Archive for the 'communicating' Category

At What Point Are There So Many Boundaries That I Can’t Find My Way to My Child’s Heart?

I had a heady moment of deja vu this morning.

There I was, crouched over my son in his car seat, using my knee to push his arching body back into place as I struggled to buckle him in and heard a gutteral voice that sounded suspiciously like my own hissing, “You sit down NOW!  Do you want me to take away The Backyardigans tonight??!!” just loudly enough to be heard over his wails.

The only difference between this episode and the spate we suffered about a year ago was the specter of his little sister staring at us from her seat.

That and, as I got behind the wheel of the car and slowly cooled myself down, the realization that all this ruckus could have been avoided if only I’d granted Jake his not as unreasonable as it sounds request to start the car.

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Turn, Turn, Turn … or Not: What I Learned at Six Months

“Yep,” Mike confirmed the other day.  “Lily’s acting like a normal baby.”

He said this after our first sunny fall day in the park.  After Lily and I arrived with her pouting in her stroller because I decided that much as she was demanding it I was simply not up to the task of walking to the park with her in the Ergo.  After yet another night of our power struggle over when she got to wake me up to nurse (as opposed to just waking me up) and how many times.  And after I summarily dumped her in Mike’s arms and walked away to chat with some other adults.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with acting like a normal baby when you are, pretty much, a normal baby.  You get to fuss.  You get to yell at your mother for not holding you enough, not nursing you enough, having the audacity to put you down on the floor so she can, say, put on her sweater for a walk to the park.  And you definitely get to refuse to sleep through the night and not care that the books say by six and a half months you probably should be doing so.

I know there is nothing wrong with all of this.  I know — I think I know, I tell myself I know — that just because Lily can be a little grumpy with me now and then it does not mean that she will come to hate me in thirteen or so years.  She will hate me then regardless of what I do right now.

What I’m having some trouble wrapping my mind around, however, is the notion that there is nothing wrong with me responding to her grumpiness with less than perfect equanimity and nurturing sweetness.  There is nothing wrong with telling a baby at one o’clock in the morning that you want to sleep and she should stop crying at you.  Especially if you are offering a tone of voice and a back rub that are a great deal more gentle than the words you are saying because you know she can’t understand them anyhow.

In short, I spent the past several days beating myself up because Lily’s crankiness made me cranky as well.

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How Can You Love Me So Much When …?

Lily and I are having a bit of a love fest these days.  We gaze into each others’ eyes.  We smile and giggle.  I marvel at the double dimples in her elbows and the figure-eight temple dents she inherited from her father.

And then, after forty-five minutes or so of mutual adoration, I whisk her off to daycare and plop her in someone else’s arms.  Getting to do so doesn’t make me love her any more; it just makes it easier to spend forty-five minutes telling her so.

But much as my daily three-hour-break from my baby makes me, if not a better mother, at least a happier one, it is powerless against those “I’m exhausted and you are making my nipples sore” moments.  Which are relatively rare, but still all too common.

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Full of Firsts — And Not a Parent in Sight

I thought — mistakenly, as it turned out — that it was pretty momentous to be witnessing Lily’s first props-assisted rollover yesterday.

We were about midway through our hour-long drop-off at daycare.  I was pretending not to notice the time I was supposed to be using for myself slipping away as I clung to my girl.  After all, I couldn’t be expected to just put her down while the infant caregiver was busy feeding one of Lily’s classmates.  And when Veronica set up a play mat to allow me to do just that, well, in my experience Lily doesn’t like play mats, so I was really doing everyone a favor by hanging out to rescue her when she complained about being stuck like a helpless little turtle on her back, unable to look away from the looming forms of stuffed horses and pigs with black and white checks on their bellies hanging overhead.

This particular play mat, however, had one thing our rejected-by-both-babies one at home does not:  a small, crescent-shaped pillow sewn into it.  Designed, I knew, even though Jake was never much of a tummy time guy, for helping infants appreciate tummy time by giving them a little lift.  Imagine, if you will, lying sprawled face down in a sea of whimsical shapes you neither recognize nor find particularly attractive while trying to lift a head that feels as if it is saddled with a thick, granite helmet.  You get a lift or two for a second or two and then crash nose-first back into the whimsy.

Now consider the benefits of a little crescent pillow that supports your chest and creates a gentle slope of your spine, allowing far easier head support.  Not that it doesn’t crash to the ground frequently, but at least you have time to appreciate the view before it does.

Quickly surmising that Lily was horrified by the animals Veronica helpfully hunted down and I obediently attached to the overhead arches of the play mat — something about her crying at the sight of them — I decided we should try out that pillow thing.  In the past week Lily’s been giving the lying on her tummy and lifting her chest and head routine a try, so I figured she’d be happy for a little prop to help her along.

She expressed a moment of initial surprise as Veronica and I arranged her.

“What do you think?” I chirped in a voice meant to suggest she should think this was just the best darned thing in the world.

She responded by rolling onto her back.

This was not the first time Lily has tried to roll over.  She’s tried more than a few times.  But has always been stymied by the bottom arm getting in the way, a common baby complaint.

This time, however, the pillow provided just enough clearance for her arm to magically move right through and — ta da! — she was on her back, crashed into one of the arches of the play mat and not particularly happy about it.

Still, it was an auspicious moment to recount to Mike half an hour later when I had rocked her to sleep so I could finally put her down and leave.

My big, euphoric bubble deflated more than a little bit, however, when I arrived to pick her up.  Lily, I was informed, had rolled over on flat ground that afternoon, a far more monumental achievement than doing so with props.  And, of course, she achieved this milestone when I wasn’t around to witness it.

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Darn You, Michael Pollan! What Am I Supposed to Feed My Child Now?

I just finished reading my first Michael Pollan book, In Defense of Food.  Which is somewhat strange, because I have been a big Michael Pollan fan for some time now.

Mostly, I have depended on Mike to give me the information I need to tell people I’m a big Michael Pollan fan.  He does the heavy lifting — actually reading the books — and I decide I like what I hear and don’t really need to read any of it myself:  eat organic (or natural), eat local, don’t eat too much meat (or any, in my case, and all non-meat-eaters like to be patted on the back every so often).  After discussing why we’re going to make weekly visits to the farmer’s market or why Mike has gone to the trouble of assembling that huge compost heap in the yard, I smugly eye The Omnivore’s Dilemma, whisper, “I’ll be reading you next,” and then abandon it to gather dust on the stacked bookcases containing the other treasures Mike brought with him to the marriage that always seem so much more appealing when I’m not actually in need of something to read.

But a few months ago, I put In Defense of Food on my bedside stand in the stack of waiting-to-be-read books I love to make my way through.  And a week ago, I actually picked it up and started reading.

Almost immediately, I began worrying about what I’m feeding my son.

This is a problem. Because, as Mike will gladly confirm, I am the very last person who needs more reasons to worry about food.

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Knowing When to Say No (and Not Just to Target on a Saturday)

I can’t remember the last time I went to Target on a Saturday.

As of today, I know why.

It was supposed to be my break, part of the divide-and-conquer strategy Mike and I launched on this Saturday morning of oh-so-cranky toddler.

And, indeed, somehow, I needed a break, despite having spent all of an hour or so with Jake.  All of it, mind you, “getting ready” to go to the park.  This involved:

1)  Three peaceful minutes of saving Daddy from his breakdown as Jake raised my hopes by agreeably taking my hand and walking upstairs to “put on clothes for the park.”  As he rarely agreeably puts on clothes these days for any reason whatsoever, even the park, I believed my calm and motherliness had finally prevailed over what I still fervently wish to believe is the myth of the Terrible Two’s.

2)  One medium-length crying fit as I objected to Jake’s preference for playing with the obnoxious-in-the-way-only-people-who-don’t-have-to-live-with-the-gift can be (a little driving console with steering wheel, radio, and turn signals that all make different and equally grating noises) over listening to me.  Not only am I particularly up in arms about his recent penchant for steadfastedly ignoring me when I talk to him, but my frustration is compounded by the fact that I am usually striving to give him the choices that are supposed to mollify and mature a young child.  Really, how much good is it letting him choose his outfit when this scenario  consists of me kneeling on the floor with a selection of three shirts draped over my arm like a maitre d’ at a restaurant serving up a selection of Old Navy toddler tops while he hunches over his race car console drowning out my pleas for him to make a choice with the VRR-VRR-VRROOOOOMM of a toy whose battery just won’t die already?

Not much good, if, like me, you end up threatening to and then taking the toy away, provoking the tears that it seems it is my job to provoke these days.

This crying episode, however, ended surprisingly well, as Jake actually heard and understood me saying that if only he’d make a choice I’d give him his toy back.  Or maybe it was sheer coincidence.  At any rate, he chose a lovely red shirt and I gave him back his toy.  All was peaceful.  Until –

3)  Five minutes of me looking for a pair of tennis shoes to celebrate our 60 degree weather while he insisted on going through my shoe boxes and trying on a pair of heels so high I’m surprised I haven’t broken an ankle in them.  He was unhappy when I wrested them away and put them back in a box, but was fortunately distracted by the much safer Ugg slippers my wonderful husband bought for my perennially cold feet at Christmas.  Minimal tears were involved.

Perhaps Jake was just saving up for:

4)  A good twenty minutes spent in the bathroom as I foolishly tried to change out a load of laundry and put shoes on him.  There were three flaws in this plan.

The first was that these days Jake is fascinated with turning on the faucet and wasting as much water as he possibly can.  While I fancy myself able to choose my battles, I had the now apparent misfortune of living through a massive California drought at the impressionable age of nine.  This means that I am hardwired to freak out at the prospect of wasted water.  To the point that my lawn in St. Louis was constantly brown, even as the neighbors explained to me that there’s this little river called the Mississippi from which their abundant water supply came.  Of course, we had a small drought a year or two after I moved there, and my brown lawn enjoyed some company, proving my point but at the expense of positively fixing me in a state of water-mania for the rest of my days.

While I might perhaps have been making some headway with Jake on the whole water-conservation thing up until this morning, we then hit flaw number two — while I was putting on shoes in the bedroom, Jake had come across the fishy-face mask of his Nebulizer and was now discovering the great fun to be had placing it under the faucet and letting all the wasted water run through the tube attached to its “mouth.”  (For those lucky souls unfamiliar with the Nebulizer, it is a very loud machine with which one administers breathing treatments to their child with viral pneumonia or, in this case, a more mild but threatening respiratory bug.  Said child is much more likely to tolerate the Nebulizer mask placed over his mouth and nose if he has viral pneumonia and is too sick and weak to protest.)  This Best Activity in the World made it that much more difficult to suggest to him that he turn off the water already.  And, no, he was not amused by the substitute game I made up, whereby I turned off the faucet, he made his way off the step stool he uses to reach the sink so he could walk around to turn the water back on and by the time he made his way back up the steps to the sink I had turned off the water again.

Yes, I understand why he was frustrated.  But I was too.

And so began more tears.  Because, remember, that’s my job.

And we’re not even to the third flaw in my plan:  thinking he would actually put on his shoes.

This was not an unreasonable assumption.  On weekends Jake gets to wear his beloved pink polka dot boots, banished from the gym at school.

“Do you want to wear your boots?” I asked in that cheery, upbeat voice I can put on even when cheery and upbeat are the last two things I am feeling.

“Nooo!”  Jake wailed.  “Shoes!”

“Really?” I asked, untucking his pants from his socks.  “Okay, shoes.”

I got one on.  Then, “Noooo!”

“What do you want?” I asked.  At this moment Mike came up the stairs.

“Daddddyyyy!” Jake howled.  I did not like this answer.  “Daddy isn’t going to hold you until you have your shoes on,” I said grimly as he squirmed in my lap.  Anyone who has had a strong, howling two-year-old squirm in her lap will appreciate how much more joyous the sensation is when you are eight months pregnant and don’t have a whole lot of lap to accommodate such squirming.

And so we entered into a match of Who Is More Determined.  I was fixated on getting that second shoe on Jake’s foot at all costs — it velcros closed I reasoned, it can’t be that hard! — and he was equally determined not to let me.  You know who won.

“BOOTS!” he finally howled.  “I want BOOOTS!”

“Then let me put your boots on!” I yelled, sounding — I cringe to admit it here — like my own mother.  I was embarrassed to have even my husband hear me talking to my child like that.  Even though there is a reason that all parents yell at their kids from time to time, and it isn’t that they’re bad parents.

The thing about me yelling is — whether I am yelling at my own parents or my husband or, in my past, roommates or boyfriends — it can end only one way.

I cry.

And I cry even more when my son is clinging to his father for dear life.  The same father who had used the very same tone of voice with him a mere forty-five minutes earlier.  Which only proved that I had blown it forever, provoked one too many tantrums, wasted all that good will built up over nine months of in-utero care and twenty-five months of hugs and outbursts of great love.

So I sat in the bathroom for a while, crying and wondering where, exactly I am supposed to draw the line.  What battles am I supposed to pick when every single thing in Jake’s life seems to be a battle these days?  How, in short, do I know when to say no?

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How Much Influence Do I Have on My Toddler’s Tantrums — and the Tantrums of Others?

It was only after the fact — as I recounted the incident to Jake’s preschool teachers this morning — that I saw the humor in it.

There I was, seven-plus months pregnant and clad in a thick black winter coat bulging at the zipper, crouched in the back seat of my CRV as I straddled my struggling toddler and he piked out of his car seat while I held him down and huffed through clenched teeth, “I’m pregnant and I’m tired and I’ve had enough.”

It’s true that I had had more than enough.  It had been an emotional morning:  The bellowing, outraged tears when I insisted on changing Jake’s diaper before washing his hands.  The same welling up of true hurt when Lilah the basset hound happened to wander by his chair as he was eating breakfast.  And don’t even get me started on the performance he put on at the top of the stairs when his father left for work.

There was a big part of me that just didn’t have the reserves to deal calmly with toddler tantrums.  I have been completely depleted since yesterday afternoon, when I was looking forward to my first few hours alone in the house in the three weeks there have been workmen sharing it with me (weatherproofing, thank goodness, so I shouldn’t complain too much.  But, then, I am.).  Instead of a cozy hour in front of the new season of Damages folding the multitudes of laundry that gather seemingly daily, I found myself huddled over my laptop at the dining room table, clad in my winter coat and sweaty yoga clothes, as the guys put a big, noisy blower in the back door and ran around the house for a couple of hours finding all the places it still leaks.  I, in the meantime, found that there is only so much one can do when one is not allowed to close any doors (say, to the bathroom where I was longing to take a shower) and doesn’t really have full access to the kitchen and is slowly losing one’s mind due to the constant HUMMMMMMMMM of the blower.

Certainly, the overwhelming sense of displacement that suddenly hit me goes a long way to explaining the fact that I yelled at Jake — I didn’t raise my voice; I YELLED — when he pulled the I’m-not-sitting-in-my-carseat stunt in the preschool parking lot when I picked him up from school at the end of my trying afternoon. And my ability to ignore his cries of despair as I washed his hair with him standing in the bathtub — the closest I’ve managed to get him to water since another poop-in-the-tub incident last week.  (Mike and I handled the most recent one with such calm that I can only imagine how much our first reaction must have traumatized him to find us back to coaxing him into a tub in his swim diaper.)

But somehow, this morning, it got even harder.  Because each time he built himself into an orgy of sadness I could feel the same emotion building up in me.  I could remember what it feels like to cry with the jagged urgency of being all alone, rejected, denied, unloved.  And it just plain killed me to hear him that way.

While, at the same time, it killed me to have to listen to it yet again.

Hence, my moment of straddling my crying child in the car this morning as I cried too and kept crying right through his two-year-old’s recovery, ignoring his comments about what we saw as we drove past, and, oh so cruelly, informing him upon his query that, “Yes, Mommy is going to work after I drop you off.  And not a moment too soon.”

Oh, yeah, he understood just what I was saying, poor guy.

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My Toddler Teaches Me When to Say “I’m Sorry”

Jake has picked up a rather impressive and useful new habit.  He now frequently says, “I’m sorry.”

The thing is, I’m not entirely certain whether he’s saying it when he’s the one who has something to be sorry for.  More often, I fear, he’s merely pointing out my own lack of social graces.

When, for example, I inadvertently elbow him in the head as I’m folding laundry.  Does his, “I’m sorry, Mommy” mean he’s sorry he got his head in the way of my elbow?  Or am I the party who should be apologizing, since my elbow feels just fine, thanks, and I generally do avoid using it to clock my son in the head?

Or what about yesterday, when Jake said, “I’m sorry,” as we were enjoying a warm, sunny day by tossing his football at the park?  In particular, what about the moment I tossed it right into his forehead?  Was his apology an acknowledgement of his still burgeoning coordination (assuming he ever possesses such a thing, being my child, after all)?  Or of his mother’s own uncoordinated reasons for generally not throwing footballs at living creatures?

The heartbreaker came some time between midnight and two last night, as he began yelling for me to remove him from his crib to my bed for the third night in a row.  “I’m not happy,” I said grimly as I lifted him into my arms.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a small, scared voice.

No tired, angry lectures from me followed.  And, in fact, when I later put him back in his crib, he slept through the night without bothering me again.

I should feel really good about this.  I should be proud of my son for understanding that it upsets me to be awakened in the middle of the night and for his quite apt apology.

Instead, however, I feel a bit like maybe I was the one who should be apologizing.

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Do I Really Have Any More Control Than a Two-Year-Old?

Mike does not believe in the Terrible Two’s.

I wish I were as certain that Jake is not, in fact, entering his Terrible Two’s as my husband, even though I know it would do me no good.  (Witness Mike’s frequent less-than-patient exchanges with Jake in which he variously commands, wheedles, and begs Jake [clench teeth here] not to whine like that.)

In a sense, though, I don’t believe in them either.  By which I mean that I don’t believe Jake has been rendered “terrible” by his newfound ability to flip from laughing, sunny child-of-mine to vibrating board of angry baby body in the blink of an eye — or the unfortunate utterance of some word he does not wish to hear.

But, truly, we have run out of any other explanation for those frequent moments when he starts making that whirring sound that signals the onset of a full-fledged tantrum unless the offending parent immediately stops what he or she is doing and gives him EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTS RIGHT NOW.  He’s not running a temperature or showing any other signs of illness.  He seems to have all his teeth (although I ventured to Mike this morning that I have read they get TWO sets of molars, which would explain the continuing flood of drool, like the particularly distressing stream that descended from Jake’s mouth to the top of his father’s head as Mike carried Jake on his shoulders through the Grove Park Inn yesterday evening).  He’s sleeping well, eating well, and, yes, pooping well, as parents like to see and to tell people who really don’t want to hear about it.  In short, he has no reason for being so cranky.

Except, of course, that he’s almost two years old.  Old enough to have his own wants and desires. Old enough to communicate them with reasonable clarity.  But not, alas, old enough to control his disappointment when he doesn’t get what he has so clearly communicated as a want or desire.

It’s at the moments when I find myself responding in kind that I wonder whether, in fact, it is too much to ask that he control his tantrums when I’m not so sure I’m capable of controlling mine.

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Giving and Receiving Toddler Style — In the Bathtub

Jake took a bath last night for the first time in a week.

This fact is notable for three reasons.  First, he is generally quite fond of the tub, so a one-week boycott is a serious thing indeed.  Second, the fact that I was able to ease him back into the tub wearing a swim diaper adorned with Winnie the Pooh suggested that he might one day overcome the Poop in the Bathtub debacle I inflicted on him, oh, last time he voluntarily took a bath.  Third, of course, is that he has taught me a big lesson about giving and receiving.

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