Spotlight on Dee!

Time to slow down for a minute, in the middle of all the baseball and spring holidays and gorgeous weather and garden days and just look at this second son of mine. Its all too easy to get revving right up like crazy and just survive parenthood. (we all do it, its necessary) Every once in a while we need to take little ordained appointments with ourselves to notice our lives. This is my "Notice Dee" pause button session. Time to take a deep breath and be present with who he is.

Suddenly, I feel like this boy is stretching out and getting all long-legged. I can tell his face is changing too and he's relaxing into his big boy role now. Its cool to see him learning to deal more amiably with pressure and anxiety and figure out how to confidently set boundaries for himself and make choices that can allow him to feel emotionally safe. For instance, he still occasionally has migraine type headaches from junk food but he now refuses proffered foods that he knows will make him feel like crap or limits how much he eats and voluntarily puts the rest away for later or just pitches it. Its great to learn that kind of confidence. So much else emerging for him right now too...

Dee Loves

1. Shadow play. This is one of his latest obsessions....the high bleachers at baseball practices are one of his favorite stages for shadow casting. His favorite thing to do is to make his own shadow into things just but changing his body position or holding things that can change the shape of the shadow he throws. He's pretty brilliant at it. He can make himself look like a weight lifter, a roman column and Darth Vader using nothing but a spare sweatshirt and his own body.

2. Scootering in the backyard. We have a pair of little Razor scooters for the boys to share and Dee loves to ride one or BOTH of them. He works on tricks a lot lately which kind of new for him. Usually Ru or Nib are hot dogging all over. Its a mind game for him though, he is less of the crash and burn type and more about clever engineering mixed with whimiscal jokes. My favorite at the moment is when he rides two scooters at once!

3. Wearing his pajama top in the daytime. He thinks its a very clever joke on his Mommy and the height of efficiency to go chance just his pajama pants when told to get dressed in the morning. Its amazing what a mother won't notice when her boy shows up to the table dressed in jeans and tennis shoes, with his teeth all brushed and his bed made. Keep your eyes open...I bet you catch him doing it.

4.What-If questions. He loves to ask me which kind of imaginary vehicle would go faster, what would happen if a volcano blew up on the moon and what I think would be the hardest thing to get in through a keyhole. Lots of these kinds of questions while we are driving places in the car. Love hearing that little mind a whirling.

5. Braiding. He asked me one day how I braid my hair and so I showed him on three strands of grass. Now its a frequent activity....sometimes he braids my hair and sometimes he braids other things: ribbons, plant stems, cords or even seaweed.

6. Pokemon. He and Ru play Pokemon pretend games and battles almost perpetually around the house and he is the master at sound effects, always making all the sounds for each character in an astounding variety of sound registers and voices. He is also the walking encyclopedia of Pokemon factoids. Ru always consults him to answer questions like "What color is Digalit?" "Tell me one the strongest attacks that Slo-King has?" He has an incredible memory for a the data and is very pleased to be consulted like a kind of personal reference librarian.

Dee Loathes

1. Doing Things Without Mastery. He has the hardest time being an early learner at any subject and really feels frustrated and easily like he is being made a fool of, simply because he isn't demonstrating high skill at any given task. He prefers to say he "doesn't know how" so that he can fly under the radar while he practices, only admitting that he can when he feels really confident and smooth. This is tricky in school.

2.Taking a bath. Never much for bathing, he still hates it. He doesn't scream through bathtime like he did when he was a baby but he sure does grumble and gripe about the suggestion that he take one. Once in the tub he loathes the soap getting in his eyes and the being chilly when you come out of the bath, having water in his ears and countless other little physical irritations and inconveniences about the whole process. So many reasons to never get clean.

3. Mushrooms. I don't know where he gets it. Mushrooms are one of God's best inventions, if you ask me...but my boy isn't of the same opinion. Even if I mince them and mix them into a mixture and cook them, he'll often discover they are there and make sure I know that he doesn't approve.

4. Math homework. I don't know if its the fact that A (who teaches math at our house) keeps a strict progress schedule and makes it clear when his students are "behind" and insists that they get no weekends off in such a status, or if its just the subject matter itself that get Dee's goat. Whatever it is, almost nothing gets under his skin and makes him melt down more spectacularly. Its very tough for me because I see so much of myself in him. I have a hard time listening and watching and remember, "This is NOT my emergency, its his." because I was so frustrated by math for so much of my young learning years. Weird how empathy can be a stumbling block sometimes.

5. Being ordered along on hikes. Dee hates most forms of being ordered around, he's the independent sorts (fits right in at our house...we are a house of clashingly independent thinkers and strong wills) and he doesn't hate hikes themselves or the outdoors which is one of his favorite retreats and play spaces. But he really does hate being told that he'll be going hiking with the family at such and such a time in so and so many minutes though. "Go get your shoes on, we're going for a walk soon and yes, you have to come." is pretty much always certain to put him in a bad mood. No choices, forced forward walking, ordered time in nature with a strict schedule....all his buttons.

6. Being asked about his eye. Remember this post?  This doesn't embarrass or infuriate him like it used to but does annoy him. He gets asked all the time if he's okay and "What happened to his eye??" and told that his eye looks funny and it gets old. Its hard for a kid who lives with some little visual difference to understand why its so broken-record-fascinating to everyone around him. He feels like, "Big deal! My eye! Who cares! I don't wanna explain again." If you're a new California friend who wonders why his eyes looks different, ask me for the story on the side, out of ear shot.

Dee At The Moment

 Oh, little Dee! Time for a little zoomed in focus on who this little person is turning out to be. I am trying to figure out how to handle all his little quirks and mannerisms. He's easily upset, only moderately communicative, and really hard to talk down once worked up, but also sweet-hearted, observant and very full of spirit. I find him both uniquely charming and particularly draining. I am so glad he's not a baby anymore as he is a lot more fun as a little boy.

As an infant he was a bundle of nerves, and pretty impressively colicky. I remember walking and walking the floor with him in my arms and wondering if the night would ever end. He's my asthma child, my surgery baby (see this post about his ptosis surgery), my wee engineer, my collector, and my thinker. I love working with him, having quiet moments alone together and watching all his little interests flicker and glitter as he tries on new ideas and expresses his likes and dislikes. Have a look yourself!

Dee Dislikes:

• The strings in fresh mango
• Spicy things....except for salsa...he likes salsa
• Pebbles in his shoes
• Buckling his seat belt
• Rumpled tags in the back of his shirt
• Getting things stuck in his teeth
• Ru, making faces
• Eating with a fork
• Tomato sauce on his pasta
• Open containers...he has to put lids on bottles, fasten hinges, lock locks and close boxes.
• Sunshine in his eyes
• Sleeping
• Red peppers
• Strong wind
• Having his hair cut or washed
  

Dee Likes:

• Painting (he could paint by the hour...especially if alone)
• Wiping things down with a sponge
• Watering plants (with his own little watering can)
• Baby ducks
• Soft eggs yolks
• The color yellow (everything should be yellow)
• Spiderman and Batman
• Motorcycles
• All seafood....smoked salmon, shrimp cocktail, steamed lobster....you name it!
• Cutting things with scissors
• Being outdoors alone
• Listening to birds "talk"
• Muffins
• Pancakes
• Steak
• Milk

Stairs? Check.

Somebody climbs. 

This week he made it to the top  of the stairs that connects the downstairs with the second floor for the first time. All self propelling....zip, zip, zip, right up  there. No pauses, no refunds.

Its official. He's a climber. Let the Olympics begin!

Still working on teaching him how to back down them again. Might want to get serious about those lessons right about now, eh? 

He's a wild one. Fits right in.

A Catalog of "Dee-lights"

I'm slowly working my way through capturing all three boys, (if you hadn't guessed already) so, today our middle-man. Dee is fabulous through and through, a completely and thoroughly different animal from his brothers and such a very concentrated personality. Love him to pieces.

Dee Likes:

• Knobs, buttons, levers, locks, screws....any tiny, little mechanism
• Seafood of all kinds...if it lives in water, he'll eat it with relish. You asks for canned sardines as a treat. 
• This book.
• Ataulfo mangoes...not the standard variety which he rejects summarily. He cares a lot about texture. The normal mangoes are too stringy but Ataulfos are super creamy and smooth. He and I eat them together. :)
• Painting! (He and his big brother can do this together by the hour)
• Maple syrup (he'll scoop it off the top of his plain yogurt at breakfast and slyly sip it away and ask for more...not that that plan really works our for him, but he does try)
• Milk, yogurt, cheese, butter and cream, cream, cream. He's our dairy boy. He'd be very happy to never drink anything else. I try to get him to drink a little water now and then.
• Forklifts...not sure where that came from, but its a downright obsession.
• Black olives...he loves manipulateable food and gets no end of fun out of capping all his little fingers with olive hats.
• His penis. (Well! I'm just saying!)
• Closing doors. He's kind of compulsive about making sure nothing is ajar. It bugs him.
• This song. Makes me smile all the time that my two year old walks around singing The Beatles.
• And also this song.
• The concept of "treasure." He's always hunting it and showing it to me and talking about some.
• A's dad. He talks all the time lately about how he "wikes Grandpa Awen...he so nice!"
• Sitting on the toilet. Not sure why. Maybe its great to be alone in there or something? He'll sit and sit and sit and sit...we've started instituting time limits.

 Dee Abhors:

• Keeping his shoes on in the car...I'm really trying to teach him this, especially as the cold weather approaches.
• Changing his clothes.
• Having his hair washed.
• People laughing at him, even in a kind way...he really can't handle it.
• Going down the stairs...not sure why this is suddenly a huge panic button issue, but...yeah.
• Taking naps. He's ridiculously hard to put to sleep these days...far harder than his older brother.
• Hard boiled egg yolks....he peels the whites off and eats them and hands me the pale yellow ball of "yucky part"
• Crowds. He loves it when everyone goes away and he's alone or all the other kids go away and he has a few select grown-ups to himself.
• Spots on his food. He picks them off or cries broken-heartedly....depending on how high his energy tank is at the moment.
• Being sticky. He will happily play outdoors and get all muddy but he'll be beside himself if he gets jam all gummed all over his arm.
• Being put on the spot. He'll melt down instantly. He is not the kind of kid you ask to do a few party tricks for your friends. Heh.
• Spicy foods. He will cry and wipe his tongue with his hand frantically and say, "Its too picey!
• Having his portrait taken. You have to be very subtle to take a good picture of him. There's no way he'll go for "Smile, Dee!" Insta-sob-fest.

These photos of just make my heart pitter-patter. You can feel so palpably what a sweet soul he is. He was just delighted with the fact that he'd been given this tiny pinwheel at church and then that he'd discovered the wind would blow it outdoors. I love how fixated he was and how placidly pleased it made him. I loved it when he closed his eyes to see how it felt too. 

This particular little guy has been quite difficult to parent in some ways, but that particularity also makes him such a wonderful and fascinating little person. I can't wait to see what he becomes.

You Can Lead A Kid To His Carpet Square.....

So, basically, what I wanna post about tonight is...how do you make kids sleep? And yeah, yeah, I know that whole thing about leading a horse to water but really. When we're talking about kids, who never seem to want to do the things they need, and when we're sure they still need it...how do make it happen?

Specifics. Dee doesn't like to sleep. Honestly, neither of the two older boys do. Ru tries to stay awake as much possible, but he's slightly more responsive to verbal reprimand. Basically, they both try to squirrel around instead of sleep (at naptime and night), but Ru will listen when I finally break down and give them a good stern scolding. My little Dee on the other hand will not sleep. Until he wears himself out.

At naptime, he will talk and play and sing and shout and walk his feet up the wall and toss his pillow around and anything else he can think of without actually getting out of his bed and only fall asleep after an hour or more of messing around. The other way to get him to go to sleep is for me to sit there in his bedroom and say over and over "No talking. Go to sleep." *wiggle wiggle wiggle* "No playing, lie down and go to sleep." *wiggle wiggle wiggle* "Close your eyes and stop singing, its time to sleep." etc.etc.etc. ad nauseum

I had been doing that, but I'm wearing out. This takes a lot of patience and also a lot of time out of my day since it takes about a half an hour of reminders till he finally goes to sleep.

At bedtime, forget it. The boys both fuss and cry and ask for one more drink of water FOREVER...we just go to bed and ignore them at this point. I hate it but, we have no idea how to teach them to go to sleep.

I thought that if I sat with them at naptime and used those verbal instructions: "Close your eyes. Lie down. Go to sleep. This is a time for rest...etc." They would start to do it without being told and I could give fewer and fewer reminders and basically pull out and see them go down easily after a fashion. No dice. Part of what is wearing me out is that there seems to be virtually no improvement.

You might say, "Maybe he doesn't need to nap anymore?"

I can't imagine that being true. By dinner time with no nap he is a freaking basketcase....out of his mind with bad behavior and over-emotionality, and he's also only two.

So, yeah...whaddya got? How do you all make kids sleep?

One of Those Days.....

Oh man. It's one of those days.

Sorry for being MIA last night. It was another in a long string of over-extensions and I'm afraid I've been pushed right over the brink. No more teetering precariously, I done fell! Last night I went on a manic errand run after dinner and came home just dragging myself up the back steps. I put groceries away for a while and then I heard a thin manic wail from Dee's room.

Yeah, and then I was up for four hours, pulling my hair out, trying to figure out what in the world was wrong with my evil-minded son. Who would only tell me that "nothing was wrong" through his continuous howl. Urgh.

Yeah. And then A relieved me and he told him that his ear was hurting. Blast.

This morning I woke up beyond tired and possessed of a throbbing head, achy limbs and a sore throat. There's only so much abuse a body will take.

I just couldn't bring myself to post last night and honestly, I feel even worse tonight...and so this folks is my cop-out missive.

I love you all but tonight, I need a bed.

Dee in Detail

Highlighting my middle son today. I like to do this from time to time. Helps those relatives and friends from afar get to know my kids and also is a good way for me to both document the small things as they pass and notice myself who each of my children has become individually. Good stuff, noticing.

Dee Likes:

• Fish, in any form: smoked salmon, sauteed trout, grilled shrimp, canned sardines, whitefish pate, or steamed mussels...he loves it any way he can get it (he's his mother's boy!)
• Whipped cream. Its his dessert of choice. He's not big on sweets and if given a sliver of pie or a small wedge of cake, he'll scrape and lick the whipped cream off and leave the dessert all naked. We have taken to keeping spray whipped cream around so he can have a ramekin full when the rest of us have dessert.
• Frog and Toad. His favorite stories at the moment.
• Banjos and pianos (how's that for a great honky-tonk pairing) This is what he answers when you say "What instrument are you going to play when you get bigger?"
• Fishing. Every stick is a pole and every puddle is a lake. (Not that we actually take him fishing....that's what we plan to do at my parents this summer!)
• Digging. He has his own small plastic trowel and spends forever gouging a hole in the turf at the edge our fence and delving around in the bark mulch at the side of the next unit. Kid needs a sandbox badly.
• Pretending to be a kitty-cat. The boys often spontaneously turn into cats when A comes home. Somehow this seems like a good greeting-plan to them. Its kind of bizarre.
• Staying awake. (Yet again, his mother's son I'm afraid) We are having, find-some-freaking-way-to-get-the-toddler-to-stay-asleep-issues lately...pretty much every night and I've taken to sitting next to his bed with my hand physically on his body to help him slow down and go to sleep at naptime.
• The Zacchaeus Song. This is how I get him to calm down when he's hysterical or when he has a nightmare...I sing it over and over and over. Its endlessly loved by the little man. Not sure exactly why or how he got attached to it.
• Milk. He loves all milk but holds a special place in his heart for the milk we pick up from New Pond Farm. He holds his little cup out and tells us that he'd like "milk of fahm, pease!"
• Rocks, sticks, leaves and other natural ephemera. I have to check his pockets carefully before I wash his pants because there's always a load of treasures. There are often rocks in our dryer. I keep saying he might end up a naturalist with this kind of penchant for collecting.
• Wearing his rubber boots. Every day is a rainy day!
• "His" baby. Always lots of kisses to give out and every day starts with a dead run for our bed where he says first thing, "Good morning Baby!"
• Play-Doh. The answer is always yes.  
• Scrambled eggs. The boy loves my scrambled eggs. My little mommy heart goes, pitter-pat.

The Scrubbing Begins

Well all, I am not vanquished yet but, I'm to the really mirey stage of The Big Clean. This is the part where I get weepy and almost quit five times a day. Things really slow down here. I was clipping merrily along yesterday but today I got to the jobs that are really grubby (scrubbing down the toilets, really, really well....cleaning the oven within an inch of its life...etc.) and they take a lot of time.

I spent all morning on just the refrigerator and by lunchtime I think everyone was on the verge of crying between the buckets and buckets of murky water I kept dumping out and refilling and the hunger level of various toddlers. Whew. Some things are nice to have over.

The hard news is that tomorrow is another hard day. After tomorrow (assuming I get tomorrow's stuff done tomorrow) I will be down to the fluffier finishing up tasks. Today, I began scrubbing with the kitchen appliances and bathrooms, and tomorrow I do glass (windows, mirrors, picture fronts and the like) and then hit the floors, walls, light plates, and skirting boards. Am trying not to think about that as I head to bed. Must just focus on rest at the moment. In the morning my aunt arrives to bolster the forces and fill our tummies with comforting food.

I will survive!

In the vein of distracting oneself...I thought you'd like to see the pictures I never posted from Dee's second birthday celebration.

Happy Birthday To Dee!!!!

And then...just like that...he was two! 

Unbelievable! 

It doesn't seem like it could have been that long ago that he was the baby we were waiting for but, now he's the shortest big boy...older brother in the making.

From this:

To this:

 

And all we had to do to be a part of it was blink. *grin* 

 

I'm really excited that he's getting bigger. The older your babies get the more and more they unfold and you get to see what exactly they've had inside all that time. So lovely to hear their words and see what makes them happy and what they find scary and tasty and silly. Dee has been a super lovely toddler...inquisitive, thoughtful, careful, serious but cheery, and chock full of clever sparks. I am really looking forward to seeing him continue unfurling and hearing and watching him become. He's a wonderful gift God gave us and we're awfully glad he came. 

And in closing...here's Ru's 2 year old birthday picture for comparison.