The inchworm

The word Keith would use for it is stubborn. He says it is because he is like me, and on one hand, I think that is the right way to look at it, but somehow it seems different to me as well.

Jack has always been his own person. You think you are going to have a child and imagine them into a certain way of being, but very often that is not how it happens. To some this can be a disappointment. I wouldn't say it has been, however, for me. It has taken some acceptance on my part and has led me to search for ways to parent the person Jack is instead of the person I might have thought he would be, so I guess in a way that is a very positive thing.

Since we moved here, we have been doing gymnastics. He has taken gymnastics since he was two in several locations, and he has always loved it. Really, it is just an energy burner, I am not expecting him to learn flips or leaps or anything of that sort. When he was two the class was pretty gender neutral, but the older he gets, the harder it gets, and then it seems, more and more geared toward little girls. He has always hated the bar at any gymnastics. When he was littler he would tell me it "hurt his tummy." Now he just refuses to do it at all. At his new class, they also do a lot of stuff on the beam. Since this was new to him, he sort of tried walking on it once. That was the end of that, and now he refuses to do it at all as well. So the last hour I spent at the gym watching him, he did about 10 minutes of stretching and warm-up, then about 5 minutes of jumping up and tumbling onto a block and running down a path. After that, the class spent about 20 minutes on the bars, which he just stubbornly shook his head a firm "no" any time they said it was his turn, and then 15 minutes on the beam, which he also refused to participate in at all.

I have always sort of had a hard time with where to go from here. I am tempted to step in and pressure him to try something that he might not want to do at first, lest he enjoy it once he tried. I know from experience that the harder you push with him, the harder he'll push back. So, I try to just not bother with it at all. I don't really care if he does it anyway, if I think about it like that. So I ask him, "Did you have fun at gymnastics?" He says, "Yes mommy." "Do you want to go back?" "Yes mommy." Well then, okay.

Yesterday was our first swimming lesson. It was interesting too, in the same way. He is very afraid of having his face in the water, and swimming is different from gymnastics to me in that it is important to me that he learn it. The teacher calls the kids over, and they get started without much fanfare. We had already done swimming in the summer and it had been a bit of a battle, and he had been in quite a battle of wills with his teacher then too. This time, the teacher tells him flat out, "Look, if you don't want to do something, you don't have to do it. Just say no and that will be the end of it." I raise my eyebrows, knowing my son, but sit back to watch. Two of the six kids can already full on swim underwater from the beginning. When it comes his turn to put his face in, he won't go for it. The teacher handles it well, asking him twice then moving on. Then the kids are supposed to push off from the wall underwater and swim about 5 feet. No dice. Next is the back float. He hates that too and I'm expecting another refusal. Timidly, he reaches for the man, and does a great attempt at a back float. I'm surprised but happy with this small concession.

This is the kind of progress that gets made with him, and the kind of slow going that has to be celebrated. You have to keep your eyes open wide, or you might miss it altogether. But, when it comes so rarely, the joy you feel about the littlest accomplishments can be amazing. It's only one back float, but it's a step.

Precious Sleep

It seems babies are being born all around lately, and it had me thinking about sleep, even before last night. You see, I don't exactly have the kinds of babies that like to sleep much. They are more like the kinds of newborns that like to eat. Jack didn't sleep through the night til he turned one. Sam was like an alarm clock at night, 12:05, 2:05, 4:05, 6:05. He ate every two hours, and I had to feed him. Especially with Sam, the newborn crazy eating phase was hard on me because Keith was gone and I was tired at night, and still had to get up and actually be human in the mornings for Jack. I have to say that in consideration of having a third child ever, one of the things I think of most is, "Ahh, the endless night wakings, I don't know if I can do that again." For some reason, though, it is almost impossible to feel any anger or contempt toward a small human, at least for me, for waking you up to nurse in the night, because they are just so tiny and innocent and you know they are hungry so you just do it and don't even really seethe about it later. That is not so much the case, however, if I get woken up now.

I am a mean mommy if someone wakes me up. I have a decent amount of patience in the daylight hours, but if one of my kids, especially one that is four, is annoying me in the night I might not be so nice at all. And you see, Jack is not at all a conventional sleeper. He still naps most days, and he sleeps through the night and all and doesn't have accidents so I can't complain about his sleeping too much. It has just become SUCH A pain to get him to go to sleep at night. He has a reliable bedtime routine but it just that you do that and he is still in no way drowsy and about to go to bed or even about to stay in his bed. He wants to sleep on the ground, and preferably the ground outside of our bedroom.


It drives me nuts that he won't stay in his bed. I honestly do feel sorry for him if he is "scared" like he says he is, of the dark, of bugs, of monsters or of anything. I was the most scared of the dark kid ever so I get that. I just want him to GO TO SLEEP so I can GO TO SLEEP MYSELF. I'm selfish like that.

Last night, we miraculously got both our kids down to bed at 6:30 and they went to sleep (I have been trying playing music in Jack's room for the last two nights and so far it has been keeping him in bed). They were SO EXHAUSTED and Jack had had no nap and that isn't so early for Sam on a regular basis. One of my favorite neighbors in Okinawa had her kids to bed every night at 6:30 pm (at 4 1/2 and 1) and we were all always extremely jealous when she was outside drinking tea and it was still daylight and we still had hours of kids going to bed routines to be done. So anyway, we were all proud of ourselves that Jack went to sleep in his bed for the first time in like forever and we even watched TV alone.

Ahh, you knew that we were in for it, didn't you? In the middle of the night Jack came in our bedroom and started sleeping on our floor. He often drags his pillow and blanket in and we don't hear him. So, Keith gets up at like 1:30 am to go to the bathroom and doesn't know Jack is there and thus steps on his face. This DID NOT go over well if you can imagine. Jack is awoken by his face being stepped on and was pissed to the highest order. Keith held him and calmed him down and he finally laid back down on his pillow. As he was drifting off to sleep, I would like to note that he said, "I am going to HIT mommy IN HER FACE when she wakes up!" Umm, excuse me? What did mommy do here?

So, about 3:01 am Sam starts crying. After ten minutes Keith is saying "What are we going to do with the baby?" I can ignore kids crying a lot longer than he can. So he gets milk and feeds him and we give him Tylenol b/c he is teething and carry Jack back to his bed so Sam doesn't wake him up too. After about 10 minutes Sam is fed, diapered, and chilled out. So we put him back in bed. Freak out city again, screaming. This lasts for the next two hours. Once we get him calmed down each time he will be happy as day in the dark in our bed, playing peek-a-boo with the covers, pointing out balls in the shadows, etc. But don't go put him back or heaven help you.

So, at about 10 til five am I kick Keith out of the bedroom, because he will not be able to sleep through the crying and I am so tired I know I probably will be able to. So Keith goes to the couch and I put Sam back and he cries about ten minutes and goes to sleep.

So from the hours of 1-5:30 am we probably slept about an hour. It just isn't pretty. This is the same way you feel in the mornings with a newborn and I don't have fond memories of feeling this weary when you have a whole day of kids to weather. The difference is at this age, I do sort of blame them.

Well, we did the movie thing

As I have previously discussed, Jack is scared of the movies. More specifically, he is scared of the movie THEATER, because he is more than a little obsessed with the kind of movies that come in "suitcases" (read, DVD cases) and can be watched at home. We have discussed why he is scared of the movie theater with him countless times without getting too far. He says it is (a) too dark (b) too loud and (c) too scary. I am figuring a and b must lead him to c.

This has been going on for quite a while and we finally decided to MAKE him to see a movie even though he didn't want to at all. So, this weekend, Keith, Mimi and I took him to see Wall-E in San Antonio. I had read that it had no dialogue for the first thirty minutes so I thought it would be perfect since he'd have time to ease into the whole "too loud" thing.

Before we even got in the door, he tried to make a run back to the van. Keith ran and caught him, and I carried his 43 lbs in and through the snack line. The snack had been one of our main bribes and was a total bust as he didn't care at all and was too scared at that point and upset to even really choose his own candy.

Keith had brought these HUGE headphones that block out noise that are from when his dad was in the Marine Corps in the late 70s early 80s. I cannot at all explain them and wish I had taken a picture. Trust me they were ENORMOUS and if you had seen Jack you would have thought he was nuts. We also carried in the following things... three beanie babies, one of the grandparents dogs' blankets, and one stuffed duck. If I had a picture of Jack and all of these things in the headphones it would make this post so much better, but it was too stressful to take a picture at that juncture.

So, Jack starts screaming during the snack checkout and I tell Keith we are going into the theater. I attempt to go in and sit down. Jack has his head burrowed into my chest and is carrying all his stuff. Once we get into the dark theather he starts full-fledged crying and talking loud/screaming. "Let's GOOOOOOOOOO" is a common refrain, as well as "NOOOOOOOOO!!", "I don't want it!", "I don't like the movie theater", and my favorite as well as the one that made me feel the most guilty "Let's get out of HERE!!!!" After about three minutes of this that felt like about thirty, I left the theater with him. We sat on a bench for a while outside the theater while I came to the realization that one of the main problems here was that Jack wasn't sucking his thumb. He had both hands over his ears the whole time so he didn't have a free hand to suck. I tried to convince him to put the military headphones on again but no dice.
F I N A L L Y after a lot of work I got him back in there with one hand over his ear myself, one of his hands over the other ear, and his other thumb in his mouth.

For the first fifteen minutes he watched nothing at all and had his eyes closed and ears covered. For the next thirty minutes after that he watched out of the side of his eyes while only partially having his head buried in my shirt. Finally, I turned him around and he watched the rest from Keith or my lap, still having his hands over his ears.

Afterwards, he was back up to his regular Jack persona, saying things like "I love Wall-E!" and "He is my favorite rol-a-bot." We asked him if he wanted to go to another movie sometimes and he said, "Well, no thanks."

This is what success looks like people.