Raincity Mama

The other night I strug­gled to get my daugh­ter to go to sleep. I feel like I’ve let her down. Get­ting her to go to sleep is such a pain in my ass. She didn’t want to nap that day, my mom strug­gled to get her to sleep. Finally she fell asleep at 2pm and my mom wanted her to get some sleep so she let her sleep until 4pm. I rec­og­nize that nap­ping is impor­tant but let­ting her sleep so late in the day just set us up for a ridicu­lous bed­time. It was 10:15 by the time I got her to sleep and it wasn’t with­out many tears.

We decided long ago to not do cry-it-out and I feel con­flicted about it so much. Am I fail­ing her by not teach­ing her to sleep? Shouldn’t she be able to put her­self to sleep by now? Should I be set­ting a sched­ule and stick­ing to it no mat­ter what? I flip flop about where I stand on this. I don’t want to put her in a room and shut the door leav­ing her to fig­ure it out. That seems cruel. I’ve been there *every* night since she was born, nurs­ing her to sleep. It seems like she has out­grown the rou­tine but *she* isn’t sure how to give it up. She wants to lay down and nurse but that doesn’t get her to sleep. I’ve been get­ting the boy to sleep and then get­ting up with her and going down­stairs and pac­ing in the dark. This “rou­tine” doesn’t really work either. Some nights she puts her head down and drifts off to sleep with lit­tle effort. Other nights she talks, kicks her legs and flaps her arms in an effort to stay awake. Her body is tired but her brain is refus­ing to let her sleep. I wish I could wig­gle my nose and she would mag­i­cally be asleep.

On nights were I’m tired and she is fight­ing sleep I ques­tion the rou­tine the most. I find myself get­ting so angry and in the light of day it seems silly but down­stairs pac­ing in the dark I feel anger and resent­ment bub­ble up inside of me. I’ve read that if I resent some­thing I need to change it but I’m at a loss as to how to move to the next step. I have a vague idea of how to pro­ceed but I feel like exe­cut­ing the change is impos­si­ble. I’m tired and angry and that doesn’t seem like the best time to start mak­ing changes.

I rec­og­nized right away that get­ting angry isn’t going to help her go to sleep, hav­ing some­one yell at you to “go to sleep” isn’t going to work. So as I felt the irri­ta­tion bub­ble up inside of me I knew I had to dif­fuse the sit­u­a­tion, so I imag­ined the anger and resent­ment bub­bling out my nose. Now I defy you to imag­ing bub­bles float­ing out of your nose and to stay angry. It is quite a silly image. I firmed the image in my head and the bub­bles were small and com­pact, tiny and bright. I felt myself start to relax and the bub­bles got big­ger, bob­bing, wig­gling, the film hold­ing them together get­ting thin­ner and thin­ner. The bub­bles quiv­ered and shook and then popped. I held onto this image until I felt bet­ter. It didn’t take long and I felt my body relax. It can’t be con­ducive to sleep to have some­one angry and rigid hold­ing you, try­ing to lull you to sleep in stiff arms.

My daugh­ter set­tled down and soon she was asleep. I hes­i­tated to write about this because I hate putting it out there that this is hard and that I’m strug­gling. Yet another mommy blog­ger writ­ing a whiny post. But I think that being hon­est about my par­ent­ing expe­ri­ence, the good and the bad, will only help me be a bet­ter par­ent. I’m not per­fect and per­haps if I can show my kids how I strug­gle and still find a way to per­se­vere and have a sense of humor I am doing right by them. So now I have a secret weapon for the next time I’m feel­ing anger start­ing to take hold of me. Bub­bles, lots and lots of bubbles.

We’re not hol­i­day peo­ple. I like to think that I’m a hol­i­day per­son but in real­ity I’m not. When it comes to Hal­loween, I think your lit­tle Pump­kin or Gob­lin are adorable, but find­ing cos­tumes for my tod­dlers and get­ting them dressed when I’m not going to let them eat candy feels like too much work. Yes, I love the trap­pings of Christ­mas but I’m loathe to actu­ally do the work to get them. If you have bought a tree I may even help you dec­o­rate it if you ply me with Christ­mas bak­ing but this year we couldn’t put one up because the kids cer­tainly would have destroyed it. Basi­cally right now I’m ignor­ing hol­i­days using the excuse that my kids are too young to enjoy them. They may not remem­ber but I will remember.

Valentine’s Day was just a few days ago. I don’t con­sider this to be a kid friendly hol­i­day. In school I remem­ber mak­ing the lit­tle mail­box to hang off my desk. I remem­ber whin­ing because my mom had bought the wrong cards, I had wanted Scooby Doo and instead I got generic cards. I recall watch­ing the other stu­dents as we went around the room drop­ping off our cards, try­ing to count to see how many cards I would get. Even though we were sup­posed to give a card to each stu­dent there were those that got extra spe­cial cards. I would get so dis­ap­pointed to see that my mail­box only con­tained cards that has hastily scrib­bled names; not see­ing the irony that all the cards I have out were filled out under duress as I sat at the kitchen table rush­ing to fin­ish so I could watch Dukes of Hazzard.

As an adult I find myself torn as to the sta­tus of this as a real hol­i­day. Flow­ers are ridicu­lously over-priced and I don’t want to eat cheap heart shaped choco­lates. I have stopped buy­ing gift cards all together because I think it is a waste of money to buy them only to glance at them, chuckle at the car­toon and then throw them away. But I do want the romance that I think goes with this hol­i­day. I want to be wooed. What I’m miss­ing is that I’m wooed every­day. Each time I find my phone fully charged or come down in the morn­ing to find my cof­fee made, the cof­fee he doesn’t drink, I’m being wooed. It is there, but I want more. A fully charged cell­phone is nice but I want some­thing a lit­tle more roman­tic. I blame the movies for my unre­al­is­tic expectations.

Sat­ur­day I asked if we could go out for din­ner and we ended up going to our favourite Mex­i­can place. We went early so we wouldn’t have to wait. We got the kids seated, we ordered and the waiter dropped off the chips and salsa as well as some crayons and paper. The kids were engrossed in colour­ing and nib­bled away on chips but there was no romance. It is hard to have any kind of adult con­ver­sa­tion when try­ing to keep the kids from eat­ing crayons instead of chips. Or keep­ing them on the chairs when the wants to run around the room and check out the kitchen. This restau­rant only has one high­chair and it was being used. We went through the trou­ble of putting our high­chairs in the car but once we got into the restau­rant my hus­band thought it would be fine just let­ting the kids sit on reg­u­lar chairs.

The restau­rant was packed and it took a while for our food to show up. The kids were done with colour­ing and chips were no longer hold­ing their atten­tion. Our food arrived and I got to sit and eat with a squirm­ing girl in my lap, try­ing to keep her from knock­ing over my drink or burn­ing her­self on the plate. I really didn’t know why I thought that this would be a good idea. The hus­band see­ing my mount­ing dis­tress took the girl on his lap while I rushed to eat my food. This is so not what I had in mind. I sit here writ­ing this after the fact and I waf­fle between whin­ing and admon­ish­ing myself. What did I think was going to hap­pen? It is my own fault for tak­ing the kids out to eat. All I wanted was a nice din­ner out, is that too much to ask? They won’t be this lit­tle for long and there will be lots of time to have din­ner out. Waaaa!

We sur­vived the din­ner, it wasn’t a cat­a­stro­phe, just not what I wanted. I wanted a lit­tle bit of magic. I’m real­iz­ing that I need to make my own magic. I could have picked a dif­fer­ent restau­rant or I could have arranged to have my par­ents watch the kids while we went out. I need to stop wait­ing for the Hol­ly­wood romance to mag­i­cally appear, I make it hap­pen if it is impor­tant to me.

I’m not nor­mally into Easter but I think that it could be a lot of fun for the kids. I have great mem­o­ries search­ing for eggs and munch­ing on choco­late and I need to be the one to make that hap­pen for our kids. They deserve to have a those mem­o­ries too. I need to make the magic hap­pen instead of wish­ing for it. My refrain at work is that “I’m a tech­ni­cian not a magi­cian” but I’m real­iz­ing that I need to work on my magic skills. Not just for the kids but for myself too.

My hus­band is tak­ing care of the kids today as he does every Mon­day. I got a call from him this morn­ing. He’s still feel­ing sick and nei­ther of the kids were nap­ping. The boy wan­ders over to the kitchen gate and points in emphat­i­cally. When offered var­i­ous items, none are what he wants, he has a melt­down. The girl is run­ning around like a wild woman. The boy went down for a nap but the girl’s antics wake him up.

I hear all this and I feel guilty. I feel bad that I’m here and that my hus­band is there. I want to go home and take care of the kids so my hus­band can take care of him­self. I can’t kick the habit of feel­ing guilty. I won­der if he felt guilty for going to work on days when I was sick and home by myself with the kids? I doubt it. I won­der if women give birth to guilt before or after they deliver the pla­centa? It seems to trite to be going on about a mother’s guilt but it has gripped me tightly today. I think that some how along the line I’ve con­fused feel­ing empa­thy with feel­ing guilty. I’d like to unlearn this right now please.

I sug­gested to the hus­band that he bun­dle up and take the kids for a walk. It is pretty much guar­an­teed that they will sleep in the stroller. He was reluc­tant to do that because that would mean going out in the cold. I wish I could mag­i­cally make him feel bet­ter or mag­i­cally make the kids sleep but I’m a tech­ni­cian not a magician.

I sit here at work divid­ing my atten­tion between the file I’m work­ing on and won­der­ing if the kids have napped yet. I’m mul­ti­task­ing but I feel less pro­duc­tive than ever. I’m wast­ing energy on guilt which isn’t help­ing resolve the issue at all. I know this intel­lec­tu­ally, but I can’t stop the guilt. Worry and guilt are two things I’d love to live without.

Tonight we were in a bit of a rush for din­ner so my hus­band put the plates on the table before I could get the kids into their high­chairs. I was just about to lift the boy into his seat when I saw the girl reach up and pull the place­mat, plate and glass off the table. Thank­fully it didn’t land on her but my meal ended up on the floor. Pasta with shards of pot­tery isn’t what I had in mind for my dinner.

After we fin­ished eat­ing I was help­ing the boy get ready to put on his PJs when the hus­band called me over. I peered aroud the cor­ner and saw our daugh­ter sit­ting in her high­chair with the straps tan­gled around her. I picked her up and tried to dis­tract her but she had a one track mind. I decided to let her climb. I stood there hold­ing my breath.

I real­ize that she is test­ing her bound­aries. I also think that kids have a need to climb. I stood back and watched her fig­ure out how to get back up to the seat. I felt my stom­ach clench with worry. I wor­ried that she would fall. I caught myself from say­ing, “you’re going to fall”. She strug­gled and had a cou­ple of false starts but climbed back up. I cheered for her and picked her up. The hus­band came and col­lected the high­chairs to move them into the kitchen, behind the gate.

I moved her in the liv­ing room with her brother and went back to speak with the hus­band. Just a few moments later I heard one of the kids fall and then I heard her cry. My daugh­ter tripped over a pil­low. (I know! Who trips over a pil­low?) I scooped her up and saw a mouth­ful of blood. No miss­ing teeth but one heck of a cut on her lip.

Just a few min­utes ago I was wor­ried about her falling off the high­chair and then she trips over a pil­low! Crap!! I’ve seen both of the kids play­ing with some­thing seem­ingly harm­less and yet they still end up hurt­ing them­selves. They slip on a book or pinch their fin­ger in a toy. I felt guilty but the real­ity is that I can­not watch them every moment of the day, I can’t be there all the time. I have to trust that they will be fine when I’m not there oth­er­wise I don’t know how I’d ever leave them.

I was dis­mayed to find myself act­ing like a heli­copter par­ent. I’ll read­ily admit that I caught myself hov­er­ing. I see dan­gers that lurk, things that the kids can’t see. I hold my breath and fight the urge to run inter­fer­ence. I don’t want them to hurt them­selves. And yet, I know that I need to let them fig­ure things out on their own. I know that swoop­ing in every­time they encounter some­thing new or dif­fi­cult it won’t really be help­ing them. They need to learn by trial and error, it will build their sense of con­fi­dence. And yet, I still stand there hold­ing my breath, ready to catch them if the really do need me to swoop in. Some­one hold me.

Rid­ing the bus. Tired.
Reflect­ing sun makes me squint.
Beau­ti­ful sunrise.