12/16/06 Gabriel and Julian go to a Holiday Party

I picked Gabriel and Julian up at Tonya's today from Sleepover, but first, we stayed for Tonya's Christmas party. Santa was supposed to show up to give out gifts, but cancelled, so Tonya's daughters did the honors.

Gabriel got a Darth Vader Mr. PotatoHead set, and Julian got a take-apart truck (which was of great interest to Gabriel too, unfortunately). Katrina stayed at home with Dad, for once not having to be roused out of a comfy nap to get dragged around after her brothers.

At one point, I said something to Gabriel about Santa coming to the party, and Gabriel asked, "you mean the real one?!"

The boys were in true form back at home, with Julian being edgy and Gabriel being a major pest. But we got it under control when we got Julian up for a nap, and Dave took Gabriel out shopping for a birthday present for Julian. This is another problem with Julian's awful birthday date -- normally it'd be fun to shop for him, but combined with Christmas-shopping crowds, and common toys being out of stock, it's no fun. This is why I sent Dave to do the dirty work!

Katrina photos from yesterday, a short experimental shoot.



















She had me up twice last night, which I've gotten un-used to! Lately it's been just once a night, but of course I always know things can change. I also don't sleep well with her right next to me because she's a very noisy and agitated sleeper, and every little peep or snuffle sets off the Mom-smoke-detector in my head and wakes me up. She's a very wiggly baby, rarely just sitting and relaxing in your lap, always moving her limbs. And even when asleep, she's in constant motion.

I've been experiencing a new guilt about being an older mom. For some reason, this bothers me more with a daughter than sons, I guess because I think she'll care more. I remember watching my mother as a little girl, and adoring her as a beautiful angel, the one to look up to and be like, whose perfume I'd wear someday (Fiji!), whose clothes I'd wear, who was my model as the perfect woman (the innocent days before girls looked up to starving supermodels, I guess). But how can Katrina look at me like that, when I'll be more of a grandmotherly figure? Later, she'll miss out on years of having her mother in her life, as an active, independent, close family member to visit and talk to and be with. Instead, I'll be an elderly parent to care for. When she's my age, I'll be pushing **90** !! Even now, I feel the tug of wanting to be a grownup, of seeing my golden years not far on the horizon -- a very different phase of life than nursing a 10-week-old baby. Gabriel and Julian...somehow, I just don't imagine that they're going to care or think about it the same way. Perhaps that's sexist of me.

I know it's silly to fret about it, because of all things in life I can do little about, it's my age. Everyone assures me that people live longer, healthier lives now, and especially me since I've always been committed to exercise and have a lot of energy. But if anything will age me fast, it's my kids!

12/16/06

12/15/06 Sleepover

Sleepover night -- no boys today and tonight!

So, dinner & a movie tonight.

And baby oogling.

But, no fighting. No throwing. No rude talk. No screaming. No crying. No messes.

Just peace.

ahh.

There will be h*ll to pay tomorrow.

12/15/06

12/14/06 Technology

Our Internet connection has stunk for a few weeks now! It hangs up for a few seconds to a few minutes, and ping tests show dropped packets during those hangups. Comcast has been here and verified that there's no inside wiring problem, and referred our complaint to "network". Meaning, black hole.

So, we ordered DSL yesterday. Ironic!

Now that we have a new phone/answering system, I ordered Caller ID and Call Waiting Caller ID. I love this! Why have we lived this long without it?! I'll be call-screening a whole lot less now. Turns out, my cordless headset phone that I've had for years supports Caller ID.

Gabriel: Great today. He asked me tonight if he gets a gold star, and I said yes. He doesn't need to actually see a gold star, he's happy with just being told that he earned one.

Gabriel spent much of the afternoon working on a fairly difficult puzzle, taking his characteristic order to a new level. First, he started with the upper left corner and then put all the edge pieces in place clockwise until he had the outline. Then, he filled in the inner pieces in the same order, solving the puzzle in a spiral pattern. I swear, that kid....

Julian: Decent today. Darling in music class, and very agreeable about a living-room nap this afternoon. A real pest later when it was time for him to leave the office, and he got in big trouble for grabbing some papers off Dave's desk and "tossing" them.

Katrina: Perfect. Her long stretch of sleep was from 11pm to 5am last night, yay! I took her and Julian to the Y's Childwatch, and left her there awake. She didn't fuss much, and went to sleep in a swing. She was fascinated and completely adorable at music class, then napped much of the afternoon. When awake, she was all beams and smiles. She's stopped crying in the bath, and loves it when I float her around the bathtub ("floaties," holding up her head). She sure is a wiggly baby though, rarely relaxing and snuggling on my shoulder, full of vim and vigor. (What is vim, anyway? I could use some!)

I absolutely HATE having to rouse Katrina when she's just settled in for a comfy long nap, for the 5 minutes it takes to pick up Gabriel from pre-K. I just need someone here for a few minutes, but instead I have to disrupt both Katrina and Julian. The days I pick Julian up at 5:30pm, I often have the same problem twice. This poor baby gets run around like crazy, and that's with me pretty much staying home after 2pm or so.

Julian too -- he was happily working on a puzzle, for nearly an hour, when I had to drag him away today to get Gabriel. Without Gabriel around to distract him, Julian's concentration on a single task is remarkable for an-almost-3-year-old. It's easy to forget that when you live with an attention span and focus like Gabriel's though.

No photos today, again. How did that happen?!

12/14/06

12/13/06 All healed

Today I had one final OB appointment, to check on my surgery incision. Amazing how fast things heal without foreign objects! Though the incision is still visible, it's not painful and is much smaller. Finally, I can really put the whole pregnancy and its physical aftermath behind me.


At the doctor's office, I found something interesting on the wall. What's that? A photo of me and Katrina?! No, just a mirror. It was entertaining trying to keep the camera out of the picture.


Katrina in a beautiful toile-like outfit, a gift from Dave's former manager and his wife. Unfortunately, baby was tired and grumpy at the time, so no cute faces.

Katrina technically slept through the night again, if you count 11:30 - 6am as "through the night."

Tonya kept Julian all day, so I had a nice relaxed afternoon with Gabriel, welcome after a hectic morning of cleaners, painters, and appointments. Gabriel and I set up the lights on the Christmas tree, as well as the mantle garland and the few other paltry decorations we have.

At one point, out of the blue, he told me, "I love it when you call me 'hugabug' Mom!" 'Hugabug' is my nickname for him. We got talking about nicknames, and he asked me what my nickname is. I told him that he can make one up, and he said, "Ok...Basket!" Yeah, Basket Case is more like it.

We took a "pajama trip" to Redwood City to drop Dave's car off at the "car doctor" for scheduled maintenance tonight, meaning all three kids were bathed and in pajamas for the ride there and back. That made us think: when my car needs service, we'll have to figure out how to make Dave's car work for all three kids. But we will. To think, we were shopping SUVs and even looked at a minivan when we knew we were going to have three carseats, thinking it was impossible to get three carseats into the Outback. Not only did we do it, but Betsy even found carseats narrow enough to squeeze two of them (Sunshine Kids Radian 65), plus an infant seat into the back of her Saturn wagon, one of the few wagons even narrower than my Outback. So we'll figure it out.

Last music class tomorrow.

12/13/06

12/13/06 Yoga Day

I went to a yoga class this morning at the Y!

It was a lot different than prenatal yoga. I think partly because it's at the Y and not at a yoga studio, it was lighthearted, the teacher cracked jokes, and there wasn't any spiritual stuff or scented mists or bell chiming or Oms or anything. He teaches it very technically, which I like.

Still, yoga is about concentration, breathing and relaxing; none of which I could do well when the class ended at 11:40am. I knew that Katrina was running out of time in the Childwatch, and I still had to get home, give Julian lunch, nurse Katrina, call Carol Capper, take a shower, and maybe eat something myself -- all before picking Gabriel up at 1pm! Not conducive to letting my mind go.

I left the yoga class early to go to the fitness area to do a more intensive workout. "Intense" in my poor shape means I have to really work hard to last 5 minutes running on a treadmill. Blah. Still, doing weights, abs and stretching felt great because of the 50 minutes of yoga.

My friend Carol Capper has a swing she wanted to get rid of, so I picked it up after picking Gabriel up from pre-K.

Yesterday, I had a horrifying moment that made me want to find something else to put Katrina in when I'm in the kitchen. Gabriel was playing on the couch, and Katrina was in the bouncer on the floor in the family room. I left the kitchen for a minute or two, and came back to find a pillow over Katrina's face. Gabriel had been playing some game of putting a pillow on her head and it fell. The shock that rings through your body when you see a pillow on your baby's face...it was awful. I thought I could trust Gabriel around her, but clearly I can't. It wasn't malicious, just stupid 4-year-old stuff.

After I gathered myself, I talked to him very seriously, without getting angry, about never, ever putting anything on baby's face. He still got mad at me and acted pissy for about an hour.

It so happened that Carol offered me the swing the same day, and I quickly accepted. But, the swing wasn't inside for two minutes before I remembered why our last swing got little use: it's greatly fascinating to older kids, who will swing it, pull on it, climb it, play with the buttons, and generally create numerous hazards to a baby. I suspect I'll only be able to use it when the boys aren't around.

Julian needs a haircut.


His hair is getting mop-toppy, though I think it's pretty cute. I took a few experimental photos of him with a light right behind him -- one of the few times I actually prefer the flash version of the photo!

And look at those lips...I've always thought he has a gorgeous mouth.

I've found a way to sometimes break Gabriel out of one of his stupid states, whether it's being unbearably rude, or his new "victim" state (in which he creates a scenario to scream and cry and say he wants something): the camera! I haven't been able to take any video of him following me around being rude, because he runs away as soon as I pull out the camera. Yay! Today, taking pictures got him goofing around on my chair got him out of victim mode after a timeout.

The painters are here. This will mean many more days of contractors traipsing around the house, Julian not taking naps upstairs, having to keep the family room clear, no privacy, much noise...but it's the last big thing before we're down to nits. Is it possible we'll actually, finally, move back upstairs?! I'm starting to forget we ever did live up there.

12/12/06

12/11/06 Katrina "sleeps through the night"

Technically, Katrina slept through the night last night! "Technically" is the keyword here, because being woken up at 5am is still being woken up.

Still, last night, my 9-week-old baby slept from about 9pm to 5am, a solid 9 hours. A fluke? I don't think so. She won't necessarily do that every night, but she's been pretty consistent about only waking up once, or twice if you count 11pmish, and mostly going right back to sleep. I haven't had to pace her around in the wee hours in weeks!

I've been jotting down the time she nurses, because I'm so discombobulated I can never remember -- even just an hour after nursing! And, if it's less than two hours after nursing, she doesn't nurse well at all. In that case, if she cries, she's almost certainly just tired, and almost always goes right to sleep if I put her down.

But noting her nursing times is instructive and interesting. Today's times were almost exactly 3 hours apart -- her times, not mine. Yesterday, it was more like every 2 hours (hungry girl!). Though this consistent pattern presents dilemmas sometimes, like if we need to go out 1-1/2 hours after nursing, for the most part, it makes doing and planning things much, much easier.

The hardest time to get her to sleep is in the evening. That's too bad, because I have this wild idea of going out for two hours on Thursday nights. Which means Dave would have to get the boys *and* Katrina to bed on his own. That's a lot to ask of anyone (well, except Peggy).

But I am going to do my utmost to get our evening/dinner routine in shape to make it as easy as possible. Because a new 13-week session of ice-skating lessons starts January 11th, and I want to be there!

12/11/06 (no photos today)

12/10/06 O Christmas Tree

We called it right on Julian sleeping in the living room last night. First, he woke up crying complaining about his ear hurting. Then, not 15 minutes later, he woke up throwing up (including the Motrin we gave him for his ear, I could smell the grape) all over his makeshift living-room bed. Poor kid! And YUK! It was a half-hour cleanup job all told (kid, PJs, bedding, floor, parents...).

Fortunately, he seems fine today, and no complaints about his ear. The hard part has been not feeding him, but we managed to hold him off with a little bit of Cream of Wheat and some bread and some Pedialyte this morning.

I found a great way to distract Julian during breakfast! I was anxious to get out and do a brisk walk or maybe even jog a little (even though I'm a terrible runner). So, I took Julian out in the jogging stroller around the neighborhood. But, just as I was about to set out, I had an epiphany:

ROLLERBLADES!

Standing up on the rollerblades, it felt different than it ever had. What gives? Ah -- ice skating lessons! The few skating lessons I had this year made ALL the difference. I could maneuver, move backward, propel myself, and best of all, STOP. A whole new world has been opened up! I'm still no skater of course, but at least I'm not flailing my arms like a sideways helicopter anymore, and that was with the support of the jogging stroller!

I took Julian around the neighborhood, skating as fast as I could, which wasn't very fast with the rough asphalt. I stopped at a dead end and tested my crossovers (gone!). Julian had a great time, and wasn't home to see Gabriel and Dave chowing down on eggs and toast.

I was euphoric for hours after my skate, and have new determination to take more ice skating lessons. I told myself: remember this moment today, even if the worst of Gabriel emerges again tonight. You had a GREAT moment today.

Gabriel? What Gabriel? An angel floated down and quantum-leaped into my bristly little boy's body today. He's been sweet, cooperative, charming, even adorable, all day. My, is he easy to love when he's like this.

The magazines would all say "positive reinforcement!" but I don't need that advice. It's so easy to hug him and tell him I love him and how happy he makes me, when he's so...well, when he's...well, not him. That sounds wrong, but I'm not sure how else to say it! Actually, he was very much "him" -- applying his characteristic focus and determination and enthusiasm to being sweet and wonderful, like he was plunging himself into a project. I told him many times how proud Dad and I were of him for being SO good, and how happy he makes me, and what a good kid he is. He beamed.

Gabriel spent much of the day setting up a "loop-de-loop" train track, even cleaning up the rest of the family room to make room for it. He's ready for a more sophisticated track-building system.

We went to Home Depot this afternoon to get our Christmas tree. I managed to temper my disappointment about missing the mountains with happiness about getting our tree at all. It's always fun to get a Christmas tree. We got a really nice, full, lush one for $24. It's up in the living room, but not decorated yet. (After all, I'm too busy typing about it!)

I didn't go to the Las Madres 2004 group's holiday party today, as I'd planned. Julian's tummy, Julian's need for a good nap, Katrina's crying at last week's party, and Gabriel's being older than most of the kids, plus spending the day getting and setting up our tree instead, all said: stay home. I love those parties, so I hated missing it, but Sunday evenings are a stretch for us anyway.

While moving things around the living room to set up for the tree, I had an opportunity to photograph Katrina in a great mood. Between her overall, shirt and the quilt background, it's quite the confluence of clashing patterns!

I also experimented with an ultra-close closeup. Too close; the camera couldn't focus well inches from her face. Here's the best I got.

I'm pretty sure we had a tough day yesterday, but thanks to today I've already forgotten about it.

12/10/2006 (Happy 30th birthday to cousin Jason today! I've not seen him since he was 12 years old, but when he was a child I sent him birthday cards every year. I always think about him on December 10th.)

12/9/06 Gabriel's yes/no game

This would normally be the weekend that we'd drive up to Black Road Christmas Tree farm and pick out and cut down our tree. But visiting Kristi's house last weekend for the holiday party reminded me of what happened last year: The tree we cut down browned up and died before Christmas! So, on Kristi's recommendation, we went to Home Depot and got the lushest, most gorgeous -- and cheapest -- tree we'd ever had. Kristi's tree this year, once again a Home Depot special, reminded me of that episode.

I love our annual outing to the mountains, and the boys would love it too, but there's no denying it: we'll get a better tree here in the flatlands. I think we're going to brave Home Depot tomorrow for our tree. Then again, the crowds there might be enough to drive us into the mountains after all.

Gabriel and his yes/no games again tonight. What can we possibly do? Tonight the final impasse was about water before bed. Do you want some water? NO. OK, time to go to bed. YES I WANT WATER WAHHH!! OK, take some water. NO. OK, then time to go to bed. YES I want water WAAHHHHH!!! Repeat, repeat, repeat. Obviously, we should cut him off right away -- one chance and that's it, right? Doesn't matter: whether we offer him water again, or insist he to go to bed, we're mired in an impasse, one that can take all night to get him out of. It was never about the water, he's perfectly capable of pouring himself a cup of water.

And, of course, it could happen again the next night -- it's not like he'll learn a lesson and it will curtail this behavior if we do the SuperNanny thing of putting him back in bed again and again and again for hours until he gives in. Which is just not practical when you have two other kids to take care of too.

I didn't like how I got him out of it tonight, losing my temper and shoving a cup of water at him so it spilled and got his pajamas wet. But that's what it took. He finally got scared and backed down and cried and said "Mommy, I want you to be nice to me." But Mommy and Daddy were also dealing with Julian having just thrown up and having to change all his bedding and Mommy had little room for Gabriel's games 45 minutes after he was supposed to be in bed. After he finally stayed in bed, I went up and talked to him quietly about being nice.

Actually, we just moved the boys back upstairs out of the living room, but put Julian to bed in the living room again tonight. Partly, Gabriel wasn't letting him sleep, and partly, all Julian's bedding was in the wash, and partly, we know from past experience that he should be closeby if he's throwing up....wow, I just got interrupted by Julian crying in the living room. Now his ear hurts, poor thing.

Thank goodness one of our children actually went to bed with no trouble at all. Gold star for Katrina.

12/9/06

12/8/06 An overcast day

Tonya had to close today, so I had Julian this morning. Well, no dilemma then about attempting to go to the gym. If Katrina were sleeping this morning, I'd be tempted to get some "think" time in (doing things in the office, photos, writing, etc), since it's becoming increasingly rare and difficult -- and necessary.

So instead of working on my mind, I worked on my body, and went to a "Pilates Fusion" class at Supreme Court. Katrina did fine in the gym daycare, sleeping the whole time in the carseat. I always, always feel better getting some kind of workout in.

I decided against attempting Target with all three kids after picking Gabriel up from pre-K. I'm glad I did, because persuading Julian to take a nap took a lot of time, but even better, I suddenly discovered a moment when all three were in a good state.


So I took advantage of the overcast day to attempt a photo session outdoors, and actually got some decent pictures. I have very few of all three together, and this is a pretty good one.

I did succeed in Julian's nap, and then Katrina's also, so spent some time with Gabriel decorating cookies. He got in a snit once when he refused to wash his hands after picking his nose, and stomped around for about 10 minutes saying, "FINE, Mom, I'm not going to help you then." So THERE. Since this was a harmless threat, I answered him calmly and said, "OK, Gabriel, that makes me sad, but that's fine," and it didn't escalate despite his best attempts. If only I could be calm about his other threats or refusals, most of which aren't so benign.

Gabriel really liked the angel-shaped cookies, and chose orange to color them with. He's a lot of fun to make cookies with, as he's enthusiastic and cheerful and constantly says how much he likes making cookies. Today's snot-snit was a rarity.

Last Christmas, the boys got a nice toy from Cousin Aidan: a wooden toolset. A nice innocuous toy, a basic building-block sort of toy that I love. Well, today it got turned into a gun. Though I see no reason to buy gun toys, I'm practical about kids and guns: they're going to make their way into the house one way or another!

Using my still camera, I couldn't resist capturing one of Katrina's gooey cooey moments today, though this doesn't do it justice at all. Of course, I know babies get even cuter and more fun as they get older, and that this clip of her at 9 weeks old will seem a lot less thrilling in even just a few weeks. But I can't help myself. Sitting and just looking at her and smiling at each other is so heartwarming and fulfilling. That's the reward of babies.


12/8/06

12/7/06 Katrina's rhythm

I daresay we have a pattern going on here.

With the first child, you have no concept of routine. With the second, you appreciate the benefits of routine. With the third, routine is absolutely essential and your life revolves around it.

I remember someone asking me about Gabriel's "naps" when he was 2 months old, and not even understanding the question. He's two months old, he sleeps on and off all the time, there was no defined "nap" for Pete's sake! But I remember now that the asker was a mother of three, and she KNEW.

Katrina isn't entirely predictable of course, but we've fallen into a definite rhythm, if not full-on pattern. She still sleeps most of the time, but her awake times are now about an hour long, and mostly completely happy. She has an awake time in the morning, then around noon, then in the late afternoon, and then in the evening sometime. At night, I get her to bed sometime between 8 and 10pm, depending on when she last woke up, and if it's more toward 10, she doesn't wake up again until 3am-4am, and then only once. Not bad.

Today when I went to pick Gabriel up from pre-K, Katrina was tired and crying and clearly in need of a snooze. And for the first time, I made a point of not driving extra to get her to sleep. Instead, I wanted her to take in her bed, not in the carseat. Already, at just two months old, I'm starting to make a point of not falling asleep in the car if we're on our way home (though I do make a point of her falling asleep if she needs it and we're on our way somewhere -- I wish I'd done that before the holiday party!). This is only possible because she is now very used to being wrapped up, hugged and "shhhd", put down, and given the pacifier. If I called it right, and now I do 80% of the time, she's out in 5 minutes. The remaining 20%, she cries and I pick her up right away and try to find out what she needs.

Katrina's relative reliability in getting her to sleep, and being in such a good mood most of the time when awake, I attribute much to loosely following the core principles in the Babywise method. I aim for the "feed-awake-sleep" cycle, meaning, I put her down awake and not right after feeding. I try to feed her every 3 hours. (I still bristle inside at calling nursing "feeding," since there's so much more to nursing, but unfortunately, for Katrina and my thrush-prone highly sensitive "girls", it is all feeding, not comfort or getting-to-sleep-ing.) When she nurses, she REALLY nurses, no nibbling or putzing (the "full feeding" called for by Babywise).

I'm not sure why, but the 3-hour (about) feed-wake-sleep cycle has helped me be much more in tune with what she needs. It's no mystery anymore when she starts to cry after she's been awake and happy for an hour. Her nursing, awake-time and sleep needs are much more organized and consolidated than I remember for the boys. Despite our rough start the first 3-4 weeks, she really doesn't cry much now, unless we're out somewhere and these needs aren't being met. (My mom friends really haven't seen much of her not crying yet!)

The best part is, we're well on our way toward having a baby who goes to sleep easily, and stays asleep for a long time. No more books! No more methods! No more crying to sleep!

Getting overconfident, am I? Of course, things could easily change -- having an easy 2-month-old doesn't mean trouble won't emerge in another month or more. After all, Gabriel was an easy baby, and we barrelled into toddlerhood thinking we were off the hook. Hah!

Speaking of who....much of today, Gabriel was nice and agreeable. But other times, his rudeness and ordering me around was unbearable. In an attempt to get a rise out of me, he even went so far as to threaten to "smash the baby." He lost watching Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer this coming Saturday, something the boys have been looking forward to all week, for that one.

Would he ever really hit Katrina? I tend to doubt it. Gabriel loves her, he always wants to help me with her, and is thrilled when she smiles at him. He's really very tender with her. He always says what an adorable baby she is, or that he's so glad that "he" has a baby. He loved this photo session today because he got to hold her and play with her for so long.

He really cracked me up today when I picked him up from pre-K and he saw Katrina, and he said to her, "Oh -- Hi Babes!" Babes?!

But Gabriel has hit Julian with the explanation later that he did it because he knew he'd get in bigger trouble if he hit me. Another time, he said he hit Julian because he was angry at me.

So how far would he go? Would he really take out his anger at me on Katrina? He can get pretty frustrated and worked up when he's had something major taken away. He escalates and does irrational things all the time to make the situation worse, looking for anything that will rile me (and often succeeds). And now that we've so strictly forbidden even saying that he'd hit the baby, he knows that's a serious trigger.

You can probably tell that I had a tough afternoon with the boys today. Julian took a nap, but woke up crying and whiny and needing lots of quiet attention from me. Then he needed to just sit and color quietly -- but Gabriel wanted a rambunctious playmate. He kept taking things from Julian, to "show" him how to color for instance, making Julian cry again and again, refusing to obey my direct instructions to leave Julian alone, and ended up on several timeouts. I was on with them constantly, every 5 minutes something else came up. I was counting the minutes until 7pm when Dave was supposed to get home from his business trip, and I was greatly relieved when he arrived early. "TAKE 'EM THEY'RE YOURS!!!"

After all that about Katrina's reliability, she had me up last night from 3:30am to 5am with a long nursing followed by some very active Happy Baby Fun Time. Adorable cooing, gurgling, flailing, full-face smiling, almost giggling. Too bad it was lost on me, especially since Julian had me up an hour earlier with some lame-o excuse (his blanket was touching the ground). Yawn. Bedtime.

12/7/06

12/6/06 Single Mom

I've done three nights now of putting the boys to bed with Katrina around, and I do say we're developing a rhythm. And tonight was the worst night yet!

But it still wasn't bad. The boys had dinner early again, by 6pm, and have now gotten used to me telling them stories and explaining things to them during dinner. I don't usually do that when Dave's there, since I want to talk to Dave. Gabriel even asked me before dinner tonight, "what story are you going to tell us tonight, Mom?"

(This supports a dynamic I've observed empirically: the boys often act up more around Dave. They act up evenly to both of us, but it's more likely when Dave is there. So many times they've been really good all day, then fall apart as soon as Dave gets home from work. That could be due to other factors, such as a later dinner, but I've noticed it at other times too. I wonder what that's about. I don't think it's about sharing my attention; I think it's more about testing Dave since they perceive him as being the stronger parent -- even though I'm the target of their antics just as much.)

Katrina was awake and crying on and off during the bed-bath process tonight. I was able to hold her for some of it, get her calm in the bassinet for some of it, and just had to let her cry for things that absolutely required two hands.

The most stressful time if she's crying is storytime; I like to read the boys a book without being rushed or stressed. Tonight she needed attention during book-reading, and I had to interrupt it once, but I managed to read the boys a book during a somewhat calm 10 minutes.

No photos today, since most of what I did today was boring grownup tasks, between baby care, errands, little-boy pickups. I did get a few moments talking and praising Gabriel for his "hard work" with his Lite-Brite cube, and actually enjoyed listening to them run like mad while I was nursing Katrina, even though I'm always braced to hear a crash followed by crying.

Yesterday, the boys right before the bed-bath process. Not easy getting them corralled, but somehow I managed without it all turning into a fight. Phew.


A final note: I was very sad to see on CNN that James Kim was found in the Oregon wilderness...dead, probably of exposure.

I've been following the story of a San Francisco family that got stranded on a National Forest road (Bear Camp 23) in Oregon. The family stayed together in their car for 6 days, then the husband set out to find help. 9 days into the ordeal, the mother and two girls, ages 4 and 7 months, were found alive in their car. The mother kept the kids alive by nursing both of them, incredibly. An intense search was started for the father, ending in tragedy today.

It really strikes home for me because of course I too have very young children. But also, NF roads like Bear Camp are ones Dave and I frequented on motorcycles (though this one appeared paved), and would be very inclined to take in our car -- with our children. Could we have found ourselves in the same situation? It's chilling. My heart goes out to the Kim family.

12/6/06

12/5/06 Mom gets away with it.

[ Technical difficulties made it impossible to post last night...and it's still not working from IE today, but sort-of is with Firefox? Dunno. ]

My first full day as a single mom...I got away with it!

I got to sleep late this morning, until 7:30am. Wow! The boys were up before then of course, playing together. If I'd been awake, I'd have been alarmed by them counting down in unison: "10, 9, 8...!" (and indeed, they were making cars "fly".) Still, I got them dressed and fed by 8:10am. I got away with it!

This early start let me go to the Y and get in a good hour's workout. Katrina slept the whole time in the Childwatch. I got away with it!


At home, I managed to squeeze in a shower and breakfast while Julian played with a map-of-the-USA puzzle, which kept him busy for a long time. A shower, and food?! I got away with it!

He loves this puzzle, and likes to ask which each state is, and if we know anyone who lives there.

Usually he knows who lives in New York and Pennsylvania; I'm not sure why he forgot in this little clip:


Julian's geography

[ More technical difficulties: Blogger doesn't like the HTML that YouTube provides to embed this clip, though I never had problems when composing with IE. Something about cutting-and-pasting into Firefox, i guess ]

After picking up Gabriel from pre-K, I decided not to run an errand in Los Gatos, but instead to grocery-shop. With all 3! I had the boys carry canvas grocery bags, and despite an extremely inconvenient detour to a bathroom, it worked out without any major disasters. I got away with it!

At home, I was torn with the max 7 minutes I expected of Katrina's sleep after the grocery outing. Should I scarf lunch? Unpack groceries? Return phone calls? Work on Julian's nap? That was the most important, not easy since he and Gabriel got ensconced in something. But I managed to distract Julian enough to get him in the living room and read him a book and get him down for a nap without event. I got away with it!

Dinnertime didn't start off well, with the boys utterly ignoring me when I announced it was time to go pee (a new rule, as Julian ALWAYS has to interrupt dinner to go, and Gabriel ALWAYS wiggles his way through dinner) and wash hands before dinner.

So I tried something different. I got two plates and put four cookies on each one and showed them to the boys. All ears now. Then I told them that these were their cookies for after dinner -- but only if they listened to me, behaved themselves, and ate their dinner. Any time they disobeyed, I'd take away a cookie. Now go wash your hands. Gabriel started to resist, but as soon as I reached for his cookie plate, he cried, "NO!" and RAN to the bathroom. Julian lost a cookie during dinner for blowing bubbles in his milk (after 3 warnings to stop), but other than that, the visual incentive worked well.

I swore I'd never lie to my kids...but do lies of omission count? Gabriel asked what something was on his plate, and I told him it was a "filet." I left out the little detail that it was fish (breaded cod from Trader Joe's). Julian loved it and wanted more; Gabriel ate his only on threat of not getting his cookies, but he didn't complain. They ate fish -- I got away with it!

Katrina woke up during the boys' bath, but I was able to hold her until she got fussy, then put her down again. Then she woke up right as I was done putting them to bed, which was complete by 8:10pm. I got away with it!

As I type, Katrina's still not down for the count; waking up crying and not nursing, not needing to be changed, not being distracted by entertainment -- not needing anything that I can find, except to go back to sleep. Still, I managed to get this far in this message....I got away with it!

12/5/06

12/4/06 Mint Katrina

Katrina had her 2-month pediatrician appointment today, and her first shots. She's thriving and healthy. Her stats:
Weight: 10lbs 8oz (50%)
Length: 23" (75%)

I like Dr. Loeb. When we brought Gabriel in for the first time, at 5 days old, I lamented aloud how clueless and out of sorts we were, and Dr. Loeb said calmly, "Don't worry, he'll guide you." Today, she commented conversationally about my having a girl after two boys, as many people do. I answered with my usual answer that I had been a confirmed boy-mom and was still trying to reconcile this whole girl thing. So far, of course, it's not that different. Dr. Loeb answered that now, maybe it's not different, but the relationship you develop with a daughter over time will be different. Once again, she hit it on the head. That's what I'd wanted the most about a girl, was the unique mother-daughter relationship -- and also am most nervous about now.

I get to be single mom for 4 days, since Dave went out of town on business today. And then Tonya couldn't take Julian this afternoon! Horrors!

But, it worked out great. I insisted with myself that I work on Julian's nap as soon as we got home from picking up him and Gabriel. He was settled in the living room by 1:30pm, but didn't actually fall asleep until 3:00 or so (I think), then I had to wake him at 5:30pm. That meant a lot of time without the boys fighting, phew!

Katrina woke up around 5pm, crying hard. She doesn't usually cry like that, and I think it was a pain cry. Shots bothering her? I held her while I tried to figure out what to do. Our infant Tylenol was upstairs, which was inaccessible today due to a final coat of floor finish applied this morning, darn it. So I held her and rubbed her and paced her around and looked at her a lot, hoping something would come to me. To my amazement, she actually put her head on my shoulder and relaxed between bouts of crying -- then fell asleep. She's never done that, not even put her head on my shoulder! It was very sweet, but unfortunately, I HAD to wake Julian and make the boys dinner. I put her down in the bassinet and she went right back to sleep.

Mercifully, Katrina slept for 3 critical hours, during which I made the boys dinner, fed them, cleaned up, gave them baths, got them ready for bed, read a book, and pretty much was tucking them in when she woke up. Yay!

One way to get the boys to pay attention and eat dinner is to tell them stories, and lately I've been gearing them up on all the standard Christmas fables. I inject some good-value stuff too, like telling them that Christmas is about spending time with family and giving people things, but they're very keen on the part about getting stuff too.

Tonight, the tale of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer kept them entertained, and I also sang them the Rudolph song a number of times. Julian tries to sing along; he loves singing "...had a very shiny noooooose."

It just happened that Katrina's shirt, blanket and socks all ended up a minty green color today. Combined with a great mood in the afternoon, it was enough for another photo session. I just love the expression on her face in this first photo.






















I love how you can lock eyes with a two-month-old and just look at each other, long past the point of comfort if you did the same thing with an adult. She's been smiling and making wonderful sounds more and more, almost like she's trying to talk.

I took a few closeups too, wanting to capture the moment of her being so sweet and happy, with little success. I always forget to turn the flash off and so end up with one flash photo. Here's why I hate indoor flash photos now: it looks like the room was dark, but you can see a stream of sunlight in the background. Still, I like the effect of capturing her nondescript gray eye color.

And then just one of numerous goofy faces.

















I'm on my own with all three tomorrow morning. Nanny, anyone?!

12/4/06

12/3/06 The Holiday Party

I'd really been looking forward to my mom's group's annual holiday party. I love the cookie exchange, which I used as an excuse to turn into a cookie-baking fiend this weekend, partly just to experiment.

Unfortunately, reality crept in. I had to wake Katrina from a much-needed and hard-won nap to go to the party, and she wouldn't go back to sleep for the entire party! She had a few short naps, the longest courtesy of Carmelita's very nice and wonderful husband swinging her in the carseat, but I spent most of the party trying to calm her and get her to sleep. (Betsy's ultra-mellow 3-week-old baby Dylan made not a peep the whole time!) I missed being able to talk freely with my friends, and their interesting husbands, and missed being able to so much as get dinner for the boys (which Heike and Carmelita kindly did for me).

Still, not all was lost. The boys had a great time (except for one incident, and I'll get into that), and once again I was reminded what marvelous and generous friends I have, even if I couldn't exchange more than a few sentences with anyone, and with only 3% concentration at that. And, when I got home, Dave had cleaned up the family room and the entire kitchen, and I'd left a major cookie mess behind! Best of all, Dave was refreshed and relaxed from a nice block of hours off from kids, and had plenty of energy to deal with Gabriel's misdeeds and to put the boys to bed. His almost cheerful demeanor (and that's saying a lot for that sworn curmudgeon!) when we got home was a huge reward for me.

The one black spot was about Gabriel crashing into things, a growing problem.

This afternoon, Dave caught Gabriel smashing a dump truck into Julian's tricycle, knocking him down and making him cry -- and then kept doing it! This is something he's done several times now, unmoved by Julian's wails. Inside, we've had to remove their beloved indoor dump trucks for getting smashed into walls and furniture deliberately. It seems I confiscate a toy every day for being thrown or crashed into something.

When we arrived at the holiday party, Gabriel found a big dump truck and started pushing it around the house. I got down and looked right in his face and told him very clearly that he absolutely may not crash it into anything here, and especially not into anyone. I warned him I would take the truck away immediately.

Not 15 minutes later, I caught him knocking down a tower of blocks with the truck, and I took the truck away from him. He was furious with this, and started with his rude obnoxious behavior, in front of people this time -- a stretch even for him. He demanded the truck back, stood right in front of me when I was sitting on the floor and stuck his tongue right in my face. At first I was stern with him, then tried laughing at him with the tongue-sticking, but all that did was make him lick my face defiantly. He stood close to me, staring at me, saying rudely, "FINE Mommy, I don't care" (he thinks that's a very strong insult). I wanted to strangle him -- I had enough on my hands with Katrina. Finally, dinner and other distractions got him out of it.

But at home, we had a big talk with Dad about this behavior. He lost his weekly Thomas-watching privilege for disobeying me and then being so rude to me. (Really, it was the rudeness -- the disobeying I can chalk up to little-kid boisterousness, though I am getting very tired of the crashing-into-things problem.) To my relief, he was sad and contrite, instead of escalating defiantly as he so often does. Still, I have no doubt at all that he'll be crashing things tomorrow morning.

Julian didn't have a nap today, and was a time bomb himself. But, mercifully, he'd taken his sweet pill today and was a perfect angel at the party, and then at home. I felt an irrational twinge of annoyance at Katrina that she wouldn't let me enjoy Julian being so sweet and agreeable. He got to watch Thomas on a DVD in the office -- a huge treat!

Katrina...oh my. This poor baby. She just couldn't get it together at the party. I called Dave on the 3-minute drive home and asked him to meet me in the driveway and pull the boys out, because I was going to drive around until she fell asleep. My stress level was very high from all the crying, and I had a splitting headache. But Dave wisely suggested that instead, I give her a bath and put her to bed, even if she was still crying. I just wanted to not hear crying for more than 15 minutes!

But Dave was right. I scrapped together some energy and launched into baby-bedtime mode, her cries pounding into my head. But, incredibly, as soon as I put her in the bath, not only did she calm down, but she went into adorable-smile-coo mode! I was floored. Where did this come from?! It was a very nice treat after all that fussing and crying. Which of course wasn't her fault...she just needed to go to bed. And very comfortably settled into the bassinet right after the bath, wrapped up, noisemaker on, pacifier, comfortable familiar place. Finally.

I wanted to take pictures at the holiday party, but was way too occupied with baby.

Still, I got a few experimental photos this morning, with Katrina in a Christmas-y outfit. It's a nice reminder that really, most of the day she was wonderful. We could all use some of that.

12/3/06

12/2/06 Hangin' and swingin'

Dave kept Katrina calm for a few minutes this morning while I got myself together, joined by Gabriel. The three of them hanging out together was very sweet.

Usually we use the pacifier only for getting her to sleep, and even then not always, but nothing else would settle her this morning (I'd just nursed her). Finally I was able to wrap her up and get her to sleep, slightly elevated on a wedge-shaped pillow. Poor thing had a hard time hanging on to sleep this morning because of an ongoing stuffy nose.


Katrina tried out Saul's swing at Sara's birthday party today, and she LOVED it! I'd be tempted to get one, except: 1) our house without any one grand big open space just doesn't lend itself well to things like that; and 2) I know how quickly babies outgrow things like that. She'll be sitting up in another 4 months, and that's not enough longevity to make me want to buy a swing. Still, the effect on her was impressive.

Despite lots of snuffling and crying when she couldn't stay asleep, Katrina had lots of delightful, adorable, full-face smiling moments today, and lots of amazing coo sounds. One nice thing about the experience I have now with babies is that I really do know how it just keeps getting better.

12/2/06

12/1/06 A fussy afternoon

Poor baby just couldn't get it together this afternoon. After hours of snoozing for max 30 minutes at a time, she was wasted. Yet, we managed to pull off going out to Spoons for dinner! Katrina responds very differently to new situations, and loves looking around at new things, and a family restaurant is full of fun things to look at. I'd forgotten that even a 2-month-old, which she almost is (already!), recognizes that something's new and reacts to it.

She also let me get away with a Ballecore class this morning at my old gym, Supreme Court. It's the first time I've done this class not pregnant. Guess what -- it's still hard! But it's a great class, and just what my extremely weak abdominal muscles need. Happily, Yolanda at the gym daycare had only Katrina to watch over that morning, and was able to keep her happy when she woke up 10 minutes before I got her. (This gym daycare is where we found Peggy.)

Dave thinks he found the reason for her fussiness though. It's in this photo, which I took to show Stacey. What's wrong with this picture?


Answer: her socks don't match. It's hard to tell, but one of the adorable ruffled flowered socks that go with this outfit got sacrificed in a pool of pee. Baby girls don't sprinkle their own faces as baby boys do during diaper changes, but they do make nice little puddles to dip their feet into. I still like the socks so much that I kept the dry one on, and put a white sock on the other foot. Clearly Katrina was distressed about this fashion don't.

I had another nice afternoon alone with Gabriel. I swear, life is so much better around here when the boys are apart. For me, anyway. Gabriel asks about Julian every time he finds Julian gone for the afternoon. Today, Gabriel said we had to go pick up Julian because Gabriel had left his beloved Teddy Bear behind at pre-K (it was Sharing Day, which is why the bear was there at all), and that Julian could show Gabriel where his Bear was.

I guess I shouldn't feel too guilty about enjoying my time with each boy alone. Kristi still uses a nanny to handle days alone with her three kids (though with twin toddlers, that's a whole different ball of wax). I feel like I should be able to handle all three kids single-handedly, but really, it's not three kids that gets me. It's two boys.

Today when the boys were reunited, they were instantly absorbed in coloring, since I got Julian a new coloring book at Target today.

I also got Gabriel a new maze book that he picked himself. It's a Kumon book, which makes me cringe because this is the company that has extremely popular tutoring schools for kids to "get ahead" and advance all their academic skills. But, Gabriel liked the illustrations even though the mazes are pretty easy. I was puzzled by that, I'd have expected more challenging ones from a Kumon book, until I saw that the book is labelled for 3-4-5 year olds. 3 sounds young to be doing mazes at all, but I guess that's the Kumon way. (Either that or I can't judge what age kids would start to do mazes...Gabriel has almost always done most things late compared to his peers, so what do I know.)

Speaking of 3, Julian's 3rd birthday is in just 3 weeks. A 3-year-old again. I'm not sure what's more shocking in my life: a 3-year-old or a 3-month-old!

12/1/06

11/30/06 Julian in music class

I took a little camera-video of Julian in music class today. The rest of the class is dancing and playing, and as usual, he is the only one just sitting! (Well, he's next to a mom holding a 9-day-old newborn, she didn't get up then either.) He always does this, acting like a little zombie. But at home, he sings along with CDs, makes up his own words to songs, and sings all the time.

The first time everyone else in music class had any idea that Julian could talk was today, when the teacher sang a song about sweet potatoes. Then he went around the room, asking each kid what they like to eat. He started with Julian, who surprised everyone (including me) by answering clearly and very sincerely, "I like to eat broccoli." Most kids answer with a single word, often shouted in glee, but Julian took this task very seriously. It made the whole room smile, including me. When he's not around Gabriel, I get comments all the time about what a sweet, mellow little boy he is.

Actually, Gabriel sings all the time too. His latest is "Hickory Dickory Dock," to which he puts in his own words describing what he's doing at the moment. This afternoon I heard him singing "each one a different color," and then various crayon colors, as he worked on coloring a backhoe drawing in his truck coloring book. He sings to himself and works on coloring, mazes or connect-the-dot (if I can find one for him with numbers that go high enough; he picks an arbitrary number and usually the connect-the-dot books we have don't go up that high) for hours at a time. I love listening to him.

Gabriel being Gabriel of course puts his own twist on coloring. If the drawing has sections that aren't closed figures, such as a mountain outline that trails off, he won't color it. It has to be completely enclosed.

Also, when he was showing me his work on the backhoe, he referred to every color as a number. Apparently each crayon has a number next to its color name. He knows the color names too ("carrot orange," "melon," etc), but when describing his work, he says that an area was colored with crayon number 10.

Katrina is 8 weeks old today! She's in a pretty good predictable pattern now, which includes times of unpredictability. At night, she wakes up once or twice, and for the most part, goes right back to sleep after nursing. In the morning, she's often awake for about an hour, usually happily, then gets a good long sleep from which I usually have to wake her to keep up the 3-hour schedule. I don't always do so, depending on how tired I am, but I try. Same in the afternoon -- a long snooze, then usually awake to nurse again in the late afternoon.

Dinnertime for the boys can be dicey; she usually needs to go back to sleep around then and starts to have a harder time doing so. From there, she has more tired crying, less sleeping and more waking up. After some sleep and nursing, I give her a bath, and lately that's been calming her if she's crying, though I also try to do it right after nursing so she's in a better mood.

After bath, she's almost always tired and crying, so that is really truly bedtime. Sometimes it can take hours to get her really to sleep; other times, like tonight, it's minutes.

When she is awake and happy, she is absolutely delightful, kicking around, cooing, smiling at nothing in particular at all. I'm sure I have mom-amnesia, but I don't remember the boys being quite this energetic when happy. I wonder how she'll feel about being tossed around and going upside-down. At about 4 months old, it was clear that Gabriel couldn't get enough of that, and Julian could well do without it. And that said a lot about their personalities today.

Oh! How could I forget. Tonight, I got all three kids fed and to bed single-handedly!! Dave had to work late, to prepare for a business trip he's taking next week. This was good preparation for me too, though we're in an odd state with everyone sleeping downstairs. In some ways, that actually makes it easier since everything is so close -- I can spend a few minutes cleaning up dinner while the boys are in the bath! Katrina was awake and crying and fussy while the boys were in the bath, but I managed to get her down for a nap long enough to get them to bed. Then Julian got up with some lame-ass excuse while I was in the bath with Katrina (the giant Jacuzzi tub downstairs is too big to bathe her leaning over it, so I have to get in with her). But I pulled it off, somehow. Good thing, because I'll have to do it three nights in a row next week.

One thing about doing it all single-handedly is to do everything early. Tonight the boys sat down to dinner at 6pm, and pretty much finished by 6:45pm. I shoot to start the bed-bath routine for the boys at 7pm. Katrina didn't allow that tonight, but I did get them started around 7:15pm, way earlier than we used to, and they were in bed by 8:20pm. It'll go a lot faster when they're back in their own room and aren't screwing around in the "camp-out" living room.

The house stinks from floor staining and the first coat of finishing, and there's more tomorrow. I can't wait for this part to be done!

11/30/06

11/29/06 Discipline issues

Still upset about yesterday's blowouts with Gabriel, I resolved today not to raise my voice and not to get physical at all with the boys today. That's more challenging than you'd think, since they often need to be physically removed -- or put into -- a situation.

Just to get them to wash their hands for dinner often takes threats, and follow-up action, of throwing away toys. Not even "putting" away anymore -- they have to see a toy go into the garbage. I try all the usual advice in books and magazines. I give them advance notice. I try to make it fun (though I can't always, and why should I have to?). The times they do comply without a fight, I give lots of praise and positive reinforcement. I warn them without anger that something or other will get taken away. I try to give them incentives, like that there's a new color of soap, or that we'll talk about something fun once they're sitting down to dinner.

But it always comes down to threats, shouts, throwing things away, followed by them screaming and crying, before they finally capitulate. It's exhausting and infuriating. And impossible when I'm carrying around a crying baby.

With Gabriel, it might be best to skip all the lead-up and go straight to the big guns -- make a big impact right away with the biggest consequence possible, otherwise he'll escalate up to that anyway across a long painful conflict. Tonight the boys would not stay in bed, then finally Julian was ready, but Gabriel kept bothering him and making him cry. Repeated warnings to stay in bed and leave Julian alone were laughed at while I was there, and ignored when I wasn't. Finally, I made a rare idle threat: he'd have to sleep in the garage.

This is only partly idle. We're out of rooms! Three of our bedrooms and two of our bathrooms are upstairs, and we can't go upstairs at all right now. We're living in a two-bedroom one-bathroom house, just like our house started out as in 1913. The boys are camped in the living room until next week, and they're taking baths in the giant Jacuzzi downstairs. Their bedtime noise is a definite problem for calming Katrina, too, as the bathroom is right next to our room where Dave and I and Katrina are sleeping.

So there's nowhere to put a little boy who's misbehaving to separate him from his brother. The garage is an idle threat -- but a powerful one. After one too many times I had to go into the living room to intervene, I walked Gabriel outside, barefoot and in pajamas, and took him into the garage. There I found a padded floor chair thing that stretches out to a convenient small mat. I told Gabriel to lie down there until he was ready to behave -- oh yes, without lights, and I would lock the door. That finally made enough of an impact on him that he backed down. He said he was scared, but I'm sure he was cold too. (The Bay Area is in the midst of a cold snap -- I had to scrape ice off my windshield this morning.) I don't know if I was more relieved that I got him to back down, or upset that it has to come to such extremely harsh measures to get him to back down.

But I had a nice day with Gabriel (Julian was at Tonya's since the flooring contractors were here today and he won't nap downstairs) and Katrina. After picking him up from pre-K, we grocery-shopped, where he earned himself a cookie for being so helpful and good and sweet (which he is most of the time!). Then we spent lots of time together at home, some of it with Katrina, cutting things. Gabriel cut out the picture he colored of the garbage truck, and I was cutting some felt to make Christmas stockings. I was glad to spend so much good time with him after yesterday.

Katrina bestowed upon me some darling Happy Baby Fun Time this morning -- at 3:30am. A full hour of wiggling, kicking, smiling, cooing....adorable, but why then?! She was tired too today, and slept a lot, and overall was very sweet and cute when awake. She's still congested, and I was glad (and surprised!) to pull a few inches (inches!) of snot out of her nose with the blue snotsucker thing they give you at the hospital.

I'm sure you're all tired of these photos, but I can't get enough of looking at Katrina's sweet face. That doesn't mean I can get great pictures though. I tried different angles, but didn't get any one crowning moment today (ooh, bad pun, since this is a shot of her crown):






I like this funny face though.


Katrina's funny and smiley faces are a welcome constant around here, a refreshing breath after all the turmoil of little-boy conflict and the disruption of flooring contractors. It's the closest to normal we have right now.

11/29/06

11/28/06 Successes and failures

Only moments to type here...

Made it to the Y this morning, and put Julian and Katrina in the Childwatch! I got 50 minutes' workout in. Success!

Tried to take Julian to the park, but Katrina fussed and cried pitifully. Failure!

At home, she nursed me dry and then slept for 4 hours, including an interruption to go pick up Gabriel. Success!

Julian agreeable about a nap. Success!

A nice relaxed afternoon with Gabriel. Got some scrapbooking in, and then a photo session with a happy baby and proud older brother. Success!



Some nasty redeye in these photos. Failure!










I like the 'S' shape of Katrina's feet together (success!) though once again my photography skill shortchanges the subject (failure!).





Gabriel colored another truck picture, very proud of himself. Success!

Later, Gabriel went upstairs and woke Julian up from his nap. Failure!

I heard Gabriel scolding Julian, then hitting sounds, then Julian crying. Found Julian with a bleeding lip and crying about his nose hurting. Failure!

Gabriel sent to his room, then slammed the door and kicked it. Consequence: door must stay closed for the remainder of his sentence. But he kept opening it, despite threat of, then ultimate action of, spanking. I'm greatly summarizing, there was a lot more to the conflict, and it escalated to the point that I was livid and screaming at him for his continuous defiance. Gabriel ended up crying and saying he wanted hugs, yet still refused to keep the door closed. Meantime, Katrina was screaming downstairs too. I broke down while trying to make dinner, it was just too much. I love him so much, why do we have to have these horrible blowouts? I felt bad for Katrina having me as a mother. Huge, huge failure.

The flooring contractors are coming tomorrow, and we won't have access to upstairs for 5-6 days. So tonight we had to get all laundry done, bring down bedding and clothes and linens for the boys to sleep in the living room. Major pain in the rear getting everything together. But we did it. Success!

Gabriel acted up again during bedtime, hitting Dave with his Teddy Bear and having it confiscated and put on a huge fit about that. Plus the major fit from both boys when blocks were confiscated after not being picked up after numerous warnings. So much for being consistent about consequences and kids learning from it. Hah. They have more confiscated toys in the garage now than inside the house. Failure!

Katrina up to her old tricks this evening: crying heartily after being fed and changed, apparently tired but refusing to stay asleep. 11pm, I think she's finally surrended. Success!

That baby has twice as much energy as her brothers put together at this age. She had a lot of nice cooey gooey happy moments today, despite a few serious crying fits. Just like me.

11/28/06

11/27/06 Flu shots

Today I skipped Power Weights class for a few reasons that I rarely succumb to. One, I was feeling headachy and decided to nap instead, since: Two, Katrina had just settled into a good nap herself. After having no end of trouble getting her to stay asleep last night, her first and only wakeup was around 4am, but she definitely needed more sleep this morning. Three, I needed to go to Target today. Four, the boys had flu shots at 2pm, so, Five, that's too much running around with a baby if I'd gone to the weights class. Oh yeah, and Six, she's not old enough for the gym daycare, and I find it stressful to have her in class with me, though I do it.

Incredibly, I managed to sneak in a successful trip to Target, with all three kids after picking Gabriel and Julian up from pre-K/preschool. Then home, feed baby, then back out to the pediatrician's office -- and we got there on time! Nothing short of miraculous. The boys were very cooperative and didn't cry or complain at all about their shots.

I weighed Katrina at the pediatrician's: she's 10 pounds even.

It was another rainy, blustery day today, which I like because it makes the skies more interesting, but it also means little boys can't go outside to play. Since I was well-rested from the morning, and since Katrina was sleeping this afternoon, I made a point to spend some real time with the boys this afternoon. Gold star for Mom today.

We went through a huge stack of catalogs, preparing for Christmas, talking a lot about Christmas and our family. I taught Gabriel how to read a price, and he got the dollars and cents, but the dollar-sign symbol didn't sink in. They both looked over the toy catalogs, volunteering what items they wanted to get for people. Gabriel wants to give a Karaoke machine to Remi and a big doll house to Bonne Maman and Papa Paul, and Julian wants to give a maze toy to Uncle Andreas (I don't know what's gotten into Julian, but he's mentioned Uncle Andreas three times in the past two days, unprompted). To my amazement, their favorite catalog was Sur La Table!

Then when Katrina woke up, the most unbelievable thing happened: nothing. I got to make dinner with a peaceful, idyllic scene next to me.

Gabriel and Julian colored, cooperating and sharing crayons, while Katrina played in a bouncer with occasional entertaining visits from her brothers. No arguing, no screaming, no crying -- none of us! It was so, so nice, and a welcome relief after yesterday.

Julian likes it when he sticks his finger near Katrina's hand and she wraps her fingers around it.

Gabriel is very proud of how he stays in the lines when he colors something, and has finally started coloring with more than one color. He had no interest at all in coloring when he was Julian's age; now he's all over it!


Gabriel gets upset when Julian "scribbles," as it violates Gabriel's ordered world. Actually, Julian has gotten much better at staying inside the lines, though he doesn't always try. And there's nothing wrong with that, I tell Gabriel -- and Julian. It's fine to scribble.

Life much better with a less fussy, more sleepy baby. Katrina sounds much less congested today, and much of the time she fusses, it ends after a big spitup. I have to believe that lots of other fusses are from a wannabe spitup that doesn't materialize. Happily, there are fewer and fewer times that we just don't know what the problem is, though even when we know what it is, we can't always solve it! Not unlike life itself, really.

11/27/06

11/26/06 Cute Katrina

Cute baby today, but with a cold and fussy today. As I type at 11:30pm, she STILL isn't asleep, keeps waking up and crying. Dave's with her now, we've been taking turns for hours.

Dave took the boys to a train expo in Pleasanton today, and I looked forward to a nice time alone with baby, but she either slept or cried. I had to take her outside, and it was rainy today, so took her to a scrapbook store. What torture, all I see is yet more supplies and materials she'll never give me a chance to use!

Here's a non-fussy cute cooey baby moment from this afternoon.


What are we going to do about Gabriel's backtalk and rudeness?? It's absolutely chilling how he orders us around, or says nasty things in the midst of a conflict. "You get me my milk RIGHT NOW Mom!". That's an easy one, he doesn't get milk. But what about something he has to get? "You get me my shoes RIGHT NOW Mom!" He has to have shoes to go out when we want him to go out. It isn't practical to bail on those things every time he's rude, since he is so often, and many times I want to, or have to, go out. I can't ignore it and teach him it's OK to talk to me that way. I can't put him on timeout every time, because it disrupts whatever it is we were going to do. I can't take things away every time, because we run out of things to take away and sometimes aren't in a good place or time to do so. I can't smack him every time (though that is the most obvious and immediate consequence) because it doesn't stop him, nor prevent future episodes, and I'd be smacking him all day long. Occasionally laughing at him stops the rude behavior and turns it into something else, it never actually ends the conflict.

Sometimes I wonder what our lives would be like if Gabriel weren't Gabriel. Then again, then it wouldn't be our lives.

11/26/06