Scared to Turn 4, Are you kidding me?

After 3 birthday parties over the last 3 weeks, I thought Hudson would be sailing high.  however, he just kept getting crankier and crankier.  I was starting to get really frustrated with him so tonight I gtook into my bedroom and gave him a holding time.  Holding time is really tough the deeper rooted the fear is.  Hudson had been sassy with me and saying he wanted to go live with his Grandee.  I was trying to figure out what was wrong and why he was so angry. 

The holding time is basically a session where I remain physically close to Hudson until we resolve our issue no matter how long it takes.  In this instance, it was probably an 1 hour.  He was really thrashing and fighting to get away from me and I just kept remaining calm saying I wanted to find out why he was so angry.  I asked him why he wanted to go live with Poppy and Gee and he said because our house wasn't his house anymore.  I asked him why he felt that way.  He basically said that if he became a big boy, then we were going to have other children and he wouldn't have a home anymore. Poor guy misinterpreted me telling him that Keith and I are planning to adopt a child when he get's older.  He said that he wanted me to adopt a sister for him while he was still little so he can play with her. He wants me to go get her tomorrow.

He's been saying he wanted to stay 3 this week and that i would be too sad if he was big boy.  (An instance where he took me too literally) I did say I would be sad if he ever grew up and that he had to stay little.   During the holding time he cried his little eyes out but by the end we both felt a lot better.  It is so good that we have this tool because instead of blaming his behavior on a phase, I know that he is truly bothered by something and we need to get to the root of it so we can move on with our lives.  I'm not saying its going to make my life like Pollyanna's however, it makes the day to day more better.  

Eli's turn to say cheese

Eli at this very moment is saying, "Say cheese, mommy. Wook at choo." The picture to the right is a pic Eli took while having the camera turned the wrong way. He is really trying to figure it all out. I wish I would have bought 2 cameras. It really does cause a lot of fights. I'm hoping a grandma will come in a save the day at Huddy's next birthday party which is this saturday. (Our grandma's usually buy both boys a present on their birthdays).

Huddy's photographic endeavors

Well, huddy got a camera for his birthday because he has been wanting to use mine a lot and I could just see the writing on the wall. He would eventually break mine and we'd have no camera. I have to admit it is pretty funny listening to him tell me to smile and say cheese and follow me around taking my picture. I'm starting to understand how annoying I've been to him all these years.

We got him a Vtech kidizoom. Most of the pictures are pretty blurry. So we are going to have to let him have a turn with mine now and again. He really lights up with it though. I can tell he gets really excited when he gets the "shot" he was after. So cute...

Hudson's 4th Birthday Fiesta

        Well, it is always a daunting task to invite people you don't know very well to your house, but especially when your entire house is under construction.  This was the case for Hudson's 4th birthday party that we celebrated this weekend.  It definitely took a village to get things ready and I have many people to thank!  Firstly, John Wilmes came over the Tuesday before the party and sanded, mudded, resanded, primed and put the first coat of paint on our new downstairs bathroom.  My friend, Katie followed us around with a shop vac to get as much dust out of here as is humanly possible.  She also, organized an extremely disorganized playroom.   My friend Laura came over and made cake, brownies, black beans, hummus, chopped veggies, did dishes etc., and brought my family dinner to eat for the night before the party (which was amazing morroccan beef stew!)  Also, Laura brought over a crate full of craft project supplies for the kids to do.  My amazing husband drywalled the kitchen and the living room, grouted the bathroom floor, finished our electric so that we would have over head lighting and plugs, installed a toilet, and sink, spread gravel in the backyard and did amazing construction clean-up.

Katie on shop vac duty

Keith and John drywalling the kitchen

Let there be light!

Freshly painted bathroom

John keeps even the most laborious jobs (sanding drywall) fun.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to our friends for making it all come together...
It is truly amazing to get to this point because it really makes our home feel a lot homier than its ever felt and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  We were ready for a relaxing evening with old friends, new friends and all the kids running around.  
 I was a little worried about making food for all the different diets that are out there now: Gluten-free, eggless, vegetarian... So we made a taco bar with lots of vegetarian and carnivorous options,  gluten-free cake and brownies.  The icing on huddy's cake was raspberry preserves and was sooo good.  I used Pamela's cake and brownie mix from Kroger's which was great it told you how to do different recipes for eggless, dairyless etc.     It took a little extra thought, but it was worth every smiling kids face when they were allowed to eat everything I made.  The only downer was that my pinata was didn't have much candy  a.) because it didn't hold that much and b.) i didn't want to give them a bunch. The pinata had silly bandz, star war rings, a few chocolate balls, bracelets and I supplemented there bags (which they decorated) with dinosaur tattoos, fruit leather, and party horns. 

Also, we decided not to make presents a big deal.  So Hudson just opened presents as each kid gave it to him without calling attention to it.  That idea came when we gave Hudson one of his b-day presents early and it traumatized Eli. Eli, hardly noticed all of Hudson's gifts and just played the night of the party.  Crisis averted.

All in all there were lots of people and it was lots of fun.  Truly the kids running around quite literally trashing the house was worth it.  Enjoy the pics below...



Hudson wearing his b-day presents wig and latex gloves...very popular.





Eli, baby juniper and hannah watching the pinata festivities.







Leslie is not going to give up!

Sweet Laslow giving it a little tap.




John and Lillah  Chris and Monie

 

Stella, so sure she was going to break it on the first try!

Hudson:  Are you sure I'm allowed to beat this thing?

Stella #2 knocking it out of the park~!

Eli comes charging in!

Lucas knocks it out of the park!

Tenative Eleanor

Katie and Stella

Maya giving it all she's got!

Jonah's almost got it.



Hudson and his preschool buddies, Maya and Ojal




Jonah, Hudson and Stella



Laura, Davey and Hannah.  Many thanks to Laura for the arts and crafts and all the cooking!

The Motley Crew: Megan, Fernanda, John, Lillah, Chris and Megan and Juniper

Singing Happy Birthday!



No pictures please... We appreciated Sara, Chris, and Jonah's for ignoring bedtime routine and  staying with us until 9pm.



Eli: My new hair!

Here's a pic with my roomate before I got married. Times sure have changed!





The end of a long day!



Pros and cons of house remodeling and young children

Doing an aggressive fast-pace, DIY home remodeling project with 2 small children is crazy but surprisingly it does have its upsides. 
Pros:

• Brick mountain- . aka,  a giant pile of bricks that we tore off of the back of the house  that the boys love to played on a lot last summer!   
• rock mountain,aka. a giant pile of gravel in the backyard. Keith has set up pic boards all over it so they can climb and pretend they are walking on planks. 
• Plumbing part games (who knew): we make robot arms out of couplings ,  we stack and build with pipes, and  ice climb up the ravine with pvc pipe.  Good times.
• Hudson and eli had tiny-nail-head hammering accuracy by the age of two. 
• I have the uncanny ability to cope with sharpies all over my walls. 
• My kids think that we have a new house all the time...
• Boys know where the main stack is in the house and the names of many tools and construction terms.
• We have  a bobcat at our disposal  (Say "What?!?" I know. Cool.  Right?)
• New Plumbing, windows, electric, paint,  and walls in a 100 year old house.  Awesome!
•  People forgive your disorganization and in fact, give you props for handling it sooo well.  Hee hee...

Love, Marriage, Happy Couples and Good/Old Friends

This has been a singular week for Keith and I.  We have not had our children with us for several days now.  Saturday night they wanted to spend the night with their cousins.  Sunday through tomorrow they are staying with my parents down in Lexington.  My babysitter is out of town and I needed childcare for my work week.  Since the incident where the boys hid from me, Keith and I have been out of sorts.  There are a lot of emotions not quite worked out and no time to do it.  Well, Saturday we had a chance to talk and reconnect and to go out with our friends John and Fernanda.  We have only really hung out with them in family situations, kids in tow. Always, a little stress underneath everything: Lilah's scared of our dogs, Eli is being too aggressive, Lucas doesn't want to play with Hudson, somebody is too tired; 
not on Saturday night!

We drank a bottle of wine, ate bread with cheese and pretzels, went out for sushi and then went clubbing.  Say, "What?"  Hopefully you answered "What?" and not "Lame."  It was a very big deal for us because I was out but not feeling guilty. My kids were having just as much fun as I was.  In fact, when I tried to pick them up from their cousin's house on Sunday, they were running from me and hiding under tables.  What a relief to get to dance and stay up as late as we wanted, to laugh with (and at) our friends.  Be flirty with each other.  So great. 

The next night, Sunday, I was feeling on a roll and I made plans to go over to my friend Katie's house, whom I used to live with right before I got married to Keith.  It was like old times.  We talked until 2 am. (now granted I had to be at work all day on Monday and that was a little much) but being able to have a conversation for as long as I wanted was pretty awesome.  We had a lot to catch up on. 

So, Tuesday, Katie and I hung out again and had lunch, took her to get her haircut, I shopped for Huddy's upcoming 4th birthday party.  It was just fun and soo free for both us. Of course, I went home and Keith put Katie and I to work unloading kitchen cabinets so he can drywall around them, but we were still laughing. Keith came home and hung the drywall that he wouldn't have been able to do if the boys were home and felt a new level of relief that maybe we'll be done with our renovation soon.  (We are getting close)

Today, it is nearly noon and I haven't even gotten out of bed. I decided to do all of the blogging that I have been wanting to get done and organize our family pics. So far blogging is winning and I might need to go get food.  Anyway, sometimes a family needs a break to be individuals and have some outside-the- family experiences.  Whew.

2011 New Year's Resolution

      Well,  my New Year's resolution is to stop being afraid of writing!  Ugh... So I am starting a blog 1/24/11 to document my family life.  My friend Valerie author of a poetry book, Triandafilo, told me she wished she had just written one sentence a day while her children were young.  I have been trying to be consistent with writing but I inadvertently lose the notebook I'm writing in or its not nearby me; however, my computer is always near me.  I love to surf the net and the time I am doing that I could be documenting my cherished memories with my wee ones and hubby.  I also, just found out that my friend Carri has been turning her blogs into books every year.  That gave me a good reason to blog.  I can tackle my fear of writing and hopefully save some memories if I choose to do some more poetic writing later on...  I'm going to try and pack in what I remember and what is happening now.  There will be a bit of flashbacking but this is ultimately for myself to have a memory spring board for more in-depth storytelling later. 

     Thanks to my friend Carri for being such a dedicated blogger and giving me some inspiration and to Valerie for being an amazing poet that shows that even the most mundane things in life have a story worth telling.

Christmas on a tight budget.

This Christmas was a little scary for me because Hudson was at the age where he really wanted some stuff.  We have been renovating our house since 2008 and we are really having to stay focused on spending our money on finishing the house. Flooring, drywall, insulation etc. all adds up quick and we need it.  I was starting to feel a little anxiety about the boys having a fun christmas and getting them stuff that they would enjoy that wouldn't break our bank. 

A few years ago I got a book about family rituals all around this country and how different families approach holidays and birthdays in ways that accentuate togetherness and family rather than on stuff.  While reading the Christmas section I got a great idea  for an advent calander that would be cheap and cause the family to spend more time together.  This woman wrapped one book under the tree every day before Christmas in the month of December. She would buy some books but would also get books from the library.  She did this every year and gave them some of the same books, which they loved because it became a nostalgic tradition.  I decided to go to the library that very day and get all the books on Christmas I could find and then got a few movies we didn't have and some that were christmas themed.  I didn't start until Dec. 5th.  I used brown paper bags for a recycled (and cheap) wrapping paper and started giving them one present a night.  It was so exciting for them and they loved reading the stories with me.  Like most books we get, they were finished reading them after a few days and I could just return it to the library with no upsets. 

We bought some books for us to keep year to year.  We had books on christmas carols, traditions around the world, and on people who don't have any toys for Christmas.  This was a good start for a what I hope to be a long tradition. 

Next I needed to start getting ready for the big day.  What was going to come from Santa Claus?  I decided to look on craigslist to see if there was any toy lots for sale.  I found one with an Imaginetics lot for sale 2 miles from my house.  I went over to check it out. I was pretty skeptical that it would be in good enough condition.  I went to the house and a little boy about 7 was the one selling the toys.  He really wanted some leggos but needed some money for his old toys to get them.  I probably would've bought dog poop from him.  Anyway, the toys were great and the lot new would have been worth over $300 and I got it all for $65.  It was a great deal.  Everything was in great condition.  I loaded it up in 2 giant suitcases and saved it for the big day. 

Midway to Christmas Hudson started telling me he really needed to talk to Santa Claus because he wanted to make sure that he got him a light saber and a transformer car for christmas.  So I took him to the Holiday Express exhibit at the Museum Center, who every year has the same Santa Claus with a real beard, who is also, enormously patient with the kids.  Truly a saint.  I got him in line and it was long. He waited and waited and waited so patiently. He really wanted to tell Santa what he wanted  (I couldn't help thinking about Ralphy in The Christmas Story).  Eli on the other hand was in one of Dante's circles if you know what I mean.  We finally got to Santa and Hudson was sooo ready to tell him. He sat on his lap and said I want a light saber and a transformer car.  This Santa was pretty well trained at not over promising and I could tell Hudson was distressed that he wasn't fully committing to these items so he repeated himself several times.  Poor guy.   I called the grandma's when I got home to let'em know what he wanted. 

Since, we were doing Christmas morning at my mom's she wanted to give them some presents from Santa, too.  Overall, they had an amazing Christmas all in a good budget and we enjoyed our time together...

Here are some christmas day photos:

Mommy/ Baby Games: With Boys

We are living in a household with 2 very different boys.  Hudson is so calm and even keeled and always has been.  Eli, on the other hand,is a little more rowdy and feels angry at us a lot.  A brooder of sorts. (I think he gets that from his father:-)  We have been trying various ways for Eli to talk about his emotional life.  We have gone to therapy ourselves,  to get our emotional lives back on track.  In doing that, my therapist recommended a book called, Holding Time, by Martha G. Welch, M.D.   We have been using the technique for over a year now and it has been one of the only things that has worked to calm Eli down.  Basically, you plan a time everyday for a holding time. You allow yourself to get in touch with your own feelings of frustration and you express them to the child, who then expresses them back with struggle, refusing to give eye contact, crying.  It is important that the whole time you are listening to your child and not giving up on making eye contact  Many times this process brought me to tears trying to figure out why my child was soo mad at me.  After a while Eli will start to use his words and say things like "I'm mad at you because you took my ball" and  "You were mean at me" and start to cry like someone who is actually sad instead of mad.  If Eli can begin to express the true feeling of sadness rather than go straight to anger everytime then he is creating a new emotional skill set as well as, neural pathways.

(We used this technique with Hudson when he was 2.5 and Keith was shocked to find out that Hudson hadn't been letting him hold him and had been mad at him for some 3 months because he accidentally hit him in the tummy with a ball while they were playing.  3 MONTHS!!! He was internalizing all of those feelings at such a young age.  Now Hudson is very verbal about his emotions. "Mommy when you get mad at me I get mean at you!" and I say,  "Okay, okay let's talk this out.")

There is another body of work that is similar called, Map of the Emotions,  by David Berenson MD.  It tells you how to distinguish between moods and emotions.  A very important distinction because during a holding time if your child and yourself don't get to a resolution, you have to do it again until you do.  So recognizing when you are stuck and why you stuck in a mood rather than processing an emotion is key.  Eli is very sensitive.  His feelings get hurt faster than other people's so I have to give him tools to process those feelings or he his going to be a tyrant!   So with this as the back drop imagine my surprise at finding that role playing mommy and baby with Eli would accomplish some of the same things. 

I believe Eli's anger issues come from having a hard time attaching to me as a baby.  I had my children very close together (got preggers when my oldest was all of  9mos).  I had horrible post-partum depression.  Eli didn't get what he needed.  I breast fed and co-slept but I didn't carry him close to me like I did Hudson.  I was emotionally drained and had the lowest energy of my life.  I felt like I could sleep all day everyday. Everything was a struggle: making food, going to the grocery store.  I would force myself to get out.  But I mostly went to my mom's house for a reprieve.  I eventually solved my post-partum issues but was still left with an unhappy toddler.   One night I decided  I was going to completely follow Eli  and Hudson's lead and play any game they brought up and this is how mommy lion and baby lion came to be.  It was really interesting to watch my very aggressive 1.5 year old calm down and be a baby during this game.  Hudson and Eli would lay with me and let me pretend to bathe them and nurse them and feed them and cuddle them while we "slept".  It was amazing to see how calm they both got.  It was like an opportunity to have their mommy all to themselves in a way they hadn't .

I decided to use this role play as an opportunity to do a bit of therapy to give Eli a chance to express his emotions.  At first I would just follow his lead and he'd say he wanted to nurse on the mommy lion which was interesting because he stopped nursing a few months earlier-  I believe because he was mad and felt rejected by me and my attention towards Hudson.  We were able to let the boys learn how to share a mommy, which has been hard for them.  We graduated to mommy and baby kangaroo's so that I could put them in  a pouch, usually a blanket and let them sit very close to me.  Then they graduated to wanting to be my baby again and we got a giant fleece and they could take turns pretending to be in my belly again.  At this point, Eli started to nurse on me again. He only does it intermittently but I think for him it shows me that he trusts me again.  He still gets frustrated but we know straight away that we have to find an outlet for his feelings so that he can move on.

Every morning now, Eli pretends to be a Lion so that he can have an outlet for his frustration at being a toddler with not as much power as he wants.  He roars and play scratches and pins us down.  And then two seconds later he is the baby lion who needs to hide next to his mommy from a hyena.  Or, as in the above photo, he hides in his den!

Losing Hudson and Eli...

    So I can officially say that January 27th 2010, was the worst day of my entire life.  Obviously, because I can blog about it- all turned out fine but I was freaked out of my mind.  After picking up Hudson and Eli at the sitters, I drove home and let the boys play out in the backyard.  I had to pee, so I went upstairs to relieve myself and grab some art supplies to do a project with my boys.  I came back outside and I couldn't see the boys.  I looked in the barn, checked to make sure my front gate wasn't open, I noticed the back gate was ajar and went to my back field which leads to 3.5+ acres of woods.  I looked in the small barn. I didn't see them anywhere.  I started yelling their names. I started screaming their names.  I ran to the trail head and screamed some more.  I ran to the house and checked everywhere screaming and screaming.  I ran to call Keith and my cell phone died.  I ran back to the back field and screamed for the boys more. Went into the woods... started getting desparate...I ran across the street to my neighbors. Beating on doors.  Screaming at cars driving by. No one stopped. Fell to my knees with nausea and lack of oxygen.  My neighbor comes out and says she'll call the police.  A man comes out into the streets tries to get information from me. He starts stopping cars to make sure the children aren't in them and  see if anyone has seen them. 

I run back to the backfield screaming hysterically.  The man comes back with me.  He doesn't know about the trailhead so starts to jump into the thickets grabbing trees with his fresh wounds of a new tattoo on his palm.  I can't breath... it is soo cold and the thoughts going through my head are of the worst kind imaginable.  I am sure my children are gone forever.  I can't believe it.  I have no idea how I am going to live my life without them.  Forty-five agonizing minutes have gone by.  I can hear the sirens in the distance.  I am sobbing, hysterical.  My heart has completely broken.  And then I hear a sarcastic voice on the side of steep ravine, that agrown man is struggling to keep his footing on. " Mommy, I'm right here."  The man, who I later found out was named Nick, said, "Is that them?".  I sobbed, "Yes, yes, yes."
The relief turned into shock. I couldn't run up the hill to them at first. I  started scrambling up the hill slipping on icy snow.  There they had been 20 feet from me the whole time, hiding on a hillside behind a giant brushpile.  I couldn't imagine them in that place, hearing me scream and being afraid that I was mad at them because of the desparation in my voice.

We got to the top and Nick told me he was so happy I found my children and we hugged.  We were both crying.  It was that moment that I figured out that Nick's 1.5 year old daughter had just passed away from spinal meningitis 2 weeks before.  I felt so guilty that I got to have a second chance with my children and he didn't. I wanted so much for him not to go back home to an empty house, my worst fear the 2 minutes before.

I went back to the house and began a major hyper-ventilation episode.  I called my friend, Jennifer, and she instructed me to drink water to try and get a breath.  I just couldn't catch my breath.  The anxiety completely racked my body. Hudson and Eli couldn't understand why I was crying so hard.  Hudson kept saying, "Your boys are fine mommy."  When Keith returned home he tried to console me but the hugs made me feel like I was losing my breath.  He was frustrated because he was freaked out and couldn't handle the emotions exploding into the room.  He sat at the kitchen table and I sat on the floor and Hudson got into my lap.  My head started to spin and I had to get the breath.  In bodywork we know that the only way to get an inhale is to fully and completely exhale.  So the most primal gutteral moans started to escape from the depths of my belly.  I couldn't control them it was like the push phase of labor, truly.  I just let the fullness of my grief leave my body so that I could breath in the new emotions of gratitude, relief, neutrality, and the anger that would hit me in the next days to come.

    The family was on edge and the boys were so confused and angry themselves because of the house was feeling so stressed.  They weren't listening to me and it was making me extremely anxious to take them out of the house.  I told them if they didn't listen to me that I was going to take the t.v. away.  I told them that I was angry that they didn't answer me.  I asked them over and over again, "why?"  Hudson said he didn't want any help getting out of the woods.  Eli was just calling me a bad mommy, stinky butt.  Normally, I could laugh that off but my feelings were really hurt.  I took the t.v. up to our third floor and started spending total quality time with them.  We painted a million pictures the day after. Played mommy and baby games, Keith built pirate ships and cars.  We talked continuously about listening to us.  If we tell you to answer, answer.  The first weekend Keith kept Eli and I took Hudson to the museum center.  Eli was still not listening and being contentious.  Hudson was saying, "Mommy, I will listen to you.  I promise." So we went and had a great time bonding.  Keith and Eli did a lot of bonding, too.   I felt like the family was starting to get back to normal and the feelings in the children were starting to subside.  The next few days I had some more time with Eli and he started cuddling with me again and not hitting me.  He had gotten really freaked out when I was screaming for them.  Of course, he didn't know that it was because I loved him so much.  I decided that I was ready to take both boys out of the house together and go do an activity. We went to the museum center and played a call and response game in the cave exhibit.  They could run a little bit ahead and I would call "Yip Yip" and they would answer "Yee" .  Making a game out of it was a much better way to handle the situation and now I feel like we have code word for "I'm worried about you, please answer me."

The enormity of the feelings I had experienced took a drain on my brain and body.  It took about a week to sleep through the night without waking up with panic and anxiety.  The feelings I had when I had  post-partum depression were back.  I was like a zombie, going through the motions but not feeling happiness.  I would tear up at work describing what happened to clients, who I had cancelled due to these feelings.  Keith was having a very hard time understanding me.  He had not lived through it.  When I thought about it Nick was the only person who could truly get it.  He was there living it with me.  I wanted to go and see Nick.  I had a sympathy card and a lasgna as a token representation of the sorrow I felt for he and his wife.  I knew he was a neighbor but I didn't know which one was his house.  I was nervous to go over.  I knew how horrible I felt and I got my kids back.  I couldn't imagine how they were feeling, although I had a horrific glance into their perspective.

Yesterday, I finally figured out where they lived and I had the lasagna and card and nervously trasped up the walkway.  Megan his wife opened the door and invited me in.  She smiled at me, "How are you?" "Good," I said and out of habit I returned the question. The question lingered because of course her heart was broken into a million pieces.  I wanted to kick myself.  We sat down and made small talk and I was thankful.  Nick came in and hugged me and we recounted the hunt for my boys from both of our perspectives.  I began to realize that if Nick hadn't of lost his daughter, he wouldn't of been home and he might not have come to help me.  He said he saw other neighbors go back in their houses when they saw me screaming but he knew it was the primal cry of a mother who had just lost a child.  He had just heard that scream in his own house.  Normally, he would have been at work but he was too sad to go that day.  He had just lit some incense and prayed to (in his words) "Whatever is out there."  'Why did I lose my child and what is my purpose in this world?'  He said he felt like my scream was his answer.  I was so glad I went over there.  I was glad that his being able to help me gave him some kind of peace. 

The boys staying in and painting for a day.

This post is dedicated to Nick, Megan and sweet Petra her memory will always live on in our family....