Nursemaid's Elbow

Here's something you probably didn't know (unless you've had a similar encounter or you're the kind of person who looks up EVERY possible ailment your child may suffer from). Until 2 1/2 or 3 years old, your child's elbow sockets are not really "set." Does this also apply to other sockets in the body? Maybe? The other sockets were not relevant to my day yesterday, so I don't know. Plus, it's not called Nursemaid's Socket, is it? But that doesn't mean there isn't a Nanny's Ankle or Au Pair's Shoulder or Eddie Murphy's Daddy Day Care Hip. Who knows with these things. The bottom line is that children are undeveloped and prone to having stupid things happen to them that they are inadequately prepared to cope with or communicate about.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, yesterday, Norah was playing. And then she abruptly stopped playing and started shrieking. Inconsolable shrieking. Now, I have to admit. My first instinct is to assume that she's being a drama queen. Insert Crying Wolf metaphor here and use it as an example to all children everywhere forever. Were she not such a drama queen, I would have immediately known that something serious was happening. If Gabe made noises like this, after making sure that I didn't need to stem blood loss, I would be making a beeline for my car keys because a trip to the hospital was immediately necessary.

But that's not the case with Norah. When she cries, here's how my immediate response goes:

1) rush into the room to make sure someone isn't bleeding
2) make cursory check for sharp things sticking out of weird places in her body
3) see where Gabe is in the room--if he's hiding under a blanket or behind a chair, he's responsible
4a) if Gabe is hiding, come up with some sort of admonishment/punishment that will be ignored and/or forgotten in two minutes
4b) if Gabe isn't hiding, tell Norah to stop crying/shrieking/screaming/whining, come up with some sort of admonishment/punishment that will be ignored and/or forgotten in two minutes.
5) warn Norah that if she keeps overreacting to everything that, before long, I will completely fail to take her seriously when she's making noise (I'm serious, I'm that kind of person, and I will make this kind of argument to a two year old despite the fact that I KNOW it won't make a difference--and I only do it so that, at some undisclosed point in the future, I can say "I told you so."

And that's more or less what I did this time. There was no blood. There was nothing APPARENTLY wrong with the arm that she seemed to be complaining about. Thus my assumption became that drama queening was going on. I held her for a minute, tried to convince her that she was fine, then put her back down to go back to playing.

Usually, at this point, she'll see if she can milk the sympathy for a few more minutes with some more sobs and whines or complaints, but when that doesn't develop, she goes about her business. This time, though, she went into the dining room, collapsed to the floor, and continued to cry.

Something wasn't right. So I went in and checked her over more closely. There really wasn't anything obviously wrong, but she kept favoring her left arm. I poked and prodded a bit but couldn't find anything obviously the matter. Then she demanded a Dora band-aid, so I got one out. I asked her wear it hurt, hoping that would help me figure out what was the specific problem. She looked at her arm to find someplace to put the band-aid and pointed to it. It was a spot of dried chocolate milk about midway up her forearm. Clearly NOT the problem, but I put the band-aid on there anyway.

For the next five minutes, I continued to evaluate her level of ouchiness. Was she REALLY hurt or was she just overreacting again to a relatively minor injury? There was obviously more than nothing going on, but I didn't want to take her to the ER for a bit of a muscle bruise. I am not now, nor will I ever be, one of those parents who take their kids to the hospital for every little injury.

Have I mentioned that when I was nine years old I had an accident with a metal grinder? I removed the top half of my right index finger down to the right knuckle--including part of that knuckle. I can't bend my finger all the way down anymore, and the fingernail is still a shambles. It never grew back properly. Do you know how I was treated for this injury? I held it under cold water for a half an hour, then Neosporin was applied to a piece of gauze, wrapped around the finger, then taped to a popsicle stick so that I couldn't bend the finger. I never set foot in a hospital or doctor's office to have it looked at.

I am not willing to take things to that extreme. I am too paranoid of infection and permanent damage. But I have to admit that I lean more towards the "if bones aren't sticking out, then you'll be fine" mentality (which applies, because, with my injury, my bone WAS sticking out).

This time, while her bones weren't sticking out, she did appear to be losing the use of her arm rather quickly. Within five or so, she'd stopped using it entirely. It was hanging limply to her side, and every time the arm was moved she screamed.

So I loaded her up into the car and took her to the hospital.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: fuck the American health care system. I'm sorry if this offends anyone who works in the health profession. I've got some bad news for you. Your boss is a fucking idiot. And if you truly believe that our system works and is awesome, then you are a fucking idiot too.

If a screaming two year old child is brought to the admission center, then that child needs to be admitted immediately unless there has been a zombie outbreak or some kind of calamity and every doctor and nurse in the facility is cleaning up that mess. Here is the order of priorities for immediate admission:

1) People with open wounds--with those who've received bites from zombies topping the list because they might soon bite someone else and spread the affliction.
2) People who are vomiting uncontrollably or suffering from some other devastating ailment that would spread disease or otherwise put out the rest of the people in there.
3) People who are screaming from the pain, even if there isn't an obvious ailment (with small children topping the list because they can't say where it hurts, so it's impossible to say how severe the ailment/injury might be)
4) People who are having any other problem.

This, I imagine, is probably how the priority list is SUPPOSED to work as it is. And, I have to admit that we were admitted before some other patients who had been waiting in the lobby for a longer period (including a parent of a three year old who FREQUENTLY mentioned how angry he was that he'd been waiting with a three year old for three hours already--but, and here's the important part, there was obviously nothing wrong with this three year old who was running around and being a nightmare all over the lobby the entire time I was waiting there, and this parent should have been called a fucking idiot and sent on his way).

But, all the same, I was forced to sit with a two year old on my lap for a little over an hour in a packed waiting room before we were brought back to a room. Norah cried almost the entire time because every time she shifted around, she moved the arm and it set off new pain. And she shifted around A LOT during that time for two reasons.

It was about 110 yesterday. And in the hour that we were in the lobby, I was "fortunate" enough to be sitting right next to the thermostat. While we were there, I watched as the temperature went up two degrees. It was hot in there, and Norah is built for winter. She was a sloppy, sweaty mess. For that matter, I'm built for winter, too. So I was also a sloppy, sweaty mess. On top of that, "sitting still" ranks right up there with long distance running on the list of things I am NOT good at doing. So every few minutes Norah and I were squirming around uncomfortably, and this set off a new jag of screaming and crying. After the first fifteen minutes, it was very nearly setting off jags of screaming and crying in me as well.

Then we were brought into a room where we waited for another half an hour--though at least we were both spared the admonishing looks from other patients as Norah screamed her way through more waiting.

Next came the x-rays. This took another half an hour. More screaming, especially when they had to twist her little arms around to get the best picture.

Then back to the room for more waiting. Another half hour of it. During this time, Libby arrived and was shown to our room. But, by the time she got there, Norah was better.

That's right. Better. Chipper, happy, playful, normal. Better.

After the x-rays, Norah was cuddled up on my lap in the room, periodically crying and in misery. Every little move set her off again. And then, quite inexplicably, it didn't anymore. Out of nowhere she used her previously useless hand to remove one of the stickers the x-ray technician had given her. And that was that.

(We still had almost an hour of waiting left, though, before we'd be released--fucking idiots.)

The doctor explained to us about Nursemaid's Elbow. Sometimes, I guess, the sockets on the arms of small children can be pulled out of joint. The name it's given, I assume, is from harsh, British-style nursemaids who yanked children's arms to get them to do what they are supposed to. The fact that this has not happened to us before and this ailment was completely foreign to me is surely a testament to my parenting methods. I have NOT yanked my children's arms out of socket. So, hurray for me!

And just as easily as they come out, they go back in. And, at some point, she twisted the arm just such a way that it popped back into place.

So that was that. Yet another failed attempt to make use of our medical profession, and yet another weird ass thing that can go wrong with small children. And if this happens to your child . . . well, it won't help you one single bit knowing this is a possibility because, let's face it, you're NOT going to start twisting your screaming child's arm around to try and pop the elbow back into place. But at least you won't be surprised when you feel stupid two and a half hours into your hospital visit when your child starts acting normally again. You will feel like just another fucking idiot in a system filled with them, but we'll both know that you're really not (unless you are, then screw you and stop making the world a terrible place for the rest of us).

Grace and Beauty

Finally! Some videos and not just me whining about something! Hurray!

Remember that thing I mentioned in my last post, about Gabe getting stuck in the rocking chair? And do you remember the other stories of daring-do involving Gabe? How he suggested that jumping down the entire flight of stairs would be fun? Or how he used to fall off the back of the couch during his "Finny and Yon!" stage without first looking to see that he had something soft to land on? Or . . . well, you get the point. He plays pretty fast and loose with his own safety.

Norah, not so much. Trying to get video of her doing something that is funny isn't that difficult, but it's a completely different kind of funny than with Gabe. She's cute funny. Gabe is dangerous funny.

But we did finally get some video of her after she got herself caught in something. While you're watching this, keep the excitement of one of Gabe's adventures in mind and contrast it to where Norah is right now.

This is about as "exciting" as it gets with Norah. A foot caught in the cup holder of a chair. EXTREME sitting!

One of the kids' favorite shows right now is "Peppa Pig." It's actually pretty amusing. And it's been rather interesting watching the non-American English slang that the kids have been picking up from it. Norah now refers to our trash cans as trash bins. And she named one of her stuffed animals Cheeky Cat. But the phrase that Libby and I have most enjoyed comes from the school teacher (who also moonlights as the dancing teacher in the show). Peppa is taking dancing lessons and the teacher often repeats the phrase "Grace and Beauty" while the kids are practicing their dancing.

And we've transferred that over to Norah. With some regularity, actually. Because we're ironic and stuff.

Over the past couple weeks she's gotten into a bit of a dancing phase of her own, and some of the stuff she does is pretty priceless. Her best move is when she tries to do one of those ballerina poses where they grab their foot and pull it up to their heads. Not only can she not raise her foot to her head, she can't grab her foot and lift it up. Or really stand on one foot. Sadly, we haven't been able to talk her into performing that move in front of the camera yet, but we did get some videos at different points in the past week or so of her showing some of her other mad dancing skillz.

You can tell that she's TRYING to grab her foot in this one, but she never quite got around to lifting her leg as she did it. All the same, we'll keep trying to get that on video because it will be well worth having for posterity's sake.

On Being an Even Older Dad

Tomorrow I turn 37. I would like to say that I have mixed feelings about this. But I don't. Actually, that's not true. I DO have mixed feelings about it--I just don't have any GOOD feelings about it mixed in there. My range of emotions on the subject range from Meh all the way down to I Can't Fucking Believe How Old I Am and How Each Year Seems to Be Spiraling Away from Me More and More Quickly.

The Meh aspects of it, I'm sure, come from the fact that 37 is one of the most pointless ages possible. To my brain's way of processing and categorizing the world, which has been nurtured by years of tireless pop culture study, 35 is the last year that people can be considered "young." If you're watching a movie or television show and there is a charismatic young person on it, that person will invariably be portrayed as 35 or under.

These people, then, are generally lumped into one of three categories: young parent (under 30 only, there are few parents between the age of 30-40, as there is no "ideal" age for their children--kids need to either be very young and cute or teenaged and sassy), not-quite-old single hipster (up to age 35), or young married person (again, under 30 only--after that the couple either has kids or CAN'T have kids, if they could have kids, they would have kids or if they didn't want kids they would not be married).

The next category of person skips to not-quite-middle aged. This category of person ranges in age from 40-45 and falls, again, into one of three categories: parent of a teenager (with the possible addition of very young children--TOO young children for any thinking adult over 40), professional single person (too busy and awesome to bother with a family, but very possibly starting to regret that decision now), and pathetic single person (too stupid/ugly/awkward/shy/misunderstood to have a successful relationship).

There is no middle ground. People are either young, nearly old, or old. And 37 is one of those years that falls into none of these categories. 37 year old actors and actresses play 30 year old characters (except in the case of the guy who plays Herrick on the BBC version of "Being Human," who is only a couple years older than me but LOOKS like he's easily in his late 40s to early 50s).

In reality, though, it is starting to feel very solidly like the not-quite-middle-aged-but-it's-GOING-to-be-middle-age-in-the-blink-of-an-eye category to me. And that's where the I Can't Fucking Believe How Old I am and How Each Year Seems to Be Spiraling Away from Me More and More Quickly feeling comes into play.

I mean, really? 37? By 37 I shouldn't even be able to remember my 10th birthday it should have been so long ago, right? My teenage years should not only feel like a lifetime ago, they should feel like someone else's lifetime because I am so far removed. College should be a fond memory of fun times had that I tsk tsk at when I consider either how much time I wasted or regret the fact that I didn't waste enough of it. BUT THEY DON'T. I vividly remember turning 10. I can still easily recall the terrible feelings of angst and longing from high school. And college seems like just yesterday (though I do somehow manage to feel, at the same time, that I wasted too much and not enough time in college). But they've been AGES ago.

And now, Gabe . . . you know, the kids who trapped himself in the rocking part of a little wooden rocking chair when he was 18 months old--who I had to cut out with a hacksaw right after taking a hilarious picture of his predicament . . . is four and only one year away from kindergarten. He likes "big kid" TV shows and plays with army guys in a way that suggests he's starting to understand what armies actually do.

Gabe related side story. He learned a valuable life lesson this morning and his reaction to it is very much in line with my last statement about him and army playing.

At some point last night, a toothy critter ate our three baby chickens. Of the first three chickens that we got, only one of them ended up being a female. It's illegal to own roosters in the city limits (with good reason, they are loud and annoying and we don't have a problem getting rid of them because they are bothering us, never mind how the neighborhood feels about them). But we didn't want to leave our one female chicken all alone, so Libby picked up three new babies, hoping we'd get at least one female out of the group again. Gabe named them Evil Doctor Porkchop, Megatron, and Spider-Man. We'd had them at least two weeks and they weren't THAT small anymore.

But some creature of the night managed to pull them ALL out of their cage THROUGH the chicken wire. Yeah, nature is gruesome and awful (and chickens are goddamn stupid as they had a boxed in shelter they could have been hiding in, yet they didn't).

When Libby explained to Gabe what had happened, his first reaction was to think that she was joking. He laughed and accused her of being silly. When she insisted that she wasn't, he got upset. He cried. And then he got MAD. Really mad (he's been starting to show signs of "grown up" anger lately, which I'm a little sad about as he's been such a sweety up to this point). He claimed he was going to "destroy" the fox that killed his chickens (we do have a fox in the "forest" behind our house, but it was probably one of the neighborhood cats that got the chickens, as there are quite a few of them that wander into our yard at all times of the day--the fox or foxes tend to keep to themselves and there is no shortage of easy to get at bunnies in the neighborhood to keep them filled up). And I'm pretty sure he would have picked up a stick and started rushing through the back forest looking for the fox if he'd had his druthers.

So there was that.

What was I talking about? Ah, who cares. It's time for my Metamucil and The Wheel comes on in a few minutes.

The Mixed Blessing of Twoness

As I pointed out a couple posts ago, there are lots of subtle changes happening in our household, many of them are welcome. And there have been a few more that I failed to mention before. All of them make me happy beyond words.

Baby gates. Now unnecessary. Well, mostly. We took the ones off the stairs because Norah has had the proper level of the fear of god put into her regarding the stairs. She treads them VERY lightly, or she won't tread them at all without one of us to help her. We kept the gate into my office and into the kitchen for now, though, because I use them while I'm riding the exercise bike. If I don't, Norah likes to come in and stand right next to the bike and wander up around the pedals, where she would get whacked if I didn't stop. I also like to use them from time to time while I'm making dinner, if the kids are being particularly pesty. But I don't really NEED them anymore, which is awesome.

And last night I realized that I was once again leaving cups with drinks in them on the end tables in the living room. That was another change that happened so gradually that I didn't even notice it. Norah now leaves them alone. Mostly. I still wouldn't leave a cup with anything that would permanently stain the carpet in there for fear that she'd want to try to drink some herself, but I can leave water and that sort of thing freely cupped around our house. And that is awesome. It's been nearly four years since we've been able to drink liquids with impunity and disregard for possible consequences. It's great to be able to put our things places and have a reasonable expectation of them not being messed with.

Then, just a few minutes ago, I pulled the high chair out of the kitchen (where we've been keeping it in between uses) and put it in the garage. She hasn't used it at all for about two weeks now, and for the past month or so we've only used it for especially messy meals. Our kitchen actually looks rather bare without it in there. Again, something that has been a staple in that room for almost four years now. I'm so pleased to have it out of the way.

Two is actually kind of a great time in a kid's life. For the parents, anyway. I have no idea how it is for the kid. Probably not great. They still have no idea what's going on and have a glaring tendency to bang themselves up a lot. But it has to be nice being able to sort of communicate what they want and need, right?

But, as I suggested in the title, two is a mixed blessing. Yes, the trappings of babyhood are going away (some might view this as a bad thing, or a sad thing, but I most certainly do not). And two is also the magical time when parents start to love their children as people.

This is something that Libby and I have talked about a few times. Up to about two, parents love their children (or the ones who are willing to admit it, anyway) because they HAVE to. Sure, sure. They're cute. And they're yours. And they're little things that are entirely dependent on you for their existence. And you love them unconditionally and you sacrifice for them because of that love.

But, let's face it, if you took the cute and the dependency away, there wouldn't be all that much to love about them. They are disgusting. They ruin all of your things. They control your life. And they contribute very little to the family atmosphere. They are there, but they don't really DO anything. Take away the "ahhh, adorable" factor, and you're left with very little reason to NOT want to leave them in some kind of baby farm where they could be provided the essentials and you could come visit them once or twice a week until they were old enough to start providing the family with some redeeming qualities.

But around two, that all starts to change. They start to become little people. They develop personalities. They start to do and say funny things. They start to follow basic orders and can help get out their diapers or grab their cups or put toys away (well, in theory at least). Right around two, you start to love your kids because of who they are, not just because you have to!

Yes, I know. That sounds kind of jaded and terrible. So, I'm jaded and terrible. But anyone who has known me for any amount of time already knew that about me. If you think about it, though, and you're honest with yourself, I bet you'll have to reluctantly agree that it's true. You love your kids when they are babies, but you don't start to love love them until they start to become functioning people.

Or maybe I'm just a dick. Who knows.

Anyway, that's happening now. Norah's personality is starting to blossom. And she's got some truly wonderful traits. She's funny. She can, and I'm not exaggerating here, light up a room with her smiles and expressions. Her entire face just transmits primal joy when she smiles. Her eyes brighten, her face opens up, and her smile crosses her entire face. She likes to sing, she does hilarious "ballerina" dances, and she has a budding imagination--creating little stories with her "friends" in her dollhouse or with some of Gabe's big construction vehicles. As I type this, she's carrying on some sort of conversation with her Yo Gabba Gabba guitar (well, Gabe's Yo Gabba Gabba guitar, but she's pretty much claimed it as her own, and Gabe's obsessed with army guys right now, so he doesn't care).

But, man, can she be a little B. Wow. She's got some SERIOUS attitude going on some times. And MEAN. I don't know if it's just because she's the youngest and is trying to push her way up the pecking order or if it's just part of her personality, but . . . wow.

Just last night . . . OK. Here's the story.

Gabe was sitting on Libby's lap in the living room. And, because he's Gabe, he decided to slide down her legs face first to the floor. But instead of getting all the way down, he left his feet up in her lap and was mostly lying face down on the floor for a little bit. Norah was standing by the couch and watched him do it. As soon as he had his head down and he was mostly defenseless, she walked over to him and, I shit you not, started to stomp on the side of his head with her foot. Just picked it up and started mashing down on his head like it was snake threatening to strike. And this was the SECOND time I've seen her do that in the last week.

Clearly she got a little spank and about five minutes in time out for it. But, come on. Granted, Gabe doesn't really help matters. He's such a glutton for punishment that he usually thinks it's a great game. He actually encourages her to "squash" him from time to time. He tells her to sit down on his back and kind of jump up and down.

OK. So maybe my kids are a little effed up. But they keep me entertained. And a little annoyed. And kind of tired.

But it is awfully nice not having any babies around anymore. And I get to laugh about as often as I find myself pulling out what little hair I have left from the last four years of raising them. So there's that.

Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don't

Recently--and I'm not sure WHY this is happening, maybe it's the current parenting zeitgeist or maybe I just keep stumbling upon articles addressing the topic--I've read many discussions on the subject of "proper parenting." Basically, the debate boils down to these two houses: Disciplinarian or Child's Best Friend, and everyone, it seems, is vehemently admonishing the other side for doing it all wrong. And actual parents are the ones caught in the middle, never knowing what is the right thing to do--and I'm one of them.

Although, let me be frank, I've NEVER put much stock in parenting "guides." If these people had been right through the last few generations, then we would be living in a Utopia where all of these grown-up children would be perfect social creatures who always got along and always did whatever work was necessary to make the world a fantastic place. They would be productive, empathic, dedicated, hard working, intelligent, sophisticated, polite, courteous, gracious, sportsmanlike, creative, imaginative, healthy, dextrous, compassionate, talented people.

But the world is full of douchebags. FULL. We have, almost certainly, reached our capacity. Critical mass will be achieved within a few short years and we will experience a douchebag overload. Douchebags will explode forth from this planet and spread their doucheiness out into the cosmos or into an alternate reality or something.

Now, is this the result of generations of bad parenting, or is this simply the result of having a planet that has 6 billion people on it, and the simple fact is that douchebags are loud, obnoxious, and seem to take up FAR more space and reality than they deserve because they are so hard to function around?

I think "yes." To whatever it is my point was supposed to be.

Here's how the philosophies (or the opposition's interpretation of those philosophies, anyway, since it's always easier to nail down the simplified and caricatured opposing view than it is to offer an ACTUAL interpretation of something so nuanced and complicated as a couple decades of parenting to raise a child to adulthood) break down.

Disciplinarians: These parents reign down terror upon their children. They squash all creativity and seek to bully or mentally/emotionally/physically abuse a child in order to "keep them in line." Children are taught from infancy that they will be punished for ALL outbursts of individuality and differentness. Often categorized as "old school" parenting--where a parent wasn't afraid to wallop a disobedient child, even if said child was acting out in the middle of a crowd of SRS workers, and the old adage "children should be seen, not heard" was enforced with a wooden spoon or yard stick (or a withering glare that threatened the eventuality of such punishment). According to the opposition, children who live through these conditions will inevitably lash out through bullying/laziness/slouching/premarital sex/ or whatever other undesirable traits that "the youth" are exhibiting that old people don't like that will "show them" that they can do their own thing despite the threat of punishment. Parents who do this are evil dictators and Hitler himself would shake his head and cluck his tongue at them if he saw how these parents treated their kids.

Child's Best Friend: These parents reign down unwavering love and support on their children. Discipline is achieved through positive reinforcement only. If a child does something bad, then that child is gently directed to do something else that is acceptable. This doesn't happen very often, though, because very nearly everything is acceptable--it is an "expression" of childhood, and children should be allowed to define themselves and rule over their immediate surroundings lest their creativity/intelligence/ambition/whatever be squelched. Furthermore, the child should be protected from EVERYTHING bad through any means possible. According to the opposition, children who live through these conditions will inevitably lash out through bullying/laziness/slouching/premarital sex/ or whatever other undesirable traits that "the youth" are exhibiting that old people don't like because they've never had to deal with reality of any sort and they are completely unprepared for how the world actually works. Parents who do this are hippie deadbeats who have never contributed anything worthwhile to society and the leading cause of gingivitis, rickets, irritable bowel syndrome, and the moral decay of society. They spit in the face of "the good old days" and won't be happy until society is crumbling around them.

That about sums it up.

Sort of.

But what is the RIGHT thing to do?

And there's the rub. It won't matter. No matter what you do, your child will blame everything bad in his/her life on your parenting (or, perhaps, they will love you too much to actually blame you, but their therapists almost certainly will all the same--because you let your child love you TOO much but they didn't have the respect they needed to understand that). In short, it doesn't matter what you do, you're going to do it wrong.

And that's not surprising. Parenting happens every waking minute (and many barely awake minutes) of every day, and unless you have the discipline of a Buddhist monk, you aren't going to be able to maintain whatever "ideal" you are striving towards. You are going to screw up. If you want strict discipline, you will find yourself momentarily incapable of dishing it out and your child will run rampant, doing what his/her heart desires for a little while as you put your metaphorical head between your legs and hide. If you want to love and support your child through positive reinforcement, you're going to lose your shit every once in awhile and bellow orders at your children backed with threats of the most unrealistic kinds of cartoon violence when you've finally reached your breaking point.

And all because sometimes you just can't take their abuse anymore.

Yeah. That's right. I said abuse. Children are the WORST practitioners of physical/mental/emotional abuse. And all of this debate boils down to "How do I react to my child's abuse?"

How DO I react to our child's abuse? What's the best way? What do I need to do to make my child the best person possible?

That's the age old question, and one that surely doesn't have a right answer. Because, as I said, it doesn't matter what you do, it will probably be wrong. If you lash out, your child will grow up afraid of people and negative consequences and go through life with a variety of stunting complexes. If you coddle and over-protect, then your child will grow up incapable of functioning in a world that doesn't give a damn about them or how they feel when they become adults. To my way of thinking, there has to be a happy medium somewhere. A child has to know love and caring and be able to treasure social contact and feel free to express creativity and individuality. And a child has to be able to blend into society and understand that the world does not now, nor ever will, revolve around him/her.

Really, I think it all boils down to teaching personal responsibility. Not just because personal responsibility is great. It is. It's necessary to feel fulfilled in life and to find a happy place in the world. But, more importantly, if a grown-up child feels personally responsible, then that child will likely not blame the parent for doing the wrong thing.

And THAT is the most important aspect of parenting--getting away with it. But how to make that happen is still a mystery to me, and I'm still convinced that, no matter what I do, it will be the wrong thing. As with all things, only time will tell. In the meantime, though, I'll just keep disagreeing with everything parenting advice columns tell me I SHOULD be doing, because they don't know any better than I do at this point. If they did, then nobody would be arguing about the best way to do things anymore.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

So, now that I'm in a nice, quiet place where I probably won't be disturbed for awhile (work), I'll get around to doing that "kind of big news" update I was talking about earlier.

Rather quietly, our lives have changed significantly over this past month. Many of the things that I've been pissing and moaning about for the past six months or so just sort of went away. More or less. And with no fanfare. In fact, the transition was so nearly seamless that I almost failed to notice it entirely. It would have just been one of those things that stopped happening that we didn't notice wasn't happening anymore until much later when we thought to ourselves, "Remember when . . . ." and then we finally remembered when.

This happened the other day with Gabe. Someone asked him his name. He said, "I'm Gabe. I'm four!" Everyone he talks to these days finds out that he's four. It's kind of his thing right now. But that was it, and a little while later I was thinking about it and remembered that his response USED TO BE "I'm Gabe Albers from Big Boy," which we loved and thought was adorable. And it just sort of stopped happening without us noticing.

I imagine that's what will keep happening from now until all the kids do is yell and throw things at us and nothing very pleasant happens anymore.

Well, that's a very jaded notion, isn't it. My children will not be monsters when they are teenagers. They will be loving children who respect me, listen closely to my opinions, always maintain their composure, and love me more than anything else in the world. Like the kids on Family Ties or Growing Pains. Right.

Anyway, the Big Boy thing was cute and a good thing and I was sad to see it go. These things with Norah, not so much.

While Libby was in the hospital for her surgery, my folks took the kids. I think I commented on that at the time--about how wonderful it was and how exhilarating the breath of freedom was.

I've since adjusted back to the chains of parenthood again, in case anyone is wondering. I barely even think about how little I can get out and do anything that I'd like to again. Which is good, because if I thought about that regularly I'd probably go batty.

While the kids were at my folks' place, Norah went through an interesting metamorphosis. Apparently, all she needed to break her of her waking up three times in the middle of the night and needing a bottle cycle was to have the reset button pushed on her. She spent five nights at my folks, and while she was there, she never once demanded a bottle in the middle of the night when she woke up. Granted, she was sharing a big bed with Nana who just calmed and soothed her back to sleep instead of getting up and giving her a bottle (and, yes, we've tried this before, rather Libby has, with zero success).

Then, when she got home, we had pulled the side off her crib so we could transition her into a big girl bed, and that combine with her short-term habit of sleeping through the night at my folks' house apparently reset her. Now, if she wakes up in the middle of the night, she mostly just calms herself down and goes back to sleep. She's woken up a couple times and needed some soothing, and once demanded a bottle, but she seems to have mostly moved on.

And it is so wonderful. If you've never had a child who wakes up multiple times a night for two years straight you really have no idea. But even I can't complain that much because I didn't wake up EVERY night. Sometimes I slept through it because I could. Libby, however, couldn't. So maybe she'll start to get some decent sleep again. Finally.

The next big thing happened the next weekend after we put her in her big girl crib. We separated Gabe's bunk beds, girlied one of them up, and moved Norah into his room. We were a little nervous about all of it--Would they go to sleep with each other there as a distraction? Would they wake one another up all night with their noise? Would Norah pee through her diaper every night and make her real, kind of expensive mattress a stinky disaster in a week? It was all rather up in the air, but we wanted to try it anyway, figuring Norah was making big changes quickly with her sleeping and we might as well ride the wave.

And it worked swimmingly. They can't nap together because they DO keep each other up all afternoon, but they sit in there and chat and play for a few minutes at night (if they aren't so tired they fall right to sleep) then go to sleep. When one of them wakes up, for the most part, the other one sleeps through it (really, it's amazing how much Gabe can sleep through--the kid is like a stone once he's gone down and if it's not after 5:00 in the morning). In addition, now that Norah isn't needing bottles all through the night, she's not really peeing through her diapers anymore (much, just a little damp from time to time, which only makes her and her sheets stink--and she's been stinky for so long that nobody probably notices anymore).

So, in the course of a month, we've been able to start sleeping through the night (we don't, of course, because we haven't been for nearly four years and it's not easy to break a habit like that), we've got our spare room back, our child doesn't stink like a pisspot every morning, and the kids are actually starting to enjoy having each other in the room with them while they sleep (Norah gets pissed when Gabe isn't in there when she's supposed to be sleeping--but this isn't a HUGE deal because Norah gets pissed about most things most of the time these days, she's at that age).

AND she's showing signs of getting ready to potty train. I know! We might be diaper free in a few months! God that would be glorious. GLORIOUS!

This Deserves Its Own Post

I know I said I was going to get to an updating type thing, and I think I've got quite a few pictures on the camera that I need to sort through and post, but something happened yesterday that deserves attention of its own.

We hosted the 4th of July party yesterday. It was, in fact, our 10th annual 4th of July party. Over the years we've hosted a variety of our holiday parties, but the 4th of July is the only one that we've had here every year.

One of our sort-of traditions (in that we don't do it EVERY year, but we've done it a few times over the past several years) is to put a fresh coat of spray paint on the giant aluminum canoe of Kris' that lives in our backyard. We have no particularly good reason to paint the thing, except that it is here, we usually have extra spray paint to get rid of, and it's good for killing about thirty minutes.

So, last night, in the lull between when the kids had fired off all of their daytime fireworks but it still wasn't dark enough yet for them to shoot off their nighttime ones, we pulled out the canoe and several people--mostly the kids--set to work on it.

And someone thought it would be a good idea to let Gabe have a go with a can of black spray paint.

He was shown how to hold the can and push the button on top to make it shoot paint in the right direction. I was trepidatious. Just two weeks ago, Gabe had his first experience with an aerosol can. He found a can of bug spray on our back porch and, convinced that he needed to put some spray on, started to use it. Instead of carefully "spritzing" himself with it, he sprayed pools of the bug deterrent into his free hand and then spread the puddle of spray around his body. In his effort to cover himself, he used up the entire can--a mostly full can. Pools of bug spray had collected all over the glass table he'd chosen to set it on. His clothes were soaked with spray. His hair was greasy with it.

Not surprisingly, I considered the experiment an unmitigated disaster and forbade him from using the bug spray by himself until he could properly figure out how to control its output. So I wasn't too hopeful about the outcome with the spray paint.

Nonetheless, I didn't want to be a helicopter parent who denied my child the chance to learn something new or have a fun experience just because I could predict a terrible outcome. It runs counter to my nature to NOT be a helicopter parent, but I'm trying. My kids deserve the chance to screw things up on their own. If they don't, they'll never learn. But, in retrospect, this might not have been the best time for me to take a step back.

To make matters worse, Libby had gone inside to give Norah a bath for bedtime, so she wasn't there to be the voice of reason. Also, a fair amount of alcohol might have been slowing my judgment, but I'm sure that didn't have anything to do with it.

Anyway, things actually didn't go TOO bad for awhile. He was hitting the canoe with most of the paint. He definitely needed to work on his application and spread of the paint--he was creating a lot of streaks and runs--and more than a little was ending up on his hands, but I figured that wasn't too much of a price to pay. The stuff on his hands would wear off eventually and he was getting to participate in an activity with the older kids.

After a few minutes, we adults grew more confident in his abilities and stopped paying close attention to him. We THOUGHT he'd more or less mastered the art of pointing the can at the canoe and pushing the button.

Then he spun around quickly with a dumbfounded look on his face, and we saw this:

Well we didn't see this EXACTLY right after it happened. I quickly ushered him to the house and told him that he needed to find Libby in the bathroom, get in the bath, and try to wash it off before it dried. This was what was left after Libby tried to get as much off as possible, which wasn't very much of it. Spray paint, it turns out, does not wash off the skin even if it is enamel. She tried to use a little finger nail polish remover, too, but it just wasn't possible to do much since so much of the paint was on his mouth and his skin is just too sensitive for that kind of thing.

At least he didn't get it in his eye, I suppose. But, all the same, I can't take him out of the house until it's faded considerably or I'm likely to have SRS called on me. And I suppose I should consider myself lucky that it wasn't the can of sky blue that he shot all over himself. Or a neon orange or something. It's bad enough that he looks like a poorly cleaned up Vaudevillian black-face performer, but at least he doesn't look like he tried to eat an emergency cone. Oh, wait, maybe I've got that backwards. Well, whatever, we're not going out in public for the next few days no matter what he looks like.

Slacker

Wow, there's now way it's been over a week since I posted last. I'm pretty sure that's the longest stretch I've had of not posting on this site since I started it almost two and a half years ago. I blame Libby being home. With her home, I haven't had to retreat to my office and use "updating the blog" as an excuse to escape the children for a little while.

But I'm sure I have things I need to be posting about. Actually, quite a bit has been going on with Norah the past few weeks.

Later. Next week Libby goes back to work, so I'll get caught up a little then. Maybe.