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May 7, 2003
I started this last week sometime...
I owe an update. My apologies for taking so long, but I waited to post the pyjama party recaps before I got back into my own little routine. If it's any consolation it's somewhat painful for me because there were some moments we lived I wanted to share. And today, now, I forget everything.
We're your basic fun loving folk. Noise, songs, action fills every corner of our home, every smidgen of our lives. But going back to last summer, we wondered how Kaillan was going to turn things. She seemed so serious, so demanding, so not so social. With no words in her vocabulary she could spew out complaints and read us the riot act. Remo and I joked once we had to get all her little friends together and organize a get-happy intervention. And then slowly or maybe all of a sudden, she butterflied into a riot. Kaillan is actually very charming and pretty social. A show off with a competitive streak. A clever girl with a determined mind. She makes us laugh out loud. What I find fascinating is how she connects with certain people and she picks them just like that.
Now Brandan has been working through some growing pains lately and not just the ones that made him so tall and little man looking all of a sudden. About this time of year, Remo starts his busy season and Brandan has always picked up on the change, acting up or out, getting a little down in the dumps. He didn't want to go to Annabelle's anymore. At first he just asked to stay home, dragging his feet when he had to get ready, trying to negotiate a plan B where he'd come with us to work or go with Kaillan to Andree's or go to Nonna's house. At first we just scooted him along, thinking once he actually got to Annabelle's he'd have so much fun with the kids, he'd forget how much he didn't want to be there. When Annabelle told me Brandan was very quiet over there too, I felt horrible. Having your child unhappy or maybe sad, breaks your heart. When I tried talking to Brandan about it, he'd clam up. Knowing Annabelle had been working through some issues of her own, I wondered if maybe that environment wasn't compounding things. Brandan started acting up at home, being defiant, pushing limits. I was after him like a broken record and he didn't seem to notice.
Spring fever hit. All of a sudden,crowds of kids were on our street and Brandan HAD to be out with them. One night I insisted he had to finish his supper before he could go back out. It was the first really warm spring day and Remo called to say we had to go for blizzards at Dairy Queen when he got home. With energy emanating from every hair on his head, it was physically impossible for Brandan to sit still. He'd escape from his chair, slip out of the room even, and I'd ship him back with a "finish your chicken first". Brandan shot out the front door and came back in with this massive "thinking" rock he and Dee Dee had painted that day. He explained that he was going to sit on it or touch it when he had something big to think about, did I like it? In a breath, he said he was done his supper and POOF he shot out the front door again. Distracted by Kaillan, it was a minute before I saw Brandan's plate, completely void of every scrap of chicken. Impossible. I went out and asked Brandan where his chicken went. His eyes quickly beaded over to the field beside our house and then back at me. He insisted he ate it. I asked him again what happened to his chicken. He said Kaillan threw it over there. I maintained she did not throw his chicken away and again asked what happened to it. But she did! She took the chicken and threw it! I said she couldn't reach over the wall. He said she went up on her tippy toes. I told him to come in the house. He came with reluctance. When I sat him at the table and told him to look in my eyes and tell me the truth, he started crying, but he still insisted it was true, Kaillan did it. I told him I knew he wasn't telling the truth, and he had to go sit on the stairs in time out, he stomped off.
Now I forget exactly what transpired, but next thing I knew Brandan was outside on the front stairs peeing on them. I'm not sure who was more shocked, me or him. When I walked out and said "BRANDAN!", he was completely humiliated. When I asked "What are you doing?" and I KNOW from his expression, he didn't really know what he was doing, he quickly said he went there because he didn't like the sound the "toy-et makes when it frushes". I went in and called Remo and Brandan was purple-red he was so embarrassed. Kaillan was chanting "Babby peed oushide" over and over. I guess the part where his son had just peed on our front steps in front of who knows who, came from way out on left field because Remo didn't know how to react. The truth of the matter was Brandan's action, though completely unacceptable, bothered me less than how quick he was with all those lies. I told Remo we were not going to Dairy Queen and we'd have to talk about it when he got home. Twenty minutes later, Remo got home, hosed down the front and came into the house with an everybody in the car. I protested no, we were not going for ice cream, Remo insisted we were not wrecking a family outing because of Brandan, everyone would have ice cream while Brandan would have a glass of water.
Now this was not one of our best parenting moments. I KNOW Remo couldn't escape visions of the new Fudgeo blizzard dancing in his head and I didn't put my foot down because I had an errand to run too. Though going out the door, I also knew no matter how hard line I can be, I could not sit in front of that boy eating my ice cream when on the other hand, I know he's also going through a tough time. Given that he was exhausted, I mostly just hoped he'd fall asleep before we got to Dairy Queen. Not a chance. Brandan got an ice cream and that night, Remo and I talked about the limits we had to set and HAD to stick by. Remo is already very soft with the kids and especially softer when at this time of year he's running around like a maniac. He just can't bare to get after them on that little bit of time he's around. Plus he's usually over his head with everything else, he's not focussed. Though I spend so much time when Remo's not around wishing he was with us, I have to be very honest in saying it's a lot easier to reign tighter when I'm on my own. He shows up and I have to parent another one.
We're working with Brandan on these big boy issues. Zero tolerance for lying. We have to stick by our rules and I think I'm going to let go of time out as our discipline of choice and take away more privileges instead. No bike for a couple days would kill him. No going to work with Daddy on Saturday mornings will have a huge impact. On Sunday, Remo and the two fathers that live next to us were playing street hockey with the kids. Brandan, at nearly five, is the youngest of the kids by a couple years. When Gracie accidentally hit him with her hockey stick, he fell apart and became a poor sport. I had gone into the house to put Kaillan down for her nap, and as I rocked her by the window, I listened to all the excitement outside. Brandan kept getting yelled at in the game to do this or that so he eventually left it to go help the kids building a baseball diamond on our yard (we're a couple weeks from grass). Over there, they were after him all over the place to do it their way. Though they were being nice about it, it struck me hard how this poor little guy had to make his way. They were after him in the game, after him in the yard, he comes in the house and we're after him for everything. Is it any wonder he turns us off?
Over my dead body am I going to raise spoiled, wild hellions but I don't want to raise stressed out children either. Setting limits and finding a balance is my goal. I'd like to be able to be in a room with Brandan and just give him THAT look and my message of tolerance will be clear. No yelling, no threats, no bribing. Finding what works for us will take trial and error and a whole lot of seeing what works for everyone else, I guess. And probably some yelling, threats and bribing. Man, this venture has bumps!
May 7th, 2003 (welcome to my first entry not completed in a sitting)
It's been one of those out of whack weeks.
It started with my aunt moving. Dee Dee is a last minute, fly by the seat of her pants person. All of a sudden she decided she had to move NOW. Her move in 5 days plan didn't have much sense to it considering she's supposed to be moving again in the summer but far be it from us to assist in thinking something through. When you're dealing with crazy Irish, you'd best be lying low and just helping however you can. In the wee hours of Sunday morning, Remo was on his way to pick up the only sixteen foot moving truck we could find at the last minute, when Dee Dee called. She was screaming like a wild animal about her left side, obviously in agony. I asked her if it was her heart twice and said we would call 911. In a wail she asked me to come there right now. With fresh tomato sauce and two batches of soup half done, a husband, who from my part of the conversation thought she was having a stroke and a cell phone not charged, I ran out of the house in that outfit you never go out in public in. White socks in loafers with sweatpants even.
Dee Dee was suffering big time, it had to be kidney stones, she's had them before. She wasn't able to talk but went immediately out to my van and continued throwing up in her mop bucket. Thank God I found her purse, but I did find it strange that the washing machine was unloading water on the basement floor. In the car, I pulled my shirt over most of my face and had half my head hanging out the window. These days, the smell of vomit makes me need to. I flew into the emergency parking lot and ran in for a wheelchair, asking the security guard if she could help me out. Dee Dee kept pitching forward in the chair. Thankfully, they took her right away and drugged her. Though maybe I'm making it sound too simple. She was on the floor, on the stretcher, on the table, under the stretcher, on the wall and not the least bit pleasant.
Gravol, Demerol and Morphine helped to calm her, though she spoke some real doozies. Good for a laugh now if I could write them and not have her kill me later. Back and forth that day I went to the hospital. At one point she looked horrible lying there. She pitched forward to rest her head on her legs and didn't move forever. Sitting in the dark room with nothing to do but watch her, it was a while it didn't look like she was breathing. Her hands (she has Raynauds phenomenon), were dead looking even. So I flicked them. Nothing. Gently touched her back. Nothing. Called her name, nothing. When all of a sudden she shot up, my heart leaped out of my chest. Then she started itching like crazy, talking about the cat in the garbage can, trying to make herself throw up and begging for more medication. When the nurses came in, she was awful to them. Overnight, someone realized she was allergic to Morphine. The next day I was amazed by how swollen she was, surely those arms belonged to someone else.
Monday night I picked up my Ottawa aunt and took her home with us. I think it's fair to say the sisters spend most of their time telling each other off, or whispering to me about how the other one is in fact crazy. You could almost laugh if you were sure that muttering wouldn't set off a war. Laugh out loud funny till they're about to scratch each others eyeballs out. It was maybe a day and a half before we discovered that leaking washing machine was in fact spewing water by the bucketfuls all over the floor and five before Dee Dee got out of the hospital. She hired movers and moved the next morning. Again, I'm leaving out the I couldn't even BEGIN to describe them details. It's amazing though how their tension made us tenser. Laundry, meals, everything that week came with a problem.
On the pregnancy front, I went for my glucose test and fasted fantastically till I started packing lunches in the morning. I cut up Kaillan's fruit and stuck that last strawberry in my mouth. Then spit it out. Put Remo's pasta in his thermos and went to lick the spoon. Brandan's crust made it in my mouth. Considering all the premeditation that goes into plotting all my meals and snacks, I find it amazing how much I must eat without any thought whatsoever. So THAT's how I ended up in a big fat week. In a big fat month(s). My legs are sore, must be getting varicosey and they are huge. Until now in my life and not to be in your face vain, I've always had nice legs. But all the third and fourth helpings are obviously dropping down into them. Is it because I'm thirty now? Will I be able to shake it off? Does anybody out there have the sort of leg exercises you can do that don't put pressure on the cervix?
OH, speaking of the cervix, did I ever make myself pink last week.
In the hour between drinking the glucose crap and the blood test that follows, I went upstairs with my more social than anyone in the living world Aunt Gerry, for my appointment with Dr. Bray. It was very quiet and I scooted in fast. Dr. Bray was particularly chatty, so while he explained to me how he memorized the periodic table of elements in school, I shared my jingle about the British North American Act of 1867. Blood pressure 140/85, though that's after I sang and I can't sing for beans. The uterus measured 29 weeks and his best guess without completely manipulating me was that the head is down (YAY!!!!!!!). As he was leaving the examining room, he mentioned at the next appointment (May 14th, I'll be 30 weeks), he'd do a cervix check to see if things were thinning (I dilated early with the last two). Now I am unquestionably shy and he was halfway out the door, but out of my mouth came a "Oh man, I'll have to shave my legs". He stopped. "You mean you don't shave your legs for your husband?" I said I did until I couldn't see them anymore (in the week since then, not seeing them from Texas would be unusual). He said that was nice for my husband to have to sleep beside a porcupine. I wanted to die. I just giggled off something, changed the subject and went out to speak to Julie about my next appointment. My aunt came into the room, all of six feet from Dr. Bray at his desk. She gushed about how much I adored Dr. Bray. Julie told her we have a really special relationship, given that he was listening I turned around to weigh myself AGAIN and said it was one of those love-hate ones. She said no, it was more like husband and wife. Husband and wife, I only shave my legs for him? I wanted to die more. He thought the whole thing, or at least my blushing was very amusing. Anyway, no time to dwell, I had my crazy busy life to get back to.
We pulled Brandan out of Annabelle's. A number of issues factored into our decision, including timing, convenience and feelings and we realized, for the couple of months we have before I have the baby and he starts school, it's not worth the extra pressure. I sat down with Brandan to figure out if it's what he really wanted, would he be sad not to go there anymore, wouldn't he miss the kids? I was surprised at how fiercely thrilled he was by the prospect. He danced and kissed my face off. Annabelle had been off for nearly two weeks, so add on this last week and he's really happy with our new routine. A couple days with Remo's mother, a couple with Kaillan and Andree and Mondays with Dee Dee.
For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to have something that I was really good at, a skill that would be enviable by someone else. A talent for something and people would wish they could have it too. Now slowly, slowly I'm getting really good at something. Cooking. In fairness, much credit has to be given to my real Italian cook every minute of every day, mother in-law because I picked up a lot from her. And Remo's younger Italian aunt. And reading, and magazines and plagiarizing friends, but I'm actually getting really into it and even more fascinating, doing well. I dedicated every weekend in April to stocking up the freezer, for hours and hours and hours, I'd chop and clean and cook up meals to freeze. My initial idea was to get ready for looming bed rest, if I could have at least thirty good meals ready in the freezer, half my worries would be eliminated. I never expected those meals to turn so knock out. My specialty is soups. I make the chicken broth in a pot so big Remo has to strain it. Then I would split the broth into two large batches. Make maybe a thick chicken vegetable soup, a vegetable bean soup, leek, potatoes and chick pea soup, you name it, I had all kinds of concoctions. Three meals in a batch. The dream of being able to pull out one of those containers, boil up some pasta and toss it in and how good they tasted? You can't know how smug I felt. Even my Shepard's pie was so good, Dee Dee asked if we could have another one of those next week. I made the EASIEST Italian tomato sauce in the world and I'll post it on my board in case anybody is interested. My only problem now is the deep freeze is so packed solid we have to put a box on top of it to keep it shut, both fridge freezers (one is oversized) are busting open and I'm pumped up in this phase where I want to keep experimenting. The thing about baking is really, aren't you only as good as your recipe? But the thing about cooking (I'm establishing right now), is you can really get good. After I have the baby I'm going to have to take up pilates or tae bo or jogging or something.
I walked downtown yesterday with one of the ladies from work and a punky cute girl with pink hair bounced in front of us. Susan swore the girl was the one from American Idol with red hair (who made it to this season's top ten), I wrote her off as a pretty good wannabe. She insisted it really did look like her. The next day she read in the paper, that she was downtown the day before. It's my celebrity spotting of a while, Vanessa Olivarez, I think. Anyway, she's a lot shorter than I would have given her. Wish I could provide you with more titillating gossip.
The baby moves like crazy, all day long and I love that it feels so strong. The other day, Kaillan counted from 3 to 9 ALL BY HERSELF, and I'm not sure if that's what she's supposed to be doing at this stage of development, but I do know we were seriously impressed. Daphne came and gave us all haircuts and lopped Kaillan's off fairly short. Did I write that somewhere already? I'm not sure who found the short hair more devastating, Andree (Kaillan is going to be her daughter's flower girl at the end of the summer) or Remo (because she looked like a boy). Is soccer big where you guys are? We signed up Brandan for soccer this summer. When I was speaking to my girlfriend and encouraging her to sign up her daughter too, we wondered how many kids are in it. I surmised they must have at least four teams of five year olds because they play a game a week. Though she's not even ten minutes from us, she was out of our zone, I was surprised to learn in our area alone, we have 200 teams of five year olds. Does that mean EVERY kid signs up? I know it's becoming big here, but is soccer big everywhere?
Little tiny ants marched their way back into our lives. For anyone around last summer, you might remember a pack of them set up shop in our garage. I wiped them out with safe Cream of Wheat (not the precooked one). It took a couple of patient days while they hauled it back to their nest to share and it swelled their bellies and killed them. Obviously not the kindest way to snuff them out, but it was safer than cancer causing chemicals. When the other day I found a tiny ant and then five more in my laundry room, and then here and there more, I freaked. Two rooms away from our kitchen! I used spray, ant baits, smooshed them with kleenex and washed the floor at least ten times. I found a pack of them in the garage again and now I'm on an ant rampage. I can't go into the laundry room or powder room without inspecting the floor.
Speaking of that time of year, we're planning on having a garden outside. We decided to do zucchini (I use them in a lot of cakes, muffins, soups or on the BBQ), green beans, peas, carrots, leeks, baby tomatoes and pumpkins for all the kids in our lives. I think I'll buy a lot of the plants from the nursery (I'm still very new at this), but we decided to plant some inside in those containers to get Brandan ready for it. Dee Dee (who knows less about this than me) and Brandan set it all up and a couple weeks later, I think we may have a problem here. For the leeks and zucchini, I think they put too many seeds in each of the containers because it looks grassy almost. Will it strangle itself and die? As for the bean stalks, Jack could climb up them. Should I be tying these things up? They're starting to tip over, the pumpkins fell over maybe a week ago. Corn, is that a waste to grow? Should I just buy it? I'm fine with gardening providing it's not overrun with bugs. If they take over, I'm outa there. If any of you have green thumbs, could you step forward on the board, so I can have my personal assistant? Could you swear to come back for updates and tutorials all the time?
In the paper yesterday they mentioned healthy eating habits we should all adopt. One of them was how we should only eat when we're hungry. To which I thought, I never actually feel hunger. To which I must say I should go get my lunch before it happens. I had the best lunch of my whole life packed up this morning and set it on the counter. Halfway to work and too far gone to turn back, I remembered. I felt crushed. What could be worse than a wasted best ever lunch?
Sigh.
Allisun
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