A Groundhog's Goodbye

Here’s a little more clarification about what my younger daughter and I are working on these days, per my last post a few days ago.

First things first, she is a kind, loving and thoughtful little girl. She is just starting to discover the joy in making people laugh and is really beginning to shine when the spotlight is on her.

I see a budding flower in her that is already amazing in its own right, so fresh and full of life. So raw with emotion and sincerity. And it will have a remarkable beauty when it blooms.

It’s just that her bud isn’t starting to blossom yet. And from my experience, it should be a bit more open than it is right now.

The challenge lies in her social skills. She is hesitant, even reluctant, to join in social situations on her own. Even if I am there, sometimes it takes her a while (and I mean over an hour) to really separate and go join the fun. A lot of times her big sister helps, but sometimes I think that can even make things worse because she’s still not trying things out on her own. Plus she will chase her sister down if she tries to go off with her own friends, which puts a bit of a damper on my other daughters’ experience.

But once she is in the moment, she does have a lot of fun and sometimes she even shows the rest of the world what I get to see every day.

Her preschool teacher last year told me it took a few months of school before she would even talk in class. And she doesn’t really have any one that she considers a close friend in her class because I think she’d just as soon play on her own. Plus she sticks to the one little girl that she has known her whole life who isn't in her class. She calls her one of her "best friends", and is still reluctant and unwilling to go play with her when we arrive at the school.

The real downside to this is that sometimes it’s too late and she doesn’t get everything she wanted because the world couldn’t stand still waiting for her to jump in.

As her mother, this is my arch enemy. I want her to have everything she wants and more. And I know she wants these things. She just can’t seem to muster up the strength to venture out on her own, and that weighs her down.

I want to lighten her load so she can run free and soar high. I want to ensure she doesn’t suffer from missed opportunities because she is so painfully shy.

Granted missed summer camps, gymnastics classes, and the like aren’t going to turn her into a social leper. I know she’ll be fine if I leave her alone and don’t worry so much. She will get through this stage in time.

But there are two problems here. One: I don’t want her to be just fine. I want her to be stupendous. And two: how much time are we talking about? Because this time that she spends is not just hers, it’s mine too.

Do you remember that movie Groundhog’s Day? Where the guy kept living the same day over and over? Well I have that going on with her goodbyes. Which are closely tied in to her hellos. Which all circle around to her shy social habits.

Here’s how her goodbye goes. She says she’s ready, then when the moment comes she balks. Burying her face in my legs is usually next, followed by “I don’t want to go to” fill-in-the-blank. Then we have a five minute discussion about what bribe I’m currently offering, and maybe one out of five times that works in motivating her to walk in to her activity, albeit without a look back or a good-bye.
It’s like I’m sending her off to the slaughter instead of someplace where fun and creative people are waiting to teach her all kinds of new and exciting things.

If you add up all the school mornings, gymnastics classes, summer camp days, swimming lessons, babysitter afternoons, etc, for the past year and a half, it’s over 400 times we’ve gone through this song and dance.

It’s killing me softly. I can’t take it anymore.

And anyone who knows me knows that I am a do-er. I need to feel like I am completely controlling doing something to help the situation.

So here is where the last post begins. With a trek into the social world of my three/almost four year old.

Over the next year and more, we will go places, we will see people, we will make friends, we will have play-dates, and we will enjoy every opportunity.

And slowly but surely, if I do my job right, that “we” will turn into “she”.

My end goal is that she sees her own opportunities ahead of her and she runs full-force, or at least at a fast-paced walk, until she can grab it on her own and head out toward the wild blue yonder.

But she still looks back to make sure I’m still there.

And I always will be.

Time To Pack My Gear for Another Climb

I think my 3 year old daughter is trying to tell me something.

This past week she told me, on two separate occasions, that she wants to live with her friends' family.

She didn't say this in a spiteful way, nor in a sad way. She was just plain content and factual.

The first time, my first response was to tell her that I would miss her so much. To which she replied that we would see each other sometimes at the preschool or Little Gym. I then told her that those times just wouldn't be enough for me and I'd still miss her tons. Then the conversation sort of petered out.

But, truth be told, I was left with a touch of sadness and a curiosity as to what I was doing wrong, or not doing at all, that might have spurred this not-so-secret wish.

The second time she mentioned this I asked her if it had something to do with the big sister in the family. I pursued this avenue because of something else she had said before. She said, yes, she wanted this other girl to be her big sister. I then replied that her real big sister and I would miss her tons, and the conversation went on much like the last one.

Again, I was left a little melancholy. But at least this time I could share the blame with my oldest daughter.

What? Someone has to be the fall guy. And I don't have the time or energy to be taking this all on myself. Why can't I share a little?

The day my 3 year old declared that she wishes she could live with her grandmother that lives close by. Again, we went through the motions in our discussion, and I could discern no clear reason to this series of ideas she had generated. Other than the fact that she really loves her Nonna, and that she lives near a cool park.

Reason enough? Probably not.

Since that day I have been paying close attention to what my daughter is trying to tell me. Fantastical thinking aside, I'm guessing she could really use some more Mommy Time. I have fallen off the wagon again, for which I try not to judge myself and just view it as inevitable with what I have on my plate these days.

Then during a conversation with my oldest, when I learned that she negotiated her way through a potentially sticky situation with a friend in a very thoughtful and confident manner, I realized that she has had a lot of my focus so that she could get to this point. I was so proud to hear how she was sensitive to her friends' needs and tried to resolve the emotional downfall in a fair way.

I patted myself on the back and did a mental victory dance.

Then I cried.

Because I realized that it was very likely that my 3 year old was going to be on the other side of that situation in a few years. She is clearly on her way. Her social skills are practically non-existent unless you are a family member or dear friend, and even then you are likely to not get a hello until she has fully assessed your intentions. And if she then feels wronged in the slightest, she will quietly slip away, and won't return until the coast is clear once again.

She has tunnel vision right now, and I really need to start preparing her for the full horizon so she can negotiate all those sticky social situations that I know await her. I know that she doesn't have to handle them in the same way as her sister. She can and will have her own style. But I think it's time to start fortifying her self-confidence so that she feels at ease with whatever that chosen style may be. Even if it continues to be the quiet type.

So I decided it was time to take on my next human experiment mothering task and focus more on my 3 year old daughter's emotional fortitude. I've climbed this mountain once, I know I can do it again. I just have to have faith in her future and keep moving forward.

And just in case I needed more motivation for this trying trek to the peak of self-confidence, the realization slapped me in the face yesterday. Although my 3 year old is the one left with the marks.

After a long day outside, I looked at her face and saw that she was my only child with little sunburned cheeks. I realized that I managed to get sunscreen (while in the midst of our activity) on the other two kids, but forgot her.

Her sweet little cheeks have sealed the deal.

Time to start devoting more of my efforts so she doesn't get burned in the future.

Unplugged

Sometimes I am happily reminded of the benefits of unplugging for a little while. No cell phones. No email. No blogging. Just a bit of peace and quiet in a little patch of nature.

We just returned from a wonderful week off. We packed up the kids, and all their accessories, and went out to Virginia to visit some friends. And we spent a few days off the grid.

Our trip was centered around the generosity of our friends' invitation to join them at their house on a lake in Northern Virginia. At no time was there less than six kids and four adults, and for the most part there were a couple more of each at any given moment as more friends came and went, dipping their toes in the lake and visiting for a little good cheer.

And yet it was still a very quiet week.

Sure there were plenty of screams. Usually cries of joy as one of the kids discovered a turtle swimming in the lake or went for a running-start jump off the dock into the water. At times the cries were of a more tragic nature when there was "play date overload". But besides the boat motors and the kids, the loudest things around were the birds and crickets.

You just gotta love nature. It forces you to observe and listen, stealing our attention away from our technology-induced stupors and stressors. Instead we focus on the most important things in our lives that all too often get put aside for a "little" time on the computer.

You know it happens to all of us. "I'll just be a few minutes on email/internet/bill-paying and then we can play that game." Before you know it an hour has passed and then it's time to do something else, like make dinner, change a diaper, or keep a child from bodily harm at the hands of his or her siblings. And that little person that so patiently waited for you gets bubkus.

Not so when you are on vacation. Everyone gets your full attention the whole time, which is a pretty amazing thing. Take away your daily routine and you take away your worries and excuses. Unplug from the craziness of this world we live in and just be.

Watching your kids discover new passions is priceless. And unfortunately, it doesn't happen often enough in our internet-driven, inflation-ridden, information-overloaded world.

I'm so grateful to our friends for opening their home to us. And I'm even more grateful to my family for filling my senses with giggles, hand-holding, water-splashing and finger-licking-good smores.

Last week I definitely found my happy place.

A Few Years Time

It's amazing the difference a few years can make.

Today I looked at my phone, which has a 'notes' section on it. I found a couple of leftovers from the last trip we took when my daughters were playing with it on the plane.

One page of notes says my 3 year old daughter's name and then:

"Qphghihjhtyjjiiiguiiiuuuuuuuuuiiiiiiiiiiiioooooooooiiiiiiiiiiii"

The next page of notes says my 6 year old daughter's name and then:

"Daughter's sayings.

April 21st Monday 2008

I can't wait until we get home to california.

Love yah mo.

May 8th Thursday 2008

Hey mo. Whats up."

Both wonderful additions in their own right.

Just a slight difference in the command of the written language.

Brain Power...Or Lack Thereof

It only took me a little over a year to re-learn the fact that babies like to be entertained.

Here I was thinking I was covering all the bases by feeding him, keeping him warm and safe, and giving him lots of love. And along comes my son, beating us over the head with this lesson. With a plastic spoon.

We were eating lunch at the café at our athletic club the other day. My husband met us there after his work-out. Shortly after placing our son in the high chair, it becomes clear he has no interest in eating lunch. No matter what we put in front of him he tries to climb and claw his way out, aiming straight for daddy.

His preference for my husband has become more and more clear lately, but I’m still keeping a stiff upper lip. I know the love is in there; he just prefers the parent that will pick him up all the time. He smells weakness.

Okay, maybe my upper lip is starting to quiver a little.

We are trying our best to appease our son and keep him in the high chair, mostly because my husband doesn’t want to muss up his work shirt. After his work-out, he showered and put back on his work clothes. BIG mistake. Eat lunch with baby first, THEN put on clean clothes and go back to work.

Eventually we take him out of the high chair and my husband tries keeping him on his lap while eating a burrito. Wet slobber marks are finding their way to his shirt and the rice and beans aren’t far behind. Now daddy is running out of patience.

We try giving the baby more grilled cheese sandwich, thinking he must be hungry. No luck. Then I try holding him, but again, he ain’t happy.

Finally my husband declares “I gotta run.” Granted it was going to be a short lunch anyway, but our son’s neediness just shortened the visit further. Now I’m losing the only adult company I’ll have all day. Bummer.

I pick my son up off daddy’s lap and we say good-bye. He’s hollering in my arms and I think ‘I should just walk him around a little’. Right in that moment I realize that I should walk him over to the place with the plastic spoons and forks.

I grab a couple of spoons and hand them over. My son puts one in each hand and a huge smile spreads across his face.

He bangs them on the table, mouths them, and practically hugs them and gives them each a pet name. He walks around the café, still with one in each hand, showing them off to all the other lunch-eating folks.

These two spoons then make their way to Target with us, gripped firmly in two happy hands, banging around the stroller.

Then they continue their joy ride all the way back home, where my son proceeds to show them around the house.

He even introduces them to his favorite canine treat, trying to use one of the spoons to scoop up some dog food.

Clever little dog-food-loving boy.

Clearly more clever than mommy and daddy.

Duh. Plastic spoons.

These were a major part of our repertoire with child #1. That and empty water bottles. And of course actual toys.

But since we haven’t really been out to an eating establishment much since we became a party of five, this nugget of knowledge slipped right out the back door of my brain while I was answering the front door with reading lessons and time-outs for the girls.

I’m beginning to see that with each child my husband’s and my brains further morph into post-parenting pulp. We seem to get overly absorbed by the children that can actually hold conversations and forget about the baby.

Although, can you call it a conversation when the main topic is either Hannah Montana or a story with a hundred utterances of the word “poopy” sprinkled with a healthy dose of giggles? Regardless, those children that can actually say “MOM, DAD, LOOK AT ME!” have sapped so much of our attention and brain power that we have to resort to just our survival instincts with the baby.

Of course, just when we finally re-learn all our lessons and get it in gear with him, he’ll be on to the next stage, with or without us. Mostly without us.

I guess we can only hope that we will succeed in steering our children through this maze of life, educating and empowering them to explore and discern their own path of discovery when they leave our shelter.

Which means that by the time our son goes to off to college, we will have become mush-brained mutants in E-Z chair loungers fighting over the remote.

Potty Power

We finally helped our 3 year old daughter through another rite of passage; the overnight pull-up diaper is now a part of her history.

Of course I hope I’m not jinxing anything by writing this blog. Wanna buy me a coke? Wait, is that right? I don’t think so, but it could be worth a shot. I really don’t want to go through night time potty training again. At least not until the next child is ready.

I never thought it would be this tough since our oldest daughter seemed to sort of do this on her own at a very early age (right after she was day-time potty trained at about two and half). She definitely set us up. Or more accurately, she set up her little sister.

Herein lies my theory about the myth of the middle child. IF the oldest child lives up to certain expectations, then there is a false sense of security with the second child. The second child then lets you know that s/he is a different person with a different mind, but it can easily be construed as difficult, not different. Thereby the middle child can be seen as a ‘problem’ child. This then sets up the third child to be able to do whatever they want whenever they want it, since the parents have now learned not to push. Hence the ‘spoiled baby’ in the family. See where this is going?

It all starts with the oldest. Just ask Marcia and Greg Brady. In our house, this is definitely the case. But understandably, I know this is not the case with everyone.

Nonetheless we made it through this inevitable juncture with our middle child. We started two months ago, so it’s been a journey. A while back someone told me that they woke up their almost 5 year old daughter every 2 hours all night long for potty breaks for an entire week and by the end of it she was dry all night. She swore by it and said they wished they’d done it sooner.

What? Doesn’t sound like fun to you? Well it didn’t to us either. I didn’t want to wake up every two hours when my alarm clock was a newborn baby screaming its head off for middle of the night nourishment in the next room. Why would I want to actually set an alarm clock and get up when the house is full of peaceful sleeping children?

So we started with the ‘my sleep is more valuable than a dry pull-up’ route. At 10 or 11pm we’d take her to the potty before we went to bed. We figured it was worth a shot.

And it worked. For the most part, that is. She was dry a lot of the time in the morning as long as she was able to empty her bladder a few hours after she went to bed.

At one point this singular potty break didn’t seem to be enough, so we started doing it later, around 2am, to see if that helped break up the night more evenly. Word to the wise; it didn’t seem to make much difference.

What did make a difference was monitoring her fluid intake from 4pm on (as much as she wants to drink before 4pm, then just a cup of milk with dinner at 6pm). It only took me a month or so of this training to remember that we did this with our oldest child as well. Sometimes I'm surprised I remember my own name, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I forgot something that was so important for a few weeks back in the Summer of 2004.

So now we are back to the 10 or 11pm break, which we are still hanging on to for the moment. Not sure when we’ll give that up; one step at a time.

But we were finally able to take a leap of faith and put her in underwear at night. It’s been 3 dry mornings in a row (cue the Hallelujah music).

Every night we sneak in there, drag her out of bed and carry her to the bathroom. This is my husband’s favorite part; an oh-so-adorable sleeping child snuggled up in his arms.

After you put her on the potty, without saying a word to her, she relieves herself right on cue. This took a little practice but her body started to get used to the routine pretty quickly.

And luckily she’s a girl, so she can pee while resting her head on your shoulder with her eyes closed. I guess this is the retribution for the pee-in-the-woods benefit that boys get.

One small pee for girl, one giant leap for family.

My Son Spot

Recently I have been compelled by the behavioral similarities of my son and my dog. I know this sounds a little insulting to my son, but you should know that we do have a really great dog. He’s a bit long in the tooth, but nonetheless my son should be honored by the comparison.

Still not convinced I should compare them? Okay, let’s look at the facts.

First the basics; they both love to eat dog food. Enough said.

Along those lines, they will both eat anything off the floor, although our dog tends to stick to just food morsels. My son is non-discriminatory when it comes to floor items.

From time to time I find a chewed up rubber end from a door stop and I'm not sure if it was my son who left it behind, or if my mom was over with her puppy. Both have been culprits of this crime.

My son and my dog love a full bowl of water; although my son is more in favor or wearing it than drinking it.

They are both inclined to curl up on a comfy dog bed from time to time.

Sleep is a very large part of their days; about 15 or 16 hours every day, to be exact.

When they give you kisses, they both use a lot of tongue.

My son and my dog are working in tandem when it comes to the highchair. The one with opposable thumbs drops all the food on the ground for his pal. Then he proceeds to get his hands licked clean and look like a nice, neat, little clean-plater to mom and dad.

Both of them love to chase balls. Especially tennis balls. This was never more evident than the other day when I had my kids at the pool. My son was in my arms and he was grunting and reaching for something behind me, his sign language for “yo mom, pay attention, can’t you see I want something?”

I turn around and see a man and his kids throwing a tennis ball back and forth from one end of the pool to the other. My son is watching it go back and forth and uttering his pleas of necessity that this ball must become his own prize possession. I think he was even drooling, which only further hits my point home.

In my opinion the phrase “it’s a dog’s life” needs to be re-thought.

Lots of sleep, hand-fed meals and bouncing balls.

It sounds like a nice life to me.

The Price of Vanity

Today I had a very frustrating experience at the doctor's office. I was there to try to get one more pregnancy souvenir taken care of, my spider veins.

I really don't have that many of these on my legs, and one of them I've had since I was a teenager, but a while back I thought I would look into getting them treated. And I wanted to get rid of a large mole that developed during my first pregnancy, called an agioma. This was my sort of "congratulations-you-carried-and-gave-birth-to-three-beautiful-children-and-now-you-are-done-with-that-crap" present to myself. Yes, yes, pregnancy is nature's most amazing gift, yada, yada, yada.

So I went to a 'consultation' that consisted of me sitting in a group of 50+ year olds and discussing cosmetic treatments with a medical dermatologist (this was the necessary first step to getting treated at the medical foundation I use for my primary care). The doctor looked at each person one at a time and you had to sit there through the whole thing. I was easily the youngest in the room, so I felt a bit like a calf in a herd of grandma cows that they were shuffling through the pasture as fast as possible. They clearly had more important cattle to handle than us.

Despite this not very warm and fuzzy experience, I decided to make an appointment. When I called I was told there was nothing on file for the prescribed treatment for the angioma, so I'd have to get it looked at again. Clearly this place, a well established medical facility, has some marks against it in my book already. But I really like some of their departments (pediatrics, namely), so I was willing to move forward.

I did have an alternative location in mind, a skin spa, but decided to go to the reknowned medical facility for this procedure. Huh. Should have given that another thought, I guess.

So today was the day that I was supposed to get my youthful legs back. I show up 10 minutes late; my bad. But I did have to get my husband to take the 3 year old to preschool - kicking and screaming - and then wait for the babysitter to show up for my other two. I am called in by a nurse that either isn't happy that I am late or just can't seem to find her happy place. She's rude and has a very indignant tone to her voice. She proceeds to tell me that I didn't listen to their advice in making appointments in the summer-time, which is the worst time of year to do any cosmetic treatments.

"You'll just end up with brown streaks in place of the spider veins that you say you don't like," she says. Excuse me, but are there people out there that actually like spider veins on their legs?

My retort is that I didn't recall any such advice and I didn't realize that treating veins would cause pigmentation changes. Although this does ring a bell when she mentions it, but I don't say so.

She then essentially tells me that I'm the idiot here, not her. She says "you people" were all at that cosmetic dermatology consultation and that's what they always tell "the groups". Just like, the sky is always blue. It's a fact. They said it and I didn't heed the warning.

At this point it is not lost on me that her reference to the room full of wrinkled, gray-haired, age-spotted women was like we were a bunch of puffy-lipped, breast-augmented, botoxed thirty year old bottle-blonds looking to get an eyelash transplant.

I mean, give me a break. I know there are people here with serious health concerns, but it's not like we aren't paying customers too. OUT-OF-POCKET paying customers, by the way. And I didn't just pull the nurse out of a life-saving melanoma removal to talk about botox. I made an appointment, like everyone else.

Then I ask her to just cancel my treatment for today, but to look at the angioma so I know what kind of treatment I can get for that, explaining why I don't have that information from the consultation. Since I am clearly wasting her time now, she gives a big sigh and tells me to show it to her.

Next I get a series of condescending remarks: "those are nothing" about some of my spider veins; "you know, that's not the angioma" while pointing to a vein, which I am well aware of and never claimed it to be; "yes, you are really tan" stated in the same tone she might say "yes, I see you are smoking while eating a large order of cheese fries and drinking a vodka tonic". Finally she looks at it and proclaims she needs to get the doctor to look at it too. Fabulous.

I then wait 35 minutes for the same doctor to come in and look at it (again) and tell us what is recommended. At least I'm not the only one that had her time wasted; the nurse was waiting too.

Then I bid farewell to the two women that look like they have spent way too much time in their coffins offices. I think they must drive to their medical facility in the dark of night so as to avoid any exposure to "the elements", like the beautiful sunshine that "my people" like to enjoy.

Skin spa here I come.

In the winter of course.

I'm not that vain.