(no subject)
My son. I have so very much to say right now but really just feel like talking about my lovely son.
I'll put it behind a cut. It is long and meandering!
He's been developing by leaps and bounds. We left him for 4 days last weed and I couldn't believe the difference in his sentence structure when we returned. A 3 year old's brain explosions are pretty incredible. I also feel as if we must be speaking in nice ways around him, because his intonation and politeness are often through the roof in hilarious sweetness.
It's been somewhat of a challenge getting him to rein the whine in this year, but he seems to be slowly learning all about how kindness and cuteness wins. I often tell him that he is more likely to win my favor if he asks me in a polite way OR a funny way. His hybrid has therefore ended up being often politely funny, which rocks. He's also picking up a ton of idiosyncrasies that are, I suppose, from the way Buster and I speak. "I'm good with that." or "I'm not cool with that." often comes up. I love it. I also feel like there are a million more little things that he says that I just can't recall right now, so close to bedtime after a long day at an amusement park with my parents. I need to try harder to write things down!!
The thing with getting him to rein in the wine is that WOW, he is really stubborn. I went out to dinner with one of his preschool teachers a few weeks ago. It was after a particularly challenging day with him, during which I actively tried to not fight with him and ended up sobbing in front of him in pure frustration, which is a really unusual occurrence, and I guess what happens when someone fights with me for hours and I try really really really hard to be nice in return. Outburst! What an awful day that was. Anyhow, his teacher told me that he is the most stubborn 3 year old she's ever encountered... and it just made me feel so much better. I guess I had been attributing it to some failing of our parenting, which of course could always use some improvement - especially since we've only had a parenting practice for just over 3 years now. Poor kiddo is a big fat experiment of random books we read and our levels of patience on any given day.
The stubbornness. The STUBBORNNESS. I honestly can. not. get. him. to. do. anything. he. does. not. want. to. do. without a fight. It's insane. If he realizes that it's something he simply must do (stupid things... putting on shoes, going to the bathroom, and on and on), he will move as slowly as possible. Oh my god, so slowly. His will is so strong. It's going to be his best friend and his worst enemy. Sometimes he goes through weeks where anything that is not his idea is a horrible idea, which is a real bummer when I'm trying to get anything done. Even fun things, like going to the park when it's his idea to play trains for another 3 hours.
Trains. TRAINS. trains. THE TRAINS. Everything in our lives has been trains for 2 years and 3 months and there is no sigh of abatement. It's unbelievable, the focus on trains. I had a very lucky 2.5 weeks when the front yard house was rented out (airbnb) to a family from Belfast that had a 4 year old who loved trains as much as Niko did. Those boys played for hours. It was magical. It made me want to adopt a young boy to just have a train playmate for this kid... until dinner or nap time came around and sharing issues started. Then I was just stoked there was another mom there to reel kid #2 back to a different house.
Potty training has been a serious issue for the past several weeks. I don't even want to talk about it. I guess it's funny that he pinches his butt cheeks together with his hands and tells me things like "I will hold it in, mama! Don't worry! I won't poop on your rug!" But while it can be funny, it really drives me nuts. It brings out angry mommy and I hate it when that bitch comes out. I wish this phase were over. I'm tired of trying to teach this small person that shitting in your pants is a party foul! He was doing so well with this so early and I think it all ties back into his stubbornness and needing to feel in control of something. I haven't figured out the magical way of getting through this one yet, but I will, I'm sure. Someday.
Bike riding is a dream. He likes to wear the super cape that Samantha made for him while coasting on his balance bike, so that he can pretend he is flying. His balance is so spot on that I am going to buy a bike for him for his half birthday - which kind of worries me that he'll start to think that a half birthday is a THING when it really is not - but he's so ready for a 2 wheel pedal bike now! I'm excited to get him started on this bike. I want him to be able to do 40 miles with me when he is 5. I'm saying this out loud here because to write it is to will it!! My kid will be a bike tour kid and it'll be awesome!!!
Swimming has not been a dream. He has never liked the water, ever. I'm hoping to take him to a pool in the east coast heat while we are here on vacation so that he'll get a dose of what it's like to have fun getting wet, but I don't have big hopes. We tried swimming lessons for 6 months or so and it just made the whole family miserable ever stinking Saturday. So not worth it.
And .... Nursing. This has been really complicated for me. I have loved nursing this kid! It's been a wonderful time of bonding for us for over three years now. I have felt pretty strongly that we don't need to stop until he is ready to stop until recently. But, recently, his nipple tweaking has been frankly out of control. "I'm not pinching your nipples, mama, I'm just trying to make them BIGGER." is a constant argument heard in our house. And begging to nurse at random times in this awful whine. And fishing down my shirt in the middle of a restaurant or wherever. It was all a bit out of control. I was feeling like he needed a little more division between our bodies to begin to understand the meaning of personal space. Plus his preschool teacher was strongly recommending that I stop. Which doesn't matter, really, I guess. Honestly, it was hard advice for me to listen to because, while she is an excellent teacher, she isn't a mother. And even if she were, the number of mothers I know who have nursed after 2 are very very few and mostly very judgmental about something they know nothing about. Nursing for some of us is an amazing, beautiful experience of bonding and comforting. I have never had a problem sharing my body with my kid. It was just time, I guess. One of my breasts wasn't even producing anymore, and Niko still wanted to nurse from "the broken one." (!!) Lots of times, it was starting to hurt. There was hardly any milk left in the one that wasn't "broken". It was just time, I guess. So when we went to NYC for Rick's wedding, I decided that I wasn't going to express at all during the 4 days I was away... the night before we left, I cried the whole time I nursed him to bed. It made me so sad to think of it as the last time and I was so worried that I was making a huge mistake.
When we came back, Niko was so happy to see us and of course asked to nurse at bedtime. I told him that I didn't have any milk left and that we would still rock, read, and sing at bedtime. He was a little resistant ("I still like to nurse, mama, even without milk!"), but seemed to really understand that it wasn't going to happen. When I sang to him that night, he sang with me. It was adorable and moving. I didn't even know that he knew this lullaby (the one he sang is Catch by The Cure) by heart. After that, he's asked a few more times, but the last time he asked out of habit, he caught himself and switched his request to "I want you to sing to me." So the not nursing transition has been pretty easy. There haven't yet been any of the tantrums I was expecting. Maybe we will not have them at all. I will miss nursing. It's been comforting to both of us for so long. I honestly don't know how new mothers can get on without the oxytocin. It made me forgive and forget so many difficult moments and get lost in the magic of motherhood over and over again. I am so grateful that we had almost 3.5 years.
That is all for now. I need sleeps.
I'll put it behind a cut. It is long and meandering!
He's been developing by leaps and bounds. We left him for 4 days last weed and I couldn't believe the difference in his sentence structure when we returned. A 3 year old's brain explosions are pretty incredible. I also feel as if we must be speaking in nice ways around him, because his intonation and politeness are often through the roof in hilarious sweetness.
It's been somewhat of a challenge getting him to rein the whine in this year, but he seems to be slowly learning all about how kindness and cuteness wins. I often tell him that he is more likely to win my favor if he asks me in a polite way OR a funny way. His hybrid has therefore ended up being often politely funny, which rocks. He's also picking up a ton of idiosyncrasies that are, I suppose, from the way Buster and I speak. "I'm good with that." or "I'm not cool with that." often comes up. I love it. I also feel like there are a million more little things that he says that I just can't recall right now, so close to bedtime after a long day at an amusement park with my parents. I need to try harder to write things down!!
The thing with getting him to rein in the wine is that WOW, he is really stubborn. I went out to dinner with one of his preschool teachers a few weeks ago. It was after a particularly challenging day with him, during which I actively tried to not fight with him and ended up sobbing in front of him in pure frustration, which is a really unusual occurrence, and I guess what happens when someone fights with me for hours and I try really really really hard to be nice in return. Outburst! What an awful day that was. Anyhow, his teacher told me that he is the most stubborn 3 year old she's ever encountered... and it just made me feel so much better. I guess I had been attributing it to some failing of our parenting, which of course could always use some improvement - especially since we've only had a parenting practice for just over 3 years now. Poor kiddo is a big fat experiment of random books we read and our levels of patience on any given day.
The stubbornness. The STUBBORNNESS. I honestly can. not. get. him. to. do. anything. he. does. not. want. to. do. without a fight. It's insane. If he realizes that it's something he simply must do (stupid things... putting on shoes, going to the bathroom, and on and on), he will move as slowly as possible. Oh my god, so slowly. His will is so strong. It's going to be his best friend and his worst enemy. Sometimes he goes through weeks where anything that is not his idea is a horrible idea, which is a real bummer when I'm trying to get anything done. Even fun things, like going to the park when it's his idea to play trains for another 3 hours.
Trains. TRAINS. trains. THE TRAINS. Everything in our lives has been trains for 2 years and 3 months and there is no sigh of abatement. It's unbelievable, the focus on trains. I had a very lucky 2.5 weeks when the front yard house was rented out (airbnb) to a family from Belfast that had a 4 year old who loved trains as much as Niko did. Those boys played for hours. It was magical. It made me want to adopt a young boy to just have a train playmate for this kid... until dinner or nap time came around and sharing issues started. Then I was just stoked there was another mom there to reel kid #2 back to a different house.
Potty training has been a serious issue for the past several weeks. I don't even want to talk about it. I guess it's funny that he pinches his butt cheeks together with his hands and tells me things like "I will hold it in, mama! Don't worry! I won't poop on your rug!" But while it can be funny, it really drives me nuts. It brings out angry mommy and I hate it when that bitch comes out. I wish this phase were over. I'm tired of trying to teach this small person that shitting in your pants is a party foul! He was doing so well with this so early and I think it all ties back into his stubbornness and needing to feel in control of something. I haven't figured out the magical way of getting through this one yet, but I will, I'm sure. Someday.
Bike riding is a dream. He likes to wear the super cape that Samantha made for him while coasting on his balance bike, so that he can pretend he is flying. His balance is so spot on that I am going to buy a bike for him for his half birthday - which kind of worries me that he'll start to think that a half birthday is a THING when it really is not - but he's so ready for a 2 wheel pedal bike now! I'm excited to get him started on this bike. I want him to be able to do 40 miles with me when he is 5. I'm saying this out loud here because to write it is to will it!! My kid will be a bike tour kid and it'll be awesome!!!
Swimming has not been a dream. He has never liked the water, ever. I'm hoping to take him to a pool in the east coast heat while we are here on vacation so that he'll get a dose of what it's like to have fun getting wet, but I don't have big hopes. We tried swimming lessons for 6 months or so and it just made the whole family miserable ever stinking Saturday. So not worth it.
And .... Nursing. This has been really complicated for me. I have loved nursing this kid! It's been a wonderful time of bonding for us for over three years now. I have felt pretty strongly that we don't need to stop until he is ready to stop until recently. But, recently, his nipple tweaking has been frankly out of control. "I'm not pinching your nipples, mama, I'm just trying to make them BIGGER." is a constant argument heard in our house. And begging to nurse at random times in this awful whine. And fishing down my shirt in the middle of a restaurant or wherever. It was all a bit out of control. I was feeling like he needed a little more division between our bodies to begin to understand the meaning of personal space. Plus his preschool teacher was strongly recommending that I stop. Which doesn't matter, really, I guess. Honestly, it was hard advice for me to listen to because, while she is an excellent teacher, she isn't a mother. And even if she were, the number of mothers I know who have nursed after 2 are very very few and mostly very judgmental about something they know nothing about. Nursing for some of us is an amazing, beautiful experience of bonding and comforting. I have never had a problem sharing my body with my kid. It was just time, I guess. One of my breasts wasn't even producing anymore, and Niko still wanted to nurse from "the broken one." (!!) Lots of times, it was starting to hurt. There was hardly any milk left in the one that wasn't "broken". It was just time, I guess. So when we went to NYC for Rick's wedding, I decided that I wasn't going to express at all during the 4 days I was away... the night before we left, I cried the whole time I nursed him to bed. It made me so sad to think of it as the last time and I was so worried that I was making a huge mistake.
When we came back, Niko was so happy to see us and of course asked to nurse at bedtime. I told him that I didn't have any milk left and that we would still rock, read, and sing at bedtime. He was a little resistant ("I still like to nurse, mama, even without milk!"), but seemed to really understand that it wasn't going to happen. When I sang to him that night, he sang with me. It was adorable and moving. I didn't even know that he knew this lullaby (the one he sang is Catch by The Cure) by heart. After that, he's asked a few more times, but the last time he asked out of habit, he caught himself and switched his request to "I want you to sing to me." So the not nursing transition has been pretty easy. There haven't yet been any of the tantrums I was expecting. Maybe we will not have them at all. I will miss nursing. It's been comforting to both of us for so long. I honestly don't know how new mothers can get on without the oxytocin. It made me forgive and forget so many difficult moments and get lost in the magic of motherhood over and over again. I am so grateful that we had almost 3.5 years.
That is all for now. I need sleeps.