car seat and drive, otherwise you’re just going to make the rest of the night painful. So, bedtimes recently have taken a lot longer than usual. He also has his upper front two teeth coming in, probably another reason he’s not going down as easy.

I have a few days left of vacation. I think I’m going to spend most of tomorrow outside. I bought a bunch of plants the other day and I’m going to stick them in pots and do something creative next to our front door. I haven’t told Mike this. He’ll probably find out via this post. It seems like whenever he leaves for New York, I go out and spend money on “house improvement” stuff. Last year it was a wall unit. I promise, baby, I’ll buy less groceries this week.

I’m probably going to change the template on here again soon. Not because I want to but because this template has a tendency to display photo’s and javascript stuff all wonky.

I used to be part of this social networking site for moms called Mayasmom, really neat but…I don’t know, there was just so much “you go girl” talk and exasperated moms talking about their chaotic lives, I sort of felt like I was stuck in a Oprah Winfrey show. No offense, it just wasn’t my cup of tea, I’m just too introverted for that kind of thing. Anyway, I did discover a lot of wonderful mommy bloggers while I was there. This lady is one of my favorites. She’s currently heading a project to design a baby bottle shaped like a female breast…novel idea. Anyway, she’s been helping to promote a site called MomsRising which is actually based on a book and documentary by the same name (see preview here) which I’m really liking. They’re a grassroots movement trying to improve the rights of parents (moms especially but I think their intention is to improve things for families in general). Compared to most parents in the country, Mike and I are in a pretty good situation. I have my complaints about the maternity/paternity leave thing (or lack there of), but at least I got some paid leave. However, some parents get nothing and some mothers are severely discriminated against. I can remember a lady at work who’s daughter was having a baby around the same time I was. She works as a nurse. When her employer found out that she was pregnant, she was fired because she was the second pregnant person on that shift and he didn’t want to have to deal with two nurses gone on maternity leave at the same time. Crazy…yup! But when I looked things up, I was shocked to discover that there aren’t any laws that could have protected her or prevented her from getting fired.

They’re also trying to help encourage moms to stop bickering over what’s better, being a stay at home mom or a working mom. In the past few years there’s been literally dozens of books published on this subject. It’s as if there’s supposed to be a particular formula for parents to follow, everyone has an opinion and pretty soon you start questioning your own methods and lifestyle, feeling damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I just caught an interesting study off of DotMoms by the Pew Research Center:

A national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted Feb.16-March 14 among 2,020 Americans, finds a widespread belief that today’s parents are not measuring up to the standard that parents set a generation ago. Mothers are seen as having the more difficult job, but they are also judged more harshly than are fathers. More than half of Americans (56%) say that mothers are doing a worse job today than mothers did 20 or 30 years ago. By comparison, somewhat fewer people (47%) say fathers are doing a worse job than fathers did 20 or 30 years ago.

It’s hard enough being a parent…why do we have to judge each other so harshly.