Barren Mare

If you give a Botany a pancake

Two excellent things are to happen next week. The first is that, after several months of badgering the human resources department, Knox finally goes on to his new part-time working pattern; it will mean quite a hit (hopefully temporary, at least until he gets another job) in terms of income but he'll be able to be here for four days a week. The second thing is that my parents arrive for the entire summer; four whole months. 

I don't know quite how to convey my relief; indeed, my absolute jubilation, at the prospect of having another couple of pairs of hands around here to help out with Botany and with the daily grind in general. I really don't want to sound like a whinger, but my god. I am so goddamn tired so much of the time- and if I am being completely honest, just a little impatient and a tad burned out with the single parenting gig. It probably doesn't help that Botany's demands on me can sometimes seem endless, relentless, unceasing. From the minute she wakes up, she is a little bundle of need.

Read, mummy! Boob! Porridge! Sippy! Milk! Sit, mummy! Cuddle! Wear the pretty dress? Want pretty dress! More porridge? More boob! Croissant! Juice! Ants! Monsters! Ants and Monsters!

That last one is particularly problematic; no amount of explaining can convey the concept that you can't have two different movies on at the same time. There is also some difficulty with the notion that in order to provide some of the things she has asked for, I do need to move to a different room occasionally, for example, to get the carton of juice out of the fridge.

Given that the litany of things Botany desires or wants begins at roughly 5.30 am every morning and finishes at about 7.30 pm, I find the days that we are home alone together to be particularly...long. She is quite easily bored- or at least, she seems to be less fractious and hard to manage if I aim to provide an endless stream of amusing and stimulating activity. Unfortunately, my energy levels as well as my finances are finite; I simply don't always have the resource to come up with the goods.

Some days, we've already been to the library, the park and the grocery store followed by the reading of  "If you Give a Pig a Pancake" approximately 9,000 times and she's had her nap and then I am aghast that it is only 2.30 pm and there is still all this time to fill. By some unfortunate chance, most of my mother friends work opposite days to me, which usually rules out playdates. I'm about to try to sign up for a local playgroup but I gather there is a waiting list so it's not clear when we'll get in. I find myself wondering with guilt what we all did before the invention of the television. Then I feel even more guilty that here in front of me sits my heart's desire, my precious most wanted child, and I am unable to enjoy it, so overwhelming is the urge for a half an hour of peace to sit in the bathroom reading Vogue magazine.

When she finally goes to bed, I often just collapse. On a bad day, I find myself mentally whimpering that I can't, I can't, I can't do this anymore- but knowing I have to get up, make her lunch, order the groceries,  find something clean to wear to work tomorrow, do the laundry, clean the bathroom, sort out the tax credit thing, and plan a wedding.

I think, most of the time, that this is a very normal developmental phase that we are going through and eventually we will come out the other side relatively unscathed. I delight in my endlessly inquisitive, loving, amusing, bright spark of a child. And then, at lower points in the day, I am convinced I have spawned an all consuming whirlwind, whose thirst for life is, quite literally, sucking me dry.

Is Botany harder work than other children her age? On one hand, I very much doubt it; all kids come with quirks and foibles and I'd be very surprised if most toddlers didn't ask a lot of their parents. On the other hand, I do sometimes suspect that Botany does fall on the intense end of the spectrum. She's never, ever been a placid child, not since the moment she was born (or trying to be born, even). There's a such a streak of strong will in her- and coupled with what I suspect may be her considerable intelligence, it means that I have to work that much harder to keep up with her. What I keep telling myself is that I was never meant to be doing all of it on my own.

It'll be so much better when there are other pairs of hands to help carry the load, pick up the slack, make the pancakes.

Overheard

"A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."

                            -quote ascribed to Irina Dunn (1970)

A few days ago, Botany and I went to look at a secondhand tricycle. There is a fantastic cycle path which runs entirely off- road to a lovely park not far from the house, and she's been showing an interest in riding the cheap metal thing that we acquired for free (but which is falling apart at the seams- you get what you pay for, I guess.)  I am all about buying quality and things that are built to last, but I was choking a little on the price of one of the better makes of trikes. Then I spotted one going for a reasonable sum in the local online classifieds and after a rapid exchange of emails, we hotfooted it over to inspect it with a view to buying.

Having clambered out of the car, Botany insisted on walking and waving her plastic shark friend in the air.

"Mummy? Bring fish?" she asked, referring to one of her infamous Bath Toy Collection.

"No, baby," I found myself saying. "We had to leave the fish at home. It's OK to bring your shark, though. You can have your shark. You can't bring the fish because we're going to look at a bicycle, and fish don't like bicycles."

She smiled up at me, holding my hand. I reminded myself yet again that sometimes, conversations with a toddler can become very, very surreal.   

Fortunately, the shark seemed to like the trike, and we bought it.  I somehow managed to cram it into the back of my teeny tiny car. As soon as we got home, Botany insisted on riding around the block at least twice, emitting little squeals of glee all the way, even though it was starting to rain. 

  

Leap forward, stumble back

Well, of course it didn't last. I has somehow suspected Botany's delightfully self-sufficient new sleep routine was probably going to turn out to be a relatively short-lived fluke. And I was right. A night or two after that last post (and indeed, the same night I somewhat smugly demonstrated the new bedtime routine to E.), Botany started howling about 15 minutes after going into her cot.  The first time, she sounded so distressed that I went in right away, which I wouldn't normally do. She was standing up, wild-eyed and looking very upset.

When I asked her what was wrong, she said, "Scared."

I was a bit taken aback. Firstly, that was not a word that I knew to be in her vocabulary and secondly, not an emotion that I thought she be able to articulate at this age.

"What are you scared of, darling?" I asked her, and she shyly named one of her plastic bath toys. For reasons which merit a whole other post, she has hitherto been obsessed with a collection of these particular toys, to the point of needing to have them on hand all the time, including at night in the cot.

I was somewhat incredulous that this particular item, which was resting innocently at the foot of the mattress, would have in any way inspired fear, but it does have slightly buggy eyes and a freaky grin so I decided to respect that actually, it might be scary. So I removed the toy, gave Botany a cuddle and back down she went without any more complaining. Problem solved, I reckoned.

The only catch was that on each subsequent night thereafter, the scenario was repeated, only she was no longer able to identify anything that was bothering her. Worse still, she wouldn't go to sleep after one check-in, instead lapsing into a round of fresh, hysterical weeping a few minutes every time I left the room.  Well, duh, I realised. After the first night, I remained hesitant about going in at all, knowing we may be getting into a problematic pattern, but it worried me- a lot- that she might be lying there, feeling scared. I don't think she was deliberately manipulating me that first time, but after that experience, she obviously saw a chink in the bedtime armour.

So we reverted to more traditional bedtime soothing- cuddles and rocking and indeed, the boob, until she was placed in a drowsy stupour into the cot. It's nice in some ways, since I always enjoyed our bedtime nursing and felt a little sad that it might be on the way out. But mostly, I now just feel like a gigantic failure. Here I was secretly congratulating myself that Project De-boobing might not end up being this huge battle and suddenly I find that we're right back into the old familiar pattern, which is not the direction I particularly want to be heading.

I'm also experiencing various pressure on the weaning front which is probably contributing to a general overall sense of Fail, Fail, Fail. My parents arrive for the summer in a few weeks; my mother has made it no secret that she thinks it is high time that Botany came off the boob for good. I already feel as though I have to be apologetic about the fact that we are still in a nursing relationship. It's almost as if nursing was a highly unsuitable boyfriend, who my parents really disapprove of, but who I love so much even though ultimately I know we're not meant to be and he will leave me in the end.

To compound the issue, Knox is absolutely convinced the sole reason Botany wakes up at such an ungodly hour every morning is because she wants boob. I suspect he's probably right; that said, neither of us is that keen to go through the nightmare process of ruling out the morning boob as the main contributing factor. I'm also savvy enough at this stage to know that when it comes to kids with sleep issues, there are very few magic bullets. But it makes me feel like there is another voice added to the Wean!Wean!Wean! choir, and it's growing louder every day.

I try really hard not to pick out the undertones of "if you were a proper mother, you'd have this child's behaviour modified by now," because I don't think that's necessarily what is intended. But when I'm already feeling like a failure, it's very easy to hear discord in the orchestra.  

Even the larks are saying "you've gotta be kidding me".

Would you believe that in the end, I forgot to take the cursed cake to worK?  Well, actually, I remembered when I was halfway there in the car- at which Botany may have learned a new word or two.

The last post on tantruming creates a nice segue into what is seemingly my mostest favouritest topic- sleep.

May's comment raises an interesting question- is it not the case that Botany is tired, having woken up at 4.45 am and might this not be a contributing factor in the tantrum incidents?  Yes and no. On that particular day, we were up very early, but in classic Botany style, she wanted to go back to bed about 7.30 for some boob and sleepies, which we did. She slept, I did not. So when I say she was not especially tired, I am basing this on her just having had an hour of sleep to compensate for the early morning waking. I concur she may have still been a little tired. But it seems Botany is completely capable of pitching a fit no matter how much sleep she may or may not have had.  Often times she kicks off not long after she has actually woken up from a refreshing nap.

Still- 4.45 am- the root of all evil. You may recall that before we went on holiday, I was considering implementing Operation Blue Light. I figured there was no point until all the travel was completed, since body clocks were going to be wonky here anyway. Then when we got back, there was a hellish period where she wouldn't sleep at all, followed by a blissful spell where she regularly slept until almost 6.30am. It was during that lovely time that I began to hope that maybe we'd finally turned a corner. Then she started waking up again at all kinds of silly, early times- BUT- and here's the part that makes both Knox and I want to weep with frustration- she only seems to do it at the weekend or on the days when we could actually enjoy sleeping in until 6.30am.

Whoah. I just wrote "enjoy sleeping in until 6.30am". Somewhere, I think I hear my mother laughing.

It's especially hard for Knox because once he's been woken up in the morning, he has a really hard time going back to sleep. I'm usually able to drift off for some extra snoozing if I bring Botany into bed to nurse for anywhere from a half hour to an hour (or however long she desires) before she starts leaping up and down on my sternum. Knox invariably ends up lying there awake, waiting to get kicked in the ribs, before eventually dragging himself bleary eyed out of bed. During this morning's 4.45 am wake up call, he actually departed in a grump for the sofa, where he threw himself down to watch television in a sleep deprived stupor. All the more unfortunate given that for a change, Botany went straight back to sleep right after I brought her into bed with me and slept like a log until 8am.  

What drives me particularly crackers is that when she does want to bound out of bed at 5am or whenever for the day, she is invariably tired a couple of hours later, and ready for a morning nap. On the days when she manages to sleep until 6am or later, she's OK to last the morning without additional sleep. Which tells me she probably really does need that extra hour of sleep. 

Interestingly, at the same time, the whole bedtime routine has changed. It used to be that we would do bath, jammies, brush teeth, read stories in the rocker chair and then she would nurse to almost sleep before I put her down in the cot around 7.30. But a couple of weeks ago, she simply would not fall asleep (even though she was clearly pretty tired). I decided that come half past seven, she was going into the cot no matter what. So I started just putting her down awake. And what I discovered is that she would go quietly, and even though awake when I left her, would fall asleep on her own.

Since then, we've progressed to her actually asking to go into the cot around 7.30 (usually after 10 minutes of nursing). I put her down, give her a kiss, shut the curtains and make sure she has all her favourite toys, her sippy cup of water, and a book. She says "night night mummy, see tomorrow morning" and waves. Sometimes we blow kisses as I leave the room. And then she will read or chat quietly to herself or the toys in the cot for up to half an hour before falling asleep. Tonight she requested asked to go to bed without any nursing at all. 

I'm frankly still trying to pick my jaw up off the floor about it all, but it's really, really great. Unfortunately, the slightly later bedtime doesn't guarantee a later wake up time, particularly at the weekend for reasons we are unable to ascertain. Can I also point out that I've attempted the Weissbluth formula of earlier bedtime repeatedly and trust me, it really does not work for Botany.) I do wish that she could apply some of the same methods of entertaining herself quietly in the cot for awhile before she gets up- but what I have learned is that clearly, she has that capacity and maybe just needs us to reinforce that message.

To do that, I may need to get started on Operation Blue Light. Amusingly, though, we've lost the instruction booklet for the timer gadget supplied by Knox. I was envisaging some little simple mechanism plugged in at the socket, but this thing is complicated enough that I reckon that secretly it is capable of doing our taxes, monitoring our heart rates and mumuring subliminal messages. Sleeeep, Botany, sleeeeep.      

 

      

 

 

Tropical Storm Botany

It feels like there is a big, black thunder cloud over my home some days. Once upon a time, Botany's tantrums were like storm squalls at sea. Out of nowhere, she'd lapse into tears, wailing about some freak, unspecified strange little problem- and then, especially as she became more articulate, with a bit of consolation or minor adjustment (take shoes OFF! MOVE tray with the cats on it! SHUT door!), it would pass. But lately, it's become more like a reoccurring typhoon and the duration is longer, fiercer and more draining than I could have imagined. 

Yesterday, for example, Knox and I wanted to take her to one of her favourite places. It's a bit of a drive to get there, though. So to achieve the visit with enough time to enjoy the requisite amount of rapturous gazing at the fish and still be home for naptime*, we needed to get dressed and get going. This was explained to her (at least the part about going to see the fish and the needing to put clothes on) and she seemed to understand.  We somehow wrestled her into a top but then would she suffer a pair of trousers to be put on? No. No, she would not. I gave her a choice of two different items, and she flung both of them in my face. I tried a dress, but it's still cold here and there has to be something underneath to cover the bare chubby legs, so that failed. I say failed but what I mean is she flung it across the room and ran down the hallway screaming like a banshee.  Finally, under duress, we managed to get on a pair of rather nice butterfly adorned sweatpants. I assure you, there was nothing binding or chafing about them that I could see, nor were they an offensive cut, colour or material based prior experience. 

Cue 45 minutes of top volume screaming while clawing at her legs, throwing herself on the floor and generally working into a frenzy so spectacular that I wanted to go hide under the bed. In fact, I think I may have done that at one point.

Needless to say, we didn't end up going. In fact, as this was the start of long, grim siege of meltdowns lasting pretty much all day about one thing or another, I don't think we even left the house. Fortunately it was a holiday weekend and so there was nothing much we particularly needed to go and do, but it was less than fun for all concerned. It was still better than the 45 minutes of Botany's howling and screaming in the confined spaces of the car when we drove up to see Knox's mother last weekend; an experience brought on by Botany wanting her coat on then off then on again, despite being strapped in the car seat hurtling down the motorway. COAT ON! COAT ON! COAT OOOOOONNNN! It is still ringing in my ears.      

This morning, I really needed to go to the store. My office has a tradition of having cake every Wednesday, and we take turns on a constant rotation as the cake provider. As there are about 25 of us, it only comes my way rarely. But of course this week of all weeks, I am on Cake Duty tomorrow. And of course, there is never any cake in my house (or at least not of the sufficient quantities needed to feed the masses). And of course, I could have bought it over the weekend prior to the arrival of Tropical Storm Botany but I am of the view that cake is better when bought fresher and besides, even I am not that organised.

The last "of course" in all this is that "of course", Botany also refused this morning to put on her clothes so we could go get the goddamn cake. I confess to complete exasperation. I hate to admit it, but I resorted to something which I very rarely do, and I raised my voice. I think, in fact, I actually shouted. Yes, yes, I did shout, flagellate away. The funny thing is, perhaps because I so rarely do it, Botany was immediately cowed and ran to me saying OKOKOK and sorrysorrymummy. And stood there in perfect compliance as I dressed her, wiped her little tearstained face and got her coat on. Inwardly, I was a crumpled mess while maintaining a stream of soothing yet upbeat chatter about the delights of cake procurement.     

I know her behaviour is perfectly normal and developmentally understandable and all that, but at the same time, it's very challenging. It's baffling and frustrating- she's not sick or teething or hungry or thirsty or especially tired. I am beginning to feel shaky and less than confident about managing her day to day. I don't want to have to yell at her to get her to comply; however, it's hard to know what to do when nothing else seems to work- not firm, down on the level direction, not reasonable explanations, not walking away, not negotiation. Nothing.  And some days, you know, we need to leave the house, and for us to do that, she's got to be wearing something other than a thin blue onesie with scooters across the chest.    

[*I might normally have been inclined to try to let her sleep in her buggy, but past attempts at this didn't work so well at this particular place. Also, I'd been up with her since 4.45 am, as we seem to be doing on a regular basis these days- on which more next time- so frankly, I was looking forward to a snooze myself.]