Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • This might not be news to you, but reading to kids is kind of awesome.

    Okay, okay okay. NO, before you start shouting at me that reading to your toddler is the bane of your life, with the repetition and the books and ALL THE BOOKS, let me just stop you. Because this is new for me. It’s new, okay?

    My eldest child is seven years old and I am FINALLY allowed to read out loud to my children. FINALLY.

    When Amy was a baby, we dutifully bought all the best board books for her. Only to have her scream the moment we tried to read to her. By the time she was a toddler, she would meltdown and throw a book across the room if you opened it in front of her. Needless to say, we never tried library story time and I was hesitant for how she would handle kindergarten two years ago.

    Turns out, peer pressure is a powerful thing and she submitted to book readings, but only in class.

    Isaac was similar. No interest in books and slammed them closed if we pushed the issue. He hid the books for a while there too, and he struggles with story time at prekinder, hiding, and peeking from under his arms.

    BUT. Enter Evelyn.

    Evelyn is awesome. Leaving aside her “failure to thrive” and our utter meltdown from yesterday –

    (short story: she’s not eating enough, is losing weight, we’re having to consider an NG tube on dietician orders, but our Paed won’t sign off on the dietician doing an NG tube until he sees her again and reassures himself that she’s not doing well, and our Geneticist didn’t examine Evelyn at all, diagnosed her with EDS anyway, but said that he didn’t believe there was objective evidence of a feeding problem despite his utter lack of seeing her eat, ever, dismissing our speechie’s experiences with Eve. We’re waiting for everyone to decide what the fuck they’re doing and get back to me. In the meantime, Evelyn has had a good eating day today.)

    – she really is the most gorgeous child.

    She loves reading, and I am so damn delighted. Earlier, she was angry. She’d tried to feed, decided to bite me instead, been removed from the boob and put on the floor. She shouted for a bit, until I suggested she bring me a book to read.

    Let’s keep in mind that Evelyn doesn’t talk. She says Mumumum a bit, and Dad-deeee! a lot, but mostly, she doesn’t talk. Which is unusual, because Amy was giving me three word sentences at this age, and so was Isaac, before he regressed and stopped doing anything for 8 months. SO, she doesn’t talk. But she does follow instructions, and makes her feelings and opinions known.

    I suggested she bring me a book and off she toddled, determined look on her face.

    Evelyn’s books are kept in a bookshelf that she has access to, alongside her toys. Backwards and forwards she went, picking the books she likes the most and bringing them to me until we had a pile of five books. Then, pointing at the books, she climbed into my lap and snuggled in to let me read.

    This is a really big thing for me as a parent. Evelyn’s love of books is slowly trickling down to her siblings, who are also hanging around now to listen to me read stories.

    And I know, that it’s not a big deal in the scheme of things, but I think it’s pretty awesome

    My toddler chooses books and brings them to me to be read. How cool is that?

  • Never fight about money

    087

    I’m delighted to announce that I’ve been asked to contribute regularly over at Money Circle. I’ll be posting links so that you can read my articles when they’re published. My first one went live last night.

    When I first moved in with my boyfriend, now husband, my mother gave me some good advice: “Never fight about money. Fighting won’t magically create more money, so it doesn’t do any good.”

    Leaving aside the ways in which fighting does make a small subset of people a lot of money (WWE, UFC, Reality TV), she was completely right. Which is not unusual, when you think about advice given by mothers everywhere.

    My husband and I have been together for nine years now, married for two. We have three children. In our time together, we’ve gone through various money woes, but we’ve always managed to talk about it openly and honestly, without fighting… Read More at Money Circle

    money circle logo

  • And then she shoved both fingers up her nose and walked around talking nonsense to herself

    Evelyn 15 months

    For those of you living under a rock, I’d just like to point out that I’m doing NaNoWriMo. And let me tell you, it’s a WHOLE DIFFERENT BALL GAME with a toddler hanging around.

    Last year Evie was only 3 months old and she slept pretty much all the time. Health issues will do that to a baby. This year, she’s fifteen months old and chaos walking. Poor Amy is doing her best to keep her room clean, but Evie’s favourite game is throw everything out of every shelf everywhere, and also let’s throw all these clothes on the floor and make clothing angels, and maybe I’ll pull all the blankets off your bed while I’m at it, and can I eat that? It looks tasty. I’m going to eat it.

    And before you suggest a door, we’ve got one and she knows how to work it.

    I’ve already had an entire book of notes shredded and eaten. Luckily I got a brand new shiny red notebook for my birthday so I transcribed as much as I can and WOW, LET ME TELL YOU, the baby eats a lot of paper. Like, A LOT.

    She’s a funny little thing. She went nearly three weeks without eating a scrap of solid food. Nothing. NADA ZIP ZILCH GIVE ME BOOBS MILKLADY.

    And then she choked on NOTHING, and puked everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE. And it was all snot and mucus and grossness and disgusting, and I caught it with my hands to stop it going on the floor, but it overflowed anyway and it was bad. I am not paid enough for this vomit catching gig.

    But like magic, she started eating again, and has since been ingesting at least one bowlful of food a day, as well as half a notebook as often as she can, various appointment cards, artworks and the middle bits of apples, but not the skin.

    Like I said. Funny little thing.

    Toddlerhood is chaos. How had I forgotten this bit?

    Yesterday I dished up ice-cream after dinner, because I can, and because when you have a toddler who is funny about food, all calories are good calories, and especially ice-cream because it’s full of dairy and fat, which are good.

    Anyway, I sat down to share it with Evelyn, who looked at me with giant limpid eyes, before defiantly pointing at my ice-cream, and then at her mouth. SLOW DOWN KID, I’m getting to it, LOOK HERE IT IS IN YOUR MOUTH.

    She made a contented noise and let me feed her all my ice-cream.

    So she doesn’t talk, but man, she let’s her feelings be known. You see that thing? Yeah, put it right here in my face hole right here and what do you mean you’re not sharing, of course you’re sharing, make with the ice-cream lady.

    I was going to write an intelligent piece right here about linkbait articles and how if I see another “these five photos will make you want to buy a puppy and dress it up in hats and throw a party” or “humans are killing the world and here’s how you’re a horrible person who deserves to be flayed to death because POLYSTYRENE”, but huh, turns out all my brain can manage right now is a whole bunch of run on sentences.

    You’re welcome internet.

    FLIPSIDE: I hit 25 thousand words last night. TAKE THAT HATERS.

  • It’s my birthday!

    I’m 25 today.

    doughnut cake

    Nathan delivered me a doughnut complete with candle this morning, and a cup of tea I didn’t make myself.

    So far, it’s a good day.

    If I wanted to get all introspective, I would point out that I’m now in my mid-twenties, and I’ve been blogging here since I was eighteen and a mother to one almost-toddler who never slept. My almost-toddler is now seven, opinionated, and awesome. Long term readers have seen me have another two children, all of us growing up.

    Years of writing, collected here.

    Happy Birthday me!

  • Resting on my laurels: A cautionary tale for the Internet

    Empty House

    I remember reading a blog post nearly three years ago now – wait, wait. Evelyn is how old? HOW MUCH TIME HAS PASSED?

    Scratch that. Start again.

    I remember reading a blog post nearly five years ago now, in which an ‘old school blogger’ whose name I can’t remember, lamented the fact that she had rested on her laurels. She’d built her audience up over some years, and during the time blogging was exploding in the US, she was considered a big name. She was there, she was everywhere, everyone knew her name.

    And then she rested on her laurels. She got comfortable sitting at the top of the blogging pile, her name on every list that came out, her audience growing.

    What she didn’t notice was that just over there (yes, there, where you are now) a bigger pile was growing. New bloggers, new blogs, up and comers, online magazines, people hungry for money and fame.

    Eventually, she realised she wasn’t a big name any more. She’d kept blogging, but hadn’t kept up the engagement, hadn’t found new readers, hadn’t pushed through with the social media. She was finding herself to be obsolete.

    It was an interesting read for me, five years ago. Five years ago, I was coasting the waves of success, and I was wary of having that happen to me.

    And then life intervened. My babies grew up. I changed my perspective. I grew up. I wrote some fiction. I wrote some more fiction. I published some. I did NaNoWriMo, wrote a book and loved it. There was cancer, death, grief, in its great soul sucking pit of horrible. My life changed. I grew up some more. I stopped caring so much.

    Five years later, I am that blogger.

    I rested on my laurels and while I’m still here blogging – albeit less regularly than I used to – the blogging world moved on without me. I stopped reading new blogs because I didn’t know their back story. I fell off the lists, people stopped asking my opinion, and when I began to turn down sponsored opportunities because I didn’t have the time/energy/inclination, I found myself pushed off the PR lists as well.

    The online world moves on, and you either adapt and improve, or get crotchety and start shouting at the kids to get off your damned lawn.

    I clearly did the latter.

    I’m finding myself drawing in, sharing less, writing more. It’s an organic change, linked to the growth of my children. Amy is seven now and her stories are not my stories. Isaac starts school in February. His stories and struggles are not mine to post all over the internet now.

    Evelyn, while small, is growing fast.

    The Internet is fast paced, a super highway full of hungry bloggers, entrepreneurs, people looking to make a quick buck.

    I stopped shouting over the noise, and the noise flowed away, like a river parting around a particularly stubborn rock. I didn’t have the time to repeat myself, over and over, for the benefit of people who hadn’t heard me the first time.

    I rested on my laurels and the Internet moved away from me.

    I’m not sure if I’m okay with that.