Scribblings

Missing T

This week I thought I'd have plenty of time to finish sorting out and then posting the hundreds of pictures TB and I took on vacation. Why? Little T is spending the week with his daddy and family on vacation! I've been going through pictures but not really doing very much .... we really miss the little guy!

Hope you're having a wonderful time, Little T, and see you soon!

Now...back to those pictures...

What can we do on a rainy miserable day?

We can play Candy Land!

I was saving the game just for a day like this one...raining cats and dogs and just totally miserable outside.

I opened the game board and took out the pieces and the cards, leaving them out for a little while until Tomas noticed them. He enjoyed the colorful trail leading to the candy palace and marched the people around. For a while, I played the game with all the pieces, moving them from colored space to colored space. Tomas does a lot of watching from the corner of his eye and I'm sure it won't be long before he's playing this game the conventional way as well as his own imaginative Tomas way.

Candy Land is back in my life once again! I played it as a child, played it innumerable times with my kids and now am appreciating it all over again as a nana!

Room Nana & Other Stuff

Schools reopened for the first time since our ice storm of a couple of days ago. Tomas's class was supposed to have a Valentine's Day party Wednesday. I volunteered to be the room "nana" and was planning to bring in paper products and goodies for the parties. I wondered if the party would still go on and in elementary school, kids still come first! We all had a great time!

Of course, Tomas had a total meltdown. I wasn't too surprised having been through the preschool years 3 times already but Heidi (who didn't have any class and wanted to come along) was shocked. At first, T was very delighted to see us but his mood began to go south when he realized we weren't going home. Setting up for the party totally threw him. He didn't want to sit down at the table with everyone and Heidi was whispering, "What's wrong with him? Why is he in such a bad mood?" I said it's because his routine is different: we are there, they aren't doing what they usually do, and he can't handle it all. Heidi worried that somehow she'd set the little guy off but all the teachers reassured her that this is what kids do under these circumstances and it's perfectly normal.

Tomas didn't want to do the craft, either, and threw the picture frame on the floor. We spent about 10 minutes trying to get him to pick it up but he steadfastly refused. He wanted me to pick him up and hold him and I kept saying I would after he picked up the frame. Then I felt him falling asleep and scooped him up. It's okay, said the teacher. He didn't have a nap before and was tuckered out.

I learned that this the teacher's first job and that is cool. She is very motivated and has lots of good ideas to stimulate the kids.

Tomas is going through some other changes which are kinda normal but yet not. What I mean is, he wants to dress himself independently and I remember my kids' early attempts. The difference is that T will get upset about something and we don't always know what it is. Then he refuses to let anyone put a new diaper on him or he refuses to wear pants or a shirt ... Trial and error, I figure out that there are three different patterns on the diapers and he prefers one over the other two. He wants pants that snap and zip, not track pants or pants with elastic waistbands. Shirts cannot have buttons down the front or turtle necks.

The communication issue makes it very difficult. I didn't envy Linda the last couple of days. Since school was closed, it didn't matter how long it took for T to get dressed but boy! It sure was frustrating! The socks have to be just so on his feet, have to match, and cannot be colored. The velcro straps on his shoes have to be aligned just so.

As I watch all this happen or experience it for myself, I wonder to myself how much of this is typical 3 year old stuff and how much of it is PDD-related?

I'm really glad I posted about that useless book I read because I got a comment from someone with another title to try:
Pervasive Developmental Disorder: An Altered Perspective by Barbara Quinn and Anthony Malone. This is the next book I'm going to read.

Parenting 101

I've been watching Dr. Phil for the last couple of years. The man is arrogant but he does know his stuff and he's had a lot of helpful shows about parenting. One thing I've heard him say over and over is that if parents fight in front of their kids and if parents are abusive toward the kids, the young ones are changed forever. It makes a lot of sense. Looking back at my own life, I think I can find several places where I was "changed".

As I've listened to some of these families speak, I wondered and worried about what kind of parent I was when my kids were little. I remember being angry a lot--not necessarily at them. I remember Rich and I yelled at each other a lot--and in front of the kids. How had that changed them? It's a scary thought, it really is! I saw enough of these books that I decided I wanted to look into it some more. So now I'm reading the book Dr. Phil was peddling last year Family First and in it, he says that even the most dysfunctional family can become what he calls "phenomenal".

That's hopeful!

Some years ago, I remember reading a poem that had a big impact on me but I don't think I had the tools to make the changes I needed to make. Rich and I talked about that poem a lot, particularly in view of the fact that he felt he'd grown up with heavy duty criticism. He was having a hard time clapping his hand over his mouth and not doing the same thing to our son! In fact, I think that's a sort of "curse" we all suffer from--being like our parents.

"Oh, I'll never do that, I won't say and do what my mother/father did."

And then when we have kids, we're horrified to hear the words we dreaded coming right out of our own mouths!

Back to the poem:

I'm at that portion of Dr. Phil's book where there are exercises to complete. He suggests keeping a private journal to do this part and maybe for some of it that would be a good idea. But if Billy, Heidi & Kristin read my blog I'd like them to see the positive points to their grandparents so some of it I figured could be public.

Here goes...

The best qualities of my mother are: her love for me and my brother even if she didn't always know how to express it; a great cook! She also was very artistic and I'm really sorry that she gave that up. I'm sure that Heidi and Kristin inherited some of their abilities from her.

The best qualities of my father are: his undying love for my mother in spite of everything, his love for my brother and me even though he didn't know how to express it always, being a good provider and a hard worker so that we always were fed, clothed & warm, and strong feelings of family ties.

What I love most about my mother: the courage she doesn't realize she has. It took some guts for her to put her foot down in deaf school, complain "you're not teaching me anything" and then going out and teaching herself the skills she needed

What I love most about my father: his strong family loyalty

My mother showed her love for me by: trying to do her best to make sure I was educated about the facts of life. Now, she was too embarrassed to talk to me personally and so she bought books and left them out for me to read.

My father showed his love for me by: giving me the freedom to make decisions for myself and not getting all critical about it or calling me "stupid" or other names.

My parents both showed their love by: showing up at functions like school plays and concerts. They could not hear, there were no interpreters and so they'd sit there patiently for a couple of hours, probably bored to tears, to be supportive of my interests!

Okay...enough for now!

My Computer Back & Depressed Parents

YAY! Thanks to TB, I have my computer back and it's working great! It had been running slow and frequently was out of virtual memory so we figured I needed a new hard drive. So we got one and TB installed it and the only thing we had to wait for was all those files to copy over to the new drive.

When I finally got online, I caught up on my email and then read news stories. This headline really tickled me:
Kids Often Depress Parents. Really, ya think? And it turns out that parents are more prone to depression than adults who don't have children. Well, I don't think you'd need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out!

I don't think that kids deliberately set out to make us parents miserable; we don't set out to make our kids miserable. No, seriously. But common sense is going to tell you that this is going to happen and that it's a part of life. And of course parents would have a greater tendency to become depressed. Think about it: we love our kids, we want the best for them and when we see them suffer or make bad choices it makes us sad. With enough frustration and sadness there, it's no surprise we get depressed.

Adults who don't have children have themselves to worry about and any pets. They don't have these issues: worrying about the safety of their kids when they're out of the house, worrying about whether they'll get into drugs or alcohol, hooked up with an abusive person, drop out of school, get in a car accident....okay, we're getting extreme here. But it is very stressful to raise kids these days. It's hard work. If you have a kid with a difficult or rebellious nature then just day to day living can be stressful.

There are lots of great reasons to be a parent. But in and of itself, parenthood won't improve your mental health -- or your relationship with your spouse, says psychologist (and parent) Susan Jeffers, PhD. Jeffers, best known for the self-help classic Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, is the author of I'm Okay, You're a Brat!: Setting the Priorities Straight and Freeing You From the Guilt and Mad Myths of Parenthood.

"Society tries to tell us parenthood is the greatest fulfillment of all times," Jeffers tells WebMD. "That is not true for a majority of people. One can find wonderful things about having children. But people are not talking about the negative effect it has on your life. And it is very hard on relationships."

It's not just the wear and tear of having an infant, Evenson and Simon find. Parents are more depressed than nonparents:

Even when their kids have grown and left home
Even when they do not have custody of the children
Even when they adopt
Even when they become stepparents
"You lose your peace of mind, your extra money, your privacy, and on and on and on," Jeffers says. "The worst part of it all is how much you love them, because you worry a lot and you have to keep learning to let go and let go and let go."

This doesn't mean parenthood can't be extremely rewarding, Jeffers notes. It just means that having children doesn't automatically make life more meaningful.

I've been reading Dr. Phil's book and he lists a statistic: parents surveyed were asked would they have children again if they had to do it all over again. One-third said no.

Shoot. I'd do it again, depression and all. It's worth it.

Thursday Threesome

Baby Birds Have To Fly

I remember my dad saying (signing, really) "baby birds have to fly" many times throughout my life. His point was that eventually kids have to go out on their own. Teenagers start to pull away from their parents by withdrawing and rebelling as they get ready to become independent. Decades or centuries ago, teenagers were considered more like adults with all of those responsibilities. It's not like that nowadays. Now teenagers are in school until their late teens or early twenties and they don't have the resources to be able to support themselves totally. So they are in an inbetween sort of state, not a child and not an adult--and just generally making parents crazy.

Heidi and TB continue to butt heads. She has her own unique view of things and isn't on the same page as TB and me. She's hurt that I'm not bailing her out. She is immature but she is becoming a young adult. She chafes under authority. She hasn't learned yet that authority is something she's going to have to deal with all her life. Meantime, I think it would be really beneficial for her to go away to college and start gaining some independence -- or, she could get an apartment with friends. She doesn't know anyone who wants to move out, though.

So...the only other choice I can see if that she's just got to live with authority as it is until she can get out on her own and run her own life. That's how baby birds fly.

Saturday 8

1. do you read magazines? if so, what kind? if not, why not?

When I get a chance to catch up, I do. I read Writer's Digest, Reader's Digest, Entertainment Weekly, Consumer Reports and Prevention.

2. do you find yourself reading or watching celeb gossip? why or why not?

Only if there's nothing else to do!

3. if you had a job that you could do from home in addition to your 'regular' job, would you take it if you could make your own hours? why or why not?

Sure, I would love to work from home. It's convenient!

4. if this job netted you $1K to $1.5K per month, how would you spend your money given your current financial situation?

No way...a month? It couldn't be legal...but if by chance I did make lots of money a month I'd pay off all our debt, set aside money for the kids & grandkids to go to college, go on vacations with TB, buy us investment property, donate a bunch of money....

5. do you participate in any activities (marches, remembrances, historical tours, reading history) during black history month?

Reading

6. so, punxsutawney phil saw his shadow last week, and we're getting 6 more weeks of "mild winter weather." how do you feel about that, or do you care at all?

Who says it's all going to be mild? And I don't really care. There's about 6 weeks from Feb. 2 to the official first day of spring regardless of whether Phil sees his shadow

7. speaking of phil, are you a fan of the film "groundhog day"? i'm consistently amazed that i can't find a single person who doesn't like that film.

You found one. I don't like that movie.

8. and speaking of film, are you interested in seeing "the davinci code"? why or why not?

Yes, I do want to see that film--Tom Hanks is my favorite actor and Ron Howard is one of my favorite directions. It's a can't-lose combination as far as I'm concerned for what was (for me) a far-fetched story.