Confession

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Cindy

I’m not sure what’s happened to me lately. I used to be a good mom. I think I still am, sometimes, but not as much as I used to be. And I don’t know exactly what happened or when it all changed.

I’m just so angry, all the time. A lot of it is just about my life in general – I resent that I’m stuck raising two kids by myself while their dad gets to go do whatever he damn well pleases and show up for visits when it suits him. Some of it is directed at Lucy, because that whole “shared bedroom” idea lasted about three nights, and now she’s back to waking me up multiple times a night. Some of it is directed at Catie, because apparently 6 is the age when The Attitude kicks in, and man alive, I wasn’t prepared for that.

There are moments when I love them so much that I can’t stop kissing them and I feel so insanely lucky to have them. But those moments happen a lot less frequently than they used to happen.

I post funny stories and cute pictures on Twitter and Facebook, because it’s all I can come up with. I haven’t blogged in over a month, because the only thing on my mind is how awful I feel all the time.

My nerves are on edge from the minute I pick them up at daycare until I finally get them to sleep. I refer to it as my nightly marathon. Not a single night goes by without me snapping and yelling at some point.

The other night I was trying to eat dinner (after I’d already fed and bathed the kids), and Catie came over to me, and just her touching me on the arm made me flinch and snap at her, “What do you want NOW?”

She was trying to give me a kiss.

Yeah. Mother of the damn Year over here.

The happiest moment of my day is after I drop them off at school and daycare, and I get to go to work and focus on something other than their needs. I dread the weekends because it means they’re all over me for 48 hours.

There’s a constant knot of anxiety in my stomach. There are times that the worst imaginable thoughts flash through my mind. That I hate my children. That I wish I’d never had them. That I wish I could run away and never come back.

I think for a long time, the anti-depressant I was taking (Lexapro, for those of you who care, and which I’ve been on for over two years now) made life more manageable for me. It’s obviously no longer working.

And so, tomorrow, I’m going to see a psychiatrist for the first time. Because I think this requires more help than my regular family doctor can provide. And I pray that this new doctor has something that can fix me. Because this is not normal, and more importantly, it’s not me. This is not the kind of mother I want to be. I don’t want my girls to grow up and remember their mom as this bitter, angry, horrible person.

I know I was a good mom once. Hopefully I can be that again. Sooner rather than later.

On the new sleeping arrangements

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Cindy

To follow up on that last post, I have now set the girls up with a shared bedroom.

Oooh, wait! Funny side story about that: Dave was going to help me move furniture around last weekend, since he was in town. Then Friday night rolled around, and I had a date. Yay for me, right? This guy asked me out to dinner, and I think it’s important to note here that we had gone out once before, and he was still texting me daily, so it’s obviously not like he was completely repulsed by me.

So, we go out to dinner at this really fantastic sushi place, and the waiter is really prompt about refilling my Diet Coke, which is keeping me happy. We had met for dinner at 6:00, and then we finish eating, and I’m like, “So, want to go see a movie or grab a drink or something?” And he was like, “Nah, I’m really tired, I think I just want to go home and go to bed.” He walked me to my car and gave me a hug, and THAT, my friends, was very clearly the end of the date. It was over by 7:15 p.m. On a Friday night.

That’s weird, right? It’s weird. Oh, and then he continued to text me afterward. I swear, I do not understand dudes.

(Also: total waste of both mascara and leg-shaving.)

After the Comically Short Date, I went home and I was thinking that I might watch a movie or something, but I was ridiculously hyped up because I had consumed something like a MILLION Diet Cokes while we were at the restaurant. So, I decided to rearrange all of the furniture by myself. On a Friday night.

(Pro tip: Don’t ever try to move a queen-size bed by yourself, unless you happen to really enjoy any excuse to take muscle relaxers.)

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So, the way I did this (for like the 3 people who read this who know what the inside of my house looks like):

* Lucy’s old room is now the guest room. (Which makes sense, because it’s right next to the hall bathroom, so really, it’s friendlier accommodations for my guests.)

* Catie’s old room is now her “office”/playroom. (I got a desk for $30 on craigslist and set her up with all of her art supplies up there. She LOVES it. And it keeps her crayons off of my kitchen table, so I love it too.)

* The former guest room is now the girls’ combined bedroom. I ordered a whole mess of vinyl wall decals, because it lets the kids personalize the room without damaging the walls or making me worry about my security deposit.

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Catie chose the design aesthetic. It’s a combination of flowering trees, butterflies… and jungle animals. Because why not, that’s why.

My mom saw it and said, “I love it. I mean, it’s completely insane, but it’s perfect.” I think that about sums it up.

Lucy’s side of the room:

Catie’s side of the room:

(Yes, Catie is a little old for a guard rail, but she is what you might call an “active sleeper,” so trust me, it’s still necessary.)

You may also note that each kid has their own Dream Lite pillow pet on their bed. Bedtime is like a freaking Pink Floyd laser light show up in here.

Anyway, since Dave has been in town, we’ve only had a limited test run with this experiment, but so far, 2 of the 3 nights that they’ve spent in the new room, Lucy slept through the night and didn’t make a peep.

Hang on a second, I’m gonna need to say that again and bust out the all-caps.

LUCY SLEPT THROUGH THE NIIIIIIGHT OMG OMG HALLELUJAH OMG!!!!!

Last night was the first night we’ve had a problem, and it was because Catie was snoring like a damn lumberjack and it kept waking Lucy up. I finally remembered to turn on the humidifier – partly to help with Catie’s snoring, but also because the white noise would drown out the sound so Lucy could sleep, and then they both slept fine for the rest of the night.

So, I am being VERY cautious because I don’t want to get overly excited here and jinx everything, but I think we maybe, possibly, kinda-sorta miiiiight have found a solution that’ll work for us.

Now, quick, throw some salt over your shoulder or knock on wood or light a candle or something.

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P.S. Gratuitous pic of my kid because it makes me laugh.

Yeah. That face. I swear. She’s damn lucky she’s cute.

little talks**

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Cindy

Oh, my poor little neglected blog. I have so many moments of things where I think, “I should blog about that,” but then I either forget it or I can’t come up with a way to capture it in an interesting storytelling format. Which sort of feels like the whole point of blogging, right?

Stuff like:
* Catie’s favorite candy right now is what she calls “Reese’s penis butter cups.” And every time she says it, I have to cover my face with both hands and leave the room so I can laugh where she can’t see me.

* Catie also told me that you have to take an airplane to get to South Carolina and that the people there speak another language. After much confusion, it appears that she thinks the words “Carolina” and “America” are interchangeable.

(And yeah, I guess they kind of do speak another language in certain parts of South Carolina. So she wasn’t totally wrong.)

* I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this, but Lucy cannot say that “Lu” part of her name, so she calls herself Cici. Which means that now we call her Cici most of the time. It’s kind of adorable and perfect for her.

* I got a notice in the mail about signing Catie up for a local beauty pageant. I laughed maniacally before tossing it in the trash. Do what you want to do, I guess, but I will never, ever be a pageant mom. And I cannot imagine my little nerdy tomboy child would ever go along with the fancy dress and big hair and all that. Unless you can count “playing games on the iPad” as a talent, because she would smoke the competition in that category.

* I’ve been dating quite a bit. It’s fun. It’s nice to have guys that make you feel pretty.

* My mom and I took the girls to see Yo Gabba Gabba Live a few weeks ago. And we (Catie, Lucy, and I) got down into the toddler mosh pit in front and we high-fived DJ Lance. This is what qualifies as a really awesome moment in my life. Don’t judge.

* Dave is in town for the next week or so, and occasionally he has to text me phonetic words to help him translate Lucy-speak to English.

Example:
Him: What does ‘Oo-oo’ mean?
Me: It means dog. That’s how she says ‘woof woof.’

I mean, duh. Obviously. How could anyone not know that?

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So, see, most of that stuff ends up condensed as a tweet or a Facebook status update, and then I don’t really come here to expand on things. Even though I want to. And I miss it. I’ve also been bad about answering friends’ emails for the same reason. Taking the time to sit down and string more than two sentences together feels like too much work.

And really, the reason it feels like so much work? Is because I am TIIIIIIRED. Because Lucy still isn’t sleeping. A lot of the sleep coach’s ideas were really good, but most of them are not things that I’ve been able to implement.

For example, she said that Lucy needs to be in bed no later than 7 to 7:30 p.m. Well, I don’t even get the kids from daycare until 6:00, and then I either have to cook dinner and feed them, or we go to my parents’ house for dinner, but either way, usually we’re only just getting into the bath by 7:30. If I get her to bed by 8:30, I feel like I’m doing really well.

Also, the reward chart? Lucy does not understand that at all yet. So that didn’t work.

And the baby gate in her doorway? Since this is a rental house, I had to use a pressure-mounted gate because I can’t screw one into the doorposts, and it took her less than 30 seconds to figure out how to go all “LUCY SMASH!” on it, knock it over, and then walk out of her room like nothing happened.

She looks cute during the daytime, I know. Trust me, this face is not cute at 3 a.m.

One of my own personal theories about Lucy’s sleep habits is that she simply doesn’t like being alone. When Dave is in town, she and Catie sleep together on a fold-out couch. And Lucy always sleeps through the night for him, without fail.

Dave said that he has seen Lucy wake up in the night. She sits up, looks around, sees him across the room and Catie right next to her, and then she lies down and goes back to sleep.

So, I’ve decided, the girls are going to start sharing a bedroom. Catie was dead-set against this idea when I first suggested it, but I’ve managed to bribe her into going along with it. (Promise that kid a new Skylander action figure and you can probably get her to do just about anything.)

Dave is going to help me re-arrange furniture this weekend to get their room set up. Is it weird to use my ex-husband for manual labor? Probably. Oh well. They’re his kids too, after all.

Wish me luck. Hopefully this will solve the constant wake-ups.

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** About the post title: this song by Of Monsters and Men?

I liked the song, until The Guy told me right around the time of our break-up that it reminded him of me. Now I hate it. Funny how that works.

Lucy’s day at the salon

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Cindy

Lucy is still not sleeping, and I don’t really want to talk about it because I’ll probably cry if I do.

SO! Let’s talk about Lucy’s hair, shall we?

Lucy’s hair has gone through many stages. She was born with a full head of dark hair, which is kind of amazing considering how blonde she is now.

But within the first few weeks of her life, all of it fell out. And then she was bald. For a long, long time. Oh, she was so bald.

But then she finally grew some hair. Very blonde hair. And then we entered the phase of Crazy Bed Head.

And even when the bedhead has been tamed, she has what I can only refer to as a Baby Mullet.

It’s bad. When Lucy sees the bottle of No More Tangles or the comb, she starts saying, “Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!” before I even touch her.

So, I decided that was enough. I called my friend Kim, who does my hair and Catie’s. She told me to bring her in and she’d take care of it.

(I got no pictures of the hair cutting process, because I had Lucy on my lap during her haircut, and I was using my phone to show her YouTube videos to distract her. Yet another case of the second kid’s milestones passing by undocumented.)

And now, my Lucy-goose no longer has a knotted up baby mullet.

Gotta say, I kind of love it. It’s like an actual hairstyle instead of just an accidental pile of hair.

Now, if we can just work on that whole sleeping thing…

sleep coaching a toddler

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Cindy

I met with the sleep coach a week ago, and I’ve been meaning to sit down and write about it ever since then, but I was too exhausted to actually implement any of the suggestions she gave me, and too exhausted to write about it, because, you know, my kid doesn’t sleep and that makes me tired. (Catch-22, anyone?)

Anyway, before I met with Pam from First Daze and Nightzzz, she sent me a questionnaire to detail Lucy’s history, so she could figure out where we were going wrong, and how to implement a solution that would work for us.

One of her questions was to list the things I had already tried. And I realized that this is a really long list.

This is what I sent her:

1.) Implementing a set/predictable bedtime routine that allows her to gradually calm down & get sleepy.

2.) When I suspected teething, I tried giving her either Motrin or Tylenol at bedtime.

3.) Trying the “cry it out” method. This doesn’t work because she gets so distressed that she makes herself vomit.

4.) Letting her sleep with me. This doesn’t work for a few reasons, but primarily because she wakes so frequently and is such a restless sleeper that neither of us was getting any rest.

5.) Moving her from a crib to a big-girl bed. This was probably a bad idea in hindsight, but it worked really well for my first daughter. Of course, the crib broke when I was moving it, & I cannot justify shelling out more money for a new crib that will likely only get a few months’ use. So we’re committed to the bed now. (It has a guard rail so she can’t fall out.)

6.) Trying the method of sitting next to her bed as she fell asleep, then over time gradually sitting closer and closer to the door as she fell asleep. Now I sit in the hall, but if she can’t see me as she falls asleep, she gets up and comes looking for me.

7.) Trying the “Supernanny technique” of not saying a word or giving her any feedback at all (neither positive nor negative), just simply picking her up and putting her back in the bed every time she got up. I did this for WEEKS. It never worked.

8.) I’ve given her Benadryl. Terrible, I know. And it had no effect whatsoever.

9.) A few weeks ago, out of desperation (because friends & pediatrician both recommended it), I took her off the bottle cold turkey & now only give her sippy cups.

That’s a lot of stuff, right? I also had to write out logs for at least 48 hours and make notes of when Lucy slept, how often she woke up, what I did to get her back to sleep, how much she eats during the day, etc. I left a notepad on my nightstand and scribbled down the times when Lucy woke up.

Normally, when I wake up in the morning, if you asked me how many times Lucy was up during the night, I would have no idea, because it all sort of blurs together. Seeing it all written out made me realize exactly why I’ve been so tired. Like the night that she woke me up 6 times. Let me repeat that: SIX. TIMES. And that’s not unusual! I mean, newborns wake you up less than that, right?

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So, we came up with a plan, and I’m tackling it now.

1. Lucy has had eczema since she was a tiny baby. I normally put cortisone cream on it, and that keeps it sort of in check, but she scratches an awful lot (mainly her hands and feet). One of the ideas that Pam mentioned is that perhaps she sleeps so restlessly because her skin is itching. (Why that never occurred to me, I don’t know.) So I took Lucy to a dermatologist last week, and we got a new cream for her eczema (which I can already tell is helping), as well as a prescription antihistamine that is specifically designed to deal with itching. (I got excited when the dermatologist told me that the antihistamine “may make her a bit groggy.” Reality: it makes her slightly groggy. Mostly it makes her meaner than a damn snake.)

2. We had a “family meeting” (well, Lucy and I did, Catie was like, “this is boring,” and took off to play on her iPad) to discuss that our new friend the Sleep Lady is going to teach us how to help Lucy sleep at night. Hard to have a real discussion with a 20 month-old, and I don’t know how much of it she understood, but I’ve been repeating this theme a lot (learning to sleep in her own bed, etc.), and hoping that it’ll sink in.

3. I bought a My Tot Clock, which is blue at night, and turns yellow in the morning when it’s time to wake up. Lucy is a big fan of colors, so she took to this pretty quickly. When the clock turns blue (normally when we’re in bed reading books), she points at it and says, “Boo! Nigh-night!” Yes, baby, blue means that it’s night-night time.

4. In the vein of basic behavior/reward charts, I’ve created Lucy’s “sleep manners” chart. Obviously she isn’t old enough to read yet, so I googled some clip art to make it something she can understand visually.

(Click to enlarge.)

A lot of the things are easy, like putting on her pajamas and brushing her teeth – I help her with those, so they’re kind of automatic wins for her. (The idea being to kind of boost her up a little, rather than just, “Well, you sucked at everything yesterday, didn’t you?”) I also bought some smiley face and star stickers to decorate it when she accomplishes the items on her chart.

5. Using the “chair method” of sitting in a chair next to the bed while she falls asleep for 3 nights, by the door for the next 3, in the hall for the next 3, and finally out of sight (with lots of returns to check on her). I thought I was already doing this by sitting on the floor next to her & gradually moving out of her sight, but the chair does make it a bit more of an official, “this is where Mommy sits” spot.

6. Putting the baby gate in the doorway to her room. Several people suggested this to me, and I was very hesitant to try it, because I’m pretty sure that if Lucy was pissed off enough, she could throw herself against the gate and knock it down.

Pam said to phrase it so that it isn’t a punishment, and more like, “Since you keep popping up and forgetting to stay in your bed, this is going to remind you that you need to stay in your own room instead of running to get Mama every time you wake up.”

Again, not sure how much a 20 month-old is going to understand out of all of this, but the idea is just to keep repeating it and eventually it’ll sink in.

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So, it’s a lot to take in, but the good news? Last night, Lucy slept through the night for the first time in ages. I have no idea if it was just completely blind, dumb luck, and we’ll be back to waking up 6 times tonight, or if it’s the start of a new trend. Obviously I’m hoping for the latter, but bracing myself for the former.

Keep your fingers crossed for us. I sure could use it.

bye bye, baba

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Cindy

I’m not sure how many times I can sit down and talk about how Lucy doesn’t sleep.

But she doesn’t. Sleep through the night. Ever. And she hasn’t since, oh, last August or so.

She wakes up approximately every 60 to 90 minutes, and she comes running down the hall to my room. All night long. Every night.

A couple of weeks ago, we went out for brunch at IHOP with the girls’ daycare friends. The mom seems really nice and easy to talk to, and the kids adore each other, so it sounded fun.

The little boy in the middle is Kameron. He’s in the toddler room at daycare with Lucy, and they adore each other. His mom and I were talking about kids and sleep issues, and she mentioned that Kameron (who just recently turned two years old) had only been sleeping through the night for about a week, and it was because she finally took away the baby bottle.

I have said in the past that I didn’t care about Lucy’s bottle addiction. And I didn’t. It made her happy, it made my life easier, it worked. She could’ve kept the bottle until elementary school, as far as I was concerned.

But desperation for sleep makes you do crazy things. So I decided that if there was a snowball’s chance in hell that weaning Lucy off the bottle would get her to sleep through the night? Well, it was worth a shot.

I dropped her off at daycare one morning, and I came home and packed up every bottle in the house. I put it all in a hefty bag and shoved it in the back of my closet. (I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, just in case this experiment failed.)

Then I wanted to cry and throw up. I kept thinking about her happily walking around the house that morning before daycare, drinking her bottle, and she had absolutely no idea that was the last bottle she was ever going to have.

I’m so, so sorry, baby.

Normally when I picked up the girls at daycare, I would bring a bottle with me. Lucy would come running to me, give me a hug, then say, “Baba?” She knew I would always have it in my bag.

That day, when I picked her up, I had a sippy cup of milk instead of a bottle. She screamed as though I had betrayed every faith she’d ever had in the universe.

Halfway home, with Lucy still screaming to the point of nearly-vomiting in the car, I was trying not to lose it, and Catie was in the backseat with her hands over her ears. Finally, Catie yelled, “Don’t you have those DVDs with the music on them that she likes?!!!” I realized she meant CDs, and yes! Actually I did. I popped in a Wiggles CD, cranked it loud enough to drown out Lucy’s screams, and she actually quieted down and listened to the music for the rest of the way home.

(Don’t judge me for the Wiggles. I will listen to “Fruit Salad Yummy Yummy” all the livelong day, if it means I don’t have to listen to my kids cry.)

When we got home, she ran to the fridge, and I opened the door to show her that the shelf that normally contained her bottles? Was now stocked with sippy cups of milk. She threw herself on the floor and wailed some more.

Grief is tough, man.

The next several days were a lot like that. She’d hopefully ask, “Baba?” And I’d say, “No, Lucy-goose, the baba went bye-bye.”

I kept repeating, “Babas are for babies, but Lucy is a BIG GIRL now.” Most of the times she’d angrily shove the sippy cup of milk away rather than drink it.

Then I had an epiphany: Lucy wants everything Catie has. And Catie still drinks milk in a sippy cup at bedtime. (Yes, she’s 6. No, I don’t care. She drinks out of regular cups all the time, but she likes to have a sippy cup on the couch sometimes, and it means I don’t have to worry about spills, so that is FINE with me.)

So, one night, while I was still holding the sippy cup of milk that Lucy angrily rejected, I said, “Wow, look, Catie sure likes her milk in a sippy cup.” Lucy looked over at Catie, then turned around, grabbed the sippy cup out of my hands, and slurped it down.

She hasn’t asked for her “baba” since then.

And a weird side effect of all of this? Lucy has suddenly turned into a major cuddle-bug. She’s always been sweet and affectionate, but normally she was always on the move, she never wanted to sit still and be cuddled. Now, she gives all of these spontaneous hugs and she wants me to hold her on my lap all the time. And it just sort of occurred to me that she always got her comfort from the bottle, and now she’s been forced to seek her comfort from, you know, other humans.

So it’s good.

But, the whole reason for taking away the bottle? To get her to sleep? No dice. It hasn’t improved her sleeping habits even one tiny bit. So I’m essentially back at square one there.

To that end, and the whole “I’m at the end of my rope and I’ll try pretty much anything at this point if it means I can get some damn SLEEP” thing? I’ve hired a child sleep coach. I’m meeting with her next week. I have no idea if this will work or not, but it’s basically my last resort, trying to throw money at the problem to see if maybe outside professional help can fix it.

She comes over on Tuesday. Cross your fingers for me.

…and now, she’s 6

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Cindy

Catie turned six years old yesterday. Which… ok, I know a lot of people get all sappy about numbers and milestones and whatnot, and I typically don’t fall into that category. I normally have more of an attitude that, yes, of course, time marches on. That’s how it’s supposed to go.

But I admit, six has thrown me for a loop a little bit. I mean, six is the age of a FIRST GRADER. How is that possible?

And in my mind, she still looks more or less like this:

I still think of her as this little soft-bodied, pudgy toddler. But there are no kissable fat rolls on her thighs anymore. No pudgy little wrists. Her soft little curls have turned into a thick, straight bob (which, for both its color and shape, is the envy of many adult women I know).

Sometimes I look at her and I do a double take. Who is this tall, skinny kid in front of me?

She is so smart, she blows me away. She picks up on everything. It’s starting to get to the point where I can’t even spell words that I don’t want her to hear because she knows so many of them.

This year, she asked for a birthday party at Monkey Joe’s (the bounce house place) again, just like she had last year. It was a much smaller party this year (which my wallet is very grateful for), and a lot of fun.

For one thing, last year, Lucy spent the entire party strapped into a Baby Bjorn. But this year, got to enjoy the bounce houses herself.

Although she has a pretty… unique?… way of going down the slides. Which she did about 10,000 times, and she laughed harder and harder every time.

The orange sticker on her back is her ID bracelet. She wouldn’t wear it on her wrist, so they stuck it to her back so she couldn’t pull it off. Kind of genius, really.

(Btw, major shout-out to my sister for crawling into the bounce houses with Lucy to keep her from getting trampled, while I was making small talk with the other parents.)

It was a really great party, and everyone had a fantastic time. Well, the kids did. The adults mostly felt like we’d been run over by a steam roller by the time it was over.

One random aside: a friend who obviously doesn’t know Catie very well gave her a Barbie doll as a present. Catie was very gracious and happy and thanked her friend, but I know for a fact that Catie has absolutely zero interest in Barbie dolls. (Believe me, I loved Barbies as a kid, so I have tried to get her interested in Barbie, to no avail.)

Last night, she asked my sister to open the Barbie’s box. I asked her if she was really sure she wanted to keep it, because we could take it to the store to exchange it for something else if she didn’t want it? She said, “No, my friend gave this to me, I want it.”

She took the Barbie doll’s shoes off, put on one of the other pairs of shoes, and looked at her for a minute.

Then she said, “Well, this is boring.”

Yep. That’s my girl.

Fortunately, Lucy LOVES the Barbie doll, and has already decided that Barbie should start working on potty training.

(Poor Barbie.)

Happy birthday to my sweet six year-old Catie-bug. You are the most wonderful, glorious little weirdo I have ever met, and I could not love you more for being exactly who you are.

PooBou.com

Mom. Stepmom. Nerd. Feminist. Pretty good wife. Outstanding ex-wife. I try to keep it light and funny. I'm not always successful.

Author Archives: Cindy

Confession

On the new sleeping arrangements

little talks**

Lucy’s day at the salon

sleep coaching a toddler

bye bye, baba

…and now, she’s 6

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