Tag: zachary

Summer Goes Too Fast

Published by dee on May 27, 2009

What? You say it’s been a week already since I posted last? Nonsense. Oh, wait. It has. Let’s just say I’ve been a little busy. It’s not even officially summer yet and I already feel like it’s almost gone. We’re hitting that fun time of year when Hubby’s work suddenly picks up and he works late nearly every night. This leaves me to try to cook dinner by myself for two little screaming banshees who are starving when I pick them up from day care. Then they must have baths because they are filthy from playing outside in the dirt. Then they want to watch TV, read books, wrestle, hold me, play games, have a snack, and all kinds of other requests, cleverly delaying bed time because it isn’t dark yet! Therefore, bed time gets pushed back nearly every night almost an hour past when it should be which means that I lose my precious me time and by the time I do get there my brain is fried. Oh, and on top of that Evie is cutting her molars (3 in one week!) and has been more cranky and clingy than usual too.

(They’ve been very lovey with each other lately)

I have all these post ideas in my head, but I just can’t seem to find the time or the mental energy to get them out. I owe Miss Evie a 14 month letter, which I have started and can’t seem to finish. I have several one line drafts that haven’t progressed at all. Plus, I started thinking about the fact that Zachary will be 4 years old next month and I am sitting around wondering how in the heck that happened? He was just a baby, like last week right? And holy cow, I have another birthday party to plan and haven’t even started!

Regardless of how stressed out I am, we did manage to cram in some fun over Memorial Day weekend (which is the real point of this post). Thanks to Jenny over at Savvy Source, we got some free tickets to Jiggle Jam. We took the kids on Saturday, which just happened to be probably the hottest day of the year so far. Besides the fact that we spent the entire day melting in the sun, we had a lot of fun. Evie loved the music and Zach enjoyed playing in the bounce houses and fountains. We met up with Cagey and her two adorable kiddos for a while, which I really enjoyed. It was great to see them outside of the computer screen for a change! The kids’ babysitter, her sister, and nephews were there as well and we enjoyed visiting with them too.

Evie likes bellies. Anjali is not amused!

On Sunday, we headed up north to visit my dad and his wife at her parents’ home. They were staying there for the weekend and invited us up for a BBQ. My brother and sister and their families were there as well and we had a great time playing with the kids and just enjoying each other’s company.

Monday we stayed home and celebrated Memorial Day by cleaning the house. Exciting, huh? It had to be done, so it was nice that we had an extra day to fit it in.

Oh, and I should also mention that I read an entire book over the weekend. I only mention it because this is not something I normally do. It usually takes me about a month to find the time to read an entire book. This one, however, I just could not put down. Now I can’t wait to get my hands on the follow-up. I’ve been doing a lot more reading lately and I’m really enjoying it. I guess it’s the one good thing that comes from Hubby staying up late at night playing WoW.

And a few more pics for good measure…

My adorable niece, Caitlin

The girls messing up the T-ball game

A cute picture turned into an awesome picture thanks to the editing skillz of my friend Jen

P.S. If you’ve made it this far, then please go check out my latest review and giveaway! It’s a perfect gift for the little girl in your life! (Yes, family members can enter too!)

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Glasses

Published by dee on May 20, 2009

Over the last couple of months I have been trying to catch up on all of the things I’ve been putting off. Well, a few things anyway. I’m the world’s best procrastinator, so there will always be more things I’m putting off at any given time. My biggest focus though has been taking care of all things medical related, which included scheduling the next well visits for the kids, all of us going to the dentist, and finally getting around to having Zach’s eyes checked.

Way back before Evie was born, Zach’s preschool he was attending had an eye screening. They sent home very vague results that said we needed to have a full eye exam done. Since I was a bazillion months pregnant I shoved it to the back of my brain and decided I’d get it done “soon”. Then when he turned 3, we got a coupon in the mail from Blue Cross to get a free eye exam through the See to Learn program. Yep, I thought, I need to get that done.

Suddenly, we’re coming up on his 4th birthday (holy crap, how did that happen?) and I finally got around to making an appointment. We talked a lot ahead of time about how the doctor was going to ask him lots of questions and look at his eyes and that maybe, if the doctor thought he needed them, he would get glasses to help him see better. We talked about how Mommy wears glasses and several other people in his family do as well. He seemed all right with it all.

The morning of his appointment he was actually pretty excited. We got to the doctor’s office, filled out paperwork, waited a few minutes, then the doctor came in and started checking his eyes. I had a feeling right away that something wasn’t right (I’ve been through this many times myself). After LOTS of testing, he decided he wanted to dilate Zach’s eyes and then check them again.

It took two assistants plus me to hold Zach down for the dilation drops. Apparently they burn, but I’ve never had them so I have no idea how bad it was for him. He wasn’t too happy after that.

After some more testing, the doctor finally sat down and talked to me (while Zach was going a bit stir crazy). Apparently Zach is farsighted, has astigmatism, and a slight case of amblyopia. He needs to wear glasses at all times (other than sleeping, of course). He also needs to be checked again in six weeks or so to see if the glasses are correcting the amblyopia or if he will need to wear an eye patch for it.

Whoa. I wasn’t prepared for all of that.

If anything, I figured he needed a slight correction because I had noticed him sitting a little too close to the TV, which made me thing he was nearsighted like me. I never even considered the possibility of him being farsighted I guess. But, now that I know, some other things are starting to make sense – like why he knows all his numbers and letters yet can’t make them out when I show them to him on a piece of paper.

So, we picked out his glasses that night. There was only ONE pair in the entire store he liked. (Well, that’s not entirely true. He did like the Barbie ones, but I vetoed that and didn’t bother to mention it to his Dad.) The lenses were ready a few days later and he’s been wearing them ever since.

I think he looks adorable in them and they must be really making a difference in his sight because he’s only complained about wearing them once. I expected it to be a bit of a fight, but he actually likes them. The biggest problem really is getting his sister to stop grabbing them off of his face!

Now, if I could only get over my guilt for not taking him to the eye doctor sooner…

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Best. Day. Ever.

Published by dee on May 17, 2009

Yesterday I took a personal day off of work. The kids’ sitter took a vacation day so instead of stressing out trying to find someone to take her place, I just decided to ask for the day off and spend it with the kids. I wanted to do something fun, just me and them.

We slept in, had a nice slow morning, then headed off to Deanna Rose Children’s Farmstead a little after 10:00. I went back and forth trying to decide what to do but finally decided on that because, well, it’s free. I figured Evie would love the animals (she’s really into our dogs and cats right now) and Zach would love the playground. I was a little nervous because I only took the single stroller, but Zach said he wanted to walk.

We had a great time walking around checking out all the animals. Zach was a little bummed that I didn’t have change to buy food to feed the goats (though we remedied that later), but instantly cheered up when he remembered the barn with the slides. I loved being able to let him play and not having to rush. While he went down the slides over and over again, Evie wandered around checking out the geese, ducks, and rabbits. She’s really starting to love being outside and it was fun watching her explore.

After that, we walked a bit more and decided to stop for some lunch. The kids played at a toddler sized playground for a bit, then we did some more walking, checked out even more animals, until finally we stopped at the BIG playground and let the kids play until they were completely worn out and it was looking like we were going to get rained on.

Just before we left, Zach yelled out, “This is the BEST. DAY. EVER!!!” I couldn’t have agreed with him more. The weather was perfect. The kids were extremely well behaved. We all had a really great time together. It was relaxing and exhausting all at the same time. It was perfect.

And, to top it all off, we stopped at Target on the way home for a few things and just happened to find a toy that Zach had been promised over a month ago (that we hadn’t been able to find in stock anywhere). He was over the moon excited.

I just wish we could have days like that every day.

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Sometimes I Forget How Small He Still Is

Published by dee on May 11, 2009

Mornings have been a struggle lately. We go back and forth with this, but lately it seems to be much harder than usual. Zach just doesn’t like to get up. Once he’s up, he doesn’t like to get dressed. Once he’s dressed, he doesn’t want to leave. When we finally make it to day care, he doesn’t want to get out of the car. I always get some resistance from him, but today was really hard.

This morning it took nearly 30 minutes just to get him out of bed. Evie was being clingy so I only had one hand to work with, and couldn’t do much but pester him to get up. Once he was finally up and we went through the whole getting dressed process he told me he didn’t want to go to day care. We had our usual talk about how he has to go to day care so Mommy and Daddy can work, etc. but he still wasn’t budging. Finally the real issue came out.

“K told me he doesn’t want to play with me any more,” he says with the saddest face I’ve ever seen. “He says I’m not a nice friend and he won’t play with me.”

My heart totally sank.

I heard a little of this going on the week before but dismissed it thinking it would all blow over but apparently it stuck with him. My mama bear instincts wanted to just sweep him up, give him a big hug, and tell him it would all be all right (and to tell K that he was a big meanie). But, my parenting instincts told me that this was a teaching moment and I needed to find just the right words to teach him how to deal with people that hurt his feelings.

Gah.

I did give him a big hug and raced through what I should say in my head. I explained to him that sometimes even your friends will say things that hurt your feelings. Sometimes they are just mad and don’t really mean it, but sometimes they do it because you have done something that hurt their feelings first. I suggested to him that if K does this again, maybe he could just go play with someone else for a while until K is ready to play with him again. We talked a little about how he needed to make sure he was being a nice friend as well so his friends would want to play with him. And of course, if they can’t solve it themselves then he can always ask a grown-up to help. I want him to learn how to deal with things like this on his own, because God knows this won’t be the last conflict that comes along. This is so minor compared to the things he’ll have to deal with in the future.

The hard part is that K is the closest one to Zach’s age at day care. The other kids are quite a bit younger, which is why Zach gravitates toward K most of the time. It is a small home day care, so there aren’t a lot of options. When they’re both happy they have a great time together. But, K plays more violently, obviously watches some more grown-up things on TV, and has the attitude to go with it. Even though he’s just a few months older than Zach, he definitely seems much older and Zach looks up to him in a way. Zach, however, is the kid that wants to play the tough guy but is really quite sensitive underneath. He was totally crushed that K didn’t want to play with him.

I’m guessing that this whole thing was weighing on him all weekend. He had kind of a rough weekend overall and I feel bad that I didn’t pick up on it and ask him what was going on. I just assumed he was being obstinate on purpose. We grow up in this society that tells us that boys are tough and don’t have feelings but seeing my 3-year-old boy so distraught over the snub of a friend brought me back to reality real quick. I’m just as guilty as anybody else of forgetting boys have feelings too (just ask my husband).

Zach is growing up so fast. He’ll be four years old next month. He wants to be so independent. Most days I look at him and I see this big boy that can do nearly anything he puts his mind to. Other days, like today, I look at him and see the tiny little baby I gave birth to and I want to hold in my arms and keep him there forever. That’s the only place I can truly protect him.

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Breaking My Own Rules Again

Published by dee on May 4, 2009

Way back before I had kids I went to college. I majored in Psychology and took classes in Child Psychology, Child Development, Family Management (as part of my minor), and the like. I LOVED these classes. In fact, had I tried to get my Master’s in one of these areas instead of Social Work I may have actually finished the degree. After taking all of these classes (not to mention all the bazillion parenting magazines I had read), I had a picture of the ideal parent fixed in my mind. I had all these ideas, thoughts, and plans for how I would parent my own child someday.

Then I had kids.

And all those ideas, thoughts, and plans when down the drain.

I have since remembered what many of my teachers (and other parents) also tried to teach me. Every kid is different. They all develop in their own time. They all have different personalities and different ways of understanding the world. They all have to be dealt with on an individual basis. What works for one doesn’t necessarily work for another one.

Also, there is no such thing as the ideal parent. That would have been helpful to know, say, 3 years and 10 months ago. I think my son could give even the best of parents a run for their money. I spent the longest time trying to figure out just where my “perfect” parenting skills had gone wrong before realizing that parenting just can’t change a child’s personality. You would think all of my classes could have taught me that, huh?

Zach is what some would call a “spirited” child. He’s amazingly bright and has an incredible imagination, but if you say the wrong word or move the wrong way he goes totally ballistic. The hardest part is that you never really know what it is going to be that sets him off. He’s also obsessed with TV.

I’ve tried different methods of dealing with his outbursts without much luck. We’ve tried positive reinforcement, removing him from the situation, yelling, spanking, behavior charts, letting him scream it out, etc. The one thing that always, without a doubt, will calm him is to turn on the TV (assuming you have chosen the correct show for that moment in time). Want him to pick up his toys? Reward him with TV. Want him to eat his dinner? Reward him with TV. Want to get him dressed in the morning? Reward him with TV. Want to see a tantrum? Turn off the TV before his show is done. It drives me crazy but it works.

I’d hate to hear what Supernanny would have to say about this.

Yes, I’ve read the reports about how bad TV is for kids. But, a mother who is insane from screaming and tantrums is most likely bad for the kids too. If TV keeps my sanity intact for a little longer, then by all means I’m going to let the kid watch TV.

That’s one of the reasons why I broke my own rule (no TV in bedrooms or playrooms) last week and finally decided to put a TV (with DVD player only) in the kids’ play room. Daddy (ok, and Mommy) likes the TV too and I’m not really interested in listening to them argue about who gets to watch the TV any more. It’s all about keeping the peace. Zach can now watch his DVD’s pretty much any time he wants to (with obvious exceptions of dinner, bed time, etc.) on his own TV.

So far he has watched exactly one movie on his TV the day we set it up.

He didn’t ask for it even once over the weekend.

Huh.

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Happy Easter!

Published by dee on April 12, 2009

I hope everyone had a fabulous Easter. Even though Hubby had to be on call for work, the kids and I went down to my Dad’s to celebrate Easter with my family. It was fun (and chaotic) watching all the kids hunt eggs and rummage through their baskets. Tonight I’m exhausted, but feeling blessed. Now I just wish I had a day off tomorrow to recover.

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