Please come console your brokenhearted child

Posted on September 7, 2011 by admin

So, today, it happened. Just over an hour after I had left him, I got a phone call from one of the teachers, saying, “Ben is very upset and is crying a lot. We think you should come and get him sooner than we had planned.” (They all call him “Ben” all the time — it doesn’t bother me, but I’m surprised at the 100% assumption of using the nickname.) As I was only 15 minutes away, having coffee, I was happy to oblige. When I got there, he was hysterical — “Mommy! Mommy! I want my Mommy!” I could hear him in the hall. I walked in, Liam in my arms, and sat down on the floor in front of him and gathered him up in a huge hug, Liam and all. His face was wet, red and swollen from crying. My poor guy.

I asked him, and the teachers, what it was that had upset him so much, and they all said it wasn’t anything in particular. The teachers surmise that after watching a few kids have tearful goodbyes with their own parents, he decided he ought to find out where I was. He was happy immediately upon my arrival. A few minutes later, I asked him how his day had gone so far, and he smiled and said, “It was great!” I told him we were going to go home, and he wanted to stay. The teachers recommended that we go ahead and leave early today, and then come in later tomorrow (hopefully missing most of the tearful goodbyes between other kids and their parents) and keep it short. We’re also making sure to plan for his time tomorrow to coincide with outside playtime, which, so far, is his favorite thing.

My poor little guy. It breaks my heart that he wanted me and I wasn’t there. For my entire walk there, I kept thinking, “He needs me and I’m not there”, and I kept reminding myself, “No, he wants me, he doesn’t need me –he’s actually safe and fine.” I’m encouraged by the fact that he still characterized his day as “great” and that he wanted to stay. I asked him, later on this afternoon, whether he wanted to go to school tomorrow. He said yes. I told him that Liam & I would take him in the morning, and drop him off, and then come back a little while later. He didn’t like that — he wants us to stay.

I’m not entirely sure if this is the right thing for him. I see the way he desperately wants to play with the other kids, and I am happy to hear him tell me about the fun he has. But, he misses me. I know that, eventually, he’ll have to be without me, even if he misses me, but I wonder if he isn’t still a little too young for it to be forced on him. I do like the fact that he likes school, he just wants me to be there. For tomorrow, we go back to school. From there, we’ll see.

On his own

Posted on September 6, 2011 by admin

Today was the second day of school for Benjamin. Liam and I went with him and got him settled in, just like yesterday. But once he was set and playing happily (about 20 minutes after we got there) the teachers suggested that we say goodbye and leave him to play without us. I was nervous — I was sure he was going to fall apart when I said I was leaving. Nope. I went to tell him and I had to drag a hug and a kiss out of him before he turned around and headed for the “grocery store”. Sigh.

So, off we went. I met Dan at his office and joined him for coffee. Liam dozed off, Dan went back to work, and I sat. I was so certain I’d get the call on my phone — “Please come console your brokenhearted child”. Nope.

When I went to pick him up, a couple of hours (!) later, he was a happy camper — playing outside in the big yard with the other kids. Turns out, Benjamin cried twice today. The fiirst time was while I was away — when he jumped out and yelled “BOO!” at another kid and she yelled, “NO!!!!” right back at him (apparently, he fell apart and it took several minutes for him to calm down). The second time was when I showed up and told him we’d be leaving soon. He didn’t stop crying until I assured him that we’ll come back to school tomorrow and he’ll be able to stay and play.

While I was gone, he ate a snack, did an art project, played, cried, played some more. I’ve never been so glad to see him sad as when I told him it was time to come home. It would have been much worse if he’d been relieved — then I would really be questioning the decision for him to be at school. As it is, he’s having a good time — and as long as he is, I want him to be there. I do think he’s having experiences he wouldn’t get otherwise. (Even just learning that not everyone enjoys having “Boo!” shouted in their face is a good life lesson, and an easier one to learn now than later.)

I miss him when we’re not together. I may get to a point of enjoying the time — the ability to get things done, or to relax, or to spend one-on-one with Liam. But for now, I just miss him. The fact that he enjoys it makes it easier, but not a lot.

First day of school

Posted on September 5, 2011 by admin

Last night, after the kids were in bed, I completely fell apart. Heartbroken, sobbing. Wishing to be able to replay sections of the past 3 years of my life and make different choices — play more, cuddle more, read more, clean less, never be frustrated, irritable or too worn out to play. I don’t want to give up any time with Benjamin every day — not even 4 hours. I want to be with him. I want to be able to play with him, kiss his boo boos, read stories, do art projects, go out and see things. My sadness is almost completely selfish.

And, so far, completely unfounded. Benjamin’s first day of preschool/kindergarten was fun, short and without trauma. We even managed to arrive on time! He played (mostly by himself, but a little with the other kids), talked to the teachers and got nearly every toy in the place out to play with. His attention span was about 4 seconds long — every time he started doing something, he got distracted by something else. He literally gasped with joy over the puzzles with pictures of Lightning McQueen, as well as the grocery store section of the classroom, complete with pretend food and a shopping cart. He built train tracks, played with play dough (first time!) and started several art projects. I stayed with him, but he only checked in with me a few times. At one point, I left for a few minutes to feed Liam, and he was so busy playing that he didn’t care to hear where I was going and didn’t seem to notice my absence.

On the teacher’s advice, we kept things short — we only stayed for a few hours, with the intention of leaving him interested enough to look forward to coming back tomorrow. It seems to have worked. He wants to go back tomorrow, especially because he didn’t get a chance to play outside in the big playground.

The original plan was for us to repeat this pattern, of Liam and I going with Benjamin to school, every day for the rest of this week. The only downside to today going so well is that his teachers think he’s ready to move on to the next step (and I agree). Tomorrow, Liam and I will go with him and get him settled in the morning, and then we’ll go out for an hour and come back to join him for a while, before heading home.

Today, the hardest thing about being there was wrestling Liam (many of the toys and games had small parts that Liam wanted to, but shouldn’t, play with, so I had to keep him under close watch the whole time — not the idea of fun for an 11 month old). Tomorrow, I actually have to leave B at school for a little while. It’s going to be harder for me than for him, I expect.

Tomorrow, everything changes

Posted on September 4, 2011 by admin

For over three years, I’ve been a “stay at home” mom. Tomorrow, for the first time, one of my children will be in daycare. Sure, it’s more appropriately preschool (kindergarten, here) than daycare, and it’s only 4 hours a day, but it doesn’t change the reality of it. Benjamin starts school tomorrow. It’s not like I’ve been with them both 24/7 since their births: I did work a few hours a week at home, I go out and do things from time to time, I even came to Austria for 4 days when Benjamin was only 18 months old, and, of course, I was in the hospital when Liam was born (and for days after, since he was in the NICU) — and thus, away from Benjamin.

This feels so different. For 50% of his waking hours, five days a week, he will be in someone else’s care. That “someone else” isn’t my mom, or Dan, or a trusted friend. It isn’t for an hour, or for a special occasion. These people are strangers to us (although I know they won’t be for long) and this will be our every day routine. My baby is leaving the nest for the first time — he goes out in to the world to interact with its other inhabitants without my constant supervision. He will experience things I’ve protected him from and the flaws in my parenting will be exposed. The other kids may not be nice to him all the time, he may experience the pain of being left out, not liked or teased. Whatever manners and good behavior he has managed to pick up will show, as will the places I’ve not quite armed him with enough.

I know that this is just preschool, and that he isn’t expected to be perfectly polite or well behaved all the time. I also know that the hurts he receives from his classmates will not only be impermanent, but also come with important life lessons better to be learned at the age of 3 than at a later time. Mostly, it’s going to be a place for him to play and interact with kids his own age (which he’s been dying to do) and to learn German — I think that by the end of September, if not sooner, he’ll be the best German speaker in the house.

But still, he’s my baby, and I don’t think I’m ready to let go, even in this little way. But, I will, because it’s what is right for him. The good parts of this, as well as the challenges, are important for his journey in life. As with pretty much everything having to do with raising children, this just isn’t about me. (If he hates it, though, I’m bringing him straight home. Just saying.)

Soccer

Posted on September 3, 2011 by admin

On the recommendation of a coworker of Dan’s, we took the boys to a soccer gathering this morning. It was a set of games, plus registration for the fall soccer season. It was our first experience with organized sports for little kids, and we had fun, although our boys were too little to participate (it’s for 4 and over).

Benjamin kicked some soccer balls around with Dan, and then with me. We tried to get him to play with the other “too little” kids that were running around, but he was feeling shy. Liam crawled around on our picnic blanket and played with a little boy who is 5 days younger than he is — it was really funny to see how exactly alike they are, developmentally (although Mateo has more teeth — and likes to bite!).

The soccer lessons/games are conducted in English, so nearly everyone there spoke English very well (and many, if not most, seemed to be English speaking expatriates). A good time was had by all — it’s beautiful here in Vienna right now, and it was a nice way to spend a Saturday morning.

I was watching all of the kids play soccer and play with each other, and I’m amazed that some of them are less than a year older than Benjamin. Soon, that will be my little boy, out on the field, playing with the other kids, not needing my help or my direct supervision. This all happens so fast — from cooing infants to giggling crawlers to growling toddlers to screaming runners to very grown up soccer players, all in a few short years. I got to have a little peek into what we have in the years ahead of us, and it looks very fun, but very, very different than what we have now.

010-MOTION

Bad hair day

Posted on September 2, 2011 by admin

I haven’t had a hair cut since before we left for Austria. Back when my hair was really long, I would routinely go a year (or longer — yikes!) without getting it cut, but I’m quickly learning that it doesn’t work well with shorter hair. My recent haircuts don’t always seem to grow out gracefully. I’ve been struggling with what to do about my hair: I loved having it short when I was pregnant, but lately, I’ve kind of been missing having it long. When my hair was really long, I wore it up almost all the time, but I knew how to wear it up in a way that I liked. With my current hair, I have no idea what to do with it.

This morning, I went to get it cut. I had a good consultation with the stylist, and she started cutting. All seemed to be in order. Then, at the end, she styled it. I hate it. She made it big, fluffy and frumpy. I think it aged me at least 5 (maybe 10 years). Yuck. I honestly had no idea I could look that old. It’s my first experience ever walking out of a salon and feeling worse than when I went in. I’m hoping (praying) that when I wash it and “style” it (I use that phrase loosely, since mostly I wash it and towel dry) that I’ll like it more and look more like myself.

This stylist did Benjamin’s hair a few months ago, and she did a great job, so I’m a little surprised that it went so badly. I think, first and foremost, I’m getting older. I don’t mean that I’m “old”, but this stylist is probably at least 10 years younger than I am. To her, I am pretty old. I have two kids, I’m married. Her major pastimes (I asked) are going out and partying. She probably doesn’t see anything wrong with a 35 year old mother of two looking old and frumpy. I’m sure she thought it’s what I should look like.

It’s amazing how much of a cloud it has put over me to have a bad hair day. I’ve found myself irritable and grumpy since getting out of the salon. I finally gave up and pulled my hair back to at least get it out of my way (and now it doesn’t look or feel so fluffy). I was expecting to come out of my appointment feeling cute and, at worst, lamenting that I probably wouldn’t be able to make it look as nice myself.

Sigh. Another Austrian challenge: find a new hair salon. On the plus side, it’s actually refreshing to have a bad experience that doesn’t seem to come from a language or cultural barrier. This is a “normal” problem, that I could just as easily have at home (but have just been lucky enough not to have ever experienced). Bad hair is bad hair, even in Austria.

New schedule

Posted on September 1, 2011 by admin

With Benjamin starting preschool next week, we need to reorganize our morning schedule. In order to get him there on time, we will have to leave the house half an hour before Dan’s supposed to be leaving now (and more often than not, we don’t make our current schedule, either). So, we need to start getting up at 5:30 in the morning. Ouch.

We decided to “practice” our morning schedule this week so that if we are totally off on how long everything will take, it won’t result in us being an hour late to school on Monday morning. Yesterday was our first practice day. It was a complete failure. We tried agian today. Fail again. For our practice days, we had decided that Dan & I would go through the motions of our usual routine, but that we wouldn’t actually get the kids up early if they weren’t up anyway (because there’s no reason to torture them, which would in turn torture us).

The result is, of course, that the kids didn’t get the memo about getting up early, and since we’ve decided not to wake them, it’s just about impossible to “practice” our morning routine with just Dan & I. Actually, just me: both yesterday and today, Dan has ended up dozing off while holding a sleeping Liam who doesn’t want to go back to bed, but isn’t really ready to get up, either. The whole “practicing” thing was a nice idea, but it isn’t working. We still have the weekend. I don’t know what’s the best course of action: to force the entire family to get up earlier than necessary in order to prove a concept, or let it go and risk being profoundly late to Benjamin’s first day of school on Monday.

I think we’re going to skip the practice and keep our fingers crossed for Monday.

Getting around

Posted on August 31, 2011 by admin

My language class finished on Monday. Benjamin starts preschool next Monday. So, next week, our schedule as a family will be completely different. Between now and then, though, we don’t have any need of our old schedule, we don’t need to be on our new schedule, and we don’t have anything in particular that we need to accomplish. I’m in schedule limbo. It’s a weird sensation (especially for me, tightly wound as I am).

So, I’ve decided that the next few days should be a like a vacation and we should try to do things we don’t always get a chance to do. This morning, I decided to pack the boys up and go explore a park on the other side of town. We went there once before, but as soon as we got there last time, Liam had a meltdown and we ended up leaving pretty quickly, before we got a chance to really check it out. The weather today was beautiful and perfect for the park, so we got ready to go out.

After I’d gotten everyone dressed, Liam threw up all over himself and me. (It’s amazing how frustrating it can be, even when you don’t have anywhere in particular to go, to *almost* get out the door and then have to turn right back around and undo everything.) So, I got him and myself cleaned up and dressed again, got out the door . . . and Benjamin slipped on the freshly mopped floor on our landing and fell. Back inside for ice on his head and lots of kisses. Back out again.

We got on the bus and rode to the end of the line, near where the park is. We got off, and I was immediately stopped and asked for directions (as usual). But, aha! Now that I’ve taken German classes, I can give directions in German! Woo hoo! I explained exactly where to go, turned around, and realized I was somewhere different than I thought I was. Not that I’d gotten off the bus in the wrong place, but I’d just lost my bearings, so I’d given these poor people the exact wrong directions. (But, at least I did it in German!)

We walked around the park a little and had a nice time — it’s very pretty. We looked around, petted some dogs, had a snack. We still didn’t see all that there was to see, but we made some definite progress. Then, as it was getting to be towards nap time, we decided to head home. Benjamin wanted to ride the strassenbahn home, so we found a stop, and boarded a train. We got off to switch trains, and decided to take the U-Bahn home instead. We all made it, in one piece, with no further catastrophe. So, today, we rode the three major forms of Viennese public transport (bus, strassenbahn, U-Bahn), went to the park, and even gave directions (never mind that they were wrong . . . ) — we’re definitely making progress.

Benjamin time

Posted on August 30, 2011 by admin

It’s inevitable: having an 11 month old who doesn’t nap means that I don’t have a lot of time to spend one-on-one with B. When Liam was very little, he napped for a few hours every day, and that gave Benjamin and I time to do things together: read, color, build things, play. As Liam has gotten older, his nap has gone away, and now much of my play time with Benjamin is now shared play time with Liam.

Much of the time, he doesn’t mind. I’ve gotten better at finding things for all of us to do together (like playing ball, which Liam is amazingly adept at) but I miss the one-on-one time with Benjamin, and I think he misses it, too. Sibling rivalry has started cropping up more and more, although he still loves Liam (he tells me so) and is still very affectionate and caring towards him. I’m grateful that our reduced playtime hasn’t turned him against Liam entirely, but I know it’s something I need to address before it creates larger resentment.

I’ve been trying, lately, to do just that. I’ve planned times for B & I to go out, to the park, to the movies (Dan & Liam ended up coming with us), or to stay in and play Wii — special things for he and I to do together where he can have my (relatively) undivided attention. I’ve been putting a lot of effort in, but frankly, it hasn’t been working out. It’s nice to spend that time with him, but it ends up feeling forced and even a little frustrating, sometimes, because it doesn’t go quite as I imagine.

This morning, Dan was putting Liam down for a nap and I was hanging out with B, who was watching tv. B wanted to go in his room to play, and wanted me to come, too. I was exhausted, and honestly felt like sitting and watching tv instead, but, I agreed to go with him. Once we got there, he wanted to set up his train tracks and play with his trains. For the first few minutes, I played along, without my heart really being in it, thinking about what I had to do today and feeling tired, but then I got caught up in his enthusiasm, and we put tracks together, switched trains around, had races, built tunnels, built bridges. We played for an hour or so while Dan got Liam down and then while Liam slept. It was fantastic: exactly what I’ve been looking for.

And then, it hit me: I don’t need to force this one-on-one time to happen. It’s fine for me to plan something “special” from time to time for us to do together, but it’s not the “specialness” of the activity that makes the time so valuable. B & I have lots of things we enjoy doing together: playing trains, playing ball, coloring with chalk, reading stories. All I have to do is make the space in my day for those things, which we already share, to happen. It isn’t what we do that’s important, it’s the fact that we have the chance to do it.

He starts preschool next week, and between being in school for half the day, coming home, having lunch and taking a nap, I feel like I’m hardly going to see him at all. I’m going to get less time with him, but it doesn’t mean we’re less important to each other. I have to make sure that I’m making time for us to spend together, because I don’t want to miss out on the precious moments of playing trains or coloring with chalk. That’s the most important part of my day.

Erste German class

Posted on August 29, 2011 by admin

Today was the last day of my first German class. It was definitely a helpful class — I can understand and communicate more than I could before. Now it’s up to me — I have to study and practice, and I certainly get plenty of opportunities to practice.

We learned to describe time, use numbers, ask questions, introduce ourselves, ask for/interpret directions, order from a menu, spell, tell someone our phone number or address and conjugate regular verbs. At the end of class today, we had a few minutes for open questions, and I also made sure I learned how to ask “Can I pet your dog?” because Benjamin has been dying to learn how to say that.

Dan had to forgo taking a German class this summer. We couldn’t take class at the same time, because we have two kids that won’t sit through an hour of adults learning German. Both sections of the summer class were at the same time, and we figured I was a higher priority because Dan gets to spend the day speaking English and I don’t. Our plan for the fall, though, is for both of us to take class. Benjamin starts preschool next week, too, so our schedule for this fall should be pretty interesting. I want to make it a priority to get myself to a German class, though — I need to stay at least one lesson ahead of Benjamin, at least, and he has age on his side.

A Mommy Abroad

Our big adventure, as a family of three.

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