here be @ewiller's tweets...Passport collected, dummies and drugs at the ready (if only I could knock myself out) – we are off to England for 2.5 weeks.
Likely not going to be blogging or facebooking but who knows…
See you in January, if I survive…
Turns out there’s another good way to have a decent day hanging out with both boys. Oliver was sick yesterday – so sick he woke up at 6am crying, but didn’t get out of bed until 8:30am. As Mark said when I shared this, “that’s a result!” Because we are that evil that we are jumping for joy when fever turns up. Anyway, we eventually got him to the doctor and for once it’s not an ear infection. Obviously just some nasty bug that made him feel horrid, but put him at the right speed for me. We didn’t even need to leave the house! I got out his new easel and some chalk and he had a good time with that.
I am spending this week trying to get all the last minute stuff done before our UK trip on Friday night. There are many reasons that this trip is going to be stressful, least of all the flights with a toddler that can’t sit still (but does have his own seat for the first time) and a newborn. And then when we get there, there’s all the travelling around in the car in traffic and making sure that everyone gets seen.
Things to look forward to? Monsoon vouchers that have been burning a hole in my…well, I haven’t carried them in my pocket for a year, but have instead kept them safely in a file – hope to spend them in the sales. A green Christmas (hopefully). Tesco (sad but true). And actually having Mark around for 2.5 weeks instead of having him at work or working at home. He had 4 weeks off when Oliver was born. The only time he’s had off so far was the actual day that Callum was born.
So Callum – I haven’t really been blogging about the poor baby, have I? He’s fine. He’s getting heftier and heftier – but we don’t go back to the doctor until he’s 2 months old so I have no idea how much he weighs. I seem to be able to get stretches of sleep at night, between 1-3 hours at a time, and he seems to be eating less at night than he used to – sort of snacks, and then goes back to sleep fairly easily. I can’t get him to take a dummy, which is slightly disappointing. But he does seem to be fairly good at settling himself down. He has a lot of gas, and a lot of it seems trapped in there, and he also spits up a hell of a lot more than Oliver did. I am often covered in it. I was beginning to suspect some kind of lactose intolerance or something, until I did some reading up online and found out how rare that would be at this point. So I guess it’s just normal. It’s a lot easier this time, a lot more relaxed in general – not because I think he’s easier than Oliver (I think he’s fussier), but just because he’s number 2 and we can all calm down a bit. Plus there’s that damn toddler to deal with!!!
Dear Oliver,
In a number of years, when you are looking into your repressed memories with your therapist, and you discover some of your mother beating you, know that it probably happened on either a Monday or a Thursday between December 2007 and October 2008. The days that you were at home with her and your newborn brother.
Yesterday I discovered that when you misbehave and I’m taking care of you both on my own, I have a significantly shorter fuse than normal. On a normal day, I have way more patience than your father when it comes to discipline. But not yesterday. Probably because for the whole day I felt like I was on tinder hooks (complete aside: what the hell does tinder hooks mean anyway? And I always thought it was tender), like at any moment everything will descend into chaos and tears. So when you try to pour a glass of water over my alarm clock, and I end up throwing you across the room onto the mattress, it was not only because I was trying to help you avoid electrocution, but also because I felt RAGE.
You are a toddler and you are testing boundaries. Well, actually, you like to cross the boundary. Yesterday, you dropped your apple core in my morning coffee. You squashed your brother’s head when I wasn’t paying enough attention. And did a few other things I can’t really remember right now. The point is, none of it was really actually that bad (well, it would have been bad if you had electrocuted all of us), so I apologise now for my own bad behaviour. Perhaps with time, I will be able to manage these days a little better. I’ll do my best not to beat you for you real.
In January, we’ll use the mornings on these days to meet some other kids, which will make you really happy. Which will make me happy and less stressed. For now, however, we’ll be using the time to get some shopping done – at least it’s getting you out of the house, which seems to be the trick. We were all at our best during a trip to Walmart yesterday – I picked up random stuff we needed like cat food, egg nog, and a twin fitted sheet for your bed, you looked at people and toys and fruit and vegetables, and Callum slept contently in the car seat in the shopping cart.
The other trick right now? PVR’d episodes of the Teletubbies (Tellies! Again! Channel!) and Balamory (Banamee! Again! Channel!) with certain segments repeated again and again and again and AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN. I now have it automatic to tape BBC Kids at the same time every weekday to ensure we have enough episodes to hand. Okay, it’s driving us a little crazy to watch it all the time, and the same parts all the time, but it makes you happy, and as we all know, if you are happy, everyone else is okay too. Because you have us all jumping through hoops – well done, Oliver! You win.
If only you were old enough to understand Christmas and then I could threaten you with Santa not visiting or with me returning all your gifts. Your father and I are trying to do a minimalist Christmas this year as (a) we have a reduced household income with me on maternity leave; (b) we are paying a ridiculous amount of money to spend the holidays in England; and (c) we’re not planning on taking much to England as we have to leave room for every day toddler and baby necessities. However, of course, I have still bought you loads of things – a Little People Farm and Airport (I might return the airport, though – sorry), a Mr Potato Head, the Leapfrog Fridge Phonics set, an art easel, some Crayola stuff, and some new clothes. I guess it’s for your 2nd birthday too, so it’s not really that much. But if only you could understand empty threats a little better…
Anyway, good luck with the therapy – I am sure there are going to be loads of other mothering issues to deal with!!!!
Love, Mummy
I did it – I just ordered an ugly yet practical double stroller. It goes against my inner desire to be a yummy mummy to have a Graco DuoGlider, but in our current state of finances, I had to go cheap and cheerful rather than stylish and the cause of stroller envy. Plus it was on special at Sears, and Mark’s office gave us a very generous Sears gift card. Bringing our total number of pushchairs owned to 5. Oh my god. We started with the Urban Detour 3 wheeler from Mothercare (big and bulky but easy to push and great for when Oliver was an infant), then we got an umbrella stroller (a Mothercare Jive in blue) for travelling that we left in England for trips back, then I splurged on the Quinny Zapp which we still use for Oliver (and which I still love – easy and lightweight to fold up, but not great in winter weather), and then we inherited another umbrella stroller which we found in the garage here. And this doesn’t take our other modes of travel into account – the Baby Bjorn, the Hot Mama sling, and the MEC backpack carrier. I think possibly I should sell the Urban Detour. But then it will be useful on days I don’t have both of them. So instead we just keep collecting them…
Oh yeah, I did survive yesterday. Because Mark worked from home. So it was sort of like just another weekend day. So Thursday is my first real test. I have found 2 playgroups to try out starting in January, one for each morning I have both of them – which will be fantastic. Hopefully. I hate attending that sort of thing, both for probably singing silly songs and having to stick my neck out to socialize with people I don’t know, but I’ll do it for my sanity. Because Oliver locked in this house all day is madness-inducing for the both of us. And god he loves to sing.
It’s December 4th, which means – holy crap – Callum is almost a month old. Have we already almost survived a month? I used to say that I hated the newborn time, because I really did with Oliver. Now I know better. Newborns are easy. Newborns just cry and eat and poop and sleep. TODDLERS suck. Our entire world revolves around not getting Oliver upset right now. Because god forbid you say the wrong thing and he has a giant tantrum. Or we mention something that he likes but we don’t have it to hand that exact second. The energy that we are expending trying to keep him happy is incredible. This is why having him at home freaks me out so much. I would much rather pay daycare lots and lots of money to keep him entertained – and we could have him back when he’s grown up a little more! Can I ship him somewhere??
Here’s Callum last night. Almost a smile going on there. Wearing something Oliver wore when he was 3 months old. I can’t believe how well this child fills out 0-3 month clothing.
Things I’ve done in the last few days:
I could type up my ‘yet to do’ list on here, all the million things that must also be done imminently, but instead I’ll feel happy at my small list of accomplishments/activities.
Which will probably all be destroyed by the dreaded tomorrow – the first day that I have both the boys at home with me. Wish us luck. Or send Kleenex.
