December Chaos

Heeeeeeey want to know what December has looked like? Me too! Good thing I took gobs of pictures of the chaos!

Nathan and Anneliese both got random fevers on the one (ONE!) day we were all home and had time to go pick out a tree together. So Charlotte and I went alone, and it should have been fine but it felt oddly sad. Tree day melancholy or something. (She didn't care in the least, she loves doing stuff with a parent all to herself.)

I cleaned out Nathan's desk (he is a baby hoarder, it was quite a project) and I had this whole funny list planned of all the funny and quirky and Nathan-y things I found, but then I found this, and it trumps them all, so here you go. Baby's first boob picture.

Yes, he assures me that is a belly button.

Another Nathan flew into town the first weekend of December and we all drove to Greensboro for our friend Meghan's wedding, which was really fun. So lovely to be back together with all these friends for a night.

Mark got suuuuper fever sick at the reception, but he hung in there long enough to be hella excited when the Clemson tiger (THE Clemson tiger) made an appearance. So, yeah.

Also, I got to shop with Another Nathan at Crabtree mall, which is our favorite thing, and we should have bought lots more (this was before the month got away from us and Christmas Panic set in) but it was still fun and lovely to just wander and brainstorm on our gift lists, like old times.

Monday is the new Black Friday! Or something.

Before he flew home, we also went back to our favorite post-choir beer place, for the first time since this summer. And half of it was boarded up and closed down. We couldn't even tell if it was open, and when we got inside it turns out that half of it (our half!) has been permanently shut down and rented out to a bakery, and it was all very sad and weird and It's A Wonderful Life, like Nathan moved and that whole special place for us is gone now. Weird. So weird. We did not take any pictures because... weird. (At least it protects those memories? It was a moment in time, those Draft House years.)

I took Anneliese to see Frozen on Ice with Andrea and her daughter, and y'all, it was delightful. Not even sarcastic. I don't know what I was expecting (more annoying? more cheesy?) but it was professional and fun and the sets were cool and the skating was amazing and it was full of Disney magic. I don't know why I was surprised. Disney... does things well. It was really fun. I would go again, in a hot minute.

Also, Anneliese wants to take ice skating lessons now. Raise your hand if you never could have seen that coming.

We did our annual Santa's Cookie Worshop™ and made a million cookies in one day, which is always fun and chaotic.

Charlotte colored all over herself with markers, and then didn't seem to understand she was in trouble, and DEAR SELF WHEN WILL YOU EVER LEARN WITH THE MARKERS FTLOG.

Ali wore pink overalls and looked supremely cute in them.

Anneliese wore alllll the colors. All of them. Some days she legitimately cries in the morning if she isn't wearing enough colors. This was not one of those days.

This worksheet about the Polar Express came home in one of Nathan's folders last week. SO LITERAL, THAT CHILD. *sigh*

5 and 10 Things: Irritating and Impressive

So. A few weeks of bloggety hiatus. Want to know how our January is going? Let's just jump right in:

Things kinda irritating me:

1.) The broken B key on my computer makes me want a whole new laptop.
2.) Really really early mornings. Over it.
3.) Especially when they involve a three-year old who thinks chapstick is for wall art.
4.) My wheezy cough that has made it hurt to breathe for the last week.
5.) The weird weather. First I hated the mugginess, then decided it was okay and I actually liked being warm, then it got really cold and rainy and threatened heavy snow, then no real snow. Not that my sweet southern kids weren't thrilled anyway:

"Mommy mommy it snowed! Can we build a snowman?"
#northcarolina

Things kinda impressive to me:

1.) The childrens museum downtown, where we are now members (thanks Nick and Barbara)!
2.) Charlotte walking around everywhere, already.
3.) My new neon coral shoelaces, fashion inspiration from a certain predictable five-year-old. (Neon coral is maybe my new favorite thing.) (They're more neon in real life than this pic. No camera can appropriately capture the neon coral goodness.)

4.) The play set out back. Gifted by Opa and Oma, erected by Mark and a few coworkers, loved by all in this house.

5.) Rex, gifted by Another Nathan. I love anything my kid loves this much.

6.) Mark, who took all three kids to the zoo last Saturday so I could sleep off a church youth lock-in.

7.) Spicy chocolate with popping candy inside. Y'all, find this and purchase it. Stat.

8.) Target's selection of adorable winter sweaters on clearance.

9.) Birthday treats for Another Nathan. I made red cupcakes (from a mix), then our friend Macy made an awesome Iowa cake (she's super talented).

10.) Myself, for finally getting it up to blog again. Praise me and make me feel like I was missed mmmkay?

Oh Anneliese

I know that each of our kids will fade in and out of easier and more difficult seasons (and I'm dreading the day when they're all three teenagers at the same time), but right now it's our dear middle child who's giving us a run for our money.  I keep alluding to our ongoing frustrations with this stage, and I keep getting sweet comments and emails and snippets of conversation affirming her wonderful cheerful demeanor (true), her good listening when she's in x person's care (true), and how she can't possibly be as naughty/frustrating/defiant/etc as we think she is (false).

I know full well that at preschool, for grandparents, at church, for sitters -- she's generally compliant and manageable and happy and, well, easy. But at home, every day, especially every morning when she and I are both barely awake, dang if she doesn't try my limits. Test them. Push them. Push past them.

I have tried a healthy handful of times to write a post explaining the madness, but none of them is exactly what I want to say. It's too critical of her yet too defensive of her. Also, too critical of me yet too defensive of me. I'm scared I don't know how to be blog-honest anymore. I don't know when it happened* but I don't like it. So while there probably aren't great (yet still guarded) words to explain how frustrating Anneliese has been lately, for some reason I sure want to try anyway.

She's just... into everything. Drawers she shouldn't be in. Grabbing things from other people's hands. Slamming doors just to make noise. Hitting siblings, seemingly just to hear them shriek. Emptying clothes from closets. Into everything.

But unlike Nathan before her (who was easily corrected with a warning, a reminder of the rules, and follow-up consequences), Anneliese is incredibly and proudly defiant. She doesn't care about consequences. Punishments don't upset her, and we can't seem to find a toy or privilege that truly bothers her to have taken away (even Hattie!).... likewise one that as a reward is enough to motivate good behavior. She just. doesn't. care.

It's maddening.

I tell her fifteen times to do any one thing. And I know, I KNOW, that's not good parenting. I know that telling her a hundred times just teaches her that she can get away with not doing it the first ninety-nine. But I also don't want to teach her that if she doesn't do it the first time, *I* will do it. So I find myself telling her to put toys away, to put her shoes on, to climb into her car seat, over and over and over again before she finally does it. And I don't know how to stop.

There's also the story of how she and I got locked into the closet in between the girls' bedrooms last week, for almost an hour. In the dark. In the heat. With a diaper full of poop. While I was glasses-less blind and post-shower naked. Which would be a funny story if it hadn't been so panic-inducing (no seriously, there were tears and panic) and if I weren't so overwhelmed by the string of naughties that led to the situation in the first place. (It involves lots of lock/door manipulating to try and foil her attempts to bust into Charlotte's room when they're both supposed to be sleeping which she does all the time; clearly our efforts backfired in a big ol locked-in-the-closet way.) (And in case you were curious, I CAN scream loud enough to wake a sleeping five-year-old through three closed doors, but I am NOT strong enough to break down even one of those doors on brute strength alone, nor am I crafty enough to pick a lock with random things I found in the closet -- pieces of my childhood telescope or the strings of a guitar. MacGyver fail. Sweet baby Nathan for the rescue-win.)

A sign of how far the frustration has come: when I wash my hands in the bathroom, I feel angry. Just the smell of the soap, which Anneliese finds and makes a mess of several times in any given week, triggers angry overwhelmed feelings. My hand soap smells like anger. This is so not okay, to feel like this.

Sure, I can remove the things that cause her worst offenses (remember the markers?) - but for everything we remove/take away/hide, there's always something else to get into. Aside from living alone with Anneliese in a padded room, I don't know how to prevent this particular into-everything brand of naughtiness.

She's stubborn and persistent and determined. I think this will serve her well later in life, but damn if it doesn't make her a difficult toddler in the meantime. Can she really not control her impulses? Because I think she can. She's almost three!  But I don't know if this is normal toddler stuff, or if she's acting out, or what.


Sometimes when the hard mornings have passed and she crawls in my arms and snuggles, and makes her thumb-sucking praying hands, like she has done since she was an infant, I just want to kiss her hair and cry a little.

Oh sweet Anneliese, I don't know what you need. I don't know what I need.

What I do know is that I hate it's so hard right now (for you too!) and that I love you more than life itself. We'll figure it all out somehow.

*Yes I do.

Friday the Thirteenth: Marker Edition

I've been waiting a few weeks to write this post, because it involves very naughty children who have been scheduled to visit grandparents, and I wanted said visits to still happen. But now that they are safely nestled in Huntersville (and Mark and I are safely out of town for a few days in Williamsburg - yay! and thank you!) I can safely let this go to post, without fear that they will be uninvited. Because... too late now!

HA HA SUCKAS. (Just kidding. Again, thank you.)

Um, but seriously. We had an Incident. With markers. It's exactly what you imagine it was.

One morning, Friday July 13th in case you're keeping track at home, after being upstairs in Charlotte's room, I came downstairs and found marker drawings everywhere. On the walls, on the window seat, on the window glass itself. And two very guilty-looking markered-up faces looking anywhere but at me.

I was furious. Hot angry tears, spinning in circles, almost without direction for my frustration.

First with Anneliese for coloring where she wasn't allowed (who does that? she knows better! Nathan would never do that! she's sooooo naughty!)...

Then with Nathan for giving her the markers (they both know she's not allowed to have them, and they had been put out of her reach, but apparently he can't say no when she asked for them anyway? and yes I recognize it's not fair for me to expect him to manage her rule-following BUT STILL)...

Then with Nathan again, because oh what's this? it's his preschool-scrawled name on the window. What the what! My compliant Rule Follower oldest child has this naughty streak too?

Later, after lots of deep breaths, a round of cell phone pictures (we are going to show daddy what you did!!! ugh words I never thought I'd utter) and a probably-over-their-heads lecture (daddy works hard to earn money to pay for this house and you would draw on it?? NO), I asked them why they broke the rules. Nathan bit his lip and nervously told me Anneliese did it, not him.

!!!!!!!

And then my heart shattered into a million pieces.

I know that this is something of a rite of passage -- kid steals markers, kid writes on walls, kid blames it on sibling. I know, I know, it's "normal" or whatever. I know it happens, all kids have lied to get out of trouble, and I'm not dumb enough to think this will be the last time. But to me, it's a Very Big Deal. All I could think was, MY BABY JUST LIED TO ME.

Am I raising a kid who's that scared of being punished? Am I that mean? Am I so angry that he's scared to tell me what happened?  And then, eventually, from the darker corners of my brain, what did I do to make him too scared to trust me with the truth?

(Ugh. We all have our emotional insecurities, and that's one of my worst.)

I felt blindsided and hurt and kind of... lost. He just would not admit it! Even when I told him I knew, and told him how terrible it is to lie, he stood his ground! What do you do with that? I can't make him tell me the truth!

(Come to think of it, this might be a parenting rite of passage too. I was lost, I tell you. LOST.)

In the absence of knowing what else to say or do, I got practical. Well, as practical as I ever am when I am emotional. I pulled out the magic eraser for Nathan, and some baby wipes for Anneliese, and I sat in the desk chair and cried and watched them scrub the walls. At first they complained that it wasn't coming off, and so I told them to scrub harder, and eventually they resigned themselves to it. My Miss Hannigan moment, except instead of being gleeful I was upset too.

It was a tensely quiet hour or so, just scrubbing and whimpering.

Marker babies are crying. And mean mommy is mean.

But eventually the drawings (mostly) came up, and while I was racking my brain about how to handle the lying, Nathan decided on his own to fess up, and apologize to boot. So, I guess that's a good thing? Because he admitted it on his own, and I didn't want that in itself to be met with a negative consequence, I just let the scrubbing be punishment enough. I didn't cancel his birthday party after all (yes, I was tempted, yes, I know it would've been too harsh, but I WAS LOST).

Anneliese is pretty much unfazed by most disciplinary consequences (time out? spanking? losing priveleges? eh), so I threw down the gauntlet and told her I'd take Hattie away (!) if she colored on the house again. It pained me, horribly. You don't take away a child's lovey! I know that, I do! But it's the only thing she's attached to, the only thing that matters, the only thing that would get her attention. It was my trump card and I played it. She panicked a little which told me she understood, though. I felt like a horrible mommy, but I was sending them to naptime with clean walls and a lie confession, so I thought I had handled it mostly okay?

But then the next day I found this:

and realized the horrible tearful angry scrubby whimpery morning before had been all for naught. AND I SOBBED AS IF I HAD NEVER SOBBED BEFORE.

(Know what is even more permanent than permanent marker? Pink highlighter. Which apparently I had missed in the previous day's Official Marker Roundup, oh my god fail so hard.)

The second-time offender was Anneliese (duh). And ugggggh I hated it but I had to follow through, so I made her bring me Hattie (and Jingle!) and they spent the day on the mantle in the living room. Where she could see them every time she walked through the room. Which caused lots of tears. Oh it was a terrible Hattie-free day. Lots of crying. I need something to hhhhhhug! Hattie is for to share!!

And hoo boy. I was mad at Anneliese for coloring on the couch, especially the second time, mad at her for punishing the rest of us by extending her misery at being punished, and mad at myself for being too mean, or mat at myself for feeling guilty about being too mean, or something.

Sad face. Times infinity.

But after that day, no more marker incidents. And as far as we know, no more lying. I don't really believe it's because I handled it well -- I mean, I know naughtiness will happen again, and I don't feel any better equipped with how to handle it. I still feel VERY VERY LOST.

These kids! And their dang free will!

In related, backdated news: hey mom and dad, remember that time I lost that ring under the new house and then lied about it? OH MY GOD I'M SO SORRY I PUT YOU THROUGH THAT.

Oh, and yeah Nathan and Anneliese probably won't color your houses this week. Um, good luck?