gearhead mama

Dear M,

How is it that more than a year has passed since I last wrote an update for you? I know the technical answer to this – I became pregnant shortly after your second birthday, and now have a 3 month old baby. Life has been busy. But I do deeply regret not finding the time or energy to do a better job of documenting your life. I am always amazed when I go back and read these updates at how many little details I’ve already forgotten. It saddens me that an entire year has slipped away unnoted, but such is life. Now … where to begin?

Today is your third birthday and you are not a toddler anymore, that is for sure. You are a little girl, with long arms and legs, tan skin, tousled hair and sinewy muscles. You are fiery and aren’t afraid to show it … three is looking like it’s going to be a tempestuous year. There have been a lot of changes in your life recently – most notably the addition of your little sister – and you have taken a while to adjust. Add in the challenges that seem to go with this age and the fact that you often don’t seem to get enough sleep, and the last few months have been, um … interesting. But it appears we have weathered the storm and are finding a rhythm again. A bumpy rhythm sometimes, but a rhythm nonetheless.

All of this is challenging me to grow and change as a parent, forcing me to find new tools to supplement the ones that don’t seem to work anymore. I admit I am not always pleased about this, no doubt due to extreme sleep deprivation and the difficulties of splitting my attention between you and your sister, but I’m starting to figure things out. It is a potent reminder that parenting is not static and there is no resting on your laurels on this job. You are going to do a lot of changing in the coming years, and I will need to change as well. If nothing else, it keeps life interesting.

Although you weaned with some encouragement early on in my pregnancy, you still liked to briefly latch on here and there, and now that my milk is back you have resumed nursing. At first it was pretty intermittent, but now you are up to about once a day, which is okay with me. I was always ambivalent about the circumstances of your weaning, since I had wanted it to happen on your terms. So I am actually pleased (most of the time) that you are nursing again. I find it is a good way for us to reconnect, and I can’t complain about the nutrition and antibodies I’m passing to you. We’ll see how I feel about it if you’re still nursing in a year, though.

You are a devoted older sister, showering Sophie with hugs and kisses and giving her toys to play with and food to eat (thankfully you seem to understand that it shouldn’t actually go in her mouth). It delights you to no end when I narrate your activities to her, and you will tell me what I should be telling her (“Tell Sophie that I jumped off the couch, mama!”). I know that you aren’t always happy that she’s here – I still occasionally hear “Put Sophie down and hold me!” or “No! I want to nurse!” – but overall you are remarkably tolerant of her presence and all of the attention she receives. Not that your anger and frustration don’t leak out in other ways, but I am grateful you don’t take it out directly on her. I would much rather have you lash out at me than hit her or throw things at her head. Although I admit I get annoyed at having to constantly manage your interactions with other younger children, since you have started taking pleasure in dominating them. Part of it is your age, but I think part of it is your frustration as well. I try to remember how you must feel and empathize with you (sometimes this means digging pretty deep).

You are incredibly strong and active. You’ve mastered practically everything on the playground, and are determined to conquer the monkey bars, insisting that I help support your weight as you struggle from bar to bar. A few weeks ago I looked up just in time to see you swing your lithe body out to the fireman’s pole and slide down, a look of triumph on your face. There is no slide too tall or swing too high as far as you’re concerned. You are a true daredevil.

Your hair is wild and crazy (doesn’t help that it only gets washed and brushed once a week), and you are getting a second growth, so it looks like you have bangs even though scissors have never touched your head. I also can’t figure out if your hair is going to be curly or not. The ends have curls, but I’m afraid they’ll be lost forever with your first haircut. But the hair growing in has some curl too. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

You never stop talking and sometimes I really wish you had a mute button. You have not started asking “why?” yet, but your favorite question is undoubtedly along the lines of, “What did X say when Y?” As in,
“What did Sophie say when I kissed her?”
”What did the pasta say when it went to the party in my stomach?”
“What does the meerkat say when I eat him?”
“What do the birds say when I eat the cookie?”
“What does the truck say when I go by it?”
“What do the neighbors say when we smell the flowers?”
“What did the ant say when I squished it?”
“What does the road say when I ride my tricycle on it?”
And on and on and on and on. And on.

Speaking of riding your tricycle, you have finally mastered this skill. You’ve known how to pedal for a while, but only recently decided to do it consistently. You took your papa by surprise with this change, yelling out, “Look Papa! I’m pedaling!” just in time for him to glance up and see you and the trike tumbling head over heels down the hill in the backyard. Thankfully he was right there and grabbed you before you made it very far, and aside from a bump to the chest, you were okay. You’ve dumped it a few times going around the block too, as sometimes steering and pedaling at the same time is a little more than you can handle. Combine this with the small hills in the neighborhood and you get up some speed, realize you’re heading for someone’s lawn, turn the wheel sharply, and over you go. We’ve started making you wear a helmet.

In addition to all of your outdoor activities, you love to play pretend and will “pick” food out of a book to eat it and feed it to me. “Do you want some cake mama?” as you pinch the pretend cake off the page and lift it to my lips? “How about a sip of tea?” We also do this with your play food, concocting elaborate meals with lots and lots of condiments. You love condiments (both pretend and real). You definitely inherited your father’s taste for mustard.

But you know where to draw the line. The other day your papa was making Grover eat a fish, and you were very upset about this, insisting over and over that he was not to eat the fish. Your papa – who loves to antagonize you – just kept right at it, with Grover plaintively crying that he was starving and he needed to eat. Finally you brought your nose up to Grover’s, stared him in the eyes, and said, “You’re a doll.” Duh. Dolls don’t need to eat.

We baked cookies for the first time the other day, another thing I’m very ambivalent about. I recently made the decision to allow sweets to enter your life and not surprisingly, you can’t get enough of them. But I figure if you’re going to be eating them, the least I can do is make them myself and try to ensure they are as healthy as possible. So when I saw this recipe for chocolate chip cookies, using almond flour and agave nectar, I decided to try it (FYI, they fail to mention an oven temperature … I cooked them at 350 and that seemed to work well). You were a little confused by this process, asking repeatedly as we left the grocery store where your cookies were and not at all grasping the concept of this nebulous thing called “ingredients”. And then it was time for lunch and a much needed nap. When you woke from your nap I went in to get you. You greeted me with a huge smile and said, “Are we going to make cookies now?” And indeed we did, a process which thoroughly delighted you. You had “just a little more batter” about 50 times, but I figure that is part of the joy of baking cookies.

You will cup your hands together to tell me how small something is, or fling your arms wide to show me how big … or how big you think it ought to be. You are also always telling me what your “fravrite” color is (there’s a Brett Favre joke in there somewhere, I just can’t figure it out). First it’s red, then blue, then purple, then yellow, and so on. I used to laugh at your indecisiveness but then I realized that each time you said this you were speaking your truth. I have come to see this as a lesson for me … a reminder that nothing in life is static, and it is okay to go with the ebb and flow, to embrace change instead of always clinging to the same thing.

But change can be hard, too. You are still a certified binky addict, something which causes me some anxiety especially now that our (very holistic) dentist has warned me that it’s causing a cross-bite and needs to go. You have not slept without a binky in your mouth for nearly 3 years, and I’m not quite sure how we’re going to go about this. I think it is too soon after Sophie’s birth to take away something that gives you so much comfort, but I am not looking forward to the process.

Another thing I’m loathe to change is your sleeping arrangements. You still sleep in your crib, even though you are very adept at climbing in and out of it. Only twice have you climbed out after you’ve been put to bed for the night, and I’m very nervous about what you might do when we transition you to a regular bed. Especially since sleep is still such a precarious thing for you. You fight it with every fiber in your being, insisting right up to the last minute that you are not tired and you don’t want to sleep. Sometimes you fall asleep in my arms as you are screaming those very words. You awake during the night and start screaming immediately – something that takes about a year off my life every time you do it. The shrieks you emit make my hair stand on end, and I’m surprised you haven’t broken any of our glasses (thankfully your sister has so far slept through these episodes, although I’m not entirely sure how). This middle-of-the-night screaming has been very difficult for me, wresting me from my bed, bleary-eyed and confused. I don’t always rise to the occasion, and I am still trying to figure out a better way to handle things.

You have become such a big girl that I sometimes forget you are still a child, not operating at the rational level of an adult. You recently developed a fear of thunder, and you cower and cling to me, insisting that I pick you up. I tried explaining that it’s just the clouds bumping into each other, but you are not having it. The worst is when it happens at night, when you cry out in terror, and will not be left alone. A few weeks ago, in a desperate attempt to get some sleep during a middle of the night thunderstorm, I dragged you into my bed. Although we co-slept for the first 9 months of your life, you have not slept in my bed since. Not for lack of trying on my part, as I have invited you there when you are sick or upset or just won’t sleep for whatever godforsaken reason. But it always devolves into a wrestling match, with you jumping up and down and flinging yourself onto me. Lying down and sleeping? Nah, not so much. But we hadn’t tried it in a while, and a mama has got to sleep. So I carried you to my room after administering many warnings about having to lie down and be quiet and close your eyes and sleep. And you know what? You did it. It took about an hour, but you were quiet (mostly) and still (mostly) and we laid together and cuddled, and by the light of my nighttime nursing nightlight I watched your eyes get heavy and finally close, your thick, dark lashes dusting the beautiful curve of your cheek.

It is hard for me to believe that you used to be small enough to fit inside my body. My lap barely contains you now, and when you nurse it’s all arms and legs tangled up and spilling over. You are independent, opinionated, wild, loud, energetic and always on the go go go. Your language constantly amazes me, and I have come to expect that you will always be capable of expressing yourself, forgetting that there are still so many things that are unknown to you. Never mind the fact that feelings can be hard to name, even for an adult. But when I watched you that night, sleeping peacefully in my bed, it reminded me just how little you really are. You are still my baby … and always will be.

Happy Birthday sweetheart. I love you.

Love,
mama

There’s a fire living inside of me. It crackles up my spine, sets my hair ablaze and destroys everything in its path. It’s my anger.

I was not allowed to get mad as a child. Instead I learned to squelch, squash, and suppress. My role models were my father – a squelcher – and my mother – someone who spewed her anger with vitriol, not caring upon who it fell. Quite frankly, I don’t know how to be mad in a non-pathological manner.

Well-managed forests (or those that are truly left to Mother Nature) burn periodically. Slowly and methodically. It clears the garbage out, but leaves the trees intact, tall and majestic. Some trees even need fire to open their pine cones and allow new growth. Forests need fire, just like humans need anger. It is possible to do this in a healthy way.

But I am a forest choked with undergrowth, grown wild and riotous after years of fire suppression. I am a raging inferno waiting to happen. And happen it does. In the blink of an eye I’m engulfed in flames, they consume me and go looking for new fuel, scorching the ones I love.

I have not yet learned how to make this fire my friend, how to make it work for me and bring health and new growth. Instead I am still seeking to control, suppress. It’s the only way I know and most of the time I’m successful. I fail when I’m tired, when it’s the middle of the night, when I’ve had 3 hours of sleep.

M bears the brunt. Sophie isn’t even 3 months old yet. Of course she’s supposed to wake up during the night, although she sleeps remarkably well for her age (not sleeping through the night at the moment, but I’m hoping that’s due to the 3 month growth spurt and she returns to it shortly). M, on the other hand … well, let’s just say I’m not nearly so magnanimous with her. She’s almost 3 years old. She has always fought sleep, but has gone for long stretches where she sleeps through the night 95% of the time. That is not happening now and I have no idea why. At least half the time she wakes in the middle of the night and starts screaming. It is not night terrors, although she may have had a bad dream. One time, after a lot of detective work on my part, I deduced that her hand had likely fallen asleep. She is unable or unwilling to tell me why she is awake, why she is screaming, why she sometimes won’t stop screaming, why, once she has stopped, she often resumes again whenever I or Mr. Gearhead try to go back to bed. And the screaming, jesus christ the screaming. It makes my hair stand on end, my heartbeat quicken, the adrenaline start to pump. It is positively crazed and I’ve never heard anything like it before. It sounds like someone is trying to kill her.

I don’t like this screaming. I don’t like it one bit. And I especially don’t like it now that I have a baby who I’m trying to keep asleep. It is the spark that sets off the inferno. I squeeze her shoulders with my hands and whisper through clenched teeth for her to stop screaming. I shake her a little and say it louder. Soon I’m screaming that she has to stop screaming. And I am horrified to admit that on two occasions I have spanked her because she wouldn’t stop screaming. Something I swore I would never, ever, ever do, under any circumstance.

When I am in the clutches of this fire, I am not myself. I don’t know myself. I look at myself and what I see is my mother. I see the rage in her eyes and the absolute need to bend me to her will at any cost. That is what I see in myself and it makes me sick.

The one difference is that I apologize, admit my fault, tell her I was wrong. Not that this makes it okay … far from it. But I still make myself do it. It’s something my mother never did. When she hit me it was because I had done something wrong, because I deserved it. That is what she taught me.

The last time this happened I sat and held M and thought of how I felt when my mother dominated me, forced me to conform to her wishes, using physical force when necessary. I remembered how powerless I felt, and how much I hated her in those moments. I thought of what I had just done and it hurt my heart to think M might be feeling that way about me. I knew that I would not, could not, walk the same path as my mother, no matter how angry I was. Especially in those moments of anger. So I made a promise to myself and to M that I would never hit her again. Ever. I had to sit there and think about it for a while before I opened my mouth and spoke. I was actually reluctant to make this promise, because I was not certain I would be able to keep it. In fact, I technically broke it just the other day when she smacked me hard with a wooden spoon (after telling me she was going to do so, and I told her not to), and I snatched the spoon out of her hand and smacked her right back. In the blink of an eye, the inferno was unleashed, consuming me before my brain could even take a breath and realize what the hell was going on.

How fucked up is all of this? I taught her how to hit, and now I’m hitting her to teach her not to? I am at a loss. Truly at a loss. All I know is that this cannot go on. It is absolutely, positively unacceptable. But I don’t know what to do with my anger. Suppressing the fire is not the answer, it’s how I got here in the first place. I’m certain there is another way, but I am currently in the dark, waving my hands around, stumbling face first into one wall after another, unable to find the door that will lead me into the light of understanding.

I trust that I will get there. I just hope it happens soon.

What a different child Sophie is. M is nearly three years old and we are still battling over sleep. My heart spasms with fear when M wakes during the night, wondering if she will settle in ten minutes or two hours. She hates sleeping. Hates it. For naps she sometimes falls asleep in my arms screaming that she doesn’t want to sleep. When she wakes up two hours later she picks up right where she left off, as if she had never slept at all. Sleeping is admitting defeat.

But Sophie. My dear, sweet Sophie. Sleep comes to her like a calm, quiet fog rolling off the water. She welcomes it, embraces it. In the early days she would sleep anytime, anywhere. Then things got tricky for a while, especially in the evening. She wouldn’t sleep between the hours of 6 PM and midnight unless she was in someone’s arms. That finally started to ease up a little, and then naps went out the window. She didn’t stay asleep if I set her down. Okay, no biggie, I just wore her for naps, trusting that it would get easier. And even then it was easy, comparatively speaking. Getting M down for a nap at this age was an ordeal. I would put her in the Moby and walk and walk and walk and walk and walk. She refused to lay her head on my chest, looking all around and eventually dropping her head backwards and staring straight up, struggling to keep her eyes open. She would finally succumb, her head flopped away from me, and still I had to walk, waiting and biding my time before I dared to gently, so gently, lift her head up and onto me. And heaven forbid if I didn’t leap to my feet and bounce if she stirred, or else I risked the wrath of her roaring to wakefulness, tired and cranky and pissed off that she had been tricked into sleeping. And set her down? HA. HA. HA.

With Sophie I just put her in my new wrap and went about my business, doing dishes, tidying the house, taking M for a walk. Sleep came effortlessly and noiselessly; she cuddled against me and let it take her.

Almost two weeks ago she started sleeping through the night. Going down between 9 and 10 PM and waking between 6 and 7 AM. Nurse and then back to bed for another 3 hours. Astonishing, simply astonishing. I still get slack-jawed when I really think about it (although you wouldn’t believe how cranky I got on the one night she deviated … how quickly we become spoiled).

Over the weekend I emerged from my twice-weekly bath to find Mr. Gearhead sans Sophie. “Where is she?” I asked. “Well, she seemed really calm and quiet, so I put her in the Kanoe and left.” “You did what?” I sputtered, my mouth agape at his audacity. “I dunno,” he shrugged, “I haven’t heard anything out of her.” I stood there stunned while he walked down the hall and poked his head through the door of her room. He returned to me. “She’s out like a light.”

And so he has given me courage. I see her yawn (usually about an hour and a half after getting up), scoop her up, change her diaper, stick the binky in, drop her in the Kanoe, bounce it for a minute and walk out. As in, I leave the room. And then … she goes to sleep. She usually wakes 30-40 minutes later. I go back in the room, re-bink her, bounce the Kanoe and leave again. And she goes back to sleep, usually for an hour or more. Sometimes I can repeat this and get another hour.

Astonishing. Simply astonishing.

At first I would tense whenever she stirred or if I did something to wake her. I would feel that anxiety in my heart, my chest tight and unyielding. But now I am learning I don’t need to have that fear. She doesn’t hate or fear sleep … she welcomes it, wants it, and is grateful when I provide the opportunity to do it. It is such a simple thing, really, and I still don’t understand why it’s so damn hard with M. My baby sleeps when she is tired and is awake when she isn’t. In fact, in the course of writing this post I have tended to her three times. The last time she wouldn’t settle, so I picked her up and changed her diaper. She fussed a bit and farted a few times. I picked her up off the changing table and she rested her head on my chest and fell back to sleep. After a few minutes I set her back in the Kanoe, and here I am, typing again - with two hands! But I know oh so well that it isn’t always like this. That it often isn’t like this.

It is such a relief to let that fear and anxiety slide away, for my life not to be ruled by the constant need to get my baby asleep and keep her that way. Especially since I have a toddler to care for as well. I cannot imagine the stress of parenting a baby like M and a toddler like M, all at the same time.

I don’t know who or what made Sophie this way. I just wanted to thank the Universe for it. I am eternally grateful.

As in, I’m getting it! Overall things have been going well with Sophie, but she’s gassy just like her sister. It’s not like she spends hours screaming in pain, but it’s just bad enough to disturb her sleep and therefore mine. Add in my own long-standing insomnia issues, and some nights I was only getting 2 or 3 hours of sleep. If I got 5 I felt lucky.

This was mind-numbingly painful for me, and my days were pretty fucking miserable. I was also an awful parent, constantly butting heads with M and resorting to tactics I really don’t agree with (punishment, bribes, coercion).

I tried everything I could think of to help Sophie – craniosacral therapy, chiropractic, homeopathy, NAET and the dreaded elimination diet (which thankfully resolved the reflux, but not the gas). I finally just quit trying. My healer thinks the universe is trying to teach me that not everything is my responsibility, that it’s not my job to “fix” things, that I can stop trying to figure everything out, stop trying to be perfect, and just be. I have to say I agree with her, but when trying to manage an infant and almost 3-year-old on 2 hours of sleep, I really didn’t give a flying fuck about lessons from the universe. I just wanted less gas and more sleep!

But I did decide to quit doing everything. I stopped making appointments and ceaselessly searching for a way to “solve” this “problem”. And about 2 weeks ago I stopped using the homeopathics because they didn’t seem to be helping anyway. I even started venturing off the elimination diet. But then I was rewarded with about 5 really hard nights. Again I started wondering what I had done “wrong” and how I could “fix” things. I know this is not a healthy mindset, but it did occur to me that the bad nights started around the time I stopped the homeopathics. Hmmmm. I started them up again, and huh, maybe they were helping after all. And things started to get better. And then things got really good, and now it seems like the gas is essentially gone, and – get this – for the last three nights, Sophie, at almost 12 weeks old, has slept for 6-8 hours straight. No waking, no nursing, just fussing once or twice, which is quickly resolved by re-binking. (Yeah, I swore I wouldn’t go that route again, but you gotta do what you gotta do.)

No way have I even started to make up all the sleep I’ve lost in the last few months, but jesus does it feel good to get 7 straight hours of sleep. I don’t think M slept 4 straight hours until she was over a year old. This? This feels decadent. Luxurious. Practically criminal.

I don’t know if it will continue, although I have to admit I desperately hope it does. With sleep like that, I can do this. I can manage, function, not dissolve into the evil screaming mother with three heads (one of which spins 360 degrees while spewing fire). It still isn’t easy, but it’s at least doable.

(Although everything is on hold while I wait for the dust to settle after my huge dietary transgressions yesterday … I ate three basil, tomato, mozzarella sandwiches (first wheat and dairy in two months) and I also had a chocolate cupcake (first chocolate and eggs in two months). Sophie seemed unusually uncomfortable about 24 hours later, although it seemed to pass (ha ha) fairly quickly. So I am crossing my fingers and holding my breath that it was an isolated incident and not related to the food. I can’t tell you how badly I want to be able to eat again.)

And I have to thank mb as well, for her mention of the Kanoe hammock on her blog. I have been eyeing hammocks since I was pregnant, but couldn’t decide what to get. With her endorsement, I made the plunge and bought a Kanoe, and I think it is also part of the reason for these long stretches of sleep. I heartily recommend it.

Now. If I could just figure out how to get her to take her naps in it, I would be happy. Right? Isn’t that how life is? I just need “this” (fill in the blank) and then I’ll be happy. Heh heh. One of these days I’ll figure out how to just be. Maybe.

And while we wait (for hell to freeze over) here are some recent pictures.

She has the most awesome smile, and we have been seeing a lot of it these days. She’s a very happy baby.

Peace man.

In my opinion, the only thing more beautiful than a nursing baby …

Is one who is sleeping on the b o o b (sorry for the spacing, but I get tired of whackos finding my site whenever I use a word like that) …