in the garage

I am this minute squeezed into a cushioned kids chair in the garage in the dark with the computer on my lap. I can't turn the lights on because the kids might see me from inside the house, and they think I'm at the grocery or walking the dog but probably not sitting in the garage with a bottle of wine. In fact, I am listening to some impressive music while on hold with applecare. (Who picks their playlist? Sometimes Apple marketing astounds me.) I've spent many an hour recently entertained by their playlist while on hold with applecare. Generally I'm holding while the good spirited front line fella named Jake talks with someone in the back who knows which end is up. Not that Jake doesn't. Just somehow I've dug myself into a digital hole from which only experts can save me.

We had swim lessons tonight, which end later than the kids should be in their pjs, and Mitch is at a work dinner. Sometimes I pressure myself about doing it alone - feel that if I'm a good mom I should be able to put them to bed by myself forcryingoutloud, but other times I'm pretty clear about acknowledging my limitations. Given Clark's incessant screaming and general volatility, my limitations these days come sooner than they have other times. Good Enough Mommy, right? So tonight I have a sitter just for bathing them and putting them to bed. It's someone they love, and whom they haven't seen for a while. Everyone was happy when I lugged my electronics out here.

You may be pleased to know that as long as I don't die from a spider bite I might soon have pictures on a computer again. I have pictures, but I can't get them off the camera. So many I've wanted to post here recently! I have faith in this round of computer support. Maybe it's the wine.

A few minutes ago I nearly killed myself tripping over a trike while unplugging the computer from the wall as requested by Applecare Jake. Besides that, and the spiders, it's rather nice out here. I can hear the rain and smell the sawdust left by the guys who've been working on our house. I can also hear my son screaming absolute bloody murder in the upstairs bathroom. My guess is it's about getting out of the bath, though really, it could be about anything. It's hard to be three. Poor Sitter Liz, but she's a capable human and besides, it's good for Clark to have to receive comfort (and reactions) from people who are not Mommy.

Sometimes Mommy needs a break. I'm pretty sure I would not have believed you if prekids you'd told me that a satisfying break would involve sitting in my dark garage in a kids' chair drinking wine and listening to music akin to The Shins while on applecare hold. Ah, the poetic twists our lives take. I hope Clark doesn't scare away Liz. She's a great sitter, and she folds laundry and does dishes. What more?

bedbedbedtime

Bedtime is the pits. It's the time when the kids push all my buttons at once, try all their tricks, delay delay delay. The other night I was trying my best to stay calm and Frances was acting like a spoiled petulant 14 year old. Since we're at the grandparents', both kids were set up on air mattresses on the floor, with Mitch and me on the bed in the same room. Frances and I really got into it. Afterwards she wouldn't let me hug her, so I said that was okay, just said goodnight and hugged Clark, then I stood out on the hall to wait for her inevitable appearance at the door and to peek at her through the crack. At first she just sat on the bed and at the ceiling, the walls, the curtains. (I'd already threatened her with her life if her body left her bed).

"Clark," she said. No response. "Clark! I don't want Mommy to come back in here."

There was a pause, then "Why you not want Mama?" Clark asked, as if he hadn't just witnessed the conflict and subsequent wailing.

"Cuz she's bad."

Clark rolled over with his thumb in his mouth. Frances sat for a minute more looking up at the ceiling, then she started to make this funny loud grunting sound.

"Clark, I'm gonna make loud sounds to bother Mommy," she said. Which I thought was funny since she supposedly didn't want me back in there.

Clark sat up and looked at her. "But then I can't sleep good," he said frankly, and lay back down.

Finally she got up and wandered my way. She opened the door and saw me leaning there against the wall, and she just stood. I waited. Finally I said gently, "Did you need something?"

She waited another moment then said, "You're mean."

"I'm sorry you feel that way, honey," I said.

We stood and looked at each other a bit more, then I told her she could go to sleep on our bed rather than on the mattress if she wanted, and I would move her later. She turned and went back to her mattress. I kept watching. After a minute she got up and walked to the bed, where she curled up. I was getting ready to leave when she got off the bed and came back to the door. She walked right to me and wrapped her arms around me. I stooped down and hugged her, picked her up and sat her on my lap, and rocked her for a long time. I kissed her face and stroked her hair.

Finally she said, "I love you, Mama," and kissed me.

"I love you too," I said. "Are you ready to get in your bed?"

She nodded yes. Then she climbed off my lap and went into the room. At Clark's bed she leaned over to kiss him but he squirmed away, then she got in her bed, pulled up the covers, and went to sleep.

lockers and swim clothes; fear and pride

So, perhaps my last post was a wee bit aggressive. Perhaps I'm feeling a little stressed. Perhaps we're not in the most pleasant of stages. Clark sure isn't. He's three this month, and I feel like we should have turned some sun-warmed corner, but then - I remember now - three is actually harder than two. Ah yes.

We will move on, shall we? 

Yesterday afternoon Frances closed herself in a locker in the hallway outside her ballet class. Clark does it all the time, finds it pretty entertaining, but when Frances did it, the locker jammed. Poor girl. She had a bit of a panic attack, sobbing hysteria. Eventually I had to ask one of the teachers to find someone to help us, someone who came with a crowbar. In the meantime, I could pull the locker open at the top just a little, just enough to see her, and I got her to take some deep breaths with me. I was so proud of her; usually she resists my attempts at deep breathing, but this time she did it, and she was able to calm down some. When the locker was finally opened and she stepped out, she wailed, "It felt like I was going to be in there forever!" 

Last night I was on my own for bedtime, which means some jockeying between bedrooms at the critical lying down time. Frances agreed to lie quietly and wait for me to come back and sing her a song while I put Clark down. (Oh that she is old enough to do this now. Getting them both to bed by myself was really a challenge when neither could understand the concept of patience.) When I left Clark's room I waited outside and listened for him to get up, and sure enough... He went into the bathroom and pushed the stool to the sink and ran himself some water in a cup (how big he's getting!), then he sat down in front of the space heater we have in his room (it's absolutely freezing in there; the coldest room in the house) like it was a campfire. He was so cute smiling at the heater, holding out his hands to warm them. After only a short while he stood up and dragged his blankie to his bed, where they both climbed in and pulled up the covers. I was enormously pleased with this turn of events, and off I went to Frances's room, where it turned out she was already asleep. 

But my celebration was premature. Downstairs, after another 20 minutes or so, Clark silently appeared. He was wearing his swim trunks and his rash guard shirt - backward - (need I remind anyone that it's March in the snowbelt, a high today of 31, a windchill of perhaps 4?). He must have dug them out of the box of summer clothes in his closet, a feat that requires a chair and a good bit of balance. Not only that, but he'd found and donned a swim diaper too. In case you're not in the know, swim diapers do not hold liquid, only solid. He was so pleased with himself for getting off his old diaper and putting the swim one on. He climbed up beside me for some TV watching, and I didn't worry much since we were sitting on a leather couch; in the end we had no accidents. It was so sweet to have him snuggle up against me, thumb and blankie sleepy, and I didn't take him back up to bed for a long time. He loved the commercials best. After one of them, he turned to me and said, with some astonishment, "Mama, he said 'don't get mad, get glad'!"

He slept in his swim clothes, need I say it? This morning he dug around some more and came up with last year's too small crocs. Oh the joy. I think he felt the outfit was complete. 

me the mama, the salve.

For the past week I've been nursing sick kids--quite sick, with high fevers and empty eyes and no appetite. Everybody's been home from school. Today, however, I had one half-sick kid and one nearly-well kid with buckets of energy. Aaaaannd now I've got the fever. The last two days I've been achy and exhausted and completely unable to do anything more than chop cubes of cheese and pour cheerios into a bowl. Since it's February and we live in upstate NY, the temp and wind have been such that the only time I even opened the door today was to let the dog out then back in.

So today when Mitch got home, I collapsed on the couch and begged to be released from bedtime duties. It mostly went well, until the end. I thought the kids would be ready for bed early, both of them still somewhat sick, but I probably didn't factor in the fact that we hadn't left the house since Tuesday. Poor Clark wailed and howled. Mama Mama Mama Mama! I listened from downstairs, wondered if I should let Mitch handle it, thought maybe it would be good for Clark to have someone else comfort him. But since he was specific in his request for me, after a few minutes up I went.

Mitch was working on his laptop outside Clark's room, and as I passed him he said, "Are you sure Clark's ready for bed?" The minute I appeared Clark got quiet and wiped his wet face with his palms. Poor guy. It's true that he seemed awake. Not strung-out-and-over-tired awake, just awake. He talked about his stuffed pony. He told me about the cricket on his shirt. I wondered if I should just bring him back downstairs and try again later. I thought I'd sing to him first, however. 

There are two songs I recently reintroduced into our nighttime playlist, both tunes that I sang to him when he was a baby, when I walked the floor to get him to sleep. It's been interesting: one of the two he wants over and over now, every night, and the other makes his eyes heavy in the first few notes. It's like a muscle memory. So tonight, though he seemed so very awake, I started the first song, assuming he would break in with a request for different lighting or some pretzels. 

You can guess where this is going. I wasn't halfway through the first song when his eyes started to droop. By the end of the second round he was so asleep that his thumb had already fallen from his mouth. It took all of three minutes. 

When I emerged from the room Mitch said, "He needed his mama. I wasn't going to do, that's for sure." Apparently Mitch had tried to comfort him, tried to hold him; Clark wouldn't even look at his daddy, just pushed him away. And Clark is crazy about his daddy. 

He's in a mommy stage, there's no question. I knew that already. (So is Frances, by the way, and the two of them together can sometimes be a little more love than I can handle.) But it's interesting to me that he calmed so quickly when I arrived, that he gave in to the deep rest of sleep so immediately. It's true; he needed me. I don't know why, but it seems odd to me that these little creatures need me so deeply, and not just for the safety and regularity of routine (I get that. I am the one home with him all the time, the one making meals and bandaiding scrapes, the one helping him navigate conflicts with his sister and his fear of the monster upstairs), but for something more intrinsic.

I'm not explaining well. I guess I mean that I'm so focused on providing the physical stuff-- cooking, and keeping the house straight, and organizing craft activities, and ushering folks into snowpants and the minivan--that I don't realize how much emotional stuff I provide too. Yet as I'm writing this I'm aware that much of the physical stuff is the emotional stuff. I keep them on regular sleep schedules and pack snacks and watch for overtiredness. I try to protect them from the bombardment of the world, while also show them what that world is. It shouldn't surprise me that he needs just me the way he does, should it? I could see it more easily if I were the only caregiver, if his daddy weren't such an amazing father... Am I still shortchanging my role in this? Do I not see with perspective who I am to my son? I think I don't. 

Frances has lately taken to calling me the "best mama in the world." Every time she does it I hear a little disclaimer in my head. But then, the other day I flipped open the book The Emotional Life of the Toddler to a random page and read that, though the parent's job is to protect the child from emotional stress, no parent can do this all the time because the perfect parent doesn't exist. And it's important to remember that children are resilient enough that they bounce back from emotional strain pretty well. 

Why can't I remember that the perfect parent doesn't exist? Why do I (and so many of the women I know) pressure ourselves to be the perfect parent? Feel we've failed when we fall short of perfection? (Why do I hear in my head, when my sweet daughter tells me I'm the best mama in the world, that no, I'm not. Why don't I just hear the love?) Why is perfection, rather than very good solid parenting, the yardstick?


Can't be. Doesn't exist. 

I feel like I'm rambling, like I'm circling the core of the thing. Like, if I could say it right, this post would be half as long.

Okay, jumping ship. We'll attribute the ramblingness of this post to the fever, whadayasay? I've got to get some sleep. 

sleepy toddler update

A big THANK YOU to everyone who responded with suggestions! (there were also about 25 more suggestions on my fb page...) It was interesting: all of it was helpful, even if I disagreed with it, because it helped me frame what I believe would work for us.

Here's what's happened: I unplugged the lamp in Clark's room (he has no overhead) and told him it was broken, and then I hung up a pretty little string of multi-colored japanese lantern lights. When I brought him in the room to show him the lights he said, "So beautiful!" That night in bed he stared up at them for ages and was so entranced with them that he let me leave before he was asleep.

The next night we had a harder time when Mitch told Clark he was leaving the room. There was screaming. Mitch left anyway and Clark screamed for a while more before he climbed out of the bed and came downstairs. I took him back up and sang him a song and told him I was going to leave. He protested, as expected. I got the bear off his changing table and put it in his crib, and told him the bear was very sleepy and he wanted to be sung a song so he could go to sleep. I asked Clark if he would sing the bear a song, asked what song he thought was the bear's favorite. Clark thought Row Row Row Your Boat might be, so I suggested he sing it to the very sleepy bear, and then I left. From downstairs the monitor told us that he sang and sang to the bear, and then happily talked to himself until he was asleep.

The next night Mitch was the one putting him down again, and when he told Clark he was leaving Clark screamed, but only for a moment. Maybe we've turned a corner. Aaaand in the middle of the night Mitch  dreamed Clark had climbed up into his arms, and then he woke, and Clark indeed was in bed with us, wrapped in Mitch's arms.

Since then we've been up and down... most nights we leave before he's completely asleep. Since we turned out the bright lights he definitely sleeps more consistently until morning, rather than getting up and 2 or 3 or 4 and wanting to get on with the day. Some nights he has a harder time than others, and we adjust; we stay with him a little while, or we make some kind of deal like we'll leave the door open and books in his bed as long as he will stay there, and some nights we just muddle through. But! Overall we're in a better place. Yay!

Frances's 4th birthday is the day after tomorrow and I'm busy now with the making of princess crowns and the creation of a castle cake, plus family is in town for the festivities, so it might be a few days before much more.... Though I do want to say that the birthday ceremony today at her Waldorf school was the sweetest thing I may have ever seen and it was all I could do not to blubber right there in the middle of it. I'll try to post pictures.