Tag: parenting

Posted in family life

learning to surf your emotional waves

Posted on by kristinabean

Rondel is a little boy with huge emotions (he takes after me in that way…). Seeing Limerick moving towards or touching one of “his” toys (meaning, any that he has used in the last week or so or assigned a personality to, especially a car) can send him into instant motion, screaming and pulling Limerick away. Not having the right tool on hand to accomplish something – like his preferred type of towel for wiping his eyes or nose – or one of us not being able to do something he wants us to do, like reach a toy from the backseat while driving or pull a random object out of a place where it is stuck, can render him completely mentally immobilized, unable to proceed, to let go, or to accept another option. And he tends to express that feeling of being helpless and stuck by yelling rather forcefully at whoever is near and trying to help…

There is the flip side of his silliness, his excitement over everyday joys (he literally ran around the room in circles glowing when he saw my brother the other day), his overflowing affection for the people he loves, and the happy stories he creates – but none of that negates the fact that he’ll need to learn how to cope with and appropriately express his more negative emotions as he grows.

One thing that’s been helping him lately is to remove him from the situation (which he hates) and sit with him until the worst of the emotion passes by, and then talk about what happened, what ideas we can try next time, and what we can do to amend or move on right then. So in the instances with Limerick, we’ll discuss what exactly made Rondel upset, and I’ll try to get him to come up with different ways he could approach the situation (like asking Limerick nicely to play with a different toy, or to let Rondel have a turn, or offering him something else in trade) and suggest some if he can’t think of any, and then I’ll let him know what I would like him to do to make things right with Limerick (usually saying sorry). As we have done this more, I’ve seen Rondel attempting to implement those ideas in the moment, and I’ve seen his understanding of the concept of an apology grow. I know a lot of people argue that you shouldn’t make a child say sorry – but I want him to learn and practice the habits of courteous behavior, and one of the most important of those behaviors is apologizing. It also gives him something he can do to fill the breach made by screaming and hitting and angry feelings, and that is empowering.

However, I’ve been thinking it would be nice to have an alternative option for times when I can’t take him away for one-on-one time! I can’t always leave what I’m doing, or leave Limerick, and it is hard for him to just be sent away on his own. So I’m thinking of making a “calm-down corner” for him to go to (either on my direction or of his own choosing) when he is feeling angry, exhausted, overwhelmed, anxious, sad, or just in need of some space and quiet time. One of my coworkers recently gifted us a massive pillow puppy that I am planning to put there, under a little hanging canopy to clearly set the space aside from the rest of the boys’ bedroom. Then there will be a small basket of toys that are just for the calm-down space: exercise balls to squeeze, bottles with water and glitter or other objects in them that can be shaken, a few soft toys to hug, and maybe a book or two. I talked with Rondel about the idea and he thought it was a good one – so we’ll see how it goes! I’m hoping to start making the canopy and toy basket this afternoon after work.

What are some of your techniques for helping your intense children learn to manage their emotions? I want to give him as many tools as I possibly can, so he’s able to stay on top of those waves instead of letting them pull him under the water.

 

Posted in family life

the importance of words

Posted on by kristinabean

Everyone always says that little kids pick up on everything going on around them, and understand far more of what they hear than you might expect – but it’s still hard to really believe it and act on it until you see evidence of it with your own kids! They just seem so deep into their own world that you don’t expect them to be paying attention to what you’re saying to another adult…

Last night, as we were reading our bedtime books, Rondel said somewhat sadly, “You don’t sleep very well.” (He refers to himself in the second person – I brought it up with the pediatrician and she thought it was hilarious and not something to worry about, which was reassuring.) I’m guessing he had heard my husband talking about how our kids in general aren’t great sleepers, because Limerick has lately been having some sleep struggles reminiscent of Rondel’s younger days, and taken it personally, and become concerned about it.

But the thing is, Rondel has been sleeping amazingly well for the past month or so, ever since we settled into a consistent routine – going to sleep without tears and protests, sleeping through the night, and waking up at a reasonable time (you might call it an ungodly early hour, but it’s when I have to get up for work anyway). He doesn’t like going to bed, but what kid does?

So I told him exactly that: that even though he doesn’t like going to sleep and it can be hard for him to calm down after a busy day, he has been sleeping really well. I told him how proud I was of him for getting into bed with a good attitude every night, and doing something that was hard for him, and sleeping so well all through the night. And he just lit up with this shy little smile, and scrunched up his shoulders, and I gave him a big hug for being my sweet and wonderful boy, just the way he is 🙂

Then I resolved to be more careful about what I say about the boys in front of them!

Posted in family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – a big announcement!

Posted on by kristinabean

Well, the boys and I managed to finish our teaser project from last week, and while it didn’t turn out quite as nicely as my Pinterest-addled mind envisioned, I’m still pretty happy about it 🙂

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The second picture has better smiles, but something about the first picture just seems fitting for two boys expecting a new sibling! Rondel’s somewhat suspicious face says, are you sure this is such a good idea? – while Limerick just looks slightly in shock! So I can never decide which one I like better…

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Of course, most of our takes ended up along these lines:

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L: Mom! It fell off again!
Me: Stop pulling it off then!

It would have been cute as well to have me holding the number 3, but that would have required another photographer so it wasn’t logistically going to happen this week. Another pair of adult hands would have simplified the process greatly though! No sooner would I position the kids and run back to the camera than they would start scooting around or becoming distracted by everything around them. I just considered myself fortunate that they were mostly happy throughout the proceedings 🙂

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They were much happier when I let them run wild on the little walls and hills and explore the number boards in their own way! I have no clue how professional photographers get toddlers to look so good in posed pictures.

So… the details? Our new little one will be arriving sometime around Christmas, and we are so excited to welcome him or her into our family. I’ve been significantly moodier and queasier with this pregnancy so I have my suspicions that it may be a girl, but we’ll have to just wait and see – it could be that I’m just out of shape so my body is protesting more 🙂

I am beyond excited to be able to walk through this Advent season with Mary, growing heavy with child, pondering the mystery of the Incarnation as the mystery of new life blossoms within me (and probably aching for the pregnancy to be over like she must have been at the end as well!). It just seems like it will be a special way to experience Advent and Christmas, a new way to see the wonder and the gift of the baby Jesus. Hopefully I will be able to hold to that instead of letting stress and busyness run my days.

Head on over to the link-up at Like Mother, Like Daughter to share in each other’s everyday joys and struggles!

Posted in family life

Rondel and role play

Posted on by kristinabean

Rondel decided a few days ago that we are all different characters from Pixar’s Cars movie, and assigned us specific roles.

He, of course, is Lightning McQueen. Sometimes he will run through the house revving his engine, screeching his brakes, or crashing into things…

Limerick is Red the fire truck, at least in Rondel’s head – he doesn’t really get it.

My husband is Sally, I am Doc Hudson, and Rondel’s grandma, grandpa, and uncle are the Sheriff, The King, and Mater respectively.

It’s kind of funny because he won’t refer to us by any other names, and he’ll correct us rather emphatically if we refer to someone in the family by another name.

I was beginning to worry about this kind of imaginative play, wondering if the influence of the movie made his pretend play more rigid and less his own, when I remembered that I did exactly the same thing with the Cinderella movie when I was his age. My pretend play probably had even less complexity than his, since I didn’t have quite so many roles to assign and since I didn’t really ever deviate from the movie’s plot like Rondel will – and it didn’t hurt my creativity in the least. I was still wildly creating my own stories all through childhood (and indeed into adulthood).

So for now I will just enjoy being Doc Hudson and race with my Lightning all through the house!

Posted in family life, musings, recipes

meal-planning for the creative and spontaneous mom

Posted on by kristinabean

I think cooking and grocery shopping are two of my favorite housekeeping activities 🙂 It’s fun imagining different ways to use the fruits and vegetables that are seasonal and on sale, or figuring out how to use up the remnants of a leftover or the last bits of produce in the fridge before they go bad without making an emergency trip to the store, or balancing all the different food groups throughout the day to make sure the boys are eating a well-rounded diet. In a way, it’s like a puzzle that never gets old because so many of the variables are always changing! (And I must confess that I would get bored pretty quickly if the variables didn’t change – I could never work off a strict rotation of menus because I get tired of cooking the same things and like to mix it up and experiment with new ideas fairly regularly).

Most of my inspiration comes from the produce sale list… I see, for instance, that red bell peppers are only 50 cents each this week and I wonder what I could make with them that my bell-pepper-disdaining family would eat (I love peppers so I’m always attempting to convert the rest of them). Maybe on top of a bruschetta with some sort of cheese – something with feta and ricotta, perhaps… I call those “little toasties” to the kids because they sometimes will outright refuse a food just because it has a strange name and I’d rather not have to deal with that if I can avoid it! And there’s one meal down: I would throw together a quick pasta or veggie to accompany it, depending on what leftovers we have and what’s in the pantry, and let the bruschetta be the main star of the meal.

I think one of the factors that makes this sort of meal-planning easier for me is that I don’t think every dinner has to include a meat. I was a vegetarian for eleven years, so as long as there is some sort of cheese or bean in the main meal I feel like it is complete, and especially if we had a high-protein breakfast or lunch I don’t think it necessary to emphasize the protein at dinner. Instead, dinner ends up being the most vegetable-heavy meal of the day most of the time. We’ll see if this needs to change as the boys get older, of course 🙂 Meats are just harder for me to be creative with because I lost those eleven years of experimentation, so I get more easily bored by the options I can reliably cook.

Right now we’re entering into one of my favorite meal-planning seasons because there is so much seasonal fresh fruit! Fruit is an easy side dish to round out a meal, a healthy dessert if I’m feeling nibbly after dinner, a no-guilt snack to pull out if the boys are hungry an hour before dinner, and a quick breakfast if I’m running late to work. It significantly reduces the amount of prep and forethought I have to put into meals… and the hot weather in general lends itself to quick, light foods instead of the heavier meals that require thawing time, prep time, and cooking time (as delicious as those meals are in the colder weather!).

What are some of your tips and tricks for feeding your family every day?

Posted in family life

night-time parenting and my need for grace

Posted on by kristinabean

My worst parenting moments are typically in the middle of the night when one of the boys is taking an uncharacteristically long time to fall back asleep after waking. It’s a combination of three difficult factors: my tiredness, the unexpectedness of the problem, and the baby’s insomnia. I could probably handle things with more grace if only one or two of those factors was involved, but together they are a deadly trifecta to my parenting calm. Because I’m tired, it’s harder for me to assess the situation and come up with a solution; because the wakefulness is unexpected and not a normal event, I have no routine already in place to deal with it; and because the baby is also tired and out of sync with his normal routine, he typically can’t express what exactly is bothering him and keeping him up. Limerick has been known to scream for a good 30 minutes straight before managing to sob out that he wants a bottle of milk instead of a bottle of water, for example, which is a far cry from his communicative daytime self.

It is in those moments that I most desperately need to turn to God for help. That is when I am most helpless, most frustrated, least buoyed up by my own reason, most emotionally and physically fragile and worn out. And yet I don’t often find myself searching for grace and peace at those times. The immediacy of the problem blots out everything else from my mind, unfortunately.

And that is one of the reasons why it is so important for me to bathe my parenting in prayer in all the other moments – to keep praying for grace, wisdom, patience, and strength even when everything seems to be going well, so that when things get hard and my sleep-fogged brain can’t see past the crying baby, I’ve already asked God for the help I’ll need to get through it with love. I have to cultivate my relationship with Him, my dependence on Him, through all the easy times, the happy times, the normal times, so that my anchor and foundation are already secure when the challenges arise. It would be foolish to think the challenges would never come, and even more foolish to think I’d be able to handle them without a consistent effort to walk with God.

So tonight I think I’ll be preemptively praying for patience, wisdom, and compassion, just in case Limerick is up for hours in the night again – and maybe that will help me when I can’t see past the irrational tears and my body is crying out for sleep. If the Spirit is there reminding me of the reasons Limerick might be up (last night he was in some sort of pain and it took a dose of Tylenol to settle him down), helping me find solutions, helping me think despite my fatigue, maybe I won’t get so frustrated with my little guy, and will be able to better respond with gentleness and love, just like God consistently responds to me even when my complaints and tears make no sense at all in the light of the bigger picture that He can see.

 

Posted in links

a better post than I could write for Mother’s Day

Posted on by kristinabean

In lieu of my own thoughts, which are not particularly profound, wise, or experienced, I want to share this post from Laura at Mothering Spirit.

None of us is all of these things. But we are all here together. And together, we are what can make motherhood so complex – and sometimes challenging to celebrate.

We are the thousand colors of one stained glass window. Love’s light passes through each one of us, and we are changed. Because we know ourselves to be mother.

[…] whenever we let our hearts be stretched to invite each other in, we all love better, bolder, and braver. Because we remember the mothers we have been. We imagine the mothers we might become. We honor the mothers we have loved.

And we love wider. Like the mothers we want to be.

 

Posted in family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – pretty much all real

Posted on by kristinabean

I will be honest with you all, this was a rough week and a half. Last Tuesday we spend the morning playing at the park with the boys’ cousins – and by nap time Limerick was vomiting. And he didn’t stop for over 30 hours, most of that time losing it every 1-2 hours very violently. So then last Thursday he transitioned from one end to the other and Rondel started bringing everything back up. Both boys had low-grade fevers for a couple days and were essentially couch-ridden (I made them sick nests on the couches so they wouldn’t have to be upstairs in bed); Rondel slept for the majority of the day three days in a row, and I have never seen him that worn out and sick before in his life – which admittedly has been a rather short one, but still! It was a new mommy experience for me.

Yesterday was really the first day both boys were feeling (almost) back to normal – no diarrhea, no vomiting, and energy to get up and play for more than 10 minutes at a time. Through this whole week, I’ve been reminded of Auntie Leila’s rejoinder to consider this time of sickness as a time to sacrifice myself – my plans, my routines, my comfort – for the sake of these kids, to show them what Christ-like love is all about. As she puts it,

You know, when our children are sick, we have a wonderful opportunity to serve them in a completely different way from the way they are used to. We can take a break from all the demands of daily life — demands which include prying them away from love of self, encouraging them to serve others and take responsibility — and just take care of them. Rather than viewing this part of motherhood as a stressful chore that reveals our incompetence, we can see it as a real blessing.

It was very stressful for not to be able to clean the house, or have regular meals together, or get out of the house for the outside time that I need just as much as the boys normally do, (a lot more stressful than I would have anticipated!) and I had to keep telling myself that “love endures all things.”

Kind of humbling to realize how much of an emotional and spiritual challenge this week of sickness was to me… I’ve still got a long way to go to reach holiness! 😉

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In the first days of the illness, Rondel was so concerned about his brother. He kept asking me when he would be feeling better, and what was wrong, and just wanted to comfort him with his presence. This is one of the beautiful side-effects of sickness, I think – the development of compassion in the sick child’s siblings.

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But all too soon he needed his own spot on the couch 😦 When Limerick started to feel better he seemed to find a lot of happiness in helping me take care of Rondel, especially when I would let him deliver a bottle to his brother, which was adorable and sweet.

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One of the happy things that sustained us during the sick times (besides endlessly blowing bubbles for Limerick) was reading books. The boys like books well enough normally, but they also like to be moving and doing things – but when they didn’t have the energy to play, the books took them out of the moment and gave them something to think about. Limerick in particular has become far more excited about reading than he was before!

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demanding to read the Very Hungry Caterpillar

So there were some fun things in the middle of all the sickness – but all in all we are all extremely glad to have the blankets and sheets washed and off the couches, and a sense of normalcy and order restored to family life. I’m sure the boys are even more glad not to be hurting and sick anymore!

I really hope that you all had a better week than we did! And don’t forget to join me over at Like Mother, Like Daughter for the link-up today 🙂

Posted in family life, musings

meditations in the midst of a round of stomach flu

Posted on by kristinabean

The boys are sleeping.

Limerick turns restlessly on his crib, mutters into the darkness, settles himself back down with his bottle of water.

Rondel lies curled up against the back cushions of the couch, pillow beneath him, blanket kicked aside, breathing quiet and small in the darkness.

And I hope that as they sleep they are healing, so that when they wake the pain and fatigue will be gone, and their normal energetic exuberance can resurface.

When the normal pattern of our life involves hours spent running and climbing and laughing outside, days in a row snuggled up on couches, dozing on and off, quiet and slow, feel foreign and strange. When bright eyes are dull and weary, when little faces are pale, when active limbs are still and calm, nothing seems right.

And I think to myself, this is only a stomach bug, and they’re going to be better in a few days, and however do mothers cope when this becomes a new normal, and sickness buries its talons into a family? How do they not break with the pain of it, loving so deeply and being so horribly unable to stop the hurting and restore health and energy to their baby? It takes my breath away, how lucky I am, how many good cards I’ve drawn in this game of life; and if it were all to fall apart, would my faith hold firm? I hope that it would, but I pray that such a test will never come.

Posted in family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – working in the garden

Posted on by kristinabean

For the first time in my desert gardening adventure, I’m going to be attempting a crop over the summer. Our scorching days not being particularly friendly to most plants, I’ve avoided the summer so far – but this year, we’re going to be planting sweet potatoes! I’ll have to take another picture of the slips I started soon, because they’re really starting to take off, especially the purple potatoes, which have the most beautiful red-veined leaves.

Anyway, to grow sweet potatoes we needed to seriously amend our soil, because the native soil where we live is the kind of clay you can build with – dense, compacted, hard, and thick: pretty much the opposite of what root vegetables need! So we spent Saturday mixing in two huge sacks full of compost from a local farm into our raised bed, and the boys, particularly Rondel, had a wonderful time exploring the dirt and helping with the work.

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He was so focused and engaged with the task at hand! He first helped me water the mint and oregano, which we had to transplant to the trench garden from the raised bed to make room for the sweet potatoes, and the continued to water the dirt in the raised bed as we mixed in the compost. We had the kiddie pool filled up in case anyone needed to cool off, since Saturday was pretty warm, and it provided Rondel with a way to fill up the watering can on his own.

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In addition to wanting to help with the tasks of preparing the garden, Rondel couldn’t resist sticking his hands in the dirt and discovering what it felt like at various stages of wetness, from completely dry all the way to soggy mud.

The garden has always been his happy place, where he pushes his sensory boundaries and lets his imagination run wild, and I absolutely love seeing him get dirty and sweaty and so incredibly captivated by natural things. This is our little piece of nature in the midst of the city, and something about it speaks to his heart.

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Limerick also wanted to use the watering can, once Rondel put it down, and after a while he kind of got the hang of it – but at first he just turned it upside down like a bucket:

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Aside from the watering can diversion, however, Limerick was not thrilled about our family time in the garden. He was tired and hungry and generally grumpy, and constantly demanded bubbles.

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have you tried taking pictures of bubbles as you’re blowing them? it’s more luck than anything that one of these bubbles managed to be in focus…

And it’s so hard to say no to him because I always wonder if I’m just saying no because of my own selfishness and laziness instead of for a legitimate reason, and because he sometimes gets very fixated on things and has a lot of trouble moving on to something else when I say no. It’s hard not to pull out the bubbles when your baby is crying for them and it’s not a difficult activity to share with him – but on the other hand, I don’t want him to think that he can get whatever he wants by crying for it. Right now I’m trying to be firm with boundaries that I care more about and just caving on the bubbles… I do love bubbles myself anyways…

Head on over to the linkup at Like Mother, Like Daughter today to share some more everyday joy and contentment!