A week like no other.

This photo is probably too small but I'm not downloading to my laptop anymore so i have to take what i can get. E smiling with her daddy. I love this photo! I think it may be the first time she picked out a dress to wear. That is not my kid!

So, we are going on the end of week one on our own. Two girls and a dog. It's been interesting to say the least. Mostly I've noticed that it's hard on your own. Not impossible, just harder. M is usually the one who gets up when the little Miss cries in the night. Or we both lay there hoping the other will get her and she falls back to sleep in the meanwhile. But now, since I am the only one and usually woken from a very sound sleep, I get up to get her out of sheer confusion! For a couple nights, she's woken up very early and asked for "cheese". I try to tell her it's not time to get up yet but that doesn't seem to fly. I don't know why! LOL Needless to say, I've been tired most of the time. I guess it's because I haven't worked out either. I really need to get back into that.

So M left last Friday morning and E and I had plans Friday and Saturday night. Our Sunday morning play date was canceled due to weather so Sunday was a very long day inside. Don't ask me why I didn't just pack her up in the car and drive to the mall so she could run around. It didn't even cross my mind that I could "go" somewhere. LOL Monday night we went to a play date/dinner with friends, Tuesday had a St Patrick's Day party with moms/kids, Wednesday two friends came over for leftovers... whew! Yesterday we stayed home and rested. Tonight again, same plan. I think I may have overbooked early in the week. :) This weekend I'll have help from a visiting friend and then M is home on Tuesday night. It should go smoothly. Now that I've said that, though, I guess I've opened myself up for all sorts of mayhem.

I've noticed a couple of interesting things lately, and I have to figure out how to handle them. Since E is an only child and probably will be, and as well she goes to daycare, she's never learned how to "fight" for toys. At home, she doesn't have to share usually. At daycare, all she gets to do is share. When we go out to other kids houses', I've noticed that she looks at me or comes to get me whenever another kid takes what she was playing with. My guess is that she expects me to handle things like the daycare teachers, who probably push sharing and/or give the toy back to the kid that was playing with it. Whatever that is. I usually tell her that things are a little different when we are at people's house, she can either wait for the item to be available again or she can push the kid when he tries to take the toy. I don't care. I don't want her to be a bully but I don't want her to not do anything (or expect me to do something). I guess it's a new situation that we need to work out. I want to support her without her thinking that I need to 'save' her. Sometimes we don't get what we want but sometimes we have to fight too. It's hard to know how to handle it. At least, it is for me. Maybe with a few more evenings like that, she might get it...

The opposite of that is that when the kids are at our house, she is a REALLY good sharer. I've never seen her take a toy away from another kid who is visiting our house. Maybe it's not a good sharer but too timid to do something, I don't know. I don't want to put her in a box. I just know that she seems pretty open when kids play with her stuff. Along with that, we had about 6 kids over on Tuesday night with ages ranging from 18 months - 5 yrs old. All of them were downstairs playing and E was upstairs with the moms, playing by herself. She would go to the stairs every now and then and check out what they were doing but then would come right back up and keep playing. She had no interest. Although the next morning, she did ask me where the kids went.

In many ways, I am seeing her like me. She likes the company of few. A lot of people seem to turn her off unless it's a lot of familiar people. I suppose being in daycare all day would make you want to be alone when you got home. I know it would if I were in a daycare all day!

Ok, as long as I am babbling on about E, I thought I'd share one last thing because I find it funny. Maybe you'd have to hear her to think it's as funny as I do. She had one little friend, I think it's a stuffed lamb or something, but we call him Ted (all the bears are Ted too). This little Ted gets in trouble ALL the time and has to go to time outs. Then after the time out, she turns to him, picks him up and holds him to her and says "Oh, honey, it's alright" only it sounds more like "Oh hohney, it's alright" and I am convinced it's one of the daycare workers that talks like that. The way she says that is not like we talk. I'll have to try and record it in a video. (Ted is constantly getting in trouble for biting, I don't know why. ;))

Anyhow, now that I have sufficiently bored you, I'm going to sign off and take a nap.

Takin' it day by day

So after my whiny post last week, I got my butt off the couch and started making some plans. I mean, you can't meet anyone if you aren't getting out and if I can conveniently use my child as an excuse to get together with other mothers then so be it. We actually had 2 play dates, one ice cream event and also a Mother's Night out with the mom's group I joined. Who knew there were nice people out there? I didn't (well, I had an idea but, boy in our neighborhood, they are hard to find). It's helps to have a little social interaction - just enough to make me happy and still talk to people about things I have no clue about. Did you know that toddlers have to be potty trained? Yes, it's true. Here I thought one day they just figured it out. I know I did. ;) How do you potty train a toddler? Yes, I'm learning how. TG for our daycare admin because I certainly wouldn't know anything. LOL

Anyhow, I'm feeling better. M is probably stressed more than ever. He's planning for a trip home for a nice break with friends and family but since we are putting our house up for sale in April (hopefully) he also has a lot of little jobs that have been waiting for his attention. Our downstairs bathroom, now finished. All the little odds and ends, completed. Gosh, it feels good and I didn't even do it. It just took a deadline and a lot of pressure for him but he's marching through it. He leaves in 2 weeks - we have a lot to do before then.

The past weekend I got to feel like how it feels for people who shake/abuse/abandon their children (I'm sure some search is going to come up and CPS will be on my doorstep in a moment). I would never do that physical damage but I can clearly see how someone could be at the end of their rope, desperate for some kind of divine intervention but not receiving it. I don't know what happened... sometimes we just have bad days... my patience was thin... her need to test it was great, I guess. Specifically at one point we were in the car, M driving and E was calling "Mama" from the backseat. I usually answer her, thinking more is coming, and it does not. I say "yes" she says "mama" again. After the 20th time, I stop answering (no one said I was quick). Then she moves on to asking for a cracker. "well honey, I don't have any crackers in the car today". She asks again, I answer again. Her whiny voice asks again and I don't know how many times this is but I told you I didn't have an f-ing cracker stop f-ing asking me for one! Of course, I didn't put it like this but my raised voice and my stink eye implied this. She was quiet for about a millisecond and then "cracker" was heard from the back seat. Needless to say, it moved downhill from there and once home, eventually earned her some "time alone" in her bedroom. Sometimes... Sometimes, I don't think I'm cut out for this.

And then, the cutest smile, the cheesiest grin, the hug. Sucker for punishment, I am. How do people cope with more than one?