Oh. My. God. How long has it been since I was last here?
Or rather: how is it that my life was still manageable with one child but with two has completely fallen off the rails? Do you know how long it has been since I answered a personal email? DO YOU? Weeks. WEEKS. If not Months. If I owe you an email, I'm sorry.
I said to The Man last night that every single Sunday I get to the end of the day and feel like I should be handed a medal. Because between the start of the day at 7am and the end of it around 9 the two of us do. not. stop. I mean the cleaning! The shopping! The laundry! The dishes! The cooking! oh, and the CHILDREN! For TWO DAYS! Yeah. It's just ... wow. And you know? I'm not complaining, not really. Life is full but full is awesome, and having little kids IS a lot of work, and it's just for a short time (you know. In terms of life length.) and we are SO privileged to have such great kids, such healthy kids, and to have each other and to have good jobs that are flexible. Yeah. Life is very good to us.
But wow, could I ever use a nap.
My parents called the other night wondering why I hadn't used the cheque they sent for a massage. I laughed. The idea of having time off for a massage! The idea!
And then I wrecked my back carrying a 20 pound baby and 15 pounds of groceries and had a massage last Friday, which was blissful. But less so when one is being massaged for an injury, because it's kind of like someone poking a wound over and over for an hour.
SO. The state of things. So! Much! To! Write! So! Little! Time!
Part of the reason for the craziness is that my daughter has now started walking. And GOING. And expressing her opinion as well, which often involves going OUTSIDE, people, what's UP with being cooped up in his BORING LITTLE HOUSE. She talks, too, and says ... what, 20 words? More every day, and her articulation is pretty awesome too. In no particular order, she can say ...
up
out
off
baby!
mama
dada
hi
bye
eat
berry
cat
juice
uh-oh
yay!
shoes
And a few others that escape my memory. But time is precious! Moving on! Her receptive language is awesome too, so that now I can say stuff to her like "Let's change your diaper" and she'll come with me to where the change table is, or "let's eat" and she'll point at her mouth. If you ask her to touch her head she will, and she knows her fingers and toes and says "boop" when she presses her nose. Or in the vicinity of it.
She still has the world's tiniest feet, and wears a 6-9 month old shoe at almost 14.5 months. Keep in mind this is a kid at the 75 percentile for height; it's truly amazing she doesn't fall over more. But somehow she manages to balance on her tiny tootsies, and it's just up to me to find shoes that fit. Which is H-H-H-HARD because most 6 month old babies don't WALK, after all, so all the shoes they have are these little decorative ones, which means that I can't walk into the local cheap place and buy runners, I'm off at the specialty baby stores spending $50 a pop for her for shoes. Which is probably more than I spent on the last pair I bought for me. Two years ago. When I last bought shoes for myself.
Her hair is getting longer, finally, but she's still got that receding baby hairline which is leaving me in a quandary about what the heck to do about it -- cut it? Leave it? The hair on top will soon be in her face, but it's not hair that's appropriate for BANGS, per se, because it's from farther back on her head, but at the same time it's too wispy to go to the side -- at least, too wispy to stay that way, so.
Yeah, I know. Me and my BIG PROBLEMS.
My son is approaching kindergarten with a great deal of excitement. He's been his usual mixture of wild delight and aggravating annoyance recently. How is it that a kid who can be so thoughtful one minute can be so obtuse the next? Oh, right: a work in progress, as ALL CHILDREN ARE. He's so TALL. And HEAVY! And full of his own opinions on things! It's just ... who is this person? And what happened to my baby? I look at pictures of him as a small baby and I can hardly believe it's the same person.
We've had no more repeats of the "I'm bored and acting out" behaviour at daycare, much to my relief. It feels a reprieve, to be honest, from what might come next. I had a long conversation with a colleague / friend who I don't see regularly who informed me that last year while I was on leave she pulled her son from the school I was planning to send mine because they weren't able to deal with the fact that he "just wanted to sit in a corner and read!" I ... had no words. I'm trying now not to panic about sending my kid there.
One thing that is delighting me beyond all reason is his "adoption" of another kid at daycare. It's that time of year that the three year olds start coming to the preschool centres; when The Boy came, two years ago, there was a kid there who was 5 who was SO NICE to him, and always invited him to play and included him, and I was just SO in love with this kid because the transition was hard and he made The Boy feel much more comfortable. And the other day when I picked him up the teachers told me that The Boy had really made friends with this little kid -- really little, he's tiny -- and had been helping him around all day, and even putting his shoes on and stuff like that. It's times like this that you start thinking that all the stuff you do to try and raise a human being instead of a savage is really going to pay off. Thank God.
One of the things I've been marvelling about recently is how stereotypes can be SO TRUE. I never realized this until I had both a boy AND a girl, but I distinctly remember my son, between 1 and 2, suddenly, with no prompting from us, starting to point out all the BIG! TRUCKS! there are on the road. And that morphed into construction vehicles and for the past year or so the kid has been SUPERHERO CRAZY, and we're buying him comic books as rewards for good behaviour. And my daughter? Obsessed with BABIES. OMG the BABIES. Every single picture of a baby she sees, she points out. An ACTUAL baby? OMG the words. She loves her baby doll. She carries it around. She hugs it. She kisses it. She plays with purses and cosmetics and loves to put on and take off her shoes. I bought her new shoes last week. Holy. Moly. The excitement and the Off! On! Off! On! WHO IS THIS CHILD?
Now I know this isn't the same with everyone's kids, but it sure seems my kids got a how-to book on how to be stereotypical in the womb and / or a big shot of testosterone / estrogen or something because MAN. They are SO. PROGRAMMED. And I mean this not in a brainwashed way, but just in a genetic way. They are who they are, it's just how it is. And now I can buy the dollhouse I always wanted to have as a kid. SQUEEE!
In other life happenings I'm still trying my best to lend support to the friend whose husband just left -- it's still an inexplicable happening, to her, to her children, to her husband's family, and I find it all terribly sad. Another friend is finalizing a divorce; another is having child custody issues. And this morning I got the news that another friend's cancer has metastasized. The news-bearer didn't seem too concerned, didn't know much about it, but Dr. Google seems to think that prognosis is "good" -- but that's a relative good. Good as in 2-3 years, not as it used to be, in mere weeks, I suppose. She's 55. Sure, older than me. But still much, much too young. Another friend is staring down the diagnosis of a chronic illness, and I'm wondering: is this just a bad month? Or am I now at an age where crappy things start happening to people I know? I don't know. And I'm sad about it, very sad, while at the same time feeling oh so very blessed in my life, despite the fact that there are crappy things in my life too.
The other day I was taking a break -- when a break means, not cleaning, and just paying attention to the children. I lay on the floor, on the playmat, as I often do -- I get to relax, the kids talk to me, and climb all over me, and we laugh and giggle and have fun. My daughter climbed upon me, sat straddled upon my chest. My son, following suit, straddled my legs. He made choo-choo noises, and shouted "ALL ABOARD THE CRAZY TRAIN!"
Such is my life, indeed. Crazy. Wonderful.
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