un

One of my favourite things about watching my children grow and develop has been observing their understanding of language. It has been both fascinating and hilarious to watch our two older children learn to speak and then to engage in conversation (particularly with each other). I will never forget the way that my oldest used to say “all my-by-self” when he wanted to do something independently or “all-yours-by-self” if he wanted me to do it. I’ll admit to a pang of sadness (mixed with pride) when he learned how to say it “properly”.

Lately our daughter has been depending on “un” to explain herself with many comical results. The other day she spilled some milk. She jumped up and ran to get a towel so she could “unwet” the table. When I asked her to clean up her lego she responded that she needed to “unbuild” it first. She’s also had to get unhungry, ungrumpy and undirty her hands after she coloured on them. So cute!

Now I must go and unfuss the baby!

did you feel that?

I bet you were wondering what the heck that loud sound that woke you up this morning was. That, my friends, was the sound of the universe shifting. A spectacular event that is truly nothing short of a bionafied miracle took place last night. MY BABY SLEPT ALL! NIGHT! LONG! I am ecstatic and rather jubilant this morning. I also don’t have a headache for the first time in a couple of months.

As I mentioned last week, Baby J started “sleep school” (whenever I tell people that he is in sleep school they always ask me, “where?” with a confused look on their faces. Never fails to make me laugh!). I was inspired by Jen over at Amazing Trips to read Marc Weissbluth’s Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. She has triplets that sleep well and is working on getting her fourth baby on a sleep schedule so I figured it was worth reading. I had run out of all the tricks I used to get the other two to sleep and was so tired that I was just exacerbating the problems.

I have been devouring Weissbluth’s book. It’s fascinating and fits well with our parenting style. He believes that the most important thing you can do for your family is to create a loving home with well-rested children and well-rested parents (pg. 13). Everyone, including Mom and Dad need to have a good nights sleep in order to function well and be happy together. Just as we don’t feed our kids all kinds of junk food or let them get overly hungry, we also need to provide them with good quality, regular sleep. I think we have done a good job of giving the other two enough rest (except, perhaps letting G give up her naps too early). Now it is Baby J’s turn to learn to sleep well. As I have said before, I’ve come to believe that teaching him how to sleep, no matter how difficult the process, is an act of kindness for our entire family.

Until last week I was very reticent to leave Baby J to cry. With the months and months of crying, tummy pain, suspected allergies etc that we have experienced, the last thing I wanted to do was listen to him cry more. I literally could not handle the sound of his wailing. With my level of exhaustion, I also lost perspective on whether his crying was because he needed me or simply wanted me. I believe that it is cruel to leave him to cry if he needs me (or his Daddy) but am very happy for him to learn that we can’t hang out at night if he simply wants me. This was particularly helpful to read:
“When your child is crying and he is not hungry, say to yourself: “My baby is crying because he loves me so much he wants my company, but he needs to sleep. I know the value of good sleep, and I love my baby so much that I am going to let him sleep” (pg. 262). Even if that means letting him cry.

We have been working on getting Baby J on a regular sleep schedule. We’re aiming for getting up around 7am (that was painful to “want”), first nap at 9:00am, second nap at 1:00pm, a possible short third nap (which he often takes) around 4 or 5:00pm and then bedtime close to 7:00pm with one (or no) night nursing around 5:00am. I was pretty skeptical that we’d be able to achieve this in any reasonable amount of time given the endless night-time drama we’ve endured but I have been pleasantly surprised. Our nights have gotten unbelievably better in a very short amount of time. We started with nights on Saturday. There was some crying. Sunday night seemed like non-stop crying between midnight and 5am (the book notes that the second night is often worse). Monday night brought some grunts and protests at 1:30am and then 5 minutes of crying at 3:30am. Last night I put Baby J to bed at 6:45pm. He fell asleep happily and peacefully within minutes. He cried for about 10 minutes at 8:30pm, sort of fussed in his sleep at 3am and then woke at 5am to eat. After I nursed him, he went back to sleep until 6:45 when he woke up cheerful and delighted with the day.

I can not tell you how thrilled we are to feel like we will have our lives back again. I feel hopeful for the first time in months. I know that once Baby J, T and I are well rested that our family will function more smoothly. We will be more patient, creative and proactive with our other two children. We’ll keep up on on household chores. I think life is going to be fun again!

In the meantime, I need to sleep train myself. My body has programmed itself to wake up automatically when Baby J did (10:30, 1:30, 3:30). The last few nights I’ve found myself wide awake while our reformed dictator slumbered peacefully in his crib!

ironic

T (looking at our baby): I just don’t get this little guys personality.
Me: What do you mean?
T: He seems so laid back but he is so unbelievably stubborn.
Me: Annnnnnnnnnnnnd YOU find that confusing?

be gone!

Dear Snow,

When I was a kid, one of my big hopes was the you would come in time for my birthday. Somehow it seemed like a better day with big, white flakes covering the earth. The prospect of the first toboggan run, hot chocolate with melted marshmallows and snowball fights after school made it all the more exciting. Much to my disappointment, the grass was usually still green and I had to be content with mimicked snow by way of coconut sprinkled vanilla frosting on my cake. This year, however, you showed up big time! My kids and I were thrilled when the first snow storm was forecast. We danced and played and frolicked as you reached the earth for the first time this season.

We continued to be pumped when snow storm after snow storm pummeled our region. I hadn’t seen this much snow since I was a kid. But just like summer vacation, McDonald’s and junk food binges, the magic began to fade. The kids grew weary of slugging through unbelievably deep snow and freezing cold fingers. I was tired of soggy socks from all the puddles of melted snow at the back door. My husband started to mutter like an old man every time he headed out to shovel… AGAIN! Once my birthday party and then my brother’s got cancelled, I was totally over you.

This morning when I looked out and saw that you came again last night, all I could do was groan. I long for the day that I look out and see something other than white, grey and frozen brown.

Snow, you need a lesson in moderation. You really have become like a clingy boyfriend who is there every time you turn around. You know, the one that made you feel special with all of the attention and togetherness for the first month and then grew increasingly more annoying until you told him that you’d be better off as friends (the kind of friends who never talk or see each other)?

So catch a hint already and make yourself scarce! We’re all pretty much over you.

Cordially,

Rachel

by way of update

Oh what a time we have had! Our darling dictator got really, really sick last weekend. Saturday night was a total nightmare. Baby J had been refusing to nurse for most of the day and was well on his way to getting dehydrated. He screamed for HOURS (I caught up on Iron Chef while rocking him) during the night. By early morning he was having trouble breathing so Sunday morning I whipped him into the clinic (along with his older brother who had also developed a bad cough and sore throat). As I suspected, he had developed a nasty chest infection and a throat infection to boot. Ditto for big brother (just not as badly). No wonder the poor little guy didn’t want to swallow anything. We got a puffer for Baby J and some antibiotics for both boys and were on our way. After a few doses of the meds, both of them were notably better. Such a relief that children recover as quickly as they deteriorate (at least when it comes to illness… not so much for attitudes!). Other than a brief set back on Tuesday evening that left T and I soaked in vomit at least twice each, things have continued to improve.

One good thing about all of this sickness is that it pushed T and I to the brink of what we can handle. I’m pretty sure my brain split right in half at some point this week. While that might not seem like a good thing, we needed to get to the point where we stood up and yelled, “ENOUGH ALREADY!”. Last night we had a parental meeting where we reminded ourselves of the rules we want our kids to live by and the atmosphere we are trying to foster in our home. Not to mention the fact that we still need to be um, PARENTS even when we are so tired we forget that we are no longer in junior high and use words like “dickface” in front of our children. There would be no more tolerating all of the eye rolling, foot stomping, yelling stupid, pooh or bum-bum-brain, looking at your Mommy and saying “no” when asked to do something or making the gist of every conversation something to do with a toilet. Manners and obedience please! Recently, I mentioned our little dictator. We also planned a coup to overthrow his reign. Basically, Mommy and Daddy have had it with the constant chaos and tired or not we are going to restore some sense of normalcy (whatever the heck that looks like) to this family.

This morning Baby J was enrolled in sleep school with Mommy as Principal. He will go down for regular naps, sleep for a reasonable amount of time and learn to sleep though the night. I’ve been reticent until now to let him cry but frankly, nothing else is working. When he cries, I remind myself that teaching him to sleep (however hard the lesson) is a kindness that extends to our entire family. We will all be happier when Baby J learns to sleep well. I feel badly when he cries but truly, it is an act of love. Just as it was hard to take away G’s soother or teach N to stop sucking his thumb, it is something that needs to be done. We’ve tried the gentle approaches and he simply scoffs at them. Hopefully, I will be writing about his graduation from Sleep School and the funny valedictorian speech he gave very soon!

wake up call

This afternoon I was pretty close to having a full scale melt down. Just as the tears were starting to flow, my Mom called. I was able to talk to her about how frustrated I am with the baby, how nothing I do for him seems to help any more, how sick to death I am of his incessant screaming, how tired I am, how badly I feel for neglecting my other two children for the past, oh, six months or so, how I am going to utterly loose my ever loving mind if something doesn’t get better really soon, how wiped out the husband is, how nothing in our life is working right now… and so on and so on. As I talked, I realized that we have put ourselves at the mercy of a tiny dictator who is growing more powerful by the day. He has us wound so tightly that if he starts to fuss or display any kind of a need everything else falls by the wayside until he is appeased. It’s ridiculous really.

I don’t quite know how we have gotten here, particularly with our third child. It’s not like we are rookies at this parenting thing. We’ve been pretty quick in the past to dole out gentle doses of “toughish” (and sometimes army style) love when our kids were getting nuts. But this little baby, he’s got us coming and going and dancing on our heads like idiots. He’s sly, that baby of ours (and pretty darn adorable)! Even so, we can’t keep allowing him to completely run our household. It is not fair to anyone else who lives here. He’s not even happy with the current arrangements.

The thing that is making us most nuts is the night feedings. Seriously kid, how often do you need to eat? Probably a lot cause he is huge (19 pounds 7 ounces and 29.5 inches this past Monday at his 6 month check up) but still… It’s got to change. Lately baby J has been refusing any solids (which is very confusing since he tries to rip any food we are holding out of our hands) and screams his head off if he even sees a bottle. Now I know that a bottle is just not as warm and lovely as the goodness Mom offers but come on child, it won’t kill you! I’ve been trying to give him a bottle in the afternoons to help boost his caloric intake. The way he carries on you’d think I was trying to feed him varsol.

Starting tonight, I will no longer be nursing him after he goes to bed. If (ha! make that WHEN) he wakes up to nurse, Daddy is going to offer him a bottle of formula. If he takes it, great. If not, he’s going to be hungry and pissed off until he relents. The kid just needs to learn to take a bottle. I wish we didn’t have to do it this way but I’ve tried every other way I know and nothing else works.

So little man, know that you are loved beyond description and that is why we need to do what is best for you and the rest of our family (even if you don’t like it). Your sister doesn’t get candy for breakfast and we don’t buy your brother every set of Lego he wants so don’t expect that you are going to get everything you demand either. I’m on to you little Castro (but I still melt every time you smile at me!).

Edited to add:

Abort! Abort! Mission hardcore postponed. Darling dictator spiked a fever. I guess hydration trumps sleep.

same title as 23 million other bloggers today

Dear Valentine,

I remember the first time I saw your face. I snuck in late to a session at school and ended up sitting next to you. When I sat down, you turned and smiled at me. I had never seen anyone with such blue eyes (I know, I know you were tired or facing a window or something). Truth be told I was smitten right then even though I wouldn’t admit it for months and months.

Can you believe it has been over thirteen years since that day? The truly amazing thing is how someone as young as I at the time could have made such a wise choice in saying yes to forever with you. My Love, you are a consistent, dependable rock. You are strong, kind, forgiving, tender, honest, patient and faithful. I loved you when you were a young man and you captured my heart. Now it goes way beyond love. You are woven into the very fabric of my being. You bring me joy and have given me a life far beyond that which I dreamed.

When you asked me to marry you that day in the park, did you even come close to imagining what our lives would be like? With the being so broke in the early days, and the fighting and making up and the moving of provinces… twice, the birthing of three children, the highs, the lows, the family dramas, the endless nights and the seemingly endless poop (did I mention I caught some in my hand this morning to save a borrowed
sleeper?)! I could only have done it all with you. And we laughed though most of it (except about the things that are VERY, VERY serious and must never be laughed at…ha!).

I am so looking forward to what comes next!

Always,

Rachel

4:23

Hi! Hello! Are you awake out there? I sure am. Since about 4:23 this morning- give or take a couple of minutes here and there (although I’m not complaining about that since the husband didn’t end yesterday until 4:22 this morning). Oh what fun we are having!

By 7:30 AM, I was elbow deep in glycerin and poo pebbles because the 3 ounces of soy formula we gave baby J on Monday (hoping to get some calories into the boy so he will sleep already) caused his insides to come to a screeching halt. Between the formula he actually drank and the solids he kind of pretends to eat (”I’m just not that into you,” he cooed to his oatmeal), his guts have become a wind tunnel with a blocked exit. The noises he makes are truly remarkable.

And then there is the bone cracking cough that wracks his little body. I don’t think I feel more helpless as a parent than when I hold my baby as he is choking and spluttering in an attempt to breath. He looks at me in a way that seems to beg me to do something. Make it better. But I can’t. Virus, run your course and leave my boy alone.

This poor little baby seems to be working through one trial after another. Allergies. Poop strikes. Gut pain. Endless teething… up, down, up, down but never out. Coughing. Drowning in snot. Farts that wake him up. And never, never sleeping enough (we have been counting sleep in minutes lately instead of hours).

Will anything come easily to this little one?