January 16th
These kids are truly horrid today. Anyone have any advice on how to keep the remains of your sanity when it's too cold to go outside, kids are all tired but it's too early to sleep, the toddler unpacks boxes fater than you can pack them, the baby is trying to nurse but is just teething on you (ouch!!!!), the kids are all still panicky because I blew a fuse and they were in the dark for 5 minutes, the house is a disaster and getting worse instead of better, trying to take a break to calm down simply gets me screams, haven't eaten in ages because I have no time and kids won't get off my body, I could go on and on but I think you get the idea. Calgon take me away. NOW!!!
Later
The last one just fell asleep, now shhhh everyone be quiet please. I was trying to pack and Sebby was unpacking after me, then getting in the box and pretending it was a car. Finally I smartened up and gave him his own box and a bunch of crayons, he was happy as a clam after that. It's amazing how much clearer you think after just 10 minutes alone.
January 21st
My husband is a great guy, but when it comes to how tense I get at home he's not very perceptive. Or at least so I thought. And then along comes today. Today was payday. He came home from work around the normal time, then left almost immediately. He went out, paid bills, and did all the grocery shopping for me. When he got home he put away all the groceries, excitedly telling me what each thing was (I humored him on that one) then ran out to get me a chocolate bar. THEN when he got home from that he said "you look tired, go take a half hour break". I've had 5 bad days in a row with Sebby so after my break I'm going out to get my hair cut while he makes supper and watches the kids. Now, there are only 3 possible conclusions here. 1. He has broken something 2. He has committed a felony 3. He has been replaced with an alien. Is this really my husband???
January 24th
This is getting frightening, I think I'm headed for a really miserable day. Though I've been busy, everything is going smoothly. My husband is more helpful, I'm more active, and I got an unexpected cheque for 425 today (wooohoooo). Whatever ends this good streak is gonna be big. I'm off to watch my neighbours kids, let's keep the fingers crossed for the good times to continue.
Unfortunately my premonition came true, and in the early days of February I lost a baby. For the full story please see Lexie's Story.
February 10th
Yesterday was tough. Seb caught the flu from Ian so I spent the day in the bathroom with him. Then tonight I caught it from whoever and I've spent the last hour in the bathroom myself. I just hope it passes for me as quickly as it did for the others.
| February 15th I was forced to go out today because it was Logan's checkup. It did me a world of good. As I already figured, Logan is healthy as a horse and growing almost as fast as one. The last time I took the boys in for a checkup the doctor said I needed to get better control of them, but today he said I'm doing much better and he was very happy with me. He gave me some advice about travelling with them last March and we discussed the ectopic. He offered to help me find counselling if I couldn't find another doctor who would send me to someone. Aside from the good doctor visit just getting out and doing something helped me. And now we come to the snarling part, which I'm actually laughing about. It seems when we left the house Sebastian must have decided he was too hot. When we got home the heat was set on 10 degrees. Now, I don't know what that is in American, but it's bloody cold. If you had told me 3 years ago I'd be used to that sort of thing by now I'd have laughed at you, but I am. That's just my Sebby. |
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February 22nd
Sebastian said I love you for the first time tonight. Does anything else in the world really matter?
Later
A few minutes ago I was trying to talk to someone and do phone number lookups, with Seb playing at my feet. He turned off the computer then looked at me and said "puter needs batteries, oh crap". He didn't hear it from me, I swear.
February 23rd
Sebastian can finally say Logan's name. For ages he was either baby or brudder. Now he's Yogan.
February 24th
Do not try to grab a nap with a toddler happily playing next to you. I woke up 15 minutes later with my living room papered in early bandaid and a child pouring ranch dressing into the milk. What a kid.
March 3rd
What a day, and it ain't half over yet. I was up all night with the baby, I ended up with about 45 minutes of sleep. Today (not surprisingly) I awoke in a bad mood and with a tight schedule. I spent the majority of the morning dealing with legal stuff then had a friend pop over unannounced. I've just now managed to get 2 exhausted babies down for their noon time nap and I've barely done anything I was supposed to get done this morning. Argh!!!! Hmmm, that felt good. I wonder if it helped. To make a series of long stories short, I feel like I woke up trying to catch up with everything and I've fallen farther and farther behind as the day goes by. I'm supposed to be out doing errands now 'cause it's payday, but here I sit. I also know it will be hours before I go out now because the babies sleep so long.
April 6th
Logan's 1st birthday
4/19/00 The boys are both down for the night so at last I have a chance to respond to everyone, but first I have to share something that happened to me today. I am so damn proud of myself. It was another beautiful Edmonton spring day today so I decided to take the boys out for a walk this afternoon. After Logan woke up from his nap I lugged them in their wagon to a nearby lake for a late lunch picnic. We had a really great time, the ducks were out and Seb had a blast feeding them. On our way home we passed a McDonalds and I decided to stop in and grab some hamburgers for supper. This is where things became interesting. On Wednesdays they do a special deal on hamburgers and they're really cheap, so I made quite a large order. We had to wait so I sat with the boys at a table and talked with them for a couple minutes. A woman came over and asked if they were both mine. I hear that pretty often so I just smiled and said yes. Then she said "I thought so. It's the f****** uneducated single teenage mothers on welfare like you that bring this country down". She said this loud enough for people at the surrounding tables to hear without straining. Now I actually hear that fairly often as well and normally I just walk away. But today I had had enough. I stood up, looked her straight in the eyes, and said "Excuse me Ma'am. I don't know you, and you don't know me. If you did you would never make a comment like that about me. I don't care if you like me but I demand common respect. To start with, please don't use that kind of language around my children. I am 22 years old, I have been married for 3 years. I have a partial degree in English. I have taught myself 3 computer languages. I own and run a successful figure skating club and most important of all I am a damn good mother. And I resent feeling I need to defend myself to you. Now if you will excuse me I need to feed my kids." She actually apologized. And I got phone numbers from 3 parents who are interested in my program. But more importantly than all that I actually stood up for myself to a stranger for once. Damn but it felt good. Woohoo!
Easter
4/20/00 I've been having a lot of problems with Sebastian as of late and I know they're not just normal toddler issues. He's always been an exceptionally active child but now he's become quite mean. Because his 6 year old brother is ADHD I am very familiar with methods of discipline regarding the disorder. I've decided to begin to try to control Sebastian using these same methods on a smaller scale. In my honest opinion I don't think Seb is ADHD. But I do think he is borderline between that and a normal 2 year old. I hope this can help teach him self control so he doesn't hit school age and suddenly have to learn a whole new thing. Does anyone have any opinions/input on this issue? This is a really hard one for me. 4/27/00 The tension of the last few days came to a head this evening. The boys and I had just got back from the park and I was racing around trying to get dinner made and hubby awake. Seb decided to pull a chair over to the freezer, climb up, and dump the ice cube tray on the floor. That's a regular occurance around here but today I flipped. I screamed at the poor kid and after he jumped off the chair I pushed it forcefully toward the table. More forcefully than I intended, I ended up taking the table leg and half the bolts out. My dining room table is now ready for a 3 legged race. I have never ever been so out of control before. God willing I'll never be that out of control again.
5/28/00 As I mentioned previously Sebastian was pretty sick recently. Friday I had a healthy family, then Saturday Logan came down with the same little bug. I finally realized it was easier just not to feed him than to clean up after him 30 seconds after he ate or drank anything. If he had no food in him he was happy as a clam. Then last night Sebby had a relapse at 2AM, so once more the sleepy mommy was awoken to the awful feeling of warm bodily functions running down my stomach. Ick!!! Then a couple hours later I caught the damn bug, and let me tell you it is a horrid one. It's been a long time since I brought a pillow and blanket into the bathroom, but that's what I did this morning along with a good book. And now, just a few hours later, I can't say that I'm healthy, but I feel multitudes better than I did earlier. It passes so quickly but damn is it violent. Besides Seb just decided to run off somewhere so I'm thinking I'd better go find him out. Running off singing "And the race is on and here comes Pride up the backstretch..." ("cause that always runs through my head when I'm chasing a kid around).
6/2/00 That Sebby is going to be the death of me, literally. I don't even know where to begin in explaining what my daily life consists of with him, so I won't try. Suffice to say that by the time he finally falls down from pure exhaustion I'm ready to join him. I'm going to add a couple more pictures of Edmonton from our travels from today. We went down to the River Valley again, but this time we went right up to the river edge for awhile. I swear the pictures look nothing like the heart of a city. After I post them I'm off for a bubble bath, or a frying pan to knock myself out with. Either way I'll be back in a bit.
6/4/00 Well, I've got a story for you. This evening was so beautiful in Edmonton I decided to lug the kids outside and let them work off some energy while I glued a bunch of stuff together (which I do at least weekly, Seb's on the destructive side). Anyway, so I have this wooden horse box thingy and the tail was broken so I was supergluing it back on to the butt. Imagine my surprise when I went to remove my hand and it didn't come with my arm. So here I am, hand glued to the ass end of a horse, hubby gone to work, neighbours not home, and 2 kids under 3 with me. Oh, and did I mention I was wearing a bathing suit? I was trying to get clothes on one handed, get shoes on the kids, and get over to the doctor. Eventually I managed to pull a pair of shorts on so we headed off to the doctor. Then we waited in the waiting room for awhile, me STILL with my hand stuck to a horse, and finally get in to see the doctor (the nurse was laughing this whole time). As I was sitting in the doctor's office waiting for him, the kids were flying around scaling the bed and digging through drawers. I reached out to grab at Logan who was about to dart out the dorr and the damn horse came off my hand. Ask me how my day went!!! Argh!!!!!! Oh believe me, the glue factory irony dawned on me as well. My hand doesn't really hurt, just feels wierd with glue clumps all over my fingers. My pride is almost fine, I'm giggling as I remember. My face must've been pretty red while at the doctors though. Picture it, shorts thrown over the bottom half of a bathing suit, nothing I could do about the top half except stick one arm through a jacket, horse stuck to my left hand, holding Logan with my right arm and urging Seb along with the horse. LMAO Why me? I feel like Charlie Brown.
6/8/00 Argh!!!!! As I posted, Logan's immunization was today. I left in plenty of time, the clinic is onlyabout 30 blocks away. I would normally walk there and make an adventure of it with the boys but it's rainy, so I decided to bus. That was my first mistake!! Logan was in a mood today, and he screamed the whole bloody way there. I was so focused on cheering him up (or at least quieting him down) I missed my damn stop. We ended up getting there a half hour late and they couldn't fit us in. Argh number 2!!! The next open appointment is in July dammit. So anyway, we took that appointment. I am also looking for parenting courses on how to deal with an agressive toddler, so I asked about that (seeing as how I was there with nothing to do) and found out the program that runs the support group I'm attending for Alexis also offers tons of courses. A bright spot in my day! The program costs $30 if you want to do more than just drop in stuff, and that's for a year. Another bright spot! The best part, the have weekly low cost "parents time out" that offers childcare in 2 hour spurts. I could use that.
6/12/00 Sebastian decided this morning that he had to take care of me because, in his words, "Mum's dill dick and Debby's getting better" (he's stuff so his Ss are coming out as Ds, translation "Mum's still sick and Sebby's getting better"). He dragged a pillow and blanket out of his room and tucked me in on the futon in the living room. When Logan woke up he got him a bottle then sat up in their room telling him stories. He made himself breakfast (as he says, cheerios and milk and sugar and bowl and spoon) and even brought me some. He kept rubbing my back and telling me to go to sleep. I dozed off and on until 11am, and he took care of everything! It kinda makes me forgive all when he does things like that. Of course now that I'm up and around he's back to his normal terrorizing self, but this morning was so wonderful. Makes me think I must be doing something right. Thank you to Sebastian for a great morning!
6/21/00 I learn a lot as I grow older. I think I've come across a new lesson today. Don't try and plan anything, everything runs so much smoother if you just let it happen. As I believe I said earlier, I didn't get my dress yesterday. This afternoon my husband said I could make a quick trip, childless, over to the mall and see if I could have any luck. Hurray, that never happens to me! I always have a kid at me feet, oh my goodness am I actually going to have a chance to try something on?!? Alas, it was not to be. Something came up and things fell apart. So I said fine, I still have some money and the kids and I are restless. I'm going to go hop on a bus, get off when I see something interesting and come home at bedtime. So we did. We didn't end up going very far, I was watching out the window and saw a little secondhand bookstore about 10 blocks from home. As most here would probably guess I am an avid reader, as are my kids in varying degrees. So, it looked like a good place to start. I ended up buying oodles of books for us, then we walked over to a nearby pizza place. After a dinner where the food was excellent and the company was tired, but happy, we came home. I tucked Logan into bed right away because he was already asleep then cuddled up with Seb in the rocking chair, both of us reading. After he drifted off to dreamland I came down here, where I have all the time in the world to catch up and enjoy a bit of adult conversation. And all is well in my little corner of the world once more.
6/25/00 Anyway, back to my point of posting. Seb and I did our outing, and managed to hit 3 festivals. I love Edmonton in the summer! We'll have festivals straight through 'till September now, and just tell me to shush if my play by play reports of them become a bit reptitive. Today was a one day thing, Honour to all Nations, that I enjoyed much more than Sebastian. After that we went to Jazz City and both of us had a blast there, and a festival called The Works that focuses on art in all forms (literary, appearance, print, spoken, etc etc etc). That has a ton of kids activities so Sebby was happy. And I was estatic because I ran into a friend of mine I haven't seen in years. It was so wonderful to catch up and be a kid again for awhile!
May
March
