Ru, Right Now

I love doing these little posts. They are deceptively hard though. It seems so simple to jot down a fast list but it is actually quite the exercise in slowly down and observing. Its amazing how easy it is to live with people and not really observe them or notice how they are changing and evolving. It takes some real thinking and puzzling and remembering to dig up a nice batch of personal characteristics. I like the sweat involved, its good relational muscle-work.

May we all, notice the ways those we love are growing and changing....and I don't just mean the children. Everyone wants to be seen as alive.

Right now, Ru is like this:

Ru's Favorites

• Daddy's chocolate chip pancakes: His favorite food of all-time at the moment. Its a weekend treat tradition at our house.
• Skateboarding: His current sport of choice. The board and helmet goes everywhere with us in the trunk of the van so that he can whip it out at a moments notice in any store parking lot. He's loving the new skateboard class we found to attend once a week.
• Playing video games: He's really into racing games right now, especially a particular game where you race boats through really vivid terrain. It makes me clutch at my chair arms to watch.
• Competition: He will do almost anything if you can find a way to turn it into either a challenge, a race or a contest. He's a natural athlete psychologically as well physically.
• Pomegranates: If we buy them, he eats them. Suddenly all the pomegranates are gone. Bam!
• Cheeseburgers: Its that pre-teen thing comin' on. I can see it now!
• Comic books: He loves them all, from Archie to Spiderman.
• Snow and ice: He freaks out when all our snow melts and its a party day when it snows again. Its kind of emotional whiplash living in Connecticut in winter for this kid, this however is a good year for him.
• Books on cd: He'll listen by the hour. A and I have both recorded some stories for him and we sometimes get them from the library too. The appetite is bottomless. Reading them himself voraciously is the next hurdle.
• Our chickens: He's the Keeper of the Fowl at our house and he loves to hold the hens and talk to them while he feeds and waters every morning. Love to peek out the kitchen window while I'm getting breakfast and see this gentle piece of him.
• Science: He's my deep outdoors lover. Anything about the world outside will have him hooked.
• Disney's animated Robin Hood: He is quoting little bits of it around the house and its his first pick if a movie is ever suggested.

Ru's Un-Favorites

• Leaving people he loves: He is heartbroken, real tears and genuine misery every time we drive out of his relatives and friend's driveways.
• Soup: I can't kick it. He won't touch the stuff.
• Going to sleep: He'll stay up as late as possible. The boy is a night owl through and through.
• Having Daddy work in California: Ru is a real Daddy's guy and he really hates it that A is working one week a month in another part of the country. Handily, A has planned it so that he is only gone during the five work days and not for any weekend time.
• Zipping his winter coat: I can tell him as many times as I want to but, the boy runs hot and he likes his coat to flap.
• Getting things out of the basement: You know, its a basement. There are things down there.
• Leaving his top shirt button open: He's a straight-laced kind of guy. Every time we go to church I double-check his buttons before we get out because he loves to slyly button up again in the car, chokingly tight, right up to his chin.
• Cooked carrots: I remember not liking them too. Not sure why. They're sweet and crunchy raw and maybe just too perfect from a kid's perspective to be improved upon? I dunno. He hates them.
• Quiet Time: I am iron-fisted about quiet time happening every day and although Ru is too old for napping he still has to spend a quiet hour alone taking a break and he really can't stand it. He's an ultra-extrovert and spending an hour alone in perfect silence is a real exercise when he'd rather be in the middle of a crown laughing loudly and chatting it up.

Sibling Rivalry: How Prevent Infant Assassination

So, one of the most frequent questions I get these days (after, "How are you feeling?") is "So...." *raised eyebrows* "How are the boys doing with the new addition?" And then they smile that sort of knowing smile and fold their hands and wait for it.

And my answer at the moment is, as it was when Dee joined us, "Oh good! Schedules are all up in the air and things a little squirrelly because of that but, the biggest relational problem we're having with Baby is that there need to be breaks between the kisses and hugs and Baby needs a little space occasionally for sleeping and we can't all hold him at once and sometimes that causes a few tears." And people often look at me with wide eyes and sort of stutter, "Uh...well...great! That's great!" And I'm not sure they believe me.

But, truly...nobody at our house has stormed, "I hate that new baby!" or tried to drop large things on him in hopes of offing him discreetly, or tried to push him off my lap or started pooping in their diapers extra and demanding their forgotten sippy cup at meals. We're all human over here but, one of the issues I've picked up a few tips for handling is sibling rivalry...at least as far as introducing a new baby to the house goes. The later form where one kid has a cooler helium balloon than his brother and they break out in cat fights, I am still working on cracking. Heh.

So, here are my hot tips for smoothly bringing in Baby (most of which by the way are blatantly plagiarized from my own mother's personal parenting philosophy) :

• Be forthright about the Baby's existence. I think its important to tell the future older siblings about the baby as soon as you know you're pregnant...honestly, we have talked about the next kid well before we're even "trying."  We talk about wanting another baby together, then we share the news with our kids as soon as we know, and all the way through the pregnancy I tell the older sibling/siblings about how the baby is developing and we talk clearly about when the baby is coming and how much longer we have to wait. The big plan? Be honest and give siblings all the time you can to warm up to the new addition. I think lots of people think they're doing their kids some kind of favor by hiding the news for a long time but, I think they accidentally plot problems for themselves instead.
• Frame Baby as positive, positive, positive. I believe strongly in the power of self-fulfilling prophesy and I think that if you set up the situation as potentially tedious, rife with jealousy and positively riddled with messy anxiety and catastrophe...then there are good chances you'll get just what you bargained for. The flip side is, a new sibling framed as an exciting new adventure will often be received as such. Kids are mirrors...ever watch a toddler who falls down and then immediately searches their parents face for cues about how to react? If Mommy smiles and says, "You're okay!" and offers a high five the tot will usually respond in kind. Its the same idea. 
• Include your older children. I try to always say "our baby" not "the baby" or "my baby" and I talk a lot through the pregnancy about how the older siblings will help and how much the baby will like them and what they can share with the baby once he or she arrives. Nobody likes to feel excluded and if you make sure that your other children have part ownership in the new little being they'll be a lot more excited and feel less need for jealousy. Our kids come with us to all the prenatal appointments, help us discuss name ideas and help me set up the baby's clothes and personal items once they come out of storage. The message is: the baby isn't just for mommy and daddy...we're all in this together.
• Once Baby arrives...encourage sibling involvement, relax and use positive language. Maybe this one point ought to be three separate ones but, together they encapsulate my plan for postpartum parental tactics so, I've thrown them all together. I let my kids hold the baby as often as I can stand to, I let them run and fetch diapers and pacifiers, kiss the baby's hair and help me tuck the swaddling blanket in at the edges. Any way I can get them physically included in all the business of taking care of the new little someone, I do it. Relaxing, means just what it sounds...letting go of a good bit of your paranoia about how having a two year old hold a baby is dangerous and how there mustn't be any ball throwing in the house now because you have an infant. Pillows stuffed into the nooks and crannies of the couch a big double bed or even a Lazy-boy can make a cozy nest for even a toddler to hold the baby and truly, babies can get used to all kinds of craziness...they are far more flexible and forgiving than you imagine. Of course sometimes older siblings must be genuinely reigned in, today for instance, I had to stop my four year old from feeding the baby lettuce out of our garden. This is where the positive language comes in. A sharp rebuke from mom about that lettuce, "Ru! Get that away from the baby! What are you doing! You must never try to feed the baby anything! That is so dangerous!" would have been a great way to make Ru shrink four inches and begin to sow the bitter seeds of hatred in his heart for his new little brother. Really though, the animosity would be thrown towards the baby but meant for me because I made him feel small and humiliated when he meant to be sharing a special garden treat with the new little one. I kept the relationship smooth and un-poisoned by saying instead: "Oh lettuce is so good isn't it? But, right now Reid can't eat lettuce. He has no teeth! Isn't that funny? Babies this small can only eat milk. In a few months you can help teach him all about lettuce though and he'll be so excited to try it." In other words, "You catch more flies with honey....." as my Papa always quoted.

So, those are my hot tips. So far so good...and frankly, even though I've done it smoothly twice now, you could still call me a notice sibling introducer and perhaps all my well-founded theories have really just been blind-luck. What do you think? Disagree with me on any one point (or two or three) or have a good idea of your own about how to smoothly introduce Baby? I'd love to hear it. Throw it at me.