Hug Twice

We have a utility pole in the easement between our property and next door that has been just about ready to fall over for the entire time we’ve lived here.  When the cable company came to install our cable last year they told us about it, and called the electric company that owned the pole to fix it.  The electric company showed up that afternoon and basically stuck a few struts on it and tied it up - a temporary fix but certainly not a permanent solution.  It had been that way for about 10 months, and this past week, they finally came back to actually fix it.

Fixing it involved the electric company digging new holes and putting in entirely new poles.  At one point, they came to the door to tell me they would be turning off the power for about a half hour to move the wires to the new pole, so I came inside and turned off the computers.  That might be the first time the computers were all turned off in CJ’s entire life besides another short power outage we had a few months ago.

CJ was incredulous.  He kept clicking the button on the monitor of his computer, trying to figure out why it wasn’t on.  And he kept looking at me and saying “Mommy, it broken.”  With this sad little dejected voice.

I’ve raised a child in the digital age, and it shows.  He doesn’t use his computer all the time but when it’s gone, he’s not quite sure what to think.

Kind of like his mommy, actually.

(Note:  Matt is a computer programmer so it follows that his children have their own computer.  This was a tower we bought on eBay for $35 plus a monitor Matt already had hanging around.  Heh.) 

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Alexa likes to chew on things.  Well, not just things.  Everything.  She is seriously orally-fixated and will shove anything and everything in her mouth.  For being so interested in chewing, you’d think that at 16 months she would have more than 4 teeth, but I digress.

One of her very favorite things to chew on is cardboard.  Board books, boxes, any thing she can find that is cardboard, she will gnaw on, and if she gnaws a piece off, she’ll very carefully scoop it out of her mouth and drop it on the floor.  Little wet cardboard piles… yum.   We of course do not let her chew randomly on things, but sometimes she gets away with it.  She’ll even rip parts off of bigger books to find the cardboard part she can chew on.  Niiiiiice.

CJ is not on board with this phenomenon at all.  It is really funny to watch a three year old try to explain to a one year old that she doesn’t want to chew on a board book, but try he does.  He tells her no, says “Yuck” and makes gagging noises, but she blissfully ignores him.  So yesterday he brought out the big guns.

“Alexa, that not cookie good!”

She still ignored him, but I know where his food priorities lie. 

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I entered posts in two carnivals that went live this past week, and I wanted to take this time to thank the hosts and highlight some of the other posts I especially enjoyed from them.  Carnivals (a collection of posts all together on the same topic) are a great way to find other great bloggers you didn’t know about through reading the article they submitted.  Yay!

First, the Carnival of Family Life was at this full house and included my post asking When Did I Stop Being The Ultimate Authority.   I really do want to know… when did I stop having all the answers? Other posts I especially enjoyed included:

• Why Homeschool:  A Lesson I Am Trying To Teach My Daughters.   I think thatis a really important concept.  I can do everything, but I can’t do it all.  Even if every part of everything is something you can do, sometimes we don’t have the time and resources to actually do it all.
• What Works For Us:  How To Make Dinner With A Toddler.  I’ve been there.  Many times.  Alexa continually dumps all of our tupperware lids on the floor while I cook.
• Raising4Boys:  The Challenges of Having (More) Kids.  I’m not good at zone defense.  That’s why I stopped at 2!

The Mothers and Daughters Blog Carnival was at Real Life and my post In A Minute was included.   Alexa is a funny little girl.  :)  Other posts about mothers and daughters I particularly liked included:

•  So Sioux Me:  Taekwondo for Girl Power.  I am such a proponent of martial arts for kids, not just for self defense but for learning discipline, patience, strength, courtesy… I could go on and on.  I’m a 3rd degree black belt myself so I have a little bias.  :)  This is a great post talking about the benefits the author sees with her own daughter.
• the so called me:  Media Makes Moms Look Unrealistic.  So true.  So sooooo true.  I often look like I just took a nap.  Heh.

Thanks so much to the hosts and all the participants!  Make sure to visit these great carnivals for yourself and find some posts you love!

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My children have always been night owls.  From birth, actually.  They come by it honestly - both Matt and I would, if it was logistically possible in the world we live in, stay up really late and sleep ’til noon every day.  It is just how we are wired.  And lucky us, we passed it on to our kids.  Because it *isn’t* logistically possible, which means if they stay up late, we still have to get up early.

When we had CJ, I thought no child could be more a night owl than that boy.  Left to his own devices, he would stay up until 3am and sleep until noon.  Slowly, over a long period of time, we fought him and fought him on that idea, and he adapted to a still crazy baby schedule of sleeping midnight til about 10am.  He was my only child and that schedule I could manage (since Matt stays up until midnight anyway, regardless of the kids) so we muddled through and eventually, when *he* had to start getting up early for school, he started being more tired at night.  Now he goes to bed around 9-9:30 pm and gets up at 7:30am and although he still dislikes waking up early, once he’s up, he quickly adjusts and goes off to school cheery and happy.

I said I thought no child could be more of a natural night owl than CJ, but then we had Alexa.  Left to her own devices, she would live like a vampire.  She literally will stay up all night and sleep the entire day.  Still.  At 16 months, she still hasn’t outgrown this desire.  It is seriously unreal.  And the problem with Alexa and nighttime is that we manage to get her to sleep, she goes to sleep, and when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she wants to party.  When CJ woke up as a baby/toddler at night, he wanted to nurse and go back to sleep.  Alexa wants to stay up for 5 hours.

So we continue to have the battle of the wills.  We continue to try and ease her into sleeping in the middle of the night, and we get a little more tired each day.  Matt slept half the night on her floor last night while she threw a little party of her own in her crib, just happy to be awake.  At least he can sleep through that stuff, I would have been awake and crying.  This night thing somehow seemed easier the first time.  Yawn.

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As I said yesterday, when CJ started full-time school, I had a lot of mixed feelings.  And guilt.  And a feeling of powerlessness because I didn’t have the skills necessary to help him grow and develop and thrive from a speech perspective.  But sometimes, I’m reminded that it’s all worth it.

A few days ago, CJ came up to me, very seriously, and said “Mommy?  I tell you.”

I replied, “You tell me what?”

And he said very sincerely “Mommy, I really love school.”

And honestly, my heart melted.

Not only can he put together much more complex sentences than he could just a few months ago, he’s expressing more abstract thoughts related to past experiences, and not just the here and now.  And he is doing something he loves.

Life is good. 

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