Rainfall

Today, September 19, holds Vancouver's first official rainfall warning of the fall and winter season.

Wheee!

Ages

Right now I have a 4.5 year old son and a 4.5 month old daughter.

This amuses me more than it should.

Complete insanity

Today I registered my son for after school care.

No, he's not in school. He's not due to start until September 2011. But I had to register him now to get a good spot. On the waitlist. At a school which is frankly my third choice. (Nothing wrong with the school. Just that one is closer to home, and another is closer to work, so this one is the most inconveniently located.)

The Man expressed wonder about my doing this so early, but I am totally blase about it now, having actually already signed him up for a program at our preferred school (the one close to home), and having registered my babies for daycare before my mother knew I was pregnant. (Eight weeks along with The Boy; four weeks with The Girl.) And with a year long mat leave, that's signing up your kid almost TWO YEARS before you will need care.

TWO.

YEARS.

Such is the insanity of daycare / after school care in this city.

But wait! It gets better! The reason I have to sign him up for after care in so many schools? Because the Vancouver schools are SO oversubscribed that even if you live in the catchement area, you are not guaranteed a spot. It's by lottery. So I have to juggle three schools and keep our options open and hope for the best and pray that some time next spring we get in at one school and get after care at the SAME school. The stars will have to align perfectly and etc. etc.

But do you know what the worst thing is? The worst thing is that none of this sounded completely batshit insane until I wrote it all down and explained it.

That's how brainwashed I am. This is not -- should not be -- normal.

But regardless, I will spend this year playing the waiting game and hoping and praying and all those things.

I guess now might be a good time to invest in a lucky rabbit's foot.

Wherin I mock myself

I've been a tad low on sleep recently --- Three nocturnal beings (cat, infant, four year old) are conspiring together to ensure the bags under my eyes continue to grow and I slowly become batshit crazy. Witness: Sunday, 3:30 am: baby awakens. Baby writhes, cries, starts shrieking requiring eventual move to living room rocking chair. 5am baby consents to sleep. Mother now wide awake slowly relaxes and starts sleeping. 5:30 am cat begins meowing. What? The sun is up, why aren't you? Cat meows intermittently until 6:30 when four year old gets up for the day. Sunday morning 10am, mother spends 30 minutes weeping on living room floor for no reason anyone including self can fathom.

Yeah.

Anyway it should come as no surprise that said awake baby cut her first tooth yesterday -- 4.5 months must be some kind of record!!!! (well. For us anyway ...) last night was also the first night in five months or so that my son fell asleep with his dad instead of needing his mommy. Of course this is a GOOD thing but you can imagine that my reaction was OF COURSE "noooooo!!!!' my BABIES!!!! They are growing up TOO FAST!!! SOB!!! WAIL!!!"

(Husband ducks down on couch scared of crazy wife)

I know every mother feels this way but isn't it a little crazy? We had children to RAISE them. And it's clear from every person on the planet that children GROW UP. This should not be a surprise nor a time for mourning. This is a celebration! A "we're doing it right all according to plan children developing normally!" celebration! Hooray! Wouldn't it be worse if my four year old was fully dependent on me for years to come, worse if my daughter didn't get teeth or hit other milestones??

Yes. Of course.

But the wide world is out there, and the wide world is both amazing and horrible. And when they are tiny and dependent you can shield them from the facts: that people aren't always nice. That people get hurt. That you don't always get what you want, and sometimes that's more serious than no ice cream after dinner.

And that in those cases all you can do is sit back and love them because you can't fix it. When my daughter is in pain and my son needs comfort I can fix that. Right now I can fix it. Kiss owies, soothe hurts, cuddle bad fears away. They are my babies and I want so much to protect them this way forever. And every step they take towards growing up is ever closer to my not being able to do that.

And sometimes I'm ok with that. I know that if I do my job properly as a parent eventually my kids will leave and go into the wide world and navigate all of it, good and bad. And I will be proud that my kids are functioning adults, and self-reliance (and teeth!) are an important part of that.

But.

Oh. But I will miss them so much when they are gone.

I rock, therefore I am

My son, once upon a time, took his vaccinations like a pro. I mean, his little infantness screamed blue murder but then would nurse, pass out, and wake as though nothing had ever happened. No fever or extreme fussiness or anything else.

When The Girl got her two month shots she one-upped her brother by sleeping it off. Almost all day she slept. Sleep, sleep, sleep. Whee!

So very smugly yesterday I went for her four month appointment thinking "heh, this'll be EASY" and even daring to think "hey maybe I'll catch up on some sleep tonight or tomorrow."

Ha. Ha ha. Hahahahahaha.

Oh don't get me wrong. I am still in the "aren't you lucky" camp. But she is running an oh-so-slight fever and has become very particular about things and lying THIS way and not THAT way is HORRIBLE, MOTHER HOW CAN YOU DO THIS TO ME? And was up last night ... I don't know how much. A lot, for her.

So once again I give thanks for the rocking chair and I rock and rock and rock and hold her and remind myself it won't always be like this. Like this, sleep deprived, headachy, cranky. Like this, just sit back and hold me mommy,cuddle me and kiss my tiny head, you're the only one who makes this better.

Summing up

I haven't posted much in the past few weeks and I have a lot to say, or so I think at 3am when up for a feeding. I should write this! or tell that story! and it probably isn't nearly so funny as I think it is at 3am, and in any case I've forgotten all about it by morning.

Three weeks ago my darling beloved husband left on a business trip. To India. For Two Weeks. And by God when he returned some of my first words to him were wow, you are NEVER doing THAT again. At least, not with a 4.5 year old and a 4 month old. Which is of course not a threat at all given next time he'll be away I'll have a 4.5+ year old and a five month old which is a world of difference.

Apparently this morning someone has found the italics key.

Anyway. So it was two weeks of combo solo parenting (six days, only two partial daycare days in there) parenting with my mom (five days) and parenting with The Man's parents (five days). I'd say parenting with my parents but my father was dealing with some stuff and doing his very best grumpy old man impression that he was hardly there and frankly we were better off for it since the few times he was around he a.) yelled at my four year old for putting his fingers through an already broken screen door b.) yelled at my four year old for closing a door, and c.) once told him to "stop whining! Be a man!" which pretty much made me crazy. I mean, I realize that my four year old whines more than is necessary and was going through an especially whiney phase then but he's also FOUR and I think the "be a man!" epithet really isn't going to bear much weight for another, I don't know, DECADE or so.

So. Not the best week for Dad.

The week with my in-laws went ok as well, but this time I started feeling crowded in my space rather than relieved by their presence, which I know is a sign that next business trip I am going to mostly go it alone and not ask them to drive from the neighboring province. I like them a lot, and I value the time to get to know them and for my children to spend time with them, but the week had enough moments of crazy that I think the getting-to-know time is best reserved for holidays. However I must admit that I love the fact that my windows were all washed (inside and out!) and my sink was repaired and toilet plumbed and my floors washed by hand (twice!) and my holes in the wall covered and the wall paper removed from my bathroom and my crown molding filled in. My father-in-law, he of the constant-head-pain-bad-heart-bad-knees-bad-ankles, he hates to be bored. And then tells me how bad he feels that he can't work as hard as he used to. I get tired just watching him. He is all kinds of awesome.

Let's see, what else is new?

I am both relieved and sad to see the beginning of fall -- relieved because my chubby baby didn't handle heat well (and neither would you if you were covered in insulation like she is. We don't call it fat around here!) and sad because wow -- where did the summer go? We had a nice one, good for Vancouver, but ... short. Very short. And in a very sunrise-sunset type of dealio I am very aware of the passage of time and mah baybee she is so old! And I will never have another! kind of thing. Which is true, she is so big and my leave is 1/3 gone already and I am still just so damn tired and shouldn't I be at the very least catching up on sleep by now?!

Apparently scratch that whole "my baby is so old stuff", as my biggest concern is "WHY AM I NOT MORE RESTED?"

At the doctor's yesterday she asked how I was doing and I think I said "I'm tired" about three times at which she barely batted an eye and merely said "it's a good thing this one is easier, make sure you sit down more" and waved away my "shouldn't I be stimulating her cerebral growth?" concern. Sit down and rest. Which is advice I can get behind and all, if only my daughter can. When I complain about the tiredness and tell the doctor I think I should be less tired she looks at me like I am crazy and tells me again that I have two children, one of which is still up in the night. Why I think I should be running marathons is rather beyond me.

The only other thing of barely important note is that I yet again went out today and bought socks for my four year old. Where on earth to little boy socks disappear to? I have hardly ever had to buy clothes for him with all the hand-me-downs but we have spent a fortune in SOCKS.

Bragging

My daughter is four months old. She babbles, she coos, she blows raspberries and on occasion will open her mouth wide at a request for a "baby kiss" and will plant slobber on your cheek. I always exclaim in delight at this and she laughs. She also laughs when I tickle her or chant nonsense at her.

She scoots along the floor backwards, she loves to stand so much that we bought her an exersaucer before my arms broke from helping her, and she has already figured out how to play with some of the toys. She loves to roll over and is a total champ at it. She likes to watch her hands and feet and will lie there for some time gazing at one or the other.

She nurses a lot but loves to watch me eat. She has grown another two inches putting her above the 97th percentile for height, but isn't gaining nearly as much weight and has dropped from above 90 for weight to only about 80 in two months.

The doctor is impressed.

She is easier than her brother but in different ways -- she's often easier to get to sleep, but I think fusses more during the day (he was easy to keep happy: carry him and never stop walking.) She is more selective and changes her mind over what soothes her more often.

My son ... ah, my son. My son who can do positive and negative number addition and subtraction in his head. My son who read a book about the body with his grandmother who told me later that the only word he couldn't read was "osteo-arthritis", which I figure is fine since most 4.5 year old kids can't read C-A-T and so missing O-S-T-E-O-A-R-T-H-R-I-T-I-S is ok by me. My son who is getting better at controlling and labelling his emotions and coping with them, who weathered the long trip of his father's with aplomb, who hugs and kisses his sister and tells her he loves her, who comforts her when she cries in the back of the car ... my son who is so excited about his books and getting new books and reading them at night and asking "what happens if we read ALL of these mommy? What happens when we are ALL FINISHED ALL OF THEM?" and is relieved to know there are more books on earth than we could ever read.

My son who loves to play with me and hug me and we play a game where we kiss each other all over and I'm just so damn proud of how he has weathered all of it, the past four months. She's growing and changing and becoming a little person, but he's becoming a better person and I can't tell who I'm proudest of because I just don't know. I only know I love them both so much.