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Fantasy Romance

parenting

The Constancy of Change

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On my way into work on a blustery cold morning without a spec of sunlight yet pinking the horizon, I succumbed to a bit of wistfulness as I drove past houses that didn’t yet have their lights on.

Back in 2011, that would’ve been me.

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Calm and tranquil

My husband and I both shower at night because of my allergies, so we could get up at 7:15 am, enjoy a cup of coffee and our breakfast smoothie while we watched the birds and squirrels in our backyard. We even bought bird feeders and heated bird baths to bring more creatures to our yard.

We then left for work at 7:50 am, each of us making it to work with plenty of time to spare. No rush. No frantic frenzy.

I didn’t bother packing a lunch because I lived close to work and came home every day. My husband made his lunch in less than five minutes.

At night, we made supper in a leisurely fashion, ate in front of the TV, and gamed or read books for the rest of the evening. We considered 11 pm a reasonable bedtime, though 11:30 or midnight was not uncommon. Weekends saw us indulging in our night owl preferences, and we’d regularly go to bed at 2 am then sleep until 10 am.

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We used to know great-horned owls were nesting in our backyard because we listened to them on weekends.

I start work now before I was even awake back in 2011. My husband and I get up at 5:15 am because there are four lunches to pack. We have to make sure the kids are dressed, their hair combed, and they eat breakfast. Backpacks to remember and the car to load.

I then head to work while my husband finishes up the morning routine, wrangles the kids into the car, and drives them to school.

While I start work earlier than I ever have, I don’t get home much earlier as I have pick-up duty. As hard as the kids are to get into the car and off to school, they are equally hard to gather up and bring home.

Then comes the emptying of lunches, going through paperwork from school, and making dinner while I fuss at the oldest to do her homework.

DoYourHomework
Please.

Why does a 1st grader even have homework?!?

Our house is anything but quiet ever. Once we could hear owls hoot. Now, we’d be lucky to hear a locomotive driving down our street.

There are also a lot more hugs, a lot more cuddles, and a lot more love.

Things may be hectic and messy, and I will never fit in with the dance moms, but the noise and chaos are part of this phase of our life. A part of having young children. And while I will never like mornings, I do love the grin on my daughter’s face as she runs out to hug me when she wakes up.

So many changes.

Makes me wonder what life will look like in 2025.

I’m guessing more changes.

How to Not Set Goals

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Goals are important. They are how you turn dreams into reality, breaking down the ephemeral into manageable tasks.

But I set my goals a little too aggressively in March.

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Every year at the day job.

Sometimes, when you are so focused on achieving something, you can forget other obligations.

I released a book in early April. You can check it out here. It was the culmination of a lifetime goal.

I started writing my first novel when I was ten. I still remember the teal blue spiral notebook that housed that first book. I had planned to publish it before I was twelve, because I was awesome.

How I wish I had the confidence now I had then!

As excited as I was to release this book out into the wild (and nervous), it was a lot of work. On top of that, I was trying to write 1.5k words a day on a new WIP, work a demanding full time job, and be a parent and spouse.

Yeah, some things fell down.

I will never be Mom of the Year, but I could’ve been a lot a better.

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Sadly.

I will never be a perfect wife. Ever.

I will never be tracked as a “superstar” where I work. I just won’t put in enough hours, which is interesting when I think of all of the hours I’ve poured into writing novels.

But, I do need to figure out a better way to fit writing into my life. I love telling stories, though the act of writing itself is work. Hard work.

But I have this tendency to throw myself fully into whatever I’m doing when what I need is balance.

So, I’m sorting through that at the moment.

I finished a story I think of as Logan and Rita. Catchy title, I know, but it’s a fresh first draft. It’ll get better. I promise.

Now, to put my editing cape back on. And by cape I mean my comfy jammies with the most amazing LL Bean slippers. I need to figure out a pace I can manage with my children, spouse and job.

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But he still gets there.

Not sure what that is yet, but I’m not giving up on my Winter 2018 time frame for How to Love a Duchess.

 

 

 

“Oh, Momma Look!” Never Ends Well

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At least, it never ends well for me.

So, when we were at Home Depot of all places, and that come out of my daughter’s mouth, I knew I was really in trouble.

What had caught her attention? An eleven foot dragon. Yeah, she’s totally my kid.

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This one.

I have to admit, she has good taste. But it looked HUGE in Home Depot. I couldn’t imagine how big it would be on our suburban front lawn.

Of course, she reminds me that we have no other decorations. Which, she’s not wrong. I don’t suppose the three little pumpkin walkway lights really count. I love watching the kids dress up at Halloween, but I hate anything macabre. You can keep your ghosts, skeletons and dead brides, thank you very much!

But she’s now at the age where she really wants to decorate for the holidays. Unlike my husband and I who were known to go without even a Christmas tree before we had kids.

I told her I’d think about it, hoping she’d forget. Of course she didn’t forget, and she reminded me about it for the next two weeks.

So, we went back to get the eleven foot dragon. When we got to Home Depot, the thing was sold out. Even the floor model was gone. This was back at the end of September, and I was shocked. A quick search with my phone showed no other Home Depots with guaranteed stock in the area. But I could still get it online.

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Thank goodness!

So, I assuage my daughter’s crushing disappointment that she isn’t getting it that day with the fact that it will arrive in three to five days and we probably wouldn’t have had time to put it up that weekend anyway. She trudges back to the car, but at least I got her out of the store without a scene. There’s more than one reason why I do so much shopping online!.

The dragon arrived, my husband put it up for her, and she is now totally excited. So excited, in fact, that when she and her sister saw the dragon deflated the next morning on the way to school, they both were super insistent that I needed to “fix” the dragon.

Raising a pair of dragon lovers. Couldn’t be more proud!

 

Do you decorate for Halloween? If so, do you go all out, or were you like us with our three little pumpkins? Any of your neighbors go all out? What’s the best or worst display you’ve seen?

Taking Time to Unplug

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It’s Sunday night, and the family is getting ready to go back to our work schedule. I’m trying to get dinner ready while sneaking in a few more words, and DH and DD1 are trying to enjoy a game together.

Enter DD2.

She is angry and upset, crying for no apparent reason. We’re all testy with her. She cries harder.

One of our cats has had made a mess, and DH is irritated as he gets the vacuum to clean it up. Terror sparks in DD2’s eyes as she sees the dreaded vacuum. I put my iPad away, gather her up, and carry her to our bedroom.

Her tears instantly dry up as we lay on the bed together and play silly games of counting her toes, getting tickled (we took turns tickling each other), and just laying together with her head on my shoulder.

Her laughter and giggles made my night.

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Or trying to understand and bond with a toddler?

Holding that in my heart, I cuddled with DD1 before work Monday morning. She is getting so big, but she still likes snuggles. For now. We talked a little, but she mostly just wanted to be held.

I’m starting to feel like the whole family is too busy, but not busy with the right things. Time goes by so fast now. I was looking at pictures of DD1 when she was just a few days old. Hard to believe that was almost six years ago. It seems like only last year we were bringing her home and learning what it was really like to have an infant in the house.

I need to slow down. Make connections. Build a relationship with my girls, and strengthen the one I have with DH.

Writing is a part of the equation. I really shouldn’t have been trying to sneak in words. But there’s more to it. I feel like my family has all become too reliant on technology for entertainment. We need to unplug.

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Not this bad. Yet.

Bored? We turn on Netflix or Amazon, and we don’t even have to sit through commercials. Open the iPad or Kindle. Pull out your phone. A lot of this isn’t deeply entertaining, but the companies know how to lure us how. How to grab our attention and keep it. How many times has boredom had me checking my phone for a quick fix rather than getting up and actually doing something meaningful?

I got so consumed with these distractions that I got annoyed with my beautiful and amazing toddler rather than giving her the love and attention she both wants and needs.

A part of me wants to give away all of the electronics, but that’s just not reasonable.

Still, I need to find a way to unplug and disconnect more, help my family unplug more, so that we can really connect. So that we spend more time counting toes and less time staring at screens. I just don’t know how.

 

How about you? Ever tried to unplug? What did you do? How did it work? Ever try to unplug your whole family? What did you do? How did it work?

What to Do When Faced with Night Terrors

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Per Kid’s Health, our pediatrician, and a child psychologist, “A night terror is a sleep disruption that seems similar to a nightmare, but with a far more dramatic presentation. Though night terrors can be alarming for parents who witness them, they’re not usually cause for concern or a sign of a deeper medical issue.

Night terrors happen during deep non-REM sleep. Unlike nightmares (which occur during REM sleep), a night terror is not technically a dream, but more like a sudden reaction of fear that happens during the transition from one sleep phase to another.”

 

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A much cuter version of what we’re facing.

Night terrors are caused by the over-arousal of the central nervous system, but science doesn’t know why.  The best hypothesis is that this area of the brain is still maturing, especially as the night terrors seem to fade as a child ages.

Doctors think it may be hereditary as most kids that have this condition have a family member who experienced them or who was prone to sleepwalking (which is apparently similar in nature to night terrors).

*Glares at DH*

Guessing it’s hereditary as the other things, like taking a new medication or sleeping away from home, don’t play into it.

Night terrors are rare – happening in only 3-6% of kids. Lucky us.

Our daughter has them regularly. Almost every night. We’ve talked to the doctor and a child psychologist. There is very little we can do.

Our pediatrician has told us the best way to combat them is to make sure she has a solid bedtime routine and is getting enough sleep. Of course, the child suffering from night terrors would love to stay up until 10pm  then sleep until 9am. It’s too bad our life doesn’t permit her the schedule she wants as I have to be to work at 8am.

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Actual footage of me at bedtime.

So, we do our best. Every night is a challenge, as she hates going to bed and usually wants me to be next to her when she falls asleep. I know, Ferber Method, etc. etc.  But I’m not sure I buy into the Ferber Method (also known as the cry-it-out method).

If my toddler is scared and alone, crying for me, I need to go to her. I need to hold and console her. Especially as I am there when she cries out at night. I’ve heard her fear.

Seriously. Until you’ve heard your toddler scream in terror in the night, begging some invisible something to “STOP”, it’s hard to understand. The night terrors are awful, and she is hard to wake up from them even if we want to wake her. She’s not in REM, so she doesn’t awaken easily. And when we do wake her, she’s shaking but doesn’t remember what happened.

Maybe I’m spoiling her, or maybe I’m showing her when she needs me, I’ll be there for her. Even if I didn’t hold and comfort her, I wouldn’t be able to sleep hearing her cries anyway. Better to follow  heart and gut on this.

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But it does explain why I’m not sleeping. Why I’m a little crabbier. And why I’m burning out.

At this point, I have no idea how to make it better. I’m rolling with the phrase I heard somewhere about raising kids, “This, too, shall pass.”

I hope it does. She deserves a good night’s sleep, and so do I.

 

How about you? Anyone in your family ever have night terrors? How did you deal with them? Did they ever go away? If so, when did they go away?

Special Flower or Weed?

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I have repeatedly heard children called flowers. Each one unique and special.

Whoever coined this phrase either never had kids or is a grandparent who has forgotten what having small children is like.

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My toddler is not a flower. She’s a weed.

Oh sure, she looks cute with her little pigtails when she smiles up at you. Her giggles of delight could make angels sing. But two seconds later, she’ll have found a crayon in her sister’s room and be coloring all over your walls while you’re making dinner, totally ignoring the toys you gave her to entertain her.

I had always thought coloring on walls was an exaggeration. I never did it as a kid, and neither did my sister. My oldest daughter never did it. My youngest? Not once, but twice so far.

Thank god for magic erasers.

mrclean

You can get them here. In bulk. Highly recommended if you have a weed in the house.

I was also spoiled by my first child when it came to potty training. I read the books on how to potty train a child, and DH and I applied them. They worked! We had a total of two accidents, and DD1 was potty trained.

After a solid week of intense training, DD2 was no closer to be trained than when we started. We showed her the books and what she was supposed to do. She just grinned at us. Or stomped her foot and shouted, “No!”

I’m telling you, weed. A spiny one at that.

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Oh sure, some of these stubborn traits will serve her well later in life. I can see her stubbornness propelling her to CEO of her own company. I will probably be less worried about her succumbing to peer pressure as a teen as she isn’t a “pleaser”.

But right now, I need to be able to make dinner without my house getting trashed.

They don’t make playpens she can’t climb out of, so we must now jealousy guard all writing utensils.

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Okay, not legal playpens.

I should’ve bought stock in Pampers with how long she’s been in them. Okay, that’s not entirely true. She gets pampers at night because I don’t want to be woken up to do laundry when there’s a leak. During the day, she gets whatever generic brand Target carries.

Yeah, I’m mean. But that’s the way I roll these days. Maybe if she’s a little uncomfortable once in a while, she’ll be more apt to learn. Gotta make it her idea . . .

 

How about you? Any guidance for someone living with a weed instead of a flower? Tricks to help them morph into a flower? Or perhaps just some potty training advice when you’re trying to train a weed?