7-24-09
he is saying words like “eventually” and “probably” and “albacore tuna”. sheesh. (actually it’s albaTore tuna and prolaly.)
7-27-09
quinn can tell me “i’m scared” or “i’m sad” without me prompting him… with prompting, he can do things like “frustrated” or other harder ones…. for that matter, he on his own says, “i’m happy!” phew. what a relief, my kid is happy AND he’s aware of it.
because how many adults do you know who are asking themselves, “do i feel happy? what IS happy?”
7-28-09
quinn and i spent 3 hours on the beach last night yay!!! we just played in the sand, i buried him up to his chest over and over and over again he LOVED it.
7-29-09
Q napped yesterday and i got a bunch of sewing done. lab party at kym’s tonight. going to see noah and trina at the beach tomorrow night, and friday night walking in the relay for life. hilariously busy!!!!
7-30-09
quinn really liked the little paper umbrellas (kym has those in her house because you NEED them if you drink rum) but he got really upset when they’d break because he was a little rough with them… and he also cried when guinness (chocolate lab) barked when we first arrived but by the end he was telling guinness “that’s not for you!” and “yeave it! yeave it!” just like the adults. and laughing when guinness would give him kisses. so cute. and when we left, i asked if he had fun and asked what he liked about it and immediately he told me “DUNNIS” was what he had liked most. kym’s 16 year old clayton, amanda (andrew’s wife) and james (who has a 1.5 year old son) and kym all played with quinn at different times, with clayton’s old pirate ship and castle and cowboys, it was pretty cute. i think he had fun, he seemed comfy to let me go sit with the big people and he’d just play, then he’d come get me when he needed to show me something. we had yummy pizzas that we all helped top, clayton made the sauce from scratch (yes at age 16) then we had ice cream over brownies with fresh raspberries on top- quinn had his without brownie but he had seconds.
7-31-09
tonight is relay for life, i’m walking from 10 to 11 or maybe even midnight (nobody has that slot yet and i might just keep walking if i feel like quinn is up for it- he will be asleep on my back so he probably won’t mind.
last night we went to beach with trina and noah. a big significant thing happened – he didn’t have milk all day since i left in the morning all the way until bedtime at 9pm. he had no nap either! he is growing up… sigh. i basically picked him up from his dad at the bayfront, and he stayed in his carseat while i ran in the house to get food and then we
drove straight to beach… he played with noah, we came home, he ate a hot dog and ranch and ketchup, he had asked for milk as i was making the hot dog, but i said don’t you want your hot dog first and he said he did… so it was totally like big boy night. he was TIRED too. and i was amazed he made it home without falling asleep in the car, but since he’d had no milk that maybe helped him stay up till normal-ish bedtime… then he needed to paint before bed…. lately he will sometimes just go to the painting spot all alone and not ask me to come or anything, and just start
doing it… very quiet…. it’s so cool to see. don’t even get me going on when he then announces… “that blue looks like a HAPPY feeling!”
my kid paints his feelings… yay.
8-3-09
a little hard to give up evening time with quinn…. but i REALLY thinkeveryone stands to gain so much from this change. i think it is really super positive…. i know it will be a while before his dad agrees, but he was civil and pleasant this weekend so i’m hoping for the best…..
the best part of the farmer’s market was people watching… such as the smoking hot hippie dude strolling along carrying onions. quinn and i just had good bonding time all weekend….. yesterday we spent at the beach, so that was nice. we sat and sifted through rocks on otter rock beach. alone time is actually good… in some ways…. it’s an adjustment… and i end up working/sewing, which is good because i’m losing my 5am morning time (i just can’t get up at 4 and now i actually have to be up at 5 to get to work on time…) but i also hope to give myself ACTUAL alone time… last night i took a long bath, and stayed in till i got cold reading a silly sci fi book.
first week of 4 10-hour days and so far so good. and yay for wednesdays off, we were going to go berry picking but my new chest freezer is back ordered and won’t get delivered till NEXT tuesday so we’re going to berry pick NEXT wednesday instead i think (marionberries, hopefully!!!! maybe some boysenberries, raspberries, that whole family of berries)…. i have absolutely NO ROOM in my regular freezer….. so this wednesday we will just chill and have a day off. yay!
we are currently picking blackberries on our street- there is a ravine and we’re on kinda a gravel side road so it’s just all overgrown with blackberry bushes along one stretch of the road, and i rolled quinn down there on his trike the other night, and picked a whole pint in 15 minutes, and these are the FIRST berries there are so many more coming along…..
i’m so excited not to buy groceries this winter. i want to just eat whatever’s in my freezer from summer, all winter long.
discussing with my bff the topic of assumptions people make about our lives. in her case, assuming that she is impatiently awaiting her wedding day (she is engaged) and realizing of course, everyoneWOULD assume that she is impatient, because it seems like engaged is just some hoop people think they have to jump through before they
“arrive” at the destination of marriage….. so silly. why not be engaged just to be engaged? what would be so bad about that??? peoples’ assumptions are just amazing sometimes… my example was that when one is pregnant, everyone asks what hospital you are going to deliver in, or who is your doctor. as mama of a toddler, i’m fielding a lot of questions about what preschool i want to put quinn in lately…. ummmm i don’t want to put him in any? how you like me now?
on parenting stuff, it seems people are SOOOOO opinionated (and yet, uninformed and ignorant so much of the time…. oddly enough) yet so willing to talk about their opinions or shove them down your throat…. and make you feel incompetent when you are really doing so much more research and just plain putting more thought into your parenting than most people in the world……. sigh…… preschool… i mean i just want quinn to be a kid! everyone gets all “he needs to be PREPARED for…. (fill in the blank- school? the “real” so called world?) i’m like… well, there are assholes in the world… do i need to prepare quinn for them by being an asshole to him now?? it’s just stupid cliches- you’re doing him a disservice if you don’t “socialize” him in school…. homeschooled kids don’t get “socialized”
enough. ok yeah he won’t know how to act the first time he goes out into society and all of a sudden has to function in large groups of 36 people all of exactly the same age…. wait, what? that seems contrived, to prepare him for a completely contrived situation by putting him into it… um, sooner? or … maybe i am the one who is too opinionated, or cynical. i’ll own it.
empty generalizations is a good way to sum up what really bothers me about what comes out when some people open their mouths. i didn’t know about the other half of the homeschoolers- well they didn’t exist in cortland new york, but i met homeschooled kids raised by schooner parents/hippies later on in life, and they are by far the smartest, coolest kids i’ve ever met. not only are they able to be social with kids their age (to some extent- i’ll get back to that) they can socialize with people NOT their own age- think about it, what good is it if all you can do is socialize with people who ARE your own age- makes it hard to relate to the other 98% of the world, right? as for kids their own age- they are always smarter and more cultured, so it’s like…. well, maybe they are a little bit outcast, a little bit freakish… because they’re homeschooled… and i say, is that a bad thing??? unschooling… i’m pretty interested in that whole concept- i have some books in my amazon wish list…. on the other hand, i have time, and honestly we’re already homeschooling in many ways so it’s so not going to be a problem!!!
i don’t have a problem with OTHER PEOPLE putting their kids in public school- that’s fine if that is what someone wants to do! i hope they get involved so it is a positive experience for the kid, but i’m not going around judging people for putting their kids into something that, admittedly, i feel is a pretty messed up system… there are good things about it too… i can see both sides of that. and i can also see that homeschooling/unschooling is most definitely NOT for everyone- but so often it feels like those allowances are not made in the other direction- if you’re the “radical” one, you get looked at funny, while if you’re the one making uninformed, go with the rest of the sheep decisions, you don’t have to endure any of that… sometimes it is tiring…. ok. rant over. lol
8-4-09
i think it is across the board, in any area we are NOT ignorant, and we put any thought into things and thought “hey, that’s not right” or “that’s not for me because…” we get considered freaks and have to answer dumb “why are you not conforming?” questions… sigh. i’d rather be on this side of the fence, though…. it isn’t going to stop me from continuing to think and look for inconsistencies and discrepancies in the way They want us to do things… (i love being paranoid. i was listening to ani “decree” last night, the hamburg live version- ‘keep your eye on my finger and listen to the sound of my voice, get your subliminal decree and your false security, be all that you can be, be all that you can be…. cuz daddy knows best yes this is the news in 90 second segments officially produced and aired again and again and again by the little black and white pawns of the network yes men while the stars are going out, and the
stripes are getting bent…..”)
last night was jam packed with quinn stuff that kept feeling like whoa, he is amazing….. i got home and he was still napping and he kind of freaked out when he woke up, had a huge smile on his face but almost immediately got really upset and wanted dada, who was gone by then. he cried for seriously a half hour, “i do NOT want MILK!!!” and would let me hold him but then would struggle to get away a minute later… just about inconsolable, which is unusual
for him… he was just really upset. and i just talked to him about it how i understood he was upset because dada was there when he went to sleep and how he wasn’t here now and that made quinn sad and i asked if he wanted me to
call dada on the phone. no. if i could help him feel better, if he wanted to go down and play, stay here and cuddle, stay here and have milk, etc. listing off things to “feel better” and it was all no no no. finally i asked, do you want dada to come back and mama to leave? (i asked it without attitude, i realize it might sound odd- i was literally just
trying to connect with what he actually wanted) and he said yeah. and i said ok, but then i started crying a little…. well, whattya know? that did it. he asked “are you happy?” and all anxious about how I was feeling then- and i said, well, i’m a little sad and a little worried about you sweetie…. and he kept asking but are you happy? over and over
again. and “can you be happy?” (i love that version) i said well i want to be happy and i want you to be happy too…. can we help each other feel better? can we hang out and have milk and play and go ride the tricycle down to pick blackberries, (all the same stuff i had been asking earlier) and he relented. and it was all done. then he nursed for
aNOTHER half hour so we didn’t even get up to play until 7… sigh……. a 2 year old with empathy. they supposedly don’t exist. supposedly they don’t develop even the first little tiny bit of it (being able to understand that they are not the center of the universe) until age 7 (which i already felt/believed from reading i’ve done was bunk but still….. 2?)
while we were picking berries he out of nowhere started saying stuff about “when you go away and i will miss you”. and i was like huh? “when i go where, sweetie?” “all the places.” oh. huh. “well yes whenever i go anywhere away from you, i sure miss you, and i bet you miss me too, huh?” “yeah”. “well, i’m here with you right now… let’s have some fun being together!” “ok!” (i feel like a hallmark commercial…. and then we picked berries….)
he didn’t eat much dinner- he was so mentally active, and i could just tell his brain was firing and he couldn’t stop to eat… i kept putting his bowl of soup (which he asked for) next to him, wherever he was playing, but he still only ate a few noodles…. he asked me to play blocks with him, the big lego kind… so i did. we built a long wall thing. it is so fun to hear him say “i yike these ones” and pick up this one certain kind of red rounded blocks… then he is all “are there any more yewwow ones? [peeking in basket] i don’t sink so…..” then we started walking the little people along the top of the wall and up and down the “steps” we had made, and then at the end of the wall, i said, maybe the people are waiting for the boat to come and pick them up…. and he just immediately went into pretend mode, saying “here it comes (swishing sailing noises) here comes the boat! to pick up the people!!!” and i was the one who actually had to go and get one of the real boats and sail it over, he was happy to do it all in his head… and then he had a blast just putting the people on and off the “dock” onto the boat, and sailing them around, and making up things they were doing, and adding the mama dada and quinn pirates (yes there is a mama pirate) into the play… and if anyone would “fall down” he’d pick them up and say “sorry” and kiss them, and he was singing his ABCs and counting to seventeen. i sort of stepped back and just watched him play….. he invented all kinds of new stuff to do… he’d take some of the “purple ones” the smallest of the blocks, and transport them with the little lego car, “i’m putting two of the purple ones on here, and driving them over here….” commentating the whole time…. i imagine in his head the purple blocks were the fish boxes coming off the fishing boats, and his little car was the forklift down at the bayfront…
at bedtime, he finished painting with red glitter paint and then ran around naked because he had a poop and i ran around after him trying to get him re-diapered and then he had milk for a while but was restless (not enough dinner) and at one point he asked if i would call dada on the phone… so i did and he told dada “yeah” to whatever question he was asking quinn, and then said “i’m having milk” and then to me “i’m handing it back to you” (ha!) and then i said do you want to say night night to dada? yeah. “night night” and handed it back again. then we laid down again for more milk, and he said, “i know, let’s go to the beach!” i said, honey i think it would be fun to go to the beach tomorrow- but right now the sun has already gone night night….” and he was bummed. but then i said, “how about we talk to the ocean and tell it night night and we’ll see it tomorrow?”
he asked, “can you call the ocean on the phone mama?”
it’s exhilarating and exhausting even just typing all of this. he is so awesome. it is SOOOO intense.
the conversation about wanting me to go away, when i cried… i am trying to write about it in a way that doesn’t sound weird but i think it’s hard to get it in writing. i was so not trying to emotionally blackmail quinn, or manipulate him with my own feelings. i was genuinely really sad to hear him say he wanted dad to come back and me to leave. i cried. i am trying to teach my son to be real about his feelings… by being real with mine. i did also have several mini-chats with quinn later about how no matter how he feels, his feelings are ok with me and i will always listen to them, and i will always love him no matter what… basically saying you saw mama cry and get sad, but you did not MAKE me sad, i had a feeling, and you have feelings, we all do, and that is nobody’s fault and it’s not a bad thing, etc. i did not think i could convey that effectively to his dad… i am a little unsure how he feels about my whole emotional intelligence quest with quinn anyway- i don’t hear him doing it nearly to the same extent, and sometimes he tells quinn things like “you’re ok” when quinn is very obviously not FEELING ok (crying, or whatever) and in that same situation i’d be telling quinn “i know you are sad” or in some other way validating his feelings and telling him he is doing a good job communicating what they are- you are crying, i can see that you are sad. good job. lol
sigh… parenting is intense.
i love how quinn speaks and uses words… sometimes i think he could be a writer or something. of course it’s amazing when he does quotes out of books… “my dander is up” etc. sometimes i have a hard time remembering which book he is getting a word from. he told me the other night “i want to fall fast asleep!” he doesn’t just say, i’m tired, i wanna sleep. he’s eloquent about it. sure, “fall fast asleep” is in every bedtime story with the intent of subliminally making children go to sleep, but you don’t hear kids walk around saying it like that even though they read the same books. and last night, picking blackberries. “are you gathering the blackberries, mama?” gathering? where is he getting these beautiful words from? certainly not from me, i said “pick”. gather is by far a lovelier choice of words. he is good at that.
i think i must have been telling my mom about fall fast asleep. that one blew me away…. he was sooooo tired (maybe it was nap time…. probably nap on saturday? right before talking to ma rew) and he was having milk but then he was obviously having trouble and he unlatched and turned onto his belly and said all whiney/cranky “i wanna fall fast
asleep!” i was surprised he even had the idea that he wanted to nap- usually i think it is default, he falls asleep because his body just DOES and he happens to be in bed cuz i put him there and gave him milk. but yeah he is really tuned in…. even when deliriously tired.
8-7-09
on wednesday quinn and i just had a relaxing day… i “slept in” till 7 and he woke up at 7:30 so i got to read for a few minutes and then we snuggled for an hour. then we played and did stuff around the house, and then we went out to panini (cafe) to get me coffee and a muffin for us to share, which is our sunday tradition but i need coffee on a wednesday, too…. then since it was sunny and we were right by the beach (panini is in nye beach, the same beach we used to walk to back when quinn was slightly smaller…) we spent about an hour on the beach, just drinking my coffee and quinn plopping his body in the sand, then burying his hands, then rolling around, then digging, then using my empty coffee cup (my purple real one, not a paper one) to fill with sand and make mountains and pour sand out the coffee-spout thingie… i may never get it clean…. but it was fun. we had no toys, just ourselves and my cup, so how could i say no? i did make him wait until i was done drinking it.
then we went to a puppet show at the library… it was kind of bad timing, quinn usually naps around 1 and this thing started at 1, but i wanted to try it because i thought he’d like it…. well, he was into it at first, but it was this story about superheroes and villains, and when “queen kong” came out, she was huge and furry and he got scared and he said “no, queen kong is NOT coming out. she’s going away!” and he wanted to have milk right there at the outdoor amphitheater, so it was kind of interesting. my friend from work was there, with her two boys, (4.5, 1.5 years old) and we were sitting with them and i had to laugh because her younger son was wearing his “yes, i’m still breastfeeding” t-shirt. so we left as soon as it ended, and quinn went down for nap as soon as we got home. i had tons of time to sew and read and chill….. it was so nice. he woke up at 4:15 and then i drove him to see his dad at the beach, and he is already doing great with the transitions- he said no i want mama to come to the beach. and i told him i’m coming back to pick you up in a little while… do you want to bring your car and your boat and play with dada in the sand? YEAH… and he was all over it. so no tears or anything and i was back in the car driving back home before 6 even came…. when i brought him home he went straight to bed…. so it is nice in some ways, but in others i feel like… hmmm, do i really have any more time with him than i used to? i think i do, but it’s like maybe 4 hours… not a whole “day” because i lose my evening time. still worth it though.
yesterday elizabeth, wyland and cole came over to our house in the evening, because i had to fix her sling a little bit (minor) and then the boys played and painted and ran around the yard and had fun. they are cool. she seems like she raises kids almost like i do… and she and i are both crazy stockpiling food right now. she has read animal vegetable miracle, and although she was already into gardening and stuff, she said it was what inspired her to get chickens…. we are going to have to go to their house so quinn can meet the chickens… 😀
8-10-09
quinn and i did tie dye this weekend! it was awesome and they came out GREAT. we were out in the yard of course….. also spent lots of time on the beach. quinn and i took a little drive south yesterday and checked out a new beach we hadn’t been to before, and i got to show him hermit crabs. that was really cool, i’ve been wanting him to see those forever. at market i sold a sling- the ladybugs! it was a great market. quinn was super tired- i’m bummed because he is getting up earlier now… 🙁 i wanted him to sleep for two hours longer after i go to work, but he seems to be adjusting to wake up before i leave some days…. saturday he woke up at 7. today he woke up just after SIX sheesh! if his bedtime moves earlier i will have NO time with him at all on the four days i work. suck. i hope he goes back the other way……. spent my entire “free time” of the weekend in the kitchen, or prepping or cleaning up from tie dye. cooking like crazy. i bought a chicken at the farmer’s market and roasted it yesterday with mashed potatoes and carrots…. all from the market, so yummy and awesome. and i picked arugula from my garden because it’s out of control and apparently the only green i can grow (i think the slugs don’t like it… they like everything else i’ve tried- kale, lettuce, spinach.) and i made arugula pesto (like replace basil with arugula) and i think i’m making pizza with it later this week.
i just went to the break room for coffee (where i go every day) and lately there have been various veggies laying on the free table- so funny. i always pick something up, too, because my freezer will be here tomorrow! today i got kale…. greens for winter. i will steam and freeze them. yesterday i made 6 12-oz jars of blackberry jam (that was a BIG batch of jam!!!) i also made whole wheat pasta with zucchini/summer squash and fresh tomato and garlic and evoo and grated parmesan…. mmmmm that is for lunch today too.
why are so many kids books so messed up? i am amazed at how much censoring i am doing…. i just gave our two thomas the train books to noah (he LOVES thomas) because they are so sexist!!!!! i know that sounds idiotic- what kid is going to actually pick up on the fact that all the engines are boys and all the train cars are girls, who have to follow along behind the boys, and the boys have to “keep them in line” but…. I CANNOT DEAL WITH IT! i thought, before having quinn, that thomas was a relatively benign, even kind of cool, character and story and all that but now that i have seen some more sides of it…. oy. even dr. seuss, who is like my favorite, i edit some of the words in some of the stories, like in the lorax when the onceler says to the lorax “you poor stupid guy, you never can tell what some people will buy” i say “you poor silly guy”. etc. or again in the lorax- “shut up if you please” i change to “be quiet if you please”. and yeah whenever i pick up books at the library invariably at least half of them go right back in the bag to be returned after one read-through because there is always something messed up about them. they encourage competitiveness, they have negative themes, or talk about guns and rockets and whatnot, (charlotte’s web has some gun stuff i have to edit as i go…) or they are just plain pointless as stories- like what in the world is this book teaching to a child? i often sit there just blown away by how little thought must have been put into some of these “children’s” books….. and i am NOT AT ALL into banning of books, or even censoring- ideally i want to expose quinn to just about everything, but with the benefit of “this is what i think of this book, and here is why i think that” so that he can learn to do the same thing…. i guess i should be practicing that now, but i guess i could sort of see “easing” into it…. maybe i am just in denial.
8-11-09
he is getting more interested in letters… he has been flipping through the ones i drew and laminated for him last christmas, and certain ones he can now identify by sight… if i go through it with him i use different words every time (except for Q….) and he just listens to it… last night he didn’t get bored until U. actually i think he wasn’t even bored, but he liked the earlier letters better than the ones at the end. then he was flipping back and he had S open and was saying “S” and i don’t know if that was just a fluke but that one seems to be sinking in for him. he’s so cute… about 3 different letters before “M” came along, he was saying “… for mama!” like “G for goat, H …” “for mama?!”
last night the word of the night was “conversation”. “i wanna have a conversation with you, mama.” i about died. he said it about 15 times…. then he’d climb on my lap and we’d have one. at one point i said, “what would you like to converse about?” and he would just sit there and think and then say, “about……. about………” and at one point i asked if he wanted to talk about how he was feeling, and he said, “yeah. i’m feeling ang-a-ry.” and smiled sweetly, got down off my lap and started to play. i was like, ok, should we talk more, or are you already feeling better? “already feeling better, mama.” he probably WAS angry too- i can’t remember, but i think i told him he couldn’t do some certain dangerous thing, and he was upset for 2.2 seconds, then requested a conversation. but he seemed like he felt funny announcing he was ang-a-ry. he just kind of laughed it off.
8-13-09
wednesday was fine, we didn’t do much. it was rainy/drizzly, and we went to panini for muffin and coffee, went into a fabric store, and played a lot in the house. in the afternoon our freezer arrived and quinn spent some time re-enacting the guys delivering the new freezer with his pirate guys, his dump truck, and his blocks. i think freezers may be the new garbage cans! we were going to go berry picking but the berries are already done for the season, sigh. then i changed the plan to go visit our farm where our veggies are from, but it was rainy, so next week i think that is what we are going to do. it’ll be the day before my parents come, so i think it’ll be nice to take a little trip with just me and him and take pictures of him frolicking in the fields where our food is grown… what a hippie i am.
8-14-09
when i got home yesterday dada told me he and quinn had been down to the beach, and that there had been a boat aground on the beach (i had heard about it- a fishing boat, the captain fell asleep at the wheel or something) and they watched all the activity yesterday as they got ready to try to pull it off the beach. apparently there was a backhoe, a helicopter, other boats involved…
dada left for the day. quinn had milk. then he sat up and told me: “mama. at the beach, there was a pump-chine” (his word for backhoe) he was literally twitching with excitement over the pumpchine! “and there was a boat up on the beach” (hand motions, sing songy voice…) “and….a HELLO-Topt-Ter!”
i asked him some questions- like what were they doing (trying to get the boat back in the water), was the boat stuck, were there other boats, etc. he conversed… then he told me, “you gotta drive me down there!”
reading about “pump-chines” with grammy!
last night was not all fun though… we did go to the beach, but he had some sort of tantrumy thing while we were there…. just contrary…. and he basically spent the whole evening, hitting, kicking me. if he had the slightest emotion at all, he’d take it out on me. i’m not fond of this. i don’t think i handled it spectacularly, but i was consistent with my “we don’t hit each other” statements… i did get close to yelling… to him, i am sure it WAS yelling…. he is not used to hearing my voice be very emphatic at all, in a negative way (i get emphatic about good stuff.) that was rough. as soon as i got home, he told his dad “i want mama to go away” and i basically had to go in the other room and try not to cry. he does this to dada all the time but it is only recent that he does it to me. and i know it’s just that he is not ready for dada to leave, but still…. dude i have had barely any time with you in 24 hours at this point, other than sleeping, please be happy to see me?
by the time we went to bed we had both cried, and it was the same “are you happy mama?” thing and i was honest, i said no i am upset that you keep hurting me. but me crying just made him more upset. finally he had milk and he was breathing normal after a few minutes and i talked to him about how much i love him and apologized (again, i had already done it before) about using my big voice, etc. told him i had had a fun time with him at the beach… and i hoped we could be happy together tomorrow….
i know quinn did not really mean it…. i think last night just stood out for me, because i think i usually AM patient and so it’s that much easier to turn on myself- what’s wrong with ME and what am I doing wrong… at times i felt like i was outside my body, watching how i dealt with it… i guess that’s weird… i mean i am attempting to be extremely mindful in the way i parent… so that makes sense that i’m always watching myself and analyzing how i did, what i should do differently… but it was also like whoa i am so pissed about this! i’m pissed at a two year old… hmmm. maybe i need to re-examine my issues… it’s just interesting. like feeling mad enough to spank a kid (ok i wasn’t even close, but still… i imagine it is like this for some people, and this is the kind of scenario i think that really gets parents off on that slippery slope…) but then like out of body experience, like “hmm, i see that the mama is pissed, and the kid is tired/wound up/emotional and needs to have milk/comfort/rocking chair time but is refusing…
oh, i also should mention i had a headache last night, so part of me crying was just pure exhaustion and ow. it was a bad night for more reasons than just his behavior… so he was pretty much perpetually upset for the last hour before bed, and it’s hard for me to differentiate… but it escalated, he was more and more all-out crying, and finally when i cried he cried even harder, but then soon after that was when i got him to calm down and have milk and was able to talk to him… he was not really talking but he would nod if i asked him a question, and i knew he was calmer and doing ok then. and then we fell asleep and slept well…
8-17-09
last night we were awake 2:30-5:30…
yesterday i agreed to drive dada to a wooden boat show in the next town and the plan was that would be his time with quinn for the day, and i’d have quinn in the evening. i took quinn to the beach beforehand, AND trina and noah randomly showed up at the exact same time at the beach… the plan was to go to the wooden boat thing, and they’d hang out, i brought my book, sat on a bench and read… they built a little toy boat together, it was all good. quinn
started asking for milk towards 1:00, and i started to take him back to the car, and then he decided he did NOT want milk. and i put him in the backpack, went back to find dada. then we got back to the car he DID want milk, had some, i put him in carseat, to drive back home.
we got home a little after 2, i took quinn up to bed, he had milk, did not fall asleep…….. no nap at all. we were up there until maybe 3:30, and i gave up. and then he played quietly all afternoon, while i did kitchen stuff, and i’d come play a little but i had so much food to deal with (made 5 jars of blackberry jam, made 5 jars of dill pickles (!),
peeled and sliced up beets, dealt with tons of blueberries to put in freezer, etc.) he went to bed at….. 5:45. sigh. slept through until 2:30 am, “can we wake up mama?” i knew he’d wake up- he had no dinner. he was hungry, but now he was all out of whack, so he instead was playing, and i could not get him to pick a food to eat, and i finally put half a burrito in front of him and he took a few bites but i had to keep prodding him to take bites… oh but he was funny when he first woke up and we were sitting in the dark bedroom still, i was asking him if he was hungry. “yeah. my body needs some food to eat!” and then i asked what kind of food? and he told me “my body needs to cook some food in MY kitchen!” he so totally just needed to get up and play. we went back up a little after 4am, but he could not sleep until 5:30. i think i dozed off and on, but he’d request “can you talk about the tow trucks? can you talk about the siren cars?” etc. he would have milk off and on… but yeah 5:30. i was supposed to GET UP at 5:15. i did not.
8-18-09
i’m insane in the kitchen. last night: made sawce out of four gigantic tomatoes from market (and basil and garlic). blanched veggies to put in freezer- summer squash/zucchini, carrots, beet greens. boiled the beets so we can snack on them (they are so purty- chioggia beets are white and red bullseye pattern on the inside, so pretty when sliced). and made egg burritos for dinner, which had shredded summer squash, cherry tomatoes, and shallot and cheddar cheese, pinch of salt. they were SOOOO yummy. most of my work last night went straight into the freezer… but that’s good. and the part that didn’t was SO yummy. 🙂
backpack self portrait!
our first ripe tomato! guess who ate it. 🙂
pickles
yummy pizza bagel before i cooked it- arugula pesto (arugula from garden- pine nuts, garlic, evoo, salt, in blender), mozz and feta, cherry tomatoes (from fm, we’ve only had one so far, that quinn ate).
quinn’s tie dye- blurry last night in bedroom. he was so cute, saying “i’m all tozy and warm!” while he had it pulled over his knees and his whole naked nudie body.
tie dye outfit, painting before bedtime.
our broccoli!!!! gonna eat some tonight!!!
8-19-09 trip to our gathering farm!
babywearing; it’s the thing to do!
following in grampy’s footsteps
happy quinn with his grammy and grampy
8-23-09
two and a half birthday… when i took him to the shop to drop him off for dada time, his dad asked him if he could help him put on his shoes (the shop floor is all sawdusty, etc and quinn was climbing around on the “big green boat”) quinn told his dad, “chances are, i don’t want to do that.” i couldn’t even hold my laughter back. his dad responded, “well chances are, dada’s gonna roll with it…” he has the book “if you give a mouse a cookie…
he’s going to want a glass of milk to go with it… if you give him the milk…” chain reaction basically then you get to the end of the book and it comes back around to “and chances are, if you give him the milk, he’s going to want a cookie to go with it.”
he invented a game of throwing balloons over the railing of the loft, so they fall down into the living room. it is exhausting but hilariously fun. thank goodness for grammy and grampy being there to join in the fun!
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