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Because Self-Therapy is Free

12/9/2008 in , Fresco, more about me!, the parenthood, trombone | 3 comments

If you search my blog for “loud” you get a handful of returned entries, 90% of which are about Fresco. Also, they are dated one per month, roughly around the 20th of each month. So this is a bit early but here is your monthly installment where I complain about how loud my baby is.

I know, it is so pointless to complain about a loud baby, or a baby of any “kind”. Can I put it this way, does it sound less whiny: imagine you have a baby who is in some fundamental way the opposite of you. You are inherently happy; he never smiles. You are a sports fan; he likes opera. You have a degree in Linguistics; he doesn’t speak until age 3.

Saint Aardvark and I are quiet, conflict-averse people. We have a shouting baby. It is stressing us out. Since I cannot change the shouting baby, I have been thinking about me, how I can change my approach so that I do not go crazy.

We attribute complex motives to the shouting, which says more about us than him. At nearly 8 months old, his motives are pretty clear cut – food, sleep, clean butt, love, entertainment. At X:00 am we are irrational, accusing him of extreme attention seeking behavior, having no self control, no ability to self-amuse, all of which, from us, are some of the worst qualities, other than a tendency to favour Harley Davidson motorcycles, that you could possibly exhibit.

I am struggling to think of him as a person who has a collection of attributes, rather than as a fully formed personality who is defined by his attributes. He likes, dislikes, not he IS, he WILL BE.

And what do I fear about that handful of characteristics anyway? Isn’t it true that we dislike in others what we dislike most in ourselves? Am I an attention hog? Am I unable to self-amuse? Am I (gasp) needy?

I think a lot these days about how we grow up; what we are born with and what we gather from our experience. The person I am now a product both of genetics and of my experience as an only child of (loving), sensible, strict parents. Where would I be now if I were more assertive, less conflict-averse, more willing to make noise, say, Hey, OVER HERE, once in a while instead of demurring, No, I’m fine, everything is fine. If I had been less obedient (to a point), more overtly rebellious instead of taking my rebellion under cover; stealing, lying, hiding food under the bed. I don’t remember why I did those things, I only vaguely remember doing them. Writing it out and analyzing myself I would guess that it was my way of expressing my anger, my frustration, my darker self, without making any noise or attracting any attention while doing so. Be a good girl. Mind your manners. No I won’t but I’ll make you think I am.

(Why do I write? Am I afraid of the sound / fury of my own voice? Do rage-fueled blog entries count as shouting? I don’t think so.)

Better to shout then. Better to express, be bold, be boisterous, take a stand.

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In the summertime, Trombone, Fresco and I were at the park. It was around a long weekend and Trombone found an empty popcorn bucket on the ground. He picked it up and put it on his head, said, this is my popcorn hat. I said, OK. We walked uptown to get some groceries and he wore his popcorn hat the whole way. We were on the receiving end of a lot of smirks, shrugs, outright laughter. A toddler with a slightly soggy popcorn bucket on his head is pretty amusing. But he didn’t look at anybody. He was completely serious about his hat. And I thought, I love that my kid wears a popcorn bucket on his head. He doesn’t know it’s funny. He is just doing it because – well, who knows why. But he is not afraid to do it. He feels compelled to do it and he just does it.

I want to be like that, I thought. I want to be brave like that. I want to wear a metaphorical popcorn bucket on my head.

Then I forgot.

But now I am remembering.

Metaphorical popcorn bucket.

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Anyway, it was probably just his teeth. He actually gnawed on my wrist knuckle (is that what they’re called? the knob on the wrist?) today and it hurt like a bad ass full of cannon fodder. Only time will tell if I have the only baby in the world who has NO TEETH at all but the lungs of Braveheart.

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What We Don’t Inherit, We Get in the Mail

12/5/2008 in food, the parenthood | 7 comments

I read a piece in the Globe and Mail yesterday about in-laws. Apparently those old saws about mothers-in-law have been investigated and the findings are in; mothers are engineered to compete with their (sons’ female) mates. Whether or not this is true is not applicable to me because I have outstanding, incredible in-laws and so does Saint Aardvark. I realize I am very lucky because I do know a lot of people for whom “in-law” is synonymous with “person I want to poke. hard. with hot pokers.” But in our family we understand each other pretty well. Some of us, like SA and my dad, understand each other a little too well, but I try to be grateful rather than freaked out and then I enjoy all the booze they make in their respective homemade stills and it doesn’t matter anymore.

Last week we got a parcel from SA’s parents. It contained a Winnie the Pooh bed sheet and a number of books for Trombone. There was one small book for Fresco too but he ate half of it while I was looking at the bed sheet so he will get it back when he is 17 and no longer eating everything. We get these care packages pretty frequently; SA’s mom is the unofficial queen of Value Village and what she doesn’t sell for killer profit on e-bay she sends our way. But the best part of this package was the gift for me. A zippered bag filled with Taco Bell Fire Sauce.

I have written before (in 2003? feels like only yesterday!) about how annoying it is that Canada has precious few Taco Bells and how the TBs there are only sell Mild and Hot sauce, as though we can’t HANDLE THE FIRE, which is totally not true, just look at our Prime Minister –

(Lame Canadian politics joke. As you were.)

Anyway, I have been going on about it for a number of years now so unsurprisingly I am well known in the family for loving Taco Bell’s Fire Sauce. So much so that when SA’s aunt and uncle recently drove up to visit his parents, they went through America and ripped off a Taco Bell of its entire Fire Sauce supply and then it got mailed to me.

Everyone should have extended family like this.

Yesterday I made play dough. I highly recommend this activity because 1. you get to find the cream of tartar at the supermarket, which is kind of an adventure! (unless I am the only one who doesn’t keep cream of tartar in her house?) and 2. your toddler might really like it (the play dough, not the cream of tartar) and keep himself busy with cookie cutters while you try not to pass out from the killer head cold he gave you. (Also, 3. he might beat the play dough instead of his younger brother. Your mileage may vary. Mine certainly does.) When I was a kid, my mom worked as a preschool teacher so I have a lot of memories of play dough being made at our house. As I kneaded and kneaded and kneaded and added food colouring and kneaded, I felt, for the first time, like someone might look in my window and mistake me for a real mother. Not a dishevelled nanny or a deeply troubled auntie, but a real, honest to goodness, mother.

All those connections over history, advice and experience passed from woman to woman and what it takes is play dough. Funny old world.

(I used this recipe for Nature’s Playdough (only with real, poisonous food colouring instead of vegetable colouring) in part because it called for an ingredient I did not have and we needed a walk and a walk with a goal is a walk worth taking!)

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Meanwhile…

11/26/2008 in Fresco, new westminster, outside, the parenthood, trombone, two! children!, whiny | 9 comments

Hey good news! Everyone who commented on my last post gets a prize! ONE FULL DAY with Fresco!

I figure after 2 weeks I will want him in my house again.

Can’t think of a new way to phrase this. That baby is LOUD. Previously it was kind of endearing. Shows character. Makes him *him*. Last week, the day after his vaccinations, he spent the day being clingy and whiny and when he gets clingy and whiny, he shouts. Shouts if you put him down, shouts if he can’t see you anymore, shouts if he wants a toy and can’t get the toy. I am not used to this. Trombone would cry. I figured he was normal – I have heard that babies cry. The experiment is not a fair one; when was at home with Trombone crying, there was no one simultaneously saying, “Can I have a treat? Can I have a treat? Can I have a treat NOW? Can I have an Aero bar?” (thank you, Halloween.) So it was stressful, the crying, but at least I was only accountable to me and the infant. And I don’t remember Trombone being so fretful all day long like this.

Also, Trombone slept through the night at an early age. This baby still wakes up twice a night. I am plenty tired and short-tempered on a good day and then, THEN I spend the day being shouted at? And it’s not a “hey, could I get some service?” sort of shout. It’s a “HEY BITCH, WHERE MY FUN AT?” sort of shout. It is imperious and it echoes and it makes everyone around it cringe. Yes, I have that shouting baby at the grocery store. A million apologies.

So he did it this past Thursday. All day. But Friday – Sunday it was all sunshine and rainbows again so I figured Thursday was due to the vaccinations. Then Monday. Shouting. Tuesday. Shouting. This morning, I woke to the sound of shouting. I felt like a big piece of glass about to shatter into a million pieces. I couldn’t talk, couldn’t smile, couldn’t do anything but hold the baby, jam the soother in his mouth, keep him from shouting.

Who gets up at 5 am just to shout? It’s not civilized.

Possible causes of Shoutapalooza include: teething. Can’t quite crawl. Bored. Tummyache from apricots. Diaper rash.

The shouting makes me tense. It makes Trombone tense. It makes me more tense with Trombone and vice versa. Everything is aggressive and in-your-face and like we are living at CNN on the first day of a new war. One day was rough. Three has nearly killed me. I am hopeful there will not be four.

We walked to the Most Depressing Mall in the Universe this morning. It is getting decked for Christmas, which means a Santa’s village and a bunch of mid-mall vending tables. Mostly the vendors are for hand-sewn dishrags and quilt raffles but there was one for Dead Sea Skin Products. I felt bad for them. There was a big, exciting booth and several hotties of both sexes, waiting to accost passers-by with “Would you like a sample of our new skin regime?” but the only passers-by, of course, are very old people, very poor people in from the cold and very addled, rather rude people like me.

I was sitting on a bench, eating my Bacon N Egger while Trombone ate his ham and cheese croissant (we compromised on a “healthy” treat; hey it’s better than an Aero bar) and Fresco looked at the lights. A middle aged guy, tall and gangly with huge sneakers and really big hair stopped to say hi. “Is this your family?” he said. He spoke like he had a hearing impairment. I said yes. “It’s good,” he said. “I grew up with foster families. Real family is better.”

Choose your own ending. Both of these are true things I thought:

1. My heart seized. You stupid woman, I thought. Just appreciate your damn babies and shut up.

2. So I decided to keep the shouting baby after all.

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I Might Love Toy Trains A Little

11/9/2008 in movies, the parenthood | 3 comments

I think the main appealing thing about the “I Love Toy Trains” videos is that the narrator is a kid. His name is Jeff and he is the son of the creator of ILTT (Tom McComas). We started with ILTT #9 and have now seen #10 but like I said, there are 12 in total so we have a ways to go before I can make any sort of definite pronouncement as to why children find them so entrancing.

I find them kind of dull, but soothing with all the clickety-clacking and wooot-woooing. Jeff reads his cue cards very well. He shows real enthusiasm for trains, though he does show more enthusiasm in #9 than in #10 which leads me to believe that in #10 he is entering puberty and about to tell his dad, look, DAD, I’m not doing your STUPID videos anymore, trains are LAME and that’s why we end at #12. In #10 they go to Maui and ride the Sugar Something Express and Jeff has that OH GOD I’m on vacation with my PARENTS look throughout. As a master of that look, I recognized it instantly. Anyway, Jeff spends most of these 30 minute films looking at toy train layouts and talking to the people who built them. Then he reports on the history of various trains. The “Lionel” features largely. There are songs that play while we watch the miniature toy trains go around and around and around and around…

…yes, as I reflect I realize it is very soothing. How valuable this is! Like toddler Va*li*um.

In ILTT #9 this creepy man is interviewed in his toy train shop. He is creepy because he makes those very exaggerated faces that people make to try and make children laugh but he ends up looking kind of dirty /perverted. Plus he is a ventriloquist and has a puppet named Vinnie sitting on his hand the whole time. I find that hand puppets rarely help your case when you are already a bit creepy. He has a very elaborate train layout in the front of the store; hundreds of trains crossing each other, crossing bridges, going through tunnels, the trains go through winter scenes, circus scenes, I don’t know what-all. Vinnie the puppet is the one who tells us all about the layout (while creepy guy is shown blowing bubbles with his gum). When Vinnie talks he sounds like he has maybe never seen the toy trains before. “So, here’s the circus train, taking the animals to the circus, boy, I sure love the circus, I sure do, I have a great time at …. …. the circus.” You know, if (world famous!) “I Love Toy Trains” says they’re coming to film your layout, don’t you take a few minutes to plan out what you’re going to say and advise your hand puppet accordingly? I would.

It’s all Toy Trains this and that around here but it took till tonight for me to go check out the TM Books and Videos (Jeff’s dad’s) website and there I found the most astounding array of merchandise for sale, including a DVD called “Lionel Nation 2″ (represent?) and an I LOVE TOY TRAINS SUPER FAN PACK OMG YOU WILL NEVER FIND BETTER TOY TRAIN STUFF THAN HERE! for a cool $99.95 (includes entire boxed set of DVDs #1 – 12, hat, bandana, train whistle, colouring book) and the news that there is a series about John Deere machinery but it was when I clicked on the “About” link that I truly appreciated what TM Books and Video has to offer. Jeff’s dad didn’t even LIKE toy trains! He received a bunch of boxes of trains in lieu of payment for some work he did and he put them in his basement but then, one day, he realized that people like toy trains. Like, they really like toy trains. So he built a huge business. Sure. Why wouldn’t you. He researched the Lionel train, wrote books about it, sold them. Made film upon film upon film. There is a photo of him at the bottom of the page and he looks like a nice, friendly guy and I just want to say Right On! to him for seeing this crazy opportunity and running with it. It makes me goofily happy when people follow random paths and find huge success.

(I am not super fond of the Original Songs, though, by James Coffey. They are very keyboardy. I wake up at 2 am humming them and not in a good way.)

The Art of Toddler

10/29/2008 in the parenthood, trombone | 4 comments

There is a class available for the taking called Dealing with Difficult People. I have seen a couple of versions available through work or for extra credit at the Justice Institute and every time I think, now THAT is valuable skill building. Why isn’t that class mandatory at a high school level that we all might start our lives as adults with at least a primer in conflict resolution and skills of interpersonal negotiation rather than the oh-so-useful Western Civilization (and its Discontents) class where we watched slideshows of bronzed busts for 8 months or heaven help me more algebra (sorry math-heads).

I was talking to a mom of two the same age as my two who lives in my neighbourhood and she helped me nail something down. She said, “I am so tired of all the fighting, all the negotiating, all the back-and-forth about every little thing.” I said, “It’s like we’re at war.” I finally clued in, then, that my exhaustion is mental as well as physical; hence even when I get a nap in the afternoon and awake semi-refreshed, if the rest of the day is spent in non-stop conflict I close out the day feeling like a used dishrag. Conflict is tiring!

I am choosing my battles, never fear. I’m not spending 10 seconds on whether his socks match or whether he can have bread and butter again for the 14th meal in a row or whether we go to X park or Y park. I am very laid back about almost everything. I know you are shocked.

But Trombone is 2 years and one quarter old and he has to assert his identity so he is running away from the diaper change, waffling about the walk to the park, having tantrums about sliding down the slide, claiming there is only one spoon that he can use to eat his oatmeal (okay…) and then dropping that spoon (well – maybe it was an accident) and then commanding me to pick up that spoon and wash it off for him. (not a fucking chance, bub) Though we are rarely actively fighting, I am always engaged, always talking, explaining, teaching, repeating myself, parenting. Gah! No one said it would be like this. I do not like to talk all day! I am a closet extrovert with a history of introversion! I am an Aquarius for heaven’s sake!

On a bad day like yesterday when I am as physically tired as I am emotionally tired, I admit: I just don’t have the energy to be the parent. I don’t have the energy to engage. It is a little frightening sometimes how well I can disengage, how I can be listening for the important bits but not actually paying attention. Saving that last precious bit of energy in case there is an earthquake, I like to think.

And the pendulum swings back – today, after a night when I have had an extra couple of hours of sleep in a row, I can see that it is useful stuff I am learning, that I am more rounded than I used to be. The days when my face is pinched and I have mean-mouth are balanced by the days when my cheeks hurt from smiling. We are all figuring out how to fight fair. How to avoid the battle but still address the conflict. How to help each other – the unique combination of quirks and weirdness and good-hearted soul that we each are – figure out what we need and how to get it. A thick slog, it is. But good.

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