The difference between the first time around and the second:

With Kate at 6+ months I brought up the highchair and started preparing little bits of food for her. (Though she didn’t really start eating regular meals until about 8 months.)

Ember is now 7 months old, I have yet to bring up the highchair at all but once in a while I’ll put her in Kate’s booster seat or on my lap to try bites of whatever I’m eating, be it banana, squash or potato salad.

Poor Ember doesn’t seem to understand the whole eating thing. She’s just recently started watching me inquisitively when I’m eating. The first few times I offered tastes of food (baby food that time) caused such a reaction – and it was NOT a good one. I generally don’t put food in their mouths but Ember was just clueless so I touched the spoon to her lips a little bit. She threw herself backwards and gagged in an exceedingly comical manner. I admit it: I laughed hard. She did not seem at all interested in trying any more food at that point until while on vacation Den gave her a tiny little taste of ice cream. I shot him a disapproving mom look but it seemed to have changed Ember’s mind about at least trying things in her mouth. Prior to that she really didn’t put anything in her mouth but her hands – no toys, no teethers, nothing. I think she has a strong gag reflex; like I mentioned previously she even gags at pacifiers and bottle nipples. Now I’ve noticed her mouthing some toys (and other things like wrapping paper, whoops). Now when I hold out my fork or spoon she actually opens her mouth and leans forward to eat it…. and then of course shudders, makes a horrible face, and spits it all out. At no point has anything actually been swallowed. She’s making progress, though! And she’s developing very good control with pushing things out of her mouth, heh.

If this had been Kate I may have worried about it but with Ember I just offer a taste, wipe her chin and shrug. She’ll figure it out eventually. Right now I kind of appreciate not having to deal with feeding her.

Kate woke up, I could hear her shifting in bed. Then I hear sobbing. I go in to get her and she’s sitting on her bed, one sock off and the other half-off. She’s sobbing hysterically about “sock on.” I go to pull it on, she yanks her feet out of my hands and sobs. Okay, I pull the sock off. She howls and pitches a fit. It continues like this for some time even though I crouch next to her and try to discern what she wants. “Socks off?” “No!” “Socks on?” “No!” She’s inconsolable. But every time I try to leave the socks behind she lunges for them. I am utterly perplexed.

Finally amongst the gibberish I hear something that sounds like “Kate socks on.” Hmmm. I wonder if this is one of those times she wants to do it herself. I ask her and that at the least doesn’t cause more howling, so I could be on to something. I hand her a sock and encourage her to put it on. She can’t of course, and that causes some sobs but I gently help her get it on. The next sock follows.

Tears dry up and she jumps to her feet, excited and proud! Whew! Tantrum weathered! She asks for yogurt and I gladly go get her some. I put the bowl down on her table. She takes one look at it and shrieks, “Kate pour it, oh no!!!” and melts to the floor for round two.

Oh my gosh thank goodness Kate is getting caught up on sleep. She has been in a great mood the last few days – yes, still pouting over things not going her way, but it’s not a constant battle anymore and she’s actually being fun to be around again. *gasp!* We’ve had fun with stickers, drawing, legos, blocks, books… you name it. She’s very into pretend play and acting things out right now, which is funny to watch. Now instead of “tea” (which she never understood, but it was a teapot so we told her it was tea) she now gives us “coffee” in our teacups because daddy drinks coffee (and I drink hot chocolate, which she has decided is also coffee).

We had a momentous occasion yesterday: pee in the potty! She was running around naked after her bath and we heard her gasp, “Oh no daddy, pee-pee!” I immediately grabbed the kid potty and said, “Quick! On the potty!” She came running, sat down, and proceeded to pee a little more in the potty. We were all very excited and loaded praise on her, and this girl lights up like a sun when praised. She was beaming and pointing and just so excited. This is the first time I think she’s really made the connection, it’s always been a lot of talk about the potty, we read books and point out what we do, but she’s always just sat on it and done nothing. So now I need to catch her when she actually needs to pee. I think I may need to just let her go naked a bunch and she’ll train herself, but I am dreading the puddles. (Also, it is cold.) Hmm.

::

Ember is a hilariously frustrating little creature right now. Hilarious because she’s learned to babble and it is just really funny to hear language-like sounds coming from such a little person. She loves to echo and converse with us, making “dada” “baba” and “mama” sounds. The frustrating part is that she is congested (again/still) – both her and I have a cold and it sucks – so she’s fighting sleep and instead having great conversations with us in bed. At midnight.

The fighting sleep is getting pretty literal, too. She’s been resisting falling asleep for a while now, I have to make it as dark as I can and nurse her and sometimes sing (but now singing causes coughing fits, which does not help). And she’ll even drift off a bit. But laying her down wakes her up. She is not normally a child who is sensitive to such movements while sleeping, so this is just a very unfortunate flashback to Kate… and it may have been the single most frustrating aspect of her first years. So now Ember takes forever to get to sleep in the first place, I have to be very careful about laying down with her, and then I get to practice some advanced form of yoga as I hold extremely awkward positions and move very very slowly in an attempt to extricate myself without waking her. And sometimes despite all of that she wakes up just as I creep towards the door and I get to start all over again.

The other night she kept waking up as I put her down over the course of an hour and I think after several times jolting awake just as she finally fell asleep she kind of lost her shit. I was rocking her, hushing her, holding her upright and bouncing her – everything I could, basically. Her head would drop towards my chest and then she’d throw it backwards, arch her back and scream at me. There was a lot of screaming; that girl has a voice when she wants to. I was getting pretty ticked off, we were afraid she’d wake up Kate would would have made my night even better. She didn’t want to nurse, she did NOT want to lay down, she wanted to be cuddled but then freaked out when I cuddled her… it was a mess. I think I finally got her out of it by holding her up and more or less waking her up, staring at her saying, “WHAT? Stop, stop! Ember!” She pouted at me, snorfling through her stuffy nose, and then and held her and rocked/jiggled her until she fell asleep again. And then I waited a long time before laying down with her. The whole thing took forever, and then she was restless all night to boot.

The kid really doesn’t sleep much, all told. She goes to bed after Kate does, wakes at about the same time, and takes one good nap a day and usually fall asleep briefly in the evening (in my arms). Once she’s no longer sick I think she’ll do two naps a day and go to bed before Kate, but right now this is what I get. She doesn’t seem any worse for wear though. You know… other than the fighting sleep thing.

::

I myself am worn down. After the vacation-that-wasn’t-very-vacationy and now having this stupid cold still I’m feeling tapped out, and with Ember not sleeping well it means I am not sleeping well. I find myself sleeping wrapped around her, contorted in awkward positions with arms numb and neck sore by morning. Den took two days off this week to help watch the kids so I could get some sleep (we were up nearly all night, with alternating children), which may be the only reason this cold didn’t get worse than it was. He’s working this weekend. I’m just tired. I’m managing to get dishes clean, I did some laundry (but didn’t put it away), and I got groceries. That’s the sum total of my entire week. I wish I could just settle in bed with some books for a few days. Being sick and still having to take care of the children kind of sucks. Thankfully I have the TV, Kate is getting more self-sufficient all the time, Ember is happy for periods on the floor with some toys, and my couch is relatively comfortable. I feel like a slug, though.

One Christmas when I was maybe about 8 years old I was given as a gift a nice little box with a bunch of beads. I’d never done much with beads but I liked the idea, and many of the beads I got were very pretty. I spent a lot of time putting the beads into the separated compartments of the box, planning what to make with them, sorting them by how much I liked them and how they might go together. I had all these ideas but I didn’t want to use up the beads that I had; if I used them for one project then I wouldn’t have them anymore for the next project, and I only had very limited numbers of the beads I loved the most.

I never used those beads. When I moved out they were still carefully sorted into the compartments of that box, stored in a cubby in my closet.

I still do the same thing. I still wait until every single duck is in a row, every possibility accounted for, every decision weighed and plotted – but of course few things in life can be mapped out so perfectly without deviation or uncertainty. I still wait for that next batch of spare beads that I never get.

And I’m not talking about things necessarily, either. Kate’s room is still only about 80% done because I couldn’t find the right wallpaper border – instead of a less perfect border there is a messy overlap of colors where a border ought to be. The frames I bought for my bedroom are still empty and unhung because I couldn’t decide which photos to put in them. I get lost in an ever-degrading spiral of options, I get overwhelmed, and then I walk away.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much time in my life I waste being weighted down with what really comes down to inconsequential details. Will it ever really matter if I get Kate the ladybugs sheets or the nature sheets? Unlikely. Maybe in some small fashion. But I just spent several hours of my life – hours of my time that I really don’t have to spend – researching every possible option. Part of it, okay, I do like decorating so it starts out being fun. But it always ends with me being frustrated and overwhelmed and ready to abandon the entire project.

::

Adolescence is a generally a time of making stupid decisions and taking risks. I, unlike pretty much any of my peers, was the one hanging back saying, “I don’t think that’s a good idea, someone’s going to get in trouble, this will inconvenience someone somewhere.” Which sounds really great in theory – how refreshing, a considerate, self-aware teenager! How wonderful! But there are lessons to be learned in adolescence, lessons about screwing up and getting back on your feet, about failure, about taking risks. Lessons that I never learned. I got through by always doing well, always getting the grades, always doing the right thing. I got through by being absolutely terrified of doing something wrong. That fear has never really left me.

::

Kate is a lot like me in many ways. She is sensitive and cautious and thoughtful. All wonderful things, I love her personality. And I have to admit, having a kid who is cautious and listens to you feels like a great thing with a 2 year old. But I see in her all the tendencies that I have… the fear to upset people, the fear to do something wrong. I am trying to help her figure it out, setting her on her feet and telling her she’s okay… trying to tell her that she can fall and get back up again. But I worry. How do I teach something when I haven’t really learned it myself?

Holy shit, a miracle has happened.

I always always dreaded the whole “no more paci” thing with Kate. She wasn’t just a paci user, she’s a paci addict. She LOVES those things. I never thought I’d have a 2.5 year old still using a paci, but there you go… life hands you unexpected hands. I introduced the pacifier to her at just a few days old, something I had no intention of doing, I was going to breastfeed on demand all the time, no pacifiers to screw it up! But then she was nursing for hours in the evenings, my nipples were raw and red and pinched and I was nearly sobbing in pain. That child just loves to suck. The pacifier gave me a break, and it ended up making no difference with the nursing (but then neither did the bottles, so don’t take that as a universal rule). And as hard as it was to get her to sleep on her own I would have given her a hundred pacis if it meant she slept in her crib on her own for an hour.

She was down to using it only at bedtime for a while when I was pregnant, then she was teething and out of sorts so I handed them over again. When sleep and attitude was restored it was back to just bedtime. For months now we’ve had an only-on-the-bed rule: she could use them at night but they stay on the bed when she gets up.

She just got her new “big girl” bed (a twin size mattress) and Den suggested taking away the paci at the same time. I was all OMGWTF are you crazy?! I’m dealing with Ember not sleeping well (and not going to sleep until like midnight), we’re changing beds around, you want to mess with the paci too?! I had fear in my heart, people. FEAR. I had images of sobbing and refusing to sleep and waking up 145 times a night. I suggested that was not at all a good idea.

So the night before we got her new bed we ended up putting up a tent – a christmas present – in her bedroom. Which was awesome until bedtime when she insisted (in that I’m-going-to-freak-the-hell-out-if-you-don’t-let-me way of a 2 year old) that she sleep in the tent. I wasn’t home so Den thought on his feet and in an attempt to get her into her bed said, “No pacis in the tent.” She handed over the pacis and got in the tent with her blanket. He rolled his eyes and left her there, thinking she’d be crying in 10 minutes and he could put her in bed. She fell asleep. She didn’t sleep all night, she woke once crying and confused but again refused to leave the tent and so didn’t take the paci. No fussing, no complaining. She fell asleep. Uhhhhh.

When we got her new bed I figured, what the hell, let’s at least throw it at the wall and see if it sticks. So we told her no pacis in the big girl bed. The entire day was kind of a mess (actually it was one big cluster$#@% of a day), but she went to bed without an issue. Without a paci. Woke up at 6am, though.

Last night didn’t go so well. She had woken up hours early and got only a car nap. By bedtime she was hyper and overtired. She went to bed without complaint but I guess couldn’t fall asleep. An hour later she was sobbing and just at a loss… she was so tired. We gave her the paci and let her get a good night’s sleep.

Nap time today? No paci. Normal 2 hour nap. At bedtime she climbed in, made sure her blanket was all correct, went through the song and book of our bedtime routine, and then went to sleep with just some kisses and a happy “Night night!”

At this point I’m pretty sure we will not all be healthy at the same time until well into spring. It has been three and a half weeks since returning from Canada and at least one of us has been sick the entire time. And of course Ember was congested for the month leading up to the vacation and for the first week of said vacation. I am so sick of it! This time Ember is congested (no surprises there!), then I got congested and sore throat with cough. She had some weepy eye going on for a couple days, I didn’t think anything of it until yesterday I took a nap and woke up with one eye swollen, red and crusted shut. Pinkeye! Yay! Just what I wanted on top of the upper respiratory I have going on. At the same time Den came home saying he felt like crap. The only one who seems mostly unaffected is Kate; she has a tiny runny nose and coughs sometimes at night but that’s it. Unfortunately that means she’s still running around saying “Come dis way Mama! Play in my room!” while Den and I ooze from one couch to the next trying to move as little as humanly possible while at the same time ensuring that the two minions stay alive.

Needless to say nothing is getting done around here. Ember’s in disposable diapers. The clean clothes I did manage to wash are all stuffed in bins in the kitchen. I finally got around to throwing all the dirty dishes into the dishwasher. This is one of those times where I really wish someone could come take my children for the day so I could just collapse in bed and sleep without interruption. Alas, my parents live far away and who wants two germy kids anyways.

It is also super cold outside (or was this weekend), and today it is snowing. We are running out of groceries and no one wants to go out in this when we are already sick. I don’t even want to send Den out to shovel the driveway, but it has to get done somehow.

Whine whine whine. That’s how I feel right now.