Last weekend was peak interesting. I am using the word "interesting" in lieu of something less poetic, like "shitshow" or "emotional hurricane". That's maturity for you.
Just kidding. I was not peak maturity this past weekend.
We had quite a few visitors last week. My mother-in-law was in town during the week and she did bath time with RB every single night she was here and it was fantastic. I really appreciate anytime family is here to do bath time because I think it's important that RB get to experience ending his day with everyone who loves him, not just us. It's just super sweet to see him get that one-on-one time with those that absolutely adore him. Plus I do appreciate a break from the nightly game RB loves to play of 'fill all the bath toys with water and throw them at Mom!', and then the nightly game I am forced to play of 'no, I will not pick those up - if you throw them out of the bath, that is where they will stay', always followed by a fun round of 'but MoooOOOOOOooooMMMMmmm'.
She left Thursday morning and my parents got in Friday night. Their visit was great too. They actually brought a sandbox that they'd made for him with them, and assembled it as soon as they got here. RB was very interested in it when it didn't have sand. After putting it together, we fed the child and they did bath time.
Isn't it funny that when someone else does bath time with your child, there is rarely any drama? At least that's how it goes for us. It's like RB saves the end-of-the-day feralness for his parents and his parents only. He went down without a hitch for them (of course he did! He's their perfect angel grandchild!) and slept like the little cherub he is.
The next morning, grandparents, uncle and Beau went to Home Depot to get like a thousand pounds of sand. That is not an exaggeration. It's a lot of fucking sand. It's technically a half ton of sand. I watched them take it from the bed of my dad's truck to the sandbox from the safety of my kitchen window. Being pregnant may be the pits at times, but it gets me out of lifting a lot of stuff. We did take RB out to the sandbox once it was filled, and then he did show his ass just a little bit and have a tiny meltdown. Looking back, I chalk his reaction up to sensory overload. He did not care for how it felt on his toes, and once it got in between his toes, he could not recover emotionally. He also didn't really care for being outside. He spends a lot of time on turf at daycare and not as much real grass, though we are working to remedy this. Just the mere fact that real grass was a factor here didn't help. We went inside, wiped his feetsies, and eventually he calmed down and went right back to dazzling his grandparents with his shining personality (as he does). They stayed through lunchtime, got him down for a nap (again, with ease) and then hit the road to head back home.
All things considered, we did have a pretty smooth week last week and that held all the way through Saturday afternoon. Beau was out on a trip for a few days last week and anytime Beau's not here, it throws RB off emotionally. He handled this trip pretty well, probably because Beau was only gone for 48 hours and his emotional distress doesn't really peak until Daddy is gone for 49 hours. I don't really know. It also helped that his CiCi was here while his dad was gone. Then his dad came home, and more grandparents came to visit.
Anyway, back to Saturday afternoon. RB rose from after his slumber and he was mostly okay but I would say more reactive than normal. I think he just realized that all the special attention was gone and now he was just back to good ol' Mom and Dad. Beau was exhausted from his trip, so I asked him (maybe more ordered? Not sure, my tone is less controlled at this point in pregnancy) to go lay down. He obliged.
It was at this point RB realized it was just him and me. This is when he started to get spicy. He was crying over everything. Ever-y-thing. He purposefully pushing on the boundaries of right and wrong by hitting me repeatedly. When I say hitting, he was absolutely trying to slap the shit out of me. I'd said no. I'd grabbed his arms and put them by his side, and said "No hitting" in my Mom-est of Mom voices. He could've given a fuck about my feedback. At one point, he popped me in the face, so I swatted his leg. I don't think the swat I swatted would've disturbed dust on a surface, it was that gentle. It wouldn't have killed a bug. This swat wouldn't have even disturbed the air around my hand. I hate to even call it a swat, because 'swat' meant something very different when I was a kid. It was more an abrupt petting. Didn't matter though. RB was beside himself. How could I? "How could you, Mommy?" This is how we learn consequences, I guess. He learned the consequence of hitting and I learned the consequences of teaching consequences. What followed was a pretty epic shit fit that was hard to come back from, but we did. Once he stopped crying, I started crying. He noticed I was crying and started bringing me toys and hugging me. He's a little gas-lighter sometimes. "Oh, you're crying because I've been emotionally terrorizing you all day? Let me be the one to make you feel better". "I don't know why you make me act like this, Mommy, you know I don't like it." I then cried because I was crying, because I was crying in front of my son, because he was clearly concerned about me being upset. Really was a total shitshow.
We somehow persevered through the rest of the afternoon, evening, and eventually bedtime.
Oh, bedtime. We're trying to do some sleep training right now. Up until now, someone has always rocked RB to sleep. But with Hunter coming soon, we're trying to give RB the tools to put himself to sleep because, well, our bandwidth as people is limited, and also it's time he learn a little self sufficiency. Some nights, he handles it well. Other nights, not so much. We're getting there, though. It's probably harder on me than it is on him. Fucking mom-guilt. It'll seep into so many different facets of your life. I'm also acutely aware of the fact that RB's time as an only child is coming to an end, and I desperately want to be as present as I can for it, and enjoy our time together as much as I can. It makes me feel like shit when we have a rough day or a rough moment because it's a time we won't get back, or when I do something and it upsets him. It's very much me fighting me right now, though. My brain knows he needs to be upset sometimes to figure out how to navigate the insane spectrum of feelings that come with the human experience, but my heart just wants to fix it. Most of the time, logic trumps emotion and I let him figure it out on his own.
He did get himself to sleep and slept through the night, and then Sunday dawned. If I thought Saturday afternoon was rough, Sunday came to humble me. He was, as my dad often refers to him as, "a bundle of raw nerve endings." We were up, down, left, and fucking right all day long. The emotional whiplash was astounding. Beau and I had wanted to take him to the local aquarium and they're only open from 1-4 on Sundays. RB typically naps from 12-2 or 3. On this particular day, he slept all the way until 3, so we skipped the trip just for the sake of letting our little insane person sleep because he so clearly needed it.
He was a little nicer Sunday afternoon, but I wouldn't say he was nice. It was more like in the morning, he was an insane, feral tiger, and in the afternoon, he was a less insane, feral tiger. Either way, still a feral tiger. My little beautiful, feral tiger.
Monday morning was mostly okay until I went to put him in his car seat to go to daycare with Dad. For some reason, RB has recently decided he would prefer it if I'd simply just ~fuck off~ and not put him in his car seat ever again. If Beau does it, he is a lot more cooperative, which is great and also hugely insulting. Like, my dude, I am your mother. Be nice to me!! I can't tell if he can sense I am growing another human and he finds that to be insulting. I don't know what the fucking deal is. My dad said that it's normally at this point that some kids start to notice that Dads rule and Moms drool. RB is definitely one of those kids. Anyway, he had a good day on Monday, and Monday evening was mostly normal, though I was still emotionally traumatized and prepared for a meltdown at any moment. Things were okay, though, until he laid down for bed. He'd apparently totally forgotten about any sleep training we've done because he acted like I had never laid him down awake before. Oh, the absolute earful I got from him. Forty minutes later (FORTY!), he was asleep, and I was fried.
He woke up the next day like a bundle of joy and his good attitude has held since, thankfully. We did get his first haircut done Tuesday afternoon. He sat in Beau's lap and really was so good about it. He waited to have his emotional meltdown until he was in the car, but that one I can't fault him for. I know it was a lot for him to take in and I just appreciate he waited until he was in a safe space with us to let all his feelings out.
Maybe it's my empathic tendencies. Maybe it's just a mom thing. I don't know, but I can tell you, the array of feelings RB is getting to feel lately has me exhausted. The pressures of keeping my shit together while my toddler emotionally abuses me is astounding. I know Trace Adkin's says we're going to miss this, and I'm sure one day when RB is a teenager and I ground him for something and he flips me off and I then spontaneously combust, I will miss this. Right now, in this moment, it just makes me bone tired.
It also makes me very anxious, though that anxiety comes and goes. At moments, I am very stressed about how we're about to have two kids. Two kids with very different needs. Two little human beings who have no idea how to be humans. Two bundles of raw nerve endings we need to nurture, protect, and do everything in our power to make sure they don't grow up to be assholes. One is hard, two is also going to be hard. I know we can do it, but there are definitely moments when I wonder just how the hell we're going to do it. In this particular moment, I feel a sense of peace, because we have no other option than to just do it.
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