A question that we can't seem to answer these days! Sundays in our household are probably much like other households, not as relaxing as they should be. We are too busy with getting ready for the next week and right now just trying to keep the peace between our kids and trying to keep our own sanity in the process. This entry is more for me than you. It is to help me process and vent about the day and try to find some humor in all of this. Also, to remind my self that this is normal and maybe remind or even warn some of you that this is normal life with two wee ones. So this is the insight to our day yesterday and how the last couple of Sundays have been what I like to now call "Story-Simon melt-down Sundays."
We wake up to the gurl stopping down the hall to our room to inform us that she cannot find one of her 20 babies (stuffed-animals) in bed and is very distraught. So Gregory gets up and goes to help her and informs her that it is too early (because it is 6 a.m.) and she needs to get back into bed. That doesn't happen of course and she continues to play in her room. Ten minutes later as I am almost back asleep she then realizes she is hungry and barrels down the hall to share this new information. So I tell her that she can get a trail mix bar from the pantry and eat it in her room, but that she needs to close our door and let us sleep. Now I was finally able to sleep in a little and by 8 a.m. the boy was awake and squawking so I peeling myself out of bed and grabbed the little man and headed downstairs.
The gurl followed us and the three of us congregated in the kitchen for our drinks of choice, juice milk and chai, to figure out breakfast. After that was taken care of we went down to the basement to play and that is when the day started tanking. Everything that the gurl had the boy wanted and this created many issues for everyone. Because if she didn't give him what he wanted he would scream, hit, bite and pull her hair until she got so angry that she would fight back. So after numerous separations and time-outs by 9:30 I decided to take them upstairs for a snack and see if that would dissipate the situation between the two. But it didn't, instead they decided to have a screaming match and continued to scream and yell at each other as loud as they could. At this point all I could do was tune them out because I had been putting up with this for almost two hours, but now Greg was woken up to this insane amount of noise and not so entertained as you might imagine.
So now that we were both up, maybe they will chill out a little, right? No- now the boy is having even more issues since he is in a serious phase of separation anxiety so anytime Gregory and the gurl are around I can't be out of sight and most of the time he will cry, whine, scream and such unless I actually hold him (thank God for my mei tai wrap). Fun times right now!
The rest of the late morning consists of the two children fluxing between having a wonderful time together playing tag and then one of them lashing out at the other over a toy or a phone. So finally at noon I put the boy down for a nap, Greg helped the gurl get lunch and we hoped that she would take her nap at the same time so that we could nap. Wishful thinking! She did go up to her room after lunch, but decided that she was going to play in her bunks, so within that hour we realized that neither of them were going to have the rest time they needed and neither were we.
We got the boy up and told the gurl she has to rest, which meant laying down, and then made our way to the basement to start tackling the laundry for this week. The gurl refused to rest and so once again both kids are messing with each other while we were trying to fold numerous baskets of laundry. So I take the boy upstairs with me to start dinner, Greg keeps the gurl in the basement. I am wondering at this point if it is still too early for a glass of wine.
The whole process of dinner is difficult these days due to the boy wanting to be held through the whole process, which is hard to do when you actually make meals. So I have a few options on most nights. I either hand him over to Greg and listen to him scream most, if not the whole time that I get dinner together or I have had to let him cry it out while I chop veggies. I then put him in my wrap while I do all of the easy parts and set him down again to finish it up, which usually starts the crying and screaming cycle. Now, I guess having Greg cook is another alternative, but I love cooking and for me this is a part of the day that I usually look forward to. I also found another option which is making the dinner during the day and then heating it up at night, since he is fine during the day because it is just the two of us and that is the option that I chose last week and it worked well. But as you have noticed on a day like yesterday that option would not work. And on the evenings that Greg works late, this doesn't seem to be an issue..hmm.....
Back to the Story-Simon melt-down Sunday. So once we (the boy and I) moved upstairs he seemed to be okay most of the time if the other two didn't appear and dinner was the best part of the day, actually a little calmer (maybe it was the red wine, I don't know).
After dinner, hell broke loose again as I took the gurl up for a shower and the boy went hysterical with me out of sight. So he wouldn't hyperventilate -honestly it was that bad, Greg had to bring him upstairs just to be in my presence so that we could get them to bed and hopefully have down time together. Greg took the gurl and finished her bedtime routine and I took the boy to calm him down and get him to bed. While trying to put him in bed the boy went into a screaming fit and after rocking, singing, and such I had to just lay him down. Now, I am not one for doing the "cry it out thing", it pains me deeply, but it had to happen last night. I could not do it for any longer and within 15 minutes (felt like 30) he was asleep. And so was she.
SO...after that all I could do was sit in front of the T.V. and vegetate and try to bring my blood pressure and heart rate down. This is my life right now, weekends are rough. I really am trying to find the pleasure during the weekends, but it has been very difficult. With Greg starting to work on Saturdays, Sunday is the only day that we have as a rest day and it has been anything but that! I am thinking that we might need to make Sundays a day for family adventures and let that be our way to connect as a family unit, because what we are doing at this present time is just not working. And then Monday mornings are here and we feel more exhausted that we did before the weekend even started.
So if we don't call back on the weekends, now you know why!
1 comment:
Oh, my friend, I can sooooooo relate to this post. My son was/is the same way. Extremely clingy, more separation anxiety I ave EVER seen in another child, EVER. And the fighting, oh yeah. Been there too. Daily, hourly. Some days, I feel so soul weary I think I will snap. I don't have any advice, all I can do is say you're not alone, and hope that helps somehow. Take Care. xoxo
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