List

There are a lot of things swirling in my mind....so hopefully it makes sense after writing.

I'm going to start with parenting. I was feeling so renewed after having a break during spring break. I'm not sure if it was something in the water, but man oh man has it been tough in our house. I take that back, I know likely the culprit--my daughter picked up a respiratory virus/strep throat several weeks ago (not covid, she was tested)....and let me tell you, there's nothing more that contributes to her mood than being sick, tired, or hungry. If you put all of them together, it's just not going to be pleasant. I've been dealing with so. much. bickering and arguing. It is relentless and nonstop. Between the two, between my girl and I, and even my son and I have had words--he's been taunting his sister a lot and he also continues to hang, swing, jump off, and climb everything, including our mantel. He literally was climbing the wall the other day--we have a post and he was shimmying up it. They both have such different personalities that when there is confrontation my son usually backs down to make peace, but my daughter just digs her heels in harder. That's a trigger for me when it's outright defiance, then things escalate. I'm ashamed to admit I've lost it a time or two lately. I've gotten back to a place that makes me realize I need parent/counseling help. I need more tools in order to figure out how to deal with the meltdowns without sacrificing the relationship w/ my girl. I do need to give myself some credit, though, because when there are battles, I sometimes do handle things well and if I dig deep I can have patience....for example, we needed to go to rental house by 12noon on a Saturday. Around 11am I said ok, time to get going. I hear, "I'm not going". My daughter decided she didn't want to go. Of course I tried most of my tricks like giving her time, space, started playing a game with my son and said she could play after she got ready....I got nothing except "No, I'm not going". In my mind I'm thinking okay, she's bigger now, I can't just pick her up and put her in the car anymore....what do I do? We do have a list of family rules on the wall, in addition to the consequences for not following them.  However, sometimes giving consequences work like a calm down (time out), but other times she could care less. I consciously said ok, I'm going to lean in to her and and empathize, hug, let her know I'm there for her etc and while it took about 45 minutes, she ended up choosing to get ready to go. Maybe I just need more practice with this type of response, I don't know. I do know that her anxieties have contributed to issues as well because for the first time at school she refused to get out of the car during morning drop off. Basically it was raining on the way to school and I said we were going to wait in the car rider line. One of her triggers is being late. The longer we sat there the more worked up she got. She ended up pretty much in a meltdown by the time we got to the door. It's not something I want to remember because it was painful. I struggled with what to do? She was in such a state--when she gets like that her mood is just 'unregulated' is the best way to describe....it's like a fight or flight kicks in and she sometimes does both. I hesitate sharing too much because I feel very protective of her and her struggles, but I suspect I'm not alone. All of that to say, I really feel like we both need help. I don't want her carrying shame or embarrassment and I need help with how best to handle certain situations.  

ME:

-I've been focused lately on taking care of some health things-like getting my tooth extracted--was a long recovery and they had to go back in--4 weeks with pain in your mouth is no fun. Right before that a crown had broken so I had to get a new one of those as well. Lots of money lately for my teeth.  I also recently had a non cancerous mole looked at. It was determined to be not great, but not bad....so Dr. wanted to err on the side of take out....so I'm healing now with a 3 inch set of stitches across my forearm. I researched whether my insurance covered dieticians and they do! So I reviewed which ones were in network and set up a new visit with her. I did like her, was motivated with it....then she needed to book out 2 weeks because of a move. Needless to say, I cancelled my visit w/ her today. I need to pick it up, but that's about how things go sometimes....I get an idea, try it, and my follow through just falls off.

- I recently looked in a trunk I had in the closet and came across some old photos. There was one of my just my mom and dad. It hit me hard that both of them are now gone. I still wanted to show my kids because I don't have pictures of my mom up, it is still painful after all these years....and the tears just rolled. Seeing my mom's face, her eyes....even now I'm just crying. God I miss her. It was sad, too in a way that seeing pictures of the family I grew up around felt like a lifetime ago. Like it's been so long since we lived together, were together, etc..that I just felt a heaviness. Sadness...wistfulness, maybe. Another random thing I did was thought of a past relationship when I was a teenager. I think opening up that trunk opened a few things up in my memories too. I looked up online and actually found a picture of him now and he is old and fat. I hardly recognized him....but what surprised me was the angry feelings I had about the relationship. It was not a healthy one, and that kind of started me down the road of not healthy relationships. I kind of had an aha because I do have fear of abandonment, perhaps contributing to the reason I'm completely single after all this time....and realized that that is exactly how he treated me. That's when I started getting mad.  I mean for real this was around 30 years ago, but all these emotions came up that I was not expecting or prepared for. I'm not really sure what to do with this knowledge other than to stew on it, but not let it bring me down.

 --To continue down the nostalgic path, I looked at videos back from when my phone could take them--around 2015. I realized we hardly have ANY videos from last year during the pandemic by the way. But also realized my kids are big now. I feel like my daughter has looked similar since she was 5, but my son has changed leaps and bounds since he turned 6. His adult teeth are coming in. It makes me sad, in a way, that my kids aren't little little anymore. My son no longer says I wuv you. It's I love you.

--I flew for the first time in maybe 2 years? My sister turned 50 and I flew up direct to meet up in a town about 2 hours from her, and 3 hours from my brother....lots of things went wrong like our hotel was horrible, we changed a few times....my brother's truck broke down. But, it allowed him to actually stay the night and spend more time together. It was really really good to be together. I wished my kids could have hung out too.....but I needed a break i.e. read all of the above.....so Amy came to visit, thankfully to allow me the 48 hours to go.

--I'm getting itchy to move. We've been here almost 6 years now. Market is great for sellers.....but no pull as to go somewhere else. I've been eyeing my neighbor's house w/ an attached garage. I decided to keep my rental house and am in the process of remodeling it. Tenant signed a two year lease so that helped me feel more confident in keeping.

--Still have been thinking of that third child. Not ready to give the idea up just yet. Maybe that's okay. If anyone wants to donate embryos? let me know. Kidding, sort of. I've checked out a few of the websites for embryo donation and just not sure how much success a single person might have on there. For now I'll just keep our baby stuff.

--My brain is so dull these days. My short term memory is laughable, I can't find the words I want to use, I forget what I am saying mid-sentence. I chalk some of this up to bad sleep i.e. I still don't sleep well and my 6 year old seems to wake up as much as a newborn sometimes. I really felt it when my son brought home a challenge sheet where you look at a picture, then take it away and ask questions to see what you can remember. Oh my....my mental sharpness is gone. I used to be So quick too. Sigh.

My son:

--We all were talking in the car the other day and he says, 'I miiiight be annoying, but I do nice stuff'! 

--He still surprises me with his sweetness....he asked to crack the eggs in the kitchen. He pulled out 9 eggs and said, 'Look!'...I said looks good. He said, 'LOOK'....I still didn't see and he showed me he had laid out the eggs in the shape of a flower for me. He was home sick and I mentioned I was tired...he said 'oh, do you want me to sit with you to comfort you?'. We were reading books at night and I asked if he wanted to read the left page and I read the right? He said, "No, you read...I like the sound of your voice".

--He is very descriptive sometimes when he talks....we had a round of strep throat come through and when my son had it he said it felt like 10,000 bees stinging it.  When he was mad he described it as he felt like he was inside of the tin cake cover i.e. feeling trapped.

--He tested into the talented and gifted program at school. I knew he was crazy good at math but I had no idea he was as good at reading. On the standardized tests he scored 97%ile in reading and 98%ile in math. He was one of only 4 kids out of over 100 that tested in. I was kind of amazed, really. They call it the Challenge program. For kinder he goes once a week for an hour and starting in first grade they go all day once a week.  Will see how that goes. I know his other kinder academic work was way too basic.

My Girl:

--She has a really dry sense of humor. She's going to be queen of the one liners, I think. The other day when we were eating dinner she says, 'I said it once and I'll say it again....I do not like meatloaf". It might be a 'you had to be there' moment but to hear this come out of an 8 year old just cracked me up.

--She has a lot of nicknames....sis, sister...babe is the one I use the most.

--Don't know if I mentioned but she got braces on the top of her teeth in December. Oy vey. Apparently they do it differently now where if they need to make space, they prefer to move their teeth to keep them versus pull them out later. I was on the fence about it, got 2 consultations, and for some reason the second one sold me. He used the 'if it were my kid'....and he has 5 of them. I made a quick decision the day of the consultation to do it, and for insurance to pay as much as they could. She will have to get the bottom ones on this week. She'll keep both on until December. I really had some remorse after doing it because she was in a lot of pain and really it's only 1 tooth we are trying to save, her teeth were already straight, she'll have to wear a retainer until all her adult teeth come in, AND this doesn't prevent her from needing a second set of braces afterwards.....but her regular dentist agreed it was the right decision too. Perhaps it will save her from having oral surgery and wearing them a shorter time both times.

--My girl had been asking for a fish for a few years now. She even wrote a paper at school that was a persuasive essay on how our family needed a fish. After reading her work I finally caved and said yes, she could get a fish. We went and picked it out, got all of the equipment, tank, rocks, and set it up.....and oh no....the fish died after two days. I dont remember it being that hard to keep a fish when I was growing up, don't you just put it in a bowl? We didn't do that of course, but aw man. After realizing what it would take to keep a fish she decided she didn't want to replace it. Probably a good decision.

--Their class got a pet hamster named Luna and she was so excited the teacher agreed to do it. There was a ball she got to run around in during class and overall they were having a lot of fun w/ her. And then....we get the email. Luna had gotten sick and didn't make it. I had to explain to my girl over spring break that Luna wouldn't be there when she got back to school. Thankfully she didn't cry. I'm hopeful that this is enough with pets for awhile.

--She's had a lot of struggles lately, but I'm hopeful that we are just in a valley and things will improve soon.

--She smells SO good. For some reason, she has always had this fresh, sweet smell and it is just amazing. sometimes I ask her to come over to me so I can hug her and just bury my head next to hers...and breathe deeply. ahhhhhh.

Like I said, lots of mish mosh of things....but I think something I'm learning w/ parenting is that there are lots of peaks and valleys. For some reason, I had this idea that things just sort of stay constant. I'm not sure why I even thought this....but in our house it just doesn't. Maybe in others' houses it does, but not ours. Guess i'm constantly learning.