Making a list or six

For the Babe:

Buy a new Nosefrida

Buy a small stack of prefolds

Buy new crib hardware

And of course, the great washing of ALL THE THINGS

Make cool-weather swaddle blanket

For the Marauder:

Buy or make a back-up outfit for his school cubby/summer activities

Paint and decorate his room

Make Spring/cool weather blanket

Find all of his educational materials and put them in Home Ed cabinet

Figure out ways to challenge him in his reading and perk up his math interest

For Patrick:

Keep mouth shut about glacial progress of things I cannot do myself

Draw rough sketch of possible kitchen and living room floorplans

For the House:

Trim the curtains

Re-organize the bathroom storage

Re-organize the kitchen storage

Pick out paint for our bedroom

Vacuum as primary anti-flea measure

Run steam cleaner over all easy chairs

New couch?

New armchair for our room?

New dresser for kids?

For the Pets:

Apply Frontline monthly 

Find good place for cat tree and then get one

Find bigger cat box?

Get Faolan back on track walking with me in am

For me:

Walking!

Stop drinking coffee, it’s making me swell

No take-out/fast food, see swelling

Go to knitting night every week

The teaching reading thing

Shay and I have been poking through phonics. After becoming enamoured with the Starfall website and then having him balk at words on paper, I’ve put Starfall aside and gotten my hands on a copy of “The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading”, which is co-written by one of the authors of “The Well-Trained Mind”. We quickly reviewed alphabet sounds and have been working on the many splendors of the short “a” words. My only strategy is to keep this similar to potty training and push as little as possible. Of course, he never played dumb during potty training but has during many a reading lesson, which drives me batty. But he’s had some good decoding success when he applies himself, which is about one time in every three. Reading from last week after flashcard review:

Pat is a cat.

Pat is a fat cat.

Pat the fat cat sat.

Pat the fat cat sat on a mat!

Tonight’s reading, no flashcard review:

Dad

Dad had

Dad had a tan

Dad had a tan hat.

Dad had a black cat.

The black cat was fat.

The black cat sat.

The fat black cat sat.

The fat black cat sat on Dad’s hat!

Dad was mad at the fat black cat.

Dad was sad about his tan hat.

Was dad’s fat black cat bad?

I think building the first sentence up helped. One day, I’ll get him to look at “Hop on Pop” and realize that essentially it’s what we’re doing now. Next up: mixing in more “ack” and introducing “am”, “ab”, and “and” words.

Dumb damage

Two things have been sliding towards ineffibility lately: me injuring myself and me breaking something expensive. One happened Thursday, the other this morning.

I had been on the tail end of the bronchitis when Seamus brought home a headcold that turned to post-nasal drip pretty quickly. Not a problem if I hadn’t already been coughing hard for weeks. On Thursday Seamus and I walked into the cafe I take him to for his post-swimming class hot chocolate. I coughed twice and felt a POP on the left side of my ribcage. I dropped to my knees for a couple of seconds - it hurt that much - and took a couple of breaths trying to figure out what I’d just done. It didn’t hurt to breathe, which reduced the likelihood of a fracture, but pain ran down my ribs from my armpit down to my floating ribs (where I felt the pop), then wrapped around to my back. Given I was in the Alameda Marketplace with my cafe-bound four year old, and that I could breathe and walk, I hit the ATM and got him his chocolate. I told Shay what had happened, told him what we needed to do to get dinner on track for Thursday and Friday, texted Patrick about the injury, then shopped with one hand while Seamus pushed the cart. 

The kid may be a terror, but he is superlative in emergencies.

I got home and got through the evening with half of my torso ignoring the Tylenol and mineral ice I used for the pain. After reading on the Mayo Clinic website that I should lie on the injury if I could, I did, and woke up sore but feeling better until I gingerly attempted to figure out how much mobility I had, felt a weird rubbing sensation, and THEN couldn’t breathe without pain. Enter an advice nurse who thought I was in preterm labor or developing pneumonia, despite my very clear descriptions of what was happening, and for some reason didn’t believe me when I said I’d stopped taking my bronchitis meds because they stopped working. Not quite sure what to do with me, she got me in to see an OB-GYN here on the island my mom came down to drive me there and to help pick up Seamus, which turned out to be a good thing as Patrick got stuck in bridge traffic.

Dr. H checked my lungs and found them to be clear, checked T/M and found him/her active with a good heartbeat, felt my ribcage and said she thought it was a muscular inflammation, and gave me a scrip for Tylenol with codeine. Poor T/M, to be fairly chemical free until the third trimester, and then to get cold meds, steroids, and opiates all in a month. I am grateful to be carrying low and transverse, as 90% of the movement I feel is nowhere near my ribcage. And I’m feeling a LOT of movement. She referred me to the x-ray clinic in Oakland, but said they would call me since they were already closed. Fortunately, I’m feeling a lot better. I’m not lifting anything heavier than the cats, but all I feel is a bit sore when I lie down or get up. 

Good thing, since I dropped and smashed my phone this morning.

Oh look, there's my sense of humor

“I’m going to fire you as my mama!”

“Sorry kiddo, I was elected Mother-for-Life. You may call me ‘Generalissima’.”

“I’ll call you ‘Mama’.”

“That works too.”

I killed Santa

So the behavior has been a slog for most of the last six months. We got a reprieve when Seamus turned four in that he stopped screaming when asked to do a task he could perform, but he still refuses, demands help, and refuses to accept any consequence for his actions. And yeah, I get that cause and effect can be pretty abstract for a kid, I’ve seen in documentaries what kids his age do in other countries as part of the household, and it makes this whole developmental stages thing look pretty damn first world. Add the asking questions then challenging the answers, speaking to us in snotty voices, and I’m wondering if I could send him out to fosterage with Namibian cattleherds, so he has something to actually complain about.

Then the stuff stream ran from his birthday through to New Year’s, and boy, you’d think he’d at least be satisfied with the haul of shit he’s acquired. Oh no. Apparently Santa played rainmaker for all of his friends and he’s completely deprived. Those goddamn Scholastic book catalogs from preschool open evenings of begging for horrible books based on TV show scripts (we’ve gotten a few from other folks, I checked them and confirmed that) with licensed characters. Then he purposely broke the balsa-wood gliders he got as a gift “because I don’t like the ones without rubber bands” without ever opening them - just snapped them in half, rendering them useless for anyone to enjoy. Badgering me for MORE stuff, while not playing with any of his new toys, many or which are open-ended and lovely. And of course, the refusal to take on his role in the household- no dressing himself, no feeding the cats.

Then the last straw: “I’m going to be good…for Santa”.

“For…Santa? You’re going to start making good choices for Santa.”

“Yeah, so he’ll give me LOTS of toys on Christmas.” There may have been some insinuation that he didn’t get enough stuff this year. 

OH HELL NO. We had kept Santa at bay pretty well till last year, when preschool introduced a lot of mainstream stuff we had omitted deliberately. I’ve mentioned St. Nick to Seamus before in the context of giving to others with less than we had, and always pointed out that we had more than enough to amuse and sustain us. But the last half year of tantrums, negotiating and arguing and haggling, always to get his way while he gave nothing in return has worn me down, and the idea that my kid would behave for an imaginary fat guy for an imagined payday is more upsetting than the fact that his classmates’ parents come up to me and tell me how lovely and what a good friend he is to their children while he proclaims to be happy to let our pets starve to death.

“Seamus, Santa isn’t real. He’s a made up story.”

“But he gave me my batteries for my nano-bugs.”

“Nope, that was Dada. We meet all of your needs, kiddo.”

There was some verbiage about how we all do our part to take care of each other and blah blah blah. I’ll be damned if he’s going to keep driving me crazy while thinking some fake dude brought him his toys. Oh no, little man. The pastels you love? and the stuffed tiger? The Babymouse comic? They came from the folks who love and support you and want you to be happy and a fuctional part of our family. Maybe someday you could grok the rest of that memo and join us in making sure we’re all cared for. Start by feeding the goddamn cats.