Oh, the Guilt!

Our dog tested positive for ringworm, so we've been treating him with meds and baths, but we also have to bathe our cats twice a week. Today, we had two casualties to the chaos. One problem was that we did it when X-man was home, which is different, but it couldn't be helped due to our schedules.

Maya and Nyssa are easy to crate. Luke and Clawdio are not. The shampoo requires the cats to sit for 5 to 10 minutes. So we wash one, put them in a carrier with a towel, get another wash, etc. When we're done with all four, we start rinsing and putting in the leave-in lotion. I got nipped by Clawdio. It didn't break the skin, but my thumb is bruised a bit.

The neurotic boy cats know when something is up, and they hide under our bed. So we have to take our bed apart to get them. X-man wanted to be present and refused to play in his room or downstairs. So he parked his butt next to my closet. I told him to stay there out of the way because the cats were scared.

As MacTroll and I are putting the mattress up, Luke, our 15 lber, goes crazy and starts trying to jump through the slats of our platform bed. And, of course, our 3 year old runs to try and help him get out so he doesn't hurt himself on the wood. I've got my hands full of pillowtop mattress and there's a king-sized bed between me and the situation. So I shout, "MOVE AWAY" as my child gets a face full of cat paw. The scratch isn't very deep because thankfully before we started this whole mess we clipped everyone. Plus, X-man apparently shut his eyes, which is great because holy cow that could have been even more terrible. He was fine after I cleaned the cut, put Neosporin on it and gave him two popsicles.

But I still feel like the worst parent alive.

Quality control needed

We had a big day today full of more and more family. This time it was MacTroll's side. X-man didn't get a nap. He'd never sleep in a strange place, so trying to find somewhere for him to go down at my in-laws was out of the question. Instead, he fell asleep on the way from their house to the swimming outing. 

We went to a swim club called Wedgewood in Peoria. It's an older pool similar to Crystal Lake in Urbana but not as well kept. And it wasn't entirely welcoming to kids X-man's size. 

There were signs in the bathroom requiring tight plastic pants for the untrained potty users. We didn't have any, so I just kind of skidded by with a swim diaper under his trunks and hoped no one would notice. Then there was a second sign that banished all non-potty trained people to the baby pool. I know why they do this. I do. It's because if there's a poopy incident they just close the baby pool and not the big pool, but it still bummed me out. Not that X-man cared. He had a grand time being kind of snotty about sharing toys with the other toddlers. And his cousins were really awesome about hanging out with him. I think it might have had a lot to do with the main pool being so cold. :-)

Anyway, we had to drop MacTroll off at the airport and then I drove X-man back home. He ended up falling asleep immediately departing the airport and he slept the whole hour and a half home. The problem with this is that now he's having a lot of trouble going to bed.

He was being so rough and wouldn't stop. So I started to flip out. I told him that I had had enough of him and that he needed to stay in his room because Mama was going to bed and would not lie with him. He cried and cried and chased me into my room trying to get me to lie with him. I carried him back to bed, got kicked for it, and said goodnight. 

But this -- this shit's gotta stop, and at this point me walking away, seems to be the only thing he understands as a real consequence to his behavior. 

Update: He's completely asleep in his big boy bed, but I feel uber shitty.

Running on Empty

It is 2-something-o'clock in the a.m. right now. I've just spent four hours staring at the Internet avoiding using my brain. Sure, there were some word games on Facebook in there. Sure, I read the newspaper... but I mean, it was avoidance. I didn't want to read about political polls or shootings in town. 

But mostly what I didn't want to do was read other people's blogs and find out how fascinating and wonderful their lives are, when mine currently seems very -- stand still-ish.

My friends in town use our blogs to catch up. It's kind of funny for a group of women who see each other more often than any of us usually see our spouses. 

Libbygirl had her baby on July 31. Lightning McColin's little brother is a spitting image of him. He eats and sleeps well. It was sweet to meet him and hold him this week. 

But it also made me think a lot about the last 2.5 years. Half of me wanted to get a little ribbon for just surviving. The other half mourned a bit because I became very conscious that I was crossing a line I never wanted to cross when I became a mother.

That is to say, I never wanted to become a bitter mom. The one with much older children that stands next to you forewarning you of all the ways your sweet infant baby will one day hate you. The one that tells you how outside of work and motherhood she doesn't have a life. That by the time she gets it back, she'll be old and gray and her unappreciative children will never call her. 

When I had a newborn, I found a lot of solace in other newborn moms. We had the same wide-eyed deer caught in headlight looks. We hadn't slept. We hadn't showered. We hadn't eaten. Our babies couldn't turn over. They had no teeth. And you could spend hours, days, weeks just staring at your kid. 

Then as my baby began to really move and interact with is world, I was fascinated by his exploration. Pushing buttons on the dishwasher was a huge achievement. He used a fork. He opened a door. He built with Mega Blocks. He pulled a string toy across the floor. 

Then he got to 18 months and the molars starting coming in. We're just now finishing with the last of his teeth, and as they came in and the speech started really flowing -- my child explored and punished others (mostly me) through biting. 

Now I realize my son will be 2.5 in September. He's no longer a baby. Besides the diapers, any infant aspect of him has disappeared. He's his own little man. He hugs and jumps and skips. He doesn't want to share his toys. His mood swings challenge me in every way. But for the first time, I find myself being angry with my child when we have bad days, when his behavior is out of hand. 

I never had that anger before. Until he was 2, he could do anything and I had this endless patience with him. That was before he decided I was the mortal enemy when I did things like force him to stay out of the street or put away a toy he threw or not allow him to have ice cream for breakfast. And I know I'm being a good mom by doing all those things. I know I'm being a better mom for sticking to my guns. 

But it feels like there's this huge separation there now. Like I've staked my claim and he's staked his, and we'll never get back to where we were. 

I see that kind of separation in a lot of families. There's this giant gap that exists. And it's not that they don't care, but it's just that there's so much shit in the gap that it's hard to ever really find a common ground that's strong enough to start all over again. It's a weird crazy tangle.

All I know, is that I don't want it to happen to X-man and I. I wonder if we've been provided enough of a map of what to do -- by learning what not to do or by learning what's not normal -- at any stage or age of a child's life. 

For example: You don't tell people that when you found out that you were pregnant you wanted to walk in front of a bus, because your kid will somehow be told that some day and boy, isn't that a great therapy conversation? 

You don't have your 12-year-old sit down next to you and tell the child if they weren't around you'd kill yourself, again, more therapy fodder.  

You don't just show up for honor society and plays and other public events where people "see" you "parenting" and yet in reality you're completely disconnected from your kids' lives to the point where they feel they look after themselves. 

You don't insult your kids' career choices. 

You don't say bad things about the people they date or marry. 

You don't criticize their parenting. 

You don't tell them bad crap about the other parent. 

You don't talk about sex as being dirty. 

You don't shame them. 

You don't guilt them. 

You don't neglect them. 

You don't make up some kind of alternate reality where you tell them things in their lives didn't happen because you're happier denying any proof that your kid endured any pain on your watch. 

You don't criticize your kids' weight. 

You don't get to get angry with your kids for thinking for themselves, even if they choose to think differently from you. 

You don't force feed religion to someone who is reluctant.

These kinds of lessons go on and on...

I know we're going to continue to make mistakes, lots and lots and lots of them. The big thing I've learned from becoming a parent is that you do your best. It's all you can do. It's all any parent can do, even parents that do the things mentioned above.

But then again, there's Yoda telling me how it is when my best isn't good enough no matter how hard I work, no matter how many bruises I have, or how much my son, after he hits me, hugs and kisses me to try to make things better. 

I get frustrated with his natural, 2-year-old ways. I get angry with him when he hurts others. 

It still has me up at now 3-something-o'clock at night. 

Fear.

I'm going to go sleep with my child and hug his Bob the Builder. And tomorrow, while the gap is still small enough... I'm going to start shoveling some of that crap out of there. And I'm going to start building the world's biggest, strongest cantilever. Not so much to smother, but enough to keep my eye on things and hope that I can do a better job.

Things I know

1. It took until 11:00 p.m. tonight for X-man to fall asleep thanks to Mother Nature's noise and light show. So it was 2 hours and 15 minutes of me lying around kissing 2-month-old boo boos that aren't there any more and having a 2 year old roll on top of me saying, "Hug, Hug, Hug." 

2. Thanks to a certain sonic screwdriver I now know that my son only has 1/2 of his upper 2nd year molars through. It's like the sharper, deeper edge on both sides of his mouth have poked through the gums, but the "lesser" edge on both teeth haven't. 

3. I told X-man's teachers that he's been putting everything in his mouth. They watched him today and he continued the behavior there. Going so far as to put his shoe in his mouth while they were getting undressed to go swimming today. Then when Ms. Holly told him that shoes aren't for chewing and had him put them away, X-man returned to the rug and started chewing on his toes, instead.

4. I was finishing up some scrapbooking pages tonight while X-man watched Elmo's World (a recent find for me at the Champaign Public Library since we don't have TV). This particular one had an episode about teeth. X-man went into the bathroom and got his toothbrush wet, brought me the Thomas the Tank Engine tooth paste and brushed his teeth and chewed on his toothbrush for the entire segment. Then he wanted to watch it again.

5. X-man came over to look at my scrapbooking photos. He pointed out Dada and Papa and Lightning McColin and Bubba. Then he picked up my sharp scissors. I quickly said, "No." and asked for them back. His grip tightened. I asked more firmly. He said, "No. Mine." I told him they were dangerous and that I was taking them back. After I got them away from him, X-man LUNGED at my legs with his mouth open as if to bite me as I stood up to take them to my desk area to put them away. I got the scissors to a safe place, picked him up and put him in his red chair and told him the whole teeth are not for biting routine. That it was unacceptable, mean and dangerous. He avoided making eye contact. I asked him if he was angry. He stayed quiet. I asked him if he knew what angry was. And he furrowed his brow and said, "Angry!" and growled (remind me to send a thank you to Cuba Gooding Jr. for his performance on Angry on the Sesame Street Podcast). 

"X-man are you angry with Mama?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"You took them there. Mine. You took. Mine."

We talked about using our words. We talked about danger. We talked about Mommy's stuff versus Xander's stuff. We talked about feeling safe. We hugged a lot. We kissed a lot. 

All the literature I read gives "biter" identities. The exploratory biter that's learning through his senses. The power biter that feels like he doesn't have any control to make choices. The frustrated biter that doesn't know how to deal with emotionally charged situations, etc.

What if my kid happens to have behavioral characteristics that fall into all areas of the biter identities? I hate puzzles that I can't solve. And getting into the mind and thoughts of a 2 year old isn't easy. I just keep hoping that consistent messages from me, open communication and time will win out. 

The dreaded reality

I am the mother of a biter. 

It doesn't happen at school. It only happens when he spends time with me and his playgroup. 

I know biters aren't "bad kids." They just can't communicate their emotions well enough to negotiate on a playground, which is normal during the toddler years, blah, blah, blah.

But what I'm internalizing this as is a big part of my own personal failure as a parent.