Category Archives: Child Wrangling

New Season

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Something fantastic is happening within the walls of my everyday life. Though the weather says Summer and the calendar says Autumn, our life is accepting the contradictions and melding into a strange, wonderful trifle of peach-raspberry-pumpkin-spice pie.

Yesterday morning a small, precious creature rose from his bed, used the bathroom, changed his clothes, and tromped downstairs to find his brother, who had engaged in a similarly self-directed ritual half an hour before. There was no struggling to climb into my bed, no sweet cuddling and twirling my hair, no early-morning screaming, no nursing, no heart-piercing dread of him falling down the stairs, no mid-night panic that he might have died in his sleep.

My youngest stands at the doorway between baby and child. And it’s amazing. Incredible to watch, intense to fathom, and lovely to experience. The steady flood of adrenaline that has colored my life for almost seven years has slowed. Anxiety pumps through me infrequently now. I pause. I breathe. I blink.

I didn’t remember what blinking felt like. Doesn’t that sound twisted? I had forgotten to blink, or couldn’t blink, or wouldn’t allow myself. To blink.

It’s quite nice, I must say, to stop the visual input, lubricate my eyes, and rest my brain. For a whole second every now and again. Quite delightful.

Last week the two boys and I walked into a restaurant and I asked them to sit down. They did. And I dropped my shoulders. I ordered burritos, paid, got water and salsa. During that two full minutes, I didn’t panic that they were falling down and cracking their heads, that they would fight, that they were bugging the other customers, or that they would run out the door and I’d lose them forever. I looked over once or twice, and they were sitting. And talking.

As though they were real, live humans.

Life is more like life now and less like a muscle-clenching jolt through incessant struggle and fear and joy and crying. Mothers with tiny new babies and precocious toddlers know the unblinking cycle of love and panic and love and panic and love and panic and frustration and love and panic. But elementary school and preschool have a different rhythm. The pace still daunts, but there are breaks for air. Time to drink water, enjoy hugs, breathe through frustration, and hold conversations.

This world is foreign, but I no longer feel as though I’m a human forced to live amongst bats.

My life is increasingly mine: a three-dimensional structure to layer and paint and plan. And inhabit. Time no longer flies by with me hanging on for dear life. I am in my skin, I own my voice, and I’m creeping toward a time when I will again make powerful decisions about who I am and what I want.

I’m not saying my children stole my power, though the sensation I’m finally shaking would make more sense if I were a vampire and they had mirrors strapped to their heads. And bottoms. And feet. I’m saying that I chose to parent in a particular way, and that I won the Lottery of Intense Children, the result of which is that my ability to exist in my own life has simply been missing for seven-and-a-half years.

And now that I’m coming back from life in a distant, alien land studying in a  foreign language to be someone I’ve never actually intended to be,  I have choices about how I’ll put the pieces of my life together. This is decision time. I’m debating returning to full-time corporate work. I’m contemplating law school. I’m even thinking of going back to teaching. I’m finishing my novel (yes, still). I’m both taking and turning down freelance work.

So why continue the blog? I began this blog five years ago because I felt lonely and frustrated as an intensely driven, full-time parent of a highly sensitive toddler. In moments of solitude I used this space to process my thoughts and feelings. I wrote my frustrations and my triumphs. I found ways to make going crazy sound funny. I vented online to keep from spiraling deeper into depression.

And the blog found an audience. As my son grew and changed and turned our family upside down in all the ways a small child can, I wrote and was heard. I helped readers and they helped me. We became a community and it felt nice to talk with the kind of people I never found in person while we lived in Southern California. The blogosphere kept me sane, so I did my best to write well for them.

When we moved to Northern California and when Butter was born readers were loyal and kindly listened while I stumbled about, trying my best, failing, and trying again. I wasn’t as funny as I had been with only one child, but I tried. And it was enough. Because with two small children and a nighttime freelance career, all you can do is try.

Or drink.

But the heart of this blog—loving my children and clawing toward an unseen buoy while fighting the upheaval to my sense of self—might not be my truth any more. I’ve accepted the major sacrifices and changes that parenthood on my terms has wrought, and I’m beginning to see a richly warm light at the end of a long, dirty, dark, wonderful but claustrophobic tunnel.

So is aging out of a major phase a reason to kill the blog? Nobody here naps any more. I’m not writing at naptime. I’m writing and researching and parenting and cooking and avoiding and volunteering and striving and observing when I can, without marking time based on what tiny creatures do. That which now feels more relaxed and less frantic might be less interesting.

Is that enough reason to stop blogging?

I hope not.

Because this new feeling? This sense that I might actually make it and that my children might actually make it and together we might actually make something we’re proud of? This is an experience I’d really like to share.

I hope you’ll stick around to hear what happens.

Learning a new language

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As soon as a baby is born, we work to learn their language, and they ours.

Each cry means something different. Each coo, burble, and shriek conveys an idea and it’s our job to interpret as best we can.

We try to learn and we struggle to communicate. So it goes with baby sign language, toddler babbles, preschool mispronunciations, elementary school obsessions.

Right now I’m learning two languages.

The simultaneous rise in importance of proprietary LEGO languages, Pokemon lingo, and team sport jargon have been relatively easy to pick up. All I need to do with my seven-year-old teacher is show interest, and he’ll explain everything. Somewhat patiently. He gets rather mad when I can’t remember which ninja possesses which fictional power, but I suppose he gets impatience and a resistance to foolishness from the X chromosome I gave him. And so I forgive. And learn.

The three-year-old is very insistent that I learn his language, and that I respond appropriately to every cue. He has many rules and is dogmatic about proper adherence. This is more difficult, since he’s taken to spelling his secret language.

“P.O.B., Mom!” he’ll shout.
“Um, okay!” I’ll offer.
“No. Mom. P.O.B. means look at me right now this very minute.”

Okeedokee. Except that pob doesn’t mean look at me. Neither do any of the other words you’re spelling.

Today P.U.V. meant please take off my shoes. And if I forgot that, even once, he screamed. “MOM! P.U.V.! Don’t you know what that means?”

Nope. I don’t. Because it’s pretend, you’re a tyrant, and I don’t like this game. “I forgot, pumpkin. You have to remind people gently when you’re teaching them.”

“Hey, Mom. P.O.C.”
“P.O.C.? What does that mean?”
“Moooooom! You said it so you should know it.”
“Um…okay. P.O.C. means I should turn off the hose.”
“No, mom. Workers never turn off the hose. P.O.C. means please dig with me.”
“Babe, you know I’m the sweeping worker and the paint worker and the mower worker but I’m not the digging worker.”
“P.O.S., Mom.”

Oh, dear goddess, as tempted as I am to say,”right back at you,” please tell me that doesn’t mean what I think it means.
“What does P.O.S. mean?”
“It means let’s go. Time to work.”
“Okay, buddy. Let’s go work.”

Just please tell me you won’t holler P.O.S at me when we’re in public. Because I’m pretty sure with your brother’s penchant for profanity and your high volume, we’re in for a rough time explaining things to your respective schools.

P.O.S, y’all. P.O.S.

Caught between a rock and a moderately challenging place

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The week before school started and the first week of school, Peanut turned his anxiety about starting second grade and his smallness in the face of big change into kindness toward his brother. For the first time in their lives, we had full days of genuine cooperation, joyful play, and sibling kindness. They’ve been nice to each other before, but it was always short-lived.

Late August and early September were just sibling heaven. I memorized the feeling of joy at watching them lead each other in play, offering each other kind words and gentle reminders that they, together, are a team. I felt down to my bones the calm of an absence—absence of fighting and teasing and retaliation—being filled with hope and love. My adrenal glands ceased production of adrenaline and my body started to recover from the stress of the past two and a half years. Okay, three and a half years. Okay, four and a half. Ah, hell…eight years.

I am so grateful for that eye in the storm because it taught me what might be.
What will be.
What won’t be. Specifically, incarceration and millions of dollars in therapy.

And then it changed. Peanut got impatient and mean. And I’ve tried to piece together what changed.

Because I really want that lull of sibling peace again.

And today I knew. Because for the first time since the day before kindergarten, he cried and told me he didn’t want to go to school. That he wanted me to come to the classroom with him. That he wanted to go home.

I hugged him and told him parents aren’t allowed in the classroom yet, by the teacher’s request. I reminded him we had an afterschool date planned, just the two of us.

I told him he would be okay. I told him he’s kind and wonderful and that he works hard and listens well, and those are the things that make school days go by quickly and productively.

Mostly I lied.

And I died a little. Because I wanted to take him home.

The first week, he was at an ideal table with two girls he knew, both of whom are bright and kind and silly. And who follow the rules. My son, the defiant, willful, rude creature at home, is a rule follower in public. He’s very cautious and does not believe in rocking the boat. He wants to play and have fun and fly under the radar. He values colleagues who do their work and leave him alone and engage in occasional harmless silly behaviors, not disruptive shenanigans.

Well, a few days into school the teacher moved last year’s Biggest Frustration right next to him. And the beginning of the second week she changed his table entirely to the one with two of the class’s Most Frequent Disrupters.

He’s devastated. He’s trying to muddle through and acknowledge that he has no power in the situation. But damn, that’s a rotten place to be. Powerlessness sucks.

I asked him to brainstorm solutions. Every night the whole family talks about their favorite part of the day, their biggest challenge, and how they handled it. The seating topic has been his biggest challenge for at least a week. Tablemates kicking each other under the table, jostling the table to break others’ concentration, jolting into neighbors’ arms while they’re writing.

“That sounds like a lot to handle,” I said. “How are you going to address it?”

He suggested just trying to avoid them.

“That’s a possibility,” I said. “What else is there?”

“I guess I could tell them to stop.”

“True. Any other options? Best way to find the right option is to think of as many as possible.”

“I could ask the teacher for a new table. The one with…”

As he fantasized about being at the table with the quiet and respectful kids, I thought about the difficulty of being introverted at school. I thought about the very different challenges of kids who have processing differences and disturbances at home and insufficient support systems. And the ones with mean streaks.

I know that my earnest, sweet, lovely child will have challenges his whole life. I know that he has to learn to work through the difficulties to prepare for the real world. I know that colleagues are often rude and brutish and stupid and lazy and all manner of terrible, so there’s no need to protect him now from what he’ll eventually find at work.

I know that life is not easy for students with neurological and biological and sociological challenges, either.

But I want so badly to pull my kid out of school forever so we can face the world together. Without quiet kids or mean kids or disruptive kids or hardworking kids or irritating kids.

Just me and Peanut. The way it used to be.

I also know I will serve him better if I teach him coping skills for life’s annoying jackasses, instead of teaching him to run to Mom.

So I’ll just cry a lot while he’s sleeping, and gently teach coping skills while he’s awake.

But man, I totally want to teach him to run to Mom.

How do you handle wanting to protect your child(ren) from all that hurts them? Tough love? Pull them out of bad situations? Teach them kindness and strength and hope for the best? Cry and overeat and hope that things are never, ever hard for your family? [Scratch that last one. It was a hypothetical that I completely, totally made up. As a joke. Yeah…a joke.]

Dental guilt

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Raised by a dentist, I have always held dental hygiene higher in importance over most other personal hygiene. I’ll skip shampoo more often than advisable and I’ll forgo shaving. But I have to brush and floss twice daily. Because that’s what people in my family do.

And I’ve brushed my kids’ teeth since the very first one erupted July 9, 2006. I did not need to look that date up, because I know my children’s dental histories.

When Peanut was diagnosed with a cavity at age 7, I felt shock and sadness. We’d been slipping a bit on the brushing, and had remembered very few morning toothbrush communions that year. We had split parental duties a bit and I brushed the younger child while Spouse monitored and rebrushed for the eldest.

But Spouse is not as dentally retentive as I am. And he let two minutes become one. Or less.

So after the cavity was filled I resolved to do all the brushing myself.

At night.

In the morning, though, I reminded Peanut of his jobs and wrote (and drew) a morning chart as suggested in The Secrets of Happy Families. His jobs were to get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth, pack his backpack, and check the weather to decide on shoes and jacket. But he rarely brushed in the morning. And I started to rely on Spouse again during the interminable evening routine. Chaos. Screaming, wailing, running, tickling chaos. So once again I brushed the little guy while Peanut increasingly took on his own dental hygiene.

Second cavity at age 7.5.

Both have been in permanent teeth.

Both, I have to note, have been without dental insurance.

And both are my fault.

Yes, I should be able to give a seven-year-old child a task and expect him to do it passably well. But I suppose there’s no need to get petulant at having to ask repeatedly and remind and plead and cajole and glare and remind again. I suppose I was wrong and it’s every parent’s job to ask seven times every single day for a basic and important task to be done, right?

Yes, I should be able to trust his father to brush him well after the initial juvenile pass. But I guess there’s no need to rely on other parents in the family to do a good job with something as important as dental health. I guess I should have to brush three mouths three times a day if I want us all to be cavity-free.

I guess.

So for at least a night I laid awake, terrifically disappointed in myself that my small child, for whose health and safety I am wholly responsible, will for his entire life have two molars that have been drilled and filled with foreign substances. And that will probably, in decades, need to be further drilled and additionally filled. It’s my fault that he will probably also have potentially toxic (though BPA-free) sealants on his teeth.

That he is broken. Invaded by bacteria. Vulnerable. Weakened. Compromised.

All because of me.

And then I woke up and thought of all the things I try so hard to do right. Food and kindness and respect and exercise and reading and science and math and listening and vocabulary and five-point harnesses and non-toxic lunchboxes and lead-free backpacks and friendship and history and family and sunshine and sunscreen and connection and nature and…

I stopped.

And thanked goodness for dental science and dentists and glass ionomer and resin composites. For disclosing tablets and timers and hygienists who teach what a child will not believe from his parents.

For lessons learned from making mistakes.

And for peace following acceptance and a plan to move on.

Maybe I’ll sleep better tonight. Right after I brush my teeth.

Of nostalgia and new generations

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Oh, how my heart skipped a beat when I picked up my seven-year-old Peanut from camp and he held out this and asked me to pick a number:

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Squeeee! I love these I love these I love these! I thought.

“Ten.”

With impressive dexterity he counted out ten, deftly pinching the fortune-teller out and in.

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“Okay, um…Blue.”

He grinned as he spelled it out, again moving more quickly than I thought someone new at something could.

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“Orange.”

He slowed a bit at spelling orange, but did it.

And I get…

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Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold the phone. Never in all my elementary school years did I have that for a fortune. It was usually about kissing someone or marrying someone or wearing a certain outfit.

I looked askance at the camp counselors.

“I got die. That’s not how I remember these things.”

One of them smirked. “Yeah, I got die earlier today, too.”

I frowned a bit. “It it a command? A suggestion?”

His favorite counselor shrugged. “An inevitability?”

“Yes, well…”

The proud young man had his brother choose. Number, color, color…

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“Get a cougar? He gets a cougar? I die and he gets a cougar?! Life is so unfair.”

Peanut is simply beaming. He’s thrilled that the family finally has a cougar. Butter begs him for another try.

He chose a different number. And a different color.

Same result.

Dude gets two cougars. And I’m still dying.

This is some bullsh*t, y’all.

So I ask Peanut to make me a fortune-teller when we get home. He says he doesn’t know how. Never mind. I have made hundreds in my lifetime. Give me that thing and I’ll deconstruct it.

No problem. We grab a stack of paper and go in the yard. I have three fortune-tellers done before the kids have even remembered to ask for a snack.

Peanut makes this follow-up:

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Pretty weak, if you ask me. Win a medal? Pbbbththth. Forty-four pieces of gold? Meh. Drink pee? Geez, boys are gross.

Butterbean suggested the following. All are verbatim answers to the following questions: “What numbers do you want me to write; what choices do you want me to write; and what do they get if they choose that answer?”

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Note that he always chooses B.O.G., which is frosting. B.O.C., B.O.P., and B.O.B. are less popular. With everyone.

Now I make a proper device of happiness and goodness.

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That’s right…choose between apple pie and strawberry shortcake. I dare you. (I count out only the letters for the fruit, not the whole dessert. I’m old and don’t need fortune-teller arthritis.)

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Oh, yeah. Peach cobbler or blueberry pie. Colors my butt. things are gettin’ REAL up in here.

So Peanut picks a number. And a pie. And a blueberry tart.

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You got it, reader. I populated the whole thing with delightful ways to make mom feel good.

When he heard his fortune, the seven-year-old who often rolls his eyes and runs when I ask for affection actually shrugged, walked over, and gave me one heckuva hug.

You have to make your own fortune, people. That’s all I’m saying.

 

Peanut goes on strike

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Peanut, my seven-year-old, refused to go to camp today.

He’s never wanted to go to camp. His first try was two weeks of camp the year between kindergarten and first grade, and he loved it. Except that he hates new things and doesn’t like new people, and is generally resistant to all experiences except the ones he’s just had one minute ago. Sigh. It’s as though his neophobia is genetic or something.

(Fun trick: call me and invite me to Hawaii tomorrow. I will panic and break out in sweat and tell you thirteen reasons I can’t go. And in three weeks, when I finally get used to the idea, I’ll call you to find out how your trip was. And I’ll still be glad I didn’t go because it was all just too much to process right now.)

So it’s clearly his own weirdness that gets him to this avoidance of all potential fun. Not my fault at all. As with all his flaws, I had nothing to do with either the nature or the nurture involved.

Ahem.

So in January, I went all New-York-parent on him and told him we had a month to decide on camps, upon penalty of missing all the good camps and being stuck with each other on our own for ten weeks without enough ideas to get us through. He wanted three weeks of camp. I talked him into five. We both felt we’d be okay with that number.

And I would be.

If the little headstrong (not my fault), opinionated (also not my fault), debate-seeker (totally not me at all) guy would go to camp.

He has attended three weeks’ worth of outdoors-y day camp in the eight weeks he’s been off school. And today should have begun week four. But last week and this weekend and this morning he told me that there was no way. His friends loved this camp last year, but he tried it as a partial backup when he couldn’t participate in a super-cool, two-week archery-lacrosse-rugby-soccer-jai’alai-badmiton sports camp because of his broken arm. And he hated it. It was boring, unimpressive, and long, he said. They didn’t make good use of the forest in which the camp is located, he said. The choices they offer are dumb, he said. It’s a waste of being outside in the summer, he said.

Upon hearing his refusal to go today I took a long look at his three-year-old brother, who has no preschool for another three weeks. I mentally thumbed through an index print of the summer highlights: fights over forts, fights over toys, fights over what to do, fights over who’s a better ninja.

“If you stay home, you have to hang out with us. All day. Including him.” I indicated with this pronoun a head nod to the completely angelic, adorable, fun-loving younger brother who is in no way aggressive (not my fault), abusive (so very not my fault), foul-mouthed (all his father), or moody (please…never a day in my life).

Peanut shrugged. He explained a few reasons why he’d rather roll with our planned day of board games and exploration than go to a mellow outdoor camp. None of the reasons was compelling or particularly articulate. None of them would sway my desire to continue with the day as planned.

But I let him stay home.

We spent a lot of time and money planning the summer so that he’d have some time with peers. I spent more effort than I’d like choosing to spend solo time with each child rather than sending them both to camp at the same time so I could work on my book. I voted to give them unscheduled time rather than give myself unscheduled time. It was a terrible vote except for the part that I totally stand by it because it’s what my kids needed.

So as I feel the waves of panic hit, knowing that most of summer is gone and I have worked on maybe one paragraph of my novel, I can’t see any point in forcing the kid into camp this week. Because his brother is home, bugging me engaging me in his creative preschool pursuits. It’s not like I’d get any work done, anyway. The money is spent either way, and it’s not as though an unstructured, boring outdoor camp is getting him into Harvard any time soon. And contrary to the impression I’ve left over five years of blogging about pulling my hair out while I muddle through as a woefully inadequate parent, I actually like spending time with the guy.

He stayed home from camp. We had a family dance party, we made homemade lemonade, we biked/scootered/ran to the distant grocery store for Juan Canary melon and salad bar and cookies. They scrounged up small toys for me to hide in plastic eggs for a Random Monday Egg Hunt. They asked for and fought through an episode of Planet Earth. They beat the tar out of each other over whose fort had a bigger blanket. They screamed about pillows and not sharing and some ridiculous thing about who’s allowed to use the gold origami paper. I calmly navigated each of these battles with suggestions and reminders and distractions. None of it worked, so I yelled a lot of “stop it”s when things got dangerous.

At the end of the evening, I asked Peanut to please, please try camp tomorrow. Just a half a day. Because we’ve paid for it. Because clearly a full day with his brother is not his idea of a good time. Because being bored in a forest beat the heck out of having a clump of your hair pulled out while under a fort blanket.

And I bet you right now that he will put his foot down and refuse to go. I’ll bet he chooses playgrounds and museums and craft projects and Monopoly and fights over unknown amounts of fun with a small group of strangers.

Because seriously, I would, too.

He said three weeks, after all. He said that in January, he said it in February. He said it in March and April and May.

Maybe next year I’ll listen to him. And schedule his brother for the same three weeks.

 

Schadenfreude

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It’s not nice to laugh at other people, I tell the boys. And I believe it. Mostly.

But our dear Rosí, the foreign exchange student who’s here this summer, just told me a story about what happened while we were camping last weekend.

She thought she found chocolate. She was so excited. Very little of our food appeals to her and she was thrilled to find something she recognized.

She tried the plump bean of chocolate. That was actually licorice.

And she now thinks that maybe she won’t eat ever again.

I tried not to laugh, but couldn’t help it. I think mistaking black licorice for chocolate might have been the cruelest thing that happened to her the whole trip.

And potentially the most hilarious.

She got me back, though.

By 6:00 a.m., my children are shrieking with laughter. Every day. There is no morning too early for poop jokes, namecalling, and silliness.

And by 6:07 they’re shrieking in murderous rages at each other. What begins in joy ends in tears. At warp speed and quite loudly.

So Rosí has nicknamed my youngest El Gallo.

The rooster.

Because he crows loudly. Early. And often.

Guess the joke’s on me.

Just in case, though, I’m putting licorice in every cupboard of the kitchen.

Because I’m mean. And running on a constant adrenaline-plus-lack-of-sleep high.

And mean.

Bugs, bugs, bugs.

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Oh, dear heavens, our seven-year-old got lice.

I really don’t need to say much more than that, for most of us had those insidious creatures as children or have parented small people growing those insidious creatures.

But holy guacamole it’s a lot of work. Our resolve to treat most illness and body issues naturally is seriously testing my rejection of all things insecticidal and toxic.

[UPDATE: See link at the end of the post for a three-week combing plan that requires no spraying, washing, nighttime masks, etc. I didn’t use it in the beginning, but have adopted it now.]

I knew as soon as I saw him scratching that I wouldn’t use neurotoxic insecticides that are illegal for use on farm animals and pets but legal for use on children. (Seriously, FDA? What is this, the billionth time you’ve made the wrong choice at the hands of major chemical companies?)

I also knew that choosing to eradicate bugs without toxic chemicals was going to make life way more challenging. But I had no idea just how challenging. I searched the Internet for nontoxic lice treatments to kill lice without poisons and came up with a regimen of head- and house-delousing that has, incidentally, almost killed me.

Why?

Day One:

  1. Shampoo and condition infected child with our regular, non-toxic products plus tea tree oil. Rinse with apple cider vinegar. Wash towel on hot. Estimated time: fifteen minutes.
  2. Strip all bedding from all beds, all clothes from drawers, all hats from rack, all costumes from basket. Put rugs outside. Sequester all washables in garage. Bag and seal all unwashable items (helmets, stuffed animals, etc.) Begin endless hot-water-and-tea-tree washing and drying on high. Estimated time: forty minutes.
  3. Take long-haired louse-festival and his brother to three stores to get supplies for two weeks of anti-lice tirades. Estimate time: one hour
  4. Spray both children with diluted tea tree oil. Comb each kid with his own with stainless steel nit comb. Boil nit combs. Time: two hours.
  5. Iron bunk bed mattresses. (Yes, with a clothes iron.) Put clean sheets on bunk beds. Estimated time: twenty-five minutes.
  6. Spray car seats with tea tree oil. Estimated time: five minutes
  7. Coat everyone’s heads with coconut oil (mixed with a dash of tea tree oil). Add shower caps. Estimated time: five minutes.
  8. Have Spouse nit comb my hair. Estimated time: forever.
  9. Continue laundry barrage. Estimated time: eternity.
  10. Sleep in coconut oil and shower cap. Estimated time: not long enough.

Day Two:

  1. Wake and comb coconut treatment out of both kids with nit comb. Ninety minutes
  2. Strip beds, throw all pillows, sheets, comforters into dryer in thirty-minute phases. Fifteen minutes
  3. Bathe kids. Wash hair, rinse with vinegar. Let dry, spray with diluted tea tree oil. Thirty minutes
  4. Take them to beach. Time? Who cares? It was lovely.
  5. Remake beds. Fifteen minutes.
  6. Give baths. Thirty minutes.
  7. Comb with nit comb. One hour. (Look at me, getting faster. Or careless.)
  8. Make beds. Fifteen minutes.
  9. Strip car seats, wash and dry covers. Twenty minutes.
  10. Regret bunk beds, hair, resistance to chemicals. All day.
  11. Apply coconut and shower caps. Five minutes.
  12. Reassemble and attach car seats. Thirty minutes.
  13. Have Spouse nit comb my hair: One hour.

Day Three:

Wash, dry. Strip beds. Wash, dry laundry. Comb kids. Wash, condition, rinse, dry kids. Make beds.

I’m going insane.

And I itch all over. I’m convinced I have lice, ticks, fleas, mosquitoes, and chiggers. All right now on my head.

Despite evidence that I don’t.

Day one eldest was crawling with bugs. Combed out maybe 50 disgusting little buggers. Youngest had none. I had none. Morning after coconut treatment eldest had at least a dozen dead bugs. Youngest had one tiny dead bug. Me, too. Morning after second coconut treatment eldest had no live bugs, two tiny dead bugs. Youngest had no live bugs, no dead bugs.

Tonight, after 48 hours and complete freaking adrenaline overload. I can’t find any eggs or lice on either kid. But eggs are microscopic and we have two more weeks, at least, of combing before we can be sure whatever hatches doesn’t grow big enough to lay its own eggs and start the whole insane cycle again.

So I’m psychosomatically itchy. And tired. And firmly resolved to keep up this incessant pace of laundry, combing, and coconutting.

The pediatrician says all we really need is the combing. And patience. Three weeks.
A friend says we could help ourselves by having the kids sleep in sleeping bags on the floor for ease of morning laundry.
The Internet says we have to keep doing all this for three weeks. Unfortunately, the Internet also says to buy lots of products, toxic and non-toxic. But nothing kills the eggs, and hatched critters can’t lay eggs if they’re combed out.

 

So.

What’s a little twelve-step day that takes six hours total? I have a spare six hours every day, right?

Wrong.

But. There are upsides.

  1. My kids are now sitting still (in front of the television, but I think anyone on the planet with excuse me that one) for an hour each day.
  2. We’re cleaning out the freezer of all the emergency, just-in-case frozen meals. Because there’s no way I’m cooking, too.
  3. The bugs seem to be gone for now. Or at least they’re on their way out. I have bested them with my will. And will continue to do so.
  4. I’ve finally needed the numbered-list formatting on my five-year-old blog.

So I guess there are silver linings to every creepy, crawly, disgusting parasite.

Right?

[UPDATE link http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/theliceprogram/index.html%5D

Sibling rivalry: the foreign exchange edition

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Before Butter was born, I read a lot about preparing children for a sibling. I read about how to handle conflict between siblings, how to channel competition into cooperation, and how to find family tranquility.

I forgot to do that before our foreign exchange student arrived.

My boys helped prepare her room and drew her pictures to decorate her walls. They helped me shop for groceries she might like. And Peanut, our seven-year-old made a list of places we should take her. All very sweet.

But since she arrived, Butter is completely unimpressed.

Okay, that’s an understatement. He despises her.

When our temporary daughter talks to him, he shouts at her. “Don’t talk to me!”

I remind him that we talk nicely. That if you don’t want to answer, you can say, “I don’t want to talk.” But screaming at our friend “don’t talk to me, stupid Rosí!” is a one-way ticket to alone time.

She is flabbergasted by his rudeness. She has asked him to be nice, and she has told him she doesn’t like yelling. In fact, at one point she told him he couldn’t come in her room. She explained that, “Mommy talks nicely so she can come in my room. Daddy talks nicely so he can come in my room. Peanut talks nicely so he can come in my room. If you want to talk nicely, you can come in my room. But when you yell? You cannot come in my room. Goodbye.”

It didn’t work. He walked out of her room and slammed the door.

I’ve explained to him that he’s my son and I love him. That she’s a guest and we have to talk nicely. That I’m not her mom…I’m his mom.

But he knows that she’s the new baby in the family, taking time and attention from mom.

In her kind attempts to tidy the house, she moves his treasures and puts his shoes in the wrong place.

In her need to understand or clarify or get directions, she is taking from him what he believes is rightfully his.

And she came in full adult form, so he didn’t get his chance to poke and pinch her and test her pain tolerance as an infant.

She interrupts him when he talks, not hearing his thinking pauses in part because she’s unused to the rhythms of a three-year-old.

When he needs something, she often needs something, too. Sometimes she has to wait, and sometimes he has to wait.

She often calls me Mommy.

Worst of all, for him, she often doesn’t understand what he says. She gently tells him, “I don’t understand what you said,” hoping that he’ll repeat himself. Or miraculously become more articulate than his three years will allow.

He bellows, “I said ‘don’t talk to me,’ stupid Rosí!”

¡Ay, dios mío!

As our Dominican guest told me this week, my children are making me an old woman.

You’re not terrible.

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Tonight during our interminable bedtime ritual, the rollercoaster of “I love you…when will this nonsense end…I love you…I can’t take this one more stinking minute…I love you…good god what is it now,” Spouse did something silly. And Three found it horrible. And I told the little guy, to stave off the raging insanity that is a three-year-old Butter freakfest, that Daddy was only trying to be silly, and that it didn’t turn out the way he’d hoped.

And somehow in there, I said, in my best silly voice, “because Daddy is Terrible.”

Immediately, Seven said in just the right voice, “He’s not terrible.” And my sweet Peanut wrapped his arms around my neck and sat in my lap and whispered, “He’s not terrible and you’re not terrible. Everyone makes mistakes. You make mistakes. He makes mistakes. Everyone alive makes at least one mistake in their life. Probably more.”

And I kissed his head and told him he was right and brilliant.

And I waited until later to cry.

Because what I’ve waited for, in my pathetic, childish, needy way, has been for my children to show me the kindness I never show myself. To hear a thank you, to be told to ease up a bit. To be told I’m not as terrible as I think I am.

And my almost-second-grader whispered kindly in my ear that I should cut myself and my husband some slack.

I’m not an expert at anything. But I’m pretty sure that’s as close to perfection as life gets.

Equality

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Last week over breakfast, our foreign exchange student announced that, on BART, she saw her first gay person.

I snickered a bit privately, since she’s seen way, way, way more than that. But I wanted to hear her story.

She said that, in her country, being gay is bad. That two women kissing on the train is not okay.

I braced myself for what came next and held my breath because the kids were listening. We have a friend who is transgendered and my children think such humans are just another kind of friend to have. In fact, the youngest doesn’t know and assumes, as he should, that our friend is a man because he’s a man. Of course, Butter’s three and thinks most of the trucks on Bob the Builder are female. So he’s clearly not attuned to conventional gender clues yet. But I didn’t know for the first few months of my friendship, either, and learned about Adam’s apples the interesting way.

We haven’t talked to our kids about what it means to be gay or lesbian, in part because gender is something children notice early, but discussing homosexuality involves ideas about attraction and marriage and being more than friends, which are by nature more mature than my children are. They know every family is different, and that some families have kids but some don’t; some have two adults in the family, some don’t; and that the families with two parents might consist of a man and a woman, a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. They know that we really like that different types of people bring different ideas and the more ideas you hear, the better you can choose what you believe.

So when Rosí announced that in her country bring gay is bad, I was prepared to stop her so we could continue later. Her opinions and experiences are valid, but they’re not always appropriate for small children.

“Yes,” she continued. “In my country this is very bad. But I think killing is bad. This? Kiss? Do you say ‘kiss’ in this way? [Yes, but you can say ‘kissing’, too.] This is love, right? And love is good. So I don’t like what they do, and I don’t think it’s right. But it’s not wrong.”

I have to say, I was impressed. I asked my eldest if he understood what we were talking about.

“Do you know the word ‘gay’?” I asked. “You know the families we know with two dads or two moms? The word for having a partner who is the same gender as you is ‘gay’.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“So she’s saying that, in her country, people believe wanting to be a family with someone who’s the same is bad. But she thinks hurting is bad, and that loving is good. What do you think?”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “Kissing is only bad if the other person says ‘stop’.”

Well, damn, readers. He just covered equality and respect in one answer.

These are good, open-minded kids I have. The two I raised and the one who just arrived three weeks ago. May they always kiss people who say “yes.”

[I haven’t talked with our guest yet about the Supreme Court decisions of last week. But when the boys and I heard on the radio, on the way to school, that the justices said the federal government can’t invalidate a legal marriage by withholding spousal benefits, and that the people in California who don’t like gay marriage have no legal standing on which to contest it, I sobbed as I explained to my children how important it is for a country to say that all people are legally the same. Of course we’re not the same. But legally, all people have the same rights. I told them how important it is to know that not liking something is not the same as being hurt by it. And that not understanding something is a reason to find out more, not to pass laws. It’s never too early to train the next generation of legislators, executives, and justices.]

My baby again

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Some parenting moments are bliss. Some include intense pain. Most are drudgery and frustration tinted with laughter. There’s sometimes just the teeniest bit of yelling. Occasionally.

But some moments make you stop.

I didn’t see my son fall and break his arm. I didn’t get a terrifying phone call. I just picked him up from school and talked with him about the best and worst of the day just like we did any other day. The seventeenth or eighteenth thing he told me on the walk home was that his arm hurt.

Easy, as broken arms go. And so we didn’t handle any of it like a trauma. Time didn’t stop. The day didn’t really seem different (except the long wait for an x-ray), the school year finished without further incident, and summer began pretty much as usual.

But today the cast came off. And my eldest baby’s tiny little arm emerged from the green fiberglass weak and vulnerable. He said the air hurt and he was scared to touch anything. So I tried to hold his hand. But that hurt, he said. So I kept a respectable distance even though it killed me.

We were escorted toward the examining room, but he seemed hesitant. So I told the nurse we were going to wash his arm before we saw the doctor. We slipped into the orthopedic department’s bathroom.

I have not, since my boys were babies, been so careful with the water temperature as I was with this peeling, pasty, dirt-bracketed arm. And not since he was brand new have I so gently washed him. I wanted to scrub off three weeks’ of unshed skin cells, rub off the grime that had accumulated around his little thumb.

Instead, I carefully removed his elementary-school filth and restored, for one moment, a time in which he completely trusted me. Without making him feel scrubbed. Or small. I got to remember how much time dissolves into genuine care. And he got pure nurturing without feeling little.

Today’s arm-rebirth was sweeter than the quiet Scrabble sessions we have while his brother is at preschool. It was calmer than his lethargic fever days when he sleeps fitfully until he rests on my shoulder and is then out for hours cuddled against me.

Today time stopped so at least one limb of my seven-year-old could be a newborn again.

But this time we already knew and understood each other, so the moment seemed even more sweet and tender.

Maybe because I know now that we might not have more episodes of naked vulnerability.

With a newborn, you expect them to need you for a while.

Seven years later, I’m not sure if I’ll get any more moments like this.

IMAG3475-1

 

 

Things get real in the second week.

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My children are testing my superpowers this week.

My three-year-old wants to start ballet and baseball. On an all girls’ baseball not softball team, he says. And when does he get to be a girl, he asks.

“When do you think?” I counter. Bad for improv, good for parenting.

“Next month,” he says.

Good. His transition talk is scheduled for July. The oldest got the transition talk when he was Three, as well. Asked if he could take off his penis and get a vulva. I told him to talk with a physician when he is eighteen. Knows he’s supported, won’t bring it up again for fifteen years.

One down, two to go.

My foreign exchange student wants a tattoo. She asked me what I think. I told her if she talks to her mother and they both understand tattoos are forever and that they have several negative connotations in her home culture, then it’s her choice. I will let her stew and then tell her how much a good tattoo really costs.

Boom. Two down, one to go.

But the last one’s sick, poor little monkey. He’s the frustrated recipient of a 102 degree fever in addition to his unrelated broken arm. He tried unsuccessfully today to nap. Tossed and turned and whimpered. Until he asked me to squeeze into the couch with him. I did. He passed right out. And fewer than ten minutes in, rolled over and cuddled me in his sleep. Two hour nap.

Sometimes it’s good to be the mom. To a sweet little furnace, his transgendered toddler brother, and his tattooed sister.

 

Respite

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I know it’s wrong to enjoy sick kids’ sweet snuggling fevers. I know it’s wrong to hope, once in a while, that the whirling tornadoes in the house get the flu just so they’ll stop running for a few minutes.

And it’s beyond despicable to enjoy a child’s broken limb.

But dang, the peace that has swirled through our house since Peanut broke his arm is significantly changing my life. I feel hope and vigor and joy, y’all. I feel this might actually be why people make it through the day and still like their children.

See, a wounded child in pain avoids things that cause him pain. He might, for instance, avoid a younger brother and talk sweetly to him to ensure that roughness is kept at bay. He might stay nestled in bed to play with LEGOs already built instead of screaming in rage that things won’t work or running like a cheetah through the house from project to project. He might even, perhaps, ask to be read to, and put a head on the shoulder he’s so long said he is too old for.

I would never want my child hurt. I’m sad for him that he’s hobbled. But the silver lining is about 90% of the cloud for me, and I’m really enjoying the seachange that has come from this week.

I praise thee, bringer of peace and breathing room

I praise thee, bringer of peace and breathing room

One-armed activities

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Well, I’ll say one thing for breaking your arm on a school field trip…it brings out the creative side of your mama. Coming up with things for a seven year old with a broken arm sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? I mean, just because you temporarily can’t bike, skateboard, climb, write, draw, sew, do origami or carpentry, I’m sure there are enough activities in the world to keep you busy for all of June.

So without further ado, here is a list of things that a seven year old child can do, even with a broken arm. Dominant side, naturally. Because when first graders do something, they do it all the way. As close to the end of school as they can manage.

Bean bag toss. Honey, I said toss. Toss means lightly. Gently. Toss, sweetie. Okay, moving on…
Marbles. So if you flick the marble at the other…um, flick. Like this. Not tossing. That was the last game, peanut. Honey, don’t throw the marbles. Okay, let’s try something else.
Puzzles. I know. I’m bored, too. Wanna try tossing the pieces into a bucket?
Board games. Now you’re talking. Let’s play all our games dozens of times. Yay! Okay. One day down…
Blanket fort for reading. Pretty dark in here, eh? Try reading with a flashlight. Oh, right. One hand. Next plan…
Word find and word jumbles. You’re right, honey. Butter does start with butt, and yes, you can circle both words.
Stomp rocket. That was fun. Now let’s go on the roof and get them. Oh, no; not you. You might break your arm.
Soccer. I know you didn’t mean to, but you still get a red card for concussing the defender with plaster.
Bug habitat. Sure, I’ll carry this terrarium around while you look for bugs. No, I’m not napping. I’m looking really closely at this ant hill.
Sidewalk chalk. Wow, your spelling is getting better from those word jumbles. That *is* exactly how you spell butt.
Dictate stories Wow. That was a lot of inventions the character put on his vehicle. Where did he get the volcanic dynamite laser protoplasm? Oh. Right. Of course he grows it himself.
Photography. Take all the photos you want and we’ll make a book from them. Sure, we can take the camera outside.
Hike.
Beach.
Zoo.
Aquarium.
Berry picking.
Berry eating.

Good luck with your summer plans. Ours just got a lot more outdoorsy.