Best Laid Plans

Dan and I decided to have a business meeting (as much as you can call us scribbling away at notepads and drinking coffee a business meeting) at an indoor playground yesterday.

In hindsight, I do not recommend it.

One grumpy one year old, and one hyperactive three year old (that has no concept of fear whatsoever) combined with the rainy weather of the last week causing everyone and their dog to have the same idea to bring the kids to play and get the sillies out of them. Lets just say none of it did much to help productivity.

But Declan playedran around like a headless chook and Connor got to eat a cupcake, so I’m fairly certain they considered it a raving sucess.

And Breathe.

The festivities are over for another year and we came out of it relatively unscathed.

Once again I learned the hard lesson that the kids really couldn’t care less about whether the honeycomb set properly, whether the tags matched the wrapping paper or whether we left out oats or carrots for Rudolf. They (and my husband) care more about having a sane wife and mother instead of me stressing out because one silver ribbon is more metallic than the other.

Fortunately I got my meltdown out of the way on Christmas eve, allowing us to have a fairly calm Christmas day in the heat with Dan’s family. Christmas morning was a little overwhelming for Declan, meaning he refused to take a nap before we left for my in law’s house for lunch and more pressies. Before the seafood was even served he was crashed out on the rug and snoring.

I know officially I should probably be bothered by having Christmas lunch without my eldest, but eating an entire meal without getting up and running around to tend to his every whim was probably the greatest Christmas miracle ever, it’s amazing how much better food tastes when it’s fresh.

Now we’ve had a few days off and it’s back into the swing of things. Bring on 2010!

Not Such A Happy Christmas

Last night was Declan’s Preschool Christmas Pageant. He’s been practicing the songs for weeks, he had the actions down perfectly and spent all Friday afternoon telling me about Santa coming to visit preschool that evening. The whole family was excited about it and we’d even dragged the in laws along for the event.

I’m sure you can guess how the evening went.

I wasn’t prepared for how packed it would be, you would have thought we were attending Elvis’ comeback tour. I went into a full blown anxiety attack before we’d even got to the gates.

The PreSchool owner got up on the little stage to welcome everyone, and with a crack of thunder the heavens opened, it continued to rain for the entirety of the kids’ songs.

Not that it mattered of course, because Declan refused to get up on stage with the other kids, he wasn’t having bar of it, not even with the coaxing of his teacher. Instead he gave us our own performance under the shelter of the veranda, including some awesome Thriller-esque moves.

We were meant to wait for Santa in the individual classrooms, which Declan did great at, right up until other people came into the classroom. Seeing his room packed with the legs of people he didn’t know lead to another meltdown. No amount of promising that Father Christmas would arrive soon was enough to calm him down and we were out of there before you could say Rudolf.

No pageant, no raffle winnings, no visit with Santa.

Seriously. I made cupcakes for this and everything.

Still Trying To Send Me To An Early Grave

Yesterday Declan had a seizure at preschool. He was full of the joys of spring when I dropped him off. Three hours later we got a phone call saying to come in immediately as he’d started having convulsions during lunch.

For some reason it shook me up a lot more than the previous ones have, of course excepting the first. The ladies at preschool did a fabulous job, and I don’t doubt their capabilities for a second, but the mama bear in me keeps on thinking about how my little boy was scared and sick and I wasn’t there for him.

This morning he was once again completely fine, we played in the garden (when I took this photo), he helped me hang up the laundry, he got told off for picking my flowers. A completely average day… right up until at dinner time when he collapsed on the chair next to him, rolled his eyes into the back of his head and once again started convulsing.

He goes from being completely fine, then comes the fever and within an hour hes having another seizure. It’s reaching a point where I’m scared to be alone with him just in case it happens, I know how to deal with it, but I don’t think there is anyway I would remain as calm as Dan does whilst he treats him.

I just want my babe to be healthy and well. Not to have me hovering over him because I’m scared of what could happen if he gets too hot. I want him to be normal.

The Shrine Of Disney

Before I had kids I promised a lot of things, no dummies (lasted 6 days!), no crazy flashing light up musical toys (my eldest wasn’t even born before we started collecting them!) and a minimal amount of characters.

I’m not sure what my issue with characters is. I think partially it’s the difference between a $11 pair of generic shoes and the $25 that can be spent on the same pair with a picture of Spiderman on. It’s also the thought of turning my child into a walking billboard, I don’t want him advertising for Disney or Nickelodeon or whoever. Primarily I think it’s just bitterness at asking for an Ariel doll one Christmas in my childhood and receiving a generic redhead mermaid doll, hell, if I didn’t have it then my kids can’t either. Santa had a lot to answer for that year.

As with all good intentions it has slowly dissolved. The boys have an older cousin, he’s just over two years older than Declan and my sister in law’s  last child, so most of Declan’s clothes for the first two years off his life (until he caught up size wise with my tiny nephew) were hand me downs. I’m not a complete idiot, so I’m not going to take someone’s generous gift of clothes and say “Actually, no thanks, they have Thomas The Tank Engine on them” and hand them back, so things started creeping into his wardrobe that way. Anything I bought new for Declan back then either featured generic images or was completely plain.

Then Dan and I discovered, through my nephew’s clothes, how much easier it made everything, a battle to put on the “blue pyjamas” turned into sheer excitement and even a rush to the bedroom when we said “time to put on your Thomas pyjamas”. Suddenly all the arguing about getting dressed eased as I slowly started slipping in character vests and pyjamas  – of course, nothing that would be seen outside of the house, because then he’d be back to walking billboard status.

Then my baby became a toddler, and then my toddler became a preschooler with a mind of his own. We now can’t walk through a store without him pointing out every single character he can see – and we don’t even have a television! He watches a minimal amount of shows and yet somehow everything gets sucked in. Dan had a picture of Batman as his desktop background for a month or so, and well, if Daddy thinks it’s cool then it’s probably awesome, he’s never watched any form of Batman, the movies, the TAS, even the old campy version, and yet it’s still so firmly engraved in his brain that it’s the most awesome thing EVER and so he must have anything and everything that features the caped crusader.

We went into Big W for some shoes today, we walked out with a Batman vest, a Roary vest, a Spiderman t-shirt and a Lightening McQueen hat, come night time Declan unpacked them and took them all to bed with him. We have no shoes because Dan and I started to argue, Dan (and Declan) wanted the Spiderman shoes, I wanted the generic We both refused to back down and ended up walking out of there with everything but something to put on the kid’s feet.

Dan’s argument, which I can understand, is that this is basically the first time we’ve bought him an entire wardrobe of clothes, with absolutely no hand me downs, so he should get clothes that he wants and loves.

My argument is that this is the first time we’ve bought him an entire wardrobe of clothes, and I’d rather not spend twice the amount because they have Lightening McQueen on the front.

Cue standstill. Dan says I have to be less of a tightarse, I say Dan has to pander less to what his two year old wants.

Do we give him what he wants and so keep this enthusiasm for his clothes and getting dressed still strong, or do I say “Sorry kid, Best & Less only from now on, say goodbye to Ironman.”?

I say we swap our son for a child with a little less fashion awareness. He couldn’t care less about branded toys over generic ones or duvet covers with XYZ on them,  just the clothes. I thought I had another ten years before I would have to deal with such self-awareness!

My Kid Is Awesome

Declan announced, right as we were doing the whole “give Daddy a kiss and say goodnight routine” that he had to draw a picture before he went to bed. One thing I have learned from raising my spirited child is to pick and chose my battles. He already had a pen in hand so I grabbed him some paper from the printer and said that he could draw one picture but then it was time for bed, he told us that he would draw Daddy and got stuck in.

The above picture is what he came up with, complete with hair and beard, and the most recent addition to his drawings, a nose! It may not make him the next Dali or Picaso, but I think it’s pretty damn awesome.

The One Where My Eldest Takes Another Ten Years Off My Life

A few months ago Declan was sick, running a high fever and climbed into my lap for some cuddles. Literally the moment he settled there his arms bolted out from his body, his neck lost all tension and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

The following hours after that are a blur, just fuzzy images in my head. Getting angry at the emergency line operator because I was calling from a mobile so she made me confirm our address three times, looking at my little boy’s body on the floor and seeing blood pooling from his mouth, watching Dan cry because our son was just a limp body on the floor.

The only thing that remains clear in my mind is when I looked down to see his head tip backwards and his eyes roll to being completely white. That image is burned into my mind. I had nightmares about it for weeks after wards and I still do occasionally when I’m stressed out or having a hard time with something.

The seizure was a febrile convulsion, just the brain’s way of dealing with excessive heat from a fever, the way it was explained to us was that the body works out what is briefly expendable so it can focus on stopping the fever, and so shuts off the brain for a couple of minutes. Now, I know I’m a little underqualified here, but if I was the body this probably wouldn’t be my way of doing things, I’d shut off the appendix, the spleen or maybe one of the kidneys for a few minutes, but not the brain. It sounds like overkill to me, but who am I to argue with evolution? Declan is apparently susceptible to them, which, for the record, is entirely Dan’s fault, as he also had them regularly until the age of five. Once again this is just another point in my argument for demanding full medical history from any man you even think about breeding with, or even have sex with, just incase. My next husband I shall vet more thoroughly.

Today Declan went from waking up fine that morning to burning up before lunchtime, he was given Nurofen to drop the fever and we tried to get him in a cool bath but he now knows the routine so I think we would have had more luck (and less injuries) shaving a cat. Around midday he was walking over to my armchair when it happened, his arms flew out to the sides, his eyes rolled to white, his body went stiff that he just fell backwards as though you’d toppled a domino. He cracked his head on the tiled floor and immediately snapped out of the seizure, obviously his body decided that to deal with his pain the brain was probably pretty important right at that moment. I was just happy that I was soothing a child who was upset because he’d hit his head rather than one that was upset and frightened because his body had started spasming uncontrollably.

But I still saw his eyes roll, and saw his body briefly lose control, I still felt that moment of sheer terror, and once again, every time I close my eyes that vision is back. I don’t think there is anything more scary than the thought of losing a child. Not until I gave birth did I realise how much these boys would change me and my life, the thought of not having either of them in my life any longer completely turns my blood cold. I love them with every last bit of me, but I dread to think how many years each of these episodes have knocked off of my life, let alone how many grey hairs they’ve added to my skull.

You Call It Preschool, I Call It Freedom!

Declan officially started preschool last Monday, I now have two days a week where I can experience the freedom of not having three foot of trouble hanging around my knees constantly. I spent the first day sobbing, the second day I was uneasy, but happy about how much he was enjoying himself, by the time yesterday hit I was delighted to ship him off to play with his friends and finger paint. As much as I love having him around, it’s like I’ve gained back a piece of me for two days a week. I have rediscovered so many joys since that first day, like peeing without an audience and eating food without having to share. If this keeps up I might even be able to do something really crazy, like take a bath ALONE!

Declan loves it, and by Thursday each week he’s already asking whether it’s time to go back to school. The ladies that teach his class keep on telling me how wonderful he is, how well he plays with the other children, how smart he is. I partially want them to see him at home stealing toys from his brother and slamming doors in my face because I’ve done something abusive and highly damaging, like telling him he can’t have a second cookie, but I also don’t want to ruin their image of how fab they think he is.

As nice as it is to get the break, it’s magic to pick him up, hear him scream “MUMMY!” and come pelting down the steps from the wendy house. He’ll run around the classroom and show me what he painted, and what he played with and tell me how wonderful it all was. His mouth is moving too fast for me to keep up and his enthusiasm is seeping from every pore in his body, it’s wonderful.

Scabs, Lies and Videotape

Declan has recently discovered the joy of picking scabs, not one to deprive him of such pleasure I haven’t got massively out of my way to stop him – he’s the kind of kid that if I say no will just get even more excited about whatever activity I’ve banned him from. That is until I realised that this scab has been sitting on his knee for over a month now, barely being given a chance to heal before my son gets his little fingernails under it and rips it off delighting in the blood running down his leg. Ick.

The blood was there this morning, so I asked him whether he’d been picking, knowing full well the answer.

His face was sheepish, but his voice told another story, a flat out “no!” with a tone that was trying to tell me just how shocked he was by my accusation.

“Are you sure?” I asked him.

“Yes!” he said defiantly, then he bowed his head realising that the game was up “No… but you shouldn’t pick scabs.”

I don’t know whether to be shocked that he’s trying out lying to get out of something (particularly something that really isn’t going to get him into trouble) or to delight in the fact that yet another piece of his psyche has been formed, the part that will one day lead to him telling his teacher that his little brother ate his homework. It might not be the kind of thing the average parent jots down in a baby book, but ever so slowly the layers on my toddler are building up and turning him into a child, one that will one day be a teen and then eventually an adult.

I just hope that he doesn’t chose to take up a career as a lawyer, after folding that easily I don’t see him getting very far.

Twelve Months On

My baby boy turned one year old on Saturday.

One year since he shot out of my vag looking like a member of the Blue Man Group and entered the world.

One year since he was whisked off to the NICU before I’d seen him, with Dan following promising to return with a photo.

One year since I told Dan that he must have photographed the wrong baby because “my baby isn’t Asian!”.

One year since I learned that jaundice and swollen eyes from birth canal trauma can do funny things to your baby’s face.

One year of learning and growing and winding his older brother up

And yet it feels like he’s been in our lives forever. Not in an “oh god, when will this annoying house guest ever leave?” way, more in the way that he filled a hole that we weren’t even aware was there.

I’ve learned in the last twelve months just how different children can be. Declan and Connor have been raised in exactly the same way, and yet you couldn’t find two children less alike. My eldest will leap off a platform twice his height and just hopes that he lands well, whereas Connor will cling to you if you take the corner too fast whilst you’re carrying him to the bedroom. Declan will bounce off walls and demands constant amusement, Connor is quite happy to sit and take in the world. Declan started walking at nine months old and woe betide anyone who wanted him to sit down and chill out, Connor has only recently started to crawl and will happily sit down and cuddle with anyone that asks.

I love Declan with every piece of me, just as I love The Conman, but my entire pregnancy I was petrified of having two of him, two kids with that level of energy and gusto would have flattened me. From day one Connor was a different baby, he still has the stubborn streak that his brother has, and believe me, if he doesn’t approve of something, he’ll let you know, but he’s not the hellbeast that Declan was, and to an extent, still is. He’s calm, he’s quietly determined and he loves human touch. He is my little boob monster, my bed buddy in the mornings when he wakes up and wants cuddles, my living garbage disposal that will eat anything that looks like it might have at one stage been edible. The telly holds no interest for him, but he’s very aware of the world around him, and his play focuses more on mimicry, probably because he takes so much in.

I’m not sure how he’ll grow up, I’ve always said that Connor’s my rugby player and his brother is the soccer star, based soley on their build. I think he will be athletic and I think his silent resolve will get him further in certain elements of life than his brother’s brash way of taking on the world, I also think if he keeps on eating in the way he currently is we’re going to have to add extra suspension to the car.

So happy birthday my little Conman, thank you for filling that gap in our lives that we didn’t know we had, thank you for teaching your brother that he isn’t the centre of the universe and for teaching me that not everything is my fault, but that every baby is different from the next

And if you could walk sometime before college, that would be awesome.

Love always,

Mummy xxx