Post-op, CIO, crafting, yay!

Well, the new lifestyle isn't going that well, but that's ok.  The weather's been rough, and I've had a lot of motivation to get stuff done around the house, so I made a conscious decision to go with that motivation while I have it.  I've been cleaning out the kids' closets and our office, which has been a disaster since we moved in over two years ago.  I also tackled a 2-month stack of paperwork, which still needs to be filed.  It's hard every time I have an hour of free time and I have to choose between exercising, which will make me healthier and improve my mood, or knocking something big and important off my to-do list that will make my daily life a little easier and also improve my mood. 

What would you choose?

Saw the orthopedic surgeon this week and had x-rays of my hand.  Things look good, although my ring finger is still really stiff, as well as my pinky, which was badly sprained and stuck in the cast and then the splint along with my ring finger.  Physical therapy is ridiculously painful, so painful that I break into a cold sweat and tears come to my eyes.  I can see how breaking a person's fingers might have been useful during the Inquisition.  Anyway, I can barely bend my fingers, and I have a whole series of exercises I have to do at least 4-6 times per day, preferably after warming my fingers with a heating pad.  Do you know how easy that is to do with two really demanding toddlers around?  Not easy at all.  Some days I feel lucky to do the exercises only 2-3 times.  Luckily, typing is also a good exercise.

Last night we let Turtle cry in his crib after he didn't fall asleep with my husband sitting in there for a half hour.  He cried for well over an hour, and didn't fall asleep until close to 10:30.  It is SO HARD to listen to him cry, but I am out of ideas and don't know what else to do.  I think if CIO doesn't work after a couple more nights, I may try to come up with something else, but I'm willing to give it a chance at this point.  It's been months now of him not falling asleep, and he did fall asleep on his own for over a year, so I know he is capable of doing it.  Also, I've tried over and over to ask him what's wrong and he doesn't tell me, no matter how many different ways I think to ask him.  I know he's not very good at expressing himself yet, but he's quite talkative in general and is usually good at telling me both if he wants/needs something and/or is scared of something, so I don't know why he is screaming and not falling asleep.  It's frustrating for us all.

I've been working on a lot of crafts - is anyone interested in seeing pics?  I've made 8 quiet book pages, I'm almost done making a cloth dollhouse, and I've made multiple fleece hats.  I could get pics up sometime in the next few days if anyone is interested.

OK, I've got about 1.5 hours to try to get dinner prepped, maybe go for a run and a shower, and get as much as possible done around the house.

Fall mini-goals

I've been having a bit of an up-and-down attitude about my current situation.  I was actually in a good mood about my broken hand situation for a long time.  I felt that I could get back on track for the marathon, that I was managing daily life pretty well, and that I was lucky and the injury could have been much worse.  Then I fell again and decided to pull out of the marathon, and stopped running, and started eating a lot of stuff I shouldn't, partly out of stress.  This week, my husband's been gone and the kids have been pretty awful, to the point that I cried multiple times yesterday.  I'm missing the rush I get from exercise, and physical therapy has suddenly gotten pretty painful (to the point where I am sweating and squirming and grabbing my seat in pain - sort of like mini-labor).  Today I asked the physical therapist what she though about my progress, and as I suspected, it's not as good as she'd like.  Which is understandable, since with 2 toddlers and no help around, it's been impossible to do my exercises as often as I should.

I decided today that I would go for a run, with my splint to protect my hand.  I just got back and I already feel better.  In a matter of a couple weeks, I went from being an active runner ready for a half-marathon and well on her way to a full one, who felt confident and healthy,who was ready for an awesome cross-country ski season, to someone who is becoming a couch potato and couldn't even keep herself from snacking on cookies every time she felt a bit of stress (and the amount of stress I felt yesterday worked out to about 15 cookies).

So.  I need a goal again.  And I have a few in mind.  My mini-goal deadline is Thanksgiving, which the hope of re-establishing some good habits.

I'm still signed up for a 10k for November 17.  Until then, I will run 3 times per week, 3-5 miles each time.  I will work out at least 2 other days per week by doing exercises at home or going for a bike ride if my husband is home. 

I will not snack between meals (possibly except of fruit, I'll see how it goes).  I'll go back to my usual schedule of a healthy breakfast (usually a slice of whole-wheat bread with cream cheese, or yogurt and cereal), lunch (need to get this healthier), afternoon coffee, and dinner without second helpings.  Dessert for special occasions only or nights out.  No more cookies!  Coffee only once a day, and don't drink it if I don't really feel like it.  Tea is fine in the morning or evening.  Try to eat fruit after every meal.  I've done this kind of diet for years, I don't know why it feels so hard now.

I'd like to have a few other goals, and one thing I want to work on is gratitude.  I was doing well for a while with no goal or program - I really wasn't at all down about my accident and surgery.  I felt that things could have been a lot worse, and I was lucky.  And it was all true.  But then when I lost my long-term goal of training for a marathon after two months of hard work and good results, followed by a week of really difficult two-year-old behavior, I lost a bit of perspective.  I want to get that back.  So here's to that - to trying to get my perspective back with a bit of good, old-fashioned gratitude.

Starting with: today, at this moment, I am grateful my husband is on his way home.  I'm grateful I have made at least SOME progress with my physical therapy.  I'm grateful my friend and my sister are coming over tonight for a crafting night.  I'm grateful for all the good food I've been eating and will continue to eat.  I'm grateful for mochas, and now especially salted caramel mochas (maybe that's not a good thing to be grateful for).  I'm grateful for my general good health. 

It's a good life.

I have not felt like blogging because my broken hand is still in a splint, so typing is a royal pain, but we are still having sleep issues, so I am sitting with my computer in Turtle's room in the dark while he is definitely not sleeping.  I actually have a lot of non-computerish things to do, such as cleaning up the kitchen and assembling the lasagne I will be serving to my mom and her friends tomorrow for lunch, so it is rather inconvenient to be stuck in here.

Otherwise, life is good.  And busy.  I am in physical therapy for my hand, which has been painful, rough, and slow-going, but at least I'm making progress.  I can tell it will be a long while before I can climb again.  I wonder how long it will be until I can type normally?

I've given up the marathon, which has been a bit depressing.  I started running again and then one day I fell again.  I was super lucky and didn't reinjure my finger, but it freaked me out and I'm ready to wait for another year or two or five.

We went on vacation!  It was so fun.  We went to Cancun for 9 days, and my in-laws flew over from Italy to meet us.  We mostly stayed at our resort, ate a lot, swam a lot, slept a lot, and played a lot, and it was a blast for everyone.  I rigged a secondary splint for myself out of athletic tape and drugstore finger splints, so I could go in the water, but my activity was pretty limited.

The kids are fabulous, as always.  They're so smart and funny, every day is awesome, although some days are also long, tiring, and frustrating.  They speak 100% Italian with us at home, although they clearly understand English.  They get into moods, especially Tadpole, where they just talk nonstop, every thought pops into their heads spewing immediately out of their mouths.  It's hilarious.

I try really hard not to gender-stereotype them (except their clothing to some degree, but it's pretty mild), but their toy preferences do seem to skew a bit towards the gender stereotypes.  They actually mostly overlap, but Turtle is slightly more into trucks, fire engines, and tractors, and Tadpole is slightly more into stuffed animals (well, animals in general).  They both like purses and hair bows, pretending to cook, running, jumping, climbing, wrestling, coloring, pushing strollers/shopping carts, reading, music, dancing, etc.

Turtle, as always, has more patience and is more interested in solving problems, such as putting puzzles together.  He likes musical instruments more than Tadpole, too, and plays the harmonica as well as strumming the little cheap guitar we got them in Cancun.  He also loves playing with our box of cars and trucks, and helping us cook, which he can do really well because he is generally patient and can follow directions.  He loves reading, and his favorite books lately are all about cars or tractors.  He is getting picky about his clothes - he likes the color red, or otherwise he wants clothes with a tractor or car or motorcycle on it.  I swear I have not done anything to push motorized vehicles around here!  Maybe he's picking it up at preschool?

Tadpole, on the other hand, is generally very impatient, at least relatively speaking, and while she can follow directions if she wants to, she usually prefers to modify the activity to suit her needs.  Placing sliced carrots into a bowl is much less fun than moving them back and forth from bowl to counter over and over.  She does a lot of role-playing, much more than Turtle.  In any given game, whether she's playing with animals, cars, balls, etc., there's always a mama and a baby, and sometimes a daddy, too, and she has imaginary conversations between all her made-up characters.  She loves to read, but I haven't noticed much in the way of a preference for any particular kind of book.  She's also not super picky about her clothes, at least not yet.  Whew.

Potty training (or "toilet learning", which I don't actually say, but I hate the term "training" used for kids, it sounds like one is talking about a dog) is not going anywhere.  We've been really laid-back and just suggest using the toilet here and there and generally we don't get any interest.  I'm feeling like my husband is ready to start pushing a bit harder (ha), but I don't know.  Turtle actually peed in the potty once, not intending to, and it scared him and now he wants nothing to do with it.  Tadpole is not patient enough to wait for something to happen.  I'm not sure how to gently encourage without being too pushy, since I think being too insistent might result in a lot of resentment and stronger refusal.  I keep hoping for a more natural breakthrough, that they'll give us some indication that they're ready.

Since bedtime has been a bit rough, I've also been thinking about moving them to beds.  Turtle slept in a bed in Mexico, although he fell out the last night.  Yesterday at naptime, I put them both in Turtle's room, with Tadpole in a pack'n'play, and at one point I saw that Turtle was trying to climb out of his crib.  So it might be just about time to make the switch.

And that's my update.  Turtle FINALLY fell asleep and it is 9:40 and I have tons to do, so off I go.

Bionic woman

Surgery went well!  I ended up getting a plate with four screws, which will hopefully stay in my hand and I won't need another surgery to have them removed.  I get my cast off on Thursday, and I think I will get a removable brace then, although I'm not totally sure.  I went for a very short run yesterday just to see how it would go, and I plan to try a mid-to-long range run tomorrow.  I can't wait to be able to use my hand again, even if it is stiff.

Since it's hard to type, I'll just leave it there.  Hope all's well with you, thanks for the comments, and sorry I haven't really returned any recently.  One-handed typing and all.

Ciao!

Today, I set out on a 12-mile run, and at mile 4.75, I tripped and fell.  When I landed, I bent two of my fingers backwards.  One came back up at an odd angle, and I sat on the pavement gripping my hand in pain.  Luckily (ha!) I was right across the street from the hospital.  4 x-rays and several hours later confirmed a bad fracture.  Several hours after THAT, I had a pre-surgery consult and scheduled surgery for Monday.

Now I am typing with one hand and feeling sorry for myself.  The husband leaves Tuesday for Boston.  I don't want him to cancel, but I'm worried about managing the whole week with not much help.  I've been training for this marathon for 7 weeks, and now I'm not sure I'll be able to do it.  I'm going to have pins put in my hand, and then later removed.  After the cast comes off, I'll have weeks of physical therapy.  And I've got two active needy two-year-olds. 

Feeling a bit overwhelmed right now.

Sleep

This sleep thing is sort of crazy.

I mean, you know that you're not going to get much sleep for a while when you have a baby.  Depending on how much experience you have with small children, and on the tendencies of your own child, you have a more or less realistic idea of how long it's going to be before you get to sleep through the night for the first time.  And then semi-regularly.

One thing that doesn't seem to get much discussion, though, is sleep after the newborn and infant stages.

Turtle is currently crying in his crib.  It's 8:30 at night.  He's been awake since 6:30 this morning, without a nap, and he only slept about 8.5-9 hours last night.  That's right, he didn't go to sleep until around 9:45 last night.  My friends, this can't go on.

And I don't know what to do about it.  I feel really helpless.  Like many people we've been floundering around looking for whatever will work, sticking to our principles as much as we can and diverging from them when we get desperate.

Things that have worked in the past are not working now. 

Repeating the bedtime routine with more milk, more singing and rocking, another good night kiss - won't work anymore.

Bringing a toy or two of Turtle's choice - for some reason, only seems to make him cry harder.

Rocking him until he falls asleep - well, he falls asleep.  But we're not very successful transferring him into his crib anymore.  It's like he won't let himself go into a deep enough sleep to not notice the transfer.  He clings, even when he's been twitching and snoring.

Rubbing his back?  Tried it for an hour the other day.  Didn't work.

Sitting in his room with him, comforting him from the floor or the futon, so he'd relax to know that someone was with him in his room.  We've tried it multiple times, sometimes for longer than an hour.  Every time we go to leave, we discover him standing in his crib, just waiting.  Not even lying down.

He has a white noise machine he's used since he was really little.  I tried switching it to quiet lullabies like they use at his preschool, but he hated it.

I've tried just asking him what he wants, what would make him comfortable, but it doesn't work either.  He wants to get out of the crib.

So far the only thing that worked easily (but after 1.5 hours of trying other stuff), was climbing into his crib and sleeping with him.  That is NOT what I consider a reasonable part of a bedtime routine. 

We're currently re-trying CIO, which I'm not a big fan of, and the problem is it's taking forever.  He still cries for an hour or more.  I hate listening to him, I hate that he's upset.  I was sure that skipping his nap today would result in a tired-enough kid to GO TO SLEEP!!!!!

I bought a magnetic white board today and drew a little chart of the bedtime routine, complete with little icons for each step.  We went through the routine with Turtle and Tadpole and let them each put a magnet next to each step when it was finished.  It made the bedtime routine much more fun and we didn't have the usual battle we've had recently.

But it hasn't helped him to go to sleep.  And perversely, it's not like he's sleeping in, either.  He's waking up between 6:30 and 7 every morning, even after falling asleep between 9:30 and 10:30!  He's getting so little sleep!  It's got to be a phase, right?

I just don't know what to do anymore.

It's funny how much sleep loss you can tolerate when you have a newborn, and how getting up a half hour earlier than usual when you have a toddler makes you feel so tired.

Tired, plus preschool discussion

I am tired.

It's been a long day.  Also, it was a long weekend.  I went backpacking Friday-Sunday, got sick on Monday, felt a bit better Tuesday, and then had to handle my mother and the kids together today.

Turtle is on another sleep strike.  Last week, without the husband home, I spent two nights of two hours trying to get him to go to sleep.  The second night, the only thing that worked was climbing in to the crib with him.  Nothing works - not rocking, not milk, not water, not singing quietly, not rubbing his back, not staying in the room with him and shhhhhhing until he falls asleep.  We're back to CIO, and as much as I hate it, I don't know what else to do.  Problem is, so far it's not working that great this time around either.  The screaming starts as we're getting the bedtime routine underway.  He no longer wants to put on his PJs, brush his teeth, etc.  Any advice?  He's only 26 months old, so I'm not sure a sticker chart or checklist would work, but I'm open to any suggestions.

I took a week off of marathon training, which I hope will be partially offset by the approximately 15 miles of hiking I did this weekend.  I was starting to feel physically very tired and achy, and I needed a little break, and I honestly do feel better from that point of view.  We'll see if it made a difference during my 7-mile run tomorrow.

I've been thinking a lot about preschool and "homeschool", too.  I put "homeschool" in quotes because I am using it in the sense of schooling at home in addition to, rather than instead of, more standard schooling (like, at an actual school).  I wasn't super happy with the preschool we ended up choosing (mostly because there was space available and my kids were one month too young to start at most of the other schools), and while the situation has improved a bit, it still isn't ideal in my mind.  I've been ok with that, because we're probably going to Italy at some point, possibly for 1-2 months, so we will probably pull them out of preschool at that point and lose our spots, and have to look elsewhere.  In touring a lot of other preschool that I had previously ignored because of the aforementioned age cut-off, I realized that there were quite a few things I liked about some of the preschools that I do NOT like about our current preschool:

- Many of the other preschools either require the kids to bring a lunch or they include the kids in the lunch-making process, and often in the gardening and food-growing process.  At our current preschool, I believe the lunches are prepackaged processed foods, and I'm now realizing that the menu is pretty boring, not very good, and repeats quite frequently.  Since my kids go only twice per week, it's not a huge deal, but it's not ideal at all.

- Many of the other preschools are play-based, imagination-strong, and very free form in their style.  Particularly the Waldorf school, which I LOVE except for a few small points (I will bring that up in a bit).  The preschool where we are is very academic, clean, and well-ordered, but seems to leave little room for the imagination and for child-led learning.

- The yards of many of the other preschools are messy, natural, and allow for a lot of exploration and creativity.  Our preschool has a very plain yard, with a play structure in tanbark, some tricycles (which are too big for my kids at this point), and a very few other toys, including some balls and buckets and shovels.  It is certainly adequate, but when compared to some of the yards I've seen, a bit depressing.

- Our preschool has had major turnover since we started (only 2.5 months ago), so the teachers they have now are already different than the ones they started with.  I was not at all impressed with their first set of teachers, but their current teachers seem a bit better - much more loving and less stern with the kids.  Still - they were off to a bad start, and need to work to improve, in my opinion.

I was particularly impressed with our local Waldorf school, without knowing much about Waldorf before touring it.  The rooms are absolutely beautiful, built to bring in lots of natural light, and furnished with natural materials, mostly wood and cloth.  The yard was very natural, with lots of plants, pathways, and free form areas, such as a sand play area and flower beds.  I think the two biggest problems (besides the age cut-off preventing my kids from attending this year) are the very strict rules against media of any kind, and the fact that they are near a freeway (not a major one, but I could hear the traffic and it bothered me a bit).  But I love that the materials are so natural and calming, the activities so creative and inspiring, and the setting is so beautiful and open-ended.

The media rule is not too much of a problem for me, although I strongly believe in reading with my children, and in them learning to read at a young age (or at least not preventing them from learning to read).  My husband doesn't like the dogmatic sense of the anti-media restrictions, and I can somewhat see his point.

But lately, I've been thinking.  My kids are only in preschool 2 days per week.  And on the other 5 days, we DO all those other things.  We play with wooden toys, and felt, and do arts and crafts and music.  We dance and read books, and do role play games.  We cook, and bake, all the time!  They are constantly helping me make lunch and dinner.  We're working on setting the table, using cloth napkins that I made myself, washing our hands before meals, being kind to one another.  We have a beautiful yard, and a water table, and we get outside a lot.  They help me in the vegetable garden, and can identify all the vegetables we grow, and help me pick them.  We also do errands, go to the library, go to gymnastics class, visit Grandma, and we are about to start attending two playgroups - one at the local cooperative nursery school, and one Italian language one nearby.  We are also raising our kids to be bilingual, which is going really well so far.  The only thing they're really missing is a chance to get used to being in school, and to be around other kids, so that is really all we need, and we have that.  While I hope to find a better place when we have to (at least in terms of food - prepackaged processed food just isn't what I want to serve my kids), I am realizing that the current situation is actually just fine.

And so that's where I am.  Crossing my fingers that Turtle is dropping off to sleep, and I'm going to try to cut out some fleece for Tadpole's winter hat before I hit the sack.  Pictures of hats to come soon!