Our Family is growing!!!

That's right, our little family is one member larger now! We adopted Oliver two weeks ago and he's fitting right in. Pudding (pictured above) has taken to him like a duck to water and the Tyke loves him a little too much and rather roughly. The Tyke thinks the cat is endlessly fascinating but has not yet learned that hair pulling is not an act of love. He's rather bewildered when the Pudding reacts badly to his adoring advances and even more confused when the cat reacts the same way. Someday he'll figure it out. Until then I must be a constant mediator in all Tyke/Cat relations.

There's always a reason

My last post was bemoaning the fact that my son has forgotten how to sleep through the night. This one, tells you why. We discovered yesterday that poor Tyke has the Swine Flu as does the Pudding, Dilbert and myself. The kids seem to have the worst of it so far and now that we're treating it, are on the upswing. Dilbert went to bed at 8pm last night and seems a bit more perky this morning but he's still having a hard time. I probably have the easiest case of it but I figure that's compensation for having to take care of the other three.
We're looking forward to leaving the house again.

Sleepless in the Suburbs

The Tyke is having trouble sleeping. With the new cold weather we either have to put socks on him when he goes to bed or make sure he's covered by his blankets. He loves nothing better than to rip socks off and kick blankets away. Then his little feet get cold and he wakes up, and up and up.
Last night Dilbert and I took turns going in to put him back to sleep. Now, this morning we look like the walking dead. The exhaustion is tough to take.
Most times I don't really mind when the Tyke wakes up to nurse at night. It's one of the few times I get to cuddle with him without getting a knee or elbow in the gut. At night, he snuggles and cuddles and will lay down quietly while he nurses back to sleep which is a big change from the day time when he tries to crawl away and take the nipple with him.
At times I think he is just physically incapable of sitting still. He goes ten different directions at once and I really don't know how he has the energy after being up so much of the night yelling at Dilbert and I.
I'm going to go take a nap now.

sleepless socks

So I've been working on these socks and I love them. They are cute and soft and beautiful on little feet. They are made from the Best Yarn in the world, Claudia handpainted sock yarn. I'd bought it a couple of years ago when I was first getting into knitting. I made a scarf out of it because I was still scared of knitting socks but even the scarf didn't really work. It was too thin and it rolled funny.
The scarf became a Pudding toy and thus, was nearly destroyed. I recently rescued it and began making the scarf into these socks. I've made two pair of these for the Tyke and the yarn is nearly gone. I know these won't fit him all that long but I can always use them for the next baby or pass them on to a friend.
The pattern is available for your perusal. Enjoy!

The importance of good decision-making skills

When I was in college I was assigned a research project for an English class. I could pick the topic and so I chose the effects of divorce on adult children. In doing research for this (I got an A) project I discoverd the work of Judith Wallenstein Phd. She has been studying the effects of divorce on children since the early 70's and some of her findings mirrored my own life so closely that I felt slightly exposed handing that research over to my professor.
Dr. Wallerstein's work showed that adult children of divorce were gun shy, they had a hard time committing, they chose inappropriate partners, were more likely to divorce themselves and were prone to depression. As I read all this as a 21 year old college student fresh from a disasterous relationship with a highly inappropriate man I felt like I'd had the wind knocked out of me. Over and over the people she'd studied displayed the same poor judgement and and reckless behavior that I did. I know that most people at 21 make a sort of sport out of bad decisions but the people in the book and people like myself made those bad decisions, not out of a sense of fun or on a lark but rather out of a sense of need or fear.
We attached ourselves to people we knew would leave us because that is what is familiar. We stayed away from relationships that could become serious because we're afraid that we'd have to relive it all over again. We open ourselves up to only the most shallow interactions as a way of protecting the scared child inside.
Looking back now, it was in reading Dr. Wallersteins book "The Unknown Legacy of Divorce" (Hyperion) that got me thinking and making decisions about what I wanted in my life and what I didn't. In many ways, I have her work to thank for making me realize that all these bad decisions and poor judgments were within my control. I could choose to follow this legacy of failure and abuse or I could make better decisions than my parents had and give my children a safer and more comforting home.
None of this is meant as a judgment on my parents (my mom reads this blog, Hi Mom!). I understand why they made the decisions they did and I know that divorce was the best option available to my mom. I do not blame them for divorcing and in retrospect it the best thing for all concerned. I do occasionally blame them for getting married in the first place because that was (I'm sure they'd both agree on this one) a bad move on both their parts. But blaming them for this is silly because if they hadn't done that, my brothers and I wouldn't be the people we are so I'm not going to pass any blame around here.
What I am saying is that at the outset, I felt it was important to really think longterm and know what I wanted in a father for my children and in a husband for myself. If anything good has come from being the child of divorce it is that I've seen how wrong it can go when you don't look at a date as a potential partner. Instead you get lost in being in-love and stupid. I love my husband dearly, like the very air I breathe but when I looked at him across the table on our first date I wasn't thinking of a magical wedding at a villa in Tuscany or about how cute he was (though he is very cute). I was thinking about what he'd be like in the trenches. Would he be someone I could work along side with toward our common goals, in building a life, in raising a family. Would his be the face I'd want to see every morning for the rest of my life? Would he be the one I'd want to talk me through contractions while I birthed his children? Would he be the one I'd want to fight and compromise with on paint colors for the living room even though he knows I'm very artistic and his wardrobe before I met him looked like oatmeal? The answer to all these has obviously been yes and for five years we've been getting to know each other and building that life.
I grew to love him, I didn't fall in love. I liked him a lot but I didn't let myself fall in love because I knew where that leads. When I knew enough about him that I knew he wouldn't hurt me, I made the decision to love this man.


The best decision of my life.

A wistful look back and a hopeful look forward.

It's coming, I know it's coming. The day that I'll have to clean out my office and say good bye to the program that I built from scratch. The Church has recieved resumes and are taking interviews sometime this week and next so there's a strong possibility that I'll be done by early November. This is good news. I know this is good news and I look forward to meeting my replacement and all that. I don't want to be working at this stage in my children's lives. I know that. I've made that decision. But right now it's hard to think about leaving that all behind me.
I was at Mini-Monet kids art group on Saturday and a little boy of about 5 was there. He and his little brother are something of regulars in that group and they are such fun kids. This little boy was especially gregarious today and had a lot of fun co-narrating the story with me. At the very end of the program, when all the toys had been cleaned up and the art supplies put away and his parents each had a foot out the door, he ran as fast as he could all the way across the room to give me a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek. I smiled at his mom as he ran back to her.
It's stuff like this that I'll miss.
Children like this little guy love so easily. They show up ready to like and be liked. As long as you don't do anything to screw it up, they will love you. All you have to do is be there and be interested in them. There are other kids that are harder to get to know, they are shy and suspicious. You have to talk softly and respectfully to them and really pull them out of their shells. You have to give them time to adjust to your presence. Love is precious in all it's forms and never more so than when it comes from a child. I will miss being loved by those kids.

In other news, I am very seriously considering homeschooling my children. Pudding is only three but I know she's a smart cookie and I have already been planning on teaching her to read as early as next year however we are now considering expanding mommy's pre-k into something more exhaustive. I'm doing a lot of research and trying to talk Dilbert into considering it. I'm glad I have two years to make this decision and get him comfortable with it. Anyone out there have any opinions to share on this? I'd love to hear it.

The Roller Coaster

It's highly amusing to me to look back at my previous posts because it seems that I am forever riding the extreme highs and the low lows of parenting. My kids make me crazy...my kids are so sweet...they're making me crazy again...but isn't that cute.
I've been riding a bit of a high lately so when I look back at my last post and see how frustrated I was with Pudding only a few days ago, I feel like I'm reading something someone else wrote. That's not the daughter I dealt with today, that must be some other woman's bratty kid having to be dragged out of preschool.
This week has gone much better, partially because I've bribed her. Today when I got to preschool to pick Pudding up, I told her I had something special in the car for her and if she came with me nicely she could have it. It turns out that she didn't really want the half a muffin I'd saved her from my own afternoon snack but by then we were already in the car and she didn't really seem to mind.
All this reminds me of Parenthood, one of my all time favorite movies. Steve Martin plays the father of three, soon to be four who has never really learned to enjoy the ups and downs and general crazyness of children. Towards the end of the movie there is a scene where their three year old escapes the clutches of his parents and manfully defends his big sister from the imagined threats of her fellow actors in her school play. The child wreaks havoc and stops the production. While many of the parents in the audience find this hilarious, one mother is red faced and tersely yelling, "He's ruining the whole play!" Over all this action the sounds of a roller coaster play.
This movie and that scene in particular make more and more sense to me the older my kids get. You can't control every thing they do. Some days they are going to embarrass you and some days they will make you so proud you feel like your chest is going to burst. Parenthood is not for the weak of heart and learning to deal with that small stuff (it's only an elementary class play, you're there to see the kids be cute) and find the joy in it is the difference between enjoying the ride and screaming your head off for someone to let you off.