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complog

February 28, 2006

combination of complain and blog: when all a blogger does is complain.

"Don't go to anklebiter.net, all they do is complog!"

(i'm stealing this idea of making up a new word from the magazine, Brain, Child. in the most recent issue, they have a couple of pages devoted to new words like this that other families have "made up".)

spring fevers

as we approach what we normally think of as springtime here in the northeast, the weather is becoming more and more like winter. what's the deal? i guess this isn't a new trend. it happened like this last year too. at least the days are getting longer, although the sun actually needs to be out more than once a week to notice this small blessing.

sickness reigns in our household this week. personally, i've been doing all i can to thwart this cold tyrant, so far successfully. he has not brought me down yet thanks to my echinacea tea (even if it is a placebo, it's working for me!). the boys however, were easily defeated and have been snotty and cranky for days now. brian and i have been trying to "teach" seb to blow his nose so we can hear his wailing, "i need a kweeeeeenex!" a little less often. he's picked up the blowing part pretty well--he holds a kleenex up to his nose and blows out a doozy--but the snot just ends up on the four corners of his face. the usefulness of the kleenex has eluded little seb. we'll keep working on that.

so due to the winterwonderland we live in, the three of us have been sequestered inside. to me it feels more like a prison sentence, and i keep praying that the next time i peer out the window and it looks like it's a nice 50 degree day, it will be, and we can all go outside. or at least seb can and the house can be in peace for a few minutes. i like my house and all, but a girl can only take so much indoors in a week.

i suppose this complaining is jumping the gun a bit. i mean, it's not even technically march yet, but tomorrow may not hold an opportunity for me to write about it.

grumpy kids a-calling. time to sign off...

talking

February 05, 2006

brian forwarded me this link to our friend doug's blog about how his two-year old boy isn't talking yet. reading it encouraged me to look back to this time last year here on our site to see where we were with seb's own lack of talking. (you can do the same by clicking on months feb-may in the archives to the right.)

a year ago february seb wasn't saying anything but "mama" and "daddy" as well as "duh-duh" for just about everything else. i was stressed. the pediatrician encouraged us to get him speech therapy. we did. and in may, he was talking.

and now? well, now we can't shut him up. we don't want him to all the time, but it would be nice if he could every once in a while to do things like, oh, i don't know, listen to us. there are times like today that i don't regret getting a little help at all when he sings for a half an hour straight during his quiet (aka, nap) time or when he says things like "ma-ma, you vacuumed!! you used daddy's very heavy vacuum. daddy vacuums every day". we wanted him to be able to communicate like this with us. to hear his voice. to witness the wonder of his little brain developing.

a couple months or so ago, we had lunch with doug, and i told him to hold off on worrying about his kid not talking yet. i said something like, "wait until he's three, and then start worrying." if i had to do it over with seb, though, i probably wouldn't change anything we did to get him to talk.

update

i was looking back at entries here today, and i saw that i haven't yet brought this up to speed in terms of how oren is doing. this week was a really good week. oren stayed awake for longer intervals and smiled a lot during those times. nursing him became enjoyable because i could just sit and he'd eat until he was done without crying or popping off for burp- and gas-time. we ruled out the hydrocele being or becoming a problem: it's one of those "he doesn't know anything else" things, so the surgeon tells us. we've decided that he's not colicky because he really doesn't cry for long periods at the same time every day, and we don't have trouble getting him to sleep.

we have decided that he probably has a mild case of reflux, although not yet gone to a GI specialist to get it officially diagnosed. we put him on zantac at a mid-level dose for a guy his size, and i eliminated dairy and peanuts from my diet. i was complaining about that in the early post in january.

and well, i take it back.

this week i attempted to add some dairy products back into my diet (cheese, mac n cheese), and he has reverted to fussy- and non-enjoyable-nursing oren. woe is me. and okay, woe is oren too. i can't wait to have all things dairy once more out of my system so oren can be comfortable with his digestive system, and i can stress about things like nap time and such instead. at least i know now one root to oren's problem and it's easy to fix.

accomplishments

February 01, 2006

i vacuumed yesterday. the living room AND dining room. for the first time since oren arrived on the scene. it felt so GOOD. it's embarassing how good it felt to clean. i think i'll do it again soon. especially since just after i finished vacuuming, one of the cats puked on it.

on the otherhand, my parenting skills have been going down the drain. even now, i'm sitting here typing this while seb is watching baby van gogh (aka, the goat) on tv. he has to holler to me in here to tell me what is going on. if i were a good mAmA, i'd be in there watching and discussing the video with him. i just can't bring myself to do it. seb and i are in the throws of grieving eachother's company, and we're acting out, each in our own special way:

seb is completely obnoxious about every little thing--screaming that he needs a kleenex every 5 minutes and refusing to do anything i ask him to do--time-outs abound. we've had to stop using his room for the time-outs because he has associated positive things like nap- and bedtime with punishment. great. now would be a good time to own a garage (haha). it was nice to have a door to shut out the noise of him "venting" during his time-out, but now we're resigned to using the stairs or something and listen to the noise. i'm becoming inured to my oldest baby's crying, and it bothers me a little bit.

my way of acting out has been to give up having any fun time with seb. i don't even really try anymore because it ends up in a battle of wills and i don't like losing. so i just automatically say "no" now. it's become a reflex... hmmm, no wonder that's all seb ever says to us.

"no, seb, you cannot play in the basement (cause i don't feel like going down there)"
"no, seb, you cannot paint (cause i don't feel like getting them out or cleaning them up)"
"no, seb, you cannot hold the baby brudder"
"no, seb, you cannot sit on my lap, i'm holding oren"
"no, seb, i can't play trains with you, my hands are full"

it really sucks. there really is no other word to describe it.

i go to a playgroup with other mothers once a week, and several of us with two kids now talk about how horrible we are at mothering, and all the other mothers with just one kid or older children just look on at us in pity.

"it'll get better eventually"
"it's teaching seb not to be so selfish and how to share"
"it's good for seb to learn how to play on his own"
"seb won't even remember this time of his life when he's older"

comforting. thanks.

at least it's too early in the motherhood game to tally up my accomplishments...