Today Bayba and I sat on a blanket on the livingroom floor. I was lightly supporting GERD-Girl, who was struggling to sit on her own. In the midst of generally benign conversation, Bayba leaned forward, looked directly into GERD-Girl's eyes and whispered...
"Get out of my house... NOW!"
I chose not to react, simply continuing with GG. Emboldened, Bayba concocted a speech about how we were going to throw GG out of our house HARD . We were going to throw her as high as we could so she'd never come back. Maybe a good mother would have been shocked or upset. Not me. I fought back a giggle and asked her (as seriously as I could) why we should throw her sister out. Bayba grumpily replied that GG was mean like a puma. Hm. So much for deep insights. The subject was concluded when I said that I love all my babies and I would never throw any of my kids out of the house - even if they were mean like pumas. Immediately Bayba shifted gears and asked if she could hold GG. I helped Bayba hold her sister and no one was thrown out the door.
I wish I could peer into Bayba's mind and see what happened in that interaction. I suspect it was a significant event - but I could be reading way too much into it.
Showing posts with label Dynamatrix adventures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dynamatrix adventures. Show all posts
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
And the Oscar Goes To...
And the Oscar goes to...
***drumroll***
The mommy in the red minivan for appearing interested and involved as her eight-year-old decided to count, out loud, to 500... in ROMAN NUMERALS! ("I. I, I. I, I, I. I, V...")
And if that mommy will keep walking stage left, she can snag her Patient-Mom-Of-The-Year award for keeping her composure as her three year old refused to leave the pool at the end of her swimming lesson... This three-year-old clutched her water toys and high-tailed it to the center of the pool, always just out of arms reach of her swim instructor and avoiding the mommy who, clutching a baby in a sling, ran around the periphery of the pool, attempting to corner the little darling. The mommy managed to sort through eight million potential tactics and scenarios without damaging any important brain cells and was able to avoid jumping into the pool, fully clothed, to drag the little cutie out of there by uttering the simple warning, "If you don't listen to your teacher, put your toys away, and come out of the pool now, you won't be able to come back for any more swimming lessons." After this warning was put forth, the three year old very calmly and sweetly returned the toys to their proper place and climbed out of the pool as if complying had been her idea in the first place.
Somebody give that mom some CHOCOLATE!
***drumroll***
The mommy in the red minivan for appearing interested and involved as her eight-year-old decided to count, out loud, to 500... in ROMAN NUMERALS! ("I. I, I. I, I, I. I, V...")
And if that mommy will keep walking stage left, she can snag her Patient-Mom-Of-The-Year award for keeping her composure as her three year old refused to leave the pool at the end of her swimming lesson... This three-year-old clutched her water toys and high-tailed it to the center of the pool, always just out of arms reach of her swim instructor and avoiding the mommy who, clutching a baby in a sling, ran around the periphery of the pool, attempting to corner the little darling. The mommy managed to sort through eight million potential tactics and scenarios without damaging any important brain cells and was able to avoid jumping into the pool, fully clothed, to drag the little cutie out of there by uttering the simple warning, "If you don't listen to your teacher, put your toys away, and come out of the pool now, you won't be able to come back for any more swimming lessons." After this warning was put forth, the three year old very calmly and sweetly returned the toys to their proper place and climbed out of the pool as if complying had been her idea in the first place.
Somebody give that mom some CHOCOLATE!
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Just Another Day with Bayba the Dynamatrix
Picture an elementary school gym, packed for an awards ceremony. I stand proudly in the back, GERD-girl in sling (she had already soaked us both in spit up in the two minutes it took to traipse from car to afrorementioned gymnasium), three year old hanging from my right arm, climbing my leg to do flips. The climbing and flipping were less disturbing to others than the stealing-of-other-kids' (and one adult's) chairs that she was doing earlier, so I was content to pat and dab puking baby with my left hand and control a flipping tasmanian devil with my right.
Smiling, I manage to shoot thumbs-ups and happy nods as my eight-year-old is called to the front SIX times to collect her awards. No other child's name is called more than once, so I'm already garnering a little more attention than I'd like - yet I have to admit that the misplaced My-Child-Is-An-Honor-Student-At-_______-type smug glow is creeping up.
The awards ceremony concludes. The students gather themselves to exit the gym as the parents wait. I release Bayba's hand to hold a cloth diaper over the front of the baby so that her projectile vomit won't land on anyone around us.
And then a siren scares the living daylights out of everyone in the gym.
Oh. No.
Oh yes.
Holding the be-slinged baby tight against my body, I dive for the media cart where a BULLHORN is flashing red lights and blaring an alarm. Somehow I find the switch Bayba had turned and turned it off. Blushing like crazy, I laugh with the parents who are chuckling sympathetically and hurry past those who aren't as I usher my dynamatrix out the door.
...
Smiling, I manage to shoot thumbs-ups and happy nods as my eight-year-old is called to the front SIX times to collect her awards. No other child's name is called more than once, so I'm already garnering a little more attention than I'd like - yet I have to admit that the misplaced My-Child-Is-An-Honor-Student-At-_______-type smug glow is creeping up.
The awards ceremony concludes. The students gather themselves to exit the gym as the parents wait. I release Bayba's hand to hold a cloth diaper over the front of the baby so that her projectile vomit won't land on anyone around us.
And then a siren scares the living daylights out of everyone in the gym.
Oh. No.
Oh yes.
Holding the be-slinged baby tight against my body, I dive for the media cart where a BULLHORN is flashing red lights and blaring an alarm. Somehow I find the switch Bayba had turned and turned it off. Blushing like crazy, I laugh with the parents who are chuckling sympathetically and hurry past those who aren't as I usher my dynamatrix out the door.
...
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Petrificus Totalis!
Lately A has been really exercising her independence. It's a good thing she's SUPER cute because sometimes I think she goes a little beyond normal two-year-old defiance. Take last night, for example.
J was trying to do bedtime stories and every time he turned his back, A was trying to provoke her big sister. Now - G is generally an awesome big sister. She's usually very patient and very generous and kind... but let's A push her until she (G) has total emotional (we're talking drama llama) meltdowns. That's what was happening last night. G had arranged her bed just so and had the books set up and ready to go. A saw this as an opportunity to examine cause and effect. What would happen if the blanket tent fell (was pushed)? How would G react if her carefully ordered books were tossed on the floor?
I'll tell you how she'd react. She reacts the same way every time. Wailing and waterworks. Which amuses A tremendously.
So J had left the room to retrieve some absolute bedtime necessity when G began crying. He hurried back into the room. A, caught in the act of demolishing the bedtime tent, began waving her arms at her Daddy, shouting "Petrificus Totalis! Petrificus Totalis!"
Those of you unfamiliar with Harry Potter may be entertained by the fact that this is the spell the young wizards and witches use to petrify (freeze) a person or moving object. Apparently A was hoping that she could delay the inevitable parental intercession by freezing her Daddy.
Good times.
Meanwhile, in the nesting/painting issue, I'm coming to an uneasy realization. Yesterday I took A to Lowe's with me and picked up a billion paint chips. There was one color I really liked. It's a greenish gray. But I'm looking for beige... cafe au lait, if you want to get all snobby about it... Anyway, when I got home, I taped my six favorite cards up on the wall and sat back to contemplate them. I had taped my favorite (though least practical) in the center, and as I sat back I realized that it matched the wall.
Yup. Nearly a perfect match.
So all day my poor preggo-addled brain worked uneasily on the issue.
My favorite chip already matches two of the walls. But what has been really slowing me down on changing anything is the fact that I love... I mean LOVE the purple that's also on two of the walls. I think it would be good - peaceful - to make everything a uniform beige (cafe au lait!). Beige with white trim looks very pretty in the magazines.
When J got home, I told him if he really wanted to be annoyed, he should guess which of the chips was my favorite. Not wanting to miss out on the opportunity to be annoyed, he played along... and guessed the color that I thought would be the best choice (Behr Pony Tail... it looks great in all the staged shots). No, I told him... look at the one in the center... it's kind of hard to see because it blends into the wall. J was not as amused as I'd hoped he'd be.
I've been thinking (it hurts but I do it anyway) - maybe the real problem is not the colors that are on the walls but that I didn't "finish" the project. Maybe I should begin by painting the trim white. No matter what color the wall is, I want white trim anyway.
Maybe, if I took an hour or two and painted the trim on that one gray wall, I could find out that's all I'm really missing... I mentioned this to J and you would have thought I'd just invented a new microcontroller or something. Big thumbs up. So guess what I'm doing today?
J was trying to do bedtime stories and every time he turned his back, A was trying to provoke her big sister. Now - G is generally an awesome big sister. She's usually very patient and very generous and kind... but let's A push her until she (G) has total emotional (we're talking drama llama) meltdowns. That's what was happening last night. G had arranged her bed just so and had the books set up and ready to go. A saw this as an opportunity to examine cause and effect. What would happen if the blanket tent fell (was pushed)? How would G react if her carefully ordered books were tossed on the floor?
I'll tell you how she'd react. She reacts the same way every time. Wailing and waterworks. Which amuses A tremendously.
So J had left the room to retrieve some absolute bedtime necessity when G began crying. He hurried back into the room. A, caught in the act of demolishing the bedtime tent, began waving her arms at her Daddy, shouting "Petrificus Totalis! Petrificus Totalis!"
Those of you unfamiliar with Harry Potter may be entertained by the fact that this is the spell the young wizards and witches use to petrify (freeze) a person or moving object. Apparently A was hoping that she could delay the inevitable parental intercession by freezing her Daddy.
Good times.
Meanwhile, in the nesting/painting issue, I'm coming to an uneasy realization. Yesterday I took A to Lowe's with me and picked up a billion paint chips. There was one color I really liked. It's a greenish gray. But I'm looking for beige... cafe au lait, if you want to get all snobby about it... Anyway, when I got home, I taped my six favorite cards up on the wall and sat back to contemplate them. I had taped my favorite (though least practical) in the center, and as I sat back I realized that it matched the wall.
Yup. Nearly a perfect match.
So all day my poor preggo-addled brain worked uneasily on the issue.
My favorite chip already matches two of the walls. But what has been really slowing me down on changing anything is the fact that I love... I mean LOVE the purple that's also on two of the walls. I think it would be good - peaceful - to make everything a uniform beige (cafe au lait!). Beige with white trim looks very pretty in the magazines.
When J got home, I told him if he really wanted to be annoyed, he should guess which of the chips was my favorite. Not wanting to miss out on the opportunity to be annoyed, he played along... and guessed the color that I thought would be the best choice (Behr Pony Tail... it looks great in all the staged shots). No, I told him... look at the one in the center... it's kind of hard to see because it blends into the wall. J was not as amused as I'd hoped he'd be.
I've been thinking (it hurts but I do it anyway) - maybe the real problem is not the colors that are on the walls but that I didn't "finish" the project. Maybe I should begin by painting the trim white. No matter what color the wall is, I want white trim anyway.
Maybe, if I took an hour or two and painted the trim on that one gray wall, I could find out that's all I'm really missing... I mentioned this to J and you would have thought I'd just invented a new microcontroller or something. Big thumbs up. So guess what I'm doing today?
Sunday, November 18, 2007
It's All Fun and Games...
Yesterday was a little more exciting than I'd hoped.
A, my darling dynamatrix, was playing with her little toy vacuum. J was out for a run. G was playing piano up in her room. I was taking advantage of the moment of presumed unneededness to read up on bread making techniques. Ah, a quiet Saturday afternoon...
Until I heard A scream.
My clever little girl had decided to pretend the mallet/stick for her triangle (we're talking about the musical instrument, here, not a geometric concept) was a screwdriver and had been "fixing" her vacuum. I, admittedly, was not paying adequate attention, or I would have realized her little game looked like this:
Yeah. You could put an eye out with that thing, and I wasn't paying attention.
Sure enough, she slipped on one of her toys, fell, and stabbed herself in the eye.
I haven't had such a huge adrenaline reaction since G broke her arm, years ago. Unfortunately, while I deal quite well with blood, gore, etc. in the general population, seeing my child hurt completely shuts my brain down and I freak out.
Sometimes I think I just don't have the emotional fortitude for this parenting thing.
Whether I do or not, here I am. I love the family practice physicians we use. I called and they told me to just come to the office as quickly as I could - despite the fact that it was nearly time for them to be shutting their doors. The doctor on call was calm and thorough and carefully checked her eye. It's painful and red from the irritation, but otherwise looks OK.
It AMAZES me how resilient kids are.
So, as J says, "All's well that ends." Hopefully today will be the boring day we'd planned for yesterday... and I'll continue my struggle to find the happy medium between prudent vigilence and overprotection.
A, my darling dynamatrix, was playing with her little toy vacuum. J was out for a run. G was playing piano up in her room. I was taking advantage of the moment of presumed unneededness to read up on bread making techniques. Ah, a quiet Saturday afternoon...
Until I heard A scream.
My clever little girl had decided to pretend the mallet/stick for her triangle (we're talking about the musical instrument, here, not a geometric concept) was a screwdriver and had been "fixing" her vacuum. I, admittedly, was not paying adequate attention, or I would have realized her little game looked like this:
Yeah. You could put an eye out with that thing, and I wasn't paying attention.
Sure enough, she slipped on one of her toys, fell, and stabbed herself in the eye.
I haven't had such a huge adrenaline reaction since G broke her arm, years ago. Unfortunately, while I deal quite well with blood, gore, etc. in the general population, seeing my child hurt completely shuts my brain down and I freak out.
Sometimes I think I just don't have the emotional fortitude for this parenting thing.
Whether I do or not, here I am. I love the family practice physicians we use. I called and they told me to just come to the office as quickly as I could - despite the fact that it was nearly time for them to be shutting their doors. The doctor on call was calm and thorough and carefully checked her eye. It's painful and red from the irritation, but otherwise looks OK.
It AMAZES me how resilient kids are.
So, as J says, "All's well that ends." Hopefully today will be the boring day we'd planned for yesterday... and I'll continue my struggle to find the happy medium between prudent vigilence and overprotection.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Reality and Parenting
Yesterday I watched my two-year-old feed silver spoons down the crevices of the sofa cushions. I didn't think much of it... just normal toddler antics. Besides, I thoroughly vacuum the sofa at least once each week, carefully wedging the crevice tool between every cushion, all the way back to the frame.
So I half-heartedly admonished her to refrain from putting the nice silverware in the sofa and plunged my arm into the abyss to retrieve my fine flatware.
Before retrieving all four spoons I salvaged 12 jumbo crayons, the mallet for the xylophone, numerous barrettes and other coiffure accoutrements, three socks, and a whole mess of Annie's Organic whole wheat bunny crackers.
I've often wondered how we manage to go through crayons so quickly. I just assumed the socks had disappeared in the dryer. That the vacuum missed the crackers altogether is somewhat disconcerting, but I'll certainly be more careful in the future.
A's name means "bird-like." The imagery in my little world was always graceful and airy... I hadn't thought she'd live up to the name by decorating a hidden "nest" with flashy contraband like a magpie. Live and learn.
Meanwhile, she has been seriously trying my patience on other fronts. It's a little overwhelming to go into too much detail, right now, but the short version is that she has boundless energy, endless enthusiasm, and a need to perpetually be in motion... and while her sparkling personality can be all charm one minute, she doesn't have a highly refined sense of empathy (very different than her older sister in this detail) and can be quite (to use a friend's description of her son) prickly. I'll spare the detailed list of events of the weekend. The bottom line is that J and I didn't get to go out for our anniversary dinner, yesterday. Today we had to leave Barnes and Noble in a hurry and I didn't get a book. And I've been coping with tantrums each and every time A doesn't get exactly what she wants when she wants it... and sometimes an extra tantrum or two just for kicks, even when she is getting her way.
Yeah, I realize I'm whining. And yes, I understand that two-year-olds are, by default, willful and prone to tantrums. But this is different than what I went through with G. Very different. So different that I actually found myself, in a moment of despair last night, reading articles on symptoms of ADHD in toddlers and preschoolers. Yes. Seriously.
I'm hoping this is just a phase. Just normal for her and her dynamic way of being in this world. Hoping that I can just hang in there and try to enjoy the lessons she has to teach me. I know this time goes by too quickly. But sometimes... Sometimes I really need a break when there is no break to be had. During those times I reserve the right to whine just a little bit.
And not be embarrassed to admit that I don't think my children are 100% delightful 100% of the time. Parenting is HARD. I love it and wouldn't trade my job for anything in the world. But right now... Right now I'm just getting through the evening and hoping tomorrow will be better.
So I half-heartedly admonished her to refrain from putting the nice silverware in the sofa and plunged my arm into the abyss to retrieve my fine flatware.
Before retrieving all four spoons I salvaged 12 jumbo crayons, the mallet for the xylophone, numerous barrettes and other coiffure accoutrements, three socks, and a whole mess of Annie's Organic whole wheat bunny crackers.
I've often wondered how we manage to go through crayons so quickly. I just assumed the socks had disappeared in the dryer. That the vacuum missed the crackers altogether is somewhat disconcerting, but I'll certainly be more careful in the future.
A's name means "bird-like." The imagery in my little world was always graceful and airy... I hadn't thought she'd live up to the name by decorating a hidden "nest" with flashy contraband like a magpie. Live and learn.
Meanwhile, she has been seriously trying my patience on other fronts. It's a little overwhelming to go into too much detail, right now, but the short version is that she has boundless energy, endless enthusiasm, and a need to perpetually be in motion... and while her sparkling personality can be all charm one minute, she doesn't have a highly refined sense of empathy (very different than her older sister in this detail) and can be quite (to use a friend's description of her son) prickly. I'll spare the detailed list of events of the weekend. The bottom line is that J and I didn't get to go out for our anniversary dinner, yesterday. Today we had to leave Barnes and Noble in a hurry and I didn't get a book. And I've been coping with tantrums each and every time A doesn't get exactly what she wants when she wants it... and sometimes an extra tantrum or two just for kicks, even when she is getting her way.
Yeah, I realize I'm whining. And yes, I understand that two-year-olds are, by default, willful and prone to tantrums. But this is different than what I went through with G. Very different. So different that I actually found myself, in a moment of despair last night, reading articles on symptoms of ADHD in toddlers and preschoolers. Yes. Seriously.
I'm hoping this is just a phase. Just normal for her and her dynamic way of being in this world. Hoping that I can just hang in there and try to enjoy the lessons she has to teach me. I know this time goes by too quickly. But sometimes... Sometimes I really need a break when there is no break to be had. During those times I reserve the right to whine just a little bit.
And not be embarrassed to admit that I don't think my children are 100% delightful 100% of the time. Parenting is HARD. I love it and wouldn't trade my job for anything in the world. But right now... Right now I'm just getting through the evening and hoping tomorrow will be better.
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