Boundaries and You...

When Riley was 6mo old I wrote a post about boundaries and my then still small baby. Notably one horrific incident when someone crossed the line. Recently my friend Kati wrote about the same disturbingly-insistent-on-helping-not-taking-no-for-an answer behavior in one of her posts. I went back and read my old post and fumed at "the nerve of some people" a little while later, when another disabled mom friend of mine (it's not like a club or anything I know four of them tops from my 29yrs on the planet) posted this. This left me really pondering the root of this kind of behavior because while Kati and I have little ones 2yrs or under, Misty has a 4yr old. I always believed people acted this way around my newborn and myself because she was so tiny and helpless. If I was right, it would stop some day. After reading Misty's post I had my doubts.

Doubts and questions to be exact. So much for getting credit for raising my child through infancy. First of all on a completely unrelated note why do all the disabled moms I know (yes all 4) have girls? Second of all why do people make such brazen assumptions? Is it because we are physically disabled women? I don't know any disabled daddies to research that quandry, so it's kind of a moot point. Maybe it's because we're all young? All this seems too general and over simplified.

Moreover, on what planet do you politely offer your help, get refused and then insist? Especially in my example where it involved a strange man removing Riley from the carrier on my chest and walking several feet away with her?!? Even in a case where your help is accepted why would you (Sorry, Misty's story makes me a little ill) stalk someone and undermine their parenting authority? What could you possibly be thinking? When would you ever barge into the parent/chlid relationship of a stranger (other than a case of child abuse)?

Kati makes an important point, about this behavior whatever your intentions are when you insist or clearly overstep social boundaries you are making us feel judged. I take care of my child everyday and you are insinuating that I am incompetent. I am a mother first, if at anytime I feel incapable of safely taking my child somewhere, I don't go. Most of the time I either have a system in place or I'm feeling it out and it's important for me to get my bearings.

Think of it this way (an exxageration so everyone can relate to the embarrasment), you're out somewhere and you see an attractive person of the opposite gender. You get an opportunity to hold the door and you are you greeted with a warm smile. Feeling encouraged, you follow them inside. They do not acknowledge/encourage you in anyway at this point so you follow them around "just in case." When they leave you follow them to their car and try to hold that door too. They say "no thanks" and turn their back to you. You're not deterred and insist on opening the car door AND buckling them in. Hmmm...wonder why they're not smiling?

If you wouldn't do it to another parent, why would you do it to me? I love it when someone holds the door for me when my hands are full. I appreciate a friendly offer, but no means no folks. Just like hitting on strangers in bars, there are boundaries.

The Stuff of Legend

Why are stepmothers in fairytales always ugly or cruel? They never save anyone or have fairy godmothers on their side. They are rarely beautiful and their intelligence is always used to manipulate and control. Why?

Maybe in the society these stories were penned in a woman old enough or worldly enough to marry a widower was thought of as impure. Maybe they were rewarding virginal young girls with royal marriages and punishing the biddies who were willing to be with a man who was married before to send a moral message. That's not quite right though.

Are they saying that any woman who would marry a man who has children already must be after something. Were they warning against gold diggers and society climbers. Maybe they're commenting on the practical rather emotional reasons a man with children would rush to remarry after his wife passes. Loveless marriages can take all kinds of turns. Perhaps single fathers were simply uncomfortable disciplining their daughters. They could berate or slap an unruly boy, but not their sweet little girl. Many fathers in modern times have trouble with this. If this is the case it's conceivable that stepmothers are just getting a bad rap for doing daddy's dirty work.

A more disturbing theory would be that the men who wrote these tales simply couldn't conceive of loving a child that wasn't biologically yours. We've all heard the clique "I won't raise another man's child". This simply isn't how most women are wired. A child in need of love and care becomes ours in a different but no less powerful way than one we bear ourselves.

It seems to me that all the stepmothers I remember from these stories marry widowers none of these men have been estranged in any way from living spouses. Maybe because they couldn't conceive of a woman abandoning her children, it's a difficult notion even in modern times. There is no story in the dusty volumes of fairy tales for me.

I am the nonexistent beautiful stepmother who saved the child abdomen by his mother. I gave him love and care not bread crumbs and chores. I never denied him happiness. In time I gave him a sibling who is his equal not the crowned princess to his foot servant. I brought sunshine back into the house and completed a family. I never stole, lied, cheated or plotted anyone's murder. I never placed anyone under an evil spell. I simply choose to love a man who had a child with someone who left them behind. It was not a simple choice and is always a difficult job, but I didn't take it on to snatch a kingdom. Where is the true in all the fiction?

I've Said It Before...

And I'll say it again. It NEVER fails. Every time Isaac brings home cooties from school he kicks it in a day or two. Then Mike gets it and carries on like he's dying for a day or two and then Riley gets it. I am somehow, maybe just through sheer determination, always the last standing. After the entire family is better it hits me like a ton of bricks. Every single time.

The problem being Isaac and Mike return to work and school and I am left to tend to the completely recovered ball of energy that is a 20mon old who got extra sleep the day before. For extra fun she's teething. I felt at least 3 razor sharp teeth coming through. Now Riley can explicitly tell me this is the case, she points to her check and says "sharp".

On top my illness and her teeth Mike needed to be on an all day conference call with work. His "office" is still full of boxes of his stuff and not a suitable workspace yet. He's been working in the family room or the back patio. Today it was raining so he had no escape from the wailing toddler. He simply muted the phone long enough to deposit her in bed with her sick mother and shut the bedroom door.

Ugh, where do I start? I needed me to come take of me like everyone else got. I needed the sleep everyone else got. I felt I had at least earned the right to watch what I wanted while I was sick. Luckily for me Miss Roo was pretty interested in Quantum Leap. Mostly though she fussed like she's rarely fussed before and tore up my bedroom. She pulled clean laundry out of baskets, "unpacked" boxes that were stacked against the wall and pushed whatever she found around my room in her doll stroller. I wish I was still breastfeeding because I wouldn't have had to get up to get Riley drinks and snacks, I could have passed her the immunities to whatever I had and it would have calmed down the teething fussiness.

No rest for the mommies. Calming teething babies, barking orders for homework completion or teeth brushing and praying this strengths their immune system from their sick bed.

All The Answers

The Bylaws of the Toddler Union (strictly enforced).

1) NEVER under any circumstances continue doing what you were doing when Mommy/Daddy/Grandma ran for the camera once the camera is out. (see fees and citations section for related penalties)
a)If adults are trying to take pictures of you and another toddler at no time should you both/all look in the direction of the camera. If you have no choice, but to look at the camera it is permissible so long as at no time both/all toddlers are smiling. At least one toddler in tears is preferred, but if a costumed character is involved it is required.
2)If a room is being vacuumed (or otherwise cleaned) it is your sworn duty to return the room to it's original state of messiness as quick as possible by any means necessary (ideally before the room's cleaning has been completed).
a)If you visit a home that is not baby proofed it is your solemn duty to immediately find the most dangerous thing in the house right away.
3)If you achieve a milestone at home under no circumstances should you repeat the word/action in front of other adults for at least a calendar month.
4)If adults seem very busy preparing for an event/company/date night make sure to slow them down as much as possible and make them rethink their decision. Never forgot our motto "Let an adult's task never go uninterrupted."
5)If at anytime you find you have behaved/eaten/slept well for a period of three moths or longer you must change your patterns for a period of no less the seventy two hours.

Did I miss any? Leave any toddler union rules I've forgotten in the comments.

Ms Helpy Helperton

My little one takes care of everyone. After she discovered my injured toe she was very distressed. She gave it a pat and a kiss and made sure everyone was very careful around Mommy. She loves to rock and feed her babies. To be clear, everything is a baby to Riley. She is equally happy to push a baby doll or stuffed animal in her stroller as she is to push bunny shaped sidewalk chalk or a picture of a baby. It's in her blood to be a nurturer. I used to carry band aids and Tylenol at all times even when I was single. I often baked cookies for my coworkers and my first car was a station wagon.

Today I pulled a t-shirt and shorts out of pile of hand-me-downs my friend's daughter gave me. I didn't even look at it until I sat down in the living room and Riley pointed to me. It turned out it was a black shirt with Joker from Batman drawn on it. I started to wonder if maybe it was scary. Miss Roo toddled over to me. She made her fakest fake cry, as it turned out on behalf of the scary clown on Mommy's shirt. She then proceeded to "share" her chicken nuggets. After she had made the appropriate eating sounds she noticed crumbs from Joker's "snack". When Riley sees a mess she doesn't just say the word in her sweet little high pitched voice she says it in a low gravely voice that reminds me of the “ Whaaaaaat's Up!” guys. So having exclaimed, "mess!" she immediately started brushing off my shirt. So helpful.

She's also very concerned about where things go. The other day she brought me a sample paint container and paint brush. I smiled and politely requested she put them back. Hours later I wondered into my room excepting to find the items in the middle of the floor. To my surprise she had put them back in exactly the same spot they came from. Amazing. Not a lot of toddlers are actually helpful very often, despite their best efforts.

Aside from being nurturing, tidy and very sweet Riley is also mechanically inclined. She helped Daddy put together the new lawnmower. She brought him his screwdriver, which she can correctly identify thanks to Handy Manny. She brought him instructions, wheels, the bottle of oil it was adorable. They were like a surgeon and scrub nurse. She was very taken with the oil bottle she brought the empty bottle (with the lid screwed tightly on) over to the flower bed and "oiled" the flowers. She is only one after all, but her heart was in the right place

Catch a Katie...

By the toe.

Awakened by screaming baby + midnight + crappy balance + Mike's mess in the middle of the bedroom floor + Boom=
All the photos were taken a little less than 24hrs after the injury.

Under Pressure

I have felt enormous pressure since the moving process started. Get packed, unpacked, painted, put away and cleaned in time for the Easter party. Phew. Get packed, unpacked, cleaned out so you can turn in the old house key. Get the kids organized, closets organized, etc moving stuff. All this while keeping the kids on their respective schedules. I've felt enormous pressure not to rock the boat.

Aside from the pressure within myself which is always the worst and within my household there is external pressure. Pressure to meet deadlines for old landlords and new landlords. Pressure to stretch a budget that is taxed with moving expenses. Pressure to still make it to family functions smiling after hellishly long days sweeping behind large appliances and literally cleaning the fridge from the inside. Pressure to keep everyone motivated and on track. Pressure to keep up my social life when all I want to do is crawl into bed for a week.

Pressure not to show my stress or pain. This is a big one right now because the move and potty training are happening concurrently. When your toddler has an accident you have to smile sweetly and explain where their bodily fluids are supposed to go. If you spook them it's game over. I'm pretty good at this usually, but today Riley sat happily on the potty watching cartoons and then took a huge poop on the floor next to the potty. It was big and smelly. I breathed through my mouth detained the pooper and called for back up. While Mike handled the floor I went to rinse off Riley's shoes. They looked like tiny cakes frosted with fecal matter. It was not the first time in the process that she stepped in her own poop. I kept looking at the floor so that Miss Roo wouldn't see my disgusted face. I gagged with my back turned while saying things like "almost big girl, in the potty next time."

Now I feel pressure to explain myself. I feel, maybe wrongly, judged for potty training my not quite 20mo old right now. I feel pressure to end the horrible rashes and infections once and for all, but for the most part I'm just following Riley's lead on this. Later in the day she went to the bathroom door and knocked. When I opened it she lifted the lid on the toilet and put her Sesame Street seat on it. She said "up." and I obliged. Sure enough this poopy made it in the big potty. She throughly enjoyed wiping and flushing while sweetly calling "bye-bye". She even got a potty super star sticker for that one.

Let us not forget the pressure of finding things. Finding the right pan, a certain shirt or a pair of scissors leads to major meltdowns right now. It gets a little better everyday. It occured to me, watching Mike build the swing set, that tools and kitchen utensils are similar. There's is a perfect tool for every job in the kitchen a wonderous utensil or machine, but I don't own most of them. I cook with what I have which is less than perfect, but gets the job done. Mike doesn't always have the exact right tool (although his dad is striving to fix that one Christmas at a time -air compressor, nail gun, etc), but he gets the job done.

Things are letting up...kind of...slowly...God willing...I hope.