Crocodile tears

 

I have woefully neglected this blog. All of my pictures from the past few months I have put on facebook instead—I’ve been doing that because it saves me time.

Colin’s work has been extremely busy the past couple of weeks and will continue to be that into the next month. This week he worked 51 hours. Unfortunately, he had a bad cold this week too. There are some very conflicting emotions here. It wasn’t long ago he was applying to other companies because work was so slow, so we are so grateful for the job security. On the other had, he is worn out.

 

The day after I made Annie cry herself to sleep, she was sick with a fever and slept the entire day. After she seemed better, I tried to continue with the sleep training. Jackson figured out sleeping the first night I did this, so there wasn’t much crying. Annie is a different story. After about five days of it, she was still crying too much and not sleeping any better. There is research that say that crying it out is damaging psychologically to babies so I wasn’t going to push it anymore. I switched to a modified version which could be called a “pick up and put down” technique. It took a while to regain her trust, and she is still weary of her crib from the cry it out experiment, however, it seems to be working. I am so grateful to get some sleep while still being able to rock my baby. I wasn’t quite ready for her to grow out of needing me completely yet.

 

Jackson newest thing is airplanes. Colin finally got sick of making him paper airplanes (I usually throw them away as I clean) so he bought him some “real” cardboard and Styrofoam airplanes he can throw around. Today he went to primary all by himself. This is good because of how clingy he’s been lately in certain social situations. Itty bitty ball was a fiasco last week for this reason. It seems like it was just too much pressure – all the people, noise, the “coaches” telling him what to do, me telling him what to do. He just quit participating. He said “I’m done.” and dropped the ball/bat/mit and refused to do anything (it happened at all 3 stations we did). I was so embarrassed and frankly didn’t know how to handle the situation. I’m pretty sure the words “you are being so weird” and “you are embarrassing me” came out of my mouth. Afterward I was trying to explain what to be embarrassed means to him. It can’t be done on a level a three year old would understand. Next week I will come prepared with thicker skin and more empathy for him in the situation.

 

 

Me now? I’ve been feeling painfully aware of shortcomings lately. I’ve been longing for the day when I was a teenager and was only insecure about my looks and had sort of a naïve and arrogant “I’m the bestest and I can do anything” attitude. This is what I need to learn: Dwelling on all the things I wish I was better at and comparing myself to other women has really only served me with a large helping of depression pie. There is a time and season for everything. For now, I am really good at the following things: (forgive my ego boost, but maybe you can draw from it too)

• wrestling a wiggly baby with a blow out diaper
• getting a wiggly baby to calm down and go to sleep
• reading books in a expressive and entertaining way
• teaching Jackson important things like that it’s not “eighteen, nineteen, twentyteen” 
• cooking yummy dinners that everyone wants to sit down and eat
• sacrificing for my kids
• giving my children worthwhile and fun experiences, usually in the mud
• being an active member in my church
• manipulating kids into behaving…you can get a kid to do almost anything if you package and sell it right
• documenting our lives – photography
• photoshoping out food on my kids faces
• Colin says “looking up answers to questions” (aka googling)
• Colin says “blogging….computer skills”
• Colin says “making me feel loved and appreciated”

I am surprised and relieved that this list is this long. I honestly feel better. What are you good at right now? What skills do you use everyday that you are devaluing or taking for granted? I’d love to hear from you.