Tag Archives: social

cross-post Problematic People

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Oh man my RSD is on turbo lately. (That’s Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria if you aren’t familiar with the acronym.) I learned about this facet of neurodiversity in later years and it was like “Huh. Ok so that’s been most of my life. I just thought I had low self esteem.” Which is why I often feel weirdly haunted by the memory of a therapist who laughed so hard she almost fell off her chair when I said I had low self esteem. She said I had the highest self esteem of any client she had worked with in over 20 years.

Right.

What does self esteem mean then? I don’t think I really understand. I have aspects of my self-hood that I have confidence in: I can giggle off aspersions about my intellect because I am ridiculously confident in my intelligence and I laugh about people implying that no one would ever fuck me because holy hell is that inaccurate.

But I doubt whether I am actually doing enough good in the world to justify how many resources are needed to keep me functional. I have a shitty, high maintenance body. I doubt whether people will really accept me with all of my fierce outbursts and intensity.

So as a result I really like a lot of folks who are publicly derided as “problematic people”. I prefer assholes because they will tell me off and compliment me in equal measure and I can lean in and rest my head on their chest and hear the authenticity of their love in their level heartbeat.

“What’s Wrong With Krissy” is, after all, one of my most frequent games.

This ties in strongly with why I pursue friendships with folks in the scene with such intensity. There are an awful lot of assholes around here. YAY!!!!

Hell, even the people I know who have mostly done the right things in life and followed all the choices they were expected to make are still people who get in trouble regularly for being overly direct. I think of them as assholes with extra class. They will still tell you off but they will do it in a way that no one is allowed to tell them to stop because it all just sounds so true and reasonable.

It is harder to find assholes around here (physical here not fetlife-here; I come to fetlife so much these days because I can smile and watch assholes). A lot more “taking the piss” and a lot less “I am going to tell you why every single thing you have done in the last 15 years is wrong. I have citations.” One of my old buddies had to leave the bay because of health issues. Now the trouble is that they are used to friendships that are super intense where folks act like mutual coaches to one another. This is a really common dynamic I have had in many of my friendships in California as everyone is striving super hard to learn new skills and hobbies and interests all the damn time. My buddy is really struggling because no one in small town New Mexico wants to do that with her. People A) don’t want to spend that much time together and B) are not interested in that dynamic because they aren’t relentlessly focused on learning new stuff and C) find it more than a little creepy that my buddy is so intense.

I feel that in my bones.

I feel overwhelmed almost every single minute that I am with folks that I need to be trying as absolutely hard as I can to hold back and not be too intense. My entire selfhood is wrong at full strength and I need to be letting it out 3%-5% at a time or I am a monster. It is additionally challenging that many of the ways I have traditionally talked people into having more tolerance for me are prohibited by agreements I have made. Also: I don’t think they would work so well at this point.

I am a Problematic Person. What do I do that is problematic? Talk too much. Not moderate eye contact sufficiently (holy shit this is a whole thing here and I’ve had immigrants bring it up with me and tell me that I need to knock it off because they get in trouble for staring too). That one is really hilarious because I had to be taught to make/keep eye contact and now I’m in trouble for doing too much of it because PEOPLE ARE NOT CONSISTENT FROM CULTURE TO CULTURE.

So, when you are instructing that autistic person on how to act to “not be offensive” what culture are you acclimating them to and how did you develop the fucking audacity to decide that whichever one you are enforcing is The Right One? Anyway.

How close am I supposed to stand to someone to look friendly but not be creepy? How do I manage the fact that my fucking tinnitus is so bad that half the time I am trying to understand people with about 70% of the words making it through to my brain? It is why I love to type. How much follow up when they are not responding is persistent and appropriate friend making behavior but when do I become a stalker? I have no fucking social credit here. I have not earned forbearance because of my long usefulness. I am a difficult outsider with a lot of demands in order to facilitate my entry.

Yeah… basically I don’t see much reason to assume that dealing with me is worth peoples time so I minimise how much I interact with people because I do not want to unfairly drain them. I have been told for years that it is not ok to give any kind of social or energetic labor with any expectation of getting anything in return. You need to just give because you have extra and probably nothing will come back to you and that needs to be ok. I have to be ok if I never get anything from anyone.

And so I sit at home and I make detailed calendars and lists of tasks for maintaining my body and whatever shred of mental health I clutch to and I pray that no one asks me for too much because I am running a surplus… barely. I am after scraping and working and hoarding and conserving and doing without. And there is this knot of worry in my stomach all the time because I am trying to put small amounts of effort into different places and people because I have to be ok if this person/group does not want to know me in three years.

There will always be people who don’t want to know me. No matter how much of my personality I saw off. They will see the mistakes I so profligately make in my haphazard pursuit of new understandings and they will not know about any of the previous history of doing exactly that before succeeding at very hard things that many people said I was not going to be able to do.

I am nobody. I am a stranger. I have no value. I have no perceived social status.

I mean, I did pick this on purpose. I made the conscious choice to pick up and move very far away to be a small fish in a small pond because I did not enjoy being a small fish in the great big ocean. They were going to eat me.

I chose to move very far away to a place where I have exactly one embedded social contact and her world has been fairly limited in her time here. I have to try and find a new place in the community. I have to find a way to have people see me as worthy of their time and effort and accommodation because you would have to fucking lobotomize me to make me easy to be around.

So mostly I just don’t go. (I am loving the fuck out of the fact that someone ranted about starting sentences with “so” and I absolutely know I am doing it extra right now just to be EXTRA.) I am a problematic person. I am an asshole. I am high effort and what I have to give is very small so it isn’t worth much. Which ends in feeling like I am not worth very much. Then I talk to people less and less. I hide and stay home and keep myself busy trying to add to any surplus of energy I might have so maybe I can have more to give and be less of a waste.

That cycle rarely goes well. It doesn’t work. The ball of tension in my stomach eats away at the surplus making it smaller and smaller until I make myself sick and then spoon deficit is days away.

So yeah. If you are ever wondering if I dislike you and that is why I don’t initiate more conversations… probably not. I’m too busy contorting myself into awkward positions around the pain in my belly to notice enough to dislike. When I dislike someone it is pretty dramatic. You won’t wonder. It’ll be public. It is part and parcel of a thing that has been repeated at me for almost 30 years now in a wide variety of settings: “You know it wouldn’t kill you to try to be friendly with (person I dislike). “But it might. Best not to try it.” Mostly I don’t bother to dislike people that much. I have conflicting feelings about people. Sometimes I detect signs of patterns that freak me out but it’s usually combined with other random positive traits and I have no idea if my gut feelings are real or if I’m just a dick. In that case I will be consistent in public and private. I will tell you how I feel about you. Often even when you don’t want to know.

Yup. A problematic person. Hard to know. I know how many thousands of hours I put into my extended community in California. In the next 20 years of my life I will not be able to come close to matching any of the similar time spans in California. I’m older. I don’t have a job. I don’t go to school. The social community up here is very different and my ability to access what exists is almost nil. I don’t drive here and I drove all the forking time in California maintaining a network of relationship that spanned thousands of miles on a regular basis. Now I very seldom get more than 5 miles from my house. I don’t go farther than 5 miles from my house in every month. I had very few days in California where I didn’t go farther than 10 miles from my house throughout my entire 38 years living there. We were car people. That’s life.

I can’t anymore. My thumbs are jacked. I can’t grip a steering wheel without overwhelmingly agonising pain. I swear I am not just a pussy. I can’t do it. I know people are surprised that I can do all of the other things I do with my hands, but I have no more connective tissue left at the base of one thumb and very little left in the other hand. It’s bone on bone. Gripping things in different ways doesn’t use my thumb and the rest of my hand is fine. When I say I can carry something I’m not usually doing so at risk of strain to my existing problems. I am strong in many ways. But I can’t drive. I can’t create a wider social community by visiting people. The train takes a whole day. It’s hard to take whole days away on a regular basis. That is not how my life is shaped.

So I am putting drips and drabs and tiny bits of effort towards trying to exist in the wider water network around me but mostly I am in my tiny pond swimming around. The little tributaries that occasionally erupt that might allow me to move around are a little scary.

Being problematic is a complicated thing. Why don’t people just act right. Why can’t you just give more. Why can’t you just complain less. Why can’t you just need less. Why can’t you act happier.

Because because because….. because of the wonderful things I does. (Leave it alone. I did it on purpose. Don’t point it out. Requiring verb agreement in order to “understand” is elitist. Don’t be a brat.)

It’s all about rhetorical effect, isn’t it? There are times and places to insist on really precise language and phrasing. It’s taught when you go to school for that thing. I mean, I did teach English grammar as an English teacher. I was also correcting the other more senior teachers on staff because apparently I actually learned what was drilled into my head at university and when I am writing an MLA standard paper I will trot that shit right out.

This is not a space governed by the MLA. I am looking to communicate. I am looking to communicate with the kind of people who like and appreciate who and what I am and my native language is typing. It is the only one that taps into what I am really thinking and feeling and I have never found a way that works in anything like an equivalent manner with my voice. I feel stupid all the fucking time because I just cannot word. I am trying to analyse all the time whether or not I am doing something “right” for the setting I am in and I feel like I am going to hyperventilate because of course I am fucking wrong and that’s why people don’t like me and fuck.

Why did I even leave the fucking house.

Because that little do-si-do around the fucking topic of grammar is exactly the kind of tiny little thing I feel in my head all day long. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BE FUCKING CONFORMING TO SOME STUPID BULLSHIT RULE THAT I HAVE NEVER FUCKING HEARD OF NOW.

WOULD YOU LIKE SOME MORE FULL STOPS WITH THAT………???????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Phew. I think I have been having some feelings. As stupid and immature as it sounds I feel strangely better. I didn’t go start a stupid argument and dump my feelings on someone. I did stand in my sandbox and I had a stupid feeling. I’m not hurting anyone.

This stupid calculus is involved in everything I say and do all day long. With my kids. With my spouse. With my neighbors. With people in the scene. With people on fetlife. With my actual blog I write with a slightly different “ideal listener” focus in my mind… it’s hard to explain. Well, not really. On my blog everyone is expected to know what Noah knows and here I don’t do that. Writing there is joining the stream full force and I have been feeling incredibly unconfident about doing that for a while. It’s a much larger thing to walk that deep into my brain.

Here I do try to keep the word count down. I swear to cheese. I try to pick a topic. I try to bring it full circle and actually find a little closure with it. It’s an essay, kinda, not just me thinking and planning and existing into the ether the way I do in my longer form writing.

The point of this essay was to demonstrate a fairly small fraction of just how much can go into being a problematic person. Maybe 5% landed here? So much censoring and picking careful examples that won’t repel the target audience by maybe sounding too close to home and thus like a preconceived dislike thus they should avoid me.

My personal ad was something like 15 pages long and I didn’t respond unless it was fucking clear you read the whole thing. I think my standards are getting more reasonable with time…

Upcoming off-line time.

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So I am getting ready to be go traveling. I looked at the calendar and realized that I will be traveling/in Arizona from April 27 – May 5. Then I am home May 6 – May 1012. Then I take off for the wedding on May 1113 and I will not be back until very late on May 16. Woof. That’s a lot of traveling for me in my pregnant, exhausted state. But! I will get through it with hopefully minimal whining. Of the days I am home in between travels I am already very booked on two of the ~~five~~ seven days. Eeek.

I am communicating this as if people care because at this point I don’t really have a functioning laptop. My laptop screen is completely dead and other things on the laptop are dying quickly. This is very sad because I liked my laptop. Jenny gave back the G4 (yay Jenny!) but the battery spent five minutes in my company and decided to completely and totally die. Given that one of Shanna’s favorite games is, “Let’s pull out the power cable!” it’s not very useful for me to have a laptop that completely and totally dies the instant it is not plugged in. (There is a new battery in the mail but it won’t get here before the Arizona trip and the wedding trip is off-grid anyway.) So uhhhh… yeah. I won’t be checking the internet much at all in the next three or so weeks.

If there is something very important you want me know, please sent me email. If you write a nifty blog entry and you think, “This is the sort of thing Krissy usually comments on” please sent me an email telling me specifically to go read it. If you think of me and go, “Hey! I’m not getting my usual stream of Krissy babble and I miss it!” please give me a call. 😀 I am 150% certain that the call/mention of thinking of me will make my day. If you don’t currently have my phone number I’m certain you know someone who does and I hereby give folks permission to hand out my number to folks who want to call me in the next few weeks. 🙂

P.S. I need a traveling icon that is a picture of the minivan. The whole back of it is made into a nest and I’m quite thrilled that I bought this van. It makes traveling soooooooooo much more comfy. I think that in another few years when both kidlets are old enough to handle traveling more I will probably start scraping together my pennies for a small RV sort of thing because I would get SO much use out of it. 🙂

Half-baked ideas on social interactions

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I would love a conversation about this and for people to post their own experiences/conflicting opinions. 🙂

I was reading a thread on MDC about whether it is ‘rude’ to correct misinformation in a social setting. Specifically a chick was talking about how there is another mother in her mommy group who routinely spouts ‘facts’ about dealing with babies that are often not-great to flat out dangerous. So far no one in the group is willing to contradict her publicly. The course of the thread involves many many women saying, “Well if it is truly dangerous I might try to very tactfully redirect, but I never contradict people because it will make the others in the group uncomfortable.”

That. That right there is why I (and I project onto most of my closer female friends) do not get along with groups of women. If you are presenting something as a fact then it is either true or not true and pointing out the truth should not be rude. I think this avoidance of conflict is basically unhealthy. I know that this is the ‘just get along’ community minded stuff that women are known for, but I don’t see it as positive. I see this conformity-or-else mindset as what encourages misogyny amongst women. Most of my female friends are pretty quick to say that they don’t like women. When I point out that they are saying that to a woman they say, “Well not you.” I think this is what is really being objected to. Women who buy into this mindset seem to believe that being smart, being right, being a ‘know it all’ is something to avoid at all costs. Why? Why in the world is this a good thing? Noah made a long argument about how long ago in communal settings when women were getting together to do the work of surviving there had to be more consensus and getting along, but that’s not particularly relevant today. Noah points out that people just don’t evolve that fast, but pshhhh forget that noise.

This made me think a lot harder about Alpha dynamics in social groups and particularly in a mommy-group I tried to join. I regularly challenged the sitting Alpha when I disagreed with her and as a result people didn’t talk to me much. I stopped going because I was sick of having to support the one chick or just shut up. Not my thing. I have a lot of Alpha-type tendencies but I am really ok with other people being Alpha if they know more, if we are at their house, if I’m just not in the mood. So I think I am not a ‘true’ Alpha in the sense that most people use the word. But I am bossy and pushy and opinionated and ok with seeing that things happen. I think that my refusal to accept a set social position (Alpha or otherwise) and my insistence that groups remain dynamic in this sense is a lot of what makes me suck in groups. I just don’t fit in because I cannot and will not accept any set defined position.

It’s interesting. What do you think?

Weekend Report!

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We went out on a hot date on Friday! Whoo hoo! We went to the swinger party at Edges. I discovered that I am really not in a position to be doing any play with other people. I had this visceral, physical, instinctive feeling of NOT THE DADDY when a playmate touched me even slightly. I just couldn’t handle that. So I only played with Noah and I had a great time. I was quite thrilled to be the initiator of a bunch of other people getting lots of play though. 🙂 That was really fun for me in the space I was at.

The only problem with such events is they keep us up very late at night and Shanna is not interested in sleeping in. 🙂 We spent Saturday very zombielike not getting much of anything accomplished and it felt wonderful. We have both been needing some together-slacker time. We also had hot sex again for the third time in a week. I am pretty sure last week involved more sex than the whole rest of this pregnancy combined. I’m feeling physically much better. 🙂 Yay for second trimesters.

On Sunday I went up to Mo’s Tea Party in San Francisco. This was not a kid-friendly event so Noah and Shanna got to have a date at the Discovery Museum. 🙂 I had a really great time. I got to catch up with folks I like and meet a bunch of new-to-me people. I stepped pretty far outside my normal comfort zone and it was a really good thing. It was a thoroughly excellent event all around. 🙂 Then I went over to Wicked Grounds for some real food (I had not had much real solid food all day that wasn’t sugary and by 5pm that’s a problem) and had an awesome sandwich. 😀 I also got to enjoy fun, festive, sassy conversation with a fair sized crowd of wonderful people. I think all of whom are on lj. 😀 Thanks everyone! I felt very included and loved. It is nice to remember that when I get out of my house there are still lots of really neato people who are happy to talk to me. 🙂 Whoo hoo! One of the people said she would be thrilled to take bart down to come visit with me and Shanna and someone else said, “I’m sorry I never visit… but at least I never promise I will!” Both comments were awesome in very different ways. 😀

30th birthday musing

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In this filter there are currently: Mo, Alex, and Sarah(yes!) (all of whom I functionally think of as single), Mark/Laura, and ~~Brittney/Joe~~ (two married couples who at this point do not have children), and Ali/Mark and Deborah/Anthony (both couples have two kids and I think they don’t plan on more).

So this filter is relatively small. I’m giving you guys this run down so you have some idea of who I am talking to about this topic. 🙂 It is also worth pointing out that even though I like all the people in this group and I would want to spend a fair bit of time with you, I need my ‘family time’ and I need a lot of it. So we would not be locked at the hip by any measure.

I would like to go on a Disney Cruise and to Walt Disney World for my 30th birthday. That’s a bit out, not till September 2011 but pre-planning is required for a couple of reasons. We just bought into the Disney Vacation Club because given my vacation habits it’ll be paid for in like five years. 🙂 If I have some idea of who might be interested it changes a bunch of my potential strategies and it gives people a chance to start saving money.

Here are some of my nitty gritty details that I’m pondering:

I can rent a 2 bedroom cottage (174 pts) or a 3 bedroom cottage (281 pts) at WDW for six days. A 2 bedroom can sleep up to 8 people and a 3 bedroom can sleep up to 12. (Children under 3 are ‘free’.)

A 3 night cruise is possible (90 pts for us 67 for someone else) or a 4 night cruise (98/77) or a 7 night cruise (157/127). [Uhhh… I’ll have a maximum of 695 points to work with.]

If 8 or fewer people are interested and sharing rooms isn’t a problem technically speaking Noah and I could pay for two state rooms and the cottage with our points. It would wipe us out for while but it would be the most wonderful birthday trip I can imagine. In exchange for that I would request that folks contribute some reasonable amount that would at least cover the rest of the trip for us (airfare, food, park tickets, some souvenirs) because dude…I’m saving you many many thousands of dollars.

Alternatively some different combination of people could say, “I will join you at WDW but not the cruise” or vice versa. Or some people could say, “I would feel more comfortable paying for myself but I can only afford a 3 day cruise and 4 days at the park.” There are many different options available. It is also possible (and pretty common) for people to stay at multiple resorts during their stay in WDW. If my family goes before anyone else we can stay in a small studio and move to a larger accommodation when others want to join up and save a bunch of points. WDW has a whole process set up for moving your stuff. It’s pretty cool. 🙂

I am partially starting this negotiation so early because I am excited about the possibility and partially because I have to make my reservations about a year in advance and this way people have plenty of dithering time before I have to commit officially.

So…. yeah! I’m going to have decades of joy out of speculating about trips. I apologize in advance to the people who talk to me on IM and who may already be sick of this. 😀

Stuff and such

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Shanna fell asleep on my lap. She hasn’t done this in a while. My foot is now asleep. I guess she’s gained some weight. 🙂

I discovered this morning that I am in Trouble. I wondered why the ASL class was moving so slowly given that it is a 5 unit course. Now I know. The reason we learn very little new in class is because you are supposed to spend a ridiculous amount of time in the lab learning everything by yourself. Uhm, thanks? Getting enough time in the lab is going to be a serious problem. They are open for very limited hours, 100% of which overlap with Noah’s work schedule. They seem to believe that only full time college students with no jobs or kids should be allowed to take ASL. Fuckers. (Technically it isn’t their fault. The problem is state budget cuts. But I can still feel whiny.)

I went out yesterday! I went to the fair and had a fabulous time. I ran into people from all over the country, many of whom I have not seen in 3+ years. 🙂 I didn’t even make a full circuit of the booths because I got there a bit late and the crowd was getting to me. I had a really great time though and I got a waist cincher from Dark Garden! w00t! I have the most generous of husbands. 🙂 Noah stayed home with the short one and he got to learn firsthand why I believe we need to acquire more board books. 🙂 It gets a bit old reading them over and over and over again. Before anyone suggests the library: Shanna is a book eater. She will grow out of this in time but for now it isn’t cool for us to have books for her that need to be well treated. I would feel horribly guilty about damaging library books. I feel confident that this stage can’t last too much longer. 🙂

I was thinking about it yesterday and I came to the conclusion that I am really glad I didn’t try real hard to have “my own time” when Shanna was smaller. I wasn’t ready. I felt anxious the entire time I was away from her. I didn’t enjoy myself. Now I can take off for a day and have fun and feel confident that it is ok and developmentally good for both of us. Yesterday was probably a bit longer than Shanna is thrilled about, but she didn’t spend the time having a temper tantrum so I think we did ok. I like feeling confident in my parenting choices. I’m super glad I ignored everyone who told me that I ‘had’ to get away from her early on. No, I didn’t. It would have sucked for all concerned. Now I can go do stuff and she does fine and I do fine and daddy does fine. We win!

Brain dump

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-I got some plants from essaying in I think January (maybe early February) and planted them pretty randomly in my yard. They are still alive and thriving with inconsistent watering using only gray water from washing dishes. I think that is pretty rad. Of course my yard still looks like shit but that’s because of all the huge expanses of bare dirt between the small pockets of healthy thriving plants. 🙂 I need to plant more stuff out there.

-By contrast my food plants in the back yard aren’t doing so hot. I water them using fresh water because I have concerns about dumping that much soap on food plants. I don’t water them very consistently. oops. I did get a lot of tomatoes and they are all still alive so I feel like that was an ok first growing season of my life. 🙂

-Noah and I had a “conversation” *cough* this morning about how we each need to take responsibility for own happiness. Mostly this consisted of me being very upset about how hard I have tried to make him happy but my efforts have failed. So forget that noise. That strategy is obviously not working and it is time to try a new one. My wonderful husband managed to stay calm and collected and not bent out of shape when my tone of voice sucked. I’m so lucky to have him.

-Shanna went out back and played in her sand box for over half an hour this morning with no prompting from me. This getting bigger business is awesome.

-I keep thinking that I should track my emotions over a few months and see how it coincides with my cycle. I have been pretty upbeat and cheerful and energetic today and far more willing to put out energy in a social way than I was a few days ago when I whined about how no one loves me. I think that a complete lack of menstrual cycle was a lot of why I was in such a good mood for the whole first year of Shanna’s life. I stepped off the roller coaster and it was so nice.

-I think that the reason I feel so alienated in mom groups is because I am not there because we have much in common other than spawning. I feel like it is the worst parts of going to public school all over again. You are together with people you may or may not like for an arbitrary reason. Wow does that not work for me. I wish more of my friends would spawn. And then have the energy to be at least a little social. 😛

And now Shanna needs a nap. So I run off. 🙂

Good people and Shanna update

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Yesterday I went to a birthday party and got to feel out of my depth in a really good way. The conversations were almost entirely on topics I find interesting (gardening, religion, law, taxes, human interactions, books) but they were all complex and complicated and going into specifics and examples I’d never heard of. Noah called it “deep humanities geeking”. I think I had a nerdgasm. I don’t think I impressed anyone at the event with my intelligence because I mostly listened with my mouth open in shock at how freakin cool the conversation was. 🙂 I think that was one of the best gatherings I’ve attended in years. I am rarely in the room with that many extremely smart people where computers were not a focus.

It was also interesting because I sort of knew a bunch of people there but didn’t know almost anyone well. That’s kind of awkward feeling to me. I keep rediscovering how socially awkward I am when I am not using sex/bdsm as an introduction to people. I’m not sure if it is a sign of low self esteem that my primary way of getting to know people is, “Hey–wanna fuck?” 🙂 It’s just awkward because I can’t use it anymore and so I don’t know how to get to know people. 🙂 Uhm, yay for learning experiences? It’s freakin hard to get to know people. One person that I knew at the party but whom I haven’t seen in years said, “So what are you doing with yourself these days?” I pointed at Shanna and said, “that.” “Oh, you’re a housewife.” See, this is why I feel like I am not very interesting these days. There is a world of scorn for how I spend most of my time. Oh well, I like it.

It feels repetitive to say, but Shanna is becoming more and more interesting. I have no worry about her liking books because she is really interested in them and she will sit and ‘read’ and talk to herself while Noah and/or I read. She’s also paying a lot more attention to her doll and the bigger apes lately. I’m not sure why, but she really likes going through her toys if they are all put away but if they are on the floor they are not as much of a draw. This drives me sorta nuts. It feels like she needs to go through stuff in the house creating as many messes as humanly possible. I’m pretty sure this is developmental though so I try not to let it get to me. Instead I have made it really really easy to clean up her toys and I do that about fifteen times a day.

Yesterday I get to hold one of the little twins for a few minutes before she was unhappy with me and she felt much like Kidlet–super solid. Shanna feels so mushy and soft compared to other kids to me. It’s really interesting feeling how much difference there is between different little kids in terms of how muscle/fat feel on the body. I know this variation is normal and to be expected but I have so little experience with babies/little kids that I’m continually surprised. 🙂

Shanna is eating like mad. It’s really interesting to me how much food she can pack away in that tiny little body. Sometimes when she is eating off of my plate I have to get more food because she has eaten enough that it makes a serious dent in my portion size. We make a whole extra egg now for breakfast because I think she eats a bit more than an egg and it was sucking to have that come out of my share. 🙂 I like watching how her eating is starting to be ruled by mood. There are times when she is just not in the mood for specific foods even though she will happily eat them at other times. She eats a wide array of foods that surprise me. She eats basically everything we eat except nuts, honey, and meat. She is fine and dandy with spicy and super strong flavors. I love watching her face when she eats pickles. 🙂

It’s also neat watching her start to have relationships with people other than me. She recognizes people now and goes to them. She loves Aunt Sarah and Aunt Marcie. She sees them more than anyone other than us and she responds to them. I think she would be even warmer towards Marcie if she saw her more. She doesn’t see my family enough to have a bond with them and that’s bugging my family members. They think she ‘should’ go to them more easily but I’m completely unwilling to push that. She’ll warm up at her own speed. When she’s around other babies/kids she is fascinated. I always feel kind of nervous because she really likes to flail and whack people pretty hard and I feel guilty when she does that to someone else’s kid. On one hand I know it is normal and developmental and not in any way mean. On the other hand–dude, my kid is smacking the hell out of other kids. I go back and forth between feeling like I should intervene (which mostly means keeping her far enough away physically that she can’t hit) and feeling like I should let her figure out how to interact. Especially when she is with an older kid I wonder if letting the older kid defend him/herself would be better. I’m not quite sure I’m up for treating it like Lord of the Flies and just letting them fight it out amongst themselves, but I do wonder about a certain amount of non-parental influence being better. I haven’t figured this out yet. I keep telling myself, “At least it isn’t biting.” But I shouldn’t say that cause who knows what she’ll be doing in a year. oy.

Overall this is still the best gig I’ve ever had. I’m really glad I get to stay home with her. And here are a few new pictures: Continue reading →