pregnancy weight loss during pregnancy

Whew! Toddlers are no joke. And preschool? I have probably told you before, but I really felt that once the boys began school there would be a magical change that made life easier. That is a total myth. Little people, little problems; big people, big problems. The older they get, the more there is to deal with; Im beginning to see this. I suppose that is why so many people told me to enjoy that first year. What they should have said is, "You think this is hard now? Honey, just you wait."

We found our groove that first year with twins. There were difficult phases, of course, and my girlfriends can tell you I made many frantic phone calls, "Why arent they napping? Will the crying ever end?" But the crying did end. They did fall into a nap schedule. There was a good balance between the rhythm of the rest of the family and the pace of the toddlers.

Toddlers are complex little creatures. Much like a butterfly (or moth?) if you touch their wings, they cant fly anymore. They must do it themselves. They must learn, explore, discover on their own. They must learn to obey by obeying. They must learn to use utensils by using utensils. They must learn to color by coloring. As much as you want to assist, you cant. If you do assist, 1. they wont learn and 2. they will more than likely meltdown. (My mother swears my first words were, "Me do it!") One toddler is exhausting to deal with-- truly. Two toddlers? Lord, give me patience. While Im unloading the dishwasher, one toddler is trying to pull out the silverware and throw it on the floor and the other is attempting to climb on the train table.

Im halfway through Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman and, so far, I love it. Written by a mom of a singleton and twins, I do wish she would say exactly how to talk to my toddlers in a way that works. I do want to have time for my pleasures and to get ready. We have a sunroom for the childrens toys and we clean up their toys every night, keeping their space separate from our "adult time." We wait a beat before we jump up to help the boys. We have a strict "cadre" (frame) of behavior we expect from them (mealtimes, naptimes, house rules, and acceptable behaviors). I have the boys help me do household tasks, from cooking to cleaning. We eat our meals together at the table at the same time. And yet, the toddlers repeatedly throw in the house. Our preschooler struggles with self-entertaining. And all three of them have perfected their whine.

There are hints in this book, Bringing Up Bebe. She says a couple times that the French women tell their children, "I cannot pick you up right now because I am cooking," and if the child chooses to cry instead of listen, they let him cry. Or when they are taking care of multiple children, they tell the child, "I need to take care of your brother before I can help you." These small glimpses of what the book is suggesting make me feel that these French mothers with "astonishingly well-behaved children," according to the book description, deal with things head on from the beginning. They would rather deal with crying and frustration now as they build good habits instead of later when they will be breaking bad habits before they can enforce good ones (one of the main points of 12 Hours in 12 Weeks by Suzy Giordano). Perhaps we are on the right track, though it really doesnt feel like it.

Our biggest point of frustration is the evening "witching hour" (witching hour extending from 1830 to 2000). We have practically hit our breaking point on this one. On page 18 a Parisian mother tells the author, "For me, the evenings are for the parents... My daughter can be with us if she wants, but its adult time." Amen, sister. However, our evenings pretty much go like this:

1730 Family dinnertime
1800 Clean up dinner and kitchen
1830 Clean up the sunroom while kids "help" and argue over toys
1900 Start getting kids in jams while kids cry and try to run away
1915 Do Os nebulizer treatment while he cries and tries to get down
1920 Stop C and D from stealing Os toys as he does his nebulizer treatment
1930 D meltdown saying it isnt his bedtime when we tell him to put on jams and brush teeth
1945 C and O meltdown when they attempt to go in the locked sunroom; proceed to throw all toys out of toy bin in family living space
1950 Carry crying toddlers to cribs and attempt to say prayers and do story
2000 Read D stories and deal with his meltdown when he wants "one more story" and he "isnt tired"
2010 Lay on couch with hand over eyes while toddlers cry in cribs, wonder when we should go in to soothe (when? if?)

Sound like fun? It didnt start so bad. For awhile, the toddlers would get fussy around 1900. Our preschooler, perhaps in an attempt to get some of the parental attention, shortly followed suit. Then the toddlers started melting down at 1645... 1630... until we have this messy, crying time from after dinner to bedtime. Our preschooler isnt even playing during this time. He follows us from room to room tattling on his brothers and yelling at them, "No! No! No, baby!" Our toddlers arent playing. They are throwing toys, emptying toy bins, and yanking toys from each other. Occasionally an impromptu chasing game breaks out, usually ending with one of the toddlers sprinting into the corner of the table and our preschooler hollering, "I didnt do it!"

Supernanny? Pamela Druckerman? Suggestions?

So we are making ch-ch-changes. No more will an open bottle of wine be the wind under my wings in the evening. Nope. We are going to teach self-entertaining and reclaim our evenings. Page 124 states, "Im also struck by the nearly universal assumption that even good mothers arent at the constant service to their children, and that theres no reason to feel bad about that... In France, the dominant social message is that while being a parent is very important, it shouldnt subsume ones other roles." The other night, we talked about how we want our evenings to go instead.

Before we got into how the kids should be behaving, we talked about how we the adults wanted to spend the evening. We arent big news watchers (he reads the news on the computer and I get the New York Times) and we dont like the kids hearing those horrible news reports. We want to sit in the family room after we clean the kitchen and talk about our day, read stories with the kids, perhaps play games like we used to. We want to enjoy this family time.

Our boys are 4-years old and 20-months old. Our 4-year old is old enough to play with toys quietly or to do his Look and Find books on his own. These are reasonable expectations. It isnt our job to entertain him all day long and we definitely do not need to be on the floor instructing him with these games. Our 20-months old are a bit of a different story. Their attention spans are shorter and their impulses harder to ignore. They may know not to touch the dogs water, but if a toy accidentally falls in there, they will have a hard time walking away. Thats about the end of our knowledge on the subject. How do we get them to stop whining all evening?

We started cracking down on listening all day. When we say "No throwing," dont throw. When we say, "Sit on the couch," we mean sit on the couch. When we say, "Keep your hands to yourself," we mean keep your hands to yourself. We have D play by himself throughout the day, having him play with new Christmas toys in the privacy of his room. We get the toddlers to play in different areas of the house so they can stack blocks or do puzzles on their own. Im doing more skill building activities with them, like cooking or drawing pictures. They are learning to take instruction and achieve results. It hasnt exactly translated to the evening yet. Yesterday evening, D did play with his Finn McMissile in the family room while C and O each stacked their own block towers. We even achieved a rare moment of calm. Both the toddlers were snuggled under a blanket with me, our dog perched on top, and D was snuggled up with Daddy. We sat on the couch watching some football thing for several minutes before a toddler wildly shoved a toy in my eye as he attempted to sit himself up.

This is a work in progress.

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during pregnancy weight loss plan

 

 

First, to my momma, do not read this blog post.

For the rest of you, having your second (or second and third) child is not at all like having your first. Some things just are different. For the longest time with our first, I felt like we were "playing house." We had this little baby to dress up and bring places with us-- just dont drop him (for those of you who had to take care of "egg babies" in health class). When our next children arrived, we felt like we had the newborn thing down. We knew about late night feedings, nap schedules, and telling the grandparents--again-- that we do not want to put rice cereal in the bottle. (The confusing thing, for us, is that we had twins... a little different than having a singleton.) But we knew how to take care of a newborn and we knew what to expect from each newborn phase. Naturally, this made us actually enjoy some of the newborn phases. "Some" being the operative word. I cannot imagine anyone saying, "Wow, last night was a blast. Our newborns cried from 5 pm all the way until bedtime. It was a great time." We knew that those endless late night feedings were not actually forever, no matter how exhausting they were for the first couple months. We knew that eventually the newborn phase would be over and eventually just the simple act of laying a hand on their back wouldnt be as soothing as it was. When people told us to enjoy it now because it goes so fast, we agreed. I cant imagine how quickly the rest of their lives will go. Suddenly we have a four-year old. If four-years flew by, how quickly will ten? Fifteen? Twenty? Thirty? How does my mom feel with two daughters producing grandchildren? How does my granny feel holding her great-grand babies? It feels like yesterday we brought D home from the hospital. Now he is a big bad preschooler with two little brothers.

But other things are different as well. I remember taking D to the soft play area when he was a toddler. I walked next to him, helping him climb up the obstacles and down the slide. I made sure he didnt put anything unsavory in his mouth and sanitized his hands before he could touch his face. Fast forward to our play area trips now: a four-year old and two toddlers. While D is ripping his shoes off and running towards the slide, C is high tailing it to the climbing wall and O is attempting to eat every neglected shoe he can find. Meanwhile Im standing forgotten by the stroller holding the hand sanitizer. It just doesnt go according to plan anymore.

There is slew of other things. Not that I was ever exceptionally embarrassed when my child acted out in public, but now it takes a lot for me to feel embarrassed by our circus. There is, truly, only so much behavior that is within my control. Some things were so hard for me the first time around. For instance, the battles that toddlers will pick-- like, every battle they could possibly pick, they do. I didnt know why he wanted to make our day that much more difficult. Now I know toddlers just enjoy the fight. Weve also learned a lot about different strokes for different folks. What worked with our first, might not work for our second or third. Weve also learned that some of our boys are exceptionally stubborn (I have no clue where they got that from...). Weve also learned that some of our boys are exceptionally soft hearted, in some areas more than areas. While we have to sternly tell C and D "no" over and over again, telling O to please stop will do the trick.

This is the part that I really dont want my mom to read. Sometimes we just want to enjoy their childhood. We know how fast they go from toddler to preschooler now. Sometimes we just want to bask in the total outrageousness of toddlerhood, even if that means throwing some of the rules out the window. No, they cant throw in the house, but, tonight, he just looks so darn cute chucking the jingle bell ornament he stole off the Christmas tree... Its even slid over to our parenting of D. We love the things he says, his little views of the world, how he feels about things. Sometimes we would rather ignore the clock and let him talk the night away. (Dont get ideas that we dont enforce law and order. I said sometimes.)

There have been many ah-ha moments along this journey from adolescence to adulthood when I realized why my parents made the decisions they did. My parents still call my youngest sister "the baby," something us three older siblings roll our eyes at. As a child, I often felt this was totally, 100% unfair. To this day, I am convinced that while I was in school, my grandmother and mother were out spoiling my youngest sister. (I swear she had a new toy every time I came home.) Now Im the mom. Maybe my granny did dedicate her time to buying my youngest sister ToysRUs. I dont know, but I really dont care. I know why she did. Childhood is fleeting. It is here one minute and gone the next.

Everyday I have to let go a little more, let my oldest test the world around him a little more, assert himself a little more. I was the mom that cried, "Hes going to be going away to college soon!" when he took his first steps. It feels just around the corner, him becoming a man, not needing me to kiss every owie and boo-boo. What happens when my kisses dont make it all better? Or he doesnt sigh deeply and walk up to me whining, "Momma, I want cuddles..."? Im not ready to let that all go yet. I dont know when I will be. For now, I want to enjoy childhood. Lets play dress up and spoil the kids. Lets turn a blind eye on really long afternoons, let them stay up on a Friday night for a Christmas special. Lets have popcorn and cheese sticks for lunch. Lets hug it out and lay on the floor talking about what we want to be when we grow up.

But, whatever we do, lets not grow up yet.

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