Very tired this morning.
We never had a full on family bed - our blankets and pillows and mattress and headboard weren't really safe for that, and Matt is a very sound sleeper. I never felt that it would be safe in our situation. So Charlotte, when she was an infant, slept in a co-sleeper sidecar'd alongside the bed. It worked out very well, until she got big and it wasn't safe anymore, and she and I kept each other up with every little shift and sigh. Charlotte was sleeping in her crib in her room when she was 7 months old. And basically, she never looked back.
Charlotte has always been a tosser and turner, and I'm a light sleeper and Matt's a heavy sleeper. On a few occasions when traveling, we've had Charlotte sleep in bed with one or both of us, and it has never worked out well. It wasn't until this last year or so that Charlotte would even fall asleep in bed with us at all if she woke up in the middle the night and came into our room. She would wake up and I would be half asleep and just let her come into bed to see if she would sleep. Usually at that point she would talk and laugh and play and then I would lead her back into her room. Now and again she'll fall asleep in bed with us, and sometimes Matt will sleep through it but I never do. Just doze.
That's what happened last night. Charlotte came into bed, I have no idea what time, and was very scared from a nightmare she had. Charlotte doesn't usually want to talk about her nightmares (I don't either) but she did want to tell me about this one. Apparently we were on an elevator and got separated. Or I got onto an elevator without her, or I was taken from her and put on an elevator. I could relate - I had a dream last week where we were separated from each other by something foolish I did, and I was a wreck that whole night and the next morning. I still feel sad and guilty when I think about that dream. I was happy to let Charlotte in to snuggle last night.
Charlotte is a very affectionate child. She's a hugger. A smoocher. A quick cuddler. But it's been a long time since she would actually demand full on body contact snuggle. That's one of the many reasons I didn't mind when she crawled into bed with me early this morning. Charlotte held onto my arm and used it as a pillow. She sighed with relief when I put my arms around her. And then, feeling safe, she fell right back to sleep.
I'm exhausted. Matt is too. I had him put Charlotte back in her bed once it was clear that she was fast asleep and we were not. Charlotte staggered out to the couch this morning and said, "I'm still tired." We all are. But I'm also grateful for that prolonged snuggle this morning. I can feel a count down ticking. Five years old seem so big sometimes.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Friday, December 21, 2012
One Week Later.
One week later.
On Monday, our school district had a 2 hour delay due to ice. I imagined all the parents were grateful, for once. 2 more hours before the parents had to be brave, and have faith, and send their kids back to school.
My pre-schooler goes to school at the elementary school building - and most days they buzz us in (outer doors are locked during school hours) and we just walk to her class. Monday when we were buzzed in they asked us to sign in at the office.
The flag outside of the school was at half-mast and coated with ice. Banging against the flag pole with a thud, dull and metallic at the same time.
I wasn't sure if more parents than usual picked up kids from school, rather than letting them take the bus. The kids sounded the same, that I do know. Parents were quieter, though.
My pre-schooler doesn't take the bus, but it does stop at our apartment complex. Most days only one or two parents are waiting for the bus. Monday there were 5. Including a neighbor who usually just watches from her window for her two kids to get off the bus. She was quiet. Smoking. Eyes cast down. Waiting outside, scanning down the road to look.
On Monday, our school district had a 2 hour delay due to ice. I imagined all the parents were grateful, for once. 2 more hours before the parents had to be brave, and have faith, and send their kids back to school.
My pre-schooler goes to school at the elementary school building - and most days they buzz us in (outer doors are locked during school hours) and we just walk to her class. Monday when we were buzzed in they asked us to sign in at the office.
The flag outside of the school was at half-mast and coated with ice. Banging against the flag pole with a thud, dull and metallic at the same time.
I wasn't sure if more parents than usual picked up kids from school, rather than letting them take the bus. The kids sounded the same, that I do know. Parents were quieter, though.
My pre-schooler doesn't take the bus, but it does stop at our apartment complex. Most days only one or two parents are waiting for the bus. Monday there were 5. Including a neighbor who usually just watches from her window for her two kids to get off the bus. She was quiet. Smoking. Eyes cast down. Waiting outside, scanning down the road to look.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Conversation with teacher.
Most days, at pick-up, I ask Charlotte's teacher, Mrs. R, how the day went. And how Charlotte did. She was telling me about a conversation she overheard between Charlotte and her friend A.
A: You could come to my house and we could have a playdate and watch "The Little Mermaid!"
Charlotte: My mom and dad do not prefer "The Little Mermaid." But you can come to my house and we can watch "The Polar Express!"
I was laughing and kind of sheepish. "It's true!" I said to Mrs. R. "She gets to watch lots of things but I just find 'The Little Mermaid' kind of creepy now. The part where she gives up all this stuff for a guy she doesn't know..." Both Mrs. R and a friend agreed that it was a little off-putting. I still felt a little sheepish about it, I don't want to be That Mom....but at the same time, "The Little Mermaid" is kind of an awful message wrapped up with some really catchy songs.
hipster ariel jpg copied from buzzfeed
Monday, December 3, 2012
Monday, November 19, 2012
Santa has all the best tech, I bet.
One of those long and winding Charlotte lines of reason. One of Charlotte's favorite shows is Wild Kratts on PBS. It's an animated show where they talk about animals and all their features and how they are kind of like super-powers. One episode, called "The Gecko Effect" talks about how geckos feet aren't like suction cups at all, they are covered with tiny cili (cilia? cilie? just doing this from memory, folks) that have an electrical charge. Basically, geckos stick to the wall with static electricity.
Charlotte & I were picking up Matt from work one day and she was telling him what she learned about geckos. She had picked up from the show that people had not found a way to re-create this yet. Matt said that he had heard that there was a lab in Germany that was figuring it out, and Charlotte was very excited. She and he talked about other developments in science that came from the animal world - she had also learned about spider silk from another episode of Wild Kratts.
Today, sitting at lunch, Charlotte was talking about the basilisk lizard and how it can run on water. "Hey!" she said. "I need to ask Daddy. Maybe Santa has figured out basilisk lizards, and he can help me for Christmas."
Charlotte wants Santa to help her walk on water. Heh.
Charlotte & I were picking up Matt from work one day and she was telling him what she learned about geckos. She had picked up from the show that people had not found a way to re-create this yet. Matt said that he had heard that there was a lab in Germany that was figuring it out, and Charlotte was very excited. She and he talked about other developments in science that came from the animal world - she had also learned about spider silk from another episode of Wild Kratts.
Today, sitting at lunch, Charlotte was talking about the basilisk lizard and how it can run on water. "Hey!" she said. "I need to ask Daddy. Maybe Santa has figured out basilisk lizards, and he can help me for Christmas."
Charlotte wants Santa to help her walk on water. Heh.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Letting it go.
Slowly, since Charlotte has been born, I've become the kind of person who cleans things. Actually, it's been since I was pregnant with Charlotte and suddenly realized, like some pregnant people do, that the world is filthy and OMG-I-can't-believe-we-live-like-this. I went from being someone who never cleaned my floor to being someone who was obsessed with cleaning my floor. I went from being vaguely sure that we must have a vacuum cleaner to actually vacuuming things. And while I've always kept the kitchen clean and the bathroom clean (running water is my happy place), I never really cared about keeping the rest of the place clean. Just clean-ish. "A place for everything and everything in its place," just didn't apply. And then, quite suddenly, it did.
Keeping things clean(er) became more of a second nature to me. There are still some things I don't do, or don't do that frequently that would probably give my mother-in-law a heart attack. Or anyone's mother-in-law. Possibly even my own mother, though she is a little more...relaxed...about housework. But I do work hard on keeping things clean. Until very recently, though, I still had a major problem with clutter.
When I went to college, and moved in, I took basically everything I cared about. Because my mom told me if I didn't, she'd go through what I left behind and sort it or chuck it or pack it up as she saw fit. And I had a fear of anyone going through my stuff. (Rightfully so - she did go through the dresser that I left behind and found a drawer full of empty cigarette cartons...Mom was PISSED.) So I brought my crap with me to college. And then to my first summer sub-let. And then to a storage space. And then back to college. And then to another summer sub-let. And then to our first apartment together. It's not like I had less stuff, either. I felt a need to keep all my college books (I spent so much on them!) and all my notebooks and binders (when -if- I went back to school I would need them!) and all our relationship memorabilia.
Fast forward 13 years. To just a few weeks ago, in fact. I was going through a bag of stuff, and I turned and looked at Matt and said, "would you be hurt if I threw some of these out?" It was a pile of greeting cards.
"No," he said thoughtfully. "I mean, if I wrote anything good in one I would be impressed. But at this point, less stuff is probably more important than cards." And so I threw out quite a few of them.
A few days later, I was talking to my sister, and we talked about how we had saved all the greeting cards and notes from when the kids were born and their first birthdays, but....why? "My girls are seriously going to suffer from second-born syndrome," Nicole said. "I'm reading the cards as I open them and just chucking them as I go." And I've started to do the same thing.
Today, in an effort to make our space a little more useable, I started to go through my "craft" cabinet. I want it to be for Charlotte & me, to be able to say to her, "You know where it is," when she asks to do something. I want her to be able to put it away, too. And to turn the bookshelf into a board game & magazine shelf, not a game & craft & papers & broken things & laptop-holder shelf.
Going through the craft cabinet I found a lot of stuff I didn't need to keep - a lot of greeting cards from other people going back to 2007...and a lot of blank greeting cards and note cards I bought but never sent. I think a safe goal for 2013 would be to not buy a single greeting card; I've got almost every occasion covered, and those that I don't, I have a blank notecard I could send instead. I'm also throwing out old craft projects of Charlotte's - I've photographed a lot of them, and some of them really can be lost to the aether.
For some reason, in the craft cabinet I had stashed an old journal - it starts on 9/18/07, the week before Charlotte was born. That was really, really, really hard to read. Five years later, I haven't really forgotten anything, but I have healed a bit. The most heartbreaking thing to me was a timeline - I had documented in my journal 24 hrs worth of feeding/changing Charlotte, and it was mostly a list of how little I was able to nurse Charlotte. "5mL of colustrum from an eyedropper" and "refused to nurse, just screamed" and then a "I'm being sent to ICU, almost the worst thing that could happen for nursing." A note of how the doctor told me "basically you have heart failure" and then the next note is me obsessing about if I could still pump while I was in the ICU. A little sample of how out of my head I was. No wonder we were all a little shell-shocked for a while.
It took me four years to accept that I wasn't able to nurse Charlotte, and that even if I only tried 85%, that was okay. It was an uphill battle against my own body, and I was mad at it enough already for heart failure and inability to have a vaginal delivery. It took me another year after that, until this very summer, to forgive myself for all of it. It sucked, I really did do my best, and that best wasn't that bad. My kid is awesome, and I love her to bits, and it needed to be more about her than me. It isn't always about me - and that means that everything isn't always my fault. Sometimes you just need to let it go - no matter what "it" is.
Keeping things clean(er) became more of a second nature to me. There are still some things I don't do, or don't do that frequently that would probably give my mother-in-law a heart attack. Or anyone's mother-in-law. Possibly even my own mother, though she is a little more...relaxed...about housework. But I do work hard on keeping things clean. Until very recently, though, I still had a major problem with clutter.
When I went to college, and moved in, I took basically everything I cared about. Because my mom told me if I didn't, she'd go through what I left behind and sort it or chuck it or pack it up as she saw fit. And I had a fear of anyone going through my stuff. (Rightfully so - she did go through the dresser that I left behind and found a drawer full of empty cigarette cartons...Mom was PISSED.) So I brought my crap with me to college. And then to my first summer sub-let. And then to a storage space. And then back to college. And then to another summer sub-let. And then to our first apartment together. It's not like I had less stuff, either. I felt a need to keep all my college books (I spent so much on them!) and all my notebooks and binders (when -if- I went back to school I would need them!) and all our relationship memorabilia.
Fast forward 13 years. To just a few weeks ago, in fact. I was going through a bag of stuff, and I turned and looked at Matt and said, "would you be hurt if I threw some of these out?" It was a pile of greeting cards.
"No," he said thoughtfully. "I mean, if I wrote anything good in one I would be impressed. But at this point, less stuff is probably more important than cards." And so I threw out quite a few of them.
A few days later, I was talking to my sister, and we talked about how we had saved all the greeting cards and notes from when the kids were born and their first birthdays, but....why? "My girls are seriously going to suffer from second-born syndrome," Nicole said. "I'm reading the cards as I open them and just chucking them as I go." And I've started to do the same thing.
Today, in an effort to make our space a little more useable, I started to go through my "craft" cabinet. I want it to be for Charlotte & me, to be able to say to her, "You know where it is," when she asks to do something. I want her to be able to put it away, too. And to turn the bookshelf into a board game & magazine shelf, not a game & craft & papers & broken things & laptop-holder shelf.
Going through the craft cabinet I found a lot of stuff I didn't need to keep - a lot of greeting cards from other people going back to 2007...and a lot of blank greeting cards and note cards I bought but never sent. I think a safe goal for 2013 would be to not buy a single greeting card; I've got almost every occasion covered, and those that I don't, I have a blank notecard I could send instead. I'm also throwing out old craft projects of Charlotte's - I've photographed a lot of them, and some of them really can be lost to the aether.
For some reason, in the craft cabinet I had stashed an old journal - it starts on 9/18/07, the week before Charlotte was born. That was really, really, really hard to read. Five years later, I haven't really forgotten anything, but I have healed a bit. The most heartbreaking thing to me was a timeline - I had documented in my journal 24 hrs worth of feeding/changing Charlotte, and it was mostly a list of how little I was able to nurse Charlotte. "5mL of colustrum from an eyedropper" and "refused to nurse, just screamed" and then a "I'm being sent to ICU, almost the worst thing that could happen for nursing." A note of how the doctor told me "basically you have heart failure" and then the next note is me obsessing about if I could still pump while I was in the ICU. A little sample of how out of my head I was. No wonder we were all a little shell-shocked for a while.
It took me four years to accept that I wasn't able to nurse Charlotte, and that even if I only tried 85%, that was okay. It was an uphill battle against my own body, and I was mad at it enough already for heart failure and inability to have a vaginal delivery. It took me another year after that, until this very summer, to forgive myself for all of it. It sucked, I really did do my best, and that best wasn't that bad. My kid is awesome, and I love her to bits, and it needed to be more about her than me. It isn't always about me - and that means that everything isn't always my fault. Sometimes you just need to let it go - no matter what "it" is.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Favorite Things, Right Now
It's been a long time since I blogged, for a lot of reasons. But certainly not for lack of material. Charlotte is such a funny little person, and I definitely owe the blog a post of Charlotte quotes. But to ease into things, here are some things that Charlotte is really into right now:
* Pirates. Charlotte is into the tv show Jake and the Neverland Pirates, but also the book The Pirates Next Door, and Talk Like a Pirate Day, and anything piratical that isn't "too spooky." This includes certain snippets of The Pirates of the Caribbean movie (enough to recognize Captain Jack Sparrow). She even had a vaguely pirate themed birthday party for her classmates, and wore a pirate shirt to her family birthday party. She has a "pirate playlist" in Spotify, and she's going to be a pirate for Halloween. Here she is at her birthday party, in the museum's dress up clothes. (We should have taken that jacket, I swear.) When she really likes something, she gives it "two hooks up" - holding her thumbs up, but curved like hooks.
* Making Books.
* Representational art, finally.
* Reading. I can't believe I have a kid who is old enough to read, but she is. Charlotte is pretty good at reading short words, and sounding things out, and very good at remembering words she's seen if someone tells her what they are. She's constantly surprising us by saying, "Oh, that says X," and we say, "How do you know that?" and she says, "I read it."
* Pre-school, friends, and marriage. Specifically, she wants to marry a boy in her pre-school. Luckily, he wants to marry her, too. When I dropped her off today, he said, "It's Charlotte! Hey Charlotte! You wanna come sit next to me?"
* Family. Grandparents and cousins especially.
* Playmobil, LaLaLoopsy, anything else small, plastic, and with a million tiny pieces.*
* Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives.
* Holiday planning.
* Music. Imagination Movers, Blues Brothers Soundtrack & Nightmare Before Christmas (soundtrack only).
* Pirates. Charlotte is into the tv show Jake and the Neverland Pirates, but also the book The Pirates Next Door, and Talk Like a Pirate Day, and anything piratical that isn't "too spooky." This includes certain snippets of The Pirates of the Caribbean movie (enough to recognize Captain Jack Sparrow). She even had a vaguely pirate themed birthday party for her classmates, and wore a pirate shirt to her family birthday party. She has a "pirate playlist" in Spotify, and she's going to be a pirate for Halloween. Here she is at her birthday party, in the museum's dress up clothes. (We should have taken that jacket, I swear.) When she really likes something, she gives it "two hooks up" - holding her thumbs up, but curved like hooks.
* Making Books.
* Representational art, finally.
* Reading. I can't believe I have a kid who is old enough to read, but she is. Charlotte is pretty good at reading short words, and sounding things out, and very good at remembering words she's seen if someone tells her what they are. She's constantly surprising us by saying, "Oh, that says X," and we say, "How do you know that?" and she says, "I read it."
* Pre-school, friends, and marriage. Specifically, she wants to marry a boy in her pre-school. Luckily, he wants to marry her, too. When I dropped her off today, he said, "It's Charlotte! Hey Charlotte! You wanna come sit next to me?"
* Family. Grandparents and cousins especially.
* Playmobil, LaLaLoopsy, anything else small, plastic, and with a million tiny pieces.*
* Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives.
* Holiday planning.
* Music. Imagination Movers, Blues Brothers Soundtrack & Nightmare Before Christmas (soundtrack only).
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