Just Powers

William is three months old today.

He seems huge to us - at his two month checkup he was 23 1/2″ long and 12 pounds, and he has been wearing his 3-6 month clothes for at least a month already. Most of his clothes sized at strictly three months he has outgrown. He wore size NB diapers for a couple of weeks after he was born but has quickly moved through the 1’s and 2’s and now can only comfortably fit in the size 3’s. I know all of this is pretty typical, but Emma was such a peanut, so this is a whole new experience for us.

He remains incredibly good natured and happy. He cries when he is hungry or in pain, but otherwise sits calmly in his car seat watching us all. In the last month he started smiling up a storm and now has full on cooing conversations with us. I swear he is going to laugh out loud any day now.

He seems to us to be super-strong. He hasn’t rolled over yet, but can bear all of his weight on his legs, and enjoys it - making me think we might have another early walker on our hands. He has had amazing neck control for a couple of months and as a result has already spent some time in the Bumbo seat as well as his johnny jump up.

He usually goes to sleep at around 9:00 or 10:00 at night and is up once during the night at about 3:00 or 4:00, then wakes up for the day when we do. We are still co-sleeping with him and plan on transitioning him to his crib one of these days, but he is so darn snuggly that I find I actually enjoy having him sleep with us. He is a good sleeper though and doesn’t fight going to bed or going back to sleep at all.

The snuggly-ness is one of the best things about our Will. Also, the fact that he seems to adore us as much as we adore him. There is nothing like the toothless grin and loving gurgles of an infant to make a person feel appreciated.

We love you Will!

I have had my bad parenting moments. There was the time I didn’t feed Emma enough and then couldn’t figure out why she wouldn’t sleep. Also, that time I locked her in the car, ugh. I have run a couple of red lights by mistake and have probably yelled more than I should. But now I have hit an all time low in bad parenting moments. It would seem that Emma’s recent difficult behavior might have been a result of sleep deprivation…

Isn’t sleep deprivation counted as a form of torture? In our house it certainly has been, for everyone involved.

On Sunday, March 8, 2009, we experienced a little thing called Daylight Savings Time, you might have heard of it? This made Emma’s room lighter in the mornings than it had been in months. It took about a week for her bedtime to adjust back to normal, but she was still sleeping in till her regular time of around 7:00 am. Eleven days later her baby brother was born. Not long after, Emma started waking progressively earlier - first 6:30, then 6, then 5:30. She kept waking up at 5:30 for weeks. We couldn’t figure out what was going on, or how to get her back to that now glorious wake-up time of 7:00, but with the baby waking up in the middle of the night, it didn’t seem like a priority since no one was getting much sleep anyway.

Simultaneous with the 5:30 am wakings, Emma’s behavior took a turn for the nightmarish. Of course, this was also somewhat simultaneous with her awareness that her brother wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so we figured she was reacting to that new reality, in addition to just being two. She was weepy and whiny, she had temper tantrums that would reduce her to hitting and kicking, and she couldn’t seem to handle any minor stress. In particular she would wake up in the morning and after naps in a really really bad mood. This was not the Emma we knew and loved, and when I wasn’t blaming myself for “breaking her” by bringing her brother into her life, I was praying to the universe to bring my little girl back.

Last week, as Will started to sleep for longer stretches, the 5:30 am thing got really old for me. I decided that maybe darkening her windows would help her sleep longer. Then I started counting up the hours of sleep she was getting each day - around 9 hours at night and 2 hours for her nap if we were lucky - and realized she was only getting 11 hours a day instead of the 12-14 hours recommended for kids her age. Um, duh? Losing 1-2 hours a day over a long period of time would leave me pretty cranky too.

So we covered her windows and the first morning I woke up at 5:30 and held my breath. At 6:15 she arrived in our room asking sweetly for something to drink and to “watch a yiddle Thomas”. SUCCESS!! Yesterday she woke up at 6:38 and this morning it was 6:52. Woohoo!! Of course I still wake up at 5:30 every morning listening for her, grr.

Of course she is still 2, which means it is her job to push my buttons and test the limits, which she is still doing, but she seems to be enjoying the testing more in the last couple of days. She hasn’t been cranky after waking up and she is markedly less whiny and weepy, which in turn makes me less whiny and weepy. It would seem her biggest problem has been her parents and their inability to make sure her basic needs are met. Good times.

If she remembers any of it, this episode in her life will make great fodder for the therapist in twenty years. “And my parents made me sleep in a BRIGHT room, and then got MAD at me when I was a pain in the butt.” If it’s any consolation honey, it’s been torture for us too.

Someone told me the other day that I have cured them of wanting kids. Ack. How terrible. I didn’t think I complained that much, but apparently I do.

So, to provide a little balance to my last post, let me say right here and right now that having kids is the best thing I have ever done. The most challenging, the most physically painful, possibly the craziest thing sure - but still, the best.

The thing is that for me the hard stuff about being a parent is tangible: the sleep deprivation, the frustration with repeating myself over and over and over, the chaos, the temper tantrums, the wondering how badly I’m screwing them up. That tangibility makes it easier to talk about the hard stuff than the good stuff.

The good stuff about being a parent happens deep inside in a place that I didn’t know was there until I had kids - maybe it didn’t even exist until then (thanks Anne Lamott). The good stuff happens in the tiny little quiet everyday moments that are tougher to describe without sounding like a Hallmark card. While I have begun to know what to expect with the hard stuff, the good stuff keeps surprising me, making me fall in love with my kids over and over again and making the hard stuff worth every second.

I don’t mean this to sound like I think everyone should have kids. It doesn’t “complete” you as a person to have kids. It doesn’t make you a better person or a more fulfilled person, but it does make you a different person. It makes you change and grow in ways that I’m not sure anything else does in quite the same way.

So please don’t be cured just yet - and certainly not just because a cranky new mother complained too much…

And Emma, who has discovered how cool band-aids are.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there! I don’t know if it is being a mom to two, or a mom of a two year old, or a new mom again, but I have a new-found respect for the job of motherhood and how hard it really is to be a good mother.

So to all moms: have a great day! And a special thank you and lots of love to all of the special mothers in my life who guide me as I figure out this crazy, amazing job.

In the almost eight weeks since Will was born, we have had lots of visitors; people who came to lend us a hand as we transitioned to a family of four. They have changed sheets, gone grocery shopping, prepared meals, washed dishes, folded laundry, cleaned out litter boxes, walked the dogs, burped the baby, mowed the lawn, installed lighting fixtures, dug a garden and tons more.

What I now know as a result of these visits is that it takes at least three, preferably four, full-time adults to care for two children and maintain a household. It is a scientific fact that one person, or even two, cannot possibly do this job and stay sane. Let me be clear: It. Cannot. Be. Done.

So, since we cannot afford full-time childcare, maid service and a chef, (because all of those things count towards that 4:2 adult:child ratio) I am in search of a village. That is what it takes, I hear, so I need one. ASAP please.

Only serious applicants need apply.

When we had Emma, I was totally prepared for that first month home with her to be the worst month of my life. I figured I would be sleep deprived, hormonal, in physical pain and generally confused about my new role as a mother. It turned out that actually it was much better than I predicted - I was pretty good about sleeping when she slept, Mike and I got to hang out just the two of us as we got to know our new baby and I didn’t feel nearly as stumped by motherhood as I thought I would.

This time around I didn’t prepare myself for much of anything, mostly because I was so wrong last time, and I couldn’t quite get my head around how life would be with two anyway, so why waste time worrying about it?

I have to say, 3 weeks and 3 days into this adventure, that things are much more challenging this time than I could have ever imagined. Sleep is… oh pthltpt, who needs sleep anyway? Mike and I are getting really good at splitting up to attend to one child each, but this means we don’t get to do a whole lot of hanging out “just the two of us” - although thank god there ARE two of us. The emotions connected to raising two kids is enough fodder for an entire month of blog posts, so I won’t even go there. And holy mackerel - the sheer logistics of managing two kids is completely overwhelming at times.

Case in point - it took us forever to get to the grocery store this weekend. Every time we planned to go something came up - Emma was melting down, Will needed to eat, the weather was too nice and a trip to the park seemed like a much better idea - and we didn’t actually get to the store until 48 hours after we had initially planned to go. It made me realize two things - 1) Going to the store by myself with both kids is not going to happen for quite a while and 2) I am in serious trouble when Mike goes back to work in a week.

Peapod may become my new best friend.

William James Carvalho joined us on Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 5:32 pm. He weighed 7 pounds 3 ounces and was 19 3/4 inches long. Like his sister, his labor was uneventful if pretty short - 6 hours of very light contractions that allowed me to drive myself to the hospital, ending with the doctor breaking my water which brought on 40 minutes of very very hard labor before Will entered the world in one push. We had the most amazing nurse in the world who made the whole experience the polar opposite of our experience delivering Emma.

One week later, we are all doing great. Emma is going through what seems like a pretty typical 2 year-old adjustment period, requiring extra patience and love from us, Will is sleeping and eating and doing everything else newborns do (no prediction here about his temperament, lest I jinx it), and Mike and I are just beginning to figure out how to juggle it all.

One of the hardest things about the whole bedrest thing during this pregnancy has been asking for help. It isn’t that I haven’t needed help, it’s just that asking for it is difficult for me, it always has been. I will happily accept help that is offered, but reaching out and being proactive about getting it when I am having a hard time is not in my nature. I just assume that people who have the time or ability to help me will offer, and if they don’t offer then they must not be able to help so what is the point of asking? This has been frustrating for lots of my family and friends who have let me know that they want to help, but don’t know how and need me to guide them. I have been trying to get better at this, but it is really hard.

When Emma was sick with the stomach flu a couple of weeks ago, she spent two days throwing up. Every time she threw up she would say “I’m ok, I’m ok, I’m ok” through her tears, to the point that Mike and I would cry with her as we watched her be very not ok.

As I watched her working so hard to convince us - and more importantly herself I guess - that she was ok, I wondered where she learned the “I’m ok” mantra. Certainly as grown ups we insist we are fine all the time when we clearly aren’t, but how does a 2-year old pick this up and start doing it? Then I realized that our usual reaction whenever Emma gets hurt or cries is to say to her “You’re ok, you’re ok.” Like a lot of parents I think, we do this in an attempt to calm her down as quickly as possible, and to reassure her - and perhaps ourselves - that she really is ok.

Now I am wondering if we are doing her a disservice by insisting she is ok, when maybe she doesn’t feel like she really is. Are we teaching her that it is more important and acceptable to be ok than it is to experience bad feelings? Certainly bad feelings aren’t comfortable, but if there is one thing I have learned over the years it is the importance of experiencing and “sitting in” the downs of life as much as enjoying and cherishing the ups. Maybe we should be trying to figure out a way to comfort her when she is hurt or sad, while still validating the bad feelings she might be experiencing? Because it really is ok to not be ok sometimes.

In the end I suspect it is stuffing the bad feelings that leads us - ahem - to pretend we are fine and don’t need help, when in fact we do. If we felt as though our bad feelings were as valid as our good ones, we wouldn’t really apologize for them or hesitate to ask for help when we needed it would we? Aren’t we stronger when we are able to ask for help and get it, when we are able to rely on others in times of need without apology or embarassment? And doesn’t this also translate into being more empathic when others aren’t ok and need help?

So I will work on asking for help more, but I am also going to work on helping my daughter be ok with not being ok, with figuring out how to feel comfortable with bad feelings without wallowing in them and with knowing that it is ok to ask for help when she needs it.

After the first substantial snow of her short life, Emma went out to play. Her favorite things to do were to fall down on purpose, and climb this little hill in our neighbors yard. Next stop, Mt. Everest!!