Category Archives: milestones

10/1000

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It’s a big day on the blog.

Today, if you like to look at the dates in the sidebar to confirm, it has been exactly ten years since my first post.

Coincidentally, this is my one thousandth post. (It’s not often you have to count to the number one thousand of anything. Which is probably why that word “thousandth” looks very very strange. But it’s right, don’t worry.)

I admit, this isn’t entirely a coincidence. I noticed back in December that these two milestones were approaching, and I thought it would be nice to make them happen on the same day. So there’s been a certain amount of deleting forgotten drafts and then deleting too many and then frantically realising I had to find something to say for three days in a row… but you don’t need to know about these behind-the-scenes minutae.

I also am bound to admit that that’s not quite one thousand published posts – some thirty of them or so are drafts; but they’re not just a saved semicolon to make up the numbers. Sometimes I put something in drafts and label it “Notes for just me,” never to be published; there are some that might still legitimately be considered works in progress.

List of posts showing 1000

And I can’t quite say I’ve been blogging steadily for ten years; but I’ve been blogging unsteadily. I don’t know if anyone ever delves into the deep dark of the distant archives, but I like having them there, as a virtual scrapbook that can plonk me straight back into the person I was two children ago, or one, or when they were smaller. I have a terrible memory; I like to have things written down.

If you’re reading, whether you’ve been around for years or just found me recently, I’m delighted to have you, and today would be the perfect day to leave me a quick comment, if you can. (I know commenting is tricky for some people. Sorry about that. It’s not me, it’s Blogger.)

Thanks for being here. It wouldn’t be the same without you.

Letters for "Blog" in fridge magnets

 

Debunking

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Sometimes life just writes my blog posts for me. The post about Mabel’s dentist visit segued into Dash’s prosaic encounter with the tooth fairy; and then this happened…

After school yesterday, out of the blue, Mabel and I had this conversation:

“Mummy, is Santa real? A___ told me today that it’s just the parents giving presents.”
“ Oh really ?” said I, playing for time.
“I know from the way you said that, he’s not real.”
“ What? “
“You used that voice you use.”
[Oh crap. Really? I'm that transparent?]

Then we had a little conversation about whether it’s more fun if Santa’s real or not real, and she admitted it’s more fun if he is real, but she still wanted to know the truth. So I told her the truth. And followed it up swiftly with the Very Serious Admonishment that now that she’s in on this big secret, she must be very careful to keep the secret from the other kids.

I admit, I felt a twinge of sadness at the passing of the belief. But mostly I felt relief. I never did very well with the double standards required by Doing Santa. When you’re reassuring your kids on the one hand that giants don’t exist and dinosaurs are extinct and fairies are only in stories and there are no goblins, and then encouraging them on the other hand to write letters to the man who’ll come down the chimney and leave them presents in some totally magical manner… well, I’ve nothing against anyone who does it, but I found it tricky.

Anyway, there are great things about having Santa finally debunked:

  • I don’t have to explain how come Santa only shops at Target.
  • I can put useful things in their stockings that Santa couldn’t possibly have known they needed (and certainly wasn’t asked for).
  • I don’t have to be careful to remember which presents we gave them and which ones Santa did for years to come.
  • Santa doesn’t get all the credit for the great gift ideas that were really mine.

Don’t worry, Santa will still be coming to our house. Probably until the children are grown-up, and maybe even then a while. But if he slips up now and then and brings the wrong thing … well, I suppose the kids will know exactly who to blame.

Tooth of doom

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Almost exactly two years ago, Mabel got a filling in a molar. She had just turned three, and it was not a fun experience. The dentist had intended to give her a crown, but she was wriggling and crying so much, in spite of the nitrous oxide, which didn’t seem to be doing anything much, that he left it at a filling.

I had taken her for a checkup as soon as her second set of molars were in, which was only about a month earlier. That seemed like a good time to start the dentist’s visits, and had been what I’d done with her brother, whose teeth have no holes. But I’d noticed a little spot on one of Mabel’s upper teeth, so I wanted to get them checked out. Sure enough, we were sent off to the pediatric dentist for a further look.

Everything had been fine at the two checkups after that filling, and then last spring Mabel took agin the dentist and decided not to open her mouth at all. I didn’t push it. She’s four-and-a-half, I said, because we’ve been through the four-and-a-halfs before, and they’re tough; she’ll be fine when she’s five. We went back a month ago and she was a lot more cooperative. And lo, the dentist could see that there was a new hole in the tooth with the filling.

So we went off to a new pediatric dentist (not that I had anything against the old one, but this one was closer and we had the referral for her) and they took some x-rays and saw that not only did she definitely need a crown, but also a baby root canal. I did ask later why they wouldn’t just pull the whole tooth: as this was a molar that isn’t due to fall out till she’s ten, the dentist felt that for spacing reasons it would be best to leave it in.

Taking x-rays was not a trivial procedure, because Mabel didn’t like the thing in her mouth that they use to x-ray just one area. She said it hurt the roof of her mouth; having a small mouth, I can empathize because I hate that too, but being a grown up I have learned to just do it and get it over with without gagging. She point-blank refused, crying piteously. Finally, they said they could try the all-round x-ray machine, and by bringing it down to the lowest level and finding some phone directories for her to stand on, they got her positioned just right. The dentist said usually this is harder for small children, because they have to stand perfectly still while the machine moves around their head, but I was proud of Mabel for swallowing her tears and standing like a statue so the machine could get a perfect photo of all her teeth, in and out of the gums. It was very cool to see all her adult teeth waiting inside there for the time when they’ll nudge the others out of the way and burst forth.

(Dash’s teeth are bursting forth all over right now. He lost his third this morning, and the adult incisor that’s front and centre is about to come down through the top gum where he’s had a space since he was a baby and knocked out the tooth. He’s going to look odd with one big and one little tooth until the second one comes out, but seeing him with a mouth full of teeth at all will be a new experience for us all.)

I told the dentist about Mabel’s previous experience and how the gas hadn’t seemed to work at all. She said she could give her some oral medication first to make her more relaxed from the outset, which would let her inhale the nitrous better. Then we had to postpone the appointment twice because she was congested with a cold, and we finally got there on Friday morning, the day after Thanksgiving. Yes, when you were all making turkey sandwiches and planning trips to see Frozen, or recovering from your Black Friday early-morning outings, I was pumping my baby full of drugs and watching the dentist drill out pretty much the entirety of her molar.

Again, the first hurdle was the worst, because she didn’t like the taste of the diazepam. After a million tiny sips and some crying and a break to watch tv, I eventually syphoned it up into a syringe and squirted it into her mouth. She swallowed some and spat out some and we called it done. In a few minutes she was amusingly floppy and having difficulty talking. (“I…an..not… [drool]…”)

Then it was into the chair and to be wrapped up in the special hugging blanket (“So I shouldn’t call it a strait jacket then?” I’m not sure they appreciated my humour, but I was pretty sure Mabel wasn’t in a position to notice, and has never heard of a strait jacket anyway) and under the elephant nose that dispenses the gas, and open wide so we can count your teeth…

Little kids must wonder why it takes dentists so very long to count teeth, and why they can never seem to remember from one opening of their mouth to the next exactly how many are in there. I sat by her head to keep the gas thing on (“Does it smell of strawberries? Or is it more like chocolate? Take a big sniff in and see.”) and to make sure no little hands wormed their way out of the huggy blanket in spite of velcro restraints.

After a lot of drilling (sorry, “buzzing”) with the little drill and the big drill, the poor molar was literally just a shell. Then it was scraped out and packed and a shiny crown put on top and boom, done. Mabel got to sit up and be unwrapped and I had to carry her to the car because she was still a bit wobbly on her pins, but we still went straight to Target (which was conveniently just across the parking lot) and got a new doll, because that was definitely a princess-worthy ordeal.

By contract II

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I suppose I should mention this: I’m no longer a nursing mother.

If you’re new around here you might not be surprised by that – after all, for most mothers whose youngest is five years old, breastfeeding is something that happened way back in the mists of babyhood; toddlerhood at least. But here’s the thing: my babies were reluctant to stop. And I mean that most understatedly. They reacted to the idea of giving up the boob with screaming and terror and horror and gnashing and wailing of teeth, and frankly it was much easier for me to go along with that than to face their wrath.

I didn’t go into breastfeeding with the intent of carrying on until my babies could write their own thank-you notes. I certainly have no opinions about how long anyone else should keep it up, any more than I have opinions about what you should have for dinner or how often, if ever, you should shave your legs. Eat food you like; shave when you feel like it. Nurse your baby for as long as it suits you and your child.*

I had been telling Mabel that we would stop when she was five ever since she turned four and a half and we didn’t quite stop. We cut down from morning and evening to just morning at that point, and when I went on my Big Trip Away to BlogHer in July (for three days) she was just fine without. But our trip to Ireland was nicely timed to happen just before her birthday, and as I had hoped, the distraction of the different, of sharing a room with her brother and being in a new place was enough to break the habit quite easily. She only thought to nurse three mornings out of fourteen while we were there, and on the morning of her birthday was quite easily put off with a simple “No, you’re five now. You don’t need it any more.”

So we’re done. I’m not sad or sorry. I have no regrets about nursing for as long as I did, and I have no regrets about that part of my life being over. My babies and I had a mutually beneficial relationship for a long time, and though often the “mutually” felt more like “completely one-sided” in their favour, it was never enough for me to call a halt sooner than they were ready for. I’m not a martyr – far from it. I was always simply too lazy to make a stand against their will, because when it came down to it, the convenience outweighed the inconvenience.

So I can finally lay to rest the “Weaning” tag that I’ve used so often over the years here, as I considered, and attempted, and gave up on, and tried again with, and gradually approached the nirvana-like state of no longer breastfeeding. I’ve been wearing proper bras for a couple of years, actually, so I can’t even go out and indulge in some fabulous lingerie; and I doubt my alcohol consumption will see much change.

It’s a big milestone, but it’s been so long coming that I really don’t even notice the difference. Perhaps that’s as it should be. We’re looking ahead, not back.

* I’m talking here mostly about extended nursing. I do think you should start out by trying to breastfeed, if you’re medically able to. I think that’s a no-brainer. But if you don’t continue for very long, for whatever reason, I’ll assume that you did what you could and ended up making the best decision for you and your family. It’s not my business to have an opinion on that.

Another five

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Mabel turned five on Monday, and I’m only now thinking to mention it on my blog. You can blame second-child syndrome, but it’s mostly to do with all the other posts that have been brewing while we’ve been away. And the way she defies description, this child. I can’t pin her down with a few choice words, because she is always so much more, so contrary that she’ll be the opposite of whatever I say, so impossible.

My impossible girl. Impossibly loving, defiant, demanding, thoughtful, intransigent, accommodating, everything.

I have a soft spot for four and seven and twelve. I don’t know why, but those ages hold magic. So I’m sorry to see my four-year-old grow up and on and become a five-year-old – or I would be, if it didn’t mean that I get a five-year-old who is so much easier to deal with in so many ways than her one-year-ago incarnation.

Mabel is direct, I can tell you that. She knows her mind, and she tells you about it. She doesn’t understand dissemblers; she’s not one for subtlety. And yet – sometimes she’ll pull my sleeve and bring my ear to her mouth and tell me something she can’t keep in, but she knows she shouldn’t say out loud. She’s learning, and she’s sharp like a knife, this girl.

And she’s funny and smart and inventive and can craft a pun or a metaphor or a rhyme that impresses, and she’s going places.

I can’t wait to see where those places will be.

Love is…

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I love that we can ask Dash if he’s a little concerned and he knows we’re quoting The Princess Bride .

I love that Mabel just spelled the word “sad” all by herself, and said she knew it was an A in the middle because it’s the same sound as in “cat”, which is the only word she knows how to spell apart from her name.

I love that Dash is reading an honest-to-God chapter book for his nightly reading these days. A simple one , but a chapter book nonetheless. Before vision therapy , the idea of his reading that much text on a page was unthinkable. The words don’t go blurry any more.

I love that Mabel keeps announcing things like “Mummy, three and three more is six!” The wonder of math, afresh.

I love that B is reading The Hobbit to Dash at bedtime these days. I thought it might be a bit ambitious, but so far it’s going well.

I love that when Dash criticized Mabel’s drawing of a dinosaur, she replied, “When you say that, it makes me feel as if I’m not important.” He apologized. I high-fived myself in the kitchen.

I love that Dash is finally old enough to make his own damn cardboard swords instead of bugging us to do it.

I love that Mabel can brush her teeth all by herself.

I love that we can take public transport into the city, walk around, do a museum, and get home again WITHOUT A STROLLER. Escalators and steps are so much easier than finding the hidden elevator every time.

I do love babies, but I love having big kids too.

Moments in independence

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On Thursday, Dash rode his bike the half-mile to school. When Mabel and I showed up in the car at 3:20 to pick him up, I’d forgotten that, but it was no biggie – we can put his bike in the back. Except he didn’t like that idea, and Mabel had already enraged him by telling him about the lollipop she got from the lady in the bank.

( Me: You don’t  have  to tell Dash about that lollipop.
Mabel: Yes I do. )

So I told him that he could ride his bike home and we’d take the car and meet him there. At first he was wary. He thought it was illegal.

“I can’t do that. You’re not allowed let me.”
“Yes, you can. I am.”
“But the rule. I’m not eight.”
“The rule says you can’t stay at home alone until you’re eight. It doesn’t say you can’t go home on your own. I say you can. I trust you to be a responsible cyclist.”

He was pretty stoked. Off he went. There are only two places where he has to cross the road, one of which has a crossing with signs and stripes on the road, and I think I was the only car he encountered on the way.

The same thing happened the next day. I’d let him come home on his own every day, but I like seeing the other moms at pickup time.

——————–

On Friday, Mabel and I went to the mall. Oh wait, first I have to tell you how that works.

Step 1: Order a couple of next-summer things for the kids on clearance from Land’s End. Include a pair of trousers that probably won’t fit for yourself, just because you can. 

Step 2: When trousers arrive, ascertain that they are indeed mom jeans, look horrible on you, and you don’t like the colour anyway. No biggie, because you can easily return them to Sears and thus not pay any postage. 

Step 3: Go to Sears at the mall. Return the jeans. 

Step 4: Pass unavoidably through the kids’ section of Land’s End in Sears. Find two pairs of summer leggings on sale and an adorable dress at 25% off that you and Mabel both just love. 

Step 5: End up spending more than you got back.

This right here is why the economy is doing just fine. Anyway. After that whole debacle/triumph, we had some lunch at the food court. Mabel got pizza and then we moved over to the next food outlet so I could have a tasty hummus/chicken/chickpea wrap thingy. This left me with two trays and only two hands. So I put both drinks on my tray and asked Mabel to carry hers (with just a paper plate holding the pizza slice). She demurred.

“I can’t.”
“You can. It’s just like carrying a plate, only bigger.”

She gingerly reached up to the tray and put her hands on either side. She lifted it down and carried it to the nearest table, as I carried the other tray beside her. The pizza slid a little on the plate, but nothing disastrous happened.

After we’d eaten, I asked her to clear away her tray. She picked it up again and I showed her how you have to let all the paper on top slide into the trashcan while keeping hold of the tray, and then put it on top. She could just about reach the pile of trays on the top, on her tippy toes.

As we walked towards the toystore she said quietly, with a smirk, “I’m a  little  bit proud of myself.”

Life with Mabel

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Life with Mabel has been really quite peaceful of late. I just wanted to acknowledge that, because sometimes when times are good you are still complaining about the little things that are bugging you, which are in fact mere buzzing mosquitoes rather than circling hyenas or angry tigers, so you forget how much worse things could be.

I happened across a blog entry from earlier  this year and was really surprised by how far she’s come in a short time. Some random highlights might include the following:

  • She is outside right now and she has her shoes on. What’s more, she put them on herself, voluntarily and without being told, before she left the house.
  • She isn’t hitting people for fun and/or profit these days. She’s not even hitting them out of rage very often. She hasn’t bitten anyone for almost a year, so I think I can actually declare that horrible phase over. If you have a biter, take heart. And buy them a chew toy.
  • She sleeps all night some nights. When she wakes up she goes back to sleep quickly if someone just lies down beside her. She goes to sleep at bedtime with a story, not nursing. Okay, so 9:30 pm seems to be her natural bedtime right now, but I’ll take it. Begrudgingly. (That one’s a very buzzy mosquito.)
  • She walks places, for a reasonable distance, without demanding to be carried. As recently as last Christmas she was still very much not wanting to walk anywhere, but it changed like flicking a switch. I’m not saying we’ll take her on a three-mile hike any time soon, but there’s been a distinct improvement. I think, in fact, it might be time to sell the stroller, which is only being used to turn upside down and play rocketships with these days.
  • She puts the toothpaste on the toothbrush and brushes for herself before letting me take a turn, and then she rinses and spits and doesn’t swallow the toothpaste just to annoy me any more.

In two weeks she too will be back at school, and I should be savouring her last year of nursery school, before next year’s big upheaval of kindergarten. She’s worried about going back to school, for nebulous reasons that she refuses to pin down, but which all come down to the fact that it’s not at home with me. She probably doesn’t like being told what to do at certain times, she is not a big fan of cleaning up, and she is not the gregarious people-pleaser her brother is. School is not her natural element as it is his. I anticipate some difficult mornings, again, as usual; but I know that she’ll be fine, that the teachers love her and know her and will take care of her, and that overall she’ll thrive there.

She’s growing up, our baby girl.

Four point five cake

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Saturday was Mabel’s four-and-a-halfth birthday. I like to make a bit of a thing about half birthdays, because a year is a long time to wait, and also Cake, any excuse for; and because sometimes I can make it into enough of a milestone in their minds that they’ll do something, or start doing something, or stop doing something, just because now they’re whatever-and-a-half.

So Mabel is no longer having boo(b) in the evening. At all. This is great.
Also, she is going to start trying to wipe herself after a poo. All I’m asking is that she tries, that she’s willing to give it a go, which will be a lot better than the point-blank refusal I’ve had up to now. And she has been trying, since Saturday. So that’s great too.

On the other hand, she had a fit of the screaming collywobbles at drop-off this morning, and I very much hope that’s not indicative of how four point five is going to go. I know it’s a tough age and I’m prepared for some backsliding in behaviour and/or willingness to try new things, but I would really like to be able to bring her to school without the clawing and the screaming and the tearing at my heart, because it’s nice when that doesn’t happen.

Oh well. Onwards to five, which everyone agrees is The Golden Age, rivalled only by eight.

More importantly, cake.

I made half a batch of Burnt Butter Brown Sugar cupcakes (Nigella, How to be a Domestic Goddess ) topped with Dark Chocolate Icing (Darina Allen, Easy Entertaining ), and they were, if I say it myself, rather gorgeous. I haven’t done the brown butter thing before even though Smitten Kitchen and others have been raving about it for a while. It was really easy and I’m pretty sure that’s what I have to thank for the fact that these buns are still moist and soft two days later.

(I know, why on earth do we still have any two days later? That will be remedied, don’t worry.)

Seven

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… And seven years later, I have a seven-year-old.

I have plenty of memories of seven. I was in second class, with our cool just-graduated-from-college teacher who played the guitar and taught us the words to songs from Jesus Christ Superstar. That summer was a standout one because we went on holidays to Corfu (a Greek island), which was my first plane trip, my first experience of a different language and a foreign culture and heat in the air and warmth in the seawater.

I learned to swim there, and had my first taste of scampi. I was a fussy eater and when my parents found that I loved the scampi, they said hang the expense and I ate it every dinnertime. It was idyllic (except for the mosquitoes, which freaked me out in the middle of the night) and it’s seared on my memory.

I would love to give Dash an experience like that, one that sticks fast and never leaves him, so that he can still conjure the smells and tastes when he’s forty; but maybe you never know what’s going to be the thing that remains, or maybe we’ve given him too much already for him to have one of those standout summer trips.

Or maybe whatever you do when you’re seven stays with you for always, because you were seven.

Happy birthday, Dash.