End of an Ergo

I'm giving you a little break so you can catch up on all my past posts, and all the other things going on around the Internet, whatever they may be. At least, apparently that's what I'm doing. But in the meantime, a few bullets to get me out of this bloggy doldrum:

• I dusted off and gussied up my resume (which mostly meant changing all the fonts so they looked less 2004 and more 2013 to my non-graphic-designer eye; maybe it just made the whole thing look different to me and therefore as if it must have new information even though it doesn't, much) and sent it to someone who expressed an interest. So that was nice. I will now proceed to freak out about all the free time I don't have even though nothing has happened yet.
• We had visitors, which was lovely and gave my deeply ingrained Internet addiction a little break. I'm also re-reading the His Dark Materials trilogy, which is exciting enough to get me away from the computer from time to time.
• I have given away, sorted out, and designated for donation the last of the baby clothes. Even more finally, I am selling the Ergo. (And the Moby, if anyone wants it.) I put them on a local mailing list yesterday afternoon and by 6pm I had three offers for the Ergo. I think it will be taken today. I used it daily for, I'd say, four years in total, and apart from some fading it's in perfect condition, not a stitch out of place. Those things are built to last, and if you're looking for a baby carrier I can't recommend it highly enough.

Oh, Ergo. The fun times we had.

• By which I mean that the baby train has left and I am not on it and I'm finally fine with that. (Disclaimer here so that writing this sentence does not immediately cause me to accidentally conceive. We do not intend to procreate any further, that's all.)

• Bedtime has taken a turn for the worse. It's not fun. I do not like chasing Mabel around the street in her nightgown after stories because she's not tired (except she is, so much) and as a result her second-favourite Barbie is now reposing in the recycling bin. I suppose I'll take it out, but it's the first time I've actually been forced to take such a drastic step. Or lost my temper enough to go through with it, I suppose.
• I hope it's a phase, because the rest of my life isn't looking much like a good time if it's not.

Milestones, tangentially

I am solo-parenting right now because B is at a conference in Denver. The night before he left, bedtime was horrible and went on for hours, and I was a bit worried about the state of my sanity if trying to go it alone for five nights in a row, but the next morning I stocked up on dollar-store bribes and so far we're doing well. When he comes home then we'll have the problem of trying to continue the peaceful bedtimes without bribes, but I'm prepared to cross that bridge when I come to it. This is known as willful ignorance, or ostrich parenting. (I shall write a book and rake in the profits.)

In my bid to exhaust the children, leading to easier bedtimes, I had to take them swimming today. Whereupon Dash swam underwater (with goggles), which I'm pretty sure I don't remember him doing before, and Mabel took her first ever strokes without wearing a floatie or keeping a toe on the bottom. At not quite four and a half, she beats her brother by a little over six months, her mother by more than three years, and her father by some enormous amount. I need to find my milestones list* and add this.

The reason bedtimes are harder again at the moment - I realise I haven't told you this - is because I don't nurse Mabel to sleep any more. Not ever. (I know, she's only almost 4.5. Don't think I hadn't noticed.) Not even in dire circumstances like having nobody to spell me when telling her stories for hours on end. I don't nurse her back to sleep in the middle of the night either, and she's sleeping much better (sometimes) (andIdidn'tsaythatpleasedon'tsmiteme) and slept for ten hours straight last night. Alone, in her own bed. Other nights she wakes up twice and then again at 5.15, but she doesn't get any booboo until 6am, when it's waking-up boob rather than going back to sleep boob. (Okay, if she happens to nod off again and we all get some extra shut-eye until 7.45 I'm not going to quibble. But mostly, it's waking up.)

Then we rode our bikes to the playground at Dash's school - which is very close but was a novelty for two out of the three of us - and Mabel swung all the way along the monkey bars for the first time too. I think her arms will be aching tomorrow.

The weather this weekend was exactly perfect and the way it should be and I want to marry it and have its babies. If it could just stay this way until, maybe, at least July, that would be ideal, thanks.

Blossom, blossom, everywhere

*My milestones list. Don't you have one? It's like a baby book, except it's just a page from a notebook that I started writing on a long time ago and somehow have managed not to lose. I had a baby book once, but it was too nice to write in, so I gave it away.

Chapters

A few weeks ago I volunteered at the elementary school's Scholastic book sale, to help the younger children note down which books they wanted their parents to shell out for and stop the older ones making off with the keychain minifigs attached to the front of a few most-sought-after volumes. In between deluges, I perused the small selection of books aimed at the parents and teachers: a slow-cooker cookbook, a multi-columned calendar that claimed to solve all my problems, and some books about how to raise readers.

Mostly, I shun parenting books these days, having had my fill when Dash was a baby and I was still convinced that somebody, somewhere, had had this model before and had helpfully published the manual. Once I figured out that this wasn't going to happen, I became bitter and cynical and decided to take all my advice from trusted figures and random strangers on the Internet instead, because that seemed much less stressful. But as the kids get older, we're moving into new territory, and since I really do want to raise readers - after all, I was one, and I thought it was great - I leafed through this particular tome with some amount of interest.

A heading caught my eye - something about why children should be reading (or have read to them) chapter books. Why should they, I wondered? Apparently it's ideal for helping train their memories to recall what's gone before and predict what might come after - all the skills they need for analytical reading later on. All righty, then. But I had tried starting Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Dash a year or so ago, and he just hadn't had the attention span. I'd mostly forgotten about it since, and our library haul continued to be a stream of not-too-long, nicely illustrated picture books that would keep the attention of both 6- and 4-year-old, as well as one or two mind-bendingly tedious Dora or Diego books and maybe a Star Wars easy reader to entice Dash to practice.

But most nights now, Mabel goes straight to bed before Dash's storytime - I try to do some reading with her around lunchtime instead. So keeping the four-year-old's interest doesn't really need to be in the mix. And having seen the piece about chapter books, one night a couple of weeks ago when I was doing bedtime by myself, I asked Dash if he'd like us to start Charlotte's Web.

"Is that the one about the spider?" he asked.
"Yes. Do you know about it?"
"I know what happens. The spider dies at the end. Daddy told me."

Okay. I'm not sure how, but for some reason the denoument of the children's classic had slipped out on the way to school one morning. Dash didn't mind, and was willing to start the book anyway. (I think it's easier for him if the stress of the unknown is tempered a bit.) I opened the paperback copy that I had picked up second-hand some time in the dim and distant past when I was ten or eleven. (Or younger: I think I remember my Dad reading it to me and doing the voices. So maybe I was seven.) The pages are yellowed and a bit crispy, and the cover has been so creased that it's smoothly wrinkled all over, but it's perfectly functional. There are line drawings every few pages, which helps the novice chapter-book reader.

All the same, I was surprised when Dash was still listening at the end of the first chapter, which to my mind was not all that thrilling and contained some puzzling references. I remember being a little mystified by the school bus, since we didn't have those in Ireland - not that that's a problem for Dash - and finding the brother's name, Avery, very odd. The mid-century rural American setting was almost as unfamiliar to Dash's ears as it had been to my suburban Irish ones thirty years earlier, but he didn't seem to mind. I quizzed him gently at the end of each part to make sure he was following along, and with some prompting it seemed he had gleaned the main points. So we continued.

I read it for two nights and then his Dad took over. Dash started telling me what was going on in the farmyard every day. From my place beside Mabel, as she dropped off, I could hear B in Dash's room doing the voices just the way my Dad used to - the goose and the rat and Mister Zuckermann and everyone else.

They finished Charlotte a few nights ago and started straight into Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - the copy I'd had the foresight to bring, with its sequel, from my bedroom bookshelves in Dublin one or two trips ago. (My bedroom remains, for now, just as it always was, and functions as a handy library for my Dad, who picks up some obscure required literature from my English degree every now and then and milks it for every drop of Victorian wisdom. Nobody looks at all the books that are my real treasures: the small shelf of young-adult fiction right beside the bed. I'm keeping them all for Mabel.)

Charlie proved so exciting that B had to read six chapters on the first night. Dash didn't want to go to sleep that night, begging to find out what was going to happen next:

"Just tell me, Mummy, does he get to go to the chocolate factory?"
"Listen. It's a book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Do you think it's all about how a boy called Charlie didn't get to go to a chocolate factory?"
"Oh. Good point. .... But does he get to go?"

I put his mind at ease on that point and he finally went to bed.

Can you imagine what the suspense will be like when we start with Harry Potter? And how soon can we do that, do you think? I have the box set (UK editions, of course) at home, and I can bring it over any time...

Now with extra autonomy

I'm pretty sure I'm hormonal today, because I don't think I usually would have to fight back tears while listening to an NPR report on how the theme to Reading Rainbow is very popular on YouTube. (Something about the magic of stories really got me, man.)

I suppose one is always hormonal, and that's a good thing, but extra hormonal, let's say. Also, I have a giant zit at the edge of my eye socket, of all places, which is a dead giveaway. Better than the tip of my nose, I suppose, as my glasses frames hide it a little. The two-inch-thick layer of concealer also hides it a little, but only a little.

I mailed KeAnne's cookies this morning, so now I'm just frittering away the rest of my time before I have to get Mabel from school. It's the first time for a while I've had nothing to do (housework, shmousework, I'm sure you'll agree), so I'm just doing nothing.

Maybe another cup of tea.

So, anyway. At the moment we are experimenting in giving the six-year-old more autonomy. I think that's what we're doing, while also, of course, providing firm boundaries and limits for him to continue to test with all his might and main. Our two main areas of battle lately have been i) homework and ii) bedtime.

So, as promised, yesterday I told him about his homework twice and left it at that. He didn't do it. This morning he got up and did it. It was not quite painless, as he was still finding it hard to focus, and breakfast time isn't the best time to work, but on the other hand he sat down and did it. Then he read for 20 minutes with me before he got dressed. Reading in the morning is definitely easier for him than reading at night, but, again, it cuts into the time when preparation for school should be happening, leaving us without any extra room for manoever.

On the plus side, yesterday afternoon was delightfully stress-free for all of us, and I enjoyed it much more that way. He probably did too.

Bedtime has been a bear lately. Last week B had extra choir rehearsals and then three concerts, so I did a lot of solo bedtimes, and they weren't good. They were pretty horrible, really, with an extra half hour of both children ignoring me, and then 40 minutes of insane manic yelling and running around (them), and a lot of shouting (me), and some locking myself in the bathroom before I did something I'd regret, and finally things would calm down, and Dash would have to use the toilet, and I'd take the opportunity to put Mabel to sleep, and once she was out of the picture he'd get to bed. Eventually.

The thing is that the lure of stories just hasn't been so lure-y of late. Telling him that "At 8pm I'm not reading any more, so you have to be ready before then," doesn't work. He still demands the stories, and by then it's 8:30 and you're so worn down that you think he'll probably leap out of bed and wake his sister and run rampage all over again, so you read them anyway. Not good for any of us. Not enforcing limits. Not setting boundaries. Not enjoying it.

Two nights ago, when B was back for our regular routine and I was trying to get Mabel to sleep while listening to their usual back-and-forth over "Do you WANT stories?" a thought occurred to me. Why not just read the stories first, and let Dash put himself to bed after that? It's all the waiting round through his interminable nighttime routine that infuriates the waiting adult; if we take that out of the equation, the pressure is off.

So for the past couple of nights B has read stories first, and then Dash has pottered around getting himself ready for bed and putting himself into it at his own daydreamy pace, without infuriating anyone because nobody was waiting for him any more. And because nobody's waiting and badgering him to do it, he just does it. He likes the independence, and it's not as if he needs us to supervise at this stage anyway.

It's such a simple change, but it seems to go against everything we expected: surely every child wants to get into bed and be read stories and be kissed goodnight and tucked in. It has probably been staring me in the face for ages, but it took this long to percolate through. I think it was only because I was once again an observer, listening to the same old futile arguments, that I could think clearly enough to come up with an improvement.

We'll see how it goes, anyway.

Prevarication

This week I've been letting Mabel nap, since Dash is at camp and it's the first time I've had an hour to myself since the summer break began. It's hard to resist the temptation to bring her upstairs at 12.30 and just see if she falls asleep. She's been waking early, so she does; and then I have a lovely time blogging or baking or sorting things in peace.

But of course, there's a downside. It's called bedtime. Bedtime for the past few nights has gone like this:

Step 1: Get the kids ready for bed. Teeth brushed, stories read.
Step 2: Dash lies down, possibly drawing in his notebook for a while until he falls asleep.
Step 3: Meanwhile, I take Mabel into her room and nurse her down.
Step 4: Down on that side, down on the other side, first side again... and she's hungry. Or thirsty for cold water from the fridge, Mummy. Please, Mummy.
Step 5: I bring her water and/or a frozen waffle. So much for the teeth.
Step 6: All done. I lie down with her again. "This is the last side, Mabel. No more sides after this."
Step 7: Mabel leaps up and makes a break for the door.
Step 8: Mabel gets to come downstairs and play for an extra twenty minutes, so long as she's quiet and leaves me alone to drink my belated cup of coffee.
Step 9: Mabel wants to watch something on my computer. Mabel wants to write her name on my computer. Mabel wants one of those things I'm eating with my coffee. Time for Mabel to go back upstairs.
Step 10: (Optional) Daddy is inveigled into going upstairs and telling Mabel some stories. Daddy is summarily dismissed.
Step 11: I go up one last (I swear, this is it) time.
Step 12: Some time about an hour and a half after her initial bedtime, Mabel finally nurses to sleep.

Hooray! Time to relax. Oh, wait. I had that in the afternoon. Fold some laundry, put away the dishes, and go to bed.