Nov. '05 Mamas, Marching into Spring! - Page 3

[3for3hb]

Originally Posted by DreamsInDigital

Well, since Kolaiah now has the weird black eye with redness and tears, I'm thinking pink eye. Anyone have a good remedy for pink eye?

If it's the king of pinkeye that produces burning tears (leaves red streaks on their cheeks) then homeopathic euphrasia helps.

[MamaZoZo]

Hi ladies, I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm Sonja, mum to Zoe (Nov 9th, 05). Mind if I lurk for a while with the occassional post? :

[MelW]

Kaspirant, welcome home and welcome baby Leah! Way to go with the doctor's appointment (but I agree, they should do housecalls). In BC the community health nurses usually do home visits for weight checks if the baby isn't under a midwife's care.

Spughy, I just remembered an article that I read in a waiting room somewhere (it may have been in Chatelaine or Canadian Living or something along those lines) about a family that did two (?) weeks without any packaged food. It was mostly about their learning curve for cooking and baking from scratch and the meal planning and prep that they did. It was for a pretty mainstream audience, but the article made it's point well about our dependence on packaged foods.

[DreamsInDigital]

Originally Posted by willemsmamma

If it's the king of pinkeye that produces burning tears (leaves red streaks on their cheeks) then homeopathic euphrasia helps.

It doesn't seem to be. Are there other homeopathic remedies for the regular kind of pink eye?

[flapjack]

Alternative remedies for conjunctivitis...

: Fern!

[HoneyTree]

Hi, MamaZoZo, and welcome!

[DreamsInDigital]

Originally Posted by flapjack

Alternative remedies for conjunctivitis...

: Fern!

Thank you Helen! That was exactly the breakdown I needed!

[barcelona]

popping in to say HI again!

kaspirant, just fyi, my pager AND my email aren't working!!!! so, i hope i haven't missed any messages, though i probably haven't, as you and leah are home safe and sound, thank goodness!!! yay you for making it to the pediatrician with two kids, and i hope jacob continues to adjust beautifully to his new baby sister.

monique, thinking of you!!! wow. hang in there. i hope your body feels better, and that you ease into an easy, gentle birth. you are so close!

DiD, hope your kids' pink eye clears up asap.

ahhh...so much more to catch up on, but have to go crash.

not much to report here, except that finley is both adorable and challenging. by the end of the day, though, i've mostly forgotten the challenges.

and i'm eating up all this birth info, really enjoying learning and am looking forward to my next experience, hopefully in two years.

helen, fern, gunter, how's it going with your newest babes?

ETA: i did a newborn photo session today, which was oh-so much fun and filled me with tender joy! i just love babies and children and the incredible miracle of life and all that good stuff.

[flapjack]

The sibling rivalry is easing off occasionally, and River is coping better with no caffeine in his (my?) diet. He even just went to sleep on his own twice this morning, with no fussing or screaming or anything, and slept solidly last night until the 5am colic burst, only waking twice. It's been horrendous though, it really has.

[*Amy*]

The colic, or just the general situation? Sorry Helen.

Hey could y'all check to see if you have these toddler books:

Goodnight Thumper, and Thumper Counts to Ten by Kitty Richards
A Bath for Beagle by Thomas Crawford

If so, could you PM me? Thanks!!

[DreamsInDigital]

OMFG. I have a cold. Suriya has a cold. And now, she also has a wonderful vomiting sickness. How do we get sick? We never leave the freaking house! This doesn't make any sense.
Winter and Kolaiah's pink eye seems to have cleared up on its own, thank the Universe.

Mamas, I really need to talk this out. My husband is turning into a tyrant. Or, should I say, back into a tyrant. I really felt like the first time we talked about his yelling, shaming, strict disciplinary ways that he heard me and agreed to work on it. But I feel like he's given up making any sort of effort to have connection with our children. He comes home from work and if Gabriel is still up (he frequently is) then everything that I've told him about throughout his work day comes up and he just starts yelling and shaming and threatening punishments. I talk to him on the phone several times during his work day and sometimes my struggles with the kids come up because hey, sometimes I need a little support. But I don't even want to tell him anything because it winds up being a point of contention when he gets home. And then when he gets up in the morning (or early afternoon) almost without fail he starts the day off by yelling at the two older kids.

I know this kind of goes against unconditional parenting, but we agreed with the kids that they would have three tasks to do during each day, load the dishwasher, tidy the living room and tidy their bedrooms. Simple tasks, but enough help that I don't feel like the burden of the entire household rests solely on me. We told the kids if they showed us they were responsible enough to do their tasks without being nagged, then we would get them each a pet hamster. They did their tasks each day without fail for two weeks. So we went last weekend to the pet store, spent $140 and got them each a pet hamster. They day after we brought these pets home, the kids stopped doing what they'd been asked. And Gabriel complained that his hamster hated him and he wanted to give it away, because it bit him. We told the kids to give the poor little things some space and a chance to settle in, and once they did, they would probably be able to hold them without getting bitten. It did get better after a few days but the cleaning was still not getting done. I asked them several times each day and got empty promises that it would get done but it never did.

So Jim comes home last night and takes the kids' hamsters out of their rooms and puts them in our bedroom. This was after I was asleep and I didn't know about it until morning when I heard the kids and Jim yelling at each other. Apparently Jim threatened to take the pets back to the store unless the kids did their cleaning for the next week, and also that they would not get their GameBoys back until then. And that they could not watch tv until then. I didn't have a chance to talk to him before he left for work because the baby vomitted all over me, but I need to sit down and tell him how outrageous his behavior is. I'm so furious at him for being this kind of parent after I thought he understood our conversation and my desire to have a connected family free of punishments and rewards, and definitely free of tyranny and parental yelling. I've held up my end but this is just terrible. And what's worse is that my mom and dad agree with what he's doing and when he talks to them they completely support him and think I'm too permissive! Argh.

[flapjack]

WHY can't our husbands go hang out in Blended/Step families parenting?

Do you want thoughts and solutions, or just the comforting sentiment that you are not alone?

[*Amy*]

Originally Posted by DreamsInDigital

I thought he understood our conversation and my desire to have a connected family free of punishments and rewards

Well if *you* are really committed to no punishments/rewards, then the whole hamster thing shouldn't have been tied to chores in the first place. YKIM?

It sounds like you first need to truly define within yourself what is acceptable and what is not, and then convey those thoughts to Jim at a time when your stress level is low(est). If the two of you can't agree to parent according to the same terms, the situation isn't going to change.

I don't know, DiD. For me, that type of parenting would just not be acceptable. I would not stay with a partner who treated my children that way. --- To be fair, I am very biased though; my step-father treated all of us children (his bio children included) *terribly*, and I could never understand why my mom 1) didn't protect us adequately, and 2) stayed in the situation. By allowing it though, you are definitely sending your children a message, whether intentional or not.

[kaspirant]

Leah's birth story

I'm tired, but I thought I'd share.

The inlaws will be here Saturday. I'm excited and dreading it all at the same time.

Leah has been cleared of all *dangers* so to speak. She is thriving and gained 3 oz in the 12 hours after my milk came in.

Jacob is croup-y. He has been wanting to nurse non-stop. At first I thought it was because of Leah nursing, but come to find out about 1 o'clock this morning, he is sick...very sick. Not fun for mama.

My boobs are about to rebel against me. In the last 48 hours I think I've had a total of 6 hours where there was no one nursing...

[DreamsInDigital]

I know, the hamsters had absolutely nothing to do with helping out with the cleaning. I guess I was just so desperate for help around the house. I can't do it all by myself! I'm exhausted! I can't stand for more than 3 minutes without feeling dizzy. Jim will help but he complains non-stop about it so I never ask him. But I can't live in a messy house and I just can't do it right now. I need my kids to help me. I just got desperate for results and it did work for a while and then backfired and I knew it would but you guys must know what the first tri. exhaustion is like. I don't want to do punishments and rewards ever, but something has to give. I need help with the housework!
I have been so committed to no rewards and punishments for a long time but Jim's suggestion just sounded so easy and I just caved in during a moment of weakness.
Amy, I know where you're coming from. My own parents were very much like how Jim is. I usually do well at helping him keep the anger monster in check but I have been sleeping a lot while he's home and I hear about a lot of these incidents well after the fact and by the time I talk to him about it, he's pretty much forgotten why he was so angry. We are going to have a long talk this weekend and I am going to set some firm limits with him.
We're about to jump into a huge committment and I'm not willing to do it if he's parenting so poorly I'm considering leaving. However, if we do this, it will change our whole lives and I am barely able to contain my excitement. I'm not quite ready to talk about it in specifics because I don't want to jinx it, but we're working towards something that has been a dream of mine for years.

[Kavita]

Originally Posted by DreamsInDigital

OMFG. I have a cold. Suriya has a cold. And now, she also has a wonderful vomiting sickness. How do we get sick? We never leave the freaking house! This doesn't make any sense.
Winter and Kolaiah's pink eye seems to have cleared up on its own, thank the Universe.

Mamas, I really need to talk this out. My husband is turning into a tyrant. Or, should I say, back into a tyrant. I really felt like the first time we talked about his yelling, shaming, strict disciplinary ways that he heard me and agreed to work on it. But I feel like he's given up making any sort of effort to have connection with our children. He comes home from work and if Gabriel is still up (he frequently is) then everything that I've told him about throughout his work day comes up and he just starts yelling and shaming and threatening punishments. I talk to him on the phone several times during his work day and sometimes my struggles with the kids come up because hey, sometimes I need a little support. But I don't even want to tell him anything because it winds up being a point of contention when he gets home. And then when he gets up in the morning (or early afternoon) almost without fail he starts the day off by yelling at the two older kids.

I know this kind of goes against unconditional parenting, but we agreed with the kids that they would have three tasks to do during each day, load the dishwasher, tidy the living room and tidy their bedrooms. Simple tasks, but enough help that I don't feel like the burden of the entire household rests solely on me. We told the kids if they showed us they were responsible enough to do their tasks without being nagged, then we would get them each a pet hamster. They did their tasks each day without fail for two weeks. So we went last weekend to the pet store, spent $140 and got them each a pet hamster. They day after we brought these pets home, the kids stopped doing what they'd been asked. And Gabriel complained that his hamster hated him and he wanted to give it away, because it bit him. We told the kids to give the poor little things some space and a chance to settle in, and once they did, they would probably be able to hold them without getting bitten. It did get better after a few days but the cleaning was still not getting done. I asked them several times each day and got empty promises that it would get done but it never did.

So Jim comes home last night and takes the kids' hamsters out of their rooms and puts them in our bedroom. This was after I was asleep and I didn't know about it until morning when I heard the kids and Jim yelling at each other. Apparently Jim threatened to take the pets back to the store unless the kids did their cleaning for the next week, and also that they would not get their GameBoys back until then. And that they could not watch tv until then. I didn't have a chance to talk to him before he left for work because the baby vomitted all over me, but I need to sit down and tell him how outrageous his behavior is. I'm so furious at him for being this kind of parent after I thought he understood our conversation and my desire to have a connected family free of punishments and rewards, and definitely free of tyranny and parental yelling. I've held up my end but this is just terrible. And what's worse is that my mom and dad agree with what he's doing and when he talks to them they completely support him and think I'm too permissive! Argh.

Okay. First of all, I don't remember exactly how old your older two are or what the specific situation with them is. (I am assuming that he is not their biological father, and I don't remember knowing anything about that situation either.) And whereas I don't have older children or multiple children, I have spent a lot of time up close and personal as a juvenile probation officer examining the effects of varying parenting styles. And it sounds to me like you and your DH essentially have a conflict in both your philosophical approach and your practical behavior in terms of parenting style. It seems like you are both at extremes and maybe you could even get some counseling or take a parenting class together to come to some agreement with each other on exactly how you both envision things going in your family.

At the risk of royally pissing you and possibly others off, I can actually see Jim's point of view on this one to some extent. I don't agree with yelling or shaming. But I don't think that enforcing rules or expectations, or having consequences for behavior, is tyranny. I think it's consistent parenting. Either they have age appropriate chores that they are expected to be responsible for, or they don't. But if they do have chores (and I'm assuming that they are age appropriate and reasonable expectations for your kids) then asking them to do the chores and letting them just consistently blow them off ends up sending your kids a message over the long haul that they don't really have to listen to you and that you don't really mean what you say, and I don't think that's any healthier a parental relationship than yelling is. I don't believe in authoritarian parenting, but I absolutely do believe in authoritative parenting--I think that children feel safer if they have some clear limits and expectations (with room of course for some communication and flexibility) and feel that their parents stand behind their words and are powerful enough to protect them.

Now, if you think that chores should not be tied to rewards or punishments and that the expectation in your family is that everyone is expected to do their chores because they are part of the family or whatever, that's fine too--but if getting the hamsters is a logical (positive) consequence for *doing* their work as expected, then not having the hamsters is a logical (negative) consequence for not doing their work as expected. I am not inherently opposed to any sort of behaviorist consequences (desire for positive consequences and avoidance of negative consequences certainly motivates most normal well adjusted adults a lot of the time--we go to work for the reward of money or job fulfillment, we don't speed because of fear of accidents or traffic tickets, etc.) I don't think pets work well as part of a reward system though, because they are living beings and then it becomes hard to take them away as a negative consequence. (Also hamsters in particular are nocturnal and thus not a lot of fun in the day, sometimes aggressive, and create a lot of mess and work and maintenance, which is the last thing it sounds like you need more of especially with three kids under three and two older ones!!)

I would also not be talking to your DH several times during the day and complaining about the kids. I would imagine that it makes him feel like things are out of control at home when he's gone, and also, if you buy the "men are from mars/women are from venus" stuff, your man wants to be your knight in shining armor and protect you and solve your problems. If you are complaining about the kids not doing the chores and how you are overburdened in the house and that the kids aren't listening to you and doing their chores, he's going to perceive that your parenting approach isn't working and want to try to resolve it *his* way. I'd find a girlfriend that I could talk to on the phone about your kids, who will sympathize without being personally involved or wanting to fix it for you, and leave your DH out of it unless it is something he needs to know. It sounds too like he is stressed and overwhelmed. He's probably dealing with it in a less than graceful way and probably he is just parenting the way he was parented and hasn't learned other skills. I can relate to that, as we all tend to react to our kids as *we* were reacted to by our own parents, unless we make a very intense and conscious choice to do otherwise. We can identify and choose a parenting philosophy that we are willing to commit to following, and then learn and practice other skills, but it's definitely challenging to put into practice even in the best of circumstances.

Good luck--I hope things get better!!!

[DreamsInDigital]

Kavita, I really appreciate your input. Thank you so much. It's really given me a lot to think over.

[HoneyTree]

So first, after reading DiD's post, I was all, make a break, sister! And after reading Amy's post, I was like, yea, this is bad news long-term. Then I read Kavita's post, and was kind of, hmmmm...don't buy the bus ticket yet... All I have left is a big hug, Lydia. A really, really big hug.

And Woody broke his clavicle. If you want the whole story, it's below. But that's the short one!

Two year, two months, and twenty-nine days. That's exactly how long the son of the Woods was out of the womb before falling to the earth with a sharp intake of breath and a startled expression, startled to have snapped one of the still green sticks that are the bones in his light, lithe little body. But of all the bones to break, a clavicle is a good one. Turns out the collar bone is a vestige of the days when we primate shuffled about on all fours and needed a stabilizer in that spot for the long forearms that routinely supported most of our weight. In other words, now that humans do most of their moving on two feet, one does not strictly need a collar bone, and people born without them are not disadvantaged in any way.

For those born with collar bones who then treat them carelessly, though, there is the trauma of the break (in Woody's case, a backward fall onto his left upper-back and shoulder from the ladder part of a slide on the playground) and the soreness that accompanies the healing (don't try to pick him up from his left side, don't push on his collar bone, and don't ask him to throw big rocks into the lake), so don't think that just because they're unnecessary that collar bones are also to be taken for granted. He's learning lots of life lessons, our boy.

The exam itself was no sweat, but the X-rays proved pretty damn scary, so we left having sat (and, red-faced, arms-flailing cried) for three of the five pictures the doctor ordered and refusing the last two. Daily we're making our peace with this beast called health care, mixing a healthy dose of intuition with informal consultations with friends in the alternative medicine fields and a handy state-job HMO.

We are told to expect a six week recovery that will happen on all its own--no braces or casts or slings, which would be comically ineffectual on a 2 year old anyway. Also, there is pretty fantastic swelling in the area of the break that is not actually swelling but rather evidence of a recalcification process that his healthy little body is undertaking to basically super-bone the area back together. Doc says it will be the strongest bone in his body when it's healed.

[DreamsInDigital]

Oh. My. God. Poor Woody! Poor you! That actually made me tear up, I feel so bad for you! Swift healing vibes to him, poor little guy!

[Queen of Cups]

Well done, Kavita! You expressed everything I was thinking, but so much more thoroughly and eloquently than I could have.

The last couple nights have been a bit rough! DH went to an out of state ballgame with his dad last night and had an astronomy club meeting tonight, and Killian didn't have school today, so its been a long couple of days and evenings with me having to put the kids to bed by myself. But I did it!

Last night my parents came over to watch a movie after the kids were asleep and it was so lucky they did because my dad noticed a leak in a pipe coming out of my water heater. We got DH on the phone and I heard my dad say, "You're at a ballgame and I'm at your house playing with leaky pipes. Its seems you've won this round." I have the stuff for DH to fix it, I just can't do any laundry till its done.

The kids try to tell knock-knock jokes all the time and its too funny. Ellie's favorite is:
Knock-knock
Who's there?
Banana peel.
Banana peel who?
Banana peel ________! (with some random word thrown in, its different every time. some of them today were: money, Valentine's Day, and door)