Post-Christmas Post

I am a day late. This is because Bean and my girlfriend are both off school, and have been since before Christmas, and since I have a rule about not being online when they're home, it means I haven't been online much at all since I got home on Friday. Couple that with a very busy three and a half days trying to catch up with all the people I haven't seen lately (friends, my parents, etc.), do all the household chores (cleaning the kitchen and bathroom, washing floors, laundry, trying to organise the books, CDs, and DVDs, dishes, cooking, etc.), get the dog walked, the dry cleaning delivered and picked up, antibiotics obtained for the cat, and helping to wrangle Bean, it has been a little crazy.

I have a longish post I want to write about procrastination and willpower, but it won't be today. Right now my girlfriend has taken Bean to Michaels and Bulk Barn, since the two of them haven't actually left the house in over a week (due first to illness and then to weather). They should be back in less than an hour, which means I have to type fast, and that longer post needs a lot of brainpower to put together.

Instead, have a Christmas recap!

I was up first, my girlfriend close behind me. I took a quick shower, which had the effect of getting me clean and waking Bean, who stumbled out of his room not five minutes later. Luckily my girlfriend was right there with the video camera to capture his reaction on film, but alas I am not able to post that here. You'll just have to take my word for it that it was very cute. ;)

There were a LOT of presents. I'm quite sure Bean will never be able to play with them all in his whole lifetime. He was very excited, though, which was so much fun.

Not pictured in this entry is the big hit of the day, which was a stroller for his doll, Malik Mollum (named by Bean himself, and woe betide you if you try to shorten the name to just 'Malik!'). Bean, true to himself, introduced us to Extreme Strollering. Within five minutes the stroller had gone round in increasingly fast circles around the open area in the dining room, been knocked over three times and been rammed into various walls and pieces of furniture. My girlfriend caught part of it on video as well, but missed the bit where he picked it up and swung it around his head.

There were much calmer parts to the morning, too. Bean was happy to get us to open the presents that were from him (he went with each of us to pick out presents for the other separately, so they would be a surprise), and while he hasn't quite completely worked out how gift-giving works, he seemed pleased that we were pleased. :)

Because my girlfriend is the most organised person EVER, we had a box for the wrapping paper set up immediately, along with a box for the smaller toys so they wouldn't get lost or misplaced. Bean did quite well in helping to keep things tidy and put the wrapping paper in the recycling box before unwrapping the next present.

Note the pink hair extension. It was a big hit, and he wore it all day long.

The toys included Barbie and a Barbie Volkswagen Beetle (pink, of course), some Monster High action figures (his latest discovery, thanks to CJ from "Raising My Rainbow"), as well as a metric buttload of train tracks. He's been building elaborate train tracks, but his vision outgrew the number of tracks he had. Now, with any luck, he'll be able to build to his heart's content.

After about an hour and a half, he got overwhelmed and started to wail. So we took a short break for some milk and for my girlfriend to make crockpot hot chocolate. It has got to be the richest hot chocolate I have ever had the delight of consuming. I could feel my pancreas giving up as I sipped. ;) 

Of course there were books, both English and French (Pinkalicious and Robert Munsch featured, as well as Llama Llama, a household favourite) and some fun clothes. Sparkly jeans and a striped hoodie, Monster High socks and sparkly peach leggings and a silver tutu. He wore his Christmas clothes right off after getting out of his PJs.

The immediate hit was the LeapPad 2. He's been obsessed with computers and games for as long as I can remember, and it's just not always possible to have him on our laps to play a game. I've been leaving the computer alone when I'm at home with the family, for one thing, and some of the games on our computers (if not most of them) really aren't age appropriate. Even if they're not scary or violent, they're just too advanced conceptually for him. This way he gets his own "puter" with games aimed at helping him learn. His earlier LeapFrog game (aka the "Puppy Game") was how he learned his letters to begin with.

As soon as we'd set it up he was going at it with the little stylus that came with it, happy as a clam.

My girlfriend's father arrived around 10:00 to join in the festivities. Bean and I know him as "Pake" which means "grandfather" in Frisian. He brought another turkey (because why have one turkey when you can have two?) and ham and more dessert than we knew what to do with.

He got to spend some quality time with Bean, and overall we all had a great time together while I was there.

The grown-ups also got quite spoiled at Christmas. Well, I did. Bean got me a sparkly green iPhone case, special gloves that work with smart phones, nail polish, and a dog-themed charm bracelet, among other things. My girlfriend, whom I frustrated to no end because I kept unknowingly buying things she'd already bought me for Christmas, got me coffee and the boxed set of Albert Campion DVDs, special strengthening nail polish, flavoured coffee syrups and a vacuum cleaner for the car, and a host of other exciting things that escape me right now because I'm not at home and my memory is absolute shit. Her father bought me a nifty thing that I can put on my windshield in winter to keep the snow and ice at bay, as well as a calendar and even moar coffee (all the k-cups!) and a k-cup carousel, which I've already set up here.

He and I surprised my girlfriend with a new Breville coffee maker, which I think she quite liked. There was also the Doctor Who scarf that I knitted for her, though I did not quite get it finished in time. It was lacking the tassels and the ends hadn't been woven in when I gifted it, which frustrated me a lot, but I think she liked it anyway. It's finished now, at least.

Alas, all good things come to an end, and around 13:30 I left to get back to work. I'd come in the night before specifically to be there for Christmas, but someone has to do my job, and that someone is me. Next year I might actually get time off for Christmas. You never know!

And that's the end of the Christmas post. Stay tuned for more in-depth stuff later.

Happy New Year, readers!

Pre-Christmas Post

Christmas this year is going to be yet another gift extravaganza for Bean. I am not entirely in agreement with the number of presents his mother likes to give him, as he's three and already has more toys than he knows what to do with, but it makes her really happy to give him all this stuff and I'm unwilling to take that away from her.

This year the focus has changed considerably with Bean's new taste for all things pink and purple and frilly and sparkly. He recently discovered Monster High (God help us all), and as I mentioned before in this blog he's become quite fond of Barbie.

The piece de resistance of this Christmas is the totally refurbished, custom-built Barbie house that his mother has spent days working on. It's huge. It's a good four and a half feet long, three feet high and a foot and a half deep. She already had the house (purchased over 20 years ago from the family who built it for their daughter), but it was tatty and faded and needed an overhaul. So she has been painting and wallpapering and tiling the house and spray-painting doll house furniture and buying little dollar store tap lights so that the house will be well-lit when he's playing with it. It looks phenomenal, to say the least, and I'm quite sure his head will explode when he sees it. The colour scheme will not only go well with Barbie, but is bright and funky enough that it will also work for all his new Monster High dolls (he's getting one for Christmas, but I have no doubt there will be many more in our future).

As for the rest, he's getting stuff we know he'll love. Play-doh, Playmobil sets, and lots and lots and LOTS of train tracks. Of late he's been building elaborate tracks that are truly a joy to look at, but the scope of his vision is too broad for the number of tracks he currently has. So his grandfather and I both bought him more straight tracks, curved tracks, connecting tracks, and I found a set that has a collapsing bridge so that he can stage a railway "akkident" if he wants. It's pretty cool. He's also getting a LaLaLoopsy doll, a doll stroller (for his favourite doll) and some doll clothes, as well as other assorted smaller items.

The big present I got him is a LeapPad. He's obsessed with computer games, and he can already name a bunch of different platforms on which they get played. ("No, Mama, it not on your 'puter, it on Kongwegate!") The trouble with this is that he constantly wants to play games, either on our computers or on our smartphones, and sometimes we simply don't want to, or don't have time to sit and supervise him. If he could sit still and do it, it wouldn't be so bad, but he consistently wants games that are adult-level and then insists on doing it himself ("No! Me know to do it!"), often pushing our hands away from the mouse or keyboard in spite of repeated admonitions not to do so. My solution has been to simply not allow him near my computer anymore (I have a laptop, and his shenanigans mean that he often risks damaging the computer, or at the very least hurting me when he tries to pull my hands away, because he tends to twist my fingers and/or wrist, and he's pretty strong for his age).

So getting him the LeapPad is the product of a bit of self-preservation as well as a good learning opportunity. LeapFrog has great products for children. He already has what he calls his "puppy game," which allowed him to learn his letters at a very early age, and which he adores. The pad itself has a number of features that you can find on any tablet, but it's geared toward kids his age, complete with games that are age-appropriate and with characters he'll recognise. It's my hope that he'll gravitate more toward that than toward the time-consuming and invasive pass-time that playing computer games with us has become. I know my girlfriend doesn't mind having him on her lap while she plays games, but I myself don't find that time particularly rewarding, for him or for me. I'd rather do something with him that doesn't involve a screen. Or, if it does, I'd rather watch a movie or TV show and talk to him about what's happening and what he thinks it means, rather than clicking away at a computer game.

I've also been spending far less time on the computer when I'm at home. I log in briefly in the evening to check email and see what's been going on, and sometimes I'll have it on during the day when no one else is home, but in those instances it's usually to listen to a podcast or watch a TV show while I knit. It's been interesting to see how I fare with limited access to social networking, and it's been instructive and enlightening to see that I have become more dependent than I would like on the gratification of instant feedback from Twitter in particular. So I'm determined to continue with this new habit of not being constantly online, and seeing where it takes me.

I will be posting again next Monday, hopefully with a Christmas recap and maybe with a longer post about my plans for the New Year. Possibly not all in the same post. ;)

Plans for this blog

I have been remiss in blogging here, even though it feels like I've barely started. I have decided, therefore, that from now on I shall make a point of posting here once a week, sometime on Mondays.

Why Mondays? you ask.

Good question.

Here's the thing. Most people tend to have their free time on the weekends. They work all week, get up early and come home tired. In my case, because my schedule is so varied, my days off aren't necessarily on the weekend. In fact, 50% of the time I end up working over the weekend (like today).

Originally I had planned to update on Sundays, then realised the error of my ways. See, on days when I work I could probably manage to post an entry here (like now). The problem arises when I'm NOT working. Bean is home on weekends, you see, which means that all my time and energy is spent either making sure he's not injuring himself (or the pets) or dealing with his constant demands for attention. Bean is an extrovert, and he is incapable of playing quietly by himself about 90% of the time. He wants me or his mother (or preferably both) not only with him at all times, but actively engaged in whatever activity he's currently involved in. Needless to say, this makes blogging in any meaningful way difficult in the extreme.

Once Bean has gone to bed, I spend that time with my girlfriend.That means that I can't just ignore her in favour of typing away at the computer.

Mondays are, all around, a better day. On days when I'm working, there's no problem. I won't be interrupted, because there's no one around to interrupt. When I'm home, Bean and my girlfriend are both at school--all day in his case, and for half the day in hers. That gives me several hours alone at home in which I can get stuff like this done.

I actually have quite a few personal goals that I'm putting in place for the New Year (though I'm starting now--no time like the present, am I right?). I'll likely be talking about that a lot here, since some of it involves improving my own mental state, especially when it comes to Bean and some of the problems I perceive with his behaviour. Since I'm not in a position to change him (for reasons I'll get into in a different post), the only thing I can change is my own reaction.

I've also been very low on energy and patience for the past few months, and I think my parenting is not good as a result. Therefore I want to change my thinking and my attitude so that I can be a better step-parent to Bean. He's a high-energy kid, and I don't want to feel resentful or exasperated whenever he gets loud and demanding and screechy and whiny. Instead I would prefer to react with patience and try to work with what we've got. This is especially true for the mornings. I consider myself a morning person, but even though Bean is an early riser, he tends to have multiple tantrums/meltdowns throughout the morning over small things (breakfast, going to the bathroom, getting dressed), and sometimes it's all I can do to make myself get out of bed because I simply. don't. want. to. deal. with. that. I like having quiet mornings with coffee and just getting the day started on the right foot, and having to fight with our preschooler the entire time makes for an unpleasant morning in the extreme. I realise I'm digressing, so I shall cut that paragraph short. I'll get into it another day.

I have also decided that part of the reason I'm so short of patience these days may be indirectly related to the internet. I spend far too much time noodling aorund online. So part of my new goals is to only spend limited and focused time on the internet. Writing for the blog will be part of that, but I am no longer going to simply have my browser/Twitter/whatever open to check every three seconds to see if someone has updated. The instant gratification is very strong, and it means I'm not spending time on other, more important things. So part of my strategy will be to not have the computer on at all when my family is at home. This will be difficult at first, but I think it will ultimately be a good thing for me, to devote all my attention to them and not divide it with online stuff in the interim.

That's it for now. I may write a proper, structured entry tomorrow, or I may wait until next Monday, depending on how much time I have tomorrow after running errands and whether or not I can make all my ideas come together in time for a coherent post.

In unrelated news, Angel the Alien gave me a Liebster award on her blog, which was lovely!  http://diaryofanalien1.blogspot.com/2013/11/i-got-liebster-award-no-not-lobster.html

I'm afraid I don't read enough other blogs to be able to nominate anyone right now, but I am so pleased she thought of me! :)

Thanks for reading!

Reconciling With Pink

Growing up, I identified as a tomboy. My best friend was a boy, and together we spent many joyous weekends and summers romping outside, wallowing in mud puddles, climbing trees and fences, playing soldiers and pirates and Star Trek (I was always Spock). We fenced and wrestled and rode our bikes in places bikes were never meant to go.

My mother, like many other mothers out there, wanted a little girl that she could dress up in pretty clothes and show off. It's true that I was a cute little thing, all big blue eyes and auburn curls, and I looked absolutely darling in the little outfits she got me. So it was understandably quite frustrating for her when I wanted to go outside and frolic with my friend in the nice new clothes she'd bought me. Once she bought me a pretty white dress with lace and frills and a lovely lace collar. I promptly went outside, tried to climb over a fence, and remained there, red-faced, shrieking and kicking, hanging by the skirt of the dress which had gotten caught on the post. My father had to come get me down, trying very hard not to laugh in the process.

After that, my mother dressed me in overalls for when I played outside.

The thing is, I wasn't what you might call a "typical" tomboy. I liked the pretty dresses my mother bought me. I enjoyed looking nice for parties, although because I was a very introverted child I generally found the parties overwhelming. I liked having ribbons in my hair, and I used to colour my fingernails with my markers so that I would have "nail polish" on. I didn't ardently desire to be a boy, except for those times when people would tell me I couldn't do or have something that was "only for boys."

My mother and I didn't truly need to compromise, the way I hear some mothers feel they have compromise with their tomboyish girls. Instead, my mother got to know me for who I was, and when I was little she never once told me I couldn't do something because I was a girl. (That tune changed when I was a teenager, but when I was a little girl? The words never crossed her lips.) My mother realised that it wasn't realistic to want me to be demure and "proper" all the time, and she worked with that. She wanted me to have fun, to be happy, and if that mean dressing me in overalls half the time or more, then so be it.

As I grew older, I found myself at odds with most girls my age. I didn't own any Barbies until I was 10, and someone gave me a couple for my birthday. I didn't really know how to "play Barbies," so my Barbies ended up going on adventures and climbing imaginary volcanoes made out of my bedclothes and a few judiciously placed chairs. There was no pink in my room (except for my bedspread, which my mother bought for me when I got my "big girl bed" and which I kept until I was nearly twenty), because pink was a "girl colour," and I knew I wasn't really like other girls. I was a girl in essence, but not especially on the surface. I had no interest in boys, which other girls seemed to develop starting as early as eight years old. I didn't understand the fascination with the New Kids on the Block (yes, that was the boy band that was incredibly popular when I was twelve, which should give you an idea of my age), and I thought makeup was pretty ridiculous.

I've never bothered to dissect my feelings about being a girl when I was young. I figure it's equal parts gender identity and internalised misogyny, with some other issues thrown in for good measure. We're constantly being told that being a woman is less desirable than being a man. Therefore anything that's associated with womanhood is automatically inferior. I refused for years to have anything to do with the colour pink. From the age of about seven to the age of twenty-five, actually, when a friend finally convinced me to buy a hot pink sleeveless top for an outfit, which turned out to look pretty damned fabulous on me.

Slowly I became more attuned to the underlying misogyny in so many of the messages I had internalised, and began to consciously examine my motivations for "disliking" things. I read a lot of articles that, for instance, pointed out how ridiculous it was to look down on romance novels. A genre of fiction written primarily by women for women? It must be inferior! Never mind that it has about the same percentage of good and bad writers as any other kind of fiction. But we've been brainwashed to think of those novels as being "trash."

I digress.

The point is that, in all these years, I've never been pushed so hard to review all my opinions about "girly" things than in the past few months since Bean has started expressing more and more interest in things that would be considered "girlish." Barbies? Check. Pink, purple and sparkly Check. Skirts and tights and Tinkerbell? Check. Check, check, check.

So what's my role as a parent? Or step-parent, in my case? All this stuff makes Bean happy, and since I want him to be a happy, well-adjusted kid, totally comfortable with who he is, then I need to make sure that my own hang-ups don't rub off on him. Just because I grew up thinking pink was undesirable doesn't mean I should pass that along to him. Much like my mother had to learn who I was and work with the side of me that loved climbing trees and playing with swords as well as the side of me that liked to pretend I was a princess (because I totally wanted to be a princess and have a pony of my very own), I am getting to know every side of Bean's personality.

Therefore I have come to reconcile myself entirely with pink in all its glorious shades and nuances. From bubble gum to Barbie to electric pink, I now embrace the colour with every ounce of my being. I may not have played Barbies when I was little, but if Bean wants me to play with him? Then I will happily join him on the floor with every single Barbie at my disposal to let him stretch his imagination as far as it will go.

The great thing about children is that they let you be a child again yourself every so often, and now I get the added joy of having a second childhood filled with pink and purple and sparkles and fairy wings. Every day I'm at home I can look forward to a new discovery.

(Yes, that's me when I was about Bean's age. It's the only photo I have at my disposal, but my mother has 24 albums' worth. :P)

What "Work" Really Means

So after a record five weeks of the new job, I finally got the "I'm here all the time and you're only here half the time," reproach that I'd been expecting. She held out longer than I thought she would before telling me that, to be honest. It still wasn't pleasant. Then she got upset because I was clenching my fist (it was either that or get really upset myself and say things I'd regret).

It appears that only she is allowed to find the present circumstances difficult. After all, I'm going on a 4-5 day vacation every time I commute 2.5 hours one-way to a different city in order to pay for the privilege of staying in an 8x11 foot room in a house that's not my own and work 12-hour shifts in order to keep a roof over all of our heads before commuting back.

She's doing the real work of going to class 2 hours a day and bringing Bean to daycare and bringing him home. She told me she feels like she's trying to fit 24 hours of work into a 12-hour day, which, okay. I get that a house is a lot of work, and Bean is a full-time job by himself. I would never dispute that.

The thing is, on my off days I work a second job doing translation contracts so that there won't be too much month left at the end of the money, since she has no income. So while I realise she thinks that I'm not doing anything, I'm working 90 hour weeks trying to keep things afloat financially. Just because she doesn't see me working, I guess she assumes that it must be all fun and games for me. Work is a lovely, relaxing thing that I do away from home, and when I am home of course I "slack off" by not immediately setting to and mopping floors or doing laundry (because I'm usually working on my translation stuff).

Short of burning out, I'm not sure what I can do about this situation. So far any attempt at discussion has failed, probably because emotions are running high on both sides. I'm exhausted and so is she, but she seems convinced that I can't possibly be tired because I sometimes get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep (on average once every 7-10 days, which is admittedly more than she gets because she has trouble sleeping even on a good day).

So, I don't know. Anyway, this has been a rant. Carry on.

Oh, the irony...

I'm becoming one of those parents. You know the ones, the ones who are obsessed with books on parenting and trying to work out just how badly they are screwing up their kids.

So far I've only read the one book, but suddenly I find myself with a "to-read" list as long as my arm. Whoops. On the plus side, my newest obsession is unlikely to affect anyone but myself, as my input on parenting strategies is still, as far as I can tell, unwelcome. I can't imagine my girlfriend will be any more receptive to "I read this in a book," than she has been to anything else I've said.

I've been back at home since yesterday evening, and we've had a pretty good time with Bean overall since I came in. We were fine right up until just before bedtime, at which point the very notion of being asked to go pee was treated as ANATHEMA. So I held him by one hand in the bathroom as he jumped and thrashed and flailed and flopped—right up until he accidentally knocked his leg against the bathroom counter and promptly wailed in anguish. So I sat him on the toilet, gave him a kiss (to make it better, you understand), and we had the following exchange:

Me: "Was that a good idea or a bad idea?"

Bean: *hiccupping* "A b-bad idea!"

Me: "Mm-hmm. And do you think you would have hit your leg if you'd listened and gone pee like we told you instead of flailing around?"

Bean: "Da!"

(As an amusing side note, Bean has not said "yes" or "yeah" or "yup" in about two years. For reasons unknown to anyone, he started saying "Da!" like a little Russian boy, and nothing we do or say has made him change his mind)

After that there were hysterics at bedtime because he remembered a half-eaten apple that he decided he had to have right now instead of going to sleep. He ended up not falling asleep until about ten to nine... an hour and twenty minutes after bedtime.

This morning went much better. My girlfriend was going on a field trip with her class (she's taking conversational French in order to hone her skills for the job market here in Quebec), so she told me last night she and Bean needed to be out the door by 8:00 at the very latest.

Morning and evening routines are what Bean finds the hardest to adhere to. Inevitably there seems to be screaming and tantrums and tears, or else he simply ignores all requests to go to the bathroom/eat his cereal/put on the clothes he's picked for the day. In the past 2-4 weeks this has gotten so bad that he and my girlfriend have not made it out of the house before 8:15 at the earliest, and sometimes as late as 8:45. My girlfriend's class starts at 9:00, which gives her not enough time to drop Bean at daycare and get to class on time.

Generally in the mornings I try to stay out of the way as much as possible. It's been made clear to me that I don't know what I'm doing and that my interference is unwelcome. This morning, though, I offered to help out, and much to my surprise she accepted. So while she was sorting out her lunch I got Bean going for the day.

Perhaps it was the novelty of my going through the morning routine with him, but he did really well right up until the last minute. He went to the bathroom and took off his nighttime diaper with very little prompting. He picked out clothes for the day (a button-down shirt and his "cosy" pants, since all his skirts are in the wash) and got dressed all by himself—I helped with exactly one button. While he ate his cereal I pulled out my phone to show him the new foal in my "pony game" (an iPhone game called Derby Days with which he's developed a slight fascination). By then it was five minutes to 8:00 and the car was packed and it was looking really good for getting out the door on time. Alas, at the last minute he decided he wanted to play in his room rather than go pee and put on his shoes, and so there was more flailing and whining and it took both of us to get his shoes on him. In the end, they made it out the door at 8:05, which is still the earliest they've been in at least a month.

In short, I'm counting today a win so far. If we can carry this momentum through to the evening right through bedtime, that would be awesome.

In the meantime, I have a stack of reading to do...

The Real Challenges

Ostensibly, this is a blog about the challenges of our newly formed, nontraditional little family.

I'm going to guess that most people who first come to read this are going to expect posts about my anxiety about the fact that Bean is gender nonconforming, about all the uphill battles we're facing. Snide remark from other adults, teasing and bullying from other children, the works. It's possible, even likely, that there will be posts about that, eventually.

The thing is, that's not the main problem we're having these days. I'm really not worried about Bean's clothing choices, nor have I ever been, and nor has his mother. Are we concerned that there might be repercussions later? Of course. For the moment, though, we are blessed by incredibly supportive friends and family (except my own parents, but that's a post for a different day) who so far have no so much as batted an eyelash at Bean's love of pink and sparkly frilly things. His preschool have also been wonderful and supportive, and the two "incidents" with other kids were short-lived and barely registered as a blip on the radar.

The real problem we're having with Bean is a behavioural one. I've mentioned before that he's a high-energy kid, that he never stops going except when he's asleep. He's also been acting out. A lot. This is no doubt due in great part to the fact that he and his mother moved in with me the week he turned three. After three years of being one-on-one with his mother who was a SAHM and was able to devote her attention to him 100% of the time, now he lives in a house with another adult who takes his mother's attention away AND goes to preschool full time, five days a week. He has to cope with a new parental/authority figure, a new home, new pets (my dog and two cats, who are much more present in the household than the two cats who live(d) with him and his mother and resided primarily in the kitchen).

It's a huge adjustment, and just as that happened I got a job in a new city which means I have to commute back and forth every 4-5 days. So my schedule is a mystery to him (heck, it's a bit of a mystery to me), and that adds to the overall stress.

In short, there is a lot of acting out. He doesn't listen, no matter what we do. Lord knows, we have tried everything from time outs to taking away toys to turning off the TV to resorting to "redirecting" at the suggestion of his teachers (i.e. physically moving him away from whatever it is he's doing that we don't like and setting him up doing something better), to no avail. He's lost whatever ability he had to tolerate frustration. The moment he hears "no,"  he melts down. Screaming tantrums, kicking and shrieking and turning red in the face, and just ignoring it until it stops doesn't work, because he just works himself up more until he's rigid and practically convulsing with rage.

When he's not having eardrum-bursting tantrums, he's running in circles and screaming (happy screams instead of tantrum screams are still screams), or getting into everything he shouldn't be getting into. Whatever idea pops into his mind, he acts on it instantly. I realise that this is part of being a three-year-old, but because he's so high-energy, what would be a minor thing with most kids turns very quickly into disaster with him. If we tell him not to mess with the drawers, he does. A regular kid might open one drawer and poke at it. Bean, on the other hand, opens all the available drawers and pulls out everything in them, dumping it all on the floor in the time it takes for us to turn around and say "No, don't do that!"

Any attempt to discipline him, when not met with the aforementioned tantrums, are met with giggling and outright defiance, as though it's all one giant game. I remember that, as a child, I was incredibly sensitive to my parents' moods, and would be crushed at the thought that they weren't happy with me. I was, even then, a people-pleaser. Bean has no such compunctions. If we're angry and frustrated, so what? That just makes it funnier. It becomes an increasingly funny game until we find the right "punishment" for that moment, at which point he starts screaming and wailing again.

It's exhausting and frustrating for all of us.

It doesn't help that my own role as parent/disciplinarian is fuzzy at best. My girlfriend and I are still working out the kinks of this whole relationship thing, and in many ways she still has the get-the-fuck-away-from-my-kid reflex whenever I try to intervene. This in turn makes me tend to either back off or not come on as strongly as I would if it were, say, a child I'd raised from birth/infancy. Bean gets away with a lot more than I ever would have liked to see in one of my kids, especially when it comes to how he behave with/around other people. He also senses that my authority is in doubt, and that makes it much easier for him to ignore me whenever I try to get him to do anything that doesn't fall within his "This is what I want to do right now" parameters.

These days, even a suggestion of "Go to the bathroom, please," when we notice he's grabbing at himself is met with "NO!" If we insist, he has a tantrum. No matter what unfolds afterward, it inevitably winds up with wet underwear. Bean actually started potty training early by most standards, well over a year ago. So it's not like going to the bathroom is a huge ordeal for him, except how apparently it is. The mere suggestion that he interrupt whatever he's doing is insupportable, it seems.

What doesn't help is that Bean is slightly delayed with his speech. Nothing too worrisome, and he's been improving by leaps and bounds since going to his new school, but he's definitely behind most of his peers. Only his mother understands the majority of what he says. I can grasp about 60% of what he says, and other adult are flummoxed. He hasn't figured out pronouns or articles except in the most basic way, and while he's now managing complex sentences (something he wasn't doing even at three years old, when he was still only putting together two words at a time), they're pretty fragmented. I suspect that the frustration of not making himself understood is a part of what's been going on.

In short, I'm at a loss, and I'm not in a position to do anything about it. Every time I even mildly make a suggestion about modifying something, I get shut down. Either it's something that's already been tried (and heaven forfend that I point out that trying something once and never again doesn't, in fact, constitute a proper try), or else I get "that would never work, because X, Y & Z." My girlfriend has years of childcare to her name (her mother took care of kids, and she ran her own daycare business for years), whereas I have none, so my input has no weight to it. Whatever idea I have, it's automatically theoretical because I have no real world experience to lend it weight. The only experience I have is my own childhood (and I was that rare unicorn of children, a quiet, self-directed people-pleaser, the kind of child who was so low-maintenance that people think my parents are lying about how easy I was to raise), and the stories I hear from other parents.

So, fair enough. I am pretty sure that my girlfriend is never truly going to accept me as Bean's other parent. Bean is hers, and I just live here. We are planning to have other kids, and I suspect it'll be hard to have the kind of double standard that will always have him getting exemptions from every attempt at discipline, but it's still workable. It's not ideal, but it's not a deal-breaker as far as I'm concerned. Raising Bean is a big challenge, and there will be different challenges in the years to come with other kids.

In conclusion? The gender nonconforming thing? It's not a real problem. It's just who Bean is, and that's one of the best things about him. I just wish it were the worst of our problems, because if it were? It would mean life was 100% awesome all the time.

The Demise of Barbie...

All the non-adult members of our household are in revolt since I started my new job. My commute and multi-day absences are taking their toll.

Bean's first tactic of screaming through his bedroom window for me not to go didn't have the desired effect of making me stay home, so last week he changed tactics.

"You go to work now, Dahdee," he said (it's how he pronounces my name, and it still amuses me to no end that people think he calls me "Daddy."). "You go to work and me stay home alone with Mama!"

Yes, reverse psychology. He's a smart cookie. Of course, it didn't produce the results he wanted. All it did was hurt my feelings. I expect that this is something I should try to get used to, being the co-parent of a kid who wasn't ~mine~ for the first three years of his life.

Alas, the pets are also staging a revolt. The cats have been... well, they've been cats. It could be worse. The dog, on the other hand, has been acting out more and more. He's chewed a few of Bean's toys, though my girlfriend was able to save most of them (the squeaky hedgehog, alas, no longer squeaks). Last week, however, the dog ate Barbie. To be specific, he bit off Barbie's butt.

Barbie is relatively new in our household. My girlfriend LOVED Barbies when she was younger (and still loves Barbie), so she rightly thought Bean would like her too. She dug two Barbies out of storage last week, and Bean does indeed adore them. It was one of the few things that made him play quietly in his room (you have no idea how rare this is), along with his train tracks. We have a house for Barbie, and one of his Christmas presents will be a Barbie Volkswagen that was found on sale. We're pretty sure Barbie is here to stay.

So on Tuesday right as I was packing the car to go there was the sound of crying and screaming from Bean's bedroom. From the sound of it I assumed he got himself in trouble for not listening/pulling on the dog/some other act of mayhem. I have a whole long other post that I need to write about the actual challenges we're facing with Bean, rather than the gender-creative thing. Oddly enough, that's not the "problem" with Bean. But like I said, that's a post for a different day.

When I went back inside, I found my girlfriend comforting Bean, who was in tears. There were bits of plastic all over the floor, and Barbie no longer had a bum. Her dress was in tatters. I put the dog in a time out, complete with presenting him with Barbie's remains. I have no idea if he understood why he was in trouble. I had bought him a different toy last week in the hopes that it would distract him from chewing the stuff that didn't belong to him, but apparently that didn't work at all.

So this week I found a couple of inexpensive Barbies at the store today. It's hard to find a good Barbie these days. Many of them now come with their clothing tops moulded on them in plastic, which is silly. After all, the whole point of Barbie is to dress and undress her any way you like, so that Barbie can be anyone you want her to be. I did finally find some that passed muster, and hopefully this will make up for last week's heartbreak.

The Colour Spectrum

This is the written-on-Sunday-posted-on-Monday edition.

Right now Bean is wearing a powder blue t-shirt with a picture of ballet slippers on it, pink leggings, powder blue socks, and a black cotton skirt. He's on the floor of the dining room assembling train tracks and yelling at the top of his lungs.

"Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!"

He's not actually hurt, though he has loudly claimed that he is. It's like sharing the room with a barking coyote. He's since moved on to staging what sounds like an elaborate railway accident.

If it weren't for the outfit, no one would think twice if they observed him right now. His behaviour is all "boy." And yet because he's wearing a skirt, I'm pretty sure that the average person might well look askance until someone explained it to them.

I am off work until Tuesday evening, and incredibly happy to be home. It's been a rough three weeks since I started this new job. A car accident for my girlfriend, a fried computer (hers, not mine), and the new commute for me have all contributed to a household filled with stress. So being home for four days is giving all of us a bit of a break.

Tomorrow is the birthday of Bean's grandfather, known as Pake ("Pah-kuh"), which is Frisian (or West Frisian) for "grandfather." So while my girlfriend went out to get birthday presents for him, Bean and I went for a long walk with Sergent, my seven year old husky-collie mix. Sergent is a sweetheart who loves Bean and lets him do pretty much whatever he wants.

We stopped to play in a nearby park. I use the term "park" loosely, because up until recently it was actually a fruit store. It burned down and they eventually tore down the building and laid down sod. So now there's a bit of grass growing, and there are about a dozen flower bins laid out, but that's about it. It was a good space for Bean to run around in, though, even though I wished it was better fenced-in than it was. Bean is... to put it politely... not a very good listener. He tends to run off and make us chase him because he thinks it's funny. Luckily, yesterday was a really good listening day, so we had a lot of fun running around the little park.

Bean was on his hands and knees in the dirt playing with acorns when one of our neighbours stopped by. She and I have chatted a few times, but she'd never met Bean before then. He was wearing his bright pink t-shirt that says "I love to dance!" on it, as well as his fuchsia skirt over his skinny jeans. The neighbour and I chatted for a few minutes until she tilted her head at me, clearly confused as to why I was using masculine pronouns to refer to Bean.

"Elle?" she prompted me, maybe thinking that French wasn't my first language (for the record: it is).

"Non, il," I confirmed. "C'est un garçon. Il aime les jupes." (He's a boy. He likes skirts.)

The thing is, Bean isn't all boy or all girl in terms of stereotypical likes and dislikes. Many of his behaviours are stereotypically "boy" (although I have known little girls to also behave this way). He's an incredibly high-energy kid. No one ever quite understands to the extent to which I mean "high energy" until they meet Bean. His mother and I often get reactions of "Oh, yes, my child is go-go-go too!" By which they mean that sometimes their kid gets hyper and runs around. Bean never stops moving, ever. Not when he's watching TV, not when he's making a puzzle. He's rarely quiet. The rest of the time he's loud. The volume ranges from we-have-to-talk-louder-to-make-ourselves-heard-during-normal-conversation all the way to ear-splitting shrieking that makes all our pets run for cover.

He also likes trains and cars and digging in the dirt. He just also likes pink and purple and sparkly things, princesses and fairies and makeup. It's very, very rare that he will sit and "play quietly" with any of his toys, whether it's his trains or his Barbies. In "Raising My Rainbow" Lori Duron said that they like to think of C.J. as a rainbow rather than a muddle of colours. If we think of the gender thing as a colour spectrum, Bean isn't a rainbow so much as he's kind of like a tie-dye t-shirt. Colourful and chaotic. We don't know if he'll continue to be gender nonconforming when he gets older. The trend seems to be 'yes' for now, but it's hard to tell. He's three and a half. He may decide that he's bored with skirts when he's five, or he might not. Either way, we're going to let him express himself the way he wants, and hopefully he won't want to censor himself for fear of being teased or bullied.

So the neighbour and I had a good chat about how kids should be allowed to like whatever they like. She was a little more hesitant when I brought the conversation around to grown men being allowed to like supposedly feminine things only, but she kept on gamely when I went into my "Feminism is also for men!" speech.

At the end she waved, Bean politely said goodbye, and she went on her way. No fuss, no muss.

For the most part, we haven't received the sort of censure that I've read about with other people whose kids don't fit the norm. It helps that, for better or for worse, my girlfriend and I are part of the LGBT community here. We may not be very active, but we know a lot of queer-identified people. All of our friends are feminists and believe in the equality of the genders. They've been teaching their daughters that it's they can want whatever they want out of life, and they understand the importance of teaching the same thing to our sons. Bean is also still young, and we are blessed that his daycare providers are supportive of his clothing choices and don't believe that ballet is only for girls.

In short, love the colours you love. The spectrum is literally just a social construct.

About Anonymity

I'm not exactly anonymous. I've always had a public persona on the internet, and I doubt this will change.

That being said, for the purposes of this blog, I'm going to keep quiet on the subject of names of people and places and anything that might make my family readily identifiable. After all, my life is no longer only my own, which used to be the case. I owe it to Bean and my girlfriend to protect their privacy. As such, I will be using nicknames and posting photographs with the faces blurred out or positioned in such a way that they can't be seen/recognised.

Anyone who knows me who comes across this blog will recognise the players instantly. I am not trying to hide who we are—our friends and family know us, after all, and there is no shame here. What I am trying to do is to protect us as much as I can from whatever the internet might throw in our direction.

I hope that all my readers (if readers there end up being!) will understand and respect this.

Thank you.

Here be brightly coloured dragons...

Post #1.

I'm not sure what kind of blog this will turn out to be. I've blogged before, mostly on LiveJournal, but mostly as a kind of personal journal with a small audience. This will, I think, be rather different. I'm starting late, but I see it a little as a way to chronicle the biggest change(s) in my life and how that goes.

To sum up what's happened since last April: my girlfriend of a year (we've known each other for ten years but only been dating for one) moved in with her three-year-old son, hereafter known as Bean. (I have yet to figure out a nickname for my girlfriend. Stay tuned. :P) I work for the RCMP as a telecoms operator, which means shift work, and recently I got transferred to a different city nearby. So for now I'm commuting back and forth for 4-5 days at a time between shifts.

So I've dived headfirst into being the "co-parent" (as my girlfriend puts it), of an extremely high-energy three-and-a-half-year-old boy, who also happens to be gender nonconforming. Or maybe more gender creative—that term seems to fit him better. Bean has two speed settings: fast and asleep; he also has two volume settings: loud and asleep. He loves trains and Iron Man and playing with rocks. He also loves princesses and fairies and pink and purple clothes and all things sparkly. He wears skirts and tights and hair clips as well as his regular "boy" clothes and plays with Barbies and throws rocks in the water and digs in the dirt. Basically, he's a kid.

I don't know if anyone will read this. I don't know if I'll be able to keep up with posting. I don't know what I'm going to put in here, except for the fact that it's going to be about my own experience with all of this. I'm not an expert, and goodness knows I am riddled with my own fair share of neuroses. Up until now, I've been terrible at relationships and not all that good with small children. I've had plenty of other things happen in my life that I will likely end up discussing here as well, because they are important to who I am.

In short, this is uncharted territory for me. Here be brightly coloured, gender nonconforming dragons. ;)

Also, eventually I hope to clean up the look of this blog. I am terrible with all things html and other coding, so bear with me while I muddle my way through the beginnings of this.