Slow it Down

Lily Ruth and I have been butting heads several times each day for a while now. It's all just regular toddler stuff (don't want to get dressed, don't want to be strapped into my car seat, don't want to have my diaper changed, etc.), but it has meant that occasionally our relationship feels a bit strained. Add in the fact that we spend almost every waking hour together, and we seem to have whipped up a batch of 'You Get On My Nerves', and we both ate a huge portion.

In the midst of this, I have allowed myself to fall into one of my favorite patterns. I like to call it 'I'm All Wound Up and Everything Makes Me Angry - No, I Will Not Calm Down'. It's something that I have done for as long as I can remember. The fact that is has never, never, not even once yielded a positive result doesn't seem to stop me. In short, I'm a big ball of tense, cranky guilt. Sounds like fun, no?

I think (I hope) that the antidote is just to take a giant step back. I need to refocus myself and my attention. Let go of the cranky and the guilt and take a look at what's in front of me. My daughter is not trying to irritate me by refusing to have her picture taken or freaking out about her car seat. She's testing boundaries and voicing opinions. She's trying her darndest to become her own little person - exactly what she should be doing. She doesn't understand my desire to catalogue her growth or my responsibility to keep her safe. Those are my things - not hers. She's a good kid.

I'm doing my best to give her more 'power' during our day. Any time that I can, I give her a choice. I try to listen to and respect her 'NO' as often as possible. I'm making more of an effort to get down on her level to play or read books several times a day. I'm trying to do one unexpected (small) activity a day instead of slipping into our comfortable rut.

I've only been doing this for a few days, but it seems to be helping... me... and Lily Ruth too... and our relationship :-)

I'll let you know how it goes...

Tough Morning.

LIly Ruth is growing up so fast! I know that it is her job to do so, but it's still tough. She's this strong-willed, opinionated, walking, babbling, mimic who sees (and remembers) more than she lets on. Because we have the option, I tend to let her come to things in her own time (instead of forcing her onto a time-table) whenever possible. This means that I occasionally spend extended time doing things like letting her wander nude through the pool house after swim lessons as she pokes curiously into crannies, notes the location of the trash can (so she can throw her own swim diapers away), and removes then replaces everyone else's towel. She also likes to do things like squat down to check out minute particles on the floor - any floor - or pick up and closely examine every leaf she sees. I like to think of these times as curious exploratory adventures, but could they be engendering a feeling of entitlement in my little one? Do I give her too much leeway and not enough leash? Should she be held to more rigid standards so that disruption of what she wants is not so traumatic?

I ask for a reason. This morning, I walked in to drop Lily Ruth off at Parent's Day Out. The (wonderful) lady in charge of the nursery told me that they were going to go ahead and try to move Lily into the older kid room. She's been in the infant room since she started there, but at 13 (almost 14!) months, and now that she's a steady walker, it's time to move up. The ladies normally take a child into the new room for several hours each day, increasing the time slowly, until they are acclimated. What they've decided with Lily Ruth however, is that the back-and-forth is actually harder on her, so they're just going to go for it. I trust them, and I know that they will do what is best for my daughter, so I said 'Great!', and walked her back. We entered the new room, and her little arm tightened around my neck. The ladies for this room approached, and she hid her face and whined. As they started to tell me about how this room is structured, I passed through the entry area and into the play area. She took one look at the toys, her playmates (one of them her good friend Henry), and began to wail. We discussed her current habits in relation to their timetable. She sobbed. Henry grabbed a blanket, shoved his thumb into his mouth in sympathy and edged closer to Lily Ruth. I finally said my good byes and started to disengage my little one from my torso. She clung, she flailed, she RAGED. I walked (ran?) out as she ramped it up to full blown, top volume shrieking.

While I know that most of her volume was an act (and BOY can she act... I have no idea where she gets the propensity for drama :-P), it is still ridiculously hard to walk away when she feels like that! My stomach turned and my eyes welled up even though I knew she was fine. Knowing her as I do, I have a feeling that this transition may be a bit more 'involved' than they are expecting. I fear that my darling one may be one of those kids who take up more time and attention than most. My worry is that this is something that I have done to her rather than just simply part of who she is.

When does latitude become indulgence? Where do you draw the line? When you start drawing the lines, how do you keep from boxing them in too tightly? WHERE IS MY LILY RUTH HANDBOOK? Do I have to order one like her birth certificate, or will it arrive on it's own like her teeth?

wow.

So, today was just meandering along. Not great, but not terrible. Lily Ruth woke up with a fever. Well, let me back up - she got her 1 year vaccinations yesterday, and she was fussy and had a low-grade (but high for her) fever all last night and this morning. She was also so congested that she couldn't nurse until I suctioned her tiny nose. We were taking it slow, but managed to get out of the house around 11 for coffee and a quick trip to the grocery store.

Coffee was good. Lily Ruth loves our neighborhood Starbucks :-)


You can't tell from that picture, but she dribbled coffee down her top... oh, did I mention that she really likes coffee? She does, and I'm up for Mother of the Year. I gave her the first sip to 'prove' to her that she wouldn't like it. Total backfire. At least I drink half-caff... that helps, right? :-P

Since we seemed to be on a roll, I decided to go ahead and go to the store. Once there, my darling one insisted that she needed to walk. A first for her as she tends to act overwhelmed and shy when we're in any place that busy. The walking was going o.k. until we got to the rice aisle. She overbalanced while holding a large bag of rice for Mama, and sat down hard. This was apparently the last straw for her. I had no idea that we were millimeters from a meltdown, so I was taken by surprise when she used her very loudest cry and deployed her fattest tears. I scooped her up, and thought that I had calmed her down. We made it one aisle over, and she began hitting and scratching my face. I pulled back, and before I could even reach for her arms or tell her 'no', she went into full-on meltdown mode - screams, tears, red face, clawing, hitting, spitting, snot, the whole nine yards. It was stunning. A truly magnificent effort. I finally calmed her down with a sotto-voice rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and we hot-footed it to the checkout line.

Once we were home, I dropped the groceries in the kitchen, and made a beeline for the bedroom. It was obviously nap time. Before we could crawl into bed, I needed to potty. I set Lily on the floor of the bathroom and went about my business. She was ticked, and started to employ her favorite face banging technique - *whack*, 'did that hurt enough to cry? no?', *whack*, 'how about that one?'. Since the pediatrician (and others) said not to stop her from doing this - in fact, I'm to ignore her - I did just that. I let her have at it until I was ready to leave the bathroom. I scooped her up, grabbed a clean diaper and went back to the bedroom to change her and lay down.

She was ticked about the diaper change, so there was lots of squirming. This kept me from noticing the blood right away. It wasn't until she had gotten blood all over her face, hands and the duvet cover that I saw it. She had finally gotten up the nerve to bang her face hard enough to make her mouth bleed. It was gross. I knew what was happening almost immediately, but I had no idea what to do! She didn't want me to rinse or wipe or sponge or dab, and by then she was 'spitting mad', so blood was FLYING EVERYWHERE. Ya'll, I did not expect to rinse coffee and blood out of my one-year-old's clothing today.

I finally just got into the bathtub with her. Initially, that just pissed her off even more, but after some in-tub nursing, and some quality time with the drain stopper, she felt better. It was back into bed for us...


Now she's napping (on the boob) and I'm blogging. I really need to pee again (stupid coffee), but I'm not about to risk waking Sleeping Dragon to make that happen.

Motherhood is not for the faint of heart, guys.

*edit - IT HAPPENED AGAIN! After her nap, I tried to dress her. She twisted away and accidentally whacked her face again!!! Holy Bloody Day, Batman! It was just as dramatic as the first time. This time I called my grandfather (the retired gum surgeon). He came over and checked her mouth. He says that she'll be fine - just sore. She tore her frenum (the piece that connects your upper lip to your gums), and her mouth is swollen. She's currently camped out on my lap with a never-ending supply of juice cubes to keep the swelling to a minimum.

*sigh* I'm knackered. I need my own staff... and a martini...