Since my last post, we've all managed to get very sick indeed with norovirus. Fun! Only, you know, not fun. I've been in hospital with it, and the past couple of days Audrey has been very sick indeed.
We're all resting, and going to be spending this Christmas very quietly indeed. We had intended to be seeing Ian's family, but our little excursion out to Gavia will have to wait until we're not quite so ill.
Still, it's Christmas Eve, there are presents under our tree, and life is beautiful.
Audrey is asleep in bed upstairs. I so hope little lady is feeling better tomorrow. She can open her presents and we can hug and stay in our pyjamas all day and play.
Feeling all the love right now. My amazing friends, my family, my daughter. Happy Christmas everyone! I promise a proper post soon, when we've all recovered a little.
Monday 24 December 2012
Monday 17 December 2012
Intentional
Audrey's sleep has been really disturbed lately. She's never been one to sleep all the way through the night, with a few brief exceptions when she was a baby, and that's always been fine by us. We so strongly disagree with the concept of "controlled crying" or "cry it out" - we take the longer, harder route of safety, respect, attachment; we practice gentle parenting. This means Audrey doesn't sleep for twelve hours straight like a good little automaton. It means she acts appropriately for her age and developmental level and wakes up several times a night needing a feed, comfort, her mama. It means she calls out to us if she has a bad dream, and in the morning she wakes me up with warm little hands on my face: "Mama! Wake." If I had a problem with this I would be seriously asking myself why I had a baby - this is what they do, you can't just pick and choose which parts of it you want and which you don't.
Audrey knows we'll always be there. Always. If she needs us, she only has to let us know and we're there. This safety, this lack of abandonment, is one of the single biggest things I can give her at this age when it comes to her psychological development. I need to remember that when I'm trying to wrap presents at midnight and hear her call my name through the baby monitor.
Independence is prized so highly in even very young children. I always wonder why. Obviously I think it's good to encourage children to try things they are ready for - both physically and emotionally ready - but it is simply not developmentally appropriate for a toddler to be independent of their parents to a very great extent at all. She needs us. She needs me to hold her hand when she's feeling shy, and not tease her for it or make it a big deal, or invalidate her feelings - "Oh, you're not shy!" Sometimes Audrey flings herself at people, makes friends with the kind of wild abandon I wish I could have when meeting new people. Sometimes she hangs back and wants to do her own thing instead. I have to work harder to make that Fine By Me.
It's also funny to me that, for all that "independence" is prized when it is something the parent wants - the child to sleep for 12 hours without waking, the child to learn to use the toilet as early as possible, the child to be okay with hanging out with strangers at nursery, the child to play by themselves/with other children and not need us there to engage with them - it is actively curtailed when it is inconvenient. What a mixed message! We are entering with Audrey what is known as the "terrible twos", the age where she is asserting her autonomy, her individuality, her no. It is really tough, but I want to be a parent who has a LOT of respect for that. I want to give her a lot of space to find out the shape of herself. And I want to teach her, through this respect, that she has a right to control over her own life and body.
As I've said so many times, I want nothing to do with "obedience". If I can't communicate why Audrey needs to do something, maybe I should have a think about what that means. Is it a NEED after all, or a want on my part? How can I model respect for people's boundaries, communication, team work, compromise? Why do I keep enforcing MY priorities on other people?
I'm trying to be a better person. I'm trying to get things right. I'm trying to look at my own behaviour first, before I censure hers. And you know what? She is trying. She is trying big time. In a funny way, she gets so much more of this right than I do, and I am constantly learning from her. Parenthood is immensely humbling like that.
Yesterday I had people coming round here to the house at 4pm for shelter related stuff, and we were cutting it fine to be back on time. My work mobile charger was broken, so I didn't have it with me and couldn't call them to rearrange. Audrey wanted to play - oh how she wanted to play outside on the crunchy, frosty grass in the park we were walking by to get to the bus stop. There were little hills to run down, and she wanted to be there so fiercely. She could not have understood less about getting home for boring work things. We couldn't stop. She cried and cried, melting to the floor, struggling to run to the park. I so got it. I so empathised. I didn't want to go home either, I didn't want responsibilities. I wanted to run down a hill and feel the grass crunching under my feet.
Empathising is easy. Communicating that to her is tough. Letting her cry and be sad and not feel pressured to pretend she's not really hacked off just so it doesn't embarrass me - that's tough. I don't want to say "it's okay" when it's clearly NOT okay by Audrey. I say "it's okay to feel really bad" and "you wanted to play, you feel sad and angry" and "I'm sorry we can't stop today, I wish we could too". I try to simply explain what's going on and keep checking that she's following what I'm saying - "We have to get the bus. Can you point to the bus?" I provide lots of opportunities for distraction, but try not to force them.
I try so hard not to let it provoke an emotional response. It is really, really hard. I can feel my brain wanting to go there, to make it all about me and how I'm having a rough time and I'm tired and hey, kid, don't you know I have work to do? Don't you care about how *I* feel?? I can feel myself wanting to shout her down, show her I can make a loud noise too, tell her to shut up, tell her she's cried enough. Ouch. Ugly feelings. It's tough to even write it down like this, but I want to be honest.
Most of the time I can look at my little girl and realise hey, I'm the parent here. I'm the adult. The only way she's going to learn to regulate her emotions and her responses is by my example - I can't bully her into feeling better, I can only try to be a calm, accepting centre for her. I can make this about empathy, or I can make it about how I'm bigger and she needs to do what I say and shut the hell up. It's an obvious choice when you think about it, right?
Lots of hugs. Lots of letting go of the small stuff. Lots of remembering just how many people would love to have these problems, lots of remembering that one day I will miss this so strongly that I would give anything for one minute of it back. Even the 1am still-not-sleeping minutes.
Audrey knows we'll always be there. Always. If she needs us, she only has to let us know and we're there. This safety, this lack of abandonment, is one of the single biggest things I can give her at this age when it comes to her psychological development. I need to remember that when I'm trying to wrap presents at midnight and hear her call my name through the baby monitor.
Independence is prized so highly in even very young children. I always wonder why. Obviously I think it's good to encourage children to try things they are ready for - both physically and emotionally ready - but it is simply not developmentally appropriate for a toddler to be independent of their parents to a very great extent at all. She needs us. She needs me to hold her hand when she's feeling shy, and not tease her for it or make it a big deal, or invalidate her feelings - "Oh, you're not shy!" Sometimes Audrey flings herself at people, makes friends with the kind of wild abandon I wish I could have when meeting new people. Sometimes she hangs back and wants to do her own thing instead. I have to work harder to make that Fine By Me.
It's also funny to me that, for all that "independence" is prized when it is something the parent wants - the child to sleep for 12 hours without waking, the child to learn to use the toilet as early as possible, the child to be okay with hanging out with strangers at nursery, the child to play by themselves/with other children and not need us there to engage with them - it is actively curtailed when it is inconvenient. What a mixed message! We are entering with Audrey what is known as the "terrible twos", the age where she is asserting her autonomy, her individuality, her no. It is really tough, but I want to be a parent who has a LOT of respect for that. I want to give her a lot of space to find out the shape of herself. And I want to teach her, through this respect, that she has a right to control over her own life and body.
As I've said so many times, I want nothing to do with "obedience". If I can't communicate why Audrey needs to do something, maybe I should have a think about what that means. Is it a NEED after all, or a want on my part? How can I model respect for people's boundaries, communication, team work, compromise? Why do I keep enforcing MY priorities on other people?
I'm trying to be a better person. I'm trying to get things right. I'm trying to look at my own behaviour first, before I censure hers. And you know what? She is trying. She is trying big time. In a funny way, she gets so much more of this right than I do, and I am constantly learning from her. Parenthood is immensely humbling like that.
Yesterday I had people coming round here to the house at 4pm for shelter related stuff, and we were cutting it fine to be back on time. My work mobile charger was broken, so I didn't have it with me and couldn't call them to rearrange. Audrey wanted to play - oh how she wanted to play outside on the crunchy, frosty grass in the park we were walking by to get to the bus stop. There were little hills to run down, and she wanted to be there so fiercely. She could not have understood less about getting home for boring work things. We couldn't stop. She cried and cried, melting to the floor, struggling to run to the park. I so got it. I so empathised. I didn't want to go home either, I didn't want responsibilities. I wanted to run down a hill and feel the grass crunching under my feet.
Empathising is easy. Communicating that to her is tough. Letting her cry and be sad and not feel pressured to pretend she's not really hacked off just so it doesn't embarrass me - that's tough. I don't want to say "it's okay" when it's clearly NOT okay by Audrey. I say "it's okay to feel really bad" and "you wanted to play, you feel sad and angry" and "I'm sorry we can't stop today, I wish we could too". I try to simply explain what's going on and keep checking that she's following what I'm saying - "We have to get the bus. Can you point to the bus?" I provide lots of opportunities for distraction, but try not to force them.
I try so hard not to let it provoke an emotional response. It is really, really hard. I can feel my brain wanting to go there, to make it all about me and how I'm having a rough time and I'm tired and hey, kid, don't you know I have work to do? Don't you care about how *I* feel?? I can feel myself wanting to shout her down, show her I can make a loud noise too, tell her to shut up, tell her she's cried enough. Ouch. Ugly feelings. It's tough to even write it down like this, but I want to be honest.
Most of the time I can look at my little girl and realise hey, I'm the parent here. I'm the adult. The only way she's going to learn to regulate her emotions and her responses is by my example - I can't bully her into feeling better, I can only try to be a calm, accepting centre for her. I can make this about empathy, or I can make it about how I'm bigger and she needs to do what I say and shut the hell up. It's an obvious choice when you think about it, right?
Lots of hugs. Lots of letting go of the small stuff. Lots of remembering just how many people would love to have these problems, lots of remembering that one day I will miss this so strongly that I would give anything for one minute of it back. Even the 1am still-not-sleeping minutes.
Tuesday 11 December 2012
Nana Betty's House
Right now Audrey is into everything and constantly on the go, which doesn't leave much time for blogging! As I'm typing this she is tipping absolutely everything she can get her hands on onto the floor and drawing on things with whiteboard marker, while saying "Mama Mama Mama Mama Mama" over and over and then waving at me every time I say "Yes?"
It's a pretty fantastic fun game :) Besides, our window ledges needed a little artistic flair and colour (and wipe clean very easily).
Recently we went to stay with Audrey's Great Nana Betty for the weekend, and had the most wonderful time. The light is so low at this time of year that I only have a handful of usable photos, and none of Uncle Peter who was with us several times during the weekend and drove us to and from the station and all sorts. We're very, very grateful to him, especially after Audrey got travel sick all over his car. Ooops! Uncle Peter - we need to get photos next time!
Little lady has had a nasty bout of croup which she was only just recovering from when we went to Nana's house. She traveled on the train like a charm, so sweet and no bother at all. Our trick is not to think for one moment that she'll be happy just sitting there for four hours. I'm not happy with it, so why would she be! We pack lots of things to do, books and colouring pens being the favourites, and plenty of snacks and drinks, and we're prepared to hold her hand and wander up and down the train looking at things for as long as she wants to. Things of particular interest to Audrey: doors, especially doors between carriages; windows, especially if there are sheep, planes or rivers/ponds/the ocean outside; ticket inspectors, she likes to hold out the ticket and say "thank you" if we pass them; people. Any people, all the time. "Look! People! Hello People."
She's so gorgeous. Once at Nana's house we spent as much time as possible outdoors, which was a fair amount considering how sick Audrey was before we went (and me too by this point).
There were so many low flying aircraft passing by that weekend, we were sure there must be an airshow nearby. Audrey was DELIGHTED. She loves planes like you wouldn't believe - above is her doing her impression of a plane, holding her arms out and yelling "Flying!" as she whirls around. She spots a plane before anyone, and stares at it in absolute wonder until it's gone. There's nothing she loves more.
My Nana's garden is so full of memories for me that it's strange and quite emotional to see Audrey playing there. I can remember so many summers of my sisters and I racing scooters precariously around the narrow paths with the cousins.
We had lunch at the Harvester opposite my Nana's house quite a few times while we were there, as they had food that everyone could eat and enjoy and it meant my Nana didn't have to cook so much. The staff there were so very friendly even when it was busy, and on one of the days Audrey got a special orange balloon which she adored. Seriously, this was the best thing she'd ever been given. She didn't let it out of her sight for one moment, she even took it to bed with her that night.
You can see where I get all my impressive height from, right? My Nana and I are actually the same height and have the same shoe size!
Despite the illness, we really did have a special weekend.
Audrey loved to sit with Nana, one of each chair beside the fire in the kitchen. If Nana got up to do anything, Audrey would tell her off very sternly and lead her back to the chair and tell her to "Sit down, Nana!"
On the last morning before we left, Audrey and I walked in the copse of trees at the back of my Nana's garden which borders onto her land. I used to climb these trees.
All right, since little missy me has just climbed into a rabbit cage I think I'd better go play. Who can resist this much fun?
It's a pretty fantastic fun game :) Besides, our window ledges needed a little artistic flair and colour (and wipe clean very easily).
Recently we went to stay with Audrey's Great Nana Betty for the weekend, and had the most wonderful time. The light is so low at this time of year that I only have a handful of usable photos, and none of Uncle Peter who was with us several times during the weekend and drove us to and from the station and all sorts. We're very, very grateful to him, especially after Audrey got travel sick all over his car. Ooops! Uncle Peter - we need to get photos next time!
Little lady has had a nasty bout of croup which she was only just recovering from when we went to Nana's house. She traveled on the train like a charm, so sweet and no bother at all. Our trick is not to think for one moment that she'll be happy just sitting there for four hours. I'm not happy with it, so why would she be! We pack lots of things to do, books and colouring pens being the favourites, and plenty of snacks and drinks, and we're prepared to hold her hand and wander up and down the train looking at things for as long as she wants to. Things of particular interest to Audrey: doors, especially doors between carriages; windows, especially if there are sheep, planes or rivers/ponds/the ocean outside; ticket inspectors, she likes to hold out the ticket and say "thank you" if we pass them; people. Any people, all the time. "Look! People! Hello People."
She's so gorgeous. Once at Nana's house we spent as much time as possible outdoors, which was a fair amount considering how sick Audrey was before we went (and me too by this point).
There were so many low flying aircraft passing by that weekend, we were sure there must be an airshow nearby. Audrey was DELIGHTED. She loves planes like you wouldn't believe - above is her doing her impression of a plane, holding her arms out and yelling "Flying!" as she whirls around. She spots a plane before anyone, and stares at it in absolute wonder until it's gone. There's nothing she loves more.
My Nana's garden is so full of memories for me that it's strange and quite emotional to see Audrey playing there. I can remember so many summers of my sisters and I racing scooters precariously around the narrow paths with the cousins.
We had lunch at the Harvester opposite my Nana's house quite a few times while we were there, as they had food that everyone could eat and enjoy and it meant my Nana didn't have to cook so much. The staff there were so very friendly even when it was busy, and on one of the days Audrey got a special orange balloon which she adored. Seriously, this was the best thing she'd ever been given. She didn't let it out of her sight for one moment, she even took it to bed with her that night.
You can see where I get all my impressive height from, right? My Nana and I are actually the same height and have the same shoe size!
Despite the illness, we really did have a special weekend.
Audrey loved to sit with Nana, one of each chair beside the fire in the kitchen. If Nana got up to do anything, Audrey would tell her off very sternly and lead her back to the chair and tell her to "Sit down, Nana!"
On the last morning before we left, Audrey and I walked in the copse of trees at the back of my Nana's garden which borders onto her land. I used to climb these trees.
All right, since little missy me has just climbed into a rabbit cage I think I'd better go play. Who can resist this much fun?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)