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.
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