Last week Calli said "Shanna" for the first time. My heart melted.
Calli adamantly refuses to be called "Calli" "Callidora" or a girl. She is "Baby" and she's a boy. She's damn sure. I say, "ok."
Things I should remember
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Tag Archives: calli
friends-only on lj isn’t *exactly* public…
I have been internally struggling with how much I want to write about the kids. Privacy and all. I've set my privacy bar at a very non-standard place. It's not transitive. So it's awkward.
I was watching a movie on Netflix about a beauty school in Afghanistan. It's kind of interesting. Then Calli woke up. I could hear her knocking softly on the door and saying, "Mama." When I got there and opened the door (carefully so I didn't hit her in the dark) the first thing she did was sign "milk". Yeah.
We settled in on the rocking chair. She nursed on both sides and then fell asleep on my chest. From start to finish of picking her up until I laid her back down in her bed was twenty five minutes. I saw the clock as I left and returned to the garage.
It felt like a lifetime. I think that a lot of my physical nursing discomfort with Calli has been anxiety around the pot. I feel bad that I smoke pot and nurse. I have done a lot of medical research and I have consulted with a number of medical professionals on this topic. It's not great but it's better than any of the other drugs I could be on, honestly. There is still this miasma of shame and guilt. It makes me tense. At this point I don't have a lot of milk left anyway. She's nearly two.
It is going to be hard to finish weaning. She's not ready. She only nurses once or twice a day but it is very important to her. If she doesn't get to nurse at those crucial times she feels really bad. She cries and cries. It breaks her heart. Nursing is a very complex experience on both sides. It still provides enormous health benefits to both of us. (My risks for various cancers and diabetes goes down by the year.) It is very good for both of us to do this.
And when I sit down and nurse her I focus on her in a way I don't the rest of the time. When I sit down and nurse and trace her face with my finger I see how much she has gotten from me.
Shanna feels like a mini-me in a variety of ways that bring me great joy. I feel like if I got to go down a list of traits that describe me and pick which ones to give to my kids Shanna got the things I would pick to give away. Shanna makes me very happy. Seeing her move around the world convinces me that there is good to come and I have to be here to see it.
Calli is a different experience. Calli is a lot like me, don't get me wrong, but if I had to pick the traits to pass on I probably wouldn't have selected quite the list Calli got. Calli is like a lot of the parts of me I struggle to accept. But this morning as I nursed her I found peace with that.
Instead of feeling bad I felt joy that she was there to remind me that even the parts of me I struggle with are good and worthy of emulation.For better or worse this tiny person sees me and sees someone good and wonderful. Someone she wants to be just like. So she picks things to pattern off of. If I don't like the patterns she is picking up, maybe I'd best watch my behavior-hey?
They are so different. Calli's birthday is next month. I asked her if she wanted to have a party for her birthday. She said yes, adamantly. I asked her if she wanted a big party or a little party. That took a little negotiation and explanation. Shanna campaigned hard for a huge party. She started listing off names of people to invite. Calli vetoed almost everyone.
Calli wants the woman who comes to our house every two weeks, her Godmamas whom she sees every month, and the family that has provided the most care taking for her since birth. She strongly vetoed every other name we could come up with.
Shanna invites every person she talks to on the bus and the train to her birthday party. It's hilarious. I'm starting to think I should reserve a spot at Lake Elizabeth and start letting her hand out business cards. If she wants that, she can have it. Calli doesn't want that.
Calli likes quiet small groups. She's overwhelmed by sound and too many people. She doesn't enjoy it. She likes having the few people she is comfortable around visit and that's it.
They mirror very different parts of me. I like it. I like watching them. I feel really good about the ways in which they are different. I feel like they embody the extreme ends of my personality. I feel like a constant peace keeper. "Shanna, don't pressure Calli to do things. If she says no you have to respect her wishes." They are both persistent. It's really wonderful.
I thought about all the things I love about Calli while I was nursing her. Including the fact that she continues to need me so intensely and viscerally. I thank anything that will listen for my children. To my children I am the most important and wonderful person in the world. They are probably going to be the only people I ever feel really comfortable around. They are the extent of my clan.
I haven't weaned Calli and I don't know when I will. It's one day at a time. Some day she will no longer need this from me. I hope I can continue to meet her needs for a while longer.
Check up season
Calli is 1! She weighs 19 lbs 6 oz and is 29″ tall.
Shanna is 3! She weighs 32.5 lbs and is 39.5″ tall.
Amusingly, Calli is actually the same weight that Shanna was at the same age. 🙂 Calli was declared charming and normal. She is officially a toddler. She walks all the time. She has something between 15 and 20 signs/words in her vocabulary. She can follow remarkably complex instructions/requests. She is practicing to be a steam whistle full time. She is intense and exploratory and wonderful.
At three the doctor starts asking questions of the kid. This was new. It was awesome. Shanna apparently knows basically all her letters and numbers (I didn’t know that) and her colors and shapes. Physically she is moving right along. Her doctor simultaneously told me that her BMI is a bit on the low side while telling me to take her off whole milk. Once again, I don’t agree with this doctor on dietary stuff.
Oh, I’m staying with this pediatrician. I picked her because she has a specialty in intergenerational patterns of abuse. I had a chat with her about my negative experiences and she was horrified. She felt really bad about making me feel uncomfortable. She told me that she thinks I am a great mother. I told her about the marijuana and she told me, “I suppose every mother has to feel guilty about something.” She’s a really nice lady. I don’t agree with all of her advice, but I’m a big girl and I can ignore it. She’s good at the important bits.
Growing and thriving.
It’s been a year
My baby girl, my last child is turning one tomorrow. It doesn’t seem possible that she has been alive for a whole year. Hasn’t it been about three months? So much has happened. This has been a pretty dramatically big year for me even aside from having a baby. I don’t feel I was as good of a mother to her as I was to Shanna. I have spent a lot of the last year in a suboptimal mood.
Callidora is serious unless she is actively trying to engage with something. She uses laughter as a tool. I feel like it is unusual for her to laugh about things that do not involve another person. I’m not sure if I’m explaining it right. I laugh easily and quickly, so does Shanna. Calli has a very calm repose. It feels like you can see the wheels turning in her head as she assimilates new data. Rather an intense kid for me. I project that Shanna is a lot like me without the sadness or bitterness. We are both delightfully strong minded and quick to laugh. Calli is a different kind of intense. She is harder to relate to. In some ways I think that is better. I spend a lot of time staring at her trying to figure out what is going on. I don’t find that I can coast much. I don’t predict her reactions well and that is hard. We also struggle because she wants to be carried all day. She’s not a fan of the carrier and using one (regardless of style) often results in her hitting me, scratching me, and screaming hysterically in my ears for extended periods. She wants to be carried in arms. Damnit. So she is also a strong minded girl. I suspect she is much much more strong minded. She’s not real pliable. I would never use the word acquiescent to describe her. This is going to be interesting.
Interacting with Calli is most lovely because in the continual challenge to really see her as a thinking person even though she is only a year old I am learning a lot about my control issues. Shanna lets me control her. She loves me and she wants to please me. Calli tells me to f-off and here’s a smack to take with you. When I’m not being slapped in the face I think it is kind of awesome and I just hope I can properly channel her strength towards good. She’s not mean. But she is very aggressive and interested in getting her way. The Id is strong in this one. She is starting to respond more to negotiations or explanations of why things are being put off. “I know you want to go to bed, but I have to brush my teeth first” and then she crawls to the bathroom instead of the bedroom. Her actions reflect recognition of what I am saying. She has receptive language to some degree. So no really, she’s a thinking feeling person and I should try to consider her.
Thing is… that’s kind of inconvenient. She’s a baby. Most of what Callidora wants is to be carried around and handed things from high shelves. That sounds like a good day to her. Not so much for me. As a result I get smacked a lot. Oh for the love of shiny green apples. She can get over this phase any day now. Because that is what it is. If I let go of my need to control every aspect of my children I have to acknowledge the fact that Calli smacking me now doesn’t mean anything about her being aggressive. It just isn’t a factor. She’s a baby learning how to deal with the world. I need to stop judging her actions with my adult perspective. And I really really really need to stop comparing my kids. Ugh.
Calli is 10 months
It’s amazing that the time is going so fast. She’s talking. She constantly says “hi” and waves. The sign for “up” is her favorite, of course. She occasionally will say “all done” and “yay” and she still calls me da da. I keep telling her I’m the other one and she doesn’t believe me. Rarely she will will sign potty or milk but mostly she just slams her face into my chest. If she wants something and we don’t hand it to her she has a tea kettle piercing shriek to announce to the world that we suck. We get to have another girl with Opinions. My ear drums aren’t thrilled but overall I’m telling myself that I want opinionated children because they will be more likely to be successful adults. Right?
As of yesterday she can hold on to a grown ups hands and walk all the way across the room. Before yesterday she would only take a couple of steps before sitting down and crawling because it is faster. She is very concerned with getting there faster. She loves Shanna but her affection is shown with slapping and hair pulling so I try to keep them physically separated most of the time. Shanna really likes to manhandle Calli so I play referee constantly. As I write this she is cruising around the chair I’m sitting on. And yelling at me because I’m not on the floor chasing her.
Calli is still nursing, as I grit my teeth. I’m not sure how long I will make it through. At this point I am praying I make it to a year before I lose my mind and run away from home. I am so done nursing. I really wish I would be able to make it to two, but I’m not sure I have it in me to do another 14 months of this. She’s not polite about nursing. She yanks, twists, hits, kicks, pinches, and scratches. Not to mention that she is physically incapable of being still for more than 1.2 seconds. This kid has energy. Another thing that I am telling myself I will appreciate in the long run even if it is hard right this minute.
She has been teething for a long time. The corner of a tooth will pop out then retract and not come back for another week before it pops out and … retracts. This has got to suck. She still doesn’t have one fully through and I have to say I’m thrilled. I think this one will bite more. Ugh.
She is fairly good natured all things considered. She really loves to play peek a boo. If you say “I’m gonna get you” she starts shrieking with joy and crawling away before she stops and checks to make sure you are chasing her. Then she keeps going. It’s lovely. She is very cuddly in a painful way. She likes to sit up and then dive bomb my chest (with or without exposed breast) over and over again. She giggles the whole time. She loves to lie next to me and burrow into my arm pit. She very much likes me more than other people, but she really likes people. She’s not a mama’s-girl and for this I thank God. She gets along with Noah really well and she is good at letting him comfort her.
She is not a fan of being carried in any baby carrier. Or stroller. She likes the wagon because there is normally a big kid in it with her and food and toys. She wants to be down crawling. No matter where we are or what we are doing she will scream and whack me in the back/head telling me to let her down. It’s festive.
This all sounds bitchy, but she is a really sweet baby. She smiles all the time. She’s just much more physically aggressive than I remember Shanna being. She has places to go and things to do and she’s bloody well going to go do them no matter who is in her way. Once she’s an adult I am going to be so happy she is like this! It’s going to be a festive childhood though. 🙂
I’m not taking enough pictures of her because I am lame about pictures. It’s dramatic how much smaller she is than Shanna at the same age. She’s got a little bit of chunk on her thighs, but just enough that she is capable of growing. She never does the rolls of fat thing. She has a little bit of jowls right now because she is closing in on a growth spurt but she actually has a rather narrow face.
She *loves* food. She is often really into meat. That’s interesting. She likes bread, but she gets uhm, backed up. I have learned that she has to have 2-3 prunes every day or she just can’t poop. That seems so very odd to me because my plumbing doesn’t work that way. (For the record, she does eat a lot of vegetable/fruit in addition to the bread and meat, but she’s less enthusiastic.) She can’t have dairy *at all* or she gets an unpleasant reaction. I’ll stop there because most people don’t want to hear it. 😛 I’m hoping that she grows out of that. Right now my plan a is to introduce goat dairy products at a year and pray. So far I am still sticking to my fascist regime of no sugar/processed foods (like potato chips/juice/soda) until a year. Only a few people have looked at me funny this time. 🙂
She takes two naps a day, the first around 9am and the second starting some time between 12 and 1:30. The first nap is 30-45 minutes and the second is usually 2+ hours. Night time sleep is rougher. She often won’t go to sleep with me. She wants to play. Often we have to let her fuss herself to sleep alone or she won’t sleep all.night.long. Of course people on the internet tell me I am causing brain damage and I am an abusive parent so I have a lot of guilt. But neither of us sleeping = big problems. When we get home I am going to get a mattress for the bottom of the bunk bed (it’s the floor) and start trying that. We’ll see how it goes. I feel awful leaving her in a baby jail to cry.
So far she seems to be growing happily and thriving, so for all of my angst I don’t think I have permanently fucked her up yet.
Calli’s personality
I feel like in the last three weeks Calli went from being a cute blob with very little discernible characteristics. I.E. “Sure there are differences from Shanna because people vary blah blah blah.” Now, all of a sudden, “Holy shit! She’s a totally different person! They have very few similarities beyond drooling and waking me up at night!” Cool. Calli has tantrums. I swear to god my six month is throwing tantrums. If she doesn’t get picked up when she wants she starts screaming/crying with this look on her face and then the minute I pick her up she gives me this huge grin, “Good job Mommy! You can follow directions!” She knows she is getting her way and she smiles benevolently upon her subject. She gets furiously angry if I take something away from her, like paper. That can lead to lots of screaming and throwing herself around violently. This kid is a pistol. She has mostly stopped the army crawling but now she is backwards crawling across the house. It’s faster. I seriously have to worry about cords already.
She doesn’t like anyone but me or Shanna very much. I actually think if I could get Shanna to be more gentle that Shanna could be her touch-base person when I’m gone because they love on each other all day. Calli is very interested in going with Big Sister even when Shanna is being overly rough. I intercede for safety a lot. Shanna isn’t deliberately hurtful much. We’ve had one or two squeezing incidents. Mostly they see one another and start laughing hysterically, even if they’ve been sitting next to each other for hours. It’s really neat seeing how much they like each other so far.
Noah says Calli doesn’t smile for him the way she smiles for me. That’s kind of weird because I think her smile is like a 1,000W bulb. She lights up for me. It’s neat how I now feel like I’m living with a person with bad communication skills. That is all of a sudden true. I’m feeling increasingly invested in her and I like that. 🙂
Motivation
Shanna learned to crawl because I had things I had to do and she wanted to follow me. Calli is learning to crawl because there are objects out of her reach and that is not ok. This is neat.
{milestones} Calli signing and sitting
I am pretty darn sure Calli signed milk for the first time this morning. I was changing her diaper and she was fussing just a little bit. I told her, “I know you want milk. We will nurse right after we finish putting this diaper on you. She looked up at me gave me a look like, “You know you wanna…” and put her hand up and squeezed it. It was funny and appropriate and wheedling. When I finished and I started to lay down next to her she grabbed at me with both hands and started trying for a sit up with a wide open mouth lurching towards my breast. She absolutely knew what was going on.
And then she proved that on our couch (it has that ‘someone sits in exactly THIS SPOT’ lean) she can go from laying down to sitting with one lurch.
I remember Shanna hitting big milestone batches right around specific ‘ages’ too. 🙂 Today Callidora is six months old. Hard to believe she is this old already.
Differences
Oh man. It’s kind of like my kids are unique people. That’s totally weird. Shanna is still far more cuddly at 2.75 years than Calli is at 4.5 months. Calli often doesn’t really want to be touched. She’ll fuss and squirm and arch her back to get away from me but if I put her in the swing or on the floor (on a blanket) she will smile and laugh and be thrilled to play with me. I thought that babies had no sense of personal space but I was wrong. Shanna would be thrilled to be allowed to nurse pretty much all day long (I’ve put up some serious limits at this point) and Calli is on long enough to fill her belly and then she is pissed off if she is still lying on my lap. TIME TO GET UP!!! Unstrangely, Calli is significantly skinnier than Shanna was at this age. She has slightly chunky legs but the rest of her has very little fat. It’s kind of sad. I was so proud of my little butter ball. I almost feel like it’s a sign my milk has become defective. I know that isn’t true. Not all babies are super chubby and it’s totally ok and healthy. Calli also dislikes carriers. All carriers. I’ve tried many styles and many positions within those styles. She’s just not into it. She’s not into strollers either. Oy.
So! Things that are a big change that are WONDERFUL include oh man is it handy that she likes to sleep by herself. Shanna still sleeps less well than Calli and always had. Shanna needs to be next to a person in a way that Calli doesn’t. I can nurse Calli to sleep in 10-15 minutes (we do have occasional nights where it is more like 30 minutes but that’s only once a week or less) and she normally needs a top up in about an hour then another when I come to bed. Then she sleeps till 5 or 6. Not bad! And there are nights when she only nurses once after I put her to bed. Sweet. Shanna wakes up more often than that. 🙂
(disclaimer before running off: Calli is a much better fit for my current life than Shanna-as-an-infant. not complaining!)
Ok out of time for writing.
How you spend your days is how you spend your years
A blogger I admire, Sara Janssens, asks about the rhythm of her readers’ days. (Disclaimer for all involved–she is very strongly Christian and would almost certainly feel uncomfortable reading some of what I write about. Nevertheless I find her engaging, inspiring, and worthy of respect.)
I feel like I am bad at creating routine. Our days are very unpredictable. The most consistent part of our life is that I do a load of laundry (most often diapers), wash dishes, and Noah makes breakfast just about every day. I think those are the only things I can depend on happening. And sometimes we even skip days with those.
We get up. Noah makes breakfast basically every day. We either go out to breakfast or I cook maybe 5 days out of a month. It makes me very happy to lie in bed nursing in the morning while listening to him and Shanna talk in the kitchen. If Calli finishes nursing quickly I go check internet-happenings while breakfast is completed. Then (depending on how late it is) I listen to Noah read Shanna a story or he runs off to work right away. Often there is fussing around him leaving because Shanna is very very Daddy-needy lately. (Ok, she’s just clingy in general.)
When he leaves I generally start a load of laundry. Most Mondays I catch up on the laundry I was bad about doing over the weekend. I also try to do the kitchen clean up at this point. I try to do project sort of things on Mondays. Although I do make plans with friends. Sometimes we rush out of the house without doing anything extra because packing up the diaper bag and food and whatever else I want to bring with us takes a while. Tuesdays we sometimes have plans with friends but more often lately we stay home because my awesome mother’s helper comes over to play with Shanna and I do big batch cooking or project stuff I can’t do by myself with the kids. Wednesdays are normally our park days. I don’t get a whole lot done other than that because we are usually out of the house for 5-6 hours. But Wednesdays are when I pick up our milk/eggs from the co-op and the Planet Organics box is dropped off. 🙂 I look forward to that. Thursdays look like Tuesdays and Fridays are more of a wild card. We often have plans with various people, though not always. Saturdays and Sundays involve a lot of house cleaning and hanging out as a family with occasional plans with people.
It’s a fairly slow life and yet I still feel overburdened. I don’t have anything big and ongoing right now, like gardening. I’m not doing any big house projects lately. I tend to feel like the biggest part of the first year is just about putting your head down and surviving. At least that is how it worked with Shanna. I don’t get out often and I barely keep on top of household matters. This time I am still cooking extensively which didn’t happen when Shanna was tiny.
I read a lot, both online and books. I read to Shanna a lot. I sing silly songs to my children. I care too much about things on the internet. I float in a bubble of barely-connected-to-the-world. The list of people I spend time with is small and select. If you do not take joy in my children I don’t have time for you. That sounds harsh but it’s just a fact. I don’t have child-free time at the moment and if someone is uninterested in my kids then they aren’t good to spend time with for now.
I try to be calm and accepting of life being whatever it is. I try to regulate my mood and enjoy this precious time with my babies. It will be over soon. I’m not as good as I want to be at having patience, but I think I am doing ok. At the least Shanna shows no signs of being traumatized by me getting frustrated with her. I hope that things will work out.
We have no set wake up, nap, or bed time. Things just kind of flow. We eat at approximate times but even that is highly flexible. I’m slightly apprehensive because Calli is showing signs of being less happy about the irregular hours. She wants to be at home, in bed, in a dark room at 6:30. She’s not real happy about being out. This is going to be challenging. Calli is already getting to the point where she is uninterested in new people. The women in my playgroup are ok–they can hold her. Almost anyone else makes her cry.
Ok, I can think of one thing that I like about the rhythm of our days a great deal. We often cuddle together during rest times and I stroke my daughters’ hair and tell them all the things about them that I love and enjoy. I tell them how wonderful and strong they are. I point out to Shanna places where she has recently developed new skills or accomplishments and talk to her about the gradual process she endured. I tell her I am proud of how strong and brave she is. I encourage her to keep trying things she currently can’t do because I am confident that she will learn how to do them. Even on the really hard days I can always find things to talk about in a positive way. I’m proud of myself for that. I’m proud that my daughter often goes to sleep with a smile on her face because she is so very sure of being loved and adored. This is my contribution to the universe.
Adventures in milk and sugar
I went out for a while on Saturday night leaving Noah alone with the girls. This meant defrosting some milk for Calli, just in case. Apparently she didn’t actually want it during the night, but it was already defrosted and you can’t refreeze. So I helped her with the cup on Sunday. (We do have bottles but I’m lazy.) She sucked the milk down so fast it was startling. And then I got the rest of the milk from the bag and brought the cup back towards her. She saw the cup and started *whining* and lurching for it. She wanted it bad. I was impressed. So much for thinking she has zero interest in food. If I were a more giving mother I would pump more often so she could drink from a cup because she obviously wants to. But I’m lazy so she’s going to have to wait for a bit. 🙂
This reaction and her current slightly increased fussiness is making me wonder about me eliminating sugar from my diet. I know the milk is adequate still but I kind of wonder if the flavor is less awesome because she is used to me having a fair bit of sugar. My mood also sucks donkey dick. I am being a viper. 🙁 I do still think doing this for a month is a good choice because health-wise neither of us will suffer. I’m just unfun. 21 days to go.
{milestones} and those other things
I haven’t seriously babbled about my kids in a while! Such a tragedy. *cough*
Calli is awesome! But she’s awesome in that way that babies are awesome so it’s pretty generic. I think she’s an easy sleeper (certainly compared to Shanna) so that makes things easier. She is trying really hard to get more clingy and I am resisting with every fiber of my being. I was astounded throughout Shanna’s infancy that I didn’t really hit ‘touched out’. I now live in Touched Out. I would kind of like to have an asbestos suit so that no one gets too close to my skin. I do carry Calli around but when she has the days where she starts fussing the minute I lay her down for a nap I end up having a stern conversation with her then holding her hand while she fusses for a while. I’m still opposed to “Cry it Out” but I am much more ok with fuss-it-out-while-I’m-holding-your-hand. I just cannot do the 24/7 in contact with the newborn thing this time. I will lose my mind. But she eats a lot and she’s vigorous and very interested in the world around her. Since the most recent pediatrician visit (dear god do we need a new one) I am aware that she is a full pound less than Shanna was at this age and almost an inch shorter. This child will not be larger than average. Apparently she is right on the 50% line for height and weight. So in fact she is… dead average. 🙂 Despite the ped telling me to get ready to start her on iron fortified rice cereal, I don’t get the impression she is going to be the most food-ready kid at 6 months. It’s kind of weird how different she is from Shanna. 🙂 She’s rolling over, but only on soft surfaces. The floor is still too hard. The couch or the bed is super easy. Sitting up this morning was surprising. I set her down and expected her to immediately collapse but she didn’t. Yay! She sat up for quite a while as I tended to Shanna.
Shanna continues to develop at an amazing (to me) pace. I don’t have much experience with other kids so it’s kind of weird to have an intellectual understanding about child development and them come against an actual kid who isn’t following all the normal curves perfectly. I was looking at the milestone chart this morning (someone asked me when sitting up was normal… I don’t know…) and I looked at the bits for Shanna. Holy Milestones she is asynchronous. The average kid her age is mastering their second adjective?! Oh. She’s speaking in 10+ word sentences using several $2 words at a go. Her favorite right now is ‘diatomaceous earth’ because we have been using it to deal with our ant problem. If you have ever heard the word before you can understand her. If you’ve never heard of the stuff she sounds kind of muddled. 🙂 I’m pretty impressed though. She is also being increasingly helpful in the kitchen. Like this morning she helped with a large portion of breakfast. She scooped out the granola, helped cut up the apples (her little kid knife did a better job than I expected), and she helped pour out the yogurt. Yay! Simple, but she’s trying so hard. She can also almost entirely make a pbj by herself. By 3 she will be able to make herself simple meals. I’m thrilled. But her physical development is… spotty. She’s a total klutz. And she also shows very little inclinations towards artistic stuff. I’m trying pretty hard to provide access to such things, but it’s not my thing… so I kind of suck at helping her. I’ll keep trying and she’ll keep doing her thing. I don’t actually mind that she would rather spend 30 minutes cutting up a piece of paper than color. 🙂 Oh! And she’s making more progress towards potty training. At this point my approach is to just leave her alone. When she makes comments complaining about diaper changes I tell her that she can avoid them by using the potty and she often asks for panties instead of a diaper. We aren’t having many accidents in panties because when she isn’t in the mood for the potty she asks for a diaper. Although I do give her candy for using the potty. 😛 I am trying to be mellow though.
Balancing the two of them is… interesting. Luckily they are both easy going and mellow so they wait their turn extremely well. It helps if I keep on a constant stream of, “I can see that you really need me to ‘x’ but right now I am doing ‘y’ for your sister. I know it is hard to wait, but please try to be patient for another ‘z’ minutes.” If I can keep that up in a patient, kind voice waiting up to 15 minutes is not a big stretch. 30 minutes can be very hard for both of them. Which uhm… is ok. They’re kind of young. 🙂
I feel like we have hit the ‘terrible twos’ and yet… if this is the worst I see we’re doing GREAT! Shanna doesn’t ‘tantrum’ much at all but she does cry a lot. She has a lot of really intense feelings and it’s hard for her to figure out what to do with them. I feel like as long as she is well rested and not hungry she does better than a lot of adults with her strong feelings. It’s kind of hard to console her if she is hungry or tired though. It gets hard. The crying sound makes me feel homicidal.
Because I’m exactly this kind of full disclosure person… I’ve lost it a couple of times. 🙁 When we were driving to Disneyland and she was really really sick of the car she started kicking the drivers seat on purpose pretty hard. I reached back and hit her feet. 🙁 I know it wasn’t the right decision and we’ve talked about it. She’s pretty happy to lecture me for a long time about how hitting is wrong and I shouldn’t do it so she enjoyed the hell out of that conversation. (so my daughter) I’ve smacked her hands a couple of times purely as a reflex when she is doing something that makes me twitch. Every time I do she begins her lecture again about how hitting is wrong. She tells me to apologize and I do. She cries and we cuddle and kiss and then feel ok again. I am trying really hard to increase my patience level but it’s hard. This is part of that ‘there are no perfect parents’ thing. I try to not spend much time feeling bad but instead put my energy towards doing better next time. It’s hard to not get into negative self-talk. Given how much stress these kids add to my life (it’s incredible in a kind of scary way) I’m aware that I am actually doing phenomenally well. It helps that I now self-medicate. The next step is to increase my exercise because that will help a lot. I informed Noah that I was going to the gym today. Period. He’s supportive. 🙂
Guess I’m willing to leave this kid before 6 months. Ha.
{milestones} sitting
Yesterday Calli turned 4 months. Today she is sitting. 🙂 Tomorrow she conquers the world!!! 🙂
Calli and Shanna laughing
Not working. Go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0nPX4aw1BY
Personality
It’s really fascinating to watch how different the girls are. Shanna really needed to be physically on me, but then she would flirt with anyone and everyone who came at all near. She was always full of smiles and loved attention. Calli however is really calm with just about anyone but she doesn’t flirt. She saves her smiles for people she knows pretty well. And last night during dinner Shanna started laughing and that kicked off Calli laughing and then both of the grown ups started laughing and we kept going in rounds for quite a few minutes. It was so wonderful and fun.
Calli is starting to exert some signs of independence and spirit. She is trying hard to sit and she’s scooting all over the place if she’s put down. I tend to wake up in the morning and she has moved 6-9 inches over and 4-7ish inches upwards in the bed. I have to be pretty careful about pillows and such on her side of the bed. She can do nearly a full ‘girl’ push up which is cool to watch. She certainly pushes all the way up from her waist. She is so very serious about doing it though. That’s what is interesting to me about it. She looks like she is studying for a test or taking a class and doing her ‘exercises’. She rarely gets frustrated. It’s surprising to me how calmly she takes it when she’s trying to do something and fails. Shanna wasn’t like that. Shanna would get worked up and pissed off if she didn’t get something on the first try.
Calli tolerates being uhm left to herself for rather long stretches. She seems to have an extensive ability to self entertain. I’m kind of wondering if this is what an introvert looks like. 🙂 Shanna continues to need unholy quantities of attention. Boy howdy is she my little extrovert. 🙂
Things in general are good. Shanna is so very intense some days. If she is happy then everything in the whole universe is wonderful. If she’s unhappy then the whole world must suffer. It’s… challenging. Luckily she doesn’t have bad days very often. She’s been injuring herself more and more as she gets braver about trying stuff. Dear god is she a klutz. I swear it is like watching a mini square faced blond me. 🙂 Sleep is becoming more of an issue for her. She really needs a nap and she often resists taking one. It leads to her having a very hard time with her feelings. I think that is a lot of what characterizes her experiences lately. She has So Many Big Feelings. When I’m being good and patient we get through just about anything well. If I’m already frustrated then it’s hard. I feel bad when I fail her through my own inadequacy. She really is a wonderful child. I’m continually amazed by how compassionate and loving she is. I kind of expect children to be as self centered all the time as she is on her very worst days. It’s rare for her to have a really bad day and I can pretty much always point at hungry/upset/tired/overstimulated specific things that have set her off. I’m really so glad.
Calli gets upset when she needs a diaper change and when she’s overtired and when she is having gas issues. Even the car crying is going away unless one of the above issues is present. When she wants to be picked up she kind of mildly fusses a bit but it really sounds like her saying, “Mom…. hey mom…. come get me now…” It’s not crying. It’s slightly/barely whiny talking. If I ignore her for a while because I have to work (usually when I’m in the middle of a sensitive part of cooking) she puts herself to sleep. I feel much more extraneous to her happiness. This is both good and bad.
I love that Calli looks more like me and Shanna looks a lot like Noah because it seems like the personality matches switched. The narcissism of having children and seeing what they have in common with us is awesome. 😀
Pictures
Here a couple so people can stop bugging me! 😀 Oh, and I also don’t particularly want to put them on facebook because then my niece will show them to my mom and sister and I’m currently feeling twitchy about that. Erf.
Ze baby:
Semi recent… like two weeks ago
About a month ago
On my birthday, so when Calli was ~2 weeks old. Shanna is a bit over 2 years. 🙂
Mixed bag
So both girls cried for about a minute after their shots and were fine. I’m so glad. 🙂
However I’m not so thrilled with our pediatrician anymore. I’m very unhappy with being told I should start sleep training my two month old. “It’s ok to let them cry for a while. You need them to understand that they can’t be dependent on you.” What the fuck? She’s two fucking months old. She IS dependent on me. And never ever ever let your infant be in the sun, now here’s your synthetic vitamin d. And because we did HiB and PC with the previous pediatrician she was snotty when I said Shanna was in for Polio–her records didn’t show Shanna having those shots so started on a lecture about how it is pretty silly to worry about Polio while leaving my child open to Meningitis.
I want to go back to Kaiser.
In other news: Calli is 11 lbs 13 oz and 22.75″. Shanna is just over 30 lbs and just shy of 36″. Yay!
I’ll put pictures for rbus up soon. 🙂
So independent
Sometimes I don’t know what to make of Calli’s self-sufficiency already. She freakin loves the swing. We could leave her in it for hours until she has a dirty diaper or needs food. She laughs, smiles, plays with the mirror baby, and thinks the mobile is awesome. Shanna sorta tolerated it when she was tired. She likes just hanging out on her blanket (when I can keep Shanna from injuring her).
I’m not complaining! It’s just… weird. Frankly I’m delighted and grateful. It allows me to get stuff done. 🙂 I have probably already accomplished more in Calli’s lifespan than I did in the first six months of Shanna’s life. 🙂
And she’s so cuddly and sweet. She has a very serious face most of the time but then she smiles and she lights up like a roman candle. I feel so blessed in my children.
Ohhhh… now I get it.
A wonderful couple was willing to babysit Shanna when she was really tiny. The wife commented (I’m not going to get the words verbatim) that she was not easy/hard/difficult… something to that effect. I couldn’t understand what she was talking about! I thought Shanna was very easy! All she needed was 24 hour a day physical contact with me most of that with my nipple in her mouth. It’s not like she had colic or reflux or anything. Fast forward to Calli…
Now I get it. Calli is perfectly happy to take naps lying on the couch by herself. When she wakes up for the night time diaper change after five, six, or eight hours of sleep (I shit you not. She sometimes sleeps for eight hour blocks.) she nurses, gets her diaper changed, then I flip her onto her stomach and rub her back for a minute and she’s right back to sleep without a murmur. The reason I have her sleeping on her stomach is because she is having issues with passing gas. (Uhm. We’ve been eating a lot of cabbage.) On her back she has to kick her legs really hard in order to get the gas out and that often wakes her up but on her stomach she can just fart without a wake up. Much more peaceful for her. She has had enough head control to lift her head up and look around before putting it back down on the other side since birth. It’s neat.
She’s already getting to the point where she’s happy to be held by other people. Ok, sometimes it takes some jouncing, but she’s (almost) six weeks old. I have to jounce her sometimes. When she does get upset it’s pretty invariable that she needs a diaper change. (Though we did have one night where her gas was really upsetting her. The face down on your arm trick solved it.)
She likes to nurse a lot, really hard, and then let go of my nipple and get on with her life. THIS IS SO COOL!!! I’m really happy not having another nurseaholic. She’s already grown out of three month sleepers so I’m very confident she is getting plenty of milk even though she nurses way less often than Shanna did. 🙂
Noah and I are very happy our kids arrived in the order they did. It would be very hard having a kid with as high of touch need as Shanna after having a kid as mellow as Calli. However, it is fucking awesome having a kid as mellow as Calli after Shanna. Which is not to say that in any way we are bitter towards Shanna. I thought everything she did was exactly how it was supposed to be and I didn’t mind. What else did I have to do?
But of course she hates the car. I just have that luck. 🙂
Adjusting is slow
Hoo boy. All the people who said that going from 0-1 is way harder than 1-2 must not be talking about the first week. The first week with just Shanna was pretty damn blissful. We all hung out on the bed together and didn’t do much. We alternated who was napping and it was awesome. Uhm… it’s not like that this time. Shanna has So Much Energy. And keeping her from jumping on the bed (HELLO! Healing from internal wounds here!!!) is difficult. Other than that she’s just pushing boundaries slightly more than usual but really she’s not being out of line at all. So yeah. We aren’t as patient as we should be, but we are both working on it. She is quite in love with Calli. 🙂
Thank all the stars in the heaven for tandem nursing. Given how much the rest of me hurts I was about ready to flip my lid when my boobs started hurting last night because my milk came in. So I called my trusty, always hungry, toddler over. Insta-relief. (Yes, there is still plenty of milk for Calli.) Every minute of discomfort while nursing through pregnancy has already paid off. 🙂
We are trying to figure out a sleep schedule that will allow me to heal as quickly as possible. It’s a challenge. I have so much going on in my brain that it takes me forever to fall asleep, nearly an hour after each wake up when I can normally fall asleep in under five minutes, so that’s extra challenging.
I sorta went against orders and took a shower today. My stench was seriously bothering me. For those of you who are childfree, when you have a baby you then have basically hot flashes for a while as you sweat out a lot of the extra fluids you have been carrying around. This is not pretty. But a shower (ok, I sat in the tub with the shower nozzle on because I can’t stand and being submerged isn’t a great plan yet) felt decadent. Huzzah for hygiene.
We have a rather remarkable number of people bringing us food. I cannot express properly my gratitude. I think that I will karmically owe food to every newly delivered mother I ever hear about for the rest of my life. It feels really awesome.
Noah is the most amazing, supportive husband I can imagine having. He has earned so many brownie points that it will be decades before I return them all. I guess I’m going to have to stop whining about his night off. He’s earned several years worth of them recently.
I’m tired and my physical recovery is predictably slow. Walking to the bathroom is easier. Returning a plate to the kitchen is still a stretch and if you’ve seen how small my house is that’s pretty sad. I could not stand long enough to dry off after the shower. After not standing during the shower. Ugh. I’m not feeling patient with this. But it’s only been three days. I need to give myself a lot more time. I feel perkier while I am sitting in bed. Once I am vertical my bravado is revealed.
Calli is… mostly asleep really. 🙂 But she’s sweet and we are already fond of her. Yay hormones.