In Search of Myself

You talkin' to me?

I was thinking this morning about Jake's delay in speech, and I realized I would take a developmental delay ANY DAY rather than a behavior or attitude problem.  Developmentally they almost always catch up with no negative effects -- it just takes them longer to arrive.  Attitude is hard to fix, and it gets worse the more it develops.  And I don't know that I want to necessarily LABEL Jake as developmentally delayed as far as speech goes, because I know that he's developing just fine and he happens to not talk much (or very clearly yet).  And the reason I was thinking about it this morning, is I think we're on the front end of him finally catching up and being able to talk more. Last night he was totally cracking me up.

We were laying in bed trying to fall asleep, and he was saying totally random stuff.  And you know, a lot of times when he says something, it's not totally clear.  HE knows what he's saying, and he'll repeat it several times for me, but it takes me a while to figure it out.  Sometimes I feel like I'm playing Wheel of Fortune, and I'm looking at the phrase, repeating possibilities to myself over and over, thinking surely it's something obvious but I just can't quite get it . . . then someone solves the puzzle and the letters all appear and you think "well DUH, that's what the phrase is!  Why did that take so long to figure out?"

So Jake randomly says "Frog. Hop."  But it's a little jumbled, so it takes me a minute.  Finally I say, "Oh, a frog hops."  "Yeah."  Then he says "Kick.  Ball."  (although it sounds like "Tick.  Bah.")  And since my job in all of this is to re-articulate what he just said so he knows I know what he's talking about, I say "Do you kick a ball?"  "Yeah."  And the odd thing about Jake, is he knows a lot of words, but they're all nouns, verbs, and a few adjectives.  It's like he doesn't understand or just has no use for connectors like the, and, a, to, etc.  So then he says, "Lion.  Roaaaar."

At this point I start laughing and I'm thinking, what, are you randomly matching nouns and verbs for me?

The Jake decides he needs to get up again to go potty, so we get up.  It's hard to know when kids REALLY need to go potty and when they just want to get out of bed, but he usually gets once that I let him get back up and he usually does have to go.  But I kept all the lights off except the night light, so he didn't get any ideas about staying up.  He points to the night light and says "Light?"  I said "that's a night light."  He repeats "night light," clear as day.  For him this is MAJOR, because it's two words together that have a lot of consonants and he totally said it right.  So of course, being the dork that I am, I got all excited about it and (very emphatically) told him good job . . . so he starts laughing and saying "night light" over and over, and every time I tell him good job.  You should have seen the smile on his face, it was so sweet.  He was so proud of himself.

But the best thing he said last night?  I was being silly while we were playing in the living room, and I kept saying, "Hey Jake.  I love you," in a sing-song kinda way.  He would laugh and repeat "Uh-voo" with a big smile.  Hell, I don't know if he was just repeating it because it made me laugh or if he knows yet what it means, but hearing that from her favorite guy makes any woman happy.

Work . . .

You know, I swear to the good Lord, some days the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning is the fact that at work I have high-speed internet and at home we have crappy dial-up.

P.S.  To whoever Googled " I think I love you Jenny"  . . .

. . .

I love you, too!  heh.

Googlisms and "Moms" Article

Ok, now how weird is this?  My blog in French.  Still trying to figure out why someone who spoke French decided they really had to read the things I was saying.  But hello, whoever you are.  (Sh*t, how do you say "hello" in French?)

I'm the #1 search for "supernanny" (depending on how you spell it/what you capatalize) and "will wonders never cease."  I'm getting a TON of SuperNanny searches.  Which is fine.  Maybe Jo will google herself and see that I think she's really cool!  (ha ha.)

I'm #6 for "Confessions of a Slacker Mom", which I'm getting a TON of lately because of the latest issue of Newsweek.  Google pulls me up because of my tounge-in-cheek post, Confessions of a Slacker Mom, which I wrote Nov. 1, pretty much as a joke about how I didn't do squat with Jake this past fall as far as seasonal activities/pictures for his scrapbook.  But the Newsweek articles are noteworthy, if nothing else because they're addressing motherhood in this generation, bring up some good points, and they have us thinking and talking about the challenges of motherhood.

Here are the articles of interest:

Mommy Madness --"What happened when the Girls Who Had It All became mothers? A new book explores why this generation feels so insane"

The Good Enough Mother -- "Forget about day camp or mandatory Gymboree. What's the point of raising kids if we don't have a good time and a few laughs?"

Meet the Slacker Mom -- "One mother says it’s time to stop the madness"

And if that's not enough required reading for the day, here is Cara's post (read comments) about it, and a thread on the topic from 2Peas (scrapbooking site where I cheat on my blog friends for hours a day.)  As usual, I go on and on in both of these, but would you expect anything less from me?  [Oh, and on the 2Peas thread, does anyone else want to smack "=)Julee"?]

Your Job as a Parent

No one wants to be told by a third party what their job is.  When I was in high school, I had a math teacher who only cared about his football team.  Somedays I honestly thought that he was a teacher just so he could be a coach.  (My high school math education was so bad then when I took the ACT, I got a 30 on reading, a 30 on writing, and a 24 on math.  I got a book, taught myself the things I was supposed to know, took the test again and got a 29 on the math.  So obviously, something was lacking.)  During football season this teacher didn't teach us crap.  He would write our assignment on the board, quickly tell us how to do it, then say "If you don't understand, ask someone who does," and then he would work on his football plays and football paperwork.  I was ALWAYS the person everyone came to for help, and I don't mind helping a few people, but it was getting absurd.  Finally I said -- loud enough for him to hear -- "You need to go ask Mr. At*r, because it's not my job to teach you this material."  He came STORMING over to me, obviously angry, and said loudly "Don't you tell me what my job is!"  I looked at him calmly and said "I'd like to be excused to the choir room."  (I always went when I was bored and Mr. F let me play piano in a practice room.)  He let me go.  If he hadn't, I was going to walk to the principal's office and have a chat with her.  I actually wish now that I HAD gone to tell the principal about it.

BUT ANYWAY, that story is a preface to the following commentary about parenting.  I know that no one wants to hear how they should be dealing with their children -- hell, me of all people.  Most of the time I meet comments with a "yeah, ok" smile and a "f*ck you, thanks for playin'" in my inner dialogue.  And really, the things I'm about to say about people's jobs as parents should have you saying "DUH" and it's really sad that it has to be said.

Did you watch SuperNanny on Monday?  I posted last week about how much I love the show, and every time I watch it I like her more and more.  The kids, though, AMAZE me.  And I have to give the parents credit for WANTING to change and admitting that there's something wrong . . . but holy cow.  Andrew was a mess.  I was mortified when he grabbed that little girl during their playdate.  He was violent and cruel, and a 3 year old is old enough to understand actions like that.  Hell, I was holding Jake accountable for behavior like that before he was 1.  What really got me, though, is that Andrew's mom rarely stepped in to stop him from being violent and mean toward his friend or brother. It is your job as a parent to protect other children from your child. I know that we're supposed to protect our kids from stuff, but if they have trouble behaving or adjusting to new situations or just playing in general, you are responsible for the safety of children in your child's path. Even my darling Jake has had moments of pushing Zoe to be mean or coming close to stepping on Aowyn, and when he does these things, I IMMEDITELY intervene, tell him what he was doing wrong, and either remove him from the situation and make him realize he can NOT act like that again, or help him figure out what to do next time.  Sometimes it's just a quick "hey, we don't do that.  Do this instead," and problem solved.  If he hurts someone, I tell him no angrily, set him aside, comfort the child he has hurt, then take him away to time out.  (I've only had to do that twice.)  And it's too bad Priscilla doesn't post on my blog, because she can attest to you that it works.  I trust Jake and Elauna playing together almost 100% because he has learned by now what is and isn't ok.  They have a little playhouse they play in at Elauna's house, and they can be in there together for 10 minutes where we can hear them but not see them, and they never have a problem.  And Jake is 14 pounds heavier than Elauna so I know how important it is that he be NICE and GENTLE at all times.  Priscilla should never have to worry about letting the girls play with Jake, because my job as a parent is to make sure Jake doesn't hurt them, even accidentally.  (Ok, and my other comment on this week's SuperNanny: did anyone else notice the mom totally copying the English accent when she said "the naughty spot."  I almost fell over laughing.)

Here's story number two about parents' jobs.  Ya know how Zoe is ALWAYS coming to my mom's house sick and getting Jake sick?  And how her mom always plays dumb about it and saying "oh I thought she was ok" or "I thought her nose was just running" or some other dumb excuse.  And I THINK all sort of things I wish I could tell her but I never do.  So anyway, Monday I got to my mom's and she'd had the kids outside playing and Jake stunk to high heaven (good Lord, that kid sweats.)  We were on our way to see Elauna, so I threw Jake in my mom's huge garden tub for a quick bath.  Zoe was immediately jealous, because sometimes my mom gives them a bath together and she was mad that she didn't get a bath.  Her mom showed up 5 minutes later and instead of packing her up to go, said "well can't she have a bath, too?  She really wants one."  So I let Zoe hop in with Jake and I sat there and soaped her up and played with both of the kids while Z's mom sat on her butt and talked to my mom.  I couldn't help myself, I had to say something.  So I mentioned that we were on our way to see Elauna, and that I had to give Jake a bath because he smelled.  I then said  "I think it's really rude to bring kids over to someone's house if they smell, or if they're sick, and I'm not going to be a rude friend." LOL.  I really hope I made my point.  I was saying it in a nice way and saying it's MY personal philosophy and that's a rule I live by, but I'm REALLY hoping she read into it like a normal person would.

A pic of us

So I had my camera out this weekend, and when I take Jake's picture he still says "'Gin? 'Gin?"  (Again.)  Finally after taking dozens of pictures of him, I say "Should we take a picture of you and me?"  And Jake replies "Yeah!  Yeah!"  I'm sitting on the couch, so I pull him onto my lap.  "Are you ready?" I ask.  "Yeah!  Yeah!"  the kid says.  And this is the picture we got.  (Click on it to "make it pop.")  Jake looks a lot less than thrilled, but I promise we were having fun.  And dude, I have a LOT of moles (I swear they're not zits.  I even edited out a couple moles because it was too much.  heh.)  And my nose looks freakishly mis-shapen.  And Jake's head looks as big as mine.  Wait, no, in real life it IS as big as mine, so that part's not weird.  But still, even when I take weird pictures like this, I resist the urge to delete, and I keep them -- because years from now, this is going to be one that I love.  (Even though right now  I think we both look goofy.)

A note from Jake

Mama is "freaking busy" today at work, so I thought I would tell you all hello and HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! (Especially to all my little girlfriends out there -- Evelyn, Ella, and Rachie, especially!  heh.)  (Although really my heart belongs to Elauna.  And mommy.)  Hope your day is great.  Love, Jake.

P.S. Ok, here's a note from me (Jen.)  It's Valentine's Day, so I thought I'd comment quickly on that.  I think that as a general rule, it's silly to set aside a holiday for couples and on that one day they should be nice to each other and get each other gifts and cards.  All of America's holidays are commercialized and over-hyped.  (Don't believe me?  Go walk around Walmart or Walgreens.  It's scary the crap that is mass-produced and over-priced for people to be guilted into buying to prove they are really in love.)  Lou and I decided we were going to do Valentine's Day yesterday (Sunday) because of our work schedules.  We had arranged for my mom to keep Jake Sunday evening and then keep him all night.  But Sunday at church my car had a flat tire -- Evie's dad helped me put the donut on (he always comes to my rescue, he is the best.)  Lou drove to church (had been at home goofing off) to trade cars with me because I didn't want to drive Jake around in the imperfect car (I'm a dork, I know.)  I took Jake to my mom's, Lou went to the tire place.  Then I went to get Lou, we went to lunch at Logan's (and it sucked, but whatever), we got my car -- I had run over a piece of metal -- and we came home and he let me take a nap while he goofed off on the computer.  Then at 6 p.m. we got Jake from my mom's and we just hung out that evening.  Lou bought me Hershey's Kisses and 2 cards (one from him, one from Jake.)  When Lou buys me cards now, he buys silly ones with pictures of dogs on them, so after I read them I can give them to Jake.  Jake LOVED the cards, and he went to bed still clutching them.  I honestly think the sweetest thing that Lou did for me for Valentine's Day was taking my car to get the wheel fixed and then paying for it for me.  That's worth MUCH MORE in my book than flowers.

Extra money is not always a good thing

Ok, so you know how on Monday I mentioned that I'd had a hard weekend and I would elaborate soon?  Here it is:

I agreed at the end of January to type a manuscript for someone.  It's the good friend of one of the people (P) I work with.  P brought in a "help needed" poster her friend had asked her to post on campus for the students to see, but P came to me first because she knew that (a) I type fast, and (b) I need money.  I looked at the flyer, which said the lady needed someone to type a manuscript for her and she would pay 75 cents a page.  I thought to myself "Hell, how hard can that be?  That's easy money." Wrong, my friend, wrong.

Ya know how you're always thinking "Gee, I wish there were work I could do at home in my free time and get paid for it, that'd be perfect."  No, it wouldn't.  Because what you don't think through is that after working all day you have to come home and sit at a computer and IGNORE your child so you can do the pointless typing.  Of a bad story.  That's horribly written.  I kept wondering "who in the world would publish this?" and it finally came out that she is doing one of those "publish it yourself" things -- where you pay all the costs and a company will print your book and help you get it listed on Amazon and Barnes&Noble.com.  People, there's a reason books need to be approved by SOMEONE before getting printed.  That way if they SUCK you won't be wasting your time.  (Seriously, this book sucked.  All 297 pages of it.  I think that typing it out made me a worse writer, because I was immersed in bad writing for two weeks.  I'm going to have to get out some classics and read some decent writing just to get myself back up to average.)

So every night after work and for two weekends I sat at my parents' dining room table with Lou's laptop and my dad's ergonomically correct keyboard and typed and typed.  Now I type about 90 words a minute, but even so, it took me about 4 minutes each page.  Which means I could only type like 10-12 pages a minute when you took interruptions into consideration.  Even at 12 pages a minute that's 24 f*cking hours of typing.  I ended up getting paid a total of $220, which means I was getting paid LESS THAN $10 AN HOUR to give myself carpal tunnel and ignore my child.  Dude, weekends and evenings are Jake time.  Jake knows this.  He knows it's all about him when mama is home from work -- so imagine what it's been like the past two weeks.  I felt horrible for ignoring him, he was acting out to get my attention, my mom was stressed from watching him so much, Lou felt ignored, I was completely exhausted and constantly at the end of my rope . . . it was NOT a happy time.  Oh, and the whole ordeal caused me to GAIN 5 POUNDS.  (To make it worse, last weekend was ALSO Frankie's MK newsletter weekend so I had to spend 10 hours doing that IN ADDITION to typing the manuscript.)

I honestly have damaged my hands and wrists and I'm hoping that if I just lay off the heavy typing for a while (aside from my blog entries, heh), they will magically self-heal.  If they don't, then what?  I don't even want to think about it.  Oh, and I had to buy IcyHot Sleeves to help my wrists feel better twice at $8 a pop, so really I only made $204, which puts my per hour down to $8.50 an hour.  My time is worth MUCH MORE than that.  So here I sit -- $200 closer to paying down my debt, wrists damaged, and lesson learned.

My boys

  I took this picture of Lou and Jake Tuesday night.  Jake was eating a snack (plain bread -- I'm not sure why he just wants to eat a slice of bread and nothing with it) and Lou had been making Jake laugh hysterically.  I told Lou "As long as you've got him laughing, stand next to him and let me get a picture."  And it only took three tries to get this.  ;o)

When good news makes you sad

I found out Wednesday night that Jennifer from church (Ryan and Alexis' mom) is pregnant.  With twins.  She's due in June.  And I don't know which makes me feel like a more horrible friend -- that I haven't noticed (she has kept it quiet up until now but was sure that I, of anyone, would figure it out), or that when she told me, tears sprung to my eyes and it felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest.  I was sad and upset the rest of the night.  I love her and I'm happy for her, and this will make FIVE kids for her and I certainly am not jealous of THAT (can you imagine having to worry about college for five kids?!!!), but finding out that she was pregnant made me so sad because we're not having more kids -- and even though I probably couldn't handle another baby anyway, it doesn't make it hurt any less.  And I know I'm stupid for feeling this way, so just indulge me feeling a little sad right now, and then in June when the babies are born, and other than that I'll shut up about it.

"The Kelly Circle"

10 of you might notice your picture in place of just a name as a link to your blog (scroll down and look left) . . . I have "The Kelly Circle" as the name of that friends list, because most of us met each other through Kelly, were pestered by Kelly to start blogs (THANK YOU!), and you guys are my more loyal readers.  Not that anyone not in the list isn't just as important to me.  And the order of pics in the Kelly list means nothing . . . it's just how they happen to fall.  The pics are ones I just happened to find on your blogs, so if you have a different pic you would rather represent you, e-mail it to me.  Kate, I totally don't have a picture of you at all!  Or if you want a pic of the kids instead of your beautiful faces, e-mail me that, too.  (But I really like the pics of you guys.)  If you would like the code to this to put on your blog . . . e-mail me.  (I can even substitute an icon of me in place of yours if you want to link that).  Anyway, let me know what you think of my newest little project.  ;o)

P.S. If you do want me to change the picture and other people already have the code on theirs, it will still work -- I will save the new pic with the same file name as the old and it will just replace it, so it's all good!  (That may have made sense to only me . . . )

P.P.S. Thursday, 2-10-05: this is a work in progress (see comment section to keep up), and I WILL work on the requests I've gotten and continue to update with new pictures.  But I'm absurdly busy today at work, so I may not do much blogging at all today.  *SOB*  heh.