Another Late Update

Sorry for the delay. I simply got distracted yesterday and forgot that it was Monday and therefore a posting day. Whoops!

Bean is finally better after over a week with a cold that quite simply kicked his ass. The doctor found no infection and his lungs were clear, so the fever was just his body fighting off the latest cold virus.

Comfort and Self-Care

Poor Bean is sick. He has been since last Wednesday, with a low-grade fever that just won't quit. The paediatrician was completely booked today, so his mother will be taking him tomorrow. We figure it's probably yet another ear infection, as those are the one thing he can't seem to shake for the life of him. It always takes antibiotics, even though ear infections are often said to clear up on their own. He hasn't complained of ear pain, but that's not necessarily significant with him--he's not much of a complainer when he's actually sick. We can always tell when he's truly under the weather, because he goes quiet. He spent most of last Wednesday cuddled up with his mother or me (whenever she wasn't available to cuddle), and has by all reports been extra clingy all week. I've been back at my job since Thursday evening, so I only have second-hand reports about all of this.

With any luck he'll have antibiotics tomorrow, and things will go back to normal. Selfishly I'm hoping he'll be ready to go back to daycare by the time I get back from work. I adore him, but having him at home 24/7 is mentally exhausting for me. When he's sick but not feeling too bad, his behavioural problems come out in force. There's even more shrieking and tantrums than usual, more outright refusal to do anything, and he gets extremely crabby and whiny and demanding, which, quite frankly, dances on my very last nerve. Also, a week of no school for him means he's not getting any social contact with other children, and it means his mother will also be fresh out of any remnant of patience. It's not good for anyone.

An Early Monday Update

I feel a little bad, actually, because once again I've arrived on a Monday with no subject in mind about which to blog.

Life has been a lot of the same for me lately: going to work, coming back, scrambling madly to get all the chores done (and failing), trying to spend some time with Bean, and then going back to work.

I did get to go to my first ever birthday party for one of Bean's friends whose parents weren't also friends of mine. This was a preschool friend, so it was kind of exciting for me to go. The parents had rented a room in the Children's Museum in Laval, which has an exhibit of all the different kinds of jobs you can have when you grow up. It didn't cover them all, but it covered a wide range, from farmer to policeman to astronaut to grocery store clerk to teacher to cook. There was also construction work and a very cool room devoted entirely to engineering and science with lots of bouncing balls that you could subject to gravity in varying ways. Bean had a blast in that room in particular.

I got to experience my very first "Mommy Wars" moment, too, which was unpleasant at the time.

Keep All Those Plates Spinning

I realise this blog has exactly one reader, but I feel I must nonetheless apologise for missing Monday's posting deadline. It's been a heck of a week, and by the time I had a minute to myself on Monday, it was already bedtime. On Tuesday I called in sick to work with a migraine and was mostly too out of it to update, and today I was back at work for a training session.

So, here you have it, a Wednesday update rather than a Monday one.

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!

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.