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Grace in Small Things: #9

November 22, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Welcome to Grace in Small Things #9: The Nighttime Nursing edition. In the spirit of thankfulness, an extended version today.

If I have to be up to feed Ethan several times a night I may as well find things to be thankful about, right? Luckily it’s not terribly hard:

Baby smiles.
Peeking in at Connor and tucking him in again when he’s kicked the covers off.
Watching the snow accumulate.
Being able to turn the dryer on again when the duvet is in there and it needs more time. (Hey, I take whatever opportunity I can get.)
Having visits from the dog who sometimes wakes up to say hello.
Having the opportunity to keep reading a book I’m enjoying.
Taking the opportunity to pee.
Getting to see tweets from the Aussies and Brits, who I usually otherwise miss.
Experiencing late-night enlightenment.
Finding a new blog to read and clicking a link to find another one and another one and getting lost in Internet-land.
Baby smiles. (Worth noting twice.)

Filed Under: Happy things, Motherhood · Tagged With: favourite activities, Grace in Small Things, gratitude, lists, sleep

Now You Are Four

June 13, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Dear Connor,

Today you turn four.

You came into our room at 5:00 this morning asking for a cuddle. Normally when it’s that early we try to get you back into your own bed, but I wanted a cuddle too so I let you stay. You fell asleep promptly, your warm little self pressed against me, and slept until 8.

The first thing you did upon waking up was run around the other side of the bed to hug your dad and thank him for your birthday cake. You knew he was making one because you had helped him bake it and, while you had no idea what it turned out like or just how cool a cake it was, that one action says so much about the boy you are becoming.

The cake and your appreciation for it

Every day you do something like that and I am reminded again of how much love a mother can have for her child. I was consumed by that today – just full of awe about how much you’ve changed my world. I understand now why my mother always reminisces on our birthdays about how and when we are born. It’s my birthday, I remember thinking. Why is it such a big deal to you?

But it is a big deal because it’s life changing for a mother, in even more profound ways than for the child I think.

In the last couple of days I’ve spent so much time thinking about when you were born. How we tried the day before to get the OB to turn you around, but how you stayed stubbornly breech. How we left the hospital knowing we were coming back very early the next morning to bring you into the world. How I called my mom and we went out for dinner and ate huge bowls of pasta because I hadn’t eaten all day while we’d been waiting to see if the external version was going to go ahead. I remember my mom sitting at that table with us. I remember how she looked at us and how she was excited knowing she would meet her first grandchild the next day. What I didn’t know at the time was just how much she knew about what was about to happen to us and how little I did.

Because, truly, I had no idea.

One of your first snow days

Since that day, so much seems to have blurred together as I try to navigate my way through a world that includes you. How you have taken lately to letting out high-pitched shrieks that threaten to deafen the lot of us. How you use the couch as a tumbling mat despite us asking you repeatedly not to. How often you tell either your dad or I that you “didn’t listen” today (which, by the way, we’re well aware of). How you want to do everything yourself whether it’s appropriate or not and how you can have the granddaddy of all meltdowns if we say no. How, after four years, you still don’t reliably sleep through the night.

Those are the little things about life with you that become big things, and sometimes those big little things overshadow the other stuff. And then you spontaneously say or do something that reminds me of just how big a heart you have and what an incredible soul you really are, and I am again filled with gratitude.

You’re missing your friends from home lately and my heart breaks at the thought that we’ve moved you away from these small people you’ve known all your life and who have helped shape the person you are. You miss Grandma and Grandpa, and while I hate that too I feel blessed that you have in my parents the grandparents I would have wished for you.

Lounging with Grandma

I worry that you’re bored and that we should be doing more to stimulate you. I want to encourage you to do the things you love to do, like painting, playing with Lego, and cooking and baking, because in those moments I see how your mind works and how the world becomes meaningful to you and full of potential. And yet I feel stuck a little bit, trapped between your smartness and short attention span and my overwhelming lack of energy right now.

Your bacon moustache

But I know this period in our life is short, and getting shorter by the day. In the fall you’ll have a new little brother – “my baby” you call him, and you’re so excited to meet him (even though you still sometimes think he’s a girl). This baby has always been “your” baby and in those words I see the big brother you’re going to be. Some days I wish we’d had another child sooner so you’d have a playmate like some of your friends do, but that’s not how it worked out. And maybe that’s for the best. You’ve had four years as the centre of our lives and you’re more than ready to take on your new role.

But for the next few months you’re still my baby, and I imagine — little brother or not — that is what you will always be.

I will love you always and forever,

Mama xx

Filed Under: Happy things, Letters to Connor, Motherhood, Pregnancy · Tagged With: family, gratitude, moments, my wish for you, sleep

Sleep and the Definition of Enough

February 12, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Three years, eight months. That’s how old my son is. To the day, actually. That’s also how long we’ve been dealing with a kid who just will not sleep.

I haven’t posted too much about sleep issues here, but if you go back through my Facebook timeline to 2008/09 you’ll find that the vast majority of my status updates are about our sleep battles.

I’m sure there are kids who are worse. And I know there are parents who deal with much harder things. But oh my god the sleep. It’s tiring. (Pun intended.)

We have had very short – VERY short – stretches where he’ll sleep through the night a few nights in a row. I can’t remember what the record was, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t take two hands to count out the streak. We had some rough nights when we first moved into this house, which we expected, but we’ve now been here, and pretty settled, for 2 1/2 months. Guess how many times he’s slept through the night since we’ve been here. Go on, guess.

ONE.

That’s not counting the nights he slept with us or the ones where one of us, or my mom, slept with him. My husband and I still basically alternate nights so only one of us has to get up on any given night. Which works all right, except for those nights when he gets up 4,326 times.

Okay, to be fair, he’s not that bad.

I’d say he’s up an average of twice a night. Many nights only once, but quite often three or four times. The good thing is that it’s much, much easier to get him back to sleep now. Lately he will just quietly walk into our room and stand next to the bed. That’s generally enough for one of us to wake up, and when we do he says he wants a cuddle. So one of us will go back with him and give him a cuddle because (a) cuddles are nice, even (usually) at 3 a.m. and (b) we’re just too tired to be tough and make him go back to bed on his own.

We’re doing this to ourselves, aren’t we? We know we are, and I think we’ve essentially decided we don’t care. I remember when Connor was really young a fellow new mom observed that all those things we do in the moment to deal with a baby when we’re really tired totally screw us over, but we don’t care. It’s like we’re choosing the way present “me” wants to do things and saying, “Screw you, future me. I’m tired.”

And then you become future me and you wish formerly present me wasn’t such a bitch.

But, alas, here I am nearly four years later still making choices that screw over future me. And not only does future me have to deal with the waking up and the interrupted sleep and the way-too-early mornings, but she has to do it while she’s tired. And there’s no version of me who does well when she’s tired.

I’ve long stopped thinking he’ll finally just sleep already. I’m sure he won’t, ever. I’m sure somewhere out there is a very small girl who may one day become his wife and who will be mad at me for screwing her over too. And all I will be able to say is, “I used to be a much nicer person and a much better mother but your dear husband never slept enough and as a result I’m kind of a bitch.”

So to her, and to all the future versions of me, I say: “Yeah, sorry about that.”

Oh look, he did sleep once. We even got it on camera.

Filed Under: Be enough me, Hard things, Motherhood · Tagged With: Be enough me, sleep

10 Days of Mama

November 8, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

It’s been 10 days. 11, I guess. Today is the 11th day.

He had the flu about a week and a half ago – 11 days ago, I guess – and we did all the usual things through a day or so with a sick little boy. I wore my Mama Who Has Been Barfed On badge again with pride and enjoyed the cuddles – warm and soft and in the normal range of worrisome. Which is to say not terribly.

Then the abdominal pain started and by 4 am a week ago Sunday we were in the ER. No parents want to learn their child’s appendix has burst the hard way.

The ER was quiet that morning. No one else in the pediatric area but us. Waybuloo is only slightly less weird at four in the morning; those Brits were definitely on something.

No appendectomy required. A bit dehydrated, even though he drinks Pedialyte like it’s juice, and home we went.

That was only the second in a series of sleepless nights.

Tonight will be the 11th night. We have pushed through a brief road trip (if a very long drive – there and back in six days – can be considered brief), a house purchase, and a few quick visits.

We are home, but he is not better. He has been, off and on. Enough that we felt it was okay to make the trip. Enough that he played in the snow on Friday. Enough that he went to school yesterday.

But he is not better, and the morning at school was apparently weepy with repeated requests for Mama. When Grandma and Grandpa picked him up, he went home with them and slept. For more than an hour. (Very unusual.) Daddy had to go and pick him up.

Mama came home, and the pieces of velcro connected again. We have been this way – attached – for 10 days. Or 11 now, I guess. He wants me and stays close, his soft hair tickling my chin and his small fingers rubbing my wrist.

This is what I know:

His toddler tummy fits right in the palm of my hand.

It is warm and soft and it soothes me.

Rubbing his tummy only sometimes soothes him.

He has a spot – a specific place he likes to be. Between my chin and collarbone, shoulder tucked under my right arm as it wraps around him.

This has been his place for months now. It’s where he comes when he wants a cuddle. It’s where he sleeps when he’s sick. It’s where he fits.

Except he doesn’t. He’s getting tall, and his gangly limbs struggle to find a place to land. His head bumps against my chin as he looks for his spot, refusing to acknowledge that he doesn’t fit the same way as before.

He wants me to fix him, except I can’t. He’s blocked, I think, so nothing terribly worrisome now either except that my baby’s in pain. We’ve tried the usual remedies – applesauce, prune juice, warm baths. We’ve tried worse, and had it work, except not fully. And now, on the 11th day, he doesn’t want any of that.

He just wants Mama.

Tomorrow Daddy will take him to the doctor to see if she can help. Mama will go to work, again, and turn on the bright lights, again, in hopes they will keep her awake. She will take ibuprofen for her shoulder – the one that loves holding her boy but is tired, and is sending waves of stabbing pain running up and down her neck between her ears and her shoulder in protest.

Tomorrow is day 12. He might still want Mama, but hopefully, for everyone’s sake, he won’t need her quite so much.

Freely written and linked up with:

Filed Under: Hard things, Motherhood, Writing · Tagged With: call for back-up, family, mom's instinct, my wish for you, sleep

My Big Little Boy

August 1, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

“How old are you going to be on your birthday, Connor?!”

We played this game a lot in the weeks before his third birthday.

“Three!”

His toddler voice turning the ‘th’ to an ‘f’.

“Wow, you’re so big now!”

I said it every time, knowing what the answer would be.

“No, I’m still little.”

He was then. Still little.

But something has changed.

***

I sit watching him, his face deep in concentration as he does a puzzle on his own, something he hasn’t done before because he never had the attention span to sit still long enough.

He gets to the end. There are two pieces missing. Buried, most likely, in the huge pile of rubble he and a friend made the day before by dumping the entire contents of the toy bins and book shelves onto the floor. The mess is huge and it takes us an hour of sorting and putting away to get it cleaned up – and for a moment he is little again, impatient and wanting those two pieces so badly he can’t sit still to help.

Then they appear and he gently but deliberately puts them into place.

And I’m looking at my little boy who suddenly seems less little.

***

I catch a glimpse of myself in the rear view mirror and take a moment to wipe a mascara smudge from my brow before driving away.

He’s in the back seat, watching. And then the questions start.

What are you doing? Why? How did it get there? Where did it come from?

As I drive, I try to think about how to explain mascara to a three-year-old. To me it’s just a mascara smudge, but if I stop long enough to look past the slight annoyance of incessant questions I can get a glimpse of who he is. Who he’s becoming.

Curious. Perceptive. On a quest for information about his world.

So many questions.

I answer them all.

***

He’s been acting out lately, deliberate in his defiance. Following bedtime stories I tuck him into bed, knowing he’s not going to stay there. He climbs out before I’ve even left the room.

We play this game for an hour. It’s the Battle of Wills, and he’s determined to win. He’s big enough now to get up and walk away. To come out – over and over – to tell me one last thing before he goes to sleep. To throw things when I stand my ground, unwilling to concede defeat until he’s demonstrated his independence.

I am frustrated. I start hearing my own questions of why. Why does he do this? Why is he worse with me than with my husband? Why won’t he just go to sleep?

And then he does. And suddenly he’s little again – round cheeks, long lashes, still-pudgy hands.

I resist the temptation to climb in next to him despite knowing the opportunities to do so are slipping away. In the last week, for the first time in three years, he has suddenly and consistently started to sleep on his own. I knew this day was coming and yet a part of me resents it. So I cherish his sleeping form and wait, knowing he’ll come to me in the night and need tucking in one more time.

He’s still little enough for that, at least.

***

“I’m big now.”

I know…

It has crept into conversation, from behind somewhere when I wasn’t looking.

“I’m big enough to carry that.”

“Look how strong you are!”

“I’m eating all my food and getting bigger.”

“Good job, buddy.”

“I don’t need you to help me. I’m big now.”

I know.

***