One Thousand Words

Niko has a bedding set with a licensed character set, Thomas And Friends. They were part of the “please please please sleep in your own bed FOR THE LOVE OF GOD stop kicking me all night” incentive when we got his twin bed set up in his room. And he’d refer to it as his “new bed” and his “little bed” and talk excitedly about his “Thomas sheets” but until recently he showed no interest in SLEEPING in that bed. He’d sit on it, he’d play in it, he’d drag the comforter off and roll around on the floor in it, but sleeping? Not so much.

Well, that has all changed (knock on wood)! Which means nobody kicks me all night, or pulls my hair, or scrapes their toenails all over my stomach/thighs while trying to warm their feet under my body. It also means I now have two beds to make every day.

When I make his bed, I put the top sheet on the bed upside down, then the comforter. Then I turn both back, so that the front side of the sheet, the “right” side of the sheet, is facing out. I do this when I make our bed, too. Years ago, when I was a little kid, a babysitter did that and I liked it and have been doing it ever since. But the other day I remembered more about the circumstances surrounding that little lesson, in a very visceral way.

Said babysitter lived down the street from us, and my mom paid her to babysit me and my brothers. She had two kids of her own, both younger than us. Even though she was getting paid to watch (and feed) us, she expected me to do housework for her, including dishes and picking up after her kids and making beds. When she provided us with food we didn’t like, she would literally shove food into our mouths, pinch our noses shut, and hold our jaws closed while we chewed and swallowed. She wouldn’t let go until we did so, which meant we couldn’t BREATHE until we did so. Which might just explain some of my issues with food, IDK. She was a screamer, and a slapper.

She took me to task for making the beds “wrong” once, and when I asked WHY she put the flat sheets on upside down she dressed me down for my stupidity in not knowing the “right” way to make a bed. Our sheets at home were cheap solid colored cotton, there was no right or wrong face to them unless you scrutinized the hem or something. Her sheets, even the plain ones, were far more upscale, with fancy hemming and binding. She came from money, you see, and married a poor dude out of love (he worked construction, he wasn’t what most people would consider poor; her wealthy parents gave her shit for marrying “beneath” her and both talked down to her all the time but also gave her gifts of money and jewelry), so there was a definite element of class to her dressing-down of me. But the biggest thing, and this was actually a theme amongst adults in positions of caregiving and teaching in my life, is that she went out of her way to make me feel stupid and wrong for asking a question.

I quickly learned not to ask questions because if I did, I would be shamed and ridiculed in public for not KNOWING. Don’t know where my seat is? Or the bathroom? Or how to do a math problem the class learned the year before, when I was in a different school? Don’t know the words to a song everyone else learned when I was absent? Don’t know someone’s name, or title, or how to get someplace? Don’t know what a food is called? Try to pick it up from context, and fake it, because otherwise? Someone will call. you. out. in the most mortifying way possible and that person? Will be an authority figure setting the tone for everyone else, every peer, in their interactions with you.

My childhood was incredibly stressful (and FUCKED UP), in so many different ways.

I so don’t want that for Niko. He asks questions and I try to answer them as fully as possible. He isn’t in the chain-of-whys phase, but he is interested in his world and what he sees and hears and experiences. And we ask HIM questions as well (do cows eat grass? do chickens? do cats? do goats?) and talk about the answers. I want him to be comfortable questioning his world, his adults, his peers, his assumptions. I know too many people who had that beaten out of them early.

Technorati Tags: abuse, parenting, toddlers

Mirrored from Now Showing!.

So, Nikola apparently has an imaginary friend.

His imaginary friend is sometimes named Boy or Roy, and is a Pretty Kitty. He is a RED Pretty Kitty.

He likes the following:

Watching Meerkats
Eating Fruit Snacks
Eating Fruit Snacks With Meerkats
Going In Tunnels
Eating Bananas
Eating Bananas With Too Many Monkeys
Riding Trains
Playing With Trains
Playing With Blocks
Butterflies
Taking a Bath

He also likes playing “Rusty and the Boulder” which, coincidentally (and like everything else on the list) is something that Nikola also likes. “Rusty and the Boulder” is a game based on the Thomas and Friends episode “Rusty and the Boulder,” and consists of Niko making a very long train on his wooden train track (or lining up a bunch of stuff on the floor to make a train) and then saying OH NO! BOULDER! while he rolls a ball toward the train and knocks everything around.

He will do this for hours.

In other news, we thought we had a mattress for Nikola’s “big boy bed” so instead of getting a toddler bed, we bought an actual bed (from IKEA), only to find out that 1) the mattress was extra long (even though more than one person measured it and thought it was normal length!) and 2) someone else (a family member) had “dibs” on it. So now we have a bed and sheets even, but no mattress. We bought one, and it’ll be delivered tomorrow. Niko loves his bed so far, though, especially because he can drop things between the wooden slats that will eventually support the mattress, then open up the storage drawers to retrieve the things dropped through. Fun times!

His sheets are Thomas sheets. He even has a Thomas comforter. Spoiled? What?

In actuality, this is STRATEGY. We’re hoping that the allure of A! New! Bed! (with fun drawers!) and Thomas! Sheets! (we let him pick between those or “red car” (lightning mcqueen) sheets) will make sleeping in his own bed something to look forward to, and maybe I won’t get kicked in the head quite as much all night going forward. Maybe Pretty Kitty can help us out.

Technorati Tags: child care, imaginary friends, parenting, sleep, toddler

Mirrored from Now Showing!.

I’ve been with the same temp agency since 2001, and although I’ve told them that recently the work I’m looking for is part time (8 hours a day for only a few days a week OR partial days for a full week) they’ve only been offering me full time work. Until recently, it was full time work with really, really weird hours. Then my current gig landed in my lap. It’s a 2 month deal at a place I’ve worked before (although a different department) that is relatively easy to get to. I think I’ve mentioned a few times that Nesko is looking to get into a specific work program that would train him in woodworking and has something like a 98% job placement rate after graduation. He qualifies for free tuition, but it’s a 3 month program that’s full time, so he wouldn’t be able to work during it. We banked most of our tax return but were still a few $k short to cover that stretch of him not working. Ideally, me working for 2 months will be enough to fill that gap with a little cushion, so we can spend 3-4 months with no money coming in.

That is… a kind of terrifying thought.

Anyway, Nesko and I are both working full time. We also have a toddler. What does one do with a toddler when one works full time? Some sort of daycare arrangement must be worked out! I leave the house at 7am and don’t get back until after 6pm. Nesko works odd hours, sometimes not getting home until 11pm (we’ve looked into day care near his work, in the past). My in-laws live five minutes away and adore Niko and they are his favorite people in the entire world, but my father in law is straight up disabled (on SSDI after falling off a roof a million stories up and breaking his… well. body.) and my mother in law survived breast cancer twice and doesn’t have the greatest amount of stamina in the world. Can they mind an active toddler for 11 hours a day 5 days a week? No, and it’s super unfair to expect them to.

Although the first week I was working, they did. How lucky are we? Incredibly lucky.

Niko got to spend the entire day every day with his most beloved people, the ones he begs to see every day. I mean, sometimes, he will just bring me his shoes and a hat and tell me that it’s time to go see baba. They indulge him. His baba buys him an entire rotisserie chicken, fresh, so he only has to eat the juicy white meat and not the dark meat. They bought him a little wading pool and let him splash around in it. He is allowed to get into everything and eat whatever he wants. It is like toddler heaven.

But that week? Niko ignored me. He shunned me. Shunned! He wouldn’t look at me, or talk to me, or touch me, or hug me. It was a very complete shunning. He wouldn’t even take food from me. Not even his beloved fruit snacks!

We made up over the weekend and are friends again, and when I came home from work on Tuesday he excitedly announced “mama home!” when I opened the door, but was too busy playing to run over and hug me. He will drop whatever he’s doing when Nesko comes home and SPRINTS over to him to give him hugs. I don’t merit that. But after I’d been home a few minutes he came over and hung all over me and gave me a kiss and demanded a piggy back ride, which I was happy to give him.

We’ll see how he does the rest of the week.

Our current childcare situation is pretty sweet. From here out, baba and djedo are going to take care of Niko at their house Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and a friend of mine (hello, friend!) will mind him Tuesday and Thursday at our house. She’s a CPS teacher who has a free pass to everyplace fun in Chicago so she’s going to take him out and about have adventures with him. He adores her hard core and considers her like a total BFF and even takes naps for her, so this is basically a match made in heaven.

We’re very lucky.

I don’t miss him as much as I thought I would, but I do miss him. I’m really hoping to find permanent part time work after this assignment. Wish me luck!

Mirrored from Now Showing!.