Month: November 2020

So yeah, it’s a MESS OUT THERE YA’LL and no one is more aware of it than our household. Totally thought I had the ‘Rona, and was SO RELIEVED that it turned out I was just regular crappy sick! But, it turns out everyone ELSE does have “the virus” (as my kids call it) and so no one can ever leave their homes again and X3 cannot go to school any more and will presumably scream for the rest of our lives.

My work is overwhelming and somehow harder to do even while I am doing significantly less while working entirely from home, and the winter holidays – whatever that means this year – are staring us in our shell-shocked faces. In this time of entirely-fucked-ness, verily I say unto you all that I am beyond thankful to have a three-year old right now, bringing, pure, unadulterated, EXTRA into my life every second.

I was never sure I would LIKE parenting. I knew I would commit and go all in and that I would find a way to enjoy many aspects but I didn’t know if I would ever feel that YES it was a better choice for me to have children than to not have children.

So, no one was more shocked than me that I absolutely fucking loved having a baby. My partner, who desperately WANTED a baby, loathed having one for at least the first six months – and at least a little flabbergasted and annoyed that I was pretty into it. I just really loved it. It wasn’t easy, it was super, duper, hard, and overwhelming, and exhausting, and constant, and stressful. But it turns out I love snuggly, warm, good-smelling things, and I love watching someone grow and learn, and I found most parts of having a baby delightful, and our baby (except for NEVER SLEEPING) was a pretty easy happy baby! It also is true that I was working full time, which has its own guilt and stress and exhaustion, but also meant that I was never in “all baby all the time my identity and life are gone this is the worst” like stay-at-home parents regularly experience

Well my baby is NOT a baby anymore, and it is both absolutely amazing and so so sad. I really love watching her grow and learn, but it is both super hard and fantastic to watch that babyness fade and to see the little big girl that is showing up in her place.

THIS IS THREE

Joy, delight, excitement, learning, development, independence.

X2 is a fucking delight. She wakes up late at night every night (yep, we are at plus 3 years, and she still doesn’t sleep through the night. She just has never been a good sleeper, and we have chosen not to sleep train) and I either sleep with her the rest of the night (in her full size bed, under X3’s bunk bed), or she comes and crawls into bed with my partner and I (in our king size bed with two adults, the dog, and the two cats. One night X3 crawled in with us and with one kid on either side and the dog sleeping on my legs I just about died. TOO MUCH EVEN FOR ME!). Simply giving in and co-sleeping has made our lives so much easier and more sleep is had by all, and especially by ME, which is a great relief. Plus honestly, I just really really like sleeping with my baby.

I explained to X2 recently that little tiny babies like to be wrapped up like burritos. But we don’t eat many burritos at our house, so she translated “burrito” to “taco”. So now in the middle of the night if she’s having trouble relaxing and getting back to sleep I hear “mom? mom, you wrap me tight like a baby-taco?” AND I SUBMIT IT IS BEYOND CUTE.

I used to sing to her in the morning, and she didn’t catch the words, but she caught the idea, so when she wants to wake up in the morning she will put her face by mine and sing “good morning, good morning, I love to see you good morning”. AWWWWWWW.

We’ve never been big on material things, and I literally cannot remember what I got her for any birthday or Christmas before now. But now EVERY SINGLE THING I SEE I WANT TO BUY FOR HER THIS YEAR, because she is at the developmental age and experimental stage where she would be absolutely ECSTATIC to receive (1) a cash register!, (2) a rocket-ship!, (3) a doctor kit!, (4) literally EVERYTHING! She is right there for magic, and I want to give her every magical experience and moment.

Her favorite activity is jumping on one leg, and she does it with intention and attention. She works hard at it and really practices it. She’s also into general jumping increasingly off of higher things and most recently jumping sideways with both feet over something. Generally, jumping is a pretty cool thing.

She’s learning shapes and can draw a circle and the letter H. She can recognize M as Momma, and Moon. Her motor skills recently are going crazy, she’s starting to color more in the lines, but she mostly doesn’t like to color, she wants to draw her own pictures. She has the concept of people shapes which is fascinating because X3 still can’t get people shapes (but is making otherwise cool and interesting art – I’m thinking people might be a weird hang-up based on her history). Her motor skills are just developing like crazy right now!

She loves the animals, (especially Harkness, who is somewhat less than interested in kids), and learning, and is more independent with her play than X3.

She will do her own thing for 20+ minutes at a time; she wants to know you are THERE, but she can often do something solo, which seems amazing. She wants attention from me more than my partner (rather than solo play) but that makes sense because I work and so my time and attention is a scarcer resource.

Every day she gets better at dressing herself, brushing her teeth, putting away her own laundry, and generally being independent. She wants to do EVERYTHING herself and woe to the person who attempts to do it for her.

She is simply full of joy and delight and it is, luckily, contagious.

Of course, three is not only pure joy. It is also pure misery…

THIS IS THREE

Rage, sadness, exhaustion, boundary-pushing.

WOOOH GOODNESS, they also weren’t kidding about the three-year old tantrums! It’s SO MUCH. In addition to age-appropriate, she has also learned some unfortunate behaviors from X3, so her BIG is VERY BIG.

Hilariously, she has also been learning all of X3’s social emotional coping strategies – so she knows that she needs to take deep breaths to calm down, and knows lots of ways to do it. But’s she’s still three, so that is a very hit or miss proposition.

A tragic and common occurrence is a tantrum meltdown, which has screaming and crying, during which she realizes she is giving herself a headache by screaming and crying, and then cries and screams “I DON’T WANT MY HEAD TO HURT” but without the control to actually calm down. Poor baby.

She is 100% a PITA to her sister and sometimes to us. She is jealous of hugs to X3, and unfair and demanding of everything for herself. She hits and kicks and tantrums when she doesn’t get what she wants – which is like, pretty often, because she’s three and doesn’t have a whole lot of autonomy on the day’s happenings.

She fully potty trained right at 3, like a freaking charm one day it was just …. done. BUT NOW…she has like 5+ accidents a day, (1) “I peed a little in my underwear”; (2) “I WAS ALMOST THERE”; (3) I was too comfy… She won’t wear a pull-up, she INSISTS on wearing underwear, she WILL. NOT. GO. if asked, directed, suggested, or otherwise cajoled (“let’s hop on one foot to the bathroom! let’s run to the bathroom, let’s go together, etc.) but also she has a total meltdown when she has an accident. We are in the proverbial no-win situation. Believe me, I have truly, truly, to my bones, felt the fear of having no good options and seeing clearly the inevitable tragic outcome. Silver lining: my bathroom floors are so much cleaner than I would likely keep them otherwise!

She is also pushing boundaries all the time, trying to get away with things, needing to do it herself, getting VERY ANGRY when a boundary or limit is imposed. And, oh, my achy-breaky heart, when my three-year old says “I no want you anymore. You not my mom” when she gets mad… it is honestly is both ridiculous and painful. Because it is the greatest fear of an adoptive mom; that those words will be true one day after a lifetime of love. And, because until now, she ALWAYS wanted me (spoiler: she still does! She’s just trying to get a reaction!). Until recently I was always able to calm her with co-regulation/deep-breathing , but now she won’t let me hold her close when she is very upset and it is just one more sign she is growing up.

Just not toooooo fast, please, baby, baby, please.

The hardest thing on the hardest journey is finding yourself re-walking ground you thought you had passed, often at great effort. Whether an evil fairy carried you backwards in your sleep, or you took an exciting short-cut that turned out to be a backwards loop, or you just happen to be living with a child with multi-factoral multi-year trauma.

I tend to be reasonably stoic about miserable experiences with a very “I can survive anything, solve any problem, and am always right” attitude (except for hiking up long inclines. Then I have a very “come back for me on your way down, I’ll just wait here attitude!”) As long as I feel movement, my self-image of “a survivor” will not let me quit. Inversely, feeling stuck and without control to move myself out of stuck or make changes creates the greatest overwhelming despair and panic.

October was awful. October is ALWAYS awful, but somehow we always seem to forget. (Part of the goal of this blog is to remember things – “parent brain” is a real thing where parents immediately forget how fucking hard parenting something was – for an example, see anyone with a second baby! Especially right about that two-year/three-year age gap!). And this year’s October was uniquely awful so it took a while to remember that the constant escalation and just miserable interactions were likely related to October. We have a 7 yr old with age-appropriate snottiness, talk-back, rudeness, whining, and boundary testing, but ptsd-meltdown response and/or delayed emotional growth 3 yr old tantrum response to any equally appropriate parenting response or boundary setting. It is so UNFAIR and HARD for her to overcome years and years of just delays. (As I was typing this a crying spell happened because the game she is playing told her to point to a wrist. She doesn’t know what her wrist is. She guessed her neck, her armpit, her shoulder, and then flopped. Apparently, she ALSO does not know shoulder or armpit – she could remember neck when pressed a little. Who knew?).

BUT, October 30, dawned following the first night of sleeping through the night in a month, and we all breathed a sigh of hope. It’s like a switch, whatever the bad thing was, her body’s memory ends on October 30.

Halloween was a joy, with my neighborhood coming together to give all the kiddos a Covid-safe super fun night of trick-or-treating. My Moanna and The King (Hamilton) were the cutest EVER, and both had signing costumes and both were great at performing their characters.

X3 received some pro-social feedback when both her cousins said they did not want to play with her because she would not stop screaming and we, as parents, breathed a hopeful breath for the motivational power of peer pressure.

The first week of November was maybe the best week we’ve had as a family in ages and ages. On Tuesday November 3 (remember Tuesday? There was some little election thing happening too, I think) things were a little hard because she did another big emotional drop of prior trauma disclosures to her therapist and we got to go our fourth round with CPS interviews, and she felt fragile and easily escalated. But she also was interested in the election, and watching the results (literally like 1 state before she had to go to bed!) and talking about Trump and Biden, and her fears if Trump was reelected and trying to figure out what a president even IS or DOES, and why adults cared, but going ALL IN on caring too. It was so amazing and heartwarming to have those conversations and have a moment that is positive AND something other than “you are safe”. The kind of thing you imagine having when you start thinking of parenting and what kind of joys will make the pains worthwhile.

And the rest of the week was good too! X3 had early night nightmares every night, but soothing back to sleep was fast and easy, and she was not as snotty/escalated/intense every single day like October. Most importantly, my partner did not look like he was going to die when I finished work on Friday!

And then it all hit. Friday the 6th seemed fairly normal and nice. Bedtime was normal. We moved into the early nightmares. But then there were more than usual. And then the endless wailing “moooooommmm”. But not going back to sleep. For hours. AND HOURS. Yelling, demanding attention, refusing to do her work to calm, to remember “then” vs “now”, being angry when I reminded her, until everyone in the house was awake, then WAILING that no one was very happy to be awake.

And then… hungry. SO HUNGRY. Despite beings stuffed full at dinner and having a pre-bedtime snack and drinking a complete water bottle. Clearly, NOT ACTUALLY HUNGRY, this is all flashbacks to when she WAS afraid and food insecure. She had to take food back to bed before she could even try to sleep. Note, she did NOT finish eating it – despite repeating over and over and over “SO HUNGRY”.

Then I had a baby to get back to sleep (another 30-40 minutes). Then of course kids are up at normal time, despite complete lack of sleep, so a whole day of crabby kids, one of whom is now the rawest nerve with an EXHAUSTED MOM.

The entire week was that. She now sleeps with a bagel under her pillow, but of course since we did that, she is not actually worried, so just wakes up in the morning and eats it in bed spilling bagel crumbs everwhere.

Last night I was up seven times with my kids, five of them with X3, the last time being almost two hours. And we are so tired that sad/sympathetic/empathetic is long gone. Her brain is so constantly activated she can’t do any work herself. So everyone in the house is exhausted, everyone is frustrated with her, she knows it and is in a shame spiral, and gets more and more out of control.

I feel like I already lived this. Wait, I DID. She hasn’t needed to sleep with food for over two years. She hasn’t been up all night since she came and we slept with her every night for five months, until she knew she was safe. We cannot go back to this. We just CANNOT. We are so tired and so sad and so frustrated. We are so sad for HER but we are also so sad FOR US. Other people’s needs can drown you, and hers are pulling her and us under. It feels like there will never be forward progress, and it’s beyond horrifying to go back to the beginning.

I cried and yelled meeting with her therapist today – her therapist noted we are living in military boot camp, where they torture you keeping you up all night, then expect you to function at maximum capacity during the day (parenting a second child, working a full-time intense job, having a relationship, living in a fucking pandemic). Because every solution she has WE HAVE BEEN DOING FOR TWO YEARS. The truth is, this child needs a village. She didn’t choose to be abused, neglected, and hurt; we didn’t do any of those things. We chose to try to help her move forward with growth and love and safety, WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT SOCIETY EXISTS AND THERE IS A TRAUMA INFORMED PROFESSIONAL VILLAGE. We had plans, backup plans, when things changed we pivoted and found new options and took advantage of every opening. BUT WE THERE IS NO FUCKING BACKUP FOR THIS. IT is ONLY US (and my seriously saint-level sister).

She needs trained therapists, she needs her daytime chaos and intensity spread across skilled paras, and therapists, and OT, and trained special educators, so that we can have a tiny break so that when I then have to stay up all night I have had the tiniest moment to breath first. There is no village. Covid took the village, and selfish people who can’t wear a fucking mask or stay away from parties, or stop hanging out with friends, or going to bars, or going to church, or having weddings, or funerals, have taken away everything our family needs to survive. Of course we won’t actually DIE. But we are all being scarred, most of all the little person who needs, and deserves, a chance to grow into the human she was meant to be, not the bundle of rage, nerves, worry, sadness, and self-loathing that has been forced on her. Right now, the kids are not ok, and neither are their parents.