Where have I been?

Thank you so much to Jasmine for letting me know that I am not alone in the world and that there actually are people who read this blog--when I get around to writing in it!

It's been a pretty busy summer; I'm a little inclined to say lousy, but let's go with busy instead. If you are ever inclined to do any major home renovation, take a deep breath and ask yourself if it's truly worth it. The first week in May, we broke ground on an addition to the house. The second week in June, Zachary finished school and has since been home. Around the middle of June, we lost the use of Ezra's room, since they knocked out the wall to expand the room so the boys can share it; since then, he's slept in our room. Since Matilda is already sleeping in there, this almost immediately meant that he stopped napping. A couple of weeks later, we lost the upstairs bathroom when they ripped it apart to add onto it, and we lost much of the use of the basement bathroom, since they tore apart the ceiling in there to get to the pipes. Somewhere in there, we were also informed that we needed a new roof and that insurance ought to pay for it; but of course we had to fight with claims adjustors for a few weeks.

Last week, I got an email from the mother of the victim of Matilda's biting; she'd been bitten again on Friday, and they decided to take a couple of weeks to decide what to do next. I cannot overstate the anxiety this created in me. I have already been all worked up about the biting, have taken two classes about it, and have consulted my child care licensor and another child care provider, who is the person I go to whenever I have a question. I have done--and am doing--all I can, and now it's just a matter of waiting to see if it gets better. I understand that's a lousy thing to hear when it's your kid getting bitten, but it's also pretty upsetting when you feel like you're the only person in the world who doesn't think your 16-month-old is a little monster. There actually hasn't been a single biting incident in the two weeks that this baby has been gone; and though I don't blame the other baby at all (she is just a baby, I realize that), it's so much less stressful when she's not here and I don't have to wait, poised, to see if Matilda is going to strike.

So yesterday this family gave me their notice that they're going to pull their daughter out of my day care. After a couple of weeks to think it over, I'm not surprised or extremely upset. I've talked with a lot of people about it and believe that she's a little caveman, not a bad person, and though I can't tolerate biting, I can accept that it's common for kids her age.

The house is almost done. Though the backyard is a mud pit, the bedroom and bathroom are just about done; I think the boys are going to move in tonight. We tried to find a baby sitter and only found a guy who kind of creeped us out and now won't stop emailing to ask why we didn't hire him. We decided to use my husband's nephew instead, and he was great the first weekend but just didn't show up last weekend. We have a woman who comes every two weeks and cleans the main floor of the house, making our lives easier and my father-in-law's room a more pleasant place for him to live; she also didn't show up, for the fourth week in a row. I need a haircut. It's dumb, but it really bothers me because I have short hair and have been in in the "I need a haircut" stage for at least a month.

Today I had a screaming match with Ezra during nap time. He wouldn't stop screaming, and eventually it made me scream, and there was a lot of screaming and crying, from both of us. I feel like I haven't had more than three seconds in a row to call my own since April. Sorry if this sounds bitchy, but I can't tell you how good it feels just to complain about it all, to get it out and admit that there is all this stuff that is bothering me. As I've been writing, the kids have been eating supper--eating ketchup with their fingers instead of eating actual chicken dipped in the ketchup, insisting that they give their crackers to the dog and then needing new ones, wanting to "try something" on me that they saw on TV. They're being kids--my delightful, annoying kids. Tonight I'm going to help the boys move into their new room, and sometime soon Matilda will move into her new room, Zachary's current room. And then I will have a bedroom with only adults in it, something that has been true only sporadically since Zachary was born almost six years ago.

I keep thinking of a line from The Simpsons, one of my favorite shows. Homer is upset about something, as usual, and says, "Why do I have three kids and no money? Why can't I have no kids and three money?" I admit, I feel that way sometimes, especially about the total absence of space and time to call my own. I've never had high financial aspirations, but space and time used to be things I could claim for myself. Sometimes I wish I could have "three space" and "three time," but most of the time, most days, I'm still overwhelmingly grateful to have three kids instead. Especially ones as delightful and annoying as mine.

Hooray for spring!

In happy news, spring has finally arrived--in the form of summer.

When I was little, I always thought that the adage "April showers bring May flowers" was some kind of taunt. In Minnesota, April showers are promptly followed by April showers, then April snows, then April general cruddiness, then some rain that freezes on top of the almost-melted snow. May is when we finally start to get something that looks a little like spring. But this year, we seem to be having actual spring weather, and in April no less!

I swear it was just a couple of weeks ago that I was swearing about the new snow, replacing the snow that I had dared to dream was gone for good. And today, it was 75. Is that confusing for anyone else? I just yesterday finally removed the hat, mittens, and scarf from Zachary's backpack, trusting that there wouldn't be a snowstorm while he was at school, trapping him 2 blocks from home without adequate winter gear. And today it was uncomfortably warm with all the windows open (yes, I am a big baby when it comes to the weather, and I only have about a 2-degree comfort range). I also figured it was probably safe to take the paper snowflakes off the window, since they look kind of silly surrounded by green grass--though no more silly than the Halloween straw broom I still have hanging from the front door. At some point we're actually closer to the holiday next year, so I may as well leave them up.

So I told the kids yesterday that since it was getting to be real live spring, maybe we should make some construction paper flowers to replace the snowflakes we were taking down. And then we spent a mostly cheerful hour or so cutting, folding, gluing and coloring paper flowers. It was nice because: it killed some time, I could send day care kids home with concrete evidence that we did not just stare at one another or Baby Einstein all day, and because it reduced the number of pounds of construction paper in the house. (I couldn't help it. I found it at Sam's Club. Cheap construction paper! Must... purchase... it!)

That was yesterday. Today was the last day for one of the kids, so I decided to make cinnamon rolls. And as I was in the kitchen, mixing and rolling and rising, the kids were playing on and under the dining room table--a favorite pastime. And I should have been worried when Ezra and his friend came in and started apologizing. First Ezra said he was sorry he had ripped his paper flower. I told him it was fine, it was his, and it wasn't a bad thing if it tore. Then his friend said he was sorry he'd been playing with the scissors; I had left the safety scissors on the dining room table in case we decided to make more flowers today. Any idea where this is headed? So I told him never to play with scissors if I wasn't there, and I walked in to check on the situation. And there sat the other little boy in this particular trio, holding a pair of safety scissors in his hand, scraping them in a half circle over and over across the dining room table--the nice, wood dining room table that, I might add, predates me in my husband's life. I washed away the pile of sawdust and looked at the damage. It's not pretty. I tell them every day not to put their forks on the table (they like to drum) because it will scratch it. I sort of thought that "don't dig into the table repeatedly with safety scissors" was sort of implied. Clearly I was wrong.

Apparently there are wood crayons, some sort of wax markers, and Old English wood markers--or something. I Googled fixing a wood table and came up with a lot of possibilities. I think it's going to result in me wandering around Menard's until I find someone who can explain to me in the simplest possible terms how to fix this. Hopefully I can do that without altering my husband to the terrible thing that I allowed to happen to the table. I hate getting in trouble. I also hate the giant scratched quarter of the table. This is what I get for trying to celebrate spring--and make cinnamon rolls.

I'm losing a battle of wills with my 3-year-old

First of all, in the name of full disclosure, I feel like crap. I've caught some sort of cold that immediately went to my chest, leaving me with a perpetual smoker's cough, without any of the fun nicotine buzz. And M, now 10 months, is teething or something and is up approximately all night long, wanting to nurse, but not really, and ideally on the other side, and plus on her stomach. So I was a little crabby. But this was the worst parenting day I can ever remember, at least for a few hours.

E is apparently outgrowing the need for a nap, which is leaving me breathless with terror. I can't tell you how much I count on that hour or two in a 24-hour period that I can kind of call my own. He wasn't napping at all well the last 2 weeks, but Z was off school, so I blamed it on having a non-napper in the house, making just enough noise to keep him up. I was seriously looking forward to today, since the husband was back at work and I would have some naptime me-time for just a little while. I got the little day care kids down and settled E and his friend in his room. We tried a new approach today: "You don't have to sleep today. There are only two rules. Stay in your bed and be quiet." Holy crap. I seriously thought that was a practical request. I got M to sleep, nursing, and just as I put her down, I realized two things: Z would be home from school in 20 minutes, and E and friend were running and yelling just above M's head. Thus followed several of the worst hours of my life.

I tried the nice approach: "You don't want your sister to cry, do you? You're going to wake her and make her cry. Do you have your book? You can read, you just have to be quiet." I tried the stern approach: "That's it. You are going to plant your butt on your bed and shut your mouth right now. And if you want a book, there's one right there. You don't get a different one." And I tried the mean approach: "You don't get a show for the rest of the day. No Baby Einstein, no SpongeBob, nothing. And if you don't shut your mouth right now, you don't get anything tomorrow either!" And while all this was going on, M woke up and started screaming--twice. (My new approach to getting her to sleep more at night--let her work it out during the day. I'm way more willing to let her scream for 10 minutes at 2 PM than at 2 AM.) And E, whom my husband has referred to as "Cool Hand Luke" and as "a force of nature," sat through it all. I swear to god, I have never actually met a more strong-willed child. I've seen the titles referring to "the strong-willed child" and always thought "I could get that, but nah." I mean, in order for you to get a book because a description of your kid is on the cover, your kid has to be diagnosed with something, right? I mean, mine must not be what they're talking about because he doesn't have Strong-Willed Child Syndrome--or something. But I think the time has come. He's a really smart kid, no question. He obviously listens closely to what people say, and then later I'm always shocked at the way he uses them in context. And when he's really engaged in listening, I can see what a great learner he is. But the strength of his will just gets in the way of his comprehension. As I explained the consequences of his behavior, he would just scream at me that he wanted to listen. And I would tell him that he wasn't listening, or that he had already lost one thing and was on the way to losing more. And he would just scream that "I WANT TO LISTEN!" I know that the idea--that a person makes a choice and there are consequences that follow that choice--makes sense to him. He sees it with his siblings and the day care kids, and even with his parents. But when he gets all up in arms, he just can't grasp that things aren't going to happen the way he wants them to. And he gets into a mode of just consistently making them worse.

By the time Z got home from school, E was in major trouble with the bedroom door closed (which he hates), M was crying her eyes out, and I was barely holding it together. An hour later, I think everyone but Z was in tears. Fortunately he was pretty into his Dora game and didn't really notice my tears--I think. But I was amazed. I am admittedly a pretty emotional person. But this was over the top. I thought I was going to have to run away for a few minutes so I didn't lose it completely. My husband has said that E is about 4,000 times better at conflict than I am, and about 4 times better than he is. So I know I'm outmatched. But if I want him to grow up into someone the rest of the world loves as much as I do, I have to find a way to deal with this insanely strong will of his. (We came up with a reward system for quiet naps, by the way; we'll see in the next week or so how it pans out.)


UPDATE 1/6: After tearfully describing my day to my sweet husband, he suggested a chart approach instead. Every day that E is quiet at nap time (being "a god listener," which is what we're always telling him he needs to be), he will get an X on his chart. If he fills his chart (6 Xs), then he will get a special big treat like going out for fast food or getting to pick a movie. Today was like night and day. The chart incentive worked absolute wonders. I realized first that I would always rather give them something than take something away; it just feels better as a parent to make them happy rather than sad. And second, he's much more motivated by working toward something than he is by avoiding something bad. Fingers crossed that it will continue to work well!

Things are not improving

So I hate conflict of any kind. I accept that. I even accept that I'm going to pay for it, mostly by being walked over. But how did it get this bad?

I'm the oldest of three children, and I'm very close to both my siblings, a brother and sister. And to this day, I resist telling them things because I'm afraid of what they're going to think of me. I'm having a problem with one of my day care families, and I've been trying to sort through things with the mom. We've been emailing and we've spoken (just barely) a couple of times. And through this, I really need all the insight I can get--this is both a business and a personal relationship, and I'm trying to sort out how to balance them and how to stand up for myself in both aspects of the relationship. But it all started with some time off that I took, which may have been a misttep on my part (I've apologized repeatedly for the "inconvenience"). And as I'm talking to my husband, to another day care provider who has answered questions and helped me out in the past, and trying to sort through things in my head, I'm still not telling my siblings about this, mostly because I'm afraid of what they're going to think. I'm afraid that they will both come at me with a list of reasons that all this is my fault.

I've had the same problem in any area I can think of. In my old job, before I started day care, I remember standing in the parking lot and crying one afternoon because I hated it there so much--and I later realized that this was 5 years (!) before I finally left that place. What kind of person stays with a job for 5 years after they realize they're deeply unhappy there? Either a person with no other options (thankfully not my problem) or a person who is secretly convinced that they deserve every bad thing that happens to them. I'm not for jumping on the "we're all clinically depressed because of the breakdown of society" bandwagon. I don't go for the romance, that was so appealing when I was 14, of wallowing in self-pity until I eventually die a very beautiful death. But it is frustrating that this many years later, I still find myself in the same position of being walked on because I can't find the guts in myself to tell people that's not okay.

I come up with lots of reasons not to confront this parent directly: I'm afraid I'm actually wrong; I think if I back off, she'll calm down and we can move on; her son is E's best friend and he doesn't have a lot of friends (also my fault for not getting them out in the community enough). But I think the truth is I'm terrified. When I had to talk to her in person yesterday about this problem, I realized when she left that I was shaking. At what age do you have to suck it up and become a grown-up, and how do you start when you've really had no practice?