wishing helena would get a little easier to ignore again

Helena is So. Freaking. Whiny.

I alternate between feeling sorry for her -- I mean, to cry this much about this many things, one has to be miserable, right? -- and wanting to kick her into next week. At which point I could reevaluate our relationship.

Not only is she terribly irritating, but she is sort of destroying the other kids' lives.

Either I'm holding her, placating her, keeping her quiet... or she's screaming so loudly that we can't interact. So they pretty much get no time at all when I'm focused on them and can hear them.

You know it's bad when I actually want to hear the kids.

Today she was briefly distracted by ruining the boys' game and I was able to sit with Miss A through her math homework and the beginning of reading. Miss A was reading some Junie B book aloud and was doing really well, and I just had to come help on the really long words like "rambunctious." Then Helena comes bawling down the stairs because she wanted a snack and the boys wouldn't listen to her or something. Sigh. We had only just finished snack, by the way.

As I tried to shut her up,

[Aside: Why are there kids screaming and playing outside at 8:20 on a Monday night? It isn't spring break. It's pitch dark out and has been for some time. It's also 36 degrees, which feels fantastic but isn't really play-outside-after-dark weather. And who are these kids? WTF?]


Anyway, as I tried to shut Haney up she cried that she wanted to play with Uh-SEE-nuh. I told her Miss A wouldn't want to play with her unless she stopped whining, and she promised she would.

Miss A agreed to play with her. It was short-lived, because Hanes climbed to the top of the boys' bunk, insisted she couldn't get down (she totally can), and then screamed until I came to get her. At which point the older kids were clear that they did *not* want to play with Haney.

This morning she ate a pop tart for breakfast, then snacked on pretzels. Then Jason and the kids walked to a coffee shop and she got a chocolate milk and a cookie. She consumed about half of those things. Lunch was apples, cheese stick, and saltines with peanut butter. A toddler's dream lunch, right? Wrong. She cried because they were not cheez-its. This is where I took over and Jason went to work, so I refused to give her cheez-its when all she'd eaten all day was carbs and sugar. Half a cheese stick! One apple slice! Eat just these things for me and I will give you your beloved cheez-its! But no. We battled over the lunch for two hours. She bit into her apple, chewed the bite and spit it out. Broken, I gave her her fucking cheez-its.

For dinner, she ate a yogurt tube and half a slice of banana. Half a freaking slice. Because I begged her and physically fed it to her. Then she ran away from the table.

OH! I also wanted to clarify something about potty training. It's not that she uses the potty to pee and just doesn't like to poop in it. No, she will sometimes use the potty to pee if we physically take her to it every 20 minutes. That's the extent of her potty training. I am really hopeful we can get this turned around before preschool starts in the fall.

more on the R word

Please take the time to read Gina's post on the R word, where she says it so much better than I ever could.

seeking advice on the care and feeding of young children

I am getting a vibe of malaise as I traverse the blogosphere. I share your unspecified pain, blogworld. I feel exhausted and like the lights aren't bright enough, and like I want to sleep for a week.

I have been attributing Helena's insane screeching and crying behavior to the impending demonic possession of age 4, but then tonight I found a post from last March about her doing much the same things. I have always thought she was an "easy" kid but now I'm realizing she's not easy, she's just easier to ignore. She is getting more difficult to ignore now that she's bigger and can shriek louder.

Aside: Might her failure to thrive be related to her being easier to ignore? I'm not sure. Now that she is no longer breastfed, isn't it on her to get enough to eat?

In fact, let's talk about toddler eating, shall we?

• How often do you feed your children?
• Do you offer snacks?
• Do you set a time limit for snacks?
• What do you feed them?

Our kids typically eat a large (multiple pop tarts and multiple bowls of cereal) breakfast around 7:30. They begin crying for snacks around 9:30. The morning routine is a little sketchy with the boys' preschool schedule, but let's pretend it was a day when they had lunch at 12-12:30. Normally Helena will reject everything except Doritos. If we refuse to serve Doritos, she won't eat at all. We aren't averse to starving our baby, as evidenced by her prominent skeleton, so sometimes she just doesn't eat lunch.

Obviously she starts crying for snack again immediately. By 2 the boys have joined her and they are all SO HUNGRY!!!!! I refuse to serve snack until 4 if they ate lunch at noon, because otherwise we're eating every 2 hours and I can't take it. So, I listen to a lot of crying from 2-4. A lot.

At 4 I offer a snack. There is usually some crying associated with this because they want vending machine quality snacks and I'm usually offering pretzel sticks or popcorn or crackers. I cut them off from snacking at 4:30-4:45. This is always met with howls of protest.

I serve dinner around 5:45-6. It is nearly always dismissed. Helena won't touch any of it. The other kids will push it around their plates and then ask for dessert. When I tell them there is no dessert, they are ANGRY!

Between 7-8, they typically ask for food again, and I say no. They cry.

Pretty much they don't want to eat unless it is prepackaged junk food, or fruit. And I'm glad they love fruit but as a sole food source, it gets expensive. I need them to eat other normal foods.

How often do you feed your kids? Give me advice.

serious post in which i start strong, but end with a jonas brother

Because I failed to refill my Effexor prescription in a timely manner, my brain was working slowly yesterday and I didn't manage to post what I wanted to, which was a brilliant treatise on the "End the R-word" movement.

This may not be that brilliant treatise.

As established, I'm not one to label certain words as "bad." The R word -- retarded -- is one I have found highly amusing for many many years. Not to describe people with Down syndrome, of course, but to describe other people whose behavior I thought reflected a lack of intellect. My children, for example. Or myself. All very ha-ha and lighthearted.

I am not sure why I thought it was all right, though. Because suddenly in the last week it struck me how freaking horrible it is to use a medical diagnosis as an insult or joke. I think it would be less offensive if I were actually referring to people with Down syndrome. "My neighbor's son is retarded." Is this sentence less offensive if my neighbor's son actually has Down syndrome? I think it is. Because then I'm just misinformed about the current accepted terminology, and I'm not insulting anyone -- neither my neighbor's ill-behaved son, nor people with Down syndrome or other conditions that result in their development being slower than usual.

For a long time I was upset by the word "rape." (Now it only makes me panic a little bit.) I could handle news reports about rapes better than I could handle phrases like, "We really got raped on that car repair bill." The word is so charged. So charged. And yes, it is just a word, just a collection of letters with several connotations, but somehow I am cold and sweating and weeping and shaking and it's been almost 11 years now. Somehow that word has power... they all have power, and we ought to be careful how we hold and use them.

So for me, 11 years of freaking out when I hear one word used carelessly. For other people, the R word carries this power for a lifetime, from the moment their baby is born, or from the moment the doctors carefully describe the damage -- from the moment their lives spin off onto a new course forever, this word -- if it is anything like my word -- pops them back into that first moment of real pain.

Oh my God, I am so sorry for being so careless.

My friend Christy wrote this little offhand comment about how, if you have a special needs kid, you probably don't get out much and if you do manage to go out on a date with your husband, you end up hearing this word flung about a dozen or more times before you return home to your beloved child. That is what hit it home for me. It sounds like being a white couple who has a black child, and having racist remarks made in your presence because -- well, hey, you're white! We can talk this way because there aren't any of them around! Not that I'm racist, of course! All in good fun!

So, I am going to be so much more careful with my speech (not my swearing, naturally, but with my insults) and I put up the big R-word button on the right and even figured out how to adjust my margins so it would fit. You can click it to go to the website where there's a pledge and a video of a Jonas Brother pledging to stop using the R word, which you may or may not want to watch again and again, depending on whether you've researched his age to determine if that makes you creepy.

oh blogworld, it's been a really good day!

This morning I woke up on the large sofa with Haney's hot smallness sprawled across my chest. She only vomited until about 1 last night but pooped herself in her sleep repeatedly afterward. Her fever was so high that I worried about her. I always worry about her.

We got tons of snow this weekend. The above is a "before" picture. All of these pictures were taken on Thursday, when Miss A was home sick.

And they are posted in no particular order.

[The boys marauding through the house, as is typical.]

This morning I managed to finish the projects that were due last Friday, which I had worried I couldn't get done by the extended deadline of Tuesday.

[G is pretending to stork-kick Rex, if you can't tell.]

The house smells a lot like sickness. My stomach feels iffy. You can see my new red barf bowl in the lower left of the picture above. I asked for it for Christmas. When I requested a new barf bowl, my mom knew exactly what I was looking for.

This morning the boys were upset that Jason hadn't decorated for my birthday. We go all out decorating for the kids' birthdays, but not for each other. Because it is a pain in the ass and doing it three times a year is more than enough. 

They made him haul out the "Happy Birthday" banner and the helium tank. The children presented me with balloons, then took them back so they could run with them through the house.

Haney made me a card from construction paper, and signed her own letter, and also drew a crown for me to wear. Miss A made me a card at school and had her classmates sign it. I felt like a rock star.

After Jason went to work, someone delivered a big basket of cookies and some balloons. When I thanked Jason he said, "I'm speaking your love language." (They are chocolate chip.)

My parents called, and my sister called, and my friend Amy called, and my brother called.

Hanes told me that I make her heart super-happy.

My neighbor brought me over a sweatshirt and a card. My grandma sent me a new plastic dish scrubby in the mail. 

No one is puking and I think I might be able to sleep in my own bed tonight!

I feel very lucky. I am 36. That seems like a really exciting age: in the middle of something and yet at the very beginning of something else. That's how it feels, at least. I love my life. I love my smelly, super-gross, very messy and disgusting life. I love working for myself. I love my funny kids. I love my funny husband. I love being married. I love my house. I love my friends and family.

So, to sum up, a decade ago this might have sounded like the most horrid birthday imaginable. But it actually kinda kicked ass. And next weekend Jason is going to make me a chocolate cake and we're going to order pizza from Romeo's and I will insist on watching funny movies, and there may even be presents, because I intend to do some online shopping this week. (Not because Jason is unwilling to do it, but because I prefer to do it myself and therefore offered to do it under the guise of taking on some of his husbandly burden.)

Blog world, thanks for stopping by on the first day of the rest of my life!

not awesome

So, I've been away. Cleaning up a whole lotta vomit and poop.

Wednesday night Miss A puked every 10-15 minutes until 4:30ish. There is also an uncontrolled bowel component to this illness. We "slept" on the sofas in the living room.

Thursday Miss A's high fever kept her homebound, and on the sofa again Thursday night.

Phe started puking Friday afternoon and continued through Friday night. Did I mention the lack of bowel control caused by this virus + violent stomach heaving? Because I'd hate to have left that out.

Griff puked all over Phoenix and their bed last night around 12:30, then continued the rest of the night and this morning.

Hanes came to me complaining of "water poop" this afternoon, then threw up all over the sofa, herself, etc. this evening.

She and Griffin apparently don't awaken to puke. They wake up when being wet wakes them up. Awesome. I'm getting better at it, though. I think it is like elimination communication. I'm getting better at reading their nonverbal cues, like slight restlessness, that herald the arrival of their stomach contents. Unfortunately, this requires me to be very alert and watchful. All freaking night.

So. I haven't spent a night in my own bed since Tuesday. I feel SO GROSS. Jason and I are pretending we aren't queasy, although we haven't really eaten today. The smell of puke is in my nose or something. We have scented candles going everywhere but I still smell it. I STILL SMELL IT!!! GAH!

The good part is that I have taken the overnights with the sick kids, and then Jason has gotten up with them in the morning and let me get a few hours in. I'm not sure we've been able to do this before, because normally more than one kid is sick at the same time.

Our laundry situation is out of control right now. As is our hot water consumption. Oh guess what, it's also my lady moontime. And my birthday. GAH!

Also, Isabelle peed on our bed. WTF!!?! And after a month of pheromone spray and careful separation of her and Mr. Nick, they still want to kill each other. So Isabelle is going to have to go, and that makes the Haney cry because "then Rex won't have his Mommy!" GAH!!!

motherhood: i'm blossoming like a freaking flower

I have evolved. I'm now at a point where "sleeping in the wet spot" = sleeping on the couch my kid just puked on. Whereever will this journey take me next?