Raincity Mama

I haven’t trav­eled since I had the kids. It isn’t in our bud­get and no travel oppor­tu­ni­ties have come up at work so I’ve been home bound. While I may not have hopped on a plane and hap­pily arrived at a new des­ti­na­tion we did a fam­ily 0uting that I think counts as a trip that I’d like to share.

We took the kids to Maple­wood Farm. It is part of Van­cou­ver Parks and the kids absolutely loved it. We’ve taken them before but the last time we went was their first time vis­it­ing out of the str0ller. If you have only one child I would imag­ine that it is easy to let a tod­dler roam around but with two tod­dlers it is impos­si­ble for a sin­gle adult to wran­gle two kids run­ning off in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. I arranged for us to go on a week­end when my hus­band could join us.

It was a rainy Van­cou­ver day so I packed the kids’ rain­suits. We got them bun­dled up and they were happy to be let loose. Once we were inside it was just a mat­ter of fol­low­ing the rain­suited child that was mine to watch. It was so nice to just have to watch one kid! I can­not explain how much energy goes into try­ing to super­vise two kids, but I think it would be sim­i­lar to try­ing to watch two ten­nis matches at the same time.

My hus­band fol­lowed one and I fol­lowed the other. I got to watch my daugh­ter pet a baby goat. It was so sweet to see how gen­tle she was with it. She seemed to under­stand that she needed to be gentle. I saw my son chase ducks and chick­ens that stayed *just* out of his reach. We watched the pigs sleep and sat and pet the enor­mous bunnies.

We let the kids roam. It was bit­ter­sweet, it was awe­some because I knew they were hav­ing a blast and I also felt sad because roam­ing isn’t some­thing they get to do nearly often enough. We made our rounds to say good­bye to the ani­mals and loaded our exhausted kids into the car. It wasn’t long until they were both asleep.

For days after both kids talked about their trip to the farm. There was lots of farm play and both kids asked to go back. Writ­ing this reminds me that I need to make time to take them again. It just goes to show that it isn’t the big things, it is the tiny things that matter.

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but you can’t make them eat.

Our kids used to be great eaters. As a mat­ter of fact, I was very smug about it. The kids started eat­ing solids at around 7 months (I think, I’m not really sure. That first year is hard to recall). Try as I might they did not like baby food. They wanted what we were eat­ing so that is what we did. We’d offer them what­ever we were eat­ing, no spe­cial meals. But­ter chicken to pesto pizza, they ate it.

Until recently that is. In the last two months the kids have become quite picky eaters. Well, my son will say that he doesn’t like it but he will usu­ally at least taste it. My daugh­ter will excit­edly climb into her high­chair and upon tak­ing a quick look at what has been lov­ingly pre­pared for her will announce “I don’t like dat!”

It is mad­den­ing! For the last two nights she has turned her nose up at what is being served for din­ner. We always have some­thing on the table that she will eat. Tonight is was a bis­cuit, she mostly just crum­bled it. Last night it was toma­toes. We always offer the kids yogurt after sup­per so I guess she ate that too.

What really both­ers me is when she refuses to eat din­ner and then as we are clear­ing the table she will announce that she is hun­gry! I’m not sure if this is just her way of exert­ing her own will or if per­haps her growth rate is slow­ing down? All I know is that it is dri­ving me nuts. I try not to make too big a deal about it because I want to avoid this becom­ing a power strug­gle. Feed­ing and sleep­ing are two things that I have no con­trol over. I get set the stage and be encour­ag­ing but I can­not make them do it.

How do you deal with picky eaters? Leave me a com­ment or point me to one of your posts where you’ve writ­ten about this. I’m going to have to reread “How to get your kid to eat but not too much”.

I would describe myself as socially awk­ward. I know I’m not the only per­son on the inter­net that is socially awk­ward but some­times it feels that way. I had hoped that social media would help me be more socia­ble but instead most days I still feel like I’m on the out­side look­ing in. I know that to get beyond this feel­ing I need to jump in but mostly it feels like I’d be interrupting.

It is hard to watch a con­ver­sa­tion flow and feel that it is ok to jump in. If I were at a cock­tail party and I jumped into a con­ver­sa­tion it would prob­a­bly grind to a halt. I know that to get to know peo­ple I need to jump in but some­times I’m not sure how peo­ple will react so I hold back. Blerg!

I’m not sure how to wrap this up. This has been on my mind quite a bit lately and I thought that writ­ing about it might help but I feel extremely self con­scious and I’m temped to just delete this.

So does any­one else think that “awk­ward” looks wrong? I know that if you say a word too many times it starts to sound weird but awk­ward just looks awkward!

At work today the topic of hor­ror movies came up and I was in the minor­ity, being some­one that avoids watch­ing scary movies. I have never liked them. I blame it on see­ing The Shin­ing when I was 7, far too young to see such a scary movie.

I hate how pan­icky I feel after watch­ing a scary movie; I cower in bed when the house creaks. The closet door needs to be shut because y0u know that there are mon­sters in there just wait­ing to leap out and get me. I know it is years away, but what am I going to do when my kids want to watch scary movies?

My co-workers gath­ered around to inter­ro­gate me. They couldn’t believe that I refuse to pay good money to scare myself silly. “What about zom­bie movies?” That was when they all got rather excited. They insisted that I need to see Zom­bieland! “It’s funny/scary!” “Yes, it’s mostly a comedy!”

I asked my co-worker why she liked zom­bie movies and she said because they are usu­ally just kind of silly; except for that one where the zom­bies could run, that one freaked her out.

From there the con­ver­sa­tion moved on to ghosts and I thought it would be funny to sug­gest that there could be a movie about ghost zom­bies, the dead undead, that would be funny! They could fly and float through walls. Once they caught you instead of just eat­ing your brains, they’d eat your soul too! Only they’re ghosts so would they even be able to eat brains? Hmm, I think I need to think this through more before I write the movie script.

In my search to find what is g0ing to make me happy I’ve been doing some soul search­ing and let me tell you soul search­ing is hard! I mean I’m as self-centered as the next per­son but all this focus on “me” and what I want is hard to maintain.

One thing that came up is that I want to learn Ital­ian. I bought a pro­gram to use before we left for Italy to get mar­ried. I used the pro­gram for a few weeks before we left but after we got back I never used it again.

It is time to dust off the disks and start using it again because I think pick­ing this up again is the right thing to do. When I was in first year of col­lege I wanted to study lan­guages and maybe it is time to explore that.

A while ago I received an odd phone call from my grand­fa­ther. He wasn’t mak­ing much sense and he hung up on me. He was call­ing from a blocked num­ber so I couldn’t call him back. I did what any sen­si­ble per­son does and freaked out. I called my par­ents’ house and had to explain it twice. My mom sensed the panic in my voice and got my dad to call to check to see if my grand­fa­ther was ok.

I sat there for about 30 min­utes feel­ing anx­ious won­der­ing why my grand­fa­ther was call­ing me. My dad called me back to tell me that my grand­fa­ther was just fine. He was call­ing from his cell­phone and didn’t have his hear­ing aid in so he couldn’t hear me. He wanted to ask me if I wanted my grandmother’s china. I was relieved and sur­prised. The only thing of my grandmother’s that I asked for and received was a token ceramic fig­urine that I have fond mem­o­ries of, it is the shape of a dog and my grand­mother would use it to rest her glasses on. It now sits at my desk at work and I use it every­day. I’ve been very care­ful to not ask for any­thing else.

It sur­prised me that I was being offered my grandmother’s china. I am the only grand­daugh­ter and my chil­dren are the only great grand­chil­dren so I guess it makes sense that I would be asked first. It just never occured to me to ask for it. As a mat­ter of fact I could not even remem­ber what the set looked like. Try as I might I could not sum­mon an image of it. The only set I could remem­ber was an anniver­sary set my grand­mother received for their 50 wed­ding anniver­sary and there is no way I’d be offered that.

Last week my dad dropped off the china set and I took a peek. It is a fairly basic pat­tern, cream and blue with gold trim. I’d be proud to have it on my table. The only thing that pains me is that it will have to be hand-washed due to the gold trim. We don’t have much in the way of stuff that must be hand-washed. The same goes for clothes that must be dry cleaned or ironed for that matter.

I now own an 8 piece set of china that will be rel­e­gated to spe­cial occa­sions. We don’t live like that. I need to have stuff that we can use every­day. If this needs to be packed away then I will never use it and it will sit unused gath­er­ing dusk in our crawl space. My mom wants me to keep it and pass it on to the Smoochie; but that will be decades from now!

What do you do with sen­ti­men­tal items that you don’t feel com­fort­able using. We are try­ing so hard to pare down what we have to items that we love and use every­day so keep­ing this china for Christ­mas doesn’t jive with how we want to live. Tell me, what you have done with stuff you have inherited?

I feel like I’ve fallen into the sea. I can’t say when it hap­pened but it hap­pened a long time ago, most likely just after the kids were born.

I remem­ber strug­gling to find my way. Thrash­ing and fight­ing and it didn’t really help. Waves washed over me and I’d splut­ter and cough. I did not scream for help because I’m stub­born and I thought I could find my own way to the shore, but I was over­whelmed and the under­tow pulled me fur­ther and fur­ther away.

I got tired of fight­ing so I switched to tread­ing water so I could catch my breath. It helped for a while but even tread­ing water is tir­ing so I decided to float instead.

It feels like I’ve been float­ing, adrift for­ever. I move with the cur­rents but make no real progress. I fig­ured I’d even­tu­ally wash ashore but I can’t even see land. I’m cold and dis­ori­ented and I close my eyes and a wave crashes over my head. I’m under­wa­ter try­ing to fig­ure out which way is up. I fight to right myself but exhaus­tion and numb­ness are pow­er­ful. I begin to lose hope.

A bea­con flashes in the dark. I can hear my name being called. I know that I have to start mov­ing again but I am so tired. Why is sav­ing myself so hard?

We’ve started tak­ing Dude to weekly speech ther­apy ses­sions, and today was his sec­ond ses­sion. At 2 1/2 years old he can say two words that a stranger would rec­og­nize. There are a cou­ple of other words that he’ll try but I think I’m the only one that can under­stand what he’s try­ing to say. For the rest he signs and when signs fail he points and grunts. He can prob­a­bly sign over 200 signs but that only works when the per­son he is sign­ing to knows ASL, which isn’t that many peo­ple. It is espe­cially hard to see him out try­ing to inter­act with other kids his age and they don’t under­stand him.

The speech ther­a­pist seems to under­stand him and his sit­u­a­tion a bit bet­ter. He is one of the youngest patients she’s worked with so she’s hav­ing to adapt her method. I was reluc­tant when we first met her months ago because she was rec­om­mend­ing that I stop teach­ing him signs. I didn’t see why I would take his only form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion away from him. I still don’t want to take it away. It is just eas­ier to sign because he will read­ily use signs to tell me what he wants but if I attempt to get him to speak then we go around and around with him point­ing to var­i­ous things and he gets upset when I don’t know what he wants.

As part of my home­work with him I’m to try to get him to use his voice more often and to do that we are going to basic sounds, like mmm, dd, bb, ah, oh, eh, etc. If I start he will copy me as long as his sis­ter doesn’t jump in. If I ask him what a dog sounds like and his sis­ter answers he just doesn’t see the point in answer­ing too. I totally get that but I just want to hear Dude try. This is one of the chal­lenges of hav­ing twins. It is really high­lighted when one if advanced and the other one is delayed. At least they aren’t iden­ti­cal because it would be even more tempt­ing to make comparisons.

Because I knew that we were going to start up speech ther­apy again I started ramp­ing up prac­tic­ing with him. The hus­band and I have also made it a pri­or­ity to give the kids one on one time with us at least once a week. It sounds so piti­ful to see that in writ­ing that they only get indi­vid­u­al­ized atten­tion once a week but I guess all par­ents with more than one kids strug­gle with that.

Mama and Dada are the two words that Dude says that I think any stranger would rec­og­nize. For the longest time he would only say them when I prompted him to use his voice. The hus­band would be upstairs and Dude would stand at the bot­tom gate sign­ing Dad and “call­ing” him in a word­less way. I’d remind him that his daddy couldn’t see him sign­ing and that if he used his voice then daddy would respond. Only then would he call Dada.

The other day I came home and Dude saw me sneak in the door. He ran over with a look of delight on his face as he cried Mama. I can hardly describe the joy I felt hear­ing my son call for me unprompted.

We sat today with the speech ther­a­pist and it quickly became obvi­ous that for what­ever rea­son Dude wasn’t inter­ested in play­ing any of her games. She com­mented on how last week he was quite talk­a­tive and it felt like magic and this week, well, not so much.

I’m as on-board with his speech ther­apy as I’m going to get. I am con­cerned about the level of his speech delay. I believe that I am doing the best thing by tak­ing him for ther­apy. I just know that he will speak when he is good and ready. There are a num­ber of kids that for what­ever rea­son decide that speech just isn’t for them and then one day they just start talk­ing. It will take time. For now he doles out words at a miserly rate. Now that I’ve heard him say my name I know that it will hap­pen; on his terms and that is fine with me.

I’ve been avoid­ing even think­ing of writ­ing. It started off, well actu­ally I’m not sure how it started’ I think I got sick and then I read a bunch of absolutely amaz­ing posts and I felt com­pletely inept. I thought that I wasn’t wor­thy. But today I had an epiphany. I’m pay­ing for this space. The only per­son I have to make happy here is me. And lately I have not been happy.

I’m not sure if it’s the weather but I’ve been slip­ping into a very dark place. Not just pulling up my hoodie and plug­ging into my iPod to lis­ten to sad music (how much more emo can I get?) but with­draw­ing from just about everything.

I’m sad and angry. Oh, the angry. I’ve been los­ing my tem­per so often the effect is com­pletely lost on the kids. I need to find a way to deal with anger other than balling it up and stuff it deep down because I’m all filled up with the angry. I can’t feel any­thing else with­out hav­ing to shove the angry out of the way.

If I can’t find a way to deal with my emo­tions as they hap­pen instead of push­ing then aside to deal with them later; how am I going to teach my kids how to deal? This par­ent­ing gig is show­ing me over and over again that I have bag­gage that I thought was resolved but no, it is still there wait­ing to be dealt with.

So what does this mean? Hell if I know. I tried hid­ing and that hasn’t worked so per­haps it is time to face the facts and start to fig­ure out what *is* going to make me happy and do that instead. And for right now, writ­ing is mak­ing me feel just a lit­tle bit bet­ter so I’ll take that.

The day came and we (finally!) moved the kids into their own room. We have co-slept with the kids since they were born. Even in the hos­pi­tal I’d sneak a baby into my bed. It was just so much eas­ier to nurse them hav­ing them right next to me and I got more sleep!

As they grew older they’d go through growth spurts, either phys­i­cal or emo­tional and I’d tell my hus­band that I’d had it and that we were mov­ing them out. He’d sup­port me and ask me to for­mu­late a plan and then he’d help. We’d get through the spurt and the kids would set­tle back to an accept­able sleep­ing pattern.

We are at the tail end of another growth spurt that has been par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult. That cou­pled with the fact that they will sleep for longer stretches if I’m not in the room made the deci­sion to move them into their own room eas­ier. Another huge decid­ing fac­tor is that I want to sleep with my hus­band again!

Let me explain. We had two queen size mat­tresses on the floor in our room. I slept on one mat­tress with the kids and my hus­band slept on the other. There were times when one of the kids would go cud­dle with him but for the most part they slept next to me. I’ve come to real­ize that I haven’t been mak­ing my hus­band a pri­or­ity and I think that sleep­ing next to him is a pretty big step in the right direction.

The kids have always had a room but they had never slept in it. I’m not sure what I’d envi­sioned. We had always intended that they would sleep in our room as new­borns but we never had a plan for mov­ing them out. Their room had a crib in it for a while. It came in handy for hold­ing clothes and toys for the babies! We tried the crib for a while once the babies got too big to sleep side-by-side in the co-sleeper attached to our bed. I’d lay our son down in the crib and he’d imme­di­ately start squawk­ing. It didn’t mat­ter how long I rocked him as soon as his head touched the mat­tress he’d complain.

The tran­si­tion went smoother than I expected. The first night we had been out and the kids fell asleep in the car so I slept in their room with them. The next night we went upstairs and ush­ered them into their “new room!” and had new stuffed ani­mals there to greet them. For the next few days they were quite excited and they talked about their room often.

It has been almost two weeks now and my daugh­ter now sleeps through the night!!! and my son sleeps a six or seven hour stretch. I think we lucked out with tim­ing it right and really, I think that the kids were ready and able to han­dle it. Plus, the hus­band and I actu­ally sleep together again! At this rate, we’re going to actu­ally have to start using birth con­trol again!