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It feels a little weird to sit down and write things about Tempest’s life and challenges now that she seems to be in the midst of her pre-teen years.
There’s been a major change in her personality over the last six or eight months, and it’s like she’s aged five years over the last one. Suddenly she’s too mature to play with Xan or Zephyra, except on rare occasions; she’s almost never in the house anymore; she’s less shy about showcasing her intelligence and is more and more interested in the finer details of the world around her. She feels like ‘the almost-teenager that lives in the house with us’, and it gives me a rather disconnected feeling, like I’m just as unsure as she is about where she fits in. I can’t group her in with Xan and Zephyra anymore – she’s too much her own person to be one of “the kids”.
This stage of life isn’t proving as challenging as I thought it would be, which can be chalked up to a budding sense of self-confidence and awareness that she never had previously, but it is definitely more… difficult to wrap my head around. Writing about her feels less like writing about my children and more like writing about another person; like how it felt to write about Marika when she was living with us. It’s weird. It’s not so much that I think it’s inappropriate to ever mention her, but rather that she no longer feels like an extension of me the way that “kids” do.
That feeling is doubly weird whenever she approaches me and asks if I’d talked about something funny or interesting that happened to her “online” yet, and if I’d posted enough pictures of her “to my friends” yet and what they’d said. She always urges me to share the mundane things far more often than I normally would, and is very interested in what goes on within my Facebook. Whenever I’m on she’s suddenly needing to ask a million questions that require her to stand right over my shoulder, and is desperate to have her own account (even though she has zero friends who use the service). I think she wants the bragging rights over any other reason.
We went to the Pride festival on July 6th and while I was in the bathroom doing my makeup Tempest came in to ask, “What’s the main colour of the festival?”
“Rainbows,” I answered.
“No, I mean the main colour.”
“Rainbows,” I said again.
She gave an exasperated sigh. “No, mom, I know it’s rainbows but I mean is there a main colour WITHIN the rainbow that… stands out? I need to coordinate my look. My top is rainbow but what about a pink skirt? Does pink go with gay pride?”
“Extremely.”
“Great, thanks.”
And off she goes leaving me a little stunned at how normal the conversation felt; like I’m not speaking with a little child anymore. I find myself talking to her more like an equal than a kid – like I’ve forgotten to put on the ‘mom hat’ that subconsciously goes on whenever you have conversations with your kids, particularly when they’re emotional – and that’s a bit of a weird feeling. It’s not something I consciously chose to do or not do, it just sort of happened as her conversation skills improved. It’s not even all the time… it’s only just enough that I’m starting to notice it more often, and be aware of how weird it feels.
One of the interesting things about having a preteen is that they barely ever live in the house… or maybe that’s just my preteen?
Tempest will get up, eat breakfast, watch her crazy horrible shows on Netflix for an hour (seriously, have you guys ever seen “House of Anubis”? It’s so painful. Oh my god.) and then leave the house to hang out with her friends immediately after finishing. After that I’m lucky if I see her once or twice before dinner.
There’s a rather nebulous group of other pre-teen girls from the community that she hangs out with, and they do nothing but wander around all day long; occasionally picking up new friends from neighbouring communities or streets, dropping a few around lunch time, and going from house to house looking for snacks to feed their crazy insane appetites. It’s like a little tweenie girl gang. Every so often the group piles into our house for about five minutes to grab some freezies, tease Xan or coo at Zephyra before running back out again.
I only recently granted Tempest permission to leave the complex with her little girl gang and visit neighbouring streets or the park down the road. It’s a low traffic area with lots of families, and I’m not at all worried about her safety: she’s surprisingly well-behaved when on her own, or with her little girlfriends, far more so than she is when she’s with me which I’m sure is also a reflection of the importance she puts on maintaining this new-found independence. To her this privilege has been a life-altering symbol of her maturity (and more importantly, her maturity over Xan).
The girls in the group range in age from 9 to 12, and most have also very recently been granted the same freedom. They don’t really do anything with this amazing gift except wander around all day long, quietly showing off to the younger children in the community who aren’t permitted to leave. The younger kids will chase them until coming to a sudden stop at the invisible age wall at the large sign that marks the entrance to the private road, then throw pinecones or loudly pout over the show of dominance the older girls have.
All of them seem to be in the same stage of transition, and rely heavily on each other for social cues and nuance as they learn to navigate their way through preteenhood. Tempest is a mirror and a sponge: her personality and behaviour gradually shift to match the group the more time she spends with them. I don’t think it’s a bad thing – in fact I think it’s totally normal: she’s learning who she is by absorbing and experimenting, finding what suits her and who she’s becoming.
Suddenly fashion has become way more important than it ever was and she spends ages deciding what to wear, how to wear it, and will go as far as changing her clothes multiple times a day or wearing the same things over and over if she likes them enough. She wants to accessorize everything, and can’t get enough of hats and rings and scarves and necklaces. She walked around in 36 degree heat the other day in a scarf and bolero because the suffocating discomfort was a sacrifice she was willing to make for the sake of fashion.
Music has become integral to her day-to-day life, and she cannot function without the knock-off MP3 player my mother got her, and the portable speaker she found in a box marked “free” after a nearby garage sale ended: together they are her most prized possessions. If allowed, she’ll spend hours with her friends crowded around a computer watching music videos of pop music in English, Japanese and Korean and remarking on the deeper meaning, dancing and visual storytelling. She carries one of my old purses and it can often be heard belting out her favourite songs as she wanders about; creating a soundtrack to her life.
A few years back it was a chore to get her to shower once a week and now she’s up every morning even before Z has woken up so she has the freedom to take over the bathroom for an hour. She’s obsessed with the creams and oils I have for skin and hair care and compliments me on my make-up application.
Tempest has always had a bit of a lag when it comes to her emotional maturity, and up until very recently all her good friends have been quite a bit younger than her. Now, all of a sudden, her friends are her age or a year older.
She started wearing training bras largely because she has two friends that do the same. She’s asking a million questions about God and religion because she has a handful of friends who are either Muslim or Catholic and show varying degrees of observance. All of a sudden she’s talking about what she might believe in and how it differs from me, or Curtis or Xan, and discusses it in a way that lets me know what brings her comfort without judgment and I’m just completely taken aback by her awareness of this kind of thing.
Earlier this week she got a pile of jewelry from a yard sale (for free) and some of it included rosaries and some bracelets with images of Mary or Jesus. After I explained to her what it meant to people who are Christian, she decided all on her own that it was disrespectful to wear the icons of a religion you don’t believe in like they’re “pretty” and polled her friends to find out whose family worshiped these things so she could gift it to them appropriately. I was so impressed, and proud, and just stunned… because it seems like this kind of awareness of herself, others, and social graces has come out of nowhere after years and years and years of struggling hard with the most basic concepts.
I’d love to thank myself for this huge growth in awareness and sensitivity, and imagine I’m the most awesome parent ever who managed to get through the fog of Aspergers and reach her in the most effective manner, but I can’t lay claim to that. I try as much as I can but I don’t believe I’ve done anything in particular that made that big a difference… honestly I think this is 99% her own doing. Maybe it’s just a part of growing older, maybe something clicked in her in a very certain way, but whatever it is… it’s changing her. She’s not that struggling, frustrated little girl that she’s been for so long. I’m so proud. And a little lost… not just for the reasons I stated earlier, but because I’ve spent so much of her life devoted to a specific set of goals and rules and ideals and now that she’s made this very sudden switch I’m left a bit stunned. My wheels are spinning and I think it’ll take me a bit for my parenting program to catch up.
It’s getting really weird thinking of her in a pseudo-adult sort of way. She’ll be eleven in August and I’m not entirely sure how she’ll fare as a teenager; I can only pray, and try my hardest, in hopes she’ll be half as close to me as I was to my mom. But in the meantime I can see her pulling away, and am left to wonder it’s just par for the course.
Months and months back I put my foot down about bedtimes: I said I would no longer be reading these mindless, endless Garfield comic books 365 days a year and that if the kids wanted to be read to as they always have been, then from now on I get to choose the book. They can choose to be present, or not, but if they want to listen they have to be respectful, patient and kind. If they get bored they can leave rather than make everyone else suffer the symptoms of their boredom.
Tempest was very excited by this prospect. Xan not so much.
The first choice was “The Hobbit”, and I pulled out the gilded-edge 50th anniversary edition that I’ve had since childhood. This is the same book my father got me when I was young, and we read it more than a dozen times because I begged for him to repeat it so often.
I started reading one evening after dinner with Z on my back, hoping she would fall asleep listening to my voice. I was pleasantly surprised to find The Elders both absolutely ate it up. I knew Tempest would love it, and while I was pretty sure the story would appeal to Xan, he can be so ridiculously stubborn about not getting his way (and losing his nightly Garfield) that I wasn’t sure how it would go over. It was such an emotional, moving experience for me to watch as their hearts soared for the characters and adventures that were such an important part of my youth. I was legitimately excited to watch them get excited. It was so cool to see how they got so into the story so quickly; to see them get nervous, angry, anxious and cheer for victories. At the end I promised them we’d watch “The Lord of the Rings” extended editions over the course of a few weeks. They ate that up, too.
As an eternal nerd, the best part was seeing them go from ‘casual kid nerds’ to total and complete converts.
After we finished the movies, which was amazing in its own right, we started reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” next. I get through half-to-one chapter per night. Xan often falls asleep, and he has trouble following the finer details of the plot – doubly so once we hit the trial – but Tempest is riveted by the story and is asking questions constantly. At least once every other day our reading time is delayed by 20 minutes or more so we can have another long conversation about race, laws, culture, language, prejudice and history.
As the story progresses, we see Jem start to mature and pull away from his younger sister Scout, she doesn’t quite understand him and thinks he’s trying to show off and act more adult than he is. It’s true to some extent, but it’s also a reflection of his transition from childhood to young man, and his growth is a major theme of the novel. I had forgotten about all of that since the last time I’d read it; I’d wanted to read it to them as a way of expanding on our recent conversations about race and prejudice – but the change in Jem and Scout’s sibling relationship and Jem enters his pre-teens and early teens is an eerie parallel to what is happening within Tempest and Xan’s relationship. I don’t think Xan understands it, but it’s clear that Tempest is absorbing the subtext, and sees herself in Jem’s character development.
We passed the mid-point of the book about a week and a half ago, and just a few nights ago finished the trial, and the chapter where Tom Robinson is found guilty despite being very obviously innocent. As the trial progressed Tempest got more and more into the details. The part where Tom is asked to stand, and the condition of his arm is revealed to all, she about jumped out of her seat just like Jem in the balcony, yelling: “He can’t use his arm! He didn’t do it! She lied! She lied!”.
When he’s found guilty anyway, Tempest was crushed. After consoling her, she said, “That wouldn’t have happened if he was white,” and I felt vindicated in the choice to read this despite being told by others that it was clearly ‘too old’ and ‘too much’. I was younger when my father first read it to me. Reading through this, and the questions and conversations that have come up since we began, has done more to help her and Xan understand the deeper effects of racism than any discussion we’ve had previous to it. I’m continually amazed by Tempest’s depth and intelligence.
One morning last month, Curtis learned that Zephyra had figured out how to get herself out of a nearly-six-foot-high fenced yard with a gate latched at the very top. That was a completely terrifying few moments. When I shared this insight on Facebook, my brother quipped, “What took her so long?”.
She hasn’t had an escape attempt in quite a few months now and we thought she had outgrown the most horrific part of toddlerhood, but apparently not. There is now a padlock on the gate with the key hidden in an envelope, and then stuck to a board on the wall in the kitchen, 5.5 feet up. Still, I remain terrified that I’m going to wake up one morning at 7am and realize that she’s backed a bag and left the house in search of bunnies or something.
Since about mid-June we’ve been babysitting Xan’s best friend Efro on weekdays while his mom works. It’s an arrangement that’ll continue until half-way through August. In exchange she’s offered a weekly stipend to help with food costs, and we’ll be figuring out a carpool plan for the next school year since the boys are going to be in the same school/class. It’s been rather fun having him here: he’s a really intelligent, shy, quiet and polite little guy (making him opposite in personality from Xan… yet they’ve been inseparable for years now). The two of them sit and play Magic: The Gathering or argue about Minecraft more often than anything else, and listening to them is hilarious. A few days ago they had a lively debate about copyright law and what constitutes a proper trademark while eating lunch. Each considered himself an expert despite knowing very little about the topics, making the debate all the more entertaining.
The only challenge has been getting Efro accustomed to Zephyra, as he’s an only child and not at all used to sharing a household with a terribly obnoxious toddler. She takes advantage of his discomfort by chasing, spitting, licking and generally tormenting him every chance she can get. I overheard him and Xan discussing this in Xan’s bedroom not too long ago. Efro solemnly admitted, “I think I hate Zephyra.”
Xan replies, “It’s ok, you just hate her actions. Sometimes I hate her actions, too.”
After a short pause Efro admits, “You’re right, I don’t really hate her. But she is really annoying sometimes.”
“Most babies are, but she’ll grow out of it. You just have to remember to close the door when your stuff is in here.”
It was very sweet.
Every time Zephyra gets into his things or drags something out of his backpack, Xan reminds his friend “that’s what happens when you leave it in her reach!” and gently chides him about natural consequences. It’s really cute, and with Xan’s help Efro is learning very quickly how to adapt. Nowadays he doesn’t have as big a problem with her as he did at the beginning, and is much better about remembering to keep his things safe and keep a calm temper with her.
Though it never ceases to amaze me how difficult the concept of if you don’t want her to chase you, stop running is for kids to absorb. Even my kids. I have had that conversation like four times a day for months now.
Toddlers are smart but have poor eyesight; if you stand still they have difficulty tracking you.
I guess she’s more of a preschooler and less of a toddler now that she’s three (!!!). She’s been out of diapers for about a month now; a milestone I’ve been desperate to celebrate not just for the obvious reasons but also because it allows me to start looking into preschool for her come September. Ideally I’d love to have a preschool/daycare set up that allows me to begin the greuling the process of going back to school, but that’s probably not a reality until Z is in Kindergarten because of the costs (both financial, and physical). Daycare is not exactly something that is easily available in this city, and I’ve had Z on multiple wait-lists for over a year and received only one call-back (and it wasn’t about a free spot, it was about whether or not I still wanted her on the list).
Everyone’s been remarking on how big Z has seemed lately. She’s almost completely transitioned from ‘baby’ to ‘big girl’ with the potty learning, though she still nurses a few times a day. This makes her the only child I’ve had that made it to, and past, three years old still nursing. I night-weaned her about four months ago largely because menopause is making my breasts really tender and her sleepy/lazy latch was making me crazy uncomfortable. And also because I’m really sick of waking up and nursing her 30 times a night because she doesn’t just “nurse quietly” at night… she kicks and spins and goes nuts because it’s more stimulating than relaxing for her. Very, very occasionally she nurses to sleep… but we’re talking once a month. My experience with older toddlers (2.5 and up) has been that they tend to sleep better when they’re no longer night-nursing because they use it as an excuse to party.
With the night-nursing gone she only nurses a few times a day: when she first wakes up in the morning, in the afternoon after her nap, and sometimes when she has a cuddle before bed (which she calls her, “cuddle nursey”; this is the only time she actually drinks milk as opposed to just sort of holding my breast for comfort). I don’t think she’ll continue for too much longer, and once she stops nursing she’ll have left the last remnants of her babyhood behind her. It’s all rather bittersweet: I will miss the little lisping toddler who cannot ever keep clothes on longer than a few minutes, but if I’m being honest I also really, really can’t wait for her to be out of the crazy heart-attack-inducing and constant-tantrum-having stage of life.
Any experienced parent will tell you that three year olds are little assholes. Right now she’s really into the, “Don’t talk to me! I don’t like it when you talk to me!” thing when one of us is disciplining her. That’s fun.
Everywhere I go with her people make the, “Wow what a handful!” or, “So much energy” comments and I’ve long ago learned not to take it as an insult. Those comments started with baby Tempest and never stopped. We’re just blessed to get exclusively high-intelligence, spirited, crazy kids and while it’s exhausting and frustrating and crazy-making, it’s also really rewarding seeing their brains work as they grow. People like quiet, obedient kids that don’t get dirty and never forget their manners and have a default setting of “shy and reserved” but that is really never going to be the kind of kids I have. Once I stopped comparing myself to families like that, and imagined they were “better” and I was “worse”, my life got a lot easier, and I learned to be more thankful, and confident (and relaxed).
My mom always said the smartest kids are the toughest to raise, and she’s not wrong. Tempest and Xan have both been tested and have crazy smarts, and if the escape attempts are any indication then Z is following in their footsteps. I do wish I had the disposable income to enrol them in extracurricular activities, brain-testing camps and such, but you do what you can.
We go for walks a lot, when my pain allows it, and the kids talk so much during the walks that I have to enforce a time-limit on each of them and carefully mediate their turns. It goes on like that literally for hours. I’m always amazed at how they never run out of things to say, questions to ask or topics to expand on, and once we’re away from distractions and screens they get so into it that it’s a challenge to keep up with them.
Since I no longer have a functional camera, a family point and shoot (which Tempest broke), or a phone camera that works (the autofocus has been broken for almost two years) the few photos I get that are acceptable are taken with Curtis’ phone when he’s not at work. So I’ve only got a few to share from my Instagram/Tumblr.
This one was taken with a potato my phone; trying to get a quick, inconspicuous shot of Xan and Zephyra’s favourite new game: Battle Baby.
They go out and carefully set up all the Tonka trucks as war machines, haphazardly pieced together out of broken toys and various parts of other trucks/toys that they can find around the house. Then Zephyra sits her butt down one on of the larger trucks at the forefront and calls out, “BRING ME MY WEAPONS!” as Xan supplies her with loaded squirt guns. Then they yell and scream about advancing aliens and Xan creates intricate plot lines and enemy forces for General Battle Baby to fight with a bucket on her head. It’s pretty amazing.
The kids at the Pride festival this year.
LC came to visit for the first time since Xan’s birthday party last October, and it was in the midst of record-breaking heat. We all walked down to the beach to cool off, which was wonderful, even if it took like an hour and a half longer than it should have to walk home.
Left to right: Aaliyah, Tempest, Z, Efro, Xan, Freja.
The real dangers of co-sleeping.
Zism of the day:
While I’m cooking, Z comes running into the kitchen and says, “Mommy it’s way too hot. We need the door to be open!”
“No, no, no! We can’t open doors, the cat will get out!” I say.
But she’s not heading toward the front door. Instead she passes me, opens up the fridge, takes off her underpants, hikes up her dress and sits her bare butt down on one of the fridge shelves and then tries to close the door on herself.
“What are you doing?” I ask her.
“I’m cooling my hot bum. It’s too hot, mom. I just HAVE to be in the fridge right now.”
Z hands me a piece of paper with some random scribbles on it.
“Here.”
“Oh very nice! What is it?”
“A drawing.”
“I know it’s a drawing, I mean what did you draw?”
She looks at me, blinks, then points at a section of it, “I drew my drawing. See? Right there? That’s a drawing.”
“No I mean what’s it a drawing OF?”
Another pause. “Blue.”
“… it’s a very lovely blue drawing.”
“Thank you.”
Tempestism of the day:
At bedtime, Tempest is being obnoxious by repeatedly playing the same notes on a recorder.
“Please put it upstairs!” I tell her. She starts marching up the stairs, punctuating each step with a note on the recorder. “WITHOUT playing it!” I add.
“It’s an INSTRUMENT, MOM. They’re MADE to be played. What do you expect me to do? Just NOT play it?! When you’re holding an instrument, YOU MUST PLAY IT.”
Awkward moment in parenting of the day:
Tempest came up to me in the afternoon wearing a button-down shirt with half the buttons undone and a camisole/bralette underneath and asks, “How many buttons do I need to have done up before you let me go outside?”
My face: ಠ_ಠ
Links of the Day:
A widow’s 4 children are taken by CPS because she left them home alone to go to work – This right here? This is why I can’t put my faith in the CPS/CAS systems. I have friends who work in it, and I deeply appreciate their efforts to be a beacon, but I feel the system has serious flaws and extremely deep problems when things like this can happen. The terrifying truth is that when I’m outside my home I find myself thinking more often about what parenting choices would have the police called on me, rather than what would actually keep my children safe.
Stromae – “Papaoutai” – I recently discovered this French pop artist and… holy man are his songs great. This one in particular, both the music and the incredible video, give me chills. The hook, “Ou est tu papa?” means, “Where are you dad?”, and the title is a bit of a nonsense word made by playing with the beat and the hook together. I speak virtually no French and can follow along only by recognizing one word out of every 3-4 and getting the gist, but you don’t have to understand the lyrics to know what the song is about. The visual story-telling in the video through dance and set are absolutely spectacular. And if you enjoyed that one, watch [ "Tous les memes" ] (“it’s all the same”) next for more fantastic story-telling through video and dance.
Sir Isaac Newton vs. Bill Nye (Epic Rap Battles of History) – If you haven’t discovered the absolute joy that is ‘Epic Rap Battles of History’, you’re missing out. This one is one of my favourites.
10 common carseat mistakes parents make, and how to fix them – Because proper carseat safety needs to be shared, and discussed and seen until it becomes common knowledge.
I was a victim of predatory remodelling – If you’ve never heard of this term, read this man’s terrifying experience and be aware if you’re ever in the market to buy a home.
The pros and cons of transgender children in the public eye – Choice quote: “You can suppress and oppress your child’s authentic gender so you don’t have to worry about what strangers think, but then you have a very anxious child who will be at a high risk for very negative outcomes.”
Because,
“Research shows that allowing children to express their true gender identity from an early age leads to better mental health outcomes down the road, she said. After all, “transgender adults started as transgender kids,”
Dawn of the bionic age: paralyzed man becomes first to use the power of thought to move his hand – Yes, you read that correctly.
It’s been a very stressful… while. Everything just sorts of blends together, and after a while the constant state of anxiety starts to feel so normal that I forget when it started, or what started it… everything just feels fucked up in one way or another. While I was in the store, an elderly stranger offered the perfect description of this feeling the other day: the days are long, but the weeks are short.
I haven’t wanted to write because I didn’t want to put it all down where I could see it all in one place, look at everything and say, “Hey wow, that’s a lot of stupid bullshit”. It’s been bad enough actually living in it all over the course of months, and even with leaving a lot of shit out it’s a lot to write down; it’s exhausting for me just to read back through this. It’s not like we had life-altering bombs dropped on us (well, I guess we sort of did – but I mean no one got cancer or anything), it’s more that the impact is long, emotional and stretched out over a period of weeks or months and that makes everything that much more draining. It leaves you feeling vulnerable, and sad.
Everything is gradually better and much more stable, though the thing about having shit crash down around you is that it’s going to take a bit to recover from no matter how great things may go afterward. And it’s not like they’re super fantastic right now… just, “not terrible”. You know things are shit when “not terrible” is a goddamn miracle by comparison. Things are stabilizing, but everything feels very precarious; it’s been months since I’ve had a good night’s sleep.
This is long, and rambling, and really personal for the first time in a long while, and so if you make it to the end I applaud you. So hey, here’s where I’ve been for two and a half months…
( Read more...Collapse )You know what's really damn annoying about having kids of various ages in different schools? Getting those mass "class emails" with special dates, notifications, general information or reminders about schedule changes with ABSOLUTELY NO CLUES about whose class or even what school its from. This is doubly annoying if all the notes and emails are from a "class rep" or PTA member who just signs all of them with shit like "janet" (sometimes teachers do this too: sign the email with only their first name, as if I'm supposed to know that. I met you once, for ten minutes, four months ago!).
This was especially ridiculous when we had Marika, and were getting regular emails from the high school, Tempest's elementary school, and Xan's preschool all at the same time. I mean I'd get this random shit like 9 times a week. Remember that there's swimming on Friday! There's a book order form due two days from now! The mysterious 'term project' should be handed in on Thursday! There's an emergency early closure tomorrow at noon so make sure to pick up your kids no later than 12:08 otherwise we'll call CPS! Also there's a lice check tomorrow morning performed by uneducated clods who can't tell the difference between eggs and dandruff and we only stock latex gloves that we'll never change between checking heads so fuck you and your kid's severe latex allergy!
Or you know, something like that anyway.
Sometimes the class rep/PTA people even email from their husband's accounts, or their work accounts, which makes things even worse! So just when you thought you'd remembered that the mysterious "janet" is from your son's 3rd grade class, now you're getting emails from "Mike in accounting" about a fucking lice check tomorrow morning and make sure your girls' hair isn't in braids and you've got two braid-loving girls in two different schools so WHO THE FUCK DOES THIS APPLY TO?! Asking your kids gets you nowhere because no matter what the question they all respond with this glassy-eyed stare and half-hearted shrug.
If you take the risk of emailing "janet" and asking which class this is for, you can expect one of three things to happen.
One: you get a response at 12:36am on the day of the event, which is an email you just so happen to miss because you were passed out in front of a Netflix binge of "Orange is the new Black".
Two: you get a passive-aggressive email that, while it does let you know whose class its from, also gives you a healthy dose of, "omg, what kind of mother really doesn't know the name, email address, marital status and child information of every class rep, PTA member and their dogs? omg bad mom alert jesus" and you get a tongue-clucking by half the parents during pick-up hour for the next four months. This effectively defuses any desire to ever email and ask this question ever again.
Three: you get no response at all because your email was sent to Janet's "Mike in accounting" address and the message is delegated to his junk folder because no one at his work knows what the fuck you're talking about.
No parent of multiple children is going to memorize the first name and email address of every goddamn person who ever wrote a notice about class, ever. We are busy enough people as it is, and some of us even hold down part or full time jobs on top of it all. The fact that we remember to wear pants when we leave the house is practically parade-worthy.
The simple solution to this would be to put, "Message from Mrs. Everyonebutyouknowsmyname's grade 2 class" in the subject line, but CLEARLY THIS IS TOO FUCKING HARD A CONCEPT. The only time I ever see this courtesy is in messages from the principal herself, and generally those are sent directly to you because your kid did something embarrassing like draw pictures of what he saw when he came sneaking into your bedroom at 2am last Friday.
And do not even get me started on this issue when they get into high school, and now have six teachers, two class aides per block, a principal, vice principal, assistant principal, school counsellor, guidance counsellor and medical staff emailing you various crap 20 times a week alongside all the paper garbage they bring home stuffed in the bottom of their backpack and covered in yogurt, reminding you about the 200 fundraisers going on that month. Which of course they forget about until it starts to rot and creates a puzzling aroma that stinks up one side of their bedroom for the next six months. You'd be happy to take care of this serious lapse in personal hygiene for them BUT OMG STAY OUT OF MY ROOM HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF PRIVACY JESUS CHRIST.
Alright I'm done.
The last month has been a ridiculous amount of medical crap, even for our family. When you live with any chronic illness or disability, medical crap and drama is par for the course and you come to expect that it'll be a part of your life forevermore so you develop a tolerance for it… but even that tolerance was being pushed by the end of this. Not so much because of the amount but just the stress levels in general.
Xan has been experiencing infrequent migraines since he was a preschooler, and we've taken him in to the doctor, and been referred to specialists for tests, quite a few times in the last years. We did the whole dietary thing, we did the allergy thing, we did the celiac thing, we even got referred for CF testing at one point. Nothing ever gave us any real answers as to why he'd get persistent and very severe headaches and stomach-aches. Some readers suggested abdominal migraines as an explanation for the mysterious stomach-aches going on at the same time… and ended up being spot on. I'd never even heard the term before, nor would I have known to ask about it. This is one of the many reasons why blogging and having online community support can be an amazing thing: you can tap into a knowledge base that is far bigger than your own, and sometimes you can get hints or ideas that never would have occurred to you otherwise and end up making a big difference. And now we finally have a real answer for his stomach problems. And while, no, it doesn't give us any magic potion to make it all better… it is a huge relief knowing where it's coming from, that it's not something really serious, and that we can start various treatments in attempt to prevent or lesson the impact.
He had his worst episode ever about a month ago: it started as a little headache and quickly grew. We threw everything we could at it (and him being a child that meant little more than tylenol or ibuprofen) and it just kept going. He ended up staying home from school for several days while the headache pain went up and down until we ended up taking him to the emergency room. The worst day by far was day 3, while we were still convinced he had contracted some sort of flu and this headache business was merely a symptom of it. He was unable to even get out of bed for eight hours, and for Xan that's a major deal. Getting him down for dinner took two people, and after a few bites he started crying. When pressed, he explained, "I'm so hungry, but it hurts my head to chew". We took him in after that.
… and just like magic, his days-long migraine disappeared after two hours in the E.R. I saw it coming (or leaving, as it were), but I pressed on in hopes of having tests done or merely having him seen by someone after all this horrible pain. But alas, all we got was a pat on the head and the invaluable advice of, "give him a tylenol", after all the stress. Thanks a lot, asshole doctor, that was super fucking helpful.
After that failure I pushed our doctor for a referral and he saw a paediatric neurologist in very short order. Part of that may have had to do with the fact that our family doctor had not seen a case of childhood migraines, "in 35 years". Wonderful. As if I needed more reason to think of you as an old fogey.
The neurologist was much more helpful, and after a half hour of exams and questions, she quickly gave him the "official" diagnosis of childhood migraines. With abdominal migraines to boot. From there we were given a long sheet suggesting of various trials of meds and vitamin supplements to help control the frequency and intensity of the migraines, and an order to come back in six months to see how it all goes. We've already started him on some, but it's hard to tell if it's working or not because his attacks are reactively infrequent (at least by my perception). The best we can do is continue to document and try and see if any of the suggestions help the next time he's actually hit hard with one.
Coincidentally, I was also in the E.R twice with the most horrific head pain I've ever experienced. It did not feel like a migraine headache; it felt like piercing, horrible icey pressurey pain. Never in my entire life have I felt something like that. It woke me up early one morning and was so intense that I couldn't stand up or walk properly, and ended up vomiting throughout the day from the pain. Eventually it got to the point where I couldn't keep water down, was horribly disoriented and could not stop crying. I took a massive dose of pain medication and it did absolutely nothing. I was becoming very afraid.
Curtis took me to the emergency room in the early evening and the staff and doctor who treated me were all amazing and kind. They were low on room and so had to put me on a bed off to the side of a hallway, but when I was first admitted and they realized how bad the pain was (by that point I couldn't open my eyes) I was moved to a dark, quiet area, given ice water and a cool cloth, and was treated really promptly.
In the end they hung 6-7 bags that included anti-nauseants, anti-inflammatories, tons and tons and tons of fluid (I was very dehydrated) and a massive dose of antibiotics. After a metric fuckton of tests the doctor surmised that since I had just recovered from an extremely bad autoimmune flare-up, my kidney function had likely been compromised (leading to extreme dehydration, as well as other issues), which is what led to the head pain. He said I was likely developing the infection before, but the flare-up just pushed it over the edge and completely fucked my kidneys. After a few hours I was sent home with a script for antibiotics, and the doctor made it very clear that I should return immediately if the head pain comes back and not to fuck around.
The next two mornings the same pain woke me up again. Just as bad. Just as severe. No meds would even touch it… and then it would spontaneously go away on it's own about 5 hours later. I was also having severe, persisting kidney pain that was only getting worse as the days (and antibiotics) went on. Curtis was working late on those days, and because of the huge stressful hassle that is trying to find childcare for all three of my children, I put off going back to the ER in hopes that this was just some sort of lingering effect that would diminish over time.
It didn't. It just kept getting worse. By day 3 the kidney pain was so bad I could barely walk around, and called my dad to ask if he could take me to the ER. I texted Curtis and he almost immediately found a way out of work, and arranged to have the kids watched by our friends. He ended up meeting me at the hospital when I was dropped off by my dad's partner.
This hospital visit did not go as smoothly as the previous one, to the say the least.
It took almost seven hours to be seen, and the doctor who was on duty was a complete fucking asshole. After seven hours of no conversation or my questions being answered, I ended up approaching the desk and asked if they knew how much longer it would take to talk to the doctor, or if my test results had come back showing anything (they'd taken blood/urine when I first arrived). I explained that I was having trouble holding up due to my AS, adding that I'd been ordered to return ASAP if the symptoms of the original problem returned (and made to believe this was serious business). The doctor happened to be standing nearby and without warning absolutely lost her shit at me, snapping, "This is an emergency room and you are not experiencing an emergency". She accused me of drug-seeking (not once did I request or even mention pain medication - I just wanted answers) before finally exclaiming that she was done with me and my remaining choices were, "You can either wait until midnight to see the next doctor or you can get out because as far as I'm concerned, you're discharged!" then she threw whatever she was holding at a desk and stalked off.
I was so emotionally and physically drained by that point that I was in tears. I was exhausted from the non-stop pain and the previous flare-up, my body was in horrible spasm from missing my afternoon dose for the purpose of getting help, and all I wanted to do was go home. I felt confused, and angry, and humiliated.
All the stress and fear from the last few days just spilled out inside of me, and when I returned to the little room with Curtis waiting I was openly sobbing. He'd not witnessed the exchange but heard that something had happened (she had been rather loud), and was furious. I begged him to just leave with me right then and not push the issue, but he was on a mission by that point. I went out and waited by the front entrance for my father to pick us up while Curtis approached the desk and requested to talk to a supervisor or some equivalent. When he explained what had happened, the woman seemed unsurprised (in an acceptable way - as in, they'd had problems with this particular doctor before), and told him to please make an official complaint. She gave him in the information, apologized profusely, and said that if we could stand to wait another hour or two the doctor who attended me the first time who had been so lovely would be coming in. I was so beyond done, physically and otherwise, that there was no way we could wait that long; my body couldn't take it. Curtis thanked her for the information, and quietly added, "She needs to be somewhere she can be cared for, and that place is no longer the hospital," and left.
I don't need his protection, but sometimes it feels nice to get it, and despite my initially not wanting to stir up any more shit I felt relieved knowing he'd stood up for me when I was unable to do it for myself.
The head pain didn't return the following morning, but my kidneys continued to hurt for almost two weeks - long past the end of the antibiotic regime. I was so run down from the ER experiences that there was no way in hell I wanted to try doing it all over again, so I just took the pain and tried to do as little as possible in hopes it would eventually stop on its own.
I try to never ever go to the ER for pain related shit and this is exactly why. When I got home after the second hospital visit our friends James and Adena were watching the kids. James has CF and had his second double-lung transplant not that long ago, and I know he and Adena understand better than anyone how fucked up and nasty the system often treats chronic illness and pain patients. And with that in mind, it was nice to cry on the shoulder of friends who really get it.
Z is finally beginning to outgrow her escape attempts, thank the fucking lord, because I was running short on the means to effectively baby proof the house. She hasn't tried to get outside or get into something major in about a month and before that her incidents of major mischief was becoming less frequent.
She has been the most difficult and insane toddler I have raised, bar none. We joked for years that baby Tempest was incredibly cunning and the most mischievous toddler but seriously Z has taken the top spot and then run with it. I've had more heart stopping moments with her than with the other two combined. God forbid I cook, clean or poop because she has her timing down well enough to create horrible disasters inside a minute and for a while there it seemed like the only solution was to leash her to my leg 24/7.
While the escape attempts have almost disappeared she's still causing trouble in other ways. For example, she was almost completely potty learned and then spontaneously gave it up about two weeks later and now we're starting from scratch all over again. It is immensely frustrating to have success so close that you not only touched it, but were able to actually relish in it for a little bit. I am so done with diapers. Right now her favourite trick is to take off her diaper and then poop on the floor. This will almost always be followed by her taking a hand and saying, "I need to go poop on the potty", which results in an excited - and ultimately unsuccessful - visit to the bathroom, and it's only after you've spent a good three and a half minutes cheerleading her elusive bowel movements that she'll finally admit that she didn't have to go at all and really meant to say, "I did need to go five minutes ago but as you'll see by the exceptionally large pile of shit next to the couch, this is no longer a problem for me".
She finds it all very amusing and apparently quite a jolly good time as she does this at least once every couple of days, and sometimes multiple times in a single day. Goddamn toddlers.
At least she's cute. My mother used to say "cute is a survival mechanism" and she's not wrong.
I've noticed lately that Z almost exclusively plays with Xan, rather than Tempest. A big part of this is that Tempest is reaching an age where "playing" that way is just not cool and therefore she won't do it, and another big one is that she simply doesn't understand Z's methods of play. Xan easily falls into pretend-style playing, and legitimately enjoys acting out silly scenarios and laughing as Z fumbles her way through them, whereas Tempest has never been able to get into that. She just… doesn't get it. Even when she was very small I very rarely saw her play pretend, and the times she did seemed off somehow. It was one of the first signs we saw as 'off', and understood as part of autism. It's hard to tell if her lack of play with Zephyra that's a personality thing or an autism thing, but either way it separates her from Z in a very big way. As a result, Z has bonded a lot with Xan over the last few months and very little with Tempest. To be honest, I don't think I've seen them "play" together unless Tempest is actively trying to teach her something, which does not happen often at this point. It doesn't seem to bother any of them, so I don't push it, but the question lingers at the back of my mind every day and it makes me wonder if I should. Should I force Tempest to play more with Z so that they become closer… or should I do my utmost to respect that Tempest is fundamentally very different and they may not ever be close as sisters? I am watching the foundation of their entire lives unfold before me, right here in the living room, and I can't figure out which is the better option: forcing, or allowing.
Tempest is not an emotional being: in her 10 years, I have heard her say, "I love you" a handful of times… and all were prompted by us. As she got older, and learned to speak on her own volition instead of in response to prompts from her parents, she never said it again. Last week as she completed her nightly ritual of "hug and kiss" before bed, I said "I love you" the way I do every night and she responded with her usual silence… except this time I added, "when your family says, 'i love you', the polite thing to do is to say, 'i love you too'," and she asked, "Why?". I don't know if it's good or bad that I'm not at all bothered by this. Friends have commented, "that must be hard," but it hasn't been - this is just the way she is, and that's okay with me; she shows love and attachment in her own ways, and I have learned to see and appreciate that.
But then we get into situations like this, like with her sister, and I start to question myself and wonder if I should be forcing her into actions she is not naturally comfortable with for the benefit of Z's future. Will they grow to resent me if I force them together? Will Z resent me if I stand by and do nothing to "encourage" their relationship? Will they still be okay in 18 years if they were never even remotely close as kids? I don't want any of my kids to have the kind of relationship my brother and I did, or do - though no piece of that has a bit to do with my mother - but I am plagued by the thought that they will as a result of my inaction.
It's impossibly hard to be a parent witnessing a permanent relationship growing that has the potential to be negative, and wonder what your role should be. If it should be at all. Things like this make you question your ability to parent entirely. Sometimes I don't even think I'm cut out for this.
Quotes of the Day:
Z came and begged for a nurse, and I asked her to wait a bit, and she had a mini tantrum and for some reason went upstairs and complained to Xan about it. His room is right over the livingroom, so I can hear them talking. Xan consoles her for a moment, and then I hear him start coaching her :
"No no, you have to ask quietly. And make sure you say please. Look cute. Yeah, like that. Now go, try that!"
She comes back down and clasps her hands together, and says very quietly, "Please. Nursie. Please... mama, please."
"I hear you asking nicely, but you'll have to wait just a bit."
She runs back upstairs. "Xan, mommy say no!"
"Were you cute?"
"I cute!"
"Hmm. I don't know, you may have to wait. Want me to read to you?"
"... okay".
While I'm reading to Xan, Z comes up onto the top bunk and asks very sternly, "I nursie?"
"Nope, you'll have to wait."
"I NURSIE!" she yells.
"No, you wait!" I jokingly call back.
"YOU NURSIE ME!"
"No nursie you!"
"YOU NURSIE ME IN MY FACE!"
"What!?"
"... please?
Z comes up and gooses Xan while they were playing.
"I got your bum!" she says.
Xan replies with the utmost seriousness, "No way, you can't touch my bum. My bum is for display only".
When taking a late night walk with the kids, Xan tried to leave the house with only a rain slicker, but with significant urging he begrudgingly agreed to put on a thicker winter coat. Two minutes out and he's shivering, complaining about the cold and begging me to zip it up.
I got down on a knee to do up his coat and said, "See? Mom did have a point about the cold after all."
After a pause he sighs deeply, reaches forward and pats my head twice and then says, completely deadpan, "Yes. You were right. Is that better?"
Smartass.
Links of the Day:
Baby dies while sleeping in car seat - Car seats are for cars; not for sleeping, not for carrying, not for moving about. They're designed for short term use by babies, just for transport... babies sleeping/kept in seats suffer oxygenation problems that can lead to really serious problems, and death. The baby in this story was 15 months - not a newborn. Please, please leave carseats in cars. If you can babywear, invest in a safe and comfortable carrier to transfer baby to during trips to help them back to sleep safely.
Reports on breastfeeding sibling study are vastly overstated - If you haven't heard about the sibling pairs study that is being touted as proof that breastfeeding has no long term benefits, be thankful you live under a rock because that shit has been ridiculous. It's flawed as all hell, to say the least, and if you're looking for some information about why, check out this fantastic take-down.
Did US researchers really find breastfeeding to be ineffective or harmful? - More of the above.
Measure your pupillary distance - Ever wanted to buy cheap-ass glasses online but don't know your pupil distance without making an appointment with a specialist? This website just needs a webcam, a well-lit room and a card with a mag strip. Follow it up with a trip to Zenni.com and you can save hundreds of dollars on glasses. We bought a replacement pair for Curtis for about $40 (including shipping) - by comparison, the absolute cheapest pair we could find for him locally that didn't look like ass would cost us almost $200.
Meet the woman who straight-up rocks a beard - If you're in need of a dose of body positivity today, look no further than this absolutely fantastic young woman. Her confidence and level of self-love are fantastic, and it's hard not to feel inspired after reading this.
I am alive - While pondering the missing Malaysian flight, I started reading about similar incidents and came upon the story of the survivors from the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. It's the event that inspired the early 90's movie, "Alive" (which I have never seen) as well as a documentary and two books. The documentary is what I have linked. It is the most incredible tale of survival I have ever heard of. The story is terrifying, chilling, and yet completely awe-inspiring. The gist is that in 1972 a small charter plane went off course and crashed deep in the Andes mountains with 45 on board: a rugby team and their families. They were over 11'000 feet up, trapped in a valley surrounded on all sides by sheer peaks. There were 27 survivors. 8 more died in a sudden avalanche and 3 more over the weeks. By day 10 they made the choice to eat the bodies of their friends and loved ones for survival. They were trapped for 72 days. Seventy-two fucking days. In the end, three of the men decided to scale one of the 15k foot peaks in hopes of finding help. They trekked without gear, shelter, tools or proper clothing for 10 days and crossed over 40 miles of the Andes before being sighted by a Chilean rancher. 16 made it home alive by the end of the ordeal. The documentary is absolutely terrifying, and yet completely inspiring. If you have an hour and a half, watch it.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
• What is this no-poo thing you speak of?
• Why on Earth would I do this?
• What you'll need
• Step one: baking soda
• Step two: apple cider vinegar
• Step three: aftercare
FAQ #2: The most common questions
• The baking soda 'shampoo'/wash doesn't lather and feels more like a rinse, what am I doing wrong?
• Does the vinegar smell stay in your hair?
• Can you still do this with dyed hair? / How do you get your colour to stay so vibrant?
• Can you use hair styling products like gel or mousse?
• Can I use this with my kids?
• How often do I need to do this?
• Do you only use one tablespoon/one cup per washing, or is that just the ratio when you're mixing?
• Do I have to use the whole cup of the mixture when I wash/rinse?
• Can I use baking powder or washing soda instead of baking soda?
• I'm a person of colour who is transitioning to natural hair, is this okay to use?
• My hair has static electricity, what can I do to reduce this?
• Do you have to use the ACV to rinse the baking soda wash out of your hair? Do you have to use the ACV rinse every single time?
• Will this bleach your hair?
• I work out every day and get sweaty - should I do this every day to wash the sweat out of my hair?
• I'm a swimmer and the chlorine makes my hair super dry, will this work for me?
• I think I'm allergic to apple cider vinegar or baking soda… how can I tell?
• My hair isn't quite as silky or moisturized as I wanted it to be, is there something else I can try or add to my routine?
• Will this make my hair grow faster and longer?
• Can I use lemon juice instead of ACV?
• Does the mixture go bad?
• This didn't work for me and I think you and your method are a big fat phoney!
I'm approaching the 10 year anniversary of writing the "No-Poo" FAQ and tutorial post on my Livejournal. That also means that my family and I have been happy, devoted users of the method for that long too! Since the post first went up I've received thousands of comments, emails, questions, and little nuggets of shared wisdom. The two most common inquiries are either related to my personal use (Do you still use it? Have you changed/added to your routine at all? Can you post before/after pictures, or pictures of your process?), and whether I'm willing to create a follow-up post for the original tutorial that would cover some of the most common questions I've received since it went up.
A few weeks ago I finally got around to taking pictures of my hair, and my process, and put my ass in gear about writing a follow-up. I've never had even the tiniest desire to go back to traditional shampoo since switching over: it really is like freaking magic to turn grody hairs into pretty hairs. It's made my hair so incredibly soft, especially the first several days after a wash, that neither I nor Curtis can stop touching it. I was not fortunate enough to be gifted with naturally voluminous hair, and this method has given me body that I spent years trying to achieve as a shampoo user. No amount of sprays, mousses, volumizing shampoos or special products ever came close to producing the swish and bounce that going shampoo-free did… and that alone was enough to satisfy the vanity end of switching (because let's be honest, no one would stick with a method that made your hair look like crap!).
If you're new to this concept and are now feeling curious, yet too lazy to go read the original post, and are starting to wonder what's up with all these vague references to constipation and hair… fear not! This post will function both as a more condensed and modern 'shampoo-free' guide for those who weren't around back then, a "ten year" follow-up including pictures of my hair before and after a wash, some more tips and tricks, plus a "no poo FAQ" version 2.0 answering the most common questions I've received over the years. If you're already familiar with the process, you can skip this next part and scroll down for the instructions on my process and the pictures instead.
Shampoo-free, otherwise known as "the no-poo method", is when you give up on commercial shampoos and conditioners and instead use nature and science to wash your hair. A baking soda solution is used to cleanse your hair, and an apple cider vinegar solution is used to clarify and condition it. It works amazingly well for all types of hair styles, colours, textures and lengths and has some other cool benefits too. Most people go through a "hair detox" (yes, this is a real thing) immediately after switching which lasts anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, which is usually comprised of your sebaceous glands over-producing oils and sebum due to the harsh stripping/sealing process that traditional shampoos and conditioners do to it. Once your hair evens itself out, your natural oil production will be way, way less than it was before which also translates to your hair staying soft and light for much longer and needing less washes overall.
I first saw this method being talked about on natural health forums somewhere around mid-2004, with the information spread over several different (and usually giant) threads about general natural health. There was almost no other information about it on the web outside a few forum threads, and none of those had any sort of real tutorial or FAQ. So after some months spent using the method and doing some research, I wrote my own. The post went stupidly viral, and is still my #1 most viewed post, and was shared literally over a hundred thousand times over the years. Over the next few years 'no poo' started becoming a thing, so a lot more tutorials and articles on the subject started popping up. A huge, huge chunk of them either reference heavily from my post - very often verbatim - or follow the exact same format with small language and grammatical changes. Running my post through a copyright search brings up hundreds of results all over the place, which is crazy. Once or twice I even got emails effectively saying things like, "hey we just published your post word-for-word in our zine without any mention of where we got it, the name of the author who originally wrote it, and without asking you if it was okay first! You’re so welcome.". To be honest I'm not really that upset about the referencing and such because it's not like I invented the practice, or am losing revenue, but it is irritating when people republish either the entire post or massive chunks of it and then claim it as their own… especially if they're paid bloggers. 'Cause that's just plain rude.
The original was posted on Livejournal, and can be read [ right here ] (this version is the most common one linked because it's the oldest). The permanent address is on my blog-site, [ right here ]. The post is quite long and includes a bit of history on shampoo, some explanation on what the ingredients do (both in shampoo and in 'no poo'), and an FAQ about problems you might encounter and how to fix them. At some point I plan on doing a video version of the post. I’ve been trying to work up the courage to do that for over a year now. One day.
Alright, now that you're caught up, here's an updated and condensed tutorial!
( Read more...Collapse )
These are examples of conversations I've had with her from just this evening:
"Where did your clothes go?"
"What."
"Why'd you take off your clothes, silly girl?"
"What. Hehe."
"Please don't bite!"
"What." Then, sarcastically, "Okay, geez."
"No bum! Nooooo bum!"
"Why can't I put your diaper back on?"
"What."
"Oh no, you fell! Are you okay?"
"Yes."
"Did you hit your leg?"
"What."
"Eat! Eat dis food!"
"No honey, I don't want to eat food that's already been in your mouth."
"Haha… what."
It's like that every hour of every day. And it's not even like she uses tones to indicate a question, it's usually said very flatly. This is some serious toddler bullshit. The only context cues are whether or not she says it loudly or quietly.
The other thing she does now is add a 'y' sound to the end of every word. Like "Pantsy" for pants, or "nursey" for breastfeeding, "foody" for food, "backy" for back time (when she's put on someone's back to assist in going to sleep), "Bootsy" when she needs to put her shoes on. I'm sure you can imagine the rest. Old readers may remember Tempest's x-y-x language quirk that happened about a year past this age, when she was around 3.5, where x is any word and y is literally the 'y' sound. This was apparent in phrases like, "I like the ring-y-ring" and "Let's go to car-y-car". Though that came off as rather adorable and not at all confusing or ridiculous, unlike Z.
All of this only adds to Z's uniquely challenging charm.
Z has been, by and large, the most challenging and exhausting toddler I have ever had. I can't be certain how much of her behaviour is learned from watching and/or being around older siblings and how much is truly organic, but regardless it's enough to make me pray for ages three and four in a way I have never imagined was possible. And ya'll know 3 and 4 are Satan child time, but it's gotta be less exhausting than this. I mean at least then I don't have to worry about her unlocking the bathroom window and crawling out onto the roof or beaning random people with mugs she stole out of a cabinet secured with no less than two child locks. And not even the cheap ones.
These things haven't yet happened, of course, but she's gotten very close. Sometimes the only thing that keeps me going is the hope that one day these stories will be hilarious and we will tell them at various family events while she squirms and looks vaguely apologetic.
Something like two months ago I wrote about a particularly exhausting afternoon with her and then forgot where I saved the file. I finally found it and I'm copying it below because seriously she is ridiculous and this shit is what most days are like with her.
I swear to god, this baby is going to be the death of me. Two year olds are always a ton of trouble but she's got the cunning and ability of both the others put together and I honestly do not understand it.
Early this morning she successfully figured out the sliding glass door locks (x2) and disappeared into the backyard (which, fortunately, has a very high fence and latch placed out of reach even for a child of Xan's height) leaving me momentarily terrified when I couldn't find her anywhere. After some desperate searching and calling I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye, and then saw her standing in the backyard completely naked (her clothes were strewn all over the dew-covered ground). Once I made eye contact with her she threw her arms up in the air and yelled, "TAH DAHHHHH!" loud enough that I could hear it through the closed door.
She skipped her nap this afternoon and instead spent time undoing every chore I was trying to get done, from laundry to sweeping. She dunked the cat's food into their water twice, then poured the water out onto the floor, threw every single piece of food I gave her to eat onto the floor, and sprayed a bottle of milk inside the vacuum cleaner after managing to lock herself in the hall closet with it while I was selfishly taking time to pee.
After I picked up the kids from school and came home to start the afternoon chores she followed me around up and down the stairs, often either right at my heels or directly in front of me and generally getting in the way. This makes it extremely hard for me to haul large baskets of laundry up and down the two flights of stairs that are between the bedrooms and the washing machine. Every distraction I threw at her failed, and she wasn't that interested in helping to put clothes in the machine either so I just barreled through it as fast as I could. I tripped over her half a dozen times, the worst of which resulted in my falling into the corner of a cabinet, splitting my toe open.
After transferring the diaper laundry to the dryer, I filled the washing machine up about 1/4 of the way and then went upstairs to grab the last laundry basket from the bathroom so I could fill it the rest of the way. When I got back downstairs with the basket, baby was once again inexplicably naked and standing at the bottom of the steps waiting for me. "TAHHH DAHHH!" she said, laughing and slapping her belly.
Alright, fine, whatever. I could care less if she's naked, as long as she hasn't stripped off a poopy diaper. I check her bum as she runs away from me and it looks clean. I'll find her clothes when I'm done.
I put the rest of the laundry in the machine and close it up.
"Alright Zephyra," I called after her, "Where's your bum?" (bum is what we call diapers).
"My bum! I naked!" she exclaimed.
"Yes I can see that. Can you show me where you put your bum so I can put it in the pail? I won't put it back on you, I swear."
She wandered in circles for about 3 minutes before finally leading me back into the laundry room and pointing at the washing machine, "Help!" she said.
"Help?… what do you need help with?"
"I help!"
"You help what?" And then it hit me. She 'helped' by throwing all of her clothes and diaper into the washing machine when I left the lid open between dumps of clothes. Crap. Well, as obnoxious as that is at least it's cloth and she didn't poop so no harm done.
And I start back upstairs and realize, wait no… it isn't cloth. The one time in ages that I've used a disposable because she was poopy two minutes before I had to run and pick up the kids, already late, and her diaper shelf was empty except for an old disposable because everything else was in the wash. She just threw a used disposable diaper into the washing machine, sandwiched somewhere between the three baskets of laundry that I threw in there.
Oh, fuck.
I ran back in and was thankfully able to stop the machine before the 'lid lock' mechanism turned on which prevents me from opening it no matter what I do (I have no idea how to disable it or even why it exists in the first place). I ended up having to pull out around 3/4 of the sopping wet, filthy clothes and cat-peed-on towels before finally locating and removing the diaper, now swollen to five times it's normal size. When I finally pulled out the dripping mass of gross, Z gave me a slow clap. Thanks, baby.
We went back upstairs to continue my afternoon chores, deciding I would not bother to try and re-dress Z, seeing as she clearly needed some naked time so damn much. My back was starting to really hurt by that point, so after I finished sweeping and mopping the kitchen I went and sat down for a rest in the livingroom. Three or four minutes went by without having Z harass me, which generally means something is very wrong somewhere in the house. Just as I started to get up she approached me with her mouth wide open.
"Yuck!" she exclaimed, gaping at me. I was overwhelmed by a sickly sweet, soapy smell. Her mouth was covered in some sort of white residue. It was also on her hands and chest. We have really difficult cabinet locks on EVERY drawer, cabinet or cupboard that contains any cleaning solution so there is absolutely no way she got into anything dangerous. Seriously the amount of time and money I have spent finding the perfect locks for each individual cabinet since moving in her has been seriously fucking stupid. With that in mind, I figured she may have eaten some hand soap or something. Though the bathrooms all have door handle locks on them, and remain closed at all times exactly for reasons like this… so that's also unlikely.
With some prompting Z eventually led me to the culprit: a now empty trial-size deodorant that had been stored in a zippered compartment of my purse. My purse that I absently left hanging on the lower hook instead of the higher one when I came in after picking up the kids. What she hadn't eaten or bitten or whatever she was doing with it was smeared all over the entryway: walls, door, floor and the wipe mat. Ugghhh.
The deodorant is not even remotely dangerous nor was it that big a deal to clean, but the smell was awful and gives me a headache. I picked it up on sale somewhere and ended up storing it in my purse for use only in terribly smelly emergencies.
Thank god the repaired Wii gamepad came in today because I seriously need to be able to just hand her the TV and let her veg out for 30 minutes right now. I'm starting to get a serious case of twitchy eyeball. It's not even 4pm yet and I still have to put aside an hour and change to make dinner and clean up after that without her burning down the damn house.
Seriously. SERIOUSLY.
On the plus side, she has spontaneously started using the potty, all on her own!
Our potty learning tactics with her have ranged from feigned disinterest, to gently encouraging or even borderline bribery without any smidgen of success. But, like her sister before her, it was only after giving up and ignoring the idea completely that she finally began to show actual interest. A few days ago she spontaneously announced that she had to use the potty while galavanting around the house naked, so I brought her there and she actually went. Like, a lot. It was very clearly a purposeful attempt at potty learning.
The next day she used the potty 7 times in a row and didn't need a diaper at all until bedtime. The day after she used it all day so long as she was naked (but asked for diapers to poop) and that night she slept without a diaper, by her rather aggressive request, and woke up dry. She then used the potty in the morning and peed so much it very nearly required a courtesy flush.
I'm calling this a half-success because she still regularly asks for diapers when she's mad at us, being lazy, or has to poop. Regardless, it's happening significantly earlier than it did with my other kids, so I have high hopes that we may actually be able to pack away her diapers by the time she turns 3. Cautiously high hopes, but hopes nonetheless.
As an update to this, she waited two more days to start using the potty to poop too. Today I went out to try and find her underwear to practice with, but I cannot find any in her size. The smallest pack I could find was "XXS" and said that it would fit a 2-3 (she wears 3T) and it's huge on her. Argh. Though I'm not sure I'll be able to take them back now, because as soon as we got home she stripped naked, ripped open the bag, took out a pair to put on, and now refuses to take them off.
This makes me unbelievably excited.
I'm going to have to put away my #1 Crunchy Mom mug when I admit that I am seriously done with changing poopy diapers. DONE. And nursing, too. I'm just not enjoying nursing anymore, and I would not be bent out of shape if she got up one morning and decided she was done forever. I have no desire to forcibly wean her because not only am too lazy for that bullshit; but also because it would begin a torrent of crying, tantrums, sleepless nights, grumpy asshole babies, and general freaking out for days or even weeks, and frankly I'd much rather she just gradually pull away the same way the other kids did because that just makes more sense. But still, it does't mean I'm not feeling done with it.
I'm all over the LLL, "don't offer, don't refuse" bullshit, which as any nursing mom knows, doesn't do jack shit, clever phrasing or no. My go-to distraction is to simply tell her I'm really not feelin' it right now and if she could wait until such-and-such time I'd be all over that and we'd nurse as much as she'd like (which is actually more like an extremely short session).
My worst problem right now is her terrible, lazy toddler latch; which is impossible to correct not only because she refuses to listen to reason (or perhaps doesn't understand my complicated instructions), but also because of the persisting effects of her tongue tie and how that effects the way my nipple is positioned in a mouth full of teeth. There really is no option here that allows for super comfortable, painless latching. And while what we have isn't exactly horrible agony, it's also not exactly fluffy peaceful clouds either. At 2.5 the only persisting problems with her tongue tie are things like excessive drooling (for a child this age), some lisping that I'm not entirely sure is truly abnormal, and a weird shallow latch that makes her top teeth dig into my areola in a way that any other normal child's latch would not. To be honest, continued breastfeeding has done more for her speech and physical therapy than anything else could come close to (and I'm not pulling this out of my ass, this comes from the PT/OT we worked with and then checked in with for so long), so there's a lot of weight on the 'pro' side of continuing to nurse her as long as she needs it. The more we nurse, the more stimulation those areas of her mouth receive, which strengthens and stretches and prevents all sorts of other problems like bubble palate or "baby bottle mouth"-like development due to pressure pockets, malocclusion and all that. Continued breastfeeding into toddlerhood does a lot of wonderful things, and that goes double for kids like her. But man am I ever getting to a point where I hate the sensation.
There are still some times when I don't mind so much, like when she's really sleepy and cuddled up nice and close, actually taking the time to get a proper, deep latch for the purpose of drinking; and I look down at her sweet little face and can watch as she drifts off. That's very sweet. I mean, up until she slips into REM sleep and bites down. But before that it's very sweet.
Speaking of sweet, I had a really lovely moment with Xan the other night, though it had not started out that way.
I walked up into the bathroom after Xan's frantic call and found that Zephyra had gotten ahold of an eyeshadow sample that was not only very expensive to replace (I did not pay for it initially, it came as a gift) but also one of my absolute favourite pieces… and she'd emptied it out all over the entire bathroom. I was furious. Both with her, and with Xan for what appeared to be him just standing there watching her do it rather than trying to help.
I got Curtis to help wrangle the baby while I tried to salvage what was left, and while I reprimanded Xan for not trying to help, I realized he was standing there looking very nervous with his shirt pulled up over his nose.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"No I mean why is your shirt like that."
"Nothing," he said again.
"Did you hurt yourself?"
"No," he admitted. Then carefully, "I just…got blush on me. The baby did it."
"Xan, it's okay if your'e playing with my make-up, all you have to do is ask so I know what you're doing. I'm mad about you not trying to stop the baby from ruining things when she was doing it right in front of you… not that you're using it."
Slowly the shirt came down to reveal that he had two swipes of blush on either cheek, and a hint of lipstick. "Yeah?"
"Yeah of course."
Tempest came in at this point to see what the kerfuffle was about. The shirt came right back up to hide his face.
"You know that makeup isn't for girls, it's for everyone. Men and women who are in theatre, TV shows or anything on stage or in front of cameras pretty much always wear make-up," I said.
Tempest agreed with me. "That's right! I see lots of guys on YouTube who teach about make-up!"
"Me too!" I said. I saw Xan out of the corner of my eye slowly lower his shirt again. "The person that gives me the best tips and tutorials about make-up is a guy, and he wears make-up almost every day!" (Wayne Goss, for those wondering, he truly is incredible and you should all subscribe to him).
I motioned to Xan, "If you ever wanted to be on stage and entertain people, you'd probably have to wear make-up!"
"Well, I don't want to do that," he said. "I want to be a cooker like daddy." He paused a moment. "Can cookers wear make-up?"
"Anyone can wear make-up," said Tempest, having even the slightest clue the difference she was making. "It's for anyone for whatever reason. Haven't you ever heard of goth?"
"No," Xan answered.
"Those are people that dress a certain way, like in all black, and they all wear the same kind of make-up no matter if they're boys or girls or anything else." (I think this is her way of acknowledging people who are intersex or androgynous, a subject we've touched upon a few times).
"You can always play with my make-up, Xan," I said. "Tempest can too. All you guys have to do is make sure you let me know first, so I know what you're doing and where you're at."
Xan pondered this for a second, then cautious made his way over to my open case and pointed at a set of foundations. "Okay, so what's this one for?"
This prompted a make-up lesson that lasted over an hour. I went through foundations and shadows and the difference between sheer and matte and what "colour payoff" meant; lipsticks, glosses, bronzers and blushers and everything I had in my kit that I'd collected over years and years. To be honest, most of it has long since expired and if I had the wherewithal I would have disposed of half of it, but I'm not rich enough to afford to replace everything before it runs dry. By the end Tempest had managed to curl her lashes and apply mascara and Xan knew the difference between bronzers, blushers, powders, sticks and which brush was appropriate to use with what product.
It was kind of amazing and gave me a weird sense of pride to know that he could be comfortable with his curiosity again. This is something I haven't seen him be so open with since Kindergarten… shortly before it was beaten and forced out of him by the bullying that year. I don't label him anything, nor do I think he requires one; I just want him to grow up knowing there are no boundaries to learning and exploring. And I hope a little part of that was accomplished that evening.
Xan had a pro-D day on Monday, though Tempest did not, and the afternoon was pleasantly warm so we decided to spend it out in the back playing with bubbles. I made up another gallon of that bubble mix I'd experimented with over the summer, and whipped up some new "wands" out of a garbage t-shirt and some bamboo skewers we had sitting in the arts and crafts box for some reason, then we all went out back.
As soon as I stepped outside the sun came out from behind the clouds and was shining over the high fence, glinting off these giant bubbles Xan was making as he patiently taught Zephyra how to do it herself, casting colourful shadows on the ground. The whole scene was just so lovely. I ran inside and grabbed my camera, and for the first time in a really long time I'm actually really happy with what I got. In a creative sense, I mean. I've just not been feeling the photography thing for probably a year, if not more, and it's been impossible to get in touch with that 'photo mojo' feeling that made me love doing it.
Creating images like that help remind me why I love photography.
The evening before it was much colder, and we'd used the last of a previous bubble mix out in the courtyard with some of the neighbour kids. Z had tried desperately to figure out how to blow the big bubbles like Xan, but couldn't quite get the hang of it.
Once she tired of that she found a hole in the ground and sat in it.
Then we went inside for painting instead, because it was freaking cold out there.
But it was this set of photos from the next day, with the sunshine coming over the fence while we played, that really made me fall in love with photography again…
At first, Z just helped me clear the yard of toys and debris so I could have a clean area for them to run around in. She had a brief love affair with the Fisher Price or Little Tykes red car that seems to be in front of every house. When Xan called her out to teach her how to make bubbles, she was initially reluctant to leave. I snapped this picture while she complained, and though it's not particularly exciting, I kind of adore it.
Xan showed her how to gently twirl and run with the soaked-up wand to make the long, twisting shapes.
Creating bubbles within bubbles.
She loved watching the ones Xan made float up over her...
…and pop.
And was so damn proud when she managed to get some big ones.
And then they were creating them together, and this wonderful image happened:
BAM.
I'm so happy with it, I want to put it up on canvas in our hall, next to the one of Tempest and Xan in tutus at the table that I took so many years before.
Links of the Day:
Families looking to cure epileptic children find first dose of hope - If you ever saw the movie Lorenzo's Oil this might make you remember the miracle you felt happened upon watching it for the first time. I have a friend whose child has just began this treatment, and has already begun to see amazing improvements. This is very literally changing lives, by gifting one to children for the first time.
Man makes 3D-printed prosthetic for his 10 year old son - When 3D printers become a household object, our entire fucking world is going to change.
Beware of the 5-lb bag of sugarless gummy bears - These write-ups had us dying laughing, but it really is true: don't ever eat this shit.
Holiday season '13 is officially done.
It was an unexpectedly awesome season this year but holy crap there was just so much. So much. From the first night of Yule straight on until several days from now kind of felt like listening to 10 songs all at once while the lights flicker on and off and you're also being spun in circles. Then suddenly everything stops and you're left with your eyeballs spinning and not entirely sure if you understand the concept of gravity anymore.
I'm completely exhausted and will have no sense of decency for at least two more days. I mean right now it's 3pm and I'm still only half-dressed, my elder kids are playing outside in clothes they wore yesterday, my toddler is watching cartoons and sucking regurgitated cereal out of the back of a toy dump truck, and my lunch has been the peanutbutter smears I licked off someone's lunch plate. And this is honestly a pretty good day so far.
The season didn't initially seem like it was going to go well after we lost our car on Friday the 13th. And by lost I mean lost the ability to have a car forever and ever amen. Our van has been a lemon since two weeks after we got it and has always had all these ridiculous personality quirks and various issues that make it one of those vehicles only the owners can operate safely.
For instance, the car's heat gauge had been having issues with periodically going off since the summer; I could watch it abruptly rise from a comfortable medium all the way up to 'overheat' in about two seconds, stay that way for anywhere from 1-5 minutes, then go back down to half-way just as quickly as it rose. We even had this problem on the coldest night of the year, when it was -12 with windchill, and we were driving around and ridiculously bundled up inside the car because our heater doesn't work and takes about 15 minutes to start blasting moderately warm air as opposed to freezing cold air. About ten minutes into the drive the overheating alarm went off. The car was convinced it was overheating in -12 when it was still so cold that the ice on the inside of the windows had yet to melt. Throughout that drive the overheating alarm went off three more times. Then the gas gauge said it was out of gas, but after we briefly stopped and started the car again it said it had a quarter tank. The car clearly had dementia. Or perhaps menopause.
For the last year and a half its been making this weird clicking noise when we make a right turn. No one could ever figure out what was making the sound but it did seem to gradually be getting louder. On the 13th we went out to do a big shop at the wholesale store outside of town, packed the car with groceries, then made a brief stop by Curtis' work to pick up his tips. As we pulled into the parking lot next door to his restaurant, the car went, "clicky-clicky-clicky-CLANK". Then it made a horrible dragging sound as we pulled into the nearest parking spot and turned off the car.
Once it had stopped we both got out and started checking underneath, under the hood, around the wheels… and we couldn't see anything suspicious. We were praying it was just some weird fluke, but alas it was not. When Curtis turned the car back on it acted like it was stuck in neutral; gunning the gas did absolutely nothing and he could barely change gears.
We ended up calling my dad for a ride and a tow to get the car home. Getting the tow truck there, the car hooked up, and back home took almost two hours because the height limit on the small parkade we were stuck in was too short for the tow truck to get inside, and the parking spot too awkward to pull a van from. They almost charged us another hundred bucks for this, but my father happened to have some nylon cords in his car and had swung by to check on how Curtis was doing after taking me and the kids home. He ended up dragging the van out with his little sedan so the tow truck could hook it up.
When it got home I had to search around outside for some large rocks to put under the wheels because we couldn't put it into park (or rather, when we did, it did nothing). When I was leaning down and putting them in place I saw what the weird dragging sound had been: the front axle literally fell out of the wheel and was dragging on the ground.
So… yeah, it's junk.
At this point it'll cost us more to fix than was paid for it and we don't even have a quarter of that much to spend.
So long you fucking piece of trashy-ass car, we never liked you anyway!
Dad was incredibly kind and offered to drive the kids to and from school every morning until the holiday break kicked in. He said he needed a reason to get up in the morning anyway, and he honestly enjoyed spending the time with them as he doesn't get to see them as often as he'd like due to his erratic teaching schedule. This also allowed me to stay in with the baby on days when her nap ran late, which was a nice bonus.
The kids' school break coincided with the first days of Yule, which also coincided with Curtis' only days off during the entire holiday season, and because we'd so recently moved into this awesome big house were eager to share it's joys with others and volunteered to host the big family dinner this year. And by family I mean all the family.
We invited everyone.
EVERYONE.
That means dad and his partner; Brother, Brother's Wife and Sophie, Marika and her new boyfriend (who is a divorced father of two and has joint custody) along with his two girls who are 4 and 8, plus Taliah who turned 1 in September; and of course my mom. This works out to 9 adults and 7 children. One of the attendees, Marika's Boyfriend's eldest, is a vegetarian and won't eat the turkey. Everyone else eats meat. We didn't want to be dicks to an eight year old so we made sure to have enough for her to enjoy without feeling left out.
Before anyone asks, no there are no pictures. I was really not in a mood for pictures.
That said, it did go well. Brother's wife and Sophie were the only ones who didn't show up and they had a good reason.
This was the first time I met Marika's New Guy's kids and I was pleasantly surprised at how well they got along with the Elders. The eldest, Rei, immediately latched onto Tempest and within five minutes they were already happily excluding Xan from whatever it was they were doing.
Xan, being the oblivious drama queen he is, was walking through the house complaining about how no one wanted to play with him while the younger girl was literally hanging off his arm and he was dragging her along with him. Eventually he noticed that she existed and wanted to spend time with him, so he invited her to play Wii with him. She very sweetly replied, "I just want to watch you," and cuddled up next to him. M'awe.
Marika emailed me a few days later to say that the girls have been talking non-stop about Tempest and Xan ever since. Clearly we need to start arranging play dates.
Over the next several days we did our Yule present exchanges and the kids went nuts every night. We had to hide all the presents in the closet because there's just no way we could put them out under the tree without the baby tearing them apart every time we looked away for a second.
We still wanted the kids to have at least one 'presents under the tree' time during the holidays, so we decided to put what was left out after the kids went to sleep on the last night of Yule, the evening before Christmas. In our family tradition of combining holidays, the kids get a single present every night from the solstice onward, and on the morning of the 25th they can open the remainder of their presents. Their stockings can be opened and played with if they wake up before we do and need something to do (which is always).
So after the kids were asleep we carefully arranged the rest of their gifts, filled their stockings with various toys and goodies (and mandarins in the toes). My dad and his partner bought the kids their big gift this year, which was a full-size electric piano with lessons for both of them (dad's partner is a piano teacher), and because it's a bit too big to hide in the closet they asked us to call after the kids were in bed so they could secretly drop it off. They came by around 10pm and carried it into the living room, and just as quickly left, hoping the kids didn't wake up at the sound of their voices and ruin the surprise.
We decided to use the last remnants of wrapping paper rolls to wrap up the piano, even though it was massive, so that the kids would get the experience of tearing into it in the morning. It took us about ten very awkward minutes to get completely wrapped, during which time Serendipity did not make the task any easier by continually batting at the paper as it flapped about. Once we were completely finished we put a bow on top and stepped back to admire our handiwork…
… and then realized we'd accidentally wrapped the cat inside the gift.
Only this cat, I swear to god.
After letting the cat out, we sat and had a few glasses of rum and eggnog while watching our Netflix addiction, "Homeland", before going up to bed. All was quiet and calm until about 4:45am.
Tempest came into our bedroom at a full run and it woke me up as soon as she crossed the threshold. By force of habit I was already going, "Ssh!" before I'd even opened my eyes, reminding her to whisper when she talked so there was no risk of waking Zephyra. Z goes to bed on a little mattress in our room, but crawls into bed with us by 1am wanting a nurse. Once there she generally sleeps through the rest of the night. Very, very rarely she'll stay in her bed until 3-4am, but that almost never happens.
Immediately I noticed she was not in bed with us.
"Mom, Zephyra just came into my room and woke me up!" said Tempest urgently.
"Okay, okay I'll come get her."
"No, you don't understand: she came into my room with a book I've never seen before a and a handful of torn wrapping paper."
"Oh, fuck me. Did you see anything?"
"I went downstairs to see what happened and I think I saw a piano, and Zephyra was ripping paper off it, then I came upstairs and talked to you."
"Okay, thank you for letting me know. Please go back in your room and go back to sleep - we'll handle it."
To my surprise, she immediately did go back into her room without any argument and I did not see nor hear from her again until the morning.
I woke up Curtis and told him what I thought had happened, then together we ran downstairs.
All the scenarios I had envisioned were nothing compared the sight that greeted us.
Every single present was unwrapped and torn open. Wrapping paper shreds coated the floor to the point where no carpet was visible. All gifts contained in boxes or plastic wrap had been ripped apart. Every single book, toy, article of clothing and video game was strewn from one end of the house to the other. All of the stockings had been dumped out and every cheap little toy thrown around - some had even been broken. Toys, paper and packaging were everywhere. She'd even torn open the mandarins we'd put in the stocking toes and eaten them (some pieces were squashed into the carpet).
For the first five minutes, Curtis and I were so dumbstruck by the scene that we literally did nothing but stand at the bottom of the stairs in silence, our mouths hanging open, watching as Zephyra moved some torn paper aside to play with one of her new toys.
Curtis offered to do the lion's share of the work, but I shot that idea down.
"If you don't bring her back to bed now, she won't go back to sleep again and will be up from this point onward… making re-wrapping a moot point. Just take her back to bed and try to get her back to sleep."
"Are you sure you want to do this by yourself?"
"Yeah. Besides, if I go up there and try to nurse her, she'll just get wired up and we'll have the same problem."
"Okay. If you're sure, you're sure."
Curtis picked her up and she immediately started screeching her displeasure. He ensured all the door locks were in place from the inside of the bedroom, turned off the lights, closed the blinds, brought her into bed with him and and effectively forced her back to sleep through sheer boredom. I heard her screaming for me for another 15 minutes before she finally gave in.
Meanwhile, I collected the torn paper in a pile and pawed through, looking for any salvageable pieces. There were none: Z had not only ripped the wrapping off the gifts, but nearly eradicated the paper itself in the process. I'd have to re-wrap the gifts with what little we had left on the rolls… which was not much. We'd also run out of scotch tape just after completing our last gift, and all I had left was some old painters tape. Ugh.
The worst part was she'd ripped up all the cards and tags, so I couldn't remember whose gifts were whose (especially the ones given by family members, where I had not known what was inside).
It took me about an hour and a half to redo everything and set it all back up again - some just by educated guess - and the sun was coming up when I was finally done. Many gifts were haphazardly wrapped with little random pieces of paper, patched up with newsprint from the recycling bin. There was nowhere near enough left to re-wrap the piano.
I was so upset.
I mean, at least it wasn't a lost cause, but still…
This year will go down in family history as the time Z's sneaky little butt almost ruined Christmas.
Thankfully my hard work paid off and even Tempest was blissfully unaware of the disaster the night before. The Elders woke up around 7:30am and immediately dove into their stockings. Z woke us up shortly after (in spite of apparently being awake half the night…) and we went downstairs to enjoy the precious few hours we had before Curtis was needed at work.
His work hours have been so, so long - especially over the holidays. I had this conversation with friends recently, about how when you're single there's none of that awful emotional cycle of hope-letdown-despair that happens when spouses are overworked every single day. No comparing, of course; I know it isn't comparable and in no way do I consider myself a single parent nor understand the unique challenges that it brings - it's apples to oranges and a completely different kind of experience. When you have a present partner you rely on them emotionally and physically for help raising your children and tempering the stress and difficulty of the day, regardless of whether or not you want to, and that only leads to a horrible build-up of anxiety and depression when they inevitably don't come home and you don't get the help you've been counting on. That daily cycle of hope and despair is emotionally draining, to say the least.
Fortunately - if you can call it that - Curtis has been overworked enough to rack up nine "owed" days (it's actually more like ten times that if you do the math, but you know…) and in a hugely surprising act of generosity, his boss actually decided to award them to him during the slower period of the year. Starting on January third he gets nine days off in a row.
There will be so much sex.
I cannot even begin to quantify the sex we will be having. I mean we're already half-way into it and already I'm so swollen I can barely sit. Goddamn.
Random crafts of the day:
I've been gradually working on my wire-wrapping and have become more confident about making the "tree of life" necklaces. I made about 15 of them, along with some spiral heart pendants, for a local craft fair that my mom managed to get me into. Unfortunately the experience was a bust and even the most experienced vendors there only sold 1-2 items at the most. This was apparently due to a terrible lack of in advertising and the fact that the front door to the building had been locked and no alternate entrance was made available. Awesome planning.
Anyway.
After that I had tried to sell some on my Facebook, and put up an album with photos and detailed descriptions. I sold 5-6 of them, and then a local friend of a friend asked if I could make her a customized order for four: two in regular silver-plated wire and two in pure sterling silver wire. I said yes and gave a cost estimate before going downtown and pricing out the materials. This was a huge mistake. You see, apparently silver wire is outrageously expensive and averages anywhere from $35-$55 a foot at the gauge I need when making the frames for the trees. I've learned more than one valuable lesson through that transaction - if I can even call it that, as I made about $6 when all was said and done - but I did really like the resulting necklaces.
These first two are the silver-plated. The first is fluorite and the second malachite.
The last two are the pure silver; the first made with amber, and the second is a mixture of onyx and snowflake obsidian.
My favourite part was the clasp. I made three or four trial versions before settling on this design.
And this was a necklace I made for my mother's birthday, but forgot to post it here.
Random Pictures of the Day:
Last month Z actually asked to use the potty, and then actually went, all by herself. She was so proud of herself she asked me to take a "pitchy" so she could look at her happy little self on the back of my camera. It was pretty darn adorable, even if it never happened again.
Those were taken just before I cut her hair. She's got the same scraggly toddler hair thing going on that all my kids do at this age. I have so many friends who have toddlers with such thick, luxurious hair and I'm so jealous because my babies have hair that's rather thin and short up until they're into their preschool years.
Z tends to mash things into her hair constantly, so the ends get gross pretty fast. She is bathed almost every single morning (and occasionally a second time in the evening), but you know… toddlers. I figured it was time to give her a trim in hopes it would encourage her hair to grow out a little nicer.
By some miracle I managed to cut it without much issue, but was not impressed with the result. It took a few days to grow on me, and now I think it's pretty adorable. I've tried to get a picture of it for over a week and she was not at all cooperative. I finally had to trick her into it by taking her into the downstairs bathroom and letting her play in the sink while I snapped some images.
She's so silly.
Then she took off the rest of her clothes and announced, "I be NEKKIE! You pitchy me silly nakkie!" (This roughly translates to, "I want to see pictures of myself while I'm naked because I'm so silly").
Naked except for her favourite pair of shoes, of course.
Accidental self-portrait of the day:
I was trying to get a photo of Z and I while she was being cute, but as soon as I got everything set up she hid when the shutter went off (you can see her behind me). I ended up keeping the photo because I actually like it: it's the only image of me I've seen in years that makes me look old… or closer to my age, at least.
I had this really amazing moment when I was getting ready for the holiday staff party at Curtis' work last month: just as I was finishing my eye make-up I stepped back, looked at myself in the mirror, and I saw a woman looking back at me. An actual, grown woman.
That was the first time in my life I've ever seen myself that way.
As a kid I always saw womanhood as a wonderful and beautiful existence: long fingers and thin willowy limbs, crow's feet, laugh lines, freckled skin and hair peppered with tiny white streaks. All of it was so wonderful, and pretty… there was a real sense of elegance to aging, and I so desperately wanted to look that way too. I often fantasized that everything would magically fall into place once I got into my 20's, and I'd somehow grow into myself and look that way, too. Look like a real woman. Then, finally I'd see the end the dysmorphia that comes with pituitary dwarfism and a lifetime of body image problems; I'd be free to learn how to love myself, to be okay with the way I looked.
That vision of womanhood never came true for me, and I never really changed at all. Every time I looked at myself in the mirror I still saw a child: someone underdeveloped, unworthy and inadequate. The older I got, the more I loathed it; at best I could make myself look like a teenager trying to pass themselves off as an adult. It's as though I am marauding through my life wearing the clothes of another woman, and no matter how I grow and change on the inside, my life and experiences never show on my face. It's been an endless source of self-loathing, and nothing has ever really improved it.
But that night, and in that moment, I felt really and truly wonderful. I saw myself as grown, just one time after all these years, and it was a strange and amazing experience. Though it was fleeting, the euphoria lasted through the evening: I was lovely, elegant and feminine - and I felt like I belonged. I've never felt that way before. I've never had that confidence.
I kept this photo for the same reason: it makes me feel pretty. When I look at it I actually see a woman who has been married nearly 12 years and has four children… instead of a teenager dressed in "mommy" clothes, trying to pass myself off as grown.
And it's nice to feel pretty every so often.
Quotes of the Day:
#1
Xan, explaining his home design choices in Minecraft: "I like to use the raw wood for the walls because it's fashion. Do you know fashion?"
"Fashionable."
"Yes, that. Raw wood is *very* fashion in Minecraft right now."
#2
While walking home from the store on New Year's eve with the kids, we passed a group of rowdy (and likely drunk) teenagers on someone's lawn. Tempest commented that they looked like they were assembling for some sort of meeting.
"What would they discuss at a teenager meeting?" I asked her.
She barely missed a beat before answering, "How to get all the junk food and alcohol, and then take over the world".
"… Actually, that's probably not too far from the truth."
#3
Since starting this entry, we've progressed into day five of Curtis' home-vacation. This evening, as soon as we both sat down on the couch, the kids went into need-machine overdrive and all the voices were going at once. At the same time, Zephyra stripped off her clothes and climbed up onto my lap to steal my food. She ate half of it in one go, then opened her mouth going, "Aawwwwhhawaaa!" to show me the half-chewed mush. When I didn't respond, she brought her open mouth closer and closer to me until it was literally pushed against the side of my face. I gave Curtis a look out of the corner of my eye while this was happening, and he laughed and shook his head.
"How do you not just drink all day?"
"This is why I'm always cleaning things. I try to avoid sitting down: it attracts them."
Links of the Day:
What do dress codes say about girls' bodies? - A fantastic article about how dress codes unapologetically target an sexualize girls; making points and dropping truth bombs that I am far too unarticulated to make.
How finding my korean mother gave me the courage to transition - A beautiful, heart-rendering story of a trans* Korean adoptee finding, and coming out to, her birth family. One of the most lovely stories I've read in a long time.
Inspiration is not inclusion - Fantastic article about the super cripple stereotype, and how being used as "inspiration" or "motivation" is neither nice nor inclusive. Choice quote: "Pairing up these images with inspirational slogans minimizes the very real challenges that people with disabilities and their families cope with every day, writes blogger Katherine Coble. Most of these challenges cannot be overcome by extra effort or quick solutions. For example, many therapies and many types of medical equipment are not affordable and not covered by insurance. Physical barriers in public places still exist for people with mobility impairments.
Some families cope with severe behavioral problems that lead to hospitalizations for the person with a disability and his or her caregiver. Sometimes these challenges are beyond the understanding of friends and extended family, so the immediate family is left alone".
Emotional Baggage Check - The concept of this site is fantastic. If you're going through something hard right now, let it out and check your "baggage" in a message, leaving your email (anonymous, and never ever shown). If you have life to spare, you come to help carry someone else's... send along some good advice, or just a note saying you heard them and you care. All these positive and helpful messages are then emailed to the person who anonymously 'checked their baggage' and they get an inbox full of support from strangers.
I've spent almost two hours on this site, leaving messages for people who are feeling overwhelmed. It's crazy, because every time I refresh the page another one comes up that I can absolutely connect with, and it makes me want to reach out and hug them.
(The only caveat is that you're required to add in a link to a song or a YouTube video in order to send the message, so I point them all to various spoken word poems by Shane Koyczan).
Still, the fact that I still feel myself getting anxious and weird once we hit December is like a permanent reminder that PTSD is stronger than any strength and distance I believe I may have gained over these years of adulthood.
I've spent the last few weeks busying myself, and the result is some sort of limbo between treading water above the seasonal blah and actual, legitimate functionality. There are definitely things to be pleased about, for instance: the threat of looming depression that has been hanging over me for a long while has lifted, and I feel that we've all adjusted to the horror story that was Curtis' shift into a higher position (without the extra pay…).
Routine is like my wonder drug, and once I've managed to set up some sort of routine to follow over the course of the day, everything else falls into place and things seem phenomenally easier.
It's also helped that I was finally able to see a new rheumatologist and my initial appointment was wonderful and included a trial of a new (additional) med for arthritis and inflammation and it's really helping to temper the overall 'background pain' to a reasonable level, which in turn makes me go through far less of my breakthrough meds and that also significantly lowers my stress levels overall.
The constant anxiety that accompanies the knowledge that you're running low on your breakthroughs, but in terrible pain, is really and truly a horrible thing to go through all the damn time. It is one of the worst and most pervasive problems when it comes to balancing treatment of pain. I've talked about this before, but probably not in this much detail, so for the uninitiated here's the low-down on this issue.
Once a flare-up starts to come on, I have two options:
(For this example I'm defining 'flare-up' as something beyond typical break-through pain; an episode of very severe pain that does not respond to rest, baths, etc; worsens considerably without effective treatment, and tends to go on for anywhere from many hours to even days).
Option 1:
Treat the flare-up with a maximum dose and repeat every 4 hours until it's gone (then add one additional, standard dose after it appears to be under control to assure it's actually gone. I have learned this final dose is super important, it's like putting the cork in the bottle… otherwise as soon as you start back to normal everything just flows right out again). Since I have no way of knowing if this flare-up will be the worst one ever, or just a 'typical" bad one, it's smarter to treat each as a worst case scenario rather than risk going too light on treatment and extending the whole experience. This option assures I use the minimum amount of medication, for the minimum amount of time, and generally blasts the flare-up out within a few doses. But, this also exhausts a huge amount of my break-through supply, even running it out completely, because during one fill period I'm only given enough to effectively treat 1-2 really bad flare-ups.
If I treat the pain like this I'll be largely functional during the course of it, and back to normal much faster, which means I'm better able to take care of my house and kids. It also dramatically reduces the risk of the flare-up yo-yo that happens when you don't get on that shit right away, and it gives me a safety net that generally extends the time between flare-ups as well as reduces the intensity of the next one when it comes.
But I am epicly, royally fucked if another flare-up or even just a bout of moderate pain hits me before my next fill… and not treating those creates a sort of perpetual pain loop in my body that can go on for days. This situation is a source of constant panic attacks, and I also feel guilty for taking that much medication in a 24 hour period even though I know I need it and this is what my doctor wants me to do.
Option two:
Treat it half-assed and only take a half dose of meds. This does not give enough relief to blast out or stop the flare-up, which means it goes on, and on, and on… sometimes for up to a week. I am irritable, exhausted due to loss of sleep, and just functional enough to meet the basic needs of household and children but not functional enough to play with them, make dinners from scratch or go for walks (shopping, etc) without needing hours of rest time afterward.
However, I leave myself enough meds to continue the half-assed, barely functional treatment through to my next fill which alleviates the panic attacks and misplaced guilt, as well as the lingering fear that someone (anyone - doesn't actually matter who - in fact it's most often me) will think I take 'too much'. This also generally gives me juuuuust enough for an emergency maximum dose on the day of my fill to give me enough energy and relief to get down to my doctor's office. But it means my overall pain levels range from very uncomfortable to horrible for days and days on end.
However, I also have a terrifying fear of becoming tolerant to my meds and requiring more, and taking doses every day does nothing to alleviate that fear… so the longer that goes on, and the worse the pain gets, the worse THAT anxiety becomes.
The "right answer" seems clear but pill/pain politics complicates everything to a point where there really isn't a clear path… and more often than not it ends up being "safest" overall to chose option two even though it's a horrible choice, because you end up not going through your meds as fast and that takes priority over everything else, including your functionality and happiness.
This is what goes through your head constantly. 24 hours a day. Even if you're not experiencing a flare-up and are doing relatively okay, this is still going through your head, because you have to constantly think about the pain vs. treatment vs. what people think vs. anxiety vs. your ever-changing limitations. I've become so obsessive over it that I regularly count my pills. I count them and then I do the math and decide how many I could reasonably take in a day for the rest of the fill time - if I needed to take them daily - and not run out. I do this every day regardless of whether or not I even need a dose that day, or even for days in a row, because it makes me feel slightly better about the whole thing if I have some sort of plan for how to make myself mildly functional in case of emergency.
All of this is also why wonderful things like The Spoon Theory are required reading when supporting, living with (or being) someone who is affected by chronic pain or illness. How many spoons I have left for the day also impact my need/want to treat my pain effectively. More spoons means I might be able to get away with less, less spoons means it's practically a death sentence to not take the maximum dose.
So, back my original point…
The weight of all that crap has been lessoned somewhat due to the new rheumatologist, who is amazeballs, especially by comparison to the previous one who saw me once a year for 3 minutes and the only advice he ever gave was, "get off your meds". Super helpful, bro - how much are you getting paid for these consults?
New Rheumatologist Lady is young, which is immediately a bonus, because the young doctors tend to spend more time actually paying attention to patients and are more likely to know about (or be open to) more modern treatments and have superior medical knowledge. Yes, this is a generalization and no, I don't care because in my experience it has been true literally 100% of the time. I find the old doctors are often big fuddy-duddies and are impossible to reason with. It always puts me at ease to see a young doctor, and she did not disappoint. She spent over an hour with me just getting my pain history, asking actually relevant questions, doing a full body exam and taking notes. I was her last appointment for the day and she went so far overtime that when I left her office the cleaning lady was the only person in the building!
She wants to schedule me for an MRI on my lower spine and lumbar area to check for inflammation so we can try to confirm the AS diagnosis, and she gave me the maximum dose of an anti-inflammatory I've tried previously with mild-to-moderate success. Turns out the increase to maximum dose really makes a big difference, because it's taken my day-to-day background pain from a 5-6 down to a 2-3 and has lengthened the time between my flare-ups as well as reduced the severity of them when they hit.
So I'd definitely call that a win.
I see her again in four months at which point she wants to go over a barrage of tests (blood, etc) to see where my body stands and how much, if any, things have changed since the last time I got a whole set back in 2009 or something. I got all the way home from the visit before I realized she forgot to give me the lab requisitions. But my experience with her was friendly and relaxed enough that I won't feel like a dick when I call and ask her to redo them.
I'm feeling very positive about her and am hoping to actually start down a path of disease management over pain management. I've spent years considering the effects and realities of the 'next step' of drugs for my disease (which involves regular injections, lots more risks and possible side effects, and an expense of about 40k a year that I have just recently learned I may actually qualify to get completely covered) and I've deteriorated enough over the last year that I think the absolute terror of biologics is now outweighed by my desire to, you know, be a person.
Without Curtis here, I am doing the job of two people 90% of the time and it's really taken a toll on me physically. As I said, getting into a daily routine has helped significantly with management of the mental side: I feel much less like a chicken with its head cut off and more like a slightly frazzled mother who can usually get shit done.
I drive him to work on our morning commute to the kids schools, and on a 'day shift' I do not see him again until the kids are in bed. On a 'night shift' he's with me for about 3 hours after the kids are at school and can get a few household chores done, and then I don't see him until midnight. The first weekend day is spent alternating sleep, because we're both so exhausted, and the second weekend day is spent catching up on all of that week's housework that I either can't do or can't do on my own (this is generally the big stuff like multiple loads of laundry all at once, or vacuuming the entire house rather than just a single room).
And we get all that wonderfulness with almost no additional pay! Hooray.
When people act like it must be super awesome having someone who is in a management position, and assume we're just livin' it up, I have to laugh because… no. Just no. We still exist many thousands under the poverty line for a family, and as a bonus I'm effectively a work widow. Aside, I'm not sure what planet other people are from where chefs make a million dollars a year but it certainly isn't this one. Unless you're Gordon Ramsay you're not exactly swimming in disposable income.
I complain and moan but it's getting better, and it's not all bad. Curtis loves his job even though it's exhausting and the staff parties are pretty awesome. This year we got a chocolate fountain. I'm not even kidding: a legitimate chocolate fountain. I was so on that.
Though I have since learned that in order to keep the chocolate flowing and prevent it from drying or gunking up the tubes, you have to have a significant amount of oil to the melted cocoa. Yum.
The kids first report cards came back earlier this month. Xan's was fantastic all around on academics, and we've been told over and over how well he's excellent in math and how amazing his reading is; with him it's just a matter of focusing on a task long enough to complete it without getting distracted by his attempts to complete a stand-up comedy routine.
Tempest on the other hand, had a horrible report card. She's gotten into this stage of life where she's enjoying the first inklings of rebellion, and part of that is doing shit all at school. This is irritating because she's brilliant (and really, this isn't just a mom thing: her IQ was tested and she's above the 95th percentile - I have it in writing), so I know she's just being lazy. The last few times she's brought homework home, she threw a fit when I asked her to double check her work and ensure it was correct because, as she put it, "everyone gets questions wrong so I don't have to make sure they're right". OMGARGH.
I talked with her at length about staying interested and finding ways to challenge yourself and all that, and she begrudgingly agreed that maybe she could try a little bit harder to actually do her work because she'd slacked off enough that even her reading mark was like… two. And she reads at a high school level.
She suggested that it would help her improve and keep interest if she could do some work at home, and Xan was all over this idea like white on rice so we set up accounts at [ Khan Learning Academy ] and had the kids start on that. They've been doing it for about a week and a half to two weeks now and have had awesome success… though I have no idea how to navigate that site well enough to figure out how to set up custom cirriculums, which is extremely frustrating. I'm also going to set them up on [ code.org ] to start them on early computer programming. Because that's an incredibly useful thing to learn overall, plus it's good for improving reading, math and a host of other things.
One thing that really pisses me off about Tempest's report card that has nothing to do with her academics is how she's being graded, year after year, for her social skills and other things that have absolutely nothing to do with schoolwork… and everything to do with having autism. She is literally having her grades brought down for being autistic.
Like, on this report card she had a terrible grade on her "oral reading" and the notation there was that her speech patterns were "quiet, uneven and halting" (ie. very typical autistic spectrum speech). THIS IS NOT SOMETHING SHE CAN CHANGE. She has been through speech and occupational therapy, she has had IEPs and school counseling and all that shit year after year that she has qualified for it and they have even worked with her specifically on these issues. While she gained a slight bit of control, we all agreed that this isn't something she's likely to "get over" simply by trying harder and in no way does it actually affect her studies, academics or ability to complete her work… and with that in mind she was released from the OTs and did not qualify for an IEP this year for the first time ever.
And yet no matter how much time I spend educating teachers, talking to counselors and all that shit it NEVER CHANGES and she still gets horrible grades on her social skills. The years before she was graded on how "well" she spoke to peers, how verbal she was in group and whether or not she made consistent eye contact. And now this year it's her patterns of speech. This kind of shit makes me so mad. It's so completely fucking unnecessary and has NOTHING to do with her ability to do her work. NOTHING to do with how well she can complete projects. It's not even remotely relevant to class work other than the part of the week where they go around the room and each kid reads aloud from a book for 3 minutes, once each. That's literally the only time it's relevant and that is really fucking reaching. Is it necessary to fail her on an entire section of her report card because she's not able to replicate neurotypical speech patterns? Awesome.
Aside from that bullshit…
This year is the first year in Tempest's schooling that she's been offered music classes, which has been immensely exciting for her. She applied for a violin or viola, because Curtis played viola through his teenage years (he also applied for violin, but was rejected for it because his hands were too large, so they gave him a viola to play instead). We got the notice back the following week that Tempest had been accepted for a viola, and I filled out the payment and rental information and sent it in. After that was a month long set of clusterfuck after clusterfuck that ended up with her missing over 15 classes that they wanted to make me pay for because no one on their end could locate the viola they'd put aside for her.
She didn't end up getting her instrument until the end of November's first week, and that was literally four days and one music lesson away from their first concert. ARGH.
I made Tempest practice like crazy every day, for at least 45 minutes - broken up into two sections - in order for her to at least basically recognize the songs. Turns out sitting in on the lessons, even with nothing to do, was enough for her because she picked it up alarmingly fast and was on par with the skills of per learned peers within those four days and played perfectly fine during the concert.
Secretly I absolutely loathe the sound of 'I have yet learned how to play violin' violin, because it sounds like a screaming cat, but she's improved so much and so quickly that it honestly didn't phase me at all. By this point in the year she's gone well past that screechy, pitchy phase of learning and her practice sessions are surprisingly smooth. She shuts herself up in her room so Z doesn't try and attack her bow while she's playing, but I can easily hear her over the living room and it's become rather soothing.
Though Zephyra tends to camp outside her door and whine, poking fingers under the door, for at least half the time she's up there. She so, so desperately wants to play too.
Curtis was working on the night of her first concert, and we were late to the venue due to Zephyra's antics so we ended up arriving with only 10 minutes to spare. And that ten minutes was entirely taken up by trying to find a fucking parking spot.
The event took place in a high school I'd never seen or visited before, so it was confusing as all hell. By the time I got into the auditorium and looked around, everyone was in position and they were just about to start. I looked around and saw an absolute mess of tightly-packed chairs and no aisles to move about in. I had the baby on my back, which was killing me, but it was easier than trying to make her follow me around when she's being so extremely two years old.
I approached one of the teachers, or someone in charge, and asked them if they had any disability priority seating. She looked lost and offered me another one of those supremely low benches that fucked me up so bad some years ago. I politely declined and let her know that it was too low to get up and down from. She shrugged, started to mumble something, then literally walked away while talking to me to avoid having to actually move a chair or something… I had no idea how to react to that.
A few parents saw/heard this and by the time I'd managed to get through one row, three separate parents got up and brought me their chairs. That was very touching, and I was so grateful for the gesture - because holy shit I am so done with administrators not giving two shits about parents and family with disabilities and how incredibly hard it is to attend or watch concerts or other events like able-bodied people.
Xan was immediately bored to death, and I told him that his job here was to politely and quietly watch - he didn't have to enjoy it. So he sat with his head against the back of the chair for the entire concert. It was barley acceptable as polite but at least he was quiet about his distaste.
Tempest was unimpressed when I took out the camera.
Zephyra was NOT having the carrier while I was sitting, so I had to risk letting her down or else be that guy in the audience with a screaming toddler. I had put my donated chair down just at the edge of a row of seats that had a 6-foot open space between them where some kids were seated on the floor, so there were a few other kids for Z to interact with. I was so worried she'd bolt, but she surprised me by finding a little girl (that looked a bit like Tempest from behind, except with blonde hair) and plunking down next to her.
She inched her way in as close as she could to this girl, who was rather put off by the whole thing, and ended up getting up to complain to her mother that she was being touched by a strange baby. I sort of heard her mother answer that at least the baby is not crying and seriously it's just a baby, I think you'll survive, and the girl begrudgingly came back to her seat. Though within moments she was loving on Z just as much as she was being loved on, and the two cuddled and sang their way through the entire performance.
Every time a song ended and applause rang out, Z would clap loudly, pose and look back at me. She was very excited that so many people had recognized her talent.
The event was a lot shorter than I'd anticipated, and when it was done we filed back out again and I pulled the kids aside for an attempt at a photo.
First of Tempest:
… in the outfit she picked out entirely on her own, accessories included. The skirt is actually one of mine. It doesn't quite fit her, hence the belt, but she made it work.
And then of all three:
I enjoy this one because Tempest and Xan look rather dashing and Z looks like she crawled out from under a bridge.
In other firsts, this year has also been the first year of the fake tree… because we are not permitted to have live (or half-dead, as it were) trees in the complex. We went out and got a white one so it would look interesting, though Curtis absolutely insisted that we try to find a bright Barbie pink one - [ which, yes, actually exist ] - and was legitimately disappointed that Wal*Mart did not have one in stock.
We brought it home and Curtis put it together while dinner was in the oven, and we spent the next few hours decorating it. One of things about moving house is that you cycle through all the old boxes you've had sitting in storage or stuffed under stairs for years, so you rediscover all this cool stuff you forgot you had sitting around. One of those things are these absolutely ancient holiday decorations that belonged to my grandmother. We usually put up the ones she made out of embroidery and cotton that are shaped like all sorts of storybook characters, but these ones are these incredibly delicate little foil-type balls in all manner of iridescent colours. They really are gorgeous to look at, but oh so fragile.
The tree looks gorgeous all done up with them…
… but the baby immediately shattered five of them in the ensuing days, so we had to move them all up to the higher branches.
The kids were very proud of themselves after decorating the tree, and requested a photo be taken of them in front of it.
(That Santa hat came in a jar Tempest won at her school's holiday festival thing, and it has been literally loved to death. There isn't a single seam on it that hasn't been ripped open).
After taking that photo I decided to try and do a proper holiday one, since I didn't do one last year. The next night I set up the lighting rig and reflectors, got the kids all dressed up and looking nice (though Tempest insisted on wearing the hat). Z was, as usual, impossible. I had to bribe her with a candy cane before she'd sit, and so had to completely give up the fantasy of getting her to smile. Tempest and Xan were a complete breeze through the whole thing.
I heart it.
Xan's disposition was improved by the fact that I asked him to be my 'light model' while I tested various settings on the monolight. I told him I just needed him to stand there in front of the tree, and he didn't have to smile or anything because how he looked didn't matter as long as he was facing me.
His eyes got all big, "You mean I can do anything I want? For the photos? ANYTHING?! I don't even have to stand still!?"
"As long as you're facing me, yes. I'll let you know when I'm done".
So he got all his crazy out beforehand.
I am supposed to be knitting a number of Yule gifts this year but that is going more slowly than I anticipated. All Xan has asked for from me is a knitted creeper (from Minecraft). He told me that he actually needs two: one to "show off" at school and another to sleep with at night, but, "one doll can probably do the job of both", he says.
I'm trying to finish a pair of gloves for Tempest right now and every afternoon Xan comes home and asks me if I've started on his creeper doll yet. Even if I had I'm not supposed to tell you, this is not how this works, Xan!
I did manage to finish a doll for one of his friends that I'm immensely proud of. I found this incredible pattern online (for free!) for a crochet doll with completely posable joints. Like, completely. Even the head! A friend of mine on Facebook was making her daughter a set of the "Equestria Girls" MLP dolls using this pattern and posted her in-progress photos; then passed on the links to me when I was desperate to be hooked up with that shit.
The finished doll:
I took a few images of her "naked" to show how posable she was. And I don't just mean you can move the limbs, I mean it's actually literally posable: the limbs stay where you put them 100% of the time!
Seriously is that not an adorable pattern? It's available on the "By Hook, By Hand" site and is called the [ "Bleuette" doll ]. The pattern is full of colour photographs that show you exactly how to attach the limbs so that they'll all be posable. It's totally awesome. If this doll pattern isn't your style, I also found [ this ] awesome tutorial from the 'Idiots Guide' series on creating posable limbs. That one gives you enough info to easily modify it to fit pretty much any pattern you want; dolls, creatures, or whatever. Here's [ one more ] explaining how to use 'bear joints' for crocheted work, and an alternative using regular buttons.
The dress I made using the top part of the [ "mock smock" bodice ] pattern, available on the same site and made specifically to fit the Bleu doll. It is easily the most weirdly complicated crochet I have ever done, but the result is really nice.
My finished dress also used a tiny bit of pink embroidery thread to go over the smocked areas, but they're already stuck together so this isn't a true "smocking" job. The dress pattern asks that you sew on a fabric skirt, but I suck at sewing so I did one using crochet instead and just fucked around with double and treble crochets until it looked nice.
I used the ideas from the Bleu pattern to do her face. I've never done a face this way before, and after this I don't think I'll never do any other face ever again! The tip about using red crayon, rubbed in with a licked thumb, to create a blushed cheek is totally brilliant and creates a wonderfully cute effect.
Also? THIS HAIR!
SO AWESOME.
I used [ this tutorial ] for the hair, which I got after asking another Ravelry user how she did her doll's amazing hair. Once again, I will never do doll wigs another way ever again because how friggin' awesome is that hair? It's thick and secure enough that you can brush it with a wide-toothed comb and even pull it up into ponytails or braids or whatever and there are no bald or thinning spots. It took forever and was kind of a pain in the ass but it's so, so worth it.
This is the hardest I've ever worked on a crochet doll, but it's also by far the nicest one I've done and I'm so thrilled with it that I plan on making more for the kids and for friends' birthdays.
Quotes of the Day:
This one made it to my blog's Facebook, so if you're a follower there you may have seen it already.
Tempest: "Let's play house!"
Xan: "You can't play house inside a house."
Me: "Playing house means someone plays the mom, someone else plays dad, and someone plays the baby."
Tempest: "Zephyra can play the baby."
Me: "Who's the mom?"
Tempest: "We have no parents."
Me: "Then who pays the bills in your house?"
Xan: "It's an abandoned house."
Me: "That sounds dangerous. Who cooks your food?"
Tempest: "We make our own food."
Me: "How do you buy the ingredients?"
Tempest: "We steal them."
Me: "What?! You run a terrible house! How would you steal?!"
Xan holds out one of the handles from the blinds. "We have a sword."
Me: "You're terrible at playing house."
Tempest: "You can do anything with your imagination."
Xan: "...And a sword."
A few weeks ago Z had the worst (and most bizarre) case of yeast rash I'd ever encountered. It came on almost immediately following TWO standard disposables on her bum the days before, which were used during a laundry mix-up that left us with no diapers for about 4 hours during an extremely poopy time. So, while we were doing the hard-core stripping washes on the cloth stash we got a tiny pack of 7th Generation (no bleach, no latex, no dyes, etc etc) to use on her.
During a walk around the village with Xan, one of the 7th Gen's fell out of the stroller and onto the wet ground. As I picked it up, Xan commented that I'd have to throw it in the wash when I got home.
"It's a disposable diaper hon, it doesn't go in the wash."
"You don't wash those? Why?"
"They're made to be thrown away after they've been dirtied."
"What? Every single one of them?"
"Yes, that's why they're called 'disposable diapers'."
"The whole pack, though? Every diaper in THE WHOLE PACK gets thrown away? Not washed?"
"Yep."
"But... why? Why would you buy a whole pack of diapers just to use once and throw away?!"
"Most people do. Very very few people use cloth diapers like we do."
"BUT WHY? It would cost so much money and it's such a waste of that money!! It's like, 'oh no my baby peed let me just throw my money in the trash!'."
This one was overheard at the table while I was doing dishes.
Xan: "Zephyra is just like a smoker."
Tempest: "What?"
Xan: "She's smelly, she's cranky all the time, and she always has something in her mouth. The only difference is she's not yellow."
Tempest: "Well, she'll grow out of it."
Xan: "That's true. She'll stop being stinky eventually... but the smokers will stink and stink until they die."
Links of the Day:
Pro Infirmis: Because who is perfect? - "Disabled mannequins will be eliciting astonished looks from passers-by on Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse today. Between the perfect mannequins, there will be figures with scoliosis or brittle bone disease modelling the latest fashions. One will have shortened limbs; the other a malformed spine. The campaign has been devised for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities by Pro Infirmis, an organization for the disabled. Entitled "Because who is perfect? Get closer.", it is designed to provoke reflection on the acceptance of people with disabilities."
10 things wrong with anti-bed-sharing campaigns - Birth Without Fear blog posts a fantastic, well-sourced and non-judgey take-down of the baseless anti-cosleeping rhetoric.
America's poor are its most generous givers - Something that poor people won't find surprising at all…
No one brings you dinner when your daughter is an addict - A thought-provoking piece about the lack of social support families receive when someone is suffering from a mental illness, or anything even remotely 'taboo'.
Shakespeare, the original pronunciation - This is an absolutely fascinating video. A professor of linguistics and his son have managed to accurately recreate the "OG" accent of early English, the accent that Shakespeare himself spoke and intended his plays to be performed in... and they began coaching actors at the Globe Theatre reconstruction how to perform in that accent. And suddenly puns, and jokes and rhymes just popped off the pages and the plays and sonnets had entirely new depths.
Dear people who do not have a child with disabilities - This may be something I've shared before, but I re-stumbled over it the other day and wanted to share it again. This should be required reading for anyone who has family, or friends, who are parents of a child with special needs. Choice quote: "We aren’t different, we parents of special needs kids. I promise I’m just like you. I kick ass at some parts of parenting, and I’m lousy at other parts, and I’m very ordinary at most of it. You’d be horrified if you heard a group of parents of kids with issues like Carter’s talking amongst ourselves; we use gallows humour and and talk in ways we know would alienate you, and we are very un-angel-like. We are deeply angry sometimes. Wounded. Broken.
But if you come to us and say, hey, I’m in trouble, I have a kid with problems and I think I belong in your club, we will gather you into our circle so fast you won’t quite know what hit you. We will listen to you cry and we won’t tell you to stop. We won’t tell you to be strong because we know you are being exactly as strong as you can be. We know that your need is deep and that you can’t handle this, even as you are in the midst of handling it."
Two days before Jericho's birthday a tiny baby bunny appeared outside my back door, which is sliding glass leading into a small, but high-fenced backyard. I see the babies often enough in little groups around the complex, tiny ones don't generally wander too far from the nest until they're about the size of a large softball and then start to explore more readily. This one was the smallest I'd ever seen.
Initially it seemed like he was eating something, so I watched him, but after a few minutes it was clear something was off. He was just sitting there on the cement, inches outside my door, occasionally swaying like he was falling asleep on his feet. He didn't really seem to be eating, or doing anything, and even after more than 30 minutes he hadn't moved an inch other than his rather ominous swaying.
I approached the back door and clicked open the lock, expecting him to run away as soon as I slid the door open, but to my surprise he merely opened his eyes and looked toward me. I stared at him for a moment, waiting to see if he'd come to his senses, but he never moved. Slowly I approached him, knelt down and reached out a finger to touch him… and did. He was as soft as silk; I've never touched anything so soft. He leaned into my hand when I stroked him, and as soon as his eyes closed he fell into my palm as though stricken with exhaustion. I'd never gotten that close to one of the wild rabbits before, most certainly never the extremely skittish babies.
I very gently picked him up and cradled him in two hands. I could feel his little heart pounding, though his sleepy eyes betrayed any fear he may have felt. I knew I should leave him, but was afraid he'd freeze in the cold wind, so I took him inside. Just to warm up, I told myself.
I held him close to me and within moments he was limp and asleep, his heart slowing, and his body slowly warming up. He lay there in my hands unmoving and asleep for an hour. When I tried to put him down, he roused within moments and scrambled out of the box, climbing back into my hand when I presented it and immediately closing his eyes in contentment again. As much as it tugged at me, my heart felt heavy as it occurred to me that me may be sick, or dying. This isn't normal baby behaviour, by any stretch.
I had to go pick up the kids from school, and decided to put him back outside that night after he'd warmed and safely slept. I know that even small babies can be fairly independent, and the mothers return in the evening to feed them. I also know that the neighbour's cat likes to stalk and kill the tiny babies, and she is put inside at night, so it was doubly safer to wait until the evening particularly if there's any reason to suspect the little guy is ill.
I told myself that if I had any reason to be concerned past that time, I'd call a vet or rescue. He's no pet, nor do I want another one, but he seemed so strangely helpless laying out there swaying with exhaustion in the breeze and it pains me to imagine doing nothing as he freezes and sways in the yard.
When I brought the kids home I made them sit quietly so I could show them what I'd found. I reminded them that he was not a pet, and we'd be putting him back out once he was a little more energetic. I also told them that babies were fragile, and there was a strong possibility that he was sick due to the way he'd been acting when I found him. They nodded dutifully, and each asked for a chance to touch him.
Xan gently ran a finger between his little ears, and he closed his eyes in contentment, his heart slowing. I almost expected him to purr.
When I had to cook and clean, Tempest took over the cuddling, since he didn't seem to like being put down. He seemed to panic when not held or stroked.
Shortly after we arrived home my neighbour, J, came by and asked me if I'd seen a tiny baby in my yard. I explained to her what I saw, and sheepishly admitted that I'd taken him in. She thanked me profusely, and told me she was terribly worried that he wasn't healthy. She'd seen him the night before on the edge of my yard and hers, shivering and unmoving, and had taken him in after calling her friend who is a vet. Her friend told her to put him back out early in the morning, in hopes it would prevent him from freezing to death overnight. She had… and he had not moved since. It had been over 8 hours. She hadn't seen him eat or drink, and had been watching him out her door in hopes his mother would return, up until she had to leave briefly for work and he'd disappeared (which is when I'd found him).
She told me she'd call her friend again and report the changes, and get back to me on what she'd said.
While I waited, I continued to give him cuddles either by me, or Tempest. Over the next few hours his lethargy seemed to abate some and his body temperature had improved dramatically. Tempest managed to get him to eat some lettuce and a tiny bite of carrot, and I got him to drink water from my fingertips. I peed him soon after, as I learned to do when fostering baby animals back in my SPCA days, and his urine was a better colour now than it was when I tried to do it originally. Once I'd done that and put him down, he peed on his own and moved around the small box to where the food was. Within another hour, his fur had stopped 'tenting' when pulled back and he seemed less lethargic. Relieved, I told Tempest that we'd put him back out that night to find his mom and she was to keep an eye out in the back to see if one came looking for him. Maybe he'd just been separated from his mom long enough to suffer from dehydration and cold, and now that he was better he'd be okay finding his way back on his own.
J came by and told me that her friend wanted to check on him that evening before we put him back out; she was still concerned about his initial behaviour. She seemed to think there was a chance he didn't have a mama or had been separated from her by some distance, given his extreme lethargy and dehydration.
In the meantime, J had found another baby next to the house with similar behaviour, called her friend back and took it in. She asked me to wait until she returned with news before putting "mine" back out, as her friend emphasized the risk of it freezing to death if it was ill or orphaned.
When she returned she said her friend had been called away in an emergency and the rest of the staff wouldn't speak to her or give her any information. The only thing they suggested was to syringe it water overnight and bring it to rescue in the morning, but also seemed concerned by the behaviour they showed when we found them and indicated that it was not a good sign that they'd make it regardless of care.
While I waited for her to return with news I got a warm cloth and gave the baby a finger bath, peed it again in case it was still having trouble (it wasn't), and offered it some more water. It seemed to greatly enjoy the bath, and fell asleep in my hand so hard that it leaned back with it's paws out.
Shortly after this, having only been in my home a few hours, I saw it stretch in a strange way that I now recognize was a seizure. I didn't realize that's what I was seeing until it happened again, and I realized that he may not be as healthy as I'd wished. His brief improvement upon being brought in and warmed up gave me false hope that he'd be okay to release, or surrender to rescue when they requested us to come in the following morning.
Within a few more hours, it was clear he was too sick to save. Warming him had only saved him a slow death by freezing, but couldn't fix the underlying problem.
J was over with the littermate when he died in my hands after suffering a long, hard seizure. She wept openly, but I found myself unable to shed my tears. She apologized over and over for being so emotional, embarrassed by her grief in contrast to my stoic facade. Her guilt was heavy, and she reported that the vet had said there was nothing that could be done given it's behaviour over the last two days and the conditions under which we'd found him. She'd strongly suspected it may have been poisoned or otherwise seriously ill, and the warming had merely delayed the inevitable. At least now he'd died comfortable and fed.
The sibling, at least, had continued to improve with warming and syringing and was successfully released early that morning and has been okay since.
We walked outside together to watch the sibling bound through the grass near it's nest, or at least what we suspected was its nest, before curling up in a little pile of hay and falling asleep.
J cried and hugged me, caught between apologies and gratitude that I'd found him and at the very least saved him the slow death by freezing; words her vet friend had also given her. I tried to tell her that the next day was the anniversary of my son's death, but the words stuck in my throat. I don't know why I even wanted to say it… I barely know her at all. It took me several tries to get it out, and when it left my lips I heard her gasp and cry harder. I couldn't look at her face, for fear that I'd join her. Tears stung my eyes, but I knew if I let them come I wouldn't be able to stop, and this was not a place where I was ready to break down.
"Maybe he chose you for a reason," she said. She immediately chided herself, realizing how terrible it sounded to send death to someone already struck by grief. I didn't take offence, as strange as it sounded I understood what she meant to express, and I appreciated it.
"It's okay," I assured her.
She went inside a few minutes later to call her husband at work and ask him to come home, too overwhelmed to be alone.
I came in and wrapped the little baby in a cotton prefold and put him somewhere safe, waiting until the kids came home to do anything more. It was Hallowe'en day, and as much as I feared it would destroy the evening for them, I couldn't bury him without them there.
I'd wanted to delay it as long as possible, but they both knew something was wrong when I said I'd talk to them about the bunny when we got home, instead of answering their questions in the car.
We all cried together as we went into the backyard to dig a grave. Tempest asked to hold and cuddle him, stroked his fur and held him close, weeping silently and watching her tears fall over his tiny body. Xan was unmoving until I placed him in the grave: he collapsed into sobs as he placed the first handful of dirt inside, watching the grit slip between his fingers and feeling the finality of the gesture. He asked to go inside before we were done in hopes he could escape it. I gave him permission, but he stayed to hear my eulogy nonetheless. When I was done he ran inside and grabbed three baby carrots from the fridge to put atop the mound.
"It's for his spirit," he explained. "In case he gets hungry on his way to somewhere else."
"Or maybe for his brother when he visits," suggested Tempest. Xan nodded, but said nothing.
They were subdued for the next few hours, but still eager for the night's festivities. We continued last-minute work on their costumes, and their moods slowly improved as the evening came on. By the time Curtis got home at 5:15, they were looking forward to going out, and able to temper their grief. Both greeted him with hugs and explained what had happened. Tempest began to cry again and she hid her face in Curtis' chest as Xan told him about the grave, the speech and the carrots.
"He was so soft," whispered Tempest, almost too quiet to hear.
He's the third baby I know of that's died, or been found dead near here recently. At least, it's the third one I've seen dead since moving in. I know the babies have a very high mortality rate and are prone to illness, but it doesn't make it any less sad. Other neighbours have reported that the number is much higher than three. It makes me wonder if someone isn't doing it on purpose.
In spite of the grief, the night went on without much incident. I was in a pretty extreme amount of pain after the non-stop work from Xan's birthday party, followed by costume prep and general house cleaning all done on my own, so Curtis took over the first leg of trick-or-treating while I stayed at home and waited for my pain meds to kick in. I went through 3/4 of the candy we'd bought within an hour or so. They weren't kidding when they said this community was a popular spot.
This was Z's first active Hallowe'en, and she was dressed in a fleecy pumpkin sleeper so she wouldn't get too cold while she walked around. She held out a little Monster's Inc. candy bag and called, "Treat, treat, treat!" at each doorstep.
The Elders ditched Curtis and Z as soon as they were able to sneak away, and showed up back at our door after they'd managed to visit every house in the complex. I texted Curtis to let him know where they were (we knew they'd return when they were done, so it wasn't a particularly big deal for them to go off on their own within the complex, just mildly annoying that they didn't ask permission first) and he came back with Zephyra a few minutes later.
"She's done anyway, so I'll take over the door if they still want to go out," he reported.
Zephyra held up her bag to me, "CAN-KNEE! CAN-KNEE!" she announced, shaking with excitement.
I walked through the surrounding neighbourhoods with the Elders for another 40 minutes before we retired home for a late dinner, a few handfuls of sugar and bed. They were particularly excited to hit this one place they call "The mansion" which looks oddly overbuilt for the area with its gargoyles and golden gates. It did not disappoint: they gave out king size bars.
Xan was eager to get out of his costume, complaining that it was too constricting to wear for all night. Once he was out of it, Zephyra climbed inside. We'd created it entirely out of cardboard moving boxes, and given the crappy construction I'm actually pretty happy with it. Almost everyone who saw him knew he was a Minecraft 'creeper'; only one father mistakenly called him Gumby throughout the evening (we passed him near a dozen times before coming to his house after he'd taken his kids home for the night).
Tempest's Marceline costume was recognized about half the time, the rest didn't seem to know the show, or the character at all.
(Not pictured: the red boots).
Once she even passed by kids dressed as Finn and Jake, who stopped to pose with her. Another kid dressed as Minecraft's "Steve" pretended to run screaming from Xan upon sighting him. There were hundreds of kids everywhere, and the candy rush didn't slow until between 7:30 and 8pm. Curtis ran out of candy by the time I returned, but our stash lasted almost through the end. This is the first year we've had a lot of kids and gotten even remotely close to running low. Every other year we generally have most of the bowl left and end up eating it ourselves over the next few days. It's stupidly fun, and makes me wish we had the money to set up something really fun in our yard next time.
Curtis' weekend started that evening so he didn't need to put in a special request for the first. We stayed up late playing video games on the couch, long after the kids went to bed.
On the morning of the first he did not wake me, and quietly took the baby downstairs with him once she became restless in hopes that I would stay asleep. I was gifted the late morning both to help relieve the pain and exhaustion from the last few days of work, and because Curtis knew I'd need the time to myself.
I fell in and out of a dreamless sleep for hours before finally giving up around 11:30 when Curtis opened up the door to let Z in for a nurse. She approached the bed with both a whine and smile, and I lifted the blankets to let her in. She climbed in eagerly, inching next to me and curling her body up against my stomach before pawing into my nightclothes in search of a breast. She gave a quiet, happy coo as she drank and stroked my chest lovingly. Curtis slid into the bed next to her and cuddled in close so she'd be secured between us. When he drew an arm over us, it was long enough to pull us both in for a tight hug. Within moments he was sound asleep, and Z's heavy lids told me she'd soon follow.
I watched as her eyelids stopped fluttering, and felt her hand let go of mine as she surrendered to exhaustion, the tension slowly leaving her body and her breath slowing. She so rarely naps without a fight these days, and it has become a very rare thing to watch her fall asleep peacefully. Suddenly, I was crying. I don't even know why it struck me then; the tears came on without warning and once I lost the fight to hold them back they came like rivers.
I felt guilty that I had not cried for him in some time, and the agony of that guilt and grief is strangely comforting. And I was desperate for anything to fill the void I was feeling that morning.
I remembered the words of my therapist some years ago, when she reminded me that pain is not the only way to keep his memory alive.
"I don't ever want it to stop hurting," I'd told her.
"Why?"
"Because if it does, then I'm okay with it. I don't want to be okay with it. I can't ever let him go."
When Zephyra's breath was slow and even, I slipped out from under her arm and rolled out of bed. I walked over to the sliding glass door next to our bed, and watched as the yard below me came into view. I rested my forehead against the glass and looked down upon the grave we'd dug for the bunny the afternoon before. One of the carrots was gone, and another had fallen to the side. My tears continued to fall; even so many years on it's easier to cry for another than for my own.
I rounded the bed and headed for the bathroom to clean my face, but was stopped by Curtis' hand. I don't know that he saw me crying, but he'd awakened as I walked past him. He pulled me down for a kiss, and told me he'd make a special dinner that night. I smiled, but I didn't mean it. As much as I appreciate his gestures, it's hard for the warmth to reach me.
I spent most of the day wishing I could go back to sleep. I always think the next year will be easier on me - next year I'll be more prepared and able to face the day without feeling like I have a weight tied to my legs - and every year the day comes and it's never as I'd hoped. Some of the recent years have left me unable to build up the energy to want a cake to celebrate him with the kids, or even leave my house and interact with people, for any reason. It took every ounce of strength in me to join Curtis and the kids on a walk to the library much later in the day, and the only reason I went is because I knew the fresh air might help me feel less ill.
We didn't do anything for him all day.
No cakes, no eulogies and no conversations with the kids.
My mom picked the Elders up from school and took them back to her house for a visit until late afternoon; she even fed them dinner so we wouldn't have to worry about it, and gave them a few small toys to keep them entertained. Curtis and I spent the time playing games or laying atop each other on the couch in silence while the baby took an extra long nap upstairs. But no matter what I tried to fill my head with, nothing could remove me far enough to stop the sting. I fell in and out of sleep on the couch, and when I finally woke Curtis had gone upstairs to take a shower with the baby after she'd awakened.
We waited until after the kids were in bed to start our dinner, and Curtis' promise didn't disappoint: he made me eggs with maple bacon, sizzled ham and home-made hash browns all piled together with a blend of spices and sauce that made it burn my lips when I ate it. It's a weird sort of comfort food for me, and I was grateful for it.
We sat in silence again as the clock turned to 10:47, and I cried some more. He held me, and we fell asleep in each other's arms.
For years before him, we slept as far apart as two people could while sharing the same bed. I couldn't stand to touch his skin at night: too hot and too claustrophobic. I even put pillows between us to avoid him.
The first night I was home after he died, we fell asleep holding each other and crying. We never slept apart again, and still drift off every night in each other's arms. Now I can't sleep at all without his arms around me and his body warming me. Every night for eight years, save for the ones I was traveling… and they were awful without Curtis' heat next to me.
Eight years.
Eight years gone and almost a decade without him.
I think every day how much better everything would seem with another little boy in the house. I know I'm romanticizing it; the idea of his life and a future I'll never know. I'm not naive: parenting is never all flowers and rainbows and I know he and Xan would probably fight just as much as Xan and Tempest do… but it's hard not to wonder, and wish to have seen, how much different it could have been if he'd stayed.
When I try to talk her down or rationalize with her she just screeches her words louder and louder until eventually all I can do is just remove her (or myself) from the situation before I succumb to my own boiling rage and give in to the temptation to join her.
The whole situation always seems more volatile with Tempest simply for the fact that I'm not accustomed to her being over-the-top emotional drama from Xan over ridiculous bullshit, I almost never see it from her and so it always has me taken aback and completely unprepared to handle it.
The latest one started at bedtime when I asked her to get ready for bed and please take her clothes up and put them away. All of a sudden she was too sick and her legs hurt too much to do anything, so I pointed out the fact that not two minutes ago she was literally chasing Zephyra through the house laughing so she's clearly not as sick as she thinks she is. And instantly it's waterworks and screeching that gravely devil-posessed scream about how I never listen to her and she's just too sick and tired to do anything and I'm the worst mother who ever lived.
From there it just got worse until I finally told her to please just go straight to bed if it's that bad. Predictably, that was just gasoline on the fire.
After half-escorting-half-dragging her upstairs to her room, I opened the door to find a floor absolutely covered in snotty tissues. And seriously, they were everywhere. I was seriously disgusted, and said so, and told her that she needs to pick that shit up right this minute and put it in the trash. Lots and lots more drama ensued. Now her legs don't just simply hurt, but are practically broken in horrible, agonizing pain and how could I torment her so?
Ugh.
I really do not have the patience for this kind of crap at this point in the evening. The bedtime circus that comes from having three kids who are all at varying points of bedtime resistance; either because they don't want to go to bed and I can't make them, or because they just want to go to sleep right fucking now and refuse to do any of the prep work (tidy up their bed, brush teeth, get pyjamas on, fill up their water bottles, etc). This leaves me so drained that I lose all my patience to fondly hand-hold someone through their cyclic temper tantrums. Especially when that someone is way too old for this shit.
The argument reached its peak when Tempest said it was my fault she'd thrown her snotty tissues all over the floor, because I was the one that refused to let her take trash cans into her bedroom (something I was completely unaware that I was forbidding her to do up until this moment. Though she did have a point; dragging the household garbage in your bedroom is not sanitary nor advisable). I told her that was really gross, and that she knows perfectly well how to not throw garbage on her floor no matter how sick she may feel. There really is no excuse for that crap. Especially when it comes to really gross, disgusting snotty garbage. She screamed and cried the entire 10 steps to the bathroom and attempted to drag the garbage can in with her. I again told her no, at which point she picked up the trash and threw it across the room, spreading gross bathroom trash everywhere.
I was absolutely dumbfounded. For a long moment we just sat there staring at each other. Me with my mouth agape, frozen in anger and my hands hanging helplessly up in the air; her waiting to see if I was going to scream, cry or run and silently challenging me to choose.
Finally I found my voice, and said very quietly, "Don't leave this room until you've cleaned this up," then left. She screeched as I descended the stairs.
Xan, never failing to miss an opportunity to be 'the good one', quietly came down after me and dutifully reported that he's finished all of his bedtime preparations without being asked more than once and is now ready for me to read to him. I told him honestly that I was too angry and needed a few minutes to calm down before I came upstairs. He replied that it was fine to wait and reminded me that he'd be in bed reading until I was ready.
About ten minutes later Tempest came down and told me she was done cleaning up. I called her over and told her rather sternly that she is not to ever pull that kind of shit - for any reason - and that if she really is suffering enough of a runny nose to burn through an entire box of snotty tissues she can just use a goddamn plastic or paper bag as temporary garbage. She nodded, still battling with the last of her tantrum, and I went upstairs to read to Xan.
When I came back down to the couch Tempest was filling up her water bottle in the kitchen, sniffling and weeping loudly. I was unsure if this was a taunt, or she was legitimately upset about something, so I came in and asked her what was wrong.
"I don't know," she said with an emphasis of attitude.
"I'm not mad anymore, Tempest. You can tell me if you're truly not feeling well."
"I DON'T KNOOOOOW," she yelled. Then she started sobbing. And not the tantrum angry sob, but a legitimate sad and pathetic sob.
"Would it help if I gave you a hug?"
She considered this, then nodded. I hugged her. "I'm sorry for yelling at you." I felt her nod again. "Really, are you okay? Why are you crying?"
"I really don't know."
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Are you sick?"
"No." She'd been suffering a mildly stuffed nose the last day or two, but she knew I was asking if she had any further illness or symptoms than that.
"Then, are you just crying for no reason?"
She nodded, then sobbed again. I hugged her some more. After a moment she said, "I get really angry and it just comes out like I can't control it. And then sometimes I get really sad and it comes out. And it's really big."
"And you don't know why?"
"Yeah. It's just something that happens. It's kinda scary."
"Do you just mean the last few days, or more than that?"
"More. Like the last few months but more lately."
I bent down a little so I could look her in the eye. "Sometimes we call that mood swings. Do you remember how we talked about entering puberty and some of the things that it does to your body and brain?"
"Yeah," she answered meekly.
"Mood swings can be one of those things," I said. She was paying more attention now, and seemed less upset.
We stood in the kitchen for a good 20 minutes while I talked about hormones, puberty and emotions. We've had lots and lots of puberty talks over her life - a lot more frequently since it became obvious that she was entering it - but the emotional side has not come up that often, nor in any real detail. It was one of those things that really didn't occur to me to go too deeply into when we were having these discussions, and as a result it's been a pretty neglected part of the sex and body talks.
The more I explained the less tense she looked; and as the adrenaline kick from her tantrum finally wore off, exhaustion took its place and I noticed her eyelids starting to droop.
Before she succumbed to sleep we made a rule about counting to three in the midst of a big fight when things got too intense, and another about being able to ask for 'emergency space' when she felt overwhelmed by her emotions.
After Curtis got home from work, at nearly midnight, I talked with him about the evening's events. He also noted how intense her emotional output had become recently, and agreed that it was probably related to her descent into puberty.
I told him about the talk I'd had with Tempest but expressed my frustration and worry over how consuming the issue was for her. I felt really unsure about how I'd approached it with her once the argument was over. Of course, he didn't see it with the same pessimism I did, and reminded me that we'd had a similar breakthrough with my sister over her emotional control and ability to communicate… but it took years for her to get to a point to even come to a point where she was able to say the things Tempest had that night.
"The fact that she's even able to tell you these things means you've already opened the doors to that level of communication, and that's really good. It means she can keep talking," he assured. I felt mildly better, but still not entirely confident. The older she gets the harder it is to feel like I'm doing the right thing - the answers are less clear as kids turn into pre-teens and young people, and they begin to diverge from the careful plans and routines that you'd set out when raising them. There comes a point where no amount of rules and will can change things, and you have to let go and surrender to the hope that you've created a strong foundation for trust and love that will carry them through. Tempest isn't there yet, but she's fast approaching that point of her life, and I can feel her childhood slipping from of my fingers as she pulls away.
Since we moved here, she's spent more and more time alone and exploring. When she gets home from school she barely stays long enough to unload her backpack before jetting out into the courtyard to find her new friends. She's often out there so long that I have to go calling for her at dinner-time, 3-4 hours later. On weekends I may not see her at all for as long as five hours. She's carved out her own group of friends, activities and is learning how to be independent from her family and siblings - much to Xan's chagrin. It's something that I spent a long period of her life worrying would never happen, and now that it is I find I'm torn between pride and sorrow as it becomes harder to convince her to spend time with us.
One of the things she spends a lot of time doing is just sitting in the grass, quietly watching the wild bunnies and hoping to earn their trust. To our surprise, it actually worked. There's this one albino bunny in the complex that is always alone and seen very frequently in the area of our home. Our neighbour has named it Conejo, which Tempest picked up immediately. She spent hours out there every day just sitting across from it, inching closer over time and carefully placing scraps of veggies on the ground and waiting to see if it would approach. Bit by bit it did, and bit by bit she moved the veggies closer to her until it would feed from her hands. It took another few days before she could reach out and pet it while it ate. A week more and it willingly approaches her, and licks her when she walks up. But her alone; no one else can get that close without it startling. She adores this rabbit, particularly since it seems to be rather exiled from the other bunnies (they're sometimes seen attacking or otherwise acting aggressively toward it) and takes time out of every day to say hello to it after school.
I'm amazed at her seemingly endless patience and care when it comes to animals. We've been calling her the "bunny whisperer" since she got so close to them. She's also been the only person we've seen that the tiny babies don't immediately scatter from. A few days ago she sat down in the grass near a nest and I watched as one of the palm-sized babies approached her completely on it's own, crawled inside her coat, explored her, sat on her knees, let her pet it, and then quietly hopped off a few minutes later. I can't even get within ten feet of one without it running away, no matter how slowly I go. It's like she's magic; or, at the very least, she's spent enough time with them that they know her as safe.
Xan's birthday party was on the 26th, and was another year absolutely packed with kids. On his previous birthday I was stricken with knee-buckling panic attacks at the prospect of a filled house and spent most of this one in the kitchen trying to catch up on food preparation in hopes I would avoid the same fate. I'm not really sure why the anxiety hits me so hard; I haven't had that problem with Tempest's parties, even when they get very busy. Maybe it has something to do with having Xan's indoors where it seems more loud and claustrophobic. Also, all of the parents stick around… which is something I'm not accustomed to. Whenever I had Tempest's parties the kids were dropped off, so I was mostly entertaining young children and that's not nearly as hard or panic-inducing as trying to entertain children plus ten sets of parents I've only met in passing. This birthday and Xan's previous one both had every single set of parents stay through all of the festivities.
I spent the previous night up until 4am, listening to the Game of Thrones audiobooks and finishing up the designs for food placards. I did everything by hand, as our printer is currently out of ink, and carefully wrote out each item's name in Minecraft-font and drew the little icons based on screen caps from the game. I set everything up on the kitchen table with the crafting bucket and used the kids' fine-tipped felt markers to do everything, suffering a terrible humpback for my trouble - and in spite of all that work I still needed to put in two hours of finishing details the next afternoon before it was all done. I cut it so close to party time that the first guest had already arrived just as I was finishing the last two labels.
The sleep deprivation wasn't doing me any favours, because when it was all said and done I'd made two stupidly awful spelling mistakes and did not even notice them until long after they had been sitting on the table in view of every strange set of parents I'd never talked to before. Awesome.
So alongside their lava blocks and green slime balls the kids also enjoyed "emerads" and "daimonds". Fuuuuuuuu.
In spite of the HORRIBLE GLARING ERRORS the food spread was actually pretty damn awesome. I made up three different lists of foods several days before: junk food, proteins/carbs and fruits/veggies, and then decided on a handful out of each category to prepare that would be fun, but still sorta balanced in terms of nutrition. Converting it to Minecraft-friendly code was more of a challenge.
In the end I decided on:
"Sticks" - Straight pretzel sticks.
"Torch" - Cut up hot dogs dipped in ketchup and mustard.
"Gold Nuggets" - Buttered popcorn.
"Slime balls" - Green grapes.
"Melon" - Watermelon pieces.
"Carrot" - Baby carrots.
"Emeralds" (emerads… ugh) - Cucumber squares.
"Slime" (as in the monsters) - Green Jell-O squares. We ran out of lime Jell-O so Curtis made up some lemon and dyed it green with some blue food colouring.
"Mushrooms" - Large marshmallows dipped in white chocolate melting wafers (dyed a pinky-red colour with gel food colouring), and dotted with buttercream icing.
"Lava" - Strawberry Jell-O squares.
"Diamonds" (Or diamonds, as it were) - Blue rice krispy squares.
"Gold bars" - Chocolate loonies (coins).
"Creeper Juice" came in two flavours: limeade juice and Sprite.
The night before I'd created a giant creeper face out about 100 3x3 inch squares of coloured construction paper, then glued them all to several pieces of heavy watercolour painters sheets and hung it on the wall above the food platters (this is visible in the birthday video, posted below).
Curtis also bought green, white and black balloons with the intent of drawing ghast and creeper faces on the first two, and turning the last into spiders along with some black crate paper… but we never had time to complete them so the balloons just sort of bounced around the rooms instead. I'd also created a ghast piñata out of a small moving box, with little white crate paper tentacles hanging down… but ran into a snag when I realized we had nowhere in the entire house to hang it so that ended up going to waste as well. Boo. This probably would have gone a little more smoothly if it had been more than just me doing all the work. It's not that Curtis didn't want to, it's that his work schedule didn't permit it.
Xan's Minecraft cake was also home-made: it was a double-layer chocolate cake covered with a sheet of red fondant (which took for-fucking-ever to do. Jesus) and painted to look like a block of Minecraft TNT. It did not turn out even remotely like I planned it to, but he didn't care and still loved it so that was the important part. I did not even bother taking a picture, because I was so frustrated with it.
I originally bought a pack of sparklers so I could put seven of them atop the individual dynamite 'sticks', but Curtis had a better idea and managed to find this absolutely giant fireball sparkler thing and stuck it right in the middle of the pile of "wires" so it looked like a huge fuse on fire. It was a big hit.
Over the week prior to the party I'd crafted an entire set of Minecraft tools and weapons out of cardboard, painted them according to screencaps from the game, and laid them around for the kids to play with. I had a diamond sword, diamond axe, pick, hoe, shovel and a bow and arrow (which was also done as though it was made from diamond, even though Xan insisted this was not actually possible. I can blame Curtis for this as the bow was his job to finish). They lasted about two days before starting to bend, but the kids adored them.
This party was a lot - A LOT - of work. I felt like I worked on this for weeks, and my body was crying out for mercy well before I was done. And despite it all, I still fucked tons of shit up and didn't do half the things I wanted to. It felt frustrating and half-assed, and up until the morning of the party I was wallowing in my failure as a parent to provide even a mostly okay themed party for my child.
But then, while I was finishing up the paint on one of the last pieces of oversized Minecraft tools, Xan made his way over to the table and remarked, "Wow mommy… these are amazing. They look so real!" He paused, took in a long breath as though to whistle, and looked it up and down. "Wow," he said again, "You're so talented! I can't believe these are for me". I looked up at him and saw the genuine awe in his face, and that alone made everything worth it.
And so, though it comes a month late… happy 7th birthday to my baby boy. Who went from this absolutely precious kewpie doll of a baby:
To this psychopath in the making:
(We laughed so, so hard when we saw this proof. I don't know what these Lifetouch people think they're doing, but this is quite possibly the most hilariously horrible portrait I've ever seen. The only thing worse was the secondary pose where he sits with his thumbs sticking backwards into his belt loops, wincing as though he just realized he was about to shit himself).
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