Life as Art » Babies

Ding Ding. Round One.

Natalie — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 05:07:18 +0000

Hey now now.
I’m all gimped up and sore wristy, because Max is so freakin heavy and strong now that I keep wrenching it when I pick him up. So these days, me and my muscley baby have been having SHOW DOWNS. I’ve started disciplining. Seriously. He’s 14 months old tomorrow and HE TAUNTS me while standing in his high chair and flings his food on the floor with glee. He laughs when I get pissed. He’s also started to have short tantrums which are gradually but surely getting longer about not getting his way all the time, like not being allowed to go down the very steep and dangerous stairs down to our basement laundry room. He’s been wailing at the door now for a few days, just tormenting us with his indignant hollering. He lies flat on his stomach and cranes his neck down so he can look under the five inch gap under the door like he’s planning his escape. Also, he’s been enjoying throwing anything he can get his hands on down the stairs, so anytime I go up and down stairs I have to collect an armful of random stuff while trying not to break my neck and get whipped by a bottle of nail polish coming tumbling down. Then I have to put it all away, or find a hiding spot for it so Max won’t chuck it down the stairs again. About a week ago Grant and I were in bed talking about our kids. Oh so romantic by the way. I said: I think it’s time to discipline Max. He answers without hesitation, lying back and staring at the ceiling : yup. Inner deep breath and a bracing. Time to have NERVES OF STEEL. Time to wrap up the reactions and be all blandy ass faced and give him clear consequences of time outs on a designated spot in the hallway. One minute- yes can you believe he actually stays in the spot, and if I have to place him back there I don’t give him ANYTHING!!! No eye contact, not a facial twitch, just DEAD MOMMY. Look kid, you just killed your mommy with your food throwing. She’s a zombie now. Well for the most part the one minute time outs are working… sort of…if I’m consistent with not reacting to his taunts. As soon as he sees a dirty look shot his way though, he grins and shouts his victory at me and then if he catches me laughing, like i often do, he REALLY revels in his victory. Like scrambles onto a table and pounds his chest and pumps his fists in the air. Sometimes he has me in such conniptions I have to hide my face and curl up in a ball to hide the fact that I’m laughing my ASS off. He actuallly gets a bit concerned, like, oh dear, now mommy is sobbing. Yeah, sobbing with LAUGHTER. Then he eases up a bit. Finally a line to his empathy..i was wondering if it existed. He hugs my back and wacks me a bit to try to uncurl me. Laughter and anger. Walking the line, walking the line. But who can stay mad at such a cute little bugger? Welcome to power struggle. Gotta love it.

This is why I look so tired.

Natalie — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:16:51 +0000

SO TIred. is how i feel. And how I’ve felt much of this year. I know I’m a broken record to people who ask, but it is what it is right now. Max is now one year old and still wakes up at 4:30 in the morning expecting me to come and help him go back to sleep, usually with the boob. I just want to sleep right through the night until a reasonable hour like 7, (and I can’t believe I’m saying that 7 is a reasonable hour), for like 3 days in a row. I remember when I used to think anything before 9 was too early. This little Max is pushing, pushing pushing all handle. I need a week off the kids. I need a BREAK. I am so rarely ALONE, without a soul around me ALONE and now I crave it so much. I’m desperate for it actually. Sweet sweet silence.

Grant was away at a workshop two weekends ago, he’s home for this weekend and then he’s off to another workshop next weekend. I’m feeling burnt out, and am sometimes fearful of being alone with the kids because they are SO MUCH WORK. Max especially is really non-stop, exploring, seeking, discovering, feeling, tasting, smashing, throwing any and every object including wet handfuls of food, drumming, growling like a grizzly bear and shaking his head like he caught a salmon, screaming at the most earth shattering decibels, hurling himself off beds and couches and stairs at any chance he can get, standing and howling in his high chair like a dog, chin pointing straight up to the sky, ’kicking’ balls with his hands as he crawls like lightening after them, trying to catch balls with his mouth like a dog does, basically exploring his body and his body in his environment. Boys sure do have a lot of yang energy.

I’m on his level for a lot of the day, playing with him on my hands and knees, following him around, because now he tries to climb furniture and often succeeds. I have to carry him a lot too, after shaking him off like dog, when I’m doing dishes or cooking and he pulls and pinches my legs and sometimes bites me to try to get me to pick him up so he can see what I’m doing. And then of course he wants to participate in everything I’m doing, and he lunges at whatever he wants to get his hands on. My back, needless to say is killing me and my left carrying arm is now a very strong vise.

So, this evening, I finally got three hours alone, which is A LOT, and i could feel myself decompressing like a big stress balloon. Now I feel like I’ve been hit by a sledge hammer, like I finally got my body to stay still for a period longer than half an hour during the day, and then all of a sudden, it’s only 6:30 pm, and it feels like it’s the middle of the night, like I really should be going to bed now. I don’t think people work as hard as when they are conscious parents with small children. I think it’s almost kinda crazy that I even signed up for this, and I obviously had NO CLUE what I was getting my self into. I now try my best to tell the truth to anyone who wants to have kids or who are preparing to have them, even at the risk of being judged as an ungrateful woman who doesn’t deserve her children: LIFE AS YOU KNOW IT IS NOW COMING TO A FAST END> GO GET DRUNK, PAINT THE TOWN RED< JOIN A GROUP< DO SOMETHING YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO DO, QUICK!!! I feel that there’s still this unspoken rule which I’m not willing to follow, which is ‘Don’t talk’, especially if it sounds anything like complaining or whining. I think that some people think that talking about the challenges is somehow being negative. Well it’s not. I’ll tell you what’s negative. When parents push and push and push down their real feelings, and then there’s this big huge pressure ball of resentment, and they eventually go NUMB because there’s too much anger and depression down there that it’s turned into this big scary monster that they are too afraid to look at. Occasionally I see the parents who have older kids who are gearing up, getting ready to do all the stuff they’ve been putting off and putting off but more often than not these parents look like deer caught in headlights, paralyzed and numb with absolutely no idea what to do with themselves. It’s like they forgot who they were. Or maybe they never knew.

The Truth of Motherhood at 5:15 pm

Natalie — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:46:20 +0000

If any of you are stay at home mothers, and have just spent all day long (10 plus hours) alone with your young children, engaging, playing, soothing, teaching, cleaning and picking up after them and picking them up, I get that you want to scream and I get that you want to cry and I get that you can’t even look at your children right now. I get that you may want to run screaming from the house right now, and I get it if you do. All I can say is: don’t feel bad for having these feelings. This is an opportunity for deep compassion for yourself. Everyday you live this reality, is a day you just climbed Everest AGAIN. This is what being a committed conscious full time Mom is. It’s grueling, thankless work, and it’s full of all the piss and shit in between. I know from my experience RIGHT NOW that it’s difficult to make any coherent communication and that I just feel stripped, shattered and raw.

Yet the paradox of this journey of motherhood is that it’s also amazing, and every day there are moments of pure joy unlike any I’ve ever experienced and unlike anything I will ever experience again. It’s a total mind fuck, because I’m living my dream raising a beautiful healthy family, but I’ve never felt so completely used up and trapped like a caged wild animal at the end of the day.

And all day long, I see how my children teach me. Teach me about myself- about what really pushes my buttons. (Constant high pitched screeching does it to me. Oh, and biting, just to name a couple) Teach me where my limits are. (How many times do I have to say something before I start shouting it?) Teach me how I behave when my limits are reached and when my limits are passed. (My heart races, growing anxiety and panic- the tip of the iceberg) Teach me about my own unique coping mechanisms, (rocking in fetal position, screaming in pillows and good ol’ sugar and caffeine, just to name a few) Teach me about the spectrum of human emotion. Teach me how to eat my words. I watch myself and I’m at times horrified and at other times awed at the range of feelings I get to experience in a day.

All I have to say to those of you who are not with children is : be absolutely SURE in the depths of your depths, without a shadow of a doubt that you want children, and if you want to give it a whirl to experience a fraction of the reality, please become a full time live in nanny. DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN BECAUSE YOUR MOTHER WANTS GRANDCHILDREN-she can adopt! DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE DOING- go get a good therapist. And if you decide that this experience is not for you, but you still want to experience having children in your life, go give your girlfriend or sister or cousin a break, who probably hasn’t yet had a shower, who may very well need to sit on the toilet because she’s been holding it for far too long, but mostly, because, if you can’t hang out with this woman who you used to be able to have a conversation with, you may as well get to know her children who are adorable versions of her and get a little shot of kid wisdom while you’re at it.

Compound this raw human reality I just described with the very real possibility that Mom isn’t getting more than two hours of sleep at a time and you can understand why those Mom’s at the supermarket with her screaming baby can’t muster the energy to pick up her baby and why she has that desperate crazed rabid look in her eyes. These are a whole nuther couple of topics…

And honey, if you’ve got some stupid ass ‘Leave it to Beaver’ idea that you gotta have a hot meal ready for your man by 6 o’clock, while you try to do dishes with a baby that won’t let you put him down without screaming bloody murder, then I ask you this: How many children do you have? and include him in the count. Remember, he gets to shower and he gets to leave and go work with people who can cooperate and communicate and who don’t throw food at him and play with their poo in front of him.

I’m hoping for your sakes, he’s rushing home and cooking you dinner while he gazes lovingly at you and tells you you are simply AMAZING and BEAUTIFUL.

Because you are.