Sleepless Nights

Category: Life

  • Evelyn the Tyrant

    Evelyn is 17.5 months old now and OH, don’t we know about it. She has WANTS and NEEDS and LOUD OPINIONS that frequently see her throwing herself to the floor to screech about the unfairness of it all.

    Last night, Amy curled up on my lap for a snuggle while I read a book. Evelyn noticed, and looking determined, she climbed on top of her sister. Using feet and elbows, she wedged herself between us, screeching at Amy the whole time.

    WOE to anyone who dares touch me. Evelyn will be there, pushing them away.

    It’s both cute, and frustrating. Usually we just pull her into the middle of whatever cuddle we’re having until she fights free.

    This morning Isaac was playing Minecraft on the computer. Evelyn climbed up onto the chair with him, and carefully, using her feet, began pushing him off the chair. Isaac, being a decent big brother, went and got a second chair for himself. Eve crawled onto that one as well and kicked him off.

    At which point I intervened and took her away, but OPINIONS and NEEDS and WANTS.

    She’s full on, exhausting. If I sit down at my computer, she pouts. If I keep working, she turns the computer off. I moved to a new desk to make the computer tower higher, out of reach. She gets a step stool. If I switch to the laptop, she shouts and pushes the lid closed.

    Needless to say, I haven’t been on the computer much at all.

    Eve’s eating has picked up a little bit. I’m hesitant to hope too much, as her eating has always been peaks and troughs, but for now she’s eating. I mostly weaned her too. She’s having a breastfeed at 4am, but isn’t interested during the day. And HALLELUJAH she’s taking a bottle of pediasure before sleep now.

    We’re working on finding new things that she’ll happily eat. She likes well seasoned food, preferring curry to plainer foods, which is nice. It’s nice to have one child who likes curry – the older two mostly just eat the rice.

    But she isn’t talking yet.

    I hesitate to say she isn’t talking “at all”, because when pressured, she will say Mumum, Da-da and something that sounds close to “MeeMee” which I assume is Amy. But she’s mostly a silent child, using various inflections of screech to communicate. She wasn’t a babbly baby, and she still isn’t now. It’s strange for me, even at the peak of Isaac’s ASD regression, he still had around 10 words.

    Our speech pathologist is a bit concerned, because it’s clear Eve understands well.

    But it’s another wait and see thing. In the meantime, I think I’d best start learning some simple sign language to teach her. It might curb the angry frustration we’re seeing a lot of.

    And that’s it from me. School holidays have left me with hardly any free time. Three children mean it’s rare that someone isn’t speaking to me, climbing on me, or needing me immediately for something. School is back in another three weeks. Isaac turns five on Saturday.

    Life is good. Busy, chaotic, exhausting – but good.

  • Why is fresh food so expensive?

    If I tally up my budget, food is our biggest expense. And I’m starting to get despondant about the fact I can buy a weeks worth of processed crap for less than the price of three days of fruit and veg.

    It’s ridiculous.

    And expensive.

    Is it the same where you live? Or is fresh produce cheap?

    Read the entire article at Money Circle.

    money circle logo

     

  • We need to tell more stories.

    This morning Hobart Mums’ Network asked what we resolved to do this year. I thought about it briefly, and flippantly replied:

    Write more, daydream more, take notes for everything, smile lots, laugh, embrace irreverence, be silly often, tell stories every day, love well, live well.

    As flippant as I felt, looking back on my comment this is exactly what I plan to do this year.

    Christmas Night, when everyone had gone home, Evelyn was asleep, and the light was disappearing from the horizon, Nathan lit the bonfire. We sat there, watching the paper and wood burn, and my brother and I began telling stories.

    Amy and Isaac curled up on the grass next to us, blankets around their shoulders, while Nathan listened. We sat there, and I recounted moments from my childhood for them. My brother added things I’d forgotten – although how I’d forgotten sliding down the dry grassy hill on a body board, I don’t know.

    My children laughed, and snuggled, and begged for more.

    There is power in telling stories to my children, especially stories from my childhood. Snippets they take into themselves, building connections between us as they imagine me as a child, hiding from my parents in an old cupboard, or sliding down a hill on my stomach.

    This year, I resolve to tell more stories. Write more, and write often. To laugh. To embrace irreverance, and to not take myself seriously.

    We can learn a lot from how our children approach life, and this year, I plan to emulate them.

    Of course, bits of adulthood continue to sneak in around the edges, with a credit card disaster fresh in my memory, and a discovery that no matter how stable it feels like we are, it only takes a minor disaster to set off my financial disaster alarm bells.

    But it’s all okay. It’s a New Year, all fresh and shiny, with the bubble wrap still caught around the edges.

    I plan to take advantage of every second.

    Of course, I’m also quitting sugar for January as part of a sponsored campaign that I’ll talk about in detail a little later in the month, so “taking advantage” may also equal “curling up in a ball with tea and a book”. Clearly I am insane as the house is still full of chocolates from Xmas. Twitch. Twitch.

    —

    You can read about my credit card disaster on Money Circle. It wasn’t the highlight of my Christmas period, that’s for sure.

  • Notes from beside a hospital bed

    Gate leave, man, it’s awesome. Last night after a long day in hospital, Evelyn and I came home and slept in our own bed. Despite still being in hospital, getting to go home every evening is saving my sanity.

    We’re still getting into the routine of things. Eve had lost weight at admittance yesterday, and the speechie has noted a few things going on with her mouth when she eats, so hopefully a plan is on the way.

    We’re probably going to repeat her swallow study, this time looking for what is going on further down her oesophagus, rather than just her swallow. Right now, Eve is complicated and we’re still feeling our way forward.

    She’s asleep right now, after I walked miles up and down the corridors, with her in her pram. She’d refused to sleep in her cot, and I was grateful, so grateful,for not being tied to the ward, for being allowed to walk, for our ability to leave the climate controlled paeds ward.

    That’s really all that is happening right now. I’m tired, and not looking forward to the rest of the week, but I’m hopeful that this will be the beginning of getting her issues sorted.

    And you know, this morning she smeared an entire tub of pureed apple and blackcurrant all over herself, so that was also a bonus.

  • 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!