I'm lazy

It's not exactly a mind-blowing epiphany but it is something that just really hit home the last couple of days.  I am lazy.


Tonight I didn't make Eli brush his teeth before bed.  I know it's good for him, but he was so cranky I wanted to get him to sleep.  I didn't want to accidentally turn on the light in the bathroom and set him off.  Or fight over how much toothpaste was on his brush, or what order we put water in the cup and on his brush in.  I just wanted to get him to sleep off the crankies and have a moment to myself to talk about the crankies with all of you.


Ozzy is not a good eater so far.  He's really difficult to feed in that he will eat the first two spoonfuls and then spend the rest of the time trying to wrestle the spoon from me.  He wants to feed himself but when he does finger foods he chokes himself and when he spoon feeds himself he gags himself and sends food everywhere.  This is why I had pretty much stopped trying to feed him.


Lazy.


Ozzy has been very cranky the last couple of weeks and eating all. the. time.  I'm so drained (literally and figuratively).  I came to the conclusion that he needs food in order for us all to happily coexist.  Today has gone better.  I'm struggling through the spoon feeding wrestle.  He had oatmeal for breakfast (I coffee grinded whole oats and added them to boiling water for like 2-3 minutes) that I added breastmilk to that seemed to go down well.  He had squash for lunch that my mom said he thoroughly enjoyed.  And he had rice cereal for dinner.  I fed him much less and he napped better and was generally happier today.  Here's hoping we solved the issue.  The only concerning point is that he seems to have bowel troubles with food, I hope his gut is ready.


Ozzy is 8 months old today!  I didn't weigh him but he is 2 foot 2.5 inches.  Likely around 23 lbs.


Eli has been doing well.  He seems to be thriving on my giving lots of notice approach.  Lots and lots of notice to anything we do, but especially bedtime.  He's becoming such a funny kid!

We had a spider in our en suite sink that we named George when we moved in but he left after about 3 weeks and I said he found a new home.  Then out of the blue today Eli asked  (or maybe told me?) that George went shopping for groceries.


And he named the measuring stick giraffe that we put up Tall.  No.  Mr. Tall.


Bedtime routine, I've been lazy.  Lazy, lazy.  Oh well I give more baths now at least.  I'm not sure what I think I have better to do with my time.  Sometimes all I want to do is stare into the abyss and not think.  That's an activity, right?  Maybe not one that trumps being with your children but oh well.  You do your best each day.

Summer lovin'

I have definitely been loving the summer heat.  Well maybe not definitely.  Our house is a furnace.  We have no air conditioning.  It sucks.  I don't do well hot.  I'm a pitta.  We're already hot and passionate enough, we need no help.  I have worse patience, I don't want to move, I definitely don't want to hold little ones.

So we bought back our swamp cooler from a friend.  The first night was wonderful and then it broke.  Doh!

Luckily my hubby is very handy and today it's been back in service.

All in all, we have had to leave our house for the great outdoors most evenings because of it being too hot which has led to many adventures outside.  Eli couldn't be happier.

Ozzy has been pretty cranky generally.  Not because of being outside more, just cranky.  Especially in the evenings.  He needs to go to bed at about 6:30pm for the night and likely would rise at 5:30am if allowed.  But the way it usually goes down is he goes down at 6:30pm for about a half hour and then Eli will wake him.  We could close the door but then Eli would scream and pound the door and wake him anyway.  Then Ozzy is awake and cranky and will eat and be happy for about 15 minutes and revert back to cranky while I try and put Eli to bed over an hour or two.  Then once Eli is asleep I put Ozzy in our bed for the night and milk him to sleep and he's down till about midnight or 2am, depending on the evening.

Then at 6:30am Ozzy is up and at 'em and Eli could use a couple more hours of sleep and is cranky all morning until I manage to get him to surrender into a nap, if I can manage to.

My Mother-in-law went through the same thing she said, her first was the early riser though and her second had colic.  I could have it so much worse.  She'd crawl to bed at 5am or so to be woken up at 6am by her toddler, ready to go for the day.

What I really don't get about kids is why you can tell they need a nap and are so, so exhaustedly tired and yet all they want to do is fight sleep?  Why?  WHY?

But overall life is pretty good, I'm still in my upswing where I can quickly find the bright side and that the grass is in fact as green on both sides of the fence.  I'm enjoying most moments with my children.  I've even gotten into the habit of talking to Eli before bed to help him calm down.  I ask him how his day was, ask him what he did, sometimes he makes stuff up, sometimes he chooses to tell me what he ate.  Then I ask him what his favorite part was and it's always different and interesting.  Today the question was answered with avoidance, also known as "Mother, can you not see I'm too busy to answer your trivial question?  I am conducting a scientific experiment to determine if my bath boats are capable of water transfer to one another."

This summer is shaping up to be a good one.  I am especially excited about an upcoming wedding of two very close friends of ours.  I will be doing my first full day with out Oz-bert so hopefully that goes well.   He will be with Baba and Grandpa and Eli of course.  I think they will have a fun time and then hubby and I can concentrate on being good wedding coordinators/MC's.  I'm going to count it as a date.  Trust me.  It counts.

The more I learn about myself, the more I learn about my kids.  I'm a much more calm, collected person when I have some sort of life away from them.  I think that's a good thing.  It's good to show your children that everyone needs alone time, or independent time.  As long as some one is there for them at all times they will do fine with it.  They will grow up to be secure individuals and I will keep my sanity!

Back to school

Well as usual I have found myself feeling very guilty lately.  In my seemingly never-ending quest to bring my body back to health, I have had to ask an awful lot of my dear parents especially my Mama.  I have been seeing a chiropractor ever since Eli was born (two days before actually).  We just started to make progress and then I told him I was pregnant again.  So we are working away trying to get my back to let me sleep again and we are making such little progress that we've added two gentle yoga sessions a week and a once a week massage for 6 weeks.  So that plus three work shifts a week = a lot of time with my momma babysitting.


So I am trying to balance getting my health back with keeping my mom from burning out.  GUILT!


So I am currently in an up-swing of parenting.  If it's one thing I've noticed about parenting is that it goes in waves of ease and waves of brutal, bang your head against the wall, exhausting hard times.  June was a hard month for that, likely because of all the change with us moving.  But like with all these hard waves you beat your head against the wall for awhile, cry, read, cope and finally find something that works... for awhile.  Then you get an easy time for awhile and then another bump in the road.  


So my current issues are pretty normal with toddlers.  Not listening.  So what I have discovered on this subject is that there can be no warnings.  If you hurt your brother I take away something you like.  Simple.  I try and do this with all "not listening issues" but there are certain exceptions when I'm breastfeeding and Eli helps himself to the fridge when I've said no but overall.


I'm not sure if I've just managed to get a little more patient or loving or what but I have had an easier time communicating with Eli as well.  Some one said something to me that when they are in the middle of a tantrum and you're losing your mind you ask the question:  how old are you?  And you basically answer it yourself.  He's two.  Two years old.  He is working on his maturity, especially his emotional maturity.  I'm the adult and I need to be a good example for him.  


The mother is the biggest influence on a child in the first three years of his or her life.  I am setting an example for how to be compassionate for my boys.  How to be strong and vulnerable, solid and impressionable, secure and wide-open.  This values that are forming right now are so important and I need to rise to the occasion.  Though sometimes rising involves clawing my way up the steepest hill of my own crap: my sleep deprivation, personal needs, and my ideas of how things should go.


I've also been managing to do something fun every day with Eli, like chalk outside, crafts inside, a walk, etc.


I've also given up on bedtime at a specific hour.  There's just no point, if he's not tired he will not sleep!  No matter how much I want him to!  So I do a routine of a big or small activity depending on how late it is and then get ready for bed and if he's tired he'll be down in 15-30 minutes.  If I try and do otherwise he can take 1-2 hours to get him to sleep, I get more time just letting him wear himself out.  But I think it has really helped to have the house quiet, no tv (and by that I mean netflix) and nice quiet music while he does quiet activities when I know he's getting pretty tired.


So anyway, it's nice to be in an up-swing it gives me hope that my dream of a third is not just an unrealistic dream.  Also a good friend of mine just announced her third is coming and I'm very impressionable to any kind of advertising: tv, seeing an item of clothing, seeing yummy food, a baby announcements, I just have to have one!  So my talk of possibly never wanting a third is kaput now and will stay likely until another down-swing, hehe.  


So back to the never ending ups and downs of parenting, the never ending lesson in compassion and patience.